Silly Angel

I'm watching, listlessly, although I agree the first season's promise went off the rails halfway through, and now it's this diffuse kind of thing. I can't find the heart of the show--Eddie? I don't like him much, his humorlessness, the new girlfriend, his lame way of rebuilding a post-cult life, his weakness. And now Things May Be More Than They Seem? Christ on a unicycle, if they all have to do a dance to escape the cult, I'm going to write a very stiff tweet to Hulu.

The long arm of Saul Bass. I like it!

"Fan" is short for "fanatic," so I'm not crazy about the rise of the "superfan." It means nothing. That said, this was one of my favorite episodes. I love when they do whimsical or monster/beauty--it really brings out interesting shades of their talents. Great results on the reveal stage, too. This is why it's an all-stars season. I don't feel I ever get that jump in quality from regular to all-star groups on other competitive reality shows. I want interstitial footage of Team Cig and George playing with their dolls. I'd watch that all day.

Man, that was ROUGH. I'm still processing but for now I have shallow notes: Rebecca's boobs in that dress, Heather's legs in that dress, Valencia's butt in those pants, Paula glowing in that blue color, with her hair aflame. Dang, girls.

Why aren't the designers allowed to use boob tape? Surely in real runway they're pinning and hot-gluing their models into their clothes. I guess it's a rule of the show but I've watched literally every season of grownup, all-stars and juniors and never heard of that.

Bingeing on the show and just catching up, so I'm sure no one will have interest in comments in an old episode, but I had to pop by to say that Finehair and his brother remind me so much of Liam and Ryan McPoyle I can't watch them without giggling.

Man, did Kyle wear out her welcome fast. Talk about, "We were all rooting for you!" I really liked her look and style but, jeepers, her idea of dancing is to shrug and clomp like Muppet Liz Lemon through Kenneth's eyes.

Trout Mask Replica--I see what you did there. So happy this show is back! I love the requirement of the green screen because it encourages the facetestants to think in terms of negative space, which is an excellent skills test for the first episode.

I know! That's what makes the thought of another season so exciting. Now that the initial concept has been introduced, worked through, and trashed, how fun will it be to watch Eleanor try to figure out what Find Chidi means and why, with Michael working against her and Tahani, Jason and Chidi in the dark, prepared to repeat their old patterns. Throw in not-a-robot Janet as a kind of neutral moral fulcrum across which everyone's intentions are sweeping...wow. I have to rewatch. Love that every loser tertiary or walk-on character on TV is named Todd. Poor Todds of the world. I'm sure most are very nice.

I can be all about the Stassi, but this mean girl, in-crowd, coven nonsense under the guise of protecting her "friends" was growing tiresome even before she said Ariana "does whatever she wants. She hangs out with the boys. She comes to the girls' bridal shower." I'm paraphrasing, but yes, she gets to go places like a grownup and do things she enjoys. "You can't sit at our lunch table" is an argument that cuts no ice with adults, you vindictive little trouts, so shut it. If anything, be mad at Schwartzie for making an end-run around the witches of WeHo by asking Ariana to be a groomsman.

It's on Amazon Video, but you have to pay. I watched the first one inspired by you guys's enthusiasm and then bought the season. Damn you, snarkers! In spite of the more obvious awfulness of Jax and Schaena in this episode, I think Katie should get the prize for being The Worst. She has horrible judgment and a complete inability to read a room, both of which are exacerbated by copious amounts of tequila and rose. Her steering Kyle to Stassi while pretending hot Karl didn't exist was a slow-mo trainwreck. Then again, Stassi should know better than to have trusted Katie to help her get laid. And to have worn that bathing suit, which wouldn't have made sense even as a leotard--covered all the wrong parts but was see-through when wet. Just a weird decision.

A little money. In mean, 1) Montauk, 2) generic seltzer, WonderBread and a margarita machine? Tacky, dumb and cheap people acting...I wish I could say tacky, dumb and cheap but I turned it off once I realized what Bravo was duping me into watching. Acting boring, essentially. The only one of these nonentities I'd keep around is Stephen for, "I just got it! Because you're wearing a turtleneck!" That could have been the button of a scripted show (it probably was) but his timing was aces. What is it with Jax and turkey sandwiches? "Sometimes I get ham." Are you serious, dude? She's clearly a monster; smack her with a shovel and scatter the pieces. I mean, the nerve of running out of your preferred sandwich meat. Why does Brittney never bring up the fact that she works too? Or tell him just because he paid for boobs doesn't mean she's a fully owned subsidiary of DoucheJax, Inc. He's like one of those guys on 90 Day Fiancee who complains that American girls are too independent and want careers and shit, and to speak before being spoken to. Scheana is a goddamn pill. I really wish she had gone to Sonoma so she could pull her I-don't-do-this, I-don't-eat-that, that-drink-is-icky, where's-my-straw high maintenance princess act on people who agreed with generally good humor to be gross in an RV for a week. These past two episodes have been really great, with the exception of Part II: Montauk Bogaloo. Getting the chucklefucks out of SUR had been a real breath of fresh air. One scene with dumb whore Lala was enough to bring back the incestuous claustrophobia. She can walk away anytime and go back to banging old guys for treats offscreen.

