MakeMeLaugh

Finally an episode that centered on the two centers of the show. Thank you thank you thank you, writers. It was great to enjoy their talent. Loved when Casey said "They got my good side"'about the heroic photo in the newspaper and Cruz said "They're all good sides" and Casey swatted him. Go away Gabby. I didn't expect Casey to win (because sorry but that's just a stupid storyline--I guess it will likely tie in occasionally with a new Dick Wolf series in the franchise) but I did expect her to be front and center when we found out and boom, there she was hogging the spotlight. Did I miss the logic of kidnapping a 7-year-old, breaking her neck, and climbing a house ten miles away to stash the body in a chimney? Not the most logical secret hiding place.

I can't even. This sounds worse than Kaitlyn's icky sex ed for tweens episode where she hee-hawed while the guys "taught" it. I am going to pass on the next season if this is the direction the show is going. Everyone has a first-time story, but we don't need to share them and I sure don't want to hear about them. Ick.

Famewhore is a pretty big brush. If these crazy young kids didn't see the adventure of participating in these shows, we'd be stuck with DWTS year round. They'll have great memories and we get entertainment. I'm in. Bring on the Fletchers!

I think Show was crazy to not have used F2 in the past--it really limited the options. No one believes F2 is really heartbroken as a rule (sometimes, maybe, but seriously, now?) any more than we believe F1 will be married and live happily ever after, as a rule, so it's not like the magic of the show needs to be maintained. And the whole show has been filmed before we see episode 1, so there is plenty of time for editing it into a fake drama. Needing to start filming promos is a bogus excuse imo. My dream show is that each episode gets edited and aired within two weeks of filming, so NO ONE knows who will be F1. It would be so much more fun to watch, and would also mean no spoilers about F1 before the first episode is even aired, if Show even cares about that anymore.

Loved this episode. We are watching this series as if it's on Netflix, in that it's a whole story told in episodes. It may not be renewed, but it may not need to be renewed. I now think it's genius, and it continues to surprise me--Chris Klein! In 2005! Jenna Fisher, daughter of a freezer door company! Bring it, Grinder. I would watch any of these actors any time. Come on, networks, pick up their pilots.

Are you Mr MML? He could not agree with you more!

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Caila took herself out of the running for B'ette. Perhaps her family, after watching how they and the other families were shown and criticized, decided they didn't want to participate. Caila is a gorgeous well-off, well-educated smart woman--she came across pretty well on the show (she wasn't mean, she wasn't cliqueish, she looks great) will be fine. Jo's family knew what they were getting into from her brother's earlier participation in one of the franchised offshoots, and they will probably have fun with it vs Caila's seemingly more sedate fam. I know I am laying in a supply of champagne to toast Jo's mom with, right out of the bottle! Really amazing anyone wants to be on this show--Show decides how to play them and then every viewer (including myself, obviously!) jumps in with petty comments about their appearances and behavior and makes assumptions after we have had the slightest most superficial exposure to them. I can see that it can be a fun thing to have done for the young person himself or herself, but then their families are expected to jump in and get selective editing too. Gah.

We didn't see a lot of what was filmed--no reason his declaration to Lauren and/or Jo could not have been edited out. Drama! The show was running really long on time--it was filler.

Well, he actually was the Bachelor and it was his show for his journey to find true love--kidding, but I liked him a lot as the Bachelor (unlike apparently almost everyone else, inclding the recapper), so that didn't bother me in the least. I thought he was funny and a nice guy.

Yes, I posted a youtube link to Ben's mother being forced by Show to say whom she preferred, in the last episode's thread. You can still see it. Yes. Ben said the relevant comment as a quip back to Chris Harrison: Chris said they had ten more minutes left of the show (when Ben asked if he could say something about his Bachelor experience) and Ben said, that's about how much longer I'll be relevant. I actually thought it was pretty funny and self-deprecating, not to mention quick.

I liked it. Loved Jo (I'm done with the Jojo thing), but I think for Ben it was Lauren from day 1 (hence the "trust me" we learned he told her early on, as in, whatever I have to do for the show, know it will be you at the end). I think there were some late onset feelings for Jo that absent Lauren, might have developed for Ben, and Show decided to run with them to add some drama. I think Jo knew all along she had that second place to overcome and Lauren may have felt her sure-thing was slipping near the end, but it really wasn't. Chemistry is as chemistry does. I do think Lauren was allowed to show so much more personality in ATFR and on Jimmy Kimmel than we had been permitted to see all season, and I could see why Ben picked her. I don't think Jo was really blindsided, and she was really classy at the end and all through ATFR. Ben too showed a lot of class imo at the end of ATFR when he thanked the show for the experience. I think he and Lauren might be the real deal and I sincerely hope their life is so happy together that we never see them again.:) Jo will be a great B'ette--had to be a no-brainer to pick her. No way will she turn into another Kaitlyn--I do not believe we heard smutty and worse, not-funny "tight-seal" and "plow the eff out of my field" jokes from her or inappropriate laughter/behavior even once. Ths season was refreshingly 100 percent different from Kaitlyn's circus and I expect Jo's Bachelorette will be too. I hope Caila wasn't really expecting to be the B'ette and isn't overly disappointed.

