Sheikh Yerbouti

I agree about triangulating a scramble, or inserting some other hint that choosing order wisely is good strategy. Maybe creating challenges and making it clear that one is about luck (needle in a haystack), one is about brains or fine motor skills (when will adrenaline make that most difficult?), and one is about brawn (when will you best be able to tackle a physical task and still have energy to complete the leg). I love the scramble concept so it’s not just a first-in first-out line of boring tasks as final legs tend to be, and I hope it's here to stay. Unfairly physical is relative. I practice flying trapeze as a hobby. I was able to do knee hang without having any other athletic background, with caveats I'll explain below. As a bucket list / date night activity, it’s all about timing and letting physics and the lines puller do the work. I would not have been able to swim out to a buoy or climb endless flights of stairs to get my next clue, but that doesn't make the physical aspect of the Race any less fair. I am sure there were several practice rounds without a catcher before Corey’s “first try.” Knee hang is the very first trick recreational schools teach, and a fair number of people can get the timing good enough to catch by the end of the first class. I felt all the Rob though. I took several classes (averaging seven turns per class) to be able to invert with catch timing, and a couple more after that to catch consistently. Rob had the added challenge that he probably needed to look for someone signing the prompts. Flying trapeze is all about timing, and beginners have it drilled into them to listen for the calls. You need the "ready!" / "hep!" to leave the board at the right time, and you need the “legs up!” / “hands off!” / “hep!” to complete the knee hang and catch at the right time. Hard enough to get that right when you can hear the cues but your brain has the zoomies trying to figure out what your body is doing. More difficult if you’re relying on visual cues (such as the catcher clapping). The straddling around the bar is called hocks style, and I'm glad that was given as an option for the guys who needed it. Tucking/piking under the bar simply isn't possible for some people depending on body proportions (arm length compared to torso and legs), no matter how athletic they are or how much flexibility and compression strength they have. I struggled with trying to pull my legs between my arms for two or three classes before an instructor finally taught me hocks, and only then was I able to progress. To this day, I do every trick I can hocks style, and skip any that can only be done with a true tuck or pike under the bar. While I didn’t enjoy any of those bands’ style of music, and yes my ears did bleed, I’m hesitant to blame the bands themselves. Have you ever heard a cell phone recording of a very good live show? The bootleg sounds horrific. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt that production goofed the audio setup. I mean, they’re professionals, and goofing the audio is unlikely…but I’d rather think that than think TAR hired three terrible bands for the evening. Those hugs among the winning and waiting teams at the finish line looked genuine. This is what happens when you cast likable teams. The Race speaks for itself, no need to stunt cast or manufacture drama to be enjoyable to watch. Take heed, producers! Bickering is not entertaining. Amazing scenery and clever tasks are entertaining. Final random thought. “Coarse language” in the tv rating indeed. They edited the glass blowing to sound as dirty as possible.

Yes, this exactly. I learned how to drive stick in a right-hand-drive car on the left side of the road. It was adjusting to the opposite in the United States that was the challenge for me, LOL. And to be honest, I preferred shifting with my left hand while keeping my dominant right hand on the steering wheel. This season of 90-minute episodes knocked (hurled?) it out of the park. My favorite final three ever. My favorite roadblock ever. (Until next week, perhaps, as the previews show my favorite hobby as part of the final leg.) Riverdancing has to be one of the most brutally precise performance tasks The Amazing Race has ever done. I could listen to this show all day, although I’m sure hearing the same sequence over and over must have driven the waiting partners crazy. Doing so many physical tasks and then having to slow my adrenaline-driven lizard brain down enough to memorize and recite convoluted poetry, knowing it was the only thing standing in the way of being one of the final three teams, would have fried me.

It would be wild if this episode piqued more interest in Slovenia than having a Slovenian First Lady of the United States.

