waldrons

Oh, of course! My memory must have leaked out of my eyes along with the tears...

I thought the fluttering lashes were poor Cait staring into the setting sun (or a bright facsimile thereof) and trying to keep her eyes open for the 20 minutes the scene seemed to take. (And imagine how much longer it took to film!) With a document as "unimportant" as a local land deed, it would not be protected in plastic or handled with gloves. I've done family research in English records offices, and have routinely "checked out" lease agreements and wills from 17-something, complete with sealing wax (which I find pretty darn thrilling). Apparently a lot of archives don't use cotton gloves any more... I was told it's because you're liable to do more damage because you can't feel the document. And there is a slim chance that a records office would have a pre-existing McKenzie family tree on file... I've seen this in Cornwall for prominent local families. I think the actress playing Bree is behaving in the way we'd expect a younger teenager to behave today... sulky, emotionally volatile, hating her mom. So it feels "off" for an older teen to be acting so bratty. (And just because a teen-aged daughter says she hates her mom, doesn't mean they're not actually really close...) In the stone scene, my eye was caught by a rag around Jamie's hand and I was trying to remember how he'd injured himself. I wonder if they filmed them cutting their initials and then cut the scene?

>>Did Dana have a cell phone?<< I was looking at it carefully, and believe it was a camera (which surprised me, as I've always wondered why we never see them taking pictures). I think she just disengaged... and I also think she looked disappointed when Phil said, "You're still in it!" Yes, she's a shrew, but that wasn't the first time he had asked her for directions and then didn't listen to the answer. I know that Sheri and Cole haven't done any traveling, but one of the things you learn when traveling is, if you think you're lost, don't keep going!!! Stop, pull over, review the directions/map, ask somebody. Don't keep driving and hoping somehow the right path will reveal itself. Plus, when Sheri was complaining that there wasn't anything around, she was driving past some buildings about a block off the road -- yes, they're not on your path, but come on, see if you can find someone there!!! As one of the women was climbing the stairs to the slides in the gold bikini, a local woman was walking down, fully covered, head-to-toe (although her face was visible) in the type of outfit worn by Muslim female athletes in the Olympics. (I just Googled it... it may have been a burqini.... yes, apparently that's a thing...)

I got the impression that the server had been repeatedly hovering and annoying them, and Tom was about to blow. As a good "work wife", Padma recognized it and tried to forestall it by dismissing the server quickly, before Tom could let him have it without the "please" and "thank you". (I even think I saw her putting a placating hand out toward Tom's sleeve -- a gesture I suspect a lot of spouses will recognize!) And as much as ManBun annoyed the cr@p out of me, I actually felt sorry for his realization that he WOULD be judged on the cocktail! The look on his face indicated his world had just shattered. Then his own reality re-asserted itself and he quickly realized that the problem wasn't with his cocktail but with the judges. And the post above about making poop "right" but it still being poop just encapsulated my feelings exactly!

This! The thing that really caught my attention was in the intro, when the voiceover called these people something like "social media influencers" --- does that mean that people are looking at them as more than entertainment? Makeup, magic, dance (which I thought originally was a version of Zoomba), and Frisbee -- these are not social leaders!! But, I will say that I didn't hate as many of them as I expected (well, except for "Who's not playing?" guy) (and maybe droppin' Dad). Maybe when everyone is screaming, it becomes white noise.

In her post-elimination rant, Grayson started off with how unfair it was that she was singled out for the offending dish, since they both worked on it. Then later in the same rant, she said something about how SHE had a ton of experience, SHE was older, SHE cooked the corn... wait, what? And she didn't say it in a, "I'll own it" way, but en route toward a point about how it sucked that she was kicked off. And there are some items that can make sense served on rocks (I would have loved to have seen someone heat the rocks in the oven and have the judges cook their own Wagyu beef strips), but lord those oysters looked nasty!

Being substantially closer in age to the nursing home folks than the Glee folks, I thought the writing of that story line was both ham-handed and tone-deaf. It actually doesn't surprise me that someone quite young wrote it... I think it showed. I know CC "wanted" it to be a tribute to the old troopers, but yikes! Billy Dee Williams and Tim Conway didn't have much to do, and looked half-dead doing it. (And the fake smiles as they listened to Memory were just cringe-worthy.) The contrast of the then/now photos was meant to link the past and present, but the closeups were so extreme and harsh that it just seemed like they were saying, "holy cow, they were cute once, but look at them now!". The final kicker was equating finding new families for the puppies with finding a new family (Kurt) for the old lady. I did love the one revised scene we saw from "Peter Pan"... I think the song and the characters all worked perfectly. Well, once CC's voice drowned out the old lady's. But generally speaking, I think the episode was both condescending and insulting to the elderly, all under the intention of honoring them.

While I agree that smart phones/Internet access make things easier to figure out, at least they do have to figure things out and clues this episode weren't being spoon-fed. There's a chance (as we saw) that someone will think they figured something out only to be wrong. Unfortunately, it was the cab drivers and not the racers, but still it allows room for error. I think I would have tried to translate the whole clue for the drivers, because it didn't say "John Keats Plaza", it said something like "the plaza of John Keats' unhappy Roman holiday". I suspect the cab drivers would have figured that out if they had heard the entire phrase. And I really wanted to see Brenchel fly to Ethiopia looking for the Eternal City!!! The giant, angry gladiators with the metal swords would have scared the snot out of me! OT: Glad to have found this site after losing TWoP....