aghst

You wouldn't think Sammy would have signed on without knowing that she might have to see Ronnie. Certainly not to have the producers blindside her, like them telling her that she won't have to see Ronnie and then them springing him on her. Jenni was never fooled by the drones. She said the murder mystery was still the better prank because it really upset her. Vinny and Pauly were smirking too much.

Tiffany has a son who looks to be in his mid teens, about as tall as she is. She probably doesn't have much opportunity to train like the other women.

Kept dozing off had to play this a few times to finish. It's not illegal for Prince to run for POTUS. So how can Chuck propose that he won't prosecute possible violations by Prince's company in exchange for dropping out of the race? Wendy also wants to prevent Prince from becoming POTUS but she's not using the law. Though you can say two psychiatrists deciding that Prince has too much ego or would be too authoritarian and using their professional judgement to try to stop him is ethically dubious in their profession. US Attorney has discretion on which cases he or she wants to prosecute. But in general, if there are big crimes, they can't look the other way. DOJ is wary about appearing to engage in any kind of political interference. On what basis can Chuck tell Prince not to run? His reasoning may be similar to Wendy's, that a person like Prince can't have too much power. But it would be easy to depict Chuck as doing it for politically-motivated reasons, and the DOJ would not allow the US Attorneys to do such things. That scene at the airport was absurd. First of all, Chuck can't order the SWAT teams around. He'd tell the commander that they have to get the suspect and not allow the plane to depart again. Then the commander might give orders such as force their way onto the plane or prevent the plane from leaving. Then Chuck and Prince are both preening for the cameras and Chuck will pose for pictures but won't take questions. Prince isn't the only one who's politically ambitious. As for the whole classical music thing, sure it could be spun the way Bradford said, that Prince winning an auction to have Scooter conduct is not manly and people wouldn't want to have a beer with Prince because of classical music!🙄 Prince could simply say he won an auction, whose proceeds go to a good charitable cause, to reward a loyal, long-time employee. So Prince has to worry about optics of every move. Wags took a shot to make MPC look bad, by preventing billions in losses. So the solution is for Prince to pay for relief efforts, good for optics. But how does it eliminate the problem that Wags bribed some govt. official to prevent billions in losses for MPC? That still happened and if they're thinking about optics, that transaction will still overshadow the relief efforts, which could be seen as PR after the fact. Mayer is convinced by Wendy that Prince must be stopped. So she drops all her other MPC employees as clients because Wendy might have to smear them to stop Prince. Meanwhile, Wendy now has a Mrs. Robinson thing for Bradford, the campaign manager who has this thing about classical music. That character is really annoying, know it all type. If he was such a great campaign manager, he wouldn't agree to run a third-party candidate. With him having a bigger role this season, they've pushed Taylor and some of the other supporting characters more to the background. Presumably, Wendy will reach out again to Axe to take down Prince, because they didn't make a splash of announcing the return of Axe just to do that brief cameo of just one episode and a little part of another. Yeah Wendy has been married to Chuck and has worked for Axe, fallen for him too. So she may have some experience with hubristic, overly ambitious men. But why does she decide to draw the line now? They certainly haven't depicted Prince as being this authoritarian to be, capable of some of the horrific things Wendy enumerated in the first episode of the season. My guess is, they started out with the plan to depict him as a nicer human than Axe but then with the decision to end the series, which is part of a larger Showtime/Paramount + strategy to create a Billions universe of spinoff shows, they wanted to bring Axe back and the way they'd do it is to give this sudden heel-turn for Prince and Axe coming back to save the day. Probably Chuck and Axe will team up. Like Chuck will decide to let Axe come back to the country because Prince is a greater threat to democracy or whatever -- so far, they've not shown that he's this horrific figure, just Wendy's hyperbolic language.

The Daily really favored blue, with the extra players to collect the tires, though their wrecking ball finished knocking out all the tires first, though it's not clear by how much time. Maybe should have adjusted the number of tires based on team size to level the playing field. In any event, the vets are all on the blue team with Josh and Fessy cooperating. In the elimination easy for Michaela and what timing to switch to individual games. Tori confident she will dominate individual challenges or just safe with the numbers she's working with?

