Bastet

I still can’t believe this of all shows did the “man acts like a total asshole, refusing to take no for an answer, and woman finds it attractive” shit, but I’m trying to just enjoy how Nick is written this season. I like them negotiating, because that was the one aspect of their interaction last season that was good. The scene where she showed him the real her was great, and I liked the call back to the first episode (with taking off the eyelashes, hair pieces, etc.). Brianna going from tormenting Grace about not inviting her, to noticing her limp and declaring she will fucking kill this guy if he did something to her leg was great. Then Grace thinking they’d slept together. Ha! “Who needs a drink?” “I’d like a martini, please. And then I’d like a pitcher of martinis.” Robert is out of his damn mind thinking it's okay to out someone he's known five minutes, just because he thinks it's the same situation he put Grace in. Is the "I didn't think she was all that" character Frankie saw when imagining her wake the one who told her Sol was gay, and then they never spoke again? But she's a kid. I know Frankie would be seeing her as she was back then, but she's still really young. I know, keep watching.

I like that they put things back to normal by episode three - Frankie is back where she belongs, and Sheree is back in her house; she can still be a part of things sometimes (I like the three of them together), but she doesn't live with them. The house adventure was fun; I like the way this show does wacky hijinks. “He better not come back – I know all kinds of jujitsu I made up.” I'm glad that Barry finding out about the cameras wasn't a huge deal. And “Destroy the camera and meet me in Mexico” from Brianna's assistant cracked me up. The Tappy Awards being sponsored by Dress Barn also cracked me up, and that was before I saw that it was happening IN a Dress Barn.

They were mirroring Olympic scoring.

I am horrified that I instantly knew the answer to the wedding/urinal clue. The conversation about Grace not telling Frankie she was miserable alone was great, and then it got even better when Frankie revealed she hates it in Santa Fe. You can say she never should have moved, because it was clearly a bad idea, but I think ultimately it’s better she tried it and realized it wasn’t for her. “We don’t have to live together to love each other.” I wish more people would realize that. I love stoned Brianna’s “grilled cheese” consisting of a hunk of cheese and a slice of bread consumed at the same time. But between her “I wanted you to know I wanted you to do the opposite of what I said you should do” and Mallory damaging her ex-husband’s car, there was a lot of stereotypical shit on display. I look forward to Grace, Frankie, and Sheree teaming up to get Sheree’s house back. “Our bodies may not be at their best, but our minds, Robert, our minds … are not that great, either.” That was amusing, but they remain the least-interesting part of the show to me. I like them with the women, and sometimes with the kids, but when it's just them I'm usually just waiting for the next scene to start.

On one hand, I was disappointed to see Frankie is in Santa Fe, Allison is having the baby, and Grace is dating Nick, but, really, I was expecting all those things and figure it will all work itself out over the course of the season. Brianna’s pathetic stalking having worked is sad, though. They’re laying it on thick with Grace/Sheree, and the number of things Grace and Frankie haven't been talking about since Frankie left, but I think that will smooth out, and I like the fundamental dynamic they're hitting me over the head with - Grace got left, again, and she's actively pursuing happiness in these changed circumstances. Frankie's the one who made the decision, and she's happy in Santa Fe, but seeing how things at home have gone on without her is hard. That Grace finds gender reveal parties ridiculous is one of the many reasons I love her (just as Brianna referring to it as “Bud and Allison’s narcissistic we’re the first people ever to have a baby bullshit” continues to enamor her to me). And Frankie reading Susan Faludi’s Backlash to her unborn grandchild is one of the many reasons I love her. There was a lot of funny dialogue in this episode. “Now available in travel size - fits discreetly into your purse. Or the seat cubby of your walker.” “I’ll meet you at the airport three flights after the one you were supposed to come in on.” “I feel so known.” “I told you, you can’t block the entrance of Build-a-Bear; those children and creepy adults get very angry.” “Who’s Hon?” “I’m Hon.” “What happened to my pet name for you?” “Kevin never really caught on.” I can't wait to find out what the "Holy shit" revelation about Sheree is.

Yes.