This might be my favorite episode yet. So much old-fashioned racing drama. Smart transportation maneuvering undone by train delay, but would have been undone by hours of operation anyway. Running off confidently in the wrong direction. Footrace up the stairs. A competitive team bailing a climb they could have won. Footraces everywhere, down to the final mat. I love when teams are in the same camera shot so we know the closeness isn’t just editing shenanigans. I was shocked to realize TAR had never been to Slovenia. I know they've been to Croatia and Romania, and the other Balkan countries have some really stunning scenery as well. Beautiful scenery and brutal tasks, and it’s always fun to say “I’ve been there / lived there!” when watching this show. There were several points where I seriously thought about the medical screening and safety precautions production must take. I consider myself reasonably healthy, but even seasonal allergies can knock me on my butt. They would have had to carry me off the field in an ambulance had I attempted the hay task. Same with the stairs. My stubborn, competitive spirit would have ignored all warning signs that I was about to collapse from a heart attack. I seriously worried about Rob when I saw the preview for the second staircase task. The editors must have really loved this team, because they only showed Rob’s initial lack of enthusiasm at another climb and then arrival at the clue box, and none of the certain struggle on the way up. I gave some side-eye to the people who didn’t get 1991 on the first try. I wondered whether they had to prove they saw the numbers before attempting to answer the question, because most people could have — should have — known the answer from the clue alone. This is not History with a capital H we learned in school. The fall of the Berlin Wall, dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s comprised an all-consuming series of current event we lived in real time and that entered even elementary school lesson planning (remember the Weekly Reader?) …. And then I realized that only really applied to anyone over the age of 40 or so, and probably even then primarily to military brats. And then I felt very old and wondered about the day when youngins would struggle to remember when September 11 happened because it was something they maybe learned in school and not part of their lived experience. Anyway back to the race. Lena and Morgan’s departure was telegraphed when they gave a very glum-looking talking head, while Whine-aleigh had none of that. Sorry to see the sisters go. Their bickering was annoying but relatable to my sibling relationships. I do wonder if this team did something to piss off production, because even scenes that could have been edited as power moments throughout their race (e.g., polishing off a plate of bugs to win the express pass) were edited to show them in their worst light. The top three teams to finish are my top three for the win. If either Rob, Corey, Greg, or John is single and into women of a certain age, call me! I live in the neighborhood of America’s premier Deaf university and only Deaf Starbucks, plus lots of local businesses have ASL-capable people on staff. Rob and Corey would be very comfortable in my home. :-)

I'm not surprised that the kind of spatial disorientation that makes Lena unable to read a map or discern left from right would also make it hard for her to distinguish between a six and a nine, underlined or not, floating in the water and viewed from the air.

I’m not always clear what the racers see on their clue cards compared to what Phil describes, but from description alone, making rice paper wrappers (essentially crepe technique) would have been the obvious choice over dressing a motorcycle. Then again, I’d take my chances in a kitchen over a mechanic’s shop any day. I also would have chosen paper over plastic simply because of the environmental factor implied in the name play. When given the choice in a grocery store, I always choose (presumably recyclable) paper over (in landfills for thousands of years) plastic. Choosing the plastic detour would have felt like choosing the petrochemical bag tax, and my overthinking mind would have concluded that the race runners designed the tasks accordingly. Paper all the way! Morgan and Lena made a choice about the express pass with the best information they had at the time. In retrospect, they would have been better off doing the boats and skipping the detour. Or making the call sooner and also choosing the paper detour. Or not using it at all. Even if they’d come in last, they’d still be in the race. Because it was a (non) non-elimination leg. “Search for Phil on the mat” ≠ “Make your way to the Pit Stop.”

I like all of the teams this season, which means every week I’ll see a team I like eliminated. That said, I’m happy the casting seems to be biased toward love of the Race than toward drama for the sake of drama. I didn’t even notice the rank order didn’t shift much because the tasks seemed to provide plenty of potential to jump ahead based on skill. I wonder how long they actually took. I would have noped on out of the lotus task. I live near the Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens in DC, and I love the annual lotus and water lily festival. But I refuse to go if the lotuses have peaked and empty seed pods await. Trypophobia, anyone? I don’t go into water if I can’t see the bottom, and fish and mosquitos and spiders and NOPE. The fact that there were so many new buds among the wilted blossoms and empty pods was very distracting. A plant plant for the show? The shopping task was made for Victor and Jocelyn. “I speak the language and own a grocery store that sells these things,” LOL. I thought the other teams that tried this would have been really hung up, but editing magic made it look like everyone blew through, and any mistakes were quickly correctable. Jackfruit is my favorite meat substitute for party dishes like buffalo chicken dip and barbecue pulled pork. I realized this episode that I would not recognize a jackfruit in the wild, because I only know it out of a can. Same for a lot of the other tropical and exotic fruits I know by name but not by pre-deconstructed appearance.

Laura Donnelly (Jenny) plays Elsa Bloodstone in Werewolf by Night, the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe available on Disney+. Fun for Halloween viewing!

I'd watch that spinoff too. If I remember correctly, Colin and Che did this during the off-season a few years ago. A weekly half-hour Weekend Update during the summer. I enjoyed most of the sketches in this episode, but I'm also probably part of MTS's target audience. The way some of you feel baffled about the humor in girl talk and booty workouts is the way I feel during most segments most weeks. It's a big world with lots of content worth satirizing. Doesn't have to be dumpster fire politics and white dude humor all the time.

Yikes. What a waste of a Friday evening. Promising premise, terrible execution. The whole plane crash survival storyline was just the background to an extended therapy session. Lots of endless flashbacks and hallucinations of parental and relationship angst amidst silliness like her not getting thirsty and searching for water until day three or four of her ordeal in the wilderness. And don't get me started on the ending. Skip this one.

I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who thought this. I was so confused by the whole sequence. Why was she taking a pregnancy test in a store and not at home? Why did the scene end with a closeup of the test in the trash? Why was there only one line indicating "not pregnant"? Was the whole thing manufactured drama meant to test Kobe's commitment? How long was she going to carry out the charade?

That's too bad. I'm sure COVID also had something to do with truncating season six. Having never read the books and just going by show alone, I could think of lots of storylines they could have delved into that wouldn't involve Cait/Claire at all. More Young Ian with the Mohawks. Fergus and Marsali in New Bern. Checking in on Jenny and Ian at Lollybroch, with a scene of seeing how Laoghaire is dealing with knowing her daughter ran off with people she despised. Following Morag MacKenzie after she parted ways with Roger after their voyage. More 1960s/70s anything. Anything at all connecting the 1770s storyline with the 20th century. On the podcasts, the showrunners always talk about how they film more than they fit into an episode. Even an episode of cut scenes would have been welcome to fill out the season.

[Channeling The Amazing Race] One month, six seasons, two hundred years of drama…binge complete and I now officially can join the ranks of people suffering through Droughtlander. Agree that I would have liked to see Claire reacting to the whistling of the time traveller the next cell over. Although I realize she would have been put in the women’s part of the jail, not a cell near a man. Minor detail in the land of time travel, nine lives, and Colonel Bogey. Who else can’t hear that song without singing, “Bobos, they make your feet feel fine. Bobos, they cost a dollar twenty-nine….”? Regarding how few Ridge settlers showed up to help the Frasers, it must have been terribly slow to comb through 10,000 acres of land (15.6 square miles or about four miles square) on horseback or foot to rally up the troops. Might have been more efficient to light the Celtic cross up high. But also wondering why eviction notices weren’t handed out to people who turned against their landlords in the months of shunning leading up to the homestead siege in the first place. I know previously a great deal was made about Jamie not being able to afford the taxes on the land without settlers, but at this point in history (dawn of the American Revolution), surely he would have known he’d have space to sort out his own traitors. I have so many impressions (not coherent enough to be called thoughts) about life in the 18th century North Carolina backcountry as depicted on the show. The layers upon layers of clothing worn in southern / mid-Atlantic heat and humidity. The citizen patrols dedicated more to vigilantism and rounding up escaped slaves (the latter not depicted this season but historically accurate) than true justice, believed by many to be the origins and ethos of modern day police forces in America. The uneducated small-mindedness and hypocrisy that still plague communities today. Still thinking the whole lot of time travelers are crazy for choosing to stay in that era, Jamie Fraser or not. I think Allan is the father, but Tom is the murderer, and his insistence on accompanying Claire isn’t so much to protect her until she can receive a “fair” trial as it is to be able to confess during said trial.

I thought we were going too see his reaction ping for the characters as well. The curious, knowing glances between Jamie and Claire as Allan possessively hugged the baby's coffin to his chest. Then cutting to Jamie standing on the porch, staring off into space while the cogs visibly turned in his head. Then what I thought was his "Zoinks! I know who the father is!" moment as he turned on his heels to head into the house. Only to confront Lizzie for her fabulous three-way action. Live vicariously through me. I just finished the penultimate episode of all the episodes currently in existence after a monthlong binge of six seasons, and I'm going into the finale still unspoiled about the story ahead.