San Diego to Madrid. Couple sold their big San Diego home and their business to go teach in Madrid. Husband talks about the low salaries they accepted to move but they should have plenty of money. Maybe they enjoy teaching but they probably don't need to for the income. Nice to have an income, nice to have a routine but he must want to leave a pile for their children. I can't believe they ever considered the suburban place. It would have been an hour commute and they didn't move from San Diego to Europe to live in that place, though he says he had little interest in travel until the wife prodded him. They chose the right place because they're more in the mode of enjoying life and having experiences as they said. So tapas bars nearby, though he wanted to be near a park, Retiro park is bounded on one end by a very busy street, without the nice tapas bars. They say they enjoyed Madrid a lot on their previous visit. Weather change for the San Diegoans, because it gets pretty cold in winter and early spring and very hot in the summer, so much that the natives tend to go north in the summer.

But what would they do if a team got covid? They can't hold up the race for them so they'd eliminate them? Through the first half of this summer, covid rates were low -- hospitalization and deaths. But they've started going up and there is a new variant which has the potential to have as big an impact as the original Omicron. So they're going to have to decide what they will do. People aren't testing as much but if a team develops symptoms, not only would there be a moral dilemma in letting racers continue but potential legal issues, knowingly letting people who are infectious board flights or be in close quarters with others. Unless they screen other racers and crew to make sure they're not immune-compromised or something.

The Ringer Prestige Podcast recaps the finale and also has an interview with either a producer or the show runner. He said there are no firm plans for another season, it's up to FX. TO apparently said that if they're going to bring in Groggins at the end, they better have nailed the previous 7-8 episodes. But maybe if FX renews, he'd still do it. They also mention that Tarantino and TO had discussed doing this series but for some reason, Tarantino didn't do it other than reviewing some of the early scripts. Prestige TV podcasts pointed out that the original Justified seasons were 13 episodes, not 8. So they had more opportunities to expand development of some of the secondary characters.

Given where he's from, he could be a racist but maybe never bothered to join some formal organization, though the tattoo may indicate some ideological commitment. Sure the actor may have been squeamish about playing a card-carrying nazi. Thing is, when Justified started airing, racism wasn't as out in the open as it is now. Back then some politicians might just throw occasional dog whistles. But it's become more overt since then, with racist speech and memes spreading like wildfire on social media.

Was Guzman on Justified before or they just cast him as a random guard, to do a line reading when the other guard pulled the rifle on him?

Could Raylan even go into Mexico to try to apprehend? Or more likely Mexican LEO arrests Boyd and then Raylan goes there to bring him back? Or Boyd gets bored of Mexico, maybe cartels too much for him to deal with and he comes back to US, though coming back to Kentucky would be stretch since he'd be arrested right away.

BTW, after they turn the tables on Ramirez, Boyd and the woman guard are by her Mustang convertible. Boyd gestures to her that she should wipe the corner of her mouth. Then she buttons up her top, which shows a lot of cleavage. Implication is clear. What a gentleman, he didn't want her to look unpresentable.

Yeah I don't know where you would even buy a cassette player. Maybe eBay? Or where Mansell would have gotten a tape recorded. He should have been pulling out his phone, asking Raylan for the Wifi password so he could play it on Carolyn's Sonos. I guess the shooting is ... "justified" because he was reaching into his pocket after breaking into the house? But does Michigan let people shoot any intruders who break into homes violently? Then again, it wasn't Raylan's home so does the castle doctrine apply? Yeah what were the Albanians going to do, let Mansell starve to death in that room? They throw away the murder weapon and then gives a guy who has to us crutches to go after Mansell in the dark. Sure because they had to let Raylan do it. Didn't Boyd play white nationalist? So he had a following among the brothers? You would think he'd have to stick with the Aryan Nation gang for safety. Instead he's charismatic, everyone loves him, including the young buxom female guard. Only two guards transporting an inmate out of a maximum security prison? And one of them is a woman so they should have known better, Boyd would use his powers of persuasion on her.🙄 I thought maybe the van was going to be trapped on that narrow bridge coming up. Somehow Boyd had henchmen outside of prison and he was going to mastermind some big action film sequence hijack and shootout, though they probably wouldn't have cast Guzman if anyone was going to be killed.