That was ridiculous, and I really appreciated Tanya shutting it down. I'd also love to see the questioning of the white team by the judges in its entirety, because Tanya's "No" upon Padma saying she'd like to hear her side of the story was followed by something like, "I already told it" (those aren't the words, but that was the sentiment). So I'd have loved to see what more she said than the little bit we saw, especially because it would probably give proper context to her snippiness with Gail; if Gail's question - which was, as placed in the edited version, not worthy of such an attitude - came after Tanya, in the natural course of conversation, had already countered Claudette's narrative with her own, it would play quite differently. As soon as she said they monopolize the stew room conversation when they win, and when they lose, I had zero trouble imagining that to in fact be the case. That didn't sit well with me, either. Yes, it would have sucked for a non-Carrie member of the red team to go home, but if the numbers resulting from judging each head-to-head fairly meant the white team wound up second instead of third, oh well. Now, I believe Mustache Joe, much as he bugs me, deserved more creativity points, and that those points would just edge out the points Chris would get for having a slightly better dish overall (and I certainly wouldn't want Adrienne or Fatima to go home for a great dish), so in some ways it's a moot point. But Tom's, "Now, this is really important, because" reminder of the scoring implications was off-putting.

I’m with Fatima on mornings, and with Adrienne in preferring to drink my breakfast in the form of a Bloody Mary. I’ve never had Nutella, so I have no idea which QF dishes I might have liked, but it was nice to see Brooke, and good for Carrie winning. The EC had just started, and Tanya saying 145 for lamb made me cringe – so now either cook it to death or get multiple points off for her properly-cooked lamb being so far off from what she’d set as her target temperature. I know she said she tests doneness by touch, not temp, but I would think the proper temp for each type of meat would be stored in her brain (she didn’t say she froze and forgot, which I would have understood). All the teams were working with everyone being involved in each round, even though one person was primarily responsible, so there wasn’t anything wrong with Claudette asking for help – especially in the round where speed was the goal – but she treated Tanya like a damn gopher! And then their communication just failed completely. The team probably set themselves up for failure by not talking ahead of time about what kind of overlap there would be (we saw at least one other team do precisely that, and saw that both other teams worked well as a group), and then once those two turned out to absolutely hate each other’s energy, the team was doomed, because they were so done with each other and it got ugly from there. Adrienne’s knife cuts were nicely displayed; she did a great job of making a dish that showcased the precision. Tanya’s knife cuts were practically invisible, so that plus being so far off from the target temp (even though the temp was actually perfect) was painful to behold, because I like her. I don’t like Mustache Joe, and the blue team was annoying me in general, but I have to give him a lot of creativity points for his dish. Chris’s dish looked more successful to me overall, but a bit less creative, which is what the round was about, so I’m not surprised they were within .5 points of each other. I liked one of the blue team pointing out to Adrienne that Claudette was doing the same thing with Tanya as she did when she and Adrienne on the bottom. But Tanya didn’t do herself any favors by getting testy with Gail for asking a completely logical, legitimate question in order to, you know, determine who should be eliminated. I wonder what Chris was doing during the first two rounds, because they didn’t show much of that, and find it surprising the statement he had no idea what was going on with his team didn’t yield any comment. Tanya’s precision simply was not there, so as much as I like her and think Claudette did not comport herself well in this, or the previous time she was up for elimination, I can’t argue with her elimination given the parameters of the challenge. But I will really miss hearing Tanya speaking truth about the reality for women, particularly women of color, in the profession. Little things from the episode: I missed the first few minutes, but they stayed up with Bruce waiting to hear the baby had been born? That’s cute. As was throwing him a shower, even though I hate baby showers. Fatima as a Meryl Davis fan was really cute. I don’t think anyone else knew who any of them were, beyond obviously Olympians (and, quite frankly, I was the same – none of those are sports I pay much attention to; I’ll watch them during the Olympics, but not remember names or faces), but she was totally into Davis. I like how much Chris looks up to Tanya. Bruce calling Fatima, Carrie, and Adrienne “the girls” can miss me, but they may not care.

Because David and Gillian have always saved Mulder and Scully from Chris's worst impulses.

Same here; Gillian is younger, and looks even younger than she is, but Dana Scully is a month away from 54. One "how the hell did that happen?" pregnancy is enough for her, thank you. I think he doesn't know how to do that in general, and it's compounded by his continued insistence on either denying or playing coy with the reality of this particular relationship, because he has long refused to accept that reality. Your characters fell in love and had sex long ago, Chris; just let it be.

