aghst

I don’t think Madison showed growth. She made some of her usual horrible comments. She didn’t rant as much this season but those are all performative and they reserved all the yelling for other cast members this season. If she became a better human being, it’s doubtful we’d see it on the show. Why would Bravo want their cast members to grow or mature? They’re not in the bus8ness of putting on zen people because low drama people don’t last on Bravo.

So much fraud in this season finale. First of all, few if any of them know the UK Mods of the early '60s. Second, there's no shop in Charleston with those costumes. They have a stylist or costumes person sourcing them from some company stocking costumes for an Austin Powers knockoff. I don't know South Carolina liquor license laws. That bar is suppose to be a business? Well he can claim this party was just some casual get together. But production footed the bill for the booze and catering obviously. That bar may have been a set. Then JT declaring his love. Why would he do that on TV and at an event with all these other people hovering nearby? The cameras were set up, one on her and one on him, all with the background out of focus. How many takes did they do, after lining up the cameras and lighting, blocking the scene? Than the confrontation. They had cameras again set up, one on JT and one on Austen. But no footage of the head butt or the punch? Why wouldn't they show that if the cameras caught it? Why wouldn't the cameras have caught it, they had at least two cameras on each of their faces up to the supposed physical strikes. Bravo is going to keep making this show. Next season, will they even try to continue with these story lines? Maybe Madison will get pregnant. But will they still keep trying to pretend all this sexual/romantic turmoil around Taylor/Olivia/Austen? Or will they come up with some other crap, probably Austen will be dating someone else. If Craig and Paige are each continuing to do cameos on each other's shows, they will carry on that charade. Maybe find another love interest for Olivia too so that she can stop playing the angry spurned woman. Fortunately this season didn't become another stupid Scandoval or whatever. Doesn't mean they won't keep trying. Maybe have some "juicy" IG posts or something again like the Austen threesome BS.

Notice now that all the legends are arriving with a little sermon to wag their fingers at some of the current challengers? Yeah that's totally spontaneous right, not prompted at all by producers?🙄 Cara Maria at the end said something like "you'll be seeing a lot more of me." Bet she's been antsy to come back. It's been at least 4 seasons now?

Hacks Season 3 coming some time this spring. https://deadline.com/2024/01/hacks-season-3-return-spring-max-1235695091/ Season 2 was released in May/June 2022. Along with Jean Smart's health issue and the strikes, it's not too much of a delay, maybe 6 months later than it would have been otherwise? The show runners are a couple so maybe they were able to do some work on scripts during the WGA strike.

So Michelle won Survivor on her only season there and has been on the Challenge several seasons without winning? Michelle: you don’t have to win Daily Challenge to win the whole Chllenge. Also Michelle: Zara has won 5 Dailies and is going to be a problem in the Final. She’s got to go! How did she become Queen Bee? How is everyone else not seeing that she and Jay are running the Alliance? Or do they see it but the script is to play along until the Alliance splinters? This is episode 12 of the season and they still have 16 challengers left, more than half the 24 who started. You figure they’ll at least have 3 men and 3 women for the Final but maybe as many as 5 of each gender starting the Final? Those things they put on under the eyes, only some of the women had them, must be for bags under the eyes?

Also, did they say he speaks German? Or that the degree program at the German university will be in English? That's not uncommon thing, European universities have English programs to attract paying students. But wonder if that degree would be recognized in English-speaking countries because if he doesn't speak German, his job choices would be in Canada and the UK.

Was it unanswered calls? I thought it was different listings of Lorraine at different places, like Lorraine office, Lorraine home, etc. I wouldn't imagine that Lorraine would tolerate him ignoring her calls.

During the deliberation, the friend asked if he would choose the place without roommates having never met the roommates? How would that be possible? In the US, often one person leases and then selects the roommates. So if this house hunter wanted to live in that place, he gets to decide to move in? Maybe in Germany the landlord decides and the tenants have to accept it? Seems unlikely. He must have met the roommates but they declined to appear on the show so they never showed them interacting with him. I can see wanting to be close to campus though instead of having to commute all the time. OK in the 3 months after, he was cutting up fruit into a bowl, took the bowl outside to the balcony and sat at a table. Then he added some chips onto the bowl? Did I see that right?

Well Danish underestimated Roy but he may have saved Dot's life, at least for the time being. He was whipping that chain. One of those would eventually have hit and Dot wouldn't be able to escape the subsequent blows. He was in a homicidal rage as he took that long walk to where Dot was. Not only the public humiliation but what the wife said to him probably increased the rage. So we get to see Roy's full on rage for the first time. He was controlled up to this point. But his end game appears to be to call on militias to go to war with whichever law enforcement tried to apprehend him for his rampage of murders. And he has a tank. Indira didn't get mad but the expression on her face as she stepped just outside her front door showed sadness, until she realized her car was being repossessed. Still kept her cool, went to Lorraine's because she realizes Dot doesn't have much time.