I looked up the price to visit Highgrove. Gardens are like £26 and they have private tours which go up hundreds, all profits for charity. Charles was always a wanker — just watched The Crown episodes when he was bullied in school. Looked like the wife hoped to get work at one of the costly Heritage site in Gloucestershire and The Cotswold area. His job seems to be in Gloucester city. Maybe no charm of the English countryside in the city though.

I quickly caught up because Max is removing it in about a week. BBC approved season 2 and production may actually be done. Heard that it will take place in Ireland. Besides Elliot, Helen will be a returning character. But we don’t know which outlet will have it in the US. Maybe it it’s in the UK soon and presumably some network or streamer will buy the rights for the US.

Max has canceled, won’t be hosting season 2 or season 1 after September 8.

With Bravo, you never know. The greater sin from Adam may be that he's low drama, not that he's inexperienced and is more likely to cause potentially catastrophic accidents.

Hmm, Ally had a close-knit group of friends who ghosted her 17 years ago because of ... Paul and his raging, liberally using impolite words like "c***" all the time. They get back together because they figure Ally and Paul would have split up by now. Well that almost happened, now Ally is doubling-down on her family, since they love her shit muffins. Turns out she has a higher tolerance for arseholes than she thought.

Yeah the mother also seemed to be used to Culver getting mad at his superiors for not getting his way. So she was telling him he had to calm down and just do the work. Jamiee can't resist her first visit to Europe but she's wary about carrying on a boatmance from one boat to another. She says they've only met a week ago. Yeah the first night she jumped into his shower. And then they've been all over each other since. Why would Culver think they're a thing? Margot doesn't feel a tingle down there when she kisses Harry but also misses the attention when he's not hanging around her all the time? Choose a lane! These guests, they're colleagues and have never had a luxury vacation together. So they decide their bonding activity is to drink based on where a spin on the app ends up? Maybe timed for when Margot was on service. Aesha is right that it gives Margot more experience making the drinks. But if they didn't use the app, these guests were going to order a lot of drinks anyways so maybe she might not have had to make a variety of drinks. Anyways, maybe it was a producer idea more than these guests, who doesn't appear to need a gimmick to down a lot of drinks.

I get that the anchor incident is a dealbreaker for Jason -- said he witnessed 3 people die in Singapore because of some similar mishap. I can understand the chains whipping around and hitting someone but didn't understand that dropping anchor while moving could cause some other issues for the entire boat. But I get a sense that he and production really wanted to get the new guy on the boat, probably someone that they had in their back pocket, so to speak. It's not just Culver being lazy, it's the shitty attitude. He gave them plenty of footage of him talking shit under his breath. And he just wants to be CEO, not a deckie. Also has to say something that he has all this experience but is still a deckhand. The one time they gave him more responsibilities, he showed why he hasn't been promoted. He seems to really like Jaimee though and she gets to go to Europe, though how does that work, will the charter company get her a work visa or she's allowed to work on the boat and doesn't need a regular work visa, which isn't easy to get for Europe if you don't have permanent resident status, which is also not an automatic process. Big employers will sponsor people whom they want to hire but otherwise, it's not that straightforward, I would think. At least this party seemed like something the guests actually asked for. These guests didn't have dietary restrictions or demands. In fact it was too much food, more than what they were used to eating. One of them commented that a lot of kings had gout because they feasted so much.

Yeah seems suspicious to me too. Both Wes and Bananas thought that he lost. In fact most of the challengers watching it thought Dusty won. The Daily, I didn’t like this setup of the trivia. Seems like they were incorrect on more questions than one of the other teams yet they were able to stay on the glass longer. I think the bigger, heavier players went down first so it wasn’t a level playing field. Previous trivia contests, you missed 3 questions, you went down so it was all about the questions. This time it was about trivia and being able to stay on the platform. As for Wes, didn’t hE boast in tHe past about how successful his business was? He seemed to imply that he wasn’t doing all these Challenge seasons for the money. He even joked about having a mansion or something, didn’t he? He was actually tearing up about possibly going home without the prize money. He’s no different than Corey, gotta win to support my baby.