That's why I said it would normally be a leap, but the "it's all a book" ending to begin with and the fact they're now apparently picking and choosing what parts of that to go with mean there's more continuity leeway than normal. I just wouldn't like it because it would mean the Gina he wouldn't kiss in the play and the Gina he wound up having a kid with are two different Ginas, and I really like the callback that the Gina he wouldn't kiss winds up being the woman he has a kid with years down the road. (That's assuming, of course, they would be going the "Oh, yeah, Chuck and Anne Marie had this other kid we knew nothing about" route. The only way to make them current Gina's parents and have her be the same Gina from before is to pretend we never saw some other guy, whom Roseanne had never met, be her father. And, yeah, when you're already asking me to pretend a main character who died didn't, that shouldn't be the thing that bugs me, but it would.) It's the sort of thing that would bug me on most shows, for the woman he ends up with to be a character we already knew of, since characters only ever having the same handful of people in their life doesn't mirror most people's reality, but I would like it on here since it fits right in with the small-town, people never get out of here, "what is this, Mayberry?" vibe the show always had.

That doesn't really fit with what Moore said in his commentary for the episode. Moore's comments are reminiscent of the things discussed by the cylons in the "we're going to have to do something about this, perhaps sooner than later" part of the episode, and center on how the D'Anna model was pulling away from the group and their way of doing things and thus constituted a threat to the cylons' cohesive system. And if he did it alone, rather than with the consent of the group, wouldn't he then be punished? I mean, they're going to notice that all copies of that model are gone, and if it was a big problem for the Threes to defy the group's decision about the raiders, it would have to be a really big problem for Cavil to decide to eliminate an entire line without putting it up for a vote. I watched Taking a Break From All Your Worries, and when I watched it with the commentary, I was stunned to learn it was written as a light, comedic episode, and in the directing, performances, and editing, it turned into a dark take. How was that ever going to be a light episode? I can see how Lee and Tyrol's repeated trips to the new bar to escape their home lives could be played as humor ("To marriage - why we build bars"), and some of the stuff between Lee and Dee at home could easily play that way as well. But the bulk of the stuff about Lee, Dee, Kara, and Sam, if I just listen to the dialogue and try to picture it performed humorously, I can't. And Baltar's interrogations? The beginning of Laura's, yes, that could have been funny (there's a hint of it in the "everybody has to eat" line), but after that? It does not surprise me in the least that once EJO got ahold of the script, he directed it as a meditation on the reliability and morality of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and on Baltar's degree of culpability instead; what stuns me is that it was written to be something else. I really enjoyed the scene at the end, with Laura lying on his bed and him sitting on the edge of it, as they talk about what to do with Baltar now. The two of them, alone, hashing out the right way of dealing with a problem is always my favorite, and this one is particularly good. I like her reflecting on what she wanted to get out of the interrogation - not intel, but a genuine admission of guilt - and him saying someone like Baltar will never give that, because he truly sees himself as a victim rather than a criminal. And then he says it's not too late for Baltar to just disappear, and she simply touches his arm and reminds him they can't do that; Baltar is one of them, so "we give him his trial." Obviously, Baltar's trial is going to be the big story for this final part of the season, and I'm looking forward to that. Moore revealed in his commentary that whatever was being hinted at by the conversation between Gaeta and Baltar in this episode is a storyline that was planned to figure prominently in the trial, but wound up being completely dropped from the subsequent episodes; something about how the Saggitarians were treated on New Caprica, including a murder, which was one of the few things they had direct evidence on; there was a witness to Baltar killing someone. So, only time will tell what I think of the trial not including that, but right now it feels weird that, just by looking at the show, I wouldn't ever know why whatever Baltar said caused Gaeta to stab him in the neck (it was scripted as Baltar threatening to blame Gaeta for the Saggitarian thing, but once they dropped the storyline from later episodes they had to go back and excise it from this one, yet the stabbing is still there).

We saw the father of Gina - the Gina D.J. didn't want to kiss in the play - and he was not Chuck. We saw and otherwise heard about Chuck and Anne Marie's son, Chuck Jr., with no indication he had any siblings. So for the Gina with whom D.J. had Mary (or to whom D.J. is married and had Mary; it's not clear from what I've read) to be the Mitchells's daughter, she would have to be a different Gina than the one D.J. refused to kiss, and a child of Chuck and Anne Marie that they didn't have, or roundly ignored, at the time of the original series. Of course, picking and choosing what's true and what's not from the "it's all a book" ending does give more continuity leeway than normal, but to make her Gina Mitchell would normally be quite a leap.