Oh, Nanna. You are so supportive! On topic, Claire still looks like a Bay City Roller. Jesse mooching around poor Dylan's house doing everything he can to make himself useless and get in the way made me FURIOUS. Why aren't you looking after the kid, assdouche? And if you can't keep your big mustard-clad ass out of grandpa D's commemorative Niagara Falls plate collection, maybe hit the gym, if you're at loose ends. I lived through the '90s and while I remember the spice-brown lipstick, I do not remember lining my lips like Bianca Del Rio. Was lip liner outside the lip line a thing? Did I block it out? Can you really stick a pen through Barbie's arm and still have fine motor control? What is the internet?

Is it the right place to bring up the spirited defense of Yoko Ono as an avant-garde pioneer someone (I) wrote in the Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock?

Sigh, I bought my mom a sous vide thingy (not the one on the show) for Christmas. She'll totes use it, though. The sad part is I was inspired by the stupid show. I hadn't realized there were home versions.

The Boypocalypse Wow album called Trap Her/Keep Her had me chortling for minutes.

I liked revisiting the coupling up of the Niners in this episode. Pretty soon we'll be into Kelly's next (AWESOME) crisis and despite the coming horrors, it's nice to see everyone paired up. This is where it begins, IIRC.

I was so hoping someone would call out that sequined lavender baby-polo so I would know it really happened and wasn't just beamed into my brain by an evil alien.

That's Riz Ahmed from The Night Of. I love that guy but he is being ill-served in these projects.

Oh, wow. None of it was true? Glad we spent 6 freaking episodes in the nonexistent bunker. I want my time back. Can I do an interpretive dance to get it? Which four of you will join me? I feel like there was some deep solipsism at play here—we're supposed to care so much for Prairie (blech with the name)/OA, the young, blond and beautiful heroine, while all the people in the supposed bunker were just nobodies and there was no Big Bad after all. The Christ imagery was just a blind to cover the fact that the young, blond, beautiful woman at the center of it all had super-accurate nose-bleedy hunches, and died a martyr for it. As for the students and Betty who danced with her, I agree with the posters who said their weirdness distracted the shooter, who in a real situation would have aimed at them. I can't shake the feeling that 95% of the story we were led to be invested in added up to nothing. I have been bored, outraged, confused, mildly amused, frustrated and charmed by various TV series, but feeling rooked is a whole different kettle of sea slug.

Yeah, there is no excuse to bungle the mind-control thing in a post Jessica Jones world. It cuts both ways, which is what's interesting and dangerous about it. Those "movements" make me want to die with shame on the actors' behalfs (behalves?). At first I was like, ugh, it's Sense8 on even more drugs, and then I was like hm, maybe we've been asking ourselves the wrong questions and the real question is, what is the definition of an angel? Why not someone who can't die but doesn't quite live, who is more soul than body? (Because there's no one like that that we know of, and it's fairly preposterous, yes, but for the purposes of this fictional show, why not?) And now at the midpoint I'm like DANCE OFF! I'll keep watching just to see the pretty shapes this slow-burning tire fire makes as it smolders. Ridiculous. Poor Phyllis from The Office, poor guy who was so great in the otherwise meh Brooklyn. Poor us. Okay, back to Netflix...

Nice to see Isaac Toups acknowledged for his boyfriendliness. I've wanted Mark's morning-eggs scenario with Toup ever since I lived in New Orleans and tasted the wonder of his meats (not a euphemism). I like 'em big and cuddly and talented and funny but that's having a type, so it makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that my all-time drives-me-wild wolfie-with-his-tongue-hanging-out-at-Red-Hot-Riding-Hood TC boyfriend is...Stefan. I dunno, you guys. Imaginary love is strange.

Leaving aside that "bio-hacking" is a shenanigans concept overall (can anyone just eat well?—or in the words of Michael Pollan, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants")—it reminds me of Jetsons'-era or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory food-in-a-pill. The idea always appalled me. I like eating, chewing, looking at nice food, smelling it, I like the temperature and texture contrast. It's not only fun, communal and satisfying, it's one of our absolutely primal urges, necessary for survival. The market for the food-in-a-pill people is very niche, mostly for guys like those Silicon Valley nerds who don't care about real food and think it's more modern to see it as nothing but sustenance. That is a very limited view of evolution. Believe me, we're not there yet. Enjoy your three-day fasts, dudes. I'm going to pour another cup of hot coffee and rip into this here cheesecake.

I normally don't feel sorry for billionaires, but they had to eat dog food, $40 million sugar cubes, and listen to not only Sheldon and Leonard blather about nonsense but meet Amy Farrah-Fowler at her most excitable. ("We hail from San Fran-cisco.") What is the deal with electric skateboards? The motor makes them go? Doesn't pawing the ground with one foot make cheaper skateboards go? You millennials get off my lawn!

Man, that was painful as fuck. Issa and Molly fighting was so hard to watch--they were both right but just, augh, I don't know, painted their lives into corners and were stuck and saw no other way but to plow straight ahead. (Mix all the metaphors!) The eye candy guys got a big dose of the feels and my heart broke about fifty times for every. Single. Person. From Justin to the batteries kid to hot Daniel. Ouch, ouch, ouch. On the batteries front, I moved to a new state, new house, a few months ago and one of my most delicious luxuries is a plastic box filled with all different size batteries. They expensive, yo.