The video of Ben's mother expressing her preference is nowhere to be found. I wonder if it is an outtake and won't be part of the show. At any rate, people who have been on this show know more than anyone else how heavily it is edited and how manipulated people are to say certain things. Lauren herself, if she is Ben's final rose, probably isn't happy with all her own edits and talking heads, so let's hope she won't hold it against Ben's mother if the camera caught her saying something against Ben's final choice. For all we know Ben's mother said something that could be construed as negative about JoJo too. I could easily see the producers saying, If you had to make a list, tell us what you like and don't like about each girl, and then skewing the clip to feature the negatives. ETA: I looked at an article about tonight's show and found the video as part of it: I didn't think Ben's mother was overprotective at all (but maybe that's because I have a grown son who chose a spouse without asking our opinion ahead of time, or even telling us he was going to propose), but it is obvious that someone was asking her hard about who she would pick if she had to--she didn't seem to just volunteer it or to be happy about giving her opinion. Stupid show.

The case that this episode was based on just keeps on getting sadder. This morning's newspaper reported, "In the latest in a series of retaliatory shootings amid a South Side gang war, the father of Tyshawn Lee has been charged with shooting the girlfriend of one of the men in custody for the killing of his 9-year-old son, authorities said Sunday." It seems almost certain that little Tyshawn's murder was an act of revenge as well.

As someone posted above, the twins are lingerie-clad cocktail waitresses at a Vegas nightclub. Ben's mom must be on her knees thanking God that Emily won't be her DIL.Amanda said in an interview that she is Lauren's B.s best friend. Sure she is.... And re Jubilee: a Haitian orphanage at that. Haiti. Anyone who comes from Jubilee's background and is a functioning adult gets a huge "mitigating circumstances" offset against any offensiveness, not that I found her the least bit offensive. And because I cannot say it enough, thank you for your service, Jubilee! Mr MML actually wants Jubilee to be the next B'ette because he thinks her bachelors and her interactions with them would make a much more interesting show (and he might get to see her in a bikini too). I don't think she is in the running but it would be interesting!

OMG. No wonder they used "Twin" as their career title. This show.

I was thinking for a lot of this episode that Ben and some of the women couldn't really say what was going on thanks to TPTB. Ben may have been following orders on the Jubilee situation and wasn't happy with the editing himself. Maybe Caila was limited in what she could say, and certainly Olivia and Jubilee would have commented on the editing they received if they could have as well as the encouragement probably received from the producers to talk soooo much for the camera, to open her mouth as wide as she could, etc. If the show Unreal is at all real (heh), they probably were all shocked by how they were portrayed. I think I feel bad for Olivia because at that age I popped off comments like the Teen Mom slam without realizing how they sounded. I wasn't a mean girl but I could toss off mean humor like nobody's business. Thank goodness reality television hadn't been invented yet and my friends stuck by me.

The bachelorettes who came across or were perceived as the villains or weird girls or outsiders or whatever didn't even make it to the home towns. They weren't the winners like Courtney on Ben F.'s season, or the final three or the runner ups, but they did get to see themselves portrayed during the show as semi-lunatics (Lace), or pushy conceited losers (Olivia), or misfit fish-out-of-water (Jubilee). And then the bachelorettes who felt wronged by them got to publicly dump all over them on the WTA, so they were punished twice. And none of the women who spoke out against them on this episode came across well either. And it can live forever on youtube. Lose lose all around. I wonder if Caila was told before the show that she is going to be put with someone else in the Kaitlyn-Brett situation of starting out as co-B'ettes and then one of them being rejected by the bachelors. Girl did not seem happy.

I know--and his character was hearing it a lot more clearly than we were at home, at least through my TV's speakers that aren't the best. We missed even more of whatever was going on as Mr MML and I kept asking each other what was being said, therefore missing the next thing that was echoing around in Eli's brain, I guess. Thanks for trying to be cool, Show--maybe a minute or two would suffice, like in a book where the characters have a heavy dialect, we really just need to read that the first couple of sentences and then we get it and the author stops the phonetic dialog. Sheesh.

I would be comfortable in Mrs. Patmore's B&B. It really was fun to see so many different types residences presented as they existed in the early twentieth century.

One thing I really liked about the finale (and I will not say this well, no doubt, but oh well)--for five or so years we have seen DA as the to-die-for home of the Crawleys living the life of the Upstairs of the wealthy entitled British. And for me they were mightily diminished (in a good way) by the finale as Robert and Cora pulled into the grounds of Brancaster Castle and we stepped into that Upstairs world, with many elegant multiples of the Crawley servants and rooms and land. Whoa. For me, these scenes made Robert and Cora more human than anything previous to this episode. (I know the Crawleys were guests at the castle the previous season under different auspices but now Edith's fiance had taken over and so I was able to see the comparison between the Brancaster and Downton lifestyles more clearly). It made Downton look downright cozy (and the management of its future and its survival easier to envision)!

Eli forgot too--he distinctly said "I am not a lawyer" to Alicia and chihuahua lawyer before, during, or after the magic airvent listening scenes. I think Vlock will be the voting machine manufacturer. Really annoying that all the testimony was muffled and the courtroom scenes were in Eli's head. It's hard enough to make sense of this show without being cutesy with the sound and the filming. OTOH I was impressed that JM filmed those bedroom scenes topless. It seems to be the standard today that women in the tv world never take their bras off while actively engaged in sex, so good on you for that, JM!

If I never see those two nitwit twins again it will be too soon. They should be a little embarrassed that their occupation is twin. I'll throw Amanda in as an honorary triplet. Olivia and Jubilee were definitely ganged up on during the episode, and I really felt bad for Olivia, who was just so sad at the end. Hang in there, girl. Wish we could have a fun women tell all, like most of the guys tell alls are, but insread we get the women who were sent home reacting to stuff as viewers of the edited show. Gah. Shut up mathematician and bird lady. I think this is my least favorite episode every Bachelorette season. Hardly anyone comes off looking good.

Sgt. Jubilee, congratulations on your promotion and a big thank you for your service. Let's toss