I am not so sure that is where they're going with this. You look back at the whole series, when has any of these characters ever eaten the slightest bit of humble pie or reflect on and acknowledge any failings on their part? That is not what this show is about. Nor does the show ever paint these characters in a negative light. They have setbacks but have we ever seen contrition? In the end they win, again and again. Whereas Succession shows the ultra rich as very flawed, pathetic beings, though in many ways, figures that viewers can sympathize with. Billions is about people who's always kicking ass, and we're suppose to cheer, as they vanquish the little people (like Winston in this episode) and drop some supposedly deep pop culture references. Chuck is back to his roost, as powerful as ever, though supposedly gun-shy? We know that's not going to last. Meanwhile he's insufferably pontificating again to Ira, as if he's going to "teach" him, like he did Connerty and Sacker and all the rest. This OTOH is more likely where they go with Wendy going for her own therapy: We know Wendy isn't going to therapy for years or decades. She will pronounce that she doesn't need to see this Mayer character any more, that she never needed to. Melfi did therapy all her life or at least through the run of The Sopranos. I can't believe neither the writers nor the actress saw how absurd it was for Wendy to brag about some financial metric when trying to prove that her work has been effective. But the way the line was written and the line reading suggests they played it straight, like they believed that notion. Maybe because I never bought into the legend of Mike Wagner as this old school bad ass who bully all these Type A traders -- to me he's still Gale, the meth cook wannabe from Breaking Bad -- I thought the whole thing about getting Winston and his software back to MPC as tedious. They don't have proof that he developed the software while at MPC. But they have proof of him hacking and so they blackmail him to coming back. How is Prince on board with that, now that he's running for the presidency? But not only is blackmailing illegal, they wiretapped his home and probably broke into his computer to get the "evidence" and they have knowledge that he perpetrated illegal hacks and they hire him back? Doesn't that make MPC liable? And Taylor, who's made noises in the past about doing good, after they've hit that $1 billion number, is in on bullying this nerdy, sexually insecure guy, probably denying him of a chance to hit big with his work, in effect taking away a valuable piece of IP which could have made him financially independent. Like I said, most of the regular characters are not in the slightest bit about contrition, but about winning, at any cost.

How would they know that the Queen Mother used the word "marionettes" to describe the role of the royal family in what is shown here as a one to one conversation with Elizabeth, no servants around IIRC? But that was interesting, she seemed to resent that they had no real power, just had become figureheads, no longer having "divine rights." Did even royal people in the 20th century believe in the divinity of kings and queens? Elizabeth didn't react so we don't know if she agrees with her mother's sense of humiliation or how things were so much better when the monarchy had real power. In contrast, Margaret's reducing of royalty to people who "breeds horses, owns land or knows my mother" is a much more modern and probably popular view of royalty, if disdainful. At least for a brief time, she seemed to like that people didn't stand up and bow or curtsy to her. Speaking of which, in her brief scene, she refers to her friend as being better in bed so if she's now sleeping with the photographer who took the picture of her with bare shoulders, how is that not a big scandal? Or is the fallout from that still to come?

I don't even know why they even make Mabel's impending move out of the building a story line. Just hand wave it, she's a young woman who doesn't have visible means of financial support, especially compared to the older characters who probably made a lot of money decades before she was even born and bought apartments then, sitting on millions of unrealized gains. They had to give her a back story in the previous seasons and they showed a relatively humble background. But they don't need to make it plausible how she lives in that building, how she continues to live there. The main focus on the show is the adventures of the characters, despite their huge generational and cultural differences. Because those are probably greater obstacles to her remaining in the building than financial reasons. Even if she was independently wealthy, a woman at her age would probably look to move to somewhere else where the residents are much closer to her age, even if she doesn't necessarily socialize with them that often. I'm not sure where the building is suppose to be but my guess is that the neighborhood doesn't attract a lot of younger people around Mabel's age. The restaurants and entertainment venues probably are geared more for the older residents in the area, so Mabel would probably be more drawn to downtown neighborhoods where her peers would be. Now the show is trying to depict how special a bond she has with the old guys but she would look to make friends with people her age, in similar life and job situations, if she hasn't already.

I thought she talked the way she does for the Russian Dolls role but then seeing her do the same in Poker Face, I guess it's her thing. Didn't see the Slums of Beverly Hills, which was a long time ago. Be curious if she was doing it back then as well.

Well they ended up going with the 20 year old building and she didn't put up a fight about it. So her concerns weren't real, maybe just something for her to say on camera so that the choices seem equally comparable.