Ever since I read a pre-season description of this episode about doppelgangers and twins, and that it was written by CC, I feared similarity to the piece of shit that was Fight Club, but this was much better. It’s also yet another episode that nods to previous episodes, but you have to stretch for a lot of them, so I still don’t know what to think about the “it’s all an alternate universe” theory versus the idea they’re just paying homage to the past in the revival. - “Mrs. Peacock” (meaning, the actor who played her in Home) plays Chucky and Judy. And her telling Scully she's old and past her child-bearing years is like her “you’re not a mother” and “I can tell” stuff from Home - The music during Mulder’s interview with Chucky is reminiscent of Humbug - Dog years in relation to Scully’s age brings to mind the happy birthday sno-ball conversation in Tempus Fugit - “Somebody has to pay the price” and “little sister” adds up to something quite similar to “Somebody has to take the blame, little sister, and it’s not going to be me” from Aubrey - The protective secret pills from a nurse in an institution is like In Excelsis Deo - One's fear becoming an actual danger is like X-Cops - Scully acknowledging the power of and simultaneously shooting down the fallacy of ghost stories is like How the Ghosts Stole Christmas - Scully seeing another version of herself in a mirror is like Elegy; Mulder and another Mulder in a mirror is like Dreamland - Scully sleeping in full make-up and bra being reminiscent of every other episode of Scully in bed; nah, that’s just TV So, again, it's all cute little nods, unintentional similarities, and/or intentional indications. At any rate, Mulder and Scully’s relationship in this season continues to build on IWTB and season 10 as being so much more honest than the coy bullshit of the original series, but then we still have CC presenting a couple who've been getting it on for eons getting it on in this one particular moment as a big deal and has them talk as if procreating with someone else is a possibility/threat. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Scully – and I know that you will” makes up for that a bit, as otherwise the dynamic was good. Except, seriously with the "what if you meet someone younger and have kids?" shit? Is this a soap opera, with Bad Judy getting in her head with that stuff? They're so far beyond that, given their history. Random notes: Judy is not remotely part of their case when Mulder asks for her medical status; how are privacy laws set aside to give it to him? Is this rock band opening the show connected to the random music television M&S were sleeping to, on mute, in the last episode? Is it DD's music both times?

I've just assumed that, but, yes, I know what happens when one assumes. I don't use social media, so I'm not familiar with her beyond being a science advisor to CC/the show. But I just figure anything anyone affiliated with the show puts out there is by design, whether that be a sneak peek, behind the scenes treat, or deliberate attempt at obfuscation. And I figure anything that gives away (or hints at) an upcoming plot point is something cleared by CC, or in some cases prompted by CC; they're not going to reveal anything he doesn't want revealed, so if it's out there, it's because he either wants it out there or doesn't care that it's out there. This stuff all sounds like something he wants out there, but whether to tease something true or point us in the wrong direction, who knows? They've done both in the past, and it's part of the fun at this point.

And here they are demonstrating their differing approaches to enjoying a backyard tree - Bandit climbs up and surveys his kingdom, while Chester opts to just chill on the lowest perch.

My parents are out of town for a couple of weeks, so I'm doing the routine where I divide my time between my house and theirs. Today, I'm at theirs with the boys. I know I posted a picture of Bandit last Christmas, showing him buried under a pile of wrapping paper, but I don't think I've ever shown Chester. So, here are the boys on their assigned sides of the guest bed (Chester on the left, Bandit on the right). That's pretty much Chester's bed, and when he's there by himself he sleeps in various places, but when the two of them are there together, you will never, ever find them in any other spot. It is a rule.

I liked their friendship both times, but Carter's crush the first time around and especially whatever the hell they were going for beyond friendship the second time around left me cold.

It's a tactic that has been employed by a national figure, so it may just be a comment on current politics. I Want to Believe morphing into I Want to Lie in MSIII may have just been about CSM telling tall tales in that episode, as he does. Or, I agree, both of them could mean something bigger about the reality of this season. Barbara Hershey's character reminded me of Diana Fowley from the moment she was cast and described. Mr. Y doesn't remind me of the mumbling guy with the bad teeth (that's First Elder/Elder #1, right?), but when people mention it, I can see it. I'd have to look at the assassin again.

I was rooting for the Saints, but I loved that video. When your team wins a must-win game is good enough, but when they win with a huge last-seconds play? I've been the one jumping around the room, or falling to the floor in relief, or with a pet running around in circles trying to figure out why I'm hootin' and hollerin' so much, and it's a great, great feeling. I'm really happy for those fans. And, yeah, Strahan unbuttoning his coat to properly freak out was great.