Even later to the game that you are, courtesy of a Netflix binge. I too feel like there's something more to Ulysses. In a time when it was illegal to teach slaves how to read or write, he's literate, well-spoken, and debonair. Where (or when) did he come from?

Inexplicable decision-making all around.

These are the moments that stood out to me too. I love Lizzy presenting the news at the port and Brianna's meeting of Jamie and reunion with Claire. I laughed through the urination and subsequent face-touching, and I'm not sure why the show runners wanted to make a farce out of a scene that was supposed to be deeply emotional. But it worked for me. I'm glad they didn't drag it out and have people spend half the season trying to find each other. Brianna and Jamie's heart-to-heart with the bees was the first time I could see Brianna actually being the offspring of Jamie and Claire. The 1960s straight hair made Brianna look as wooden as her line delivery, and I couldn't see how such a dull-looking person could possibly be their child. Putting Brianna in 1760s fashion and more natural-looking hair did her so many favors, and she now looks like the gorgeous daughter who resembles both of her parents. Now just need to address that emotionless script-reading. As for Brianna and Claire, I feel like their sudden closeness is unearned. I think we're supposed to understand that the two became much closer while Claire prepared to return to Jamie, and that Claire desperately missed her daughter after returning to the past, but that gallop through their lives together in S03 mostly showed a distant, barely-there mother-daughter relationship. The whole rape and pregnancy storyline is something I can do entirely without. I find birthing bairns to be tedious plots in any tv show, and this one promises to be doubly so. For people clamoring to age up Jamie...he's supposed to be mid-40s, not 70. He looks exactly like a healthy, fit 40-something.

Zooming in on the map Brianna pulled out, it showed a route outlined from Craigh na Dun (helpfully marked on the map by a circle of stones) to Ayr, a port on the western coast. It also showed that Craigh na Dun (which I realize is not a real place) was not as close to Inverness as portrayed on the show — probably about 30-40 miles to the east. The route from stones to port marked in red on the map would have been a solid 200 mile journey. Brianna was going to walk there? Really, that was her plan? With just a single PBJ and not even a bottle of water? Agree with others that she should have first sought out Lollybroch. It was a complete and fortuitous coincidence that she passed out near Laoghaire’s house. Also, isn’t Inverness itself a port city? Did transatlantic vessels not set sail from there in the 18th century? (Not a book reader, binge-watching the show for the first time, unspoiled as to what follows.)

Let me preface this by saying that I have been living under a rock for the past many moons and am probably the only person in the world who is completely unspoiled with how the series progresses, having never read the books and only discovering the tv show on Netflix a couple of weeks ago. I imagine my experience binge-watching multiple seasons in a short period of time differs from your original viewing. Literally everything is plot twist to me -- you mean Claire and Jamie were always the endgame, and that whole getting back to Frank was just a detour? That's the kind of obliviousness to the Outlander universe I'm talking about having. Saying all that to highlight that this is pure speculation that probably doesn't even fit into the essence of the Outlander saga. I interpreted Adawehi's line about having wisdom beyond time to mean that Claire travels to the future, like to the year 4000, and thus develops knowledge of medicine unimaginable to us even today. After all, magic is just science that has yet to be explained.

"Did we eat the clue?" My favorite line of the night. I had to open up a can of Trader Joe's dolmas during the wrapping roadblock. I finished the tenth and final one as Lulu and Lala were finishing their second souvlaki. I'm not going to hate on people who have never had souvlaki before. They're not super common in large swaths of America, although almost everyone would recognize some form of a skewer or pita wrap. I also get never having onions. Allium sensitivities are pretty common, and if you don't grow up with someone who cooks with onions or garlic, you can easily get to adulthood without ever chowing on them raw. I picked the visible onions off of food until I was in my 20s. I am jealous that hyperfocus is one of Penn's ADHD superpowers. I can get into a hyperfocus flow state when I'm digging deep into data, but I can't listen to people talk at me to save my life. I've spent my entire life struggling through classroom lectures, work meetings, and "listening comprehension" sections of exams (which in my opinion test attention span and focus more than understanding of language, but whatever). There is no way I would have been able to pay attention to a 15-minute story about saints or match names to pictures. Edited because I just realized that they never had to name the saint, just pick the correct icon. And most of the pictures had something that reflected the quiz question, like St. Christopher carrying a traveler. Maybe the story session was just psych ops to unnerve contestants, and the quiz was doable just by looking for clues in the pictures.

All the speculation about whether teams should have chosen sausage-making over carrying wine bottles up a million flights of stairs makes me long for the Detour narration of old. A detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its pros and cons....The racers AND the audience were clued in about whether a task would be scary but fast, or easy but slow, or physically draining but a chance for a strong team to get ahead, or whatever. Going just by the description we saw, I would have chosen the wine over the sausage because of the ick factor. But I also never would have been on the race because I'm not one of those vegetarians who can look the other way and chow down on sheep brains for a chance to win a million dollars.

Listening to Kim and Penn talk about all the good bits that didn't make the final edit -- including the comment that next week's episode (#3) is the one that actually should be / should have been two hours because it ended up being a doozy of a day for the racers -- makes me wish that we could get an extended cut version of TAR on one of the streaming platforms. I would pay to see hours and hours of footage and talking head interviews from each leg.

Ha, yes, that jumped out at me. Flight instructor Rachel’s introduction definitely made her one of the more memorable ones of the bunch. I'll need more time to figure out if I actually like her, though. I did like Korean-Persian Ency, whose bio says that she taught English to North Korean defectors. She has very striking features, although I wish Clayton had more to say than “she’s pretty” after the Korean lesson. Teddi has the best hair, but, like, I just can’t, like, with the Valley Girl talk. I could have done without the manufactured drama of Ms. Previously Engaged. I resent 33 years old being considered a cougar. That’s more like puma cub territory. Holly as Rachel’s wingwoman didn’t quite land the delivery of her lines, but I wish there would be a Senior Bachelor. A grown-up version of this show would be much more interesting than watching the producers manipulate a bunch of immature kids season after season. If it’s true that there weren’t many takers, why not do a season of 40s-50s, the current ages of OG Bachelor’s primary audience? Presuming the Bachelor gets to specify his aesthetic preferences in the casting, we certainly know Clayton's type. Good lord half these women look exactly the same. Not a whole lot of diversity; even the black and ethnically ambiguous women are very similar-looking in that pretty but generic Eurocentric way. I do appreciate the number of medical professionals. Once again, the producers think we all want to hear amplified disgusting mouth noises. Why can’t they just show the kissing muted with background music and voiceovers? The flashback of Clayton and Michelle made me realize exactly why all of her kissing scenes grossed me out more so than usual. Her mouth was just so huge and completely consumed the faces of the guys she was kissing, and she was all about the extra slurping. Given how much we all clowned Matt James for his fish-face kissing, I’m surprised Michelle got a pass around these parts. But I digress. Looks like we’re going to have to suffer through a whole lot of crying. Including by Clayton. I usually skip the season preview at the end of the first episode — do they usually spoil who the final three are?

Do we still need to use spoiler tags now that the complete season has been out for a while? Just in case, here are my impressions having binged the entire season in one sitting equivalent to an actual long-haul flight to Korea. The fact that I pulled an all-nighter and spent nine hours reading subtitles (when I rarely watch tv without doing something else at the same time) is a testament to how great this show is. I don’t want a second season to ruin it. And one last thing -- the fact that the story repeatedly emphasized that Sae-Byeok was a North Korean defector took me out of it. The actress is like 5'9, way too tall to play a North Korean in desperate straits.

Children do not belong in Vegas shows. This is the only reason I can tolerate ChapKidz getting cut, and why I really dislike Victory going through. Give her a scholarship to a performing arts school or a tutorial education while she performs with symphonies and then goes off to Juilliard or something. If I'm paying to see a show in Vegas, I want to see circus acts and other (adult) feats of extreme talent. Not people singing...I can see that anywhere. I would pay to see the likes of the Colombian hand-balancers, UniCircle Flow, and Lea Kyle quick change. I don't give a hoot about glorified church choirs. Mostly I tuned in to watch Duo Transcend. They are beasts and an inspiration to this aspiring aerialist.