Could be a bad sign. They've shot 4 seasons, two seasons at a time. In June 2022, they renewed season 3 and 4 at the same time and both were shot at the same time. Maybe the viewing numbers aren't great but the show gets great critical reception that Apple is doing it for one more season?

I haven't watched LOD in at least a couple of years, whenever the last season was released. But I wonder if the plots were based on some big police force in the UK which was so rife with corruption and so infiltrated by criminal groups. For all we know there are still police departments with high level of corruption, though I think often film and TV prefer to create corrupt police characters because those types often have appeal to audiences. But it wasn't too long ago that cops were making like $50k with overtime, so it was relatively easy for criminals to bribe cops. I believe NYPD had a big problem. The trope is that mobsters always had officers relatively high in rank on the take. LOD though has not only bent cops at high levels but they have been infiltrated without young criminals who join the police force as young recruits, in their early 20s. There must be some real-life antecedent in the UK for these plots.

NYC must have a shortage of men if she's settling for Craig. But more likely Bravo pitched them on being both shows. Never watched SH so I presume she's still on it and Craig makes guest appearances or something?

Even if he does something heroic in the end, Gator at least killed that old woman and intended to kill Munch. But it's unlikely his first rodeo. So he'd have to answer for at least the one murder we saw on screen.

Austin to Mexico City, a couple with a young boy. They wanted to live in one of the most upscale neighborhoods. Wife is from MC and husband, who grew up in France, is going to open a burger joint. A Frenchman making burgers in Mexico City. Probably $20 burgers in an upscale neighborhood with a lot of international cuisine? She was going to work from home so they wanted 3 bedrooms and a big kitchen. They wanted furnished because they were going to keep their home back in Austin. So if this hamburger place didn't work out, they'd go back? It struck me that most of the HHI involve looking for furnished places. I don't know if that's because a lot of these places have furnished apartments and homes or because the house hunters are really interested in short-term stays or they've kept a home back at their point of origin or as some say, they sold everything to move. In the US certainly, furnished places are not common, either for rent or buy. I can see in a small apt. in a big European city, furnished might be more common but we've seen cases where previous homeowners take kitchen appliances with them, sometimes counters too so the house hunters would have to install a new kitchen. So house 1 is unfurnished, has big kitchen and big outdoor space, has 3rd bedroom and is $3500. House 2 is 2 bedrooms so no third bedroom to set up an office, only partially furnished but is open concept like they asked for. But no outdoor space. House 3 is the only one over budget at $3700. It has outdoor space and 3 bedrooms but a small, separated kitchen. They eliminate House 3, end up choosing House 2 because it has a second living area which could be set up as her office.

Miami to Thailand, model wants a home for herself and daughter in Chiang Mai, has only a $400 budget but all the choices are over budget. Her friend seems familiar. Either this episode is a retread or Nubian may be a former house hunter herself. Get a lot of space for $500 there. She apparently books modeling jobs herself but she's kind of old for modeling, with two daughters, one of them apparently a teen old enough to live apart from mother.

I think Jed Mercurio is working on other projects at the moment. Not sure why, as Line of Duty is by far his most successful, commercially and critically. On his IMDB page, there's a listing for a new season of Bodyguard.

I think they just wanted to turn over as many vets as possible and get in all these twenty somethings, who are photogenic. They've given Nurys a lot of seasons and Michelle as well. Young pretty women and buff men would have greater appeal to young viewers than these old vets who are now in their mid 30s or older. So having one of the new generation win a title is an attempt to make them stars. Anyways the thing about Michelle and Laurel was just a narrative and they played into it. They have had pole wrestle but not hall brawl yet? Laurel would have been the logical choice since she outweighs most women by a lot.

Gator is an irredeemable villain at this point. He may have been a victim when he was a kid as depicted in the puppet play. But he threw in his lot with Roy and has probably killed many more than what's been shown. His attempt to kill Munch wasn't his first rodeo and even though he didn't intend to kill Mama Munch, it's still on him. So would he turn on Roy at that point? Would he still care that Roy killed Linda? Other than possible helping to take Roy down, Gator's reaction may not matter since he's probably a multiple murderer.

Yeah I forgot to comment about Lamb and Standish. Standish thought MI5 was better when Partner was in charge. She also didn't want to believe that MI5 would kill their own. Lamb doesn't suffer fools but he didn't mock or insult her like he usually does, just gave her the brutal truth about Partner, that he betrayed his country and that he was going to frame her. Above all, that Partner made her his secretary because she was a drunk and would be oblivious to what Partner was doing. Usually Lamb's zingers don't hurt their targets enough to make them want to get away from Lamb permanently. Even as he berated Marcus and Shirley, they didn't want to lose their jobs. In this case, Standish literally walked away in the middle of nowhere. But the season 4 previews show she's still around. Maybe she doesn't come back to Slough House right away.

They really ramped up the body count compared to the previous seasons. I don't think it's going to be typical of this show. Finally, Taverner tells Tearney that ordering the deaths of MI5 agents isn't going to go over well at all, including in the Park, the building where they work. Tearney thinks if Donovan and the Slow Horses are taken out, she can sell it. Donovan finds the file and turns out he's a badass with killing mercenaries, takes out enough of them to buy River and Louisa enough time. Otherwise they were so hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered. Yes Shirley is a badass. Seemed she and Marcus weren't too surprised that they're fighting Duffy and other UK nationals trying to kill MI5 agents -- Slow Horses are subject to ridicule by "real" MI5 but would they so easily try to kill them? Duffy isn't just some foil for River and the other Slow Horses to outwit. He will kill anyone that he's ordered to kill so Louisa had to put him down or he would have gutted Marcus. So only the female Slow Horses had kills? Not sure if River or Marcus killed any of the bad guys. River goes to his grandfather with the file, who burns it because his lesson is that it would only get him into trouble. Turns out River suspected that his grandfather would bury or burn the file so he made a copy and the lesson learned was to leak it anonymously. Tearney is gone but you'd think there would be a huge scandal. Well the Home Secretary is ousted as well. That is like the head of the FBI or CIA being ousted. For all the dead mercenaries, who tried to kill MI5 agents, it would get international headlines. But somehow the damage control limited it to Tearney and Peter Judd?

She left Scottie with Indira, presumably because she had a purpose? She promised to be back in a couple of days I thought. Yet she just wandered into a particular diner, where she'd be victimized in a random way and end up in Roy's clutches. She's shown to be a careful planner as well as a genius, McGuyver-like improviser. Maybe the vivid way she re-enacted her victimization in her dream shows that she still has PTSD, despite cleverly fending off Roy's attempts to abduct her? If a part of her believes that she just needs to find Linda, convince her to go to the cops with her and it would solve all her problems, maybe she doesn't have a plan. She learned to fight at some point and had some ideas on what to do if Roy caught up to her again. But maybe the dream suggests she doesn't have ideas, that her self-reliance to be safe and protect her family is at an end. At the end of the episode, she's seen as pretty helpless, quite a contrast from the tiger she's shown herself to be. Or the one who told Lorraine to back off. The way she ends up captured is crazy, seems like a deus ex machina not to save the hero but in this case, to put the heroine in danger, just to move the plot along to the remaining 3 episodes. Roy and Gator are going to dare other local law enforcement to stop them -- convenient since Roy believes he is the law, even if he doesn't win that election. So you would think it would be up to the FBI but it's clear they have their own agenda, which isn't to protect someone like Dot but to get Roy in a way that advances their careers. The good guys this season would be Indira and Witt Farr. Lorraine may use her resources to help Dot. Are they going to be enough?

Calgary to London. Young couple from Canada decide to have an overseas adventure. They both get jobs in London and want to live in East London. Richard approves because he lives there. Their budget is $2800 and he's more budget-conscious while she has a long wish list -- English charm, washer/dryer, dishwasher, space for cat, no carpet and she's willing to pay more. House 1 is modern, $200 below budget and has the best transit link to his job in West London. It doesn't have a dishwasher, just washer/dryer. She doesn't approve of the esthetics. House 2 is $3000 but is unfurnished and Richard says furnishing it would cost $2000-3000. It's renovated cardboard factory with a cool rooftop terrace of their own and all the appliances that she wants. He brings up the financial challenges it would present, as well as the poor commute for him. It doesn't have English charm but she likes the hipster factor of the repurposed factory in a cool renovated space. House 3 is $2400, would save them a lot of money obviously. Only has a washer, no dryer, no dishwasher. It's a renovated public housing block, looks very unappealing from the outside. Inside is not much better, besides the missing appliances, room are small and there's carpet in them, not so good for Fergus the cat, which has a pretty round head and face. They must have a pretty healthy cat food budget. They eliminate house #3 (which also had the worst transportation access) and she says she likes #2 the best but compromise because it won't be their forever home and they can move to a place she likes better in the future, he promises. 3 months later: They still like the place and they even got to do some traveling, as well as find some good hangout places nearby.

Looks like Pat is no longer able to host or do as many scenes with the other cast members as she has in the past. So maybe Whitney is going to do more hosting at that mansion and now they're going to do up the cottage or whatever so that they can film more scenes there. This is probably a good example of a fake show relationship. He's much older and probably has little in common with the others. But Whit may have financial incentive to keep the show going as much as possible so he'll do enough. But most of the events on the show are fake anyways, just a reason for the cast to dress up and be at the same place at the same time so that they can snipe at each other or talk shit behind each other's back.

Where are the photos from, the reunion? Yeah Bravo splurges to make these people seem glamorous. Even at its best, it's trashy soap opera, which would be a couple of steps up from its current state.

Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the Slow Horses season 3 finale. Then they interview Will Smith, the creator and show runner. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/slow-horses-season-3-with-creator-will-smith/id1111739567?i=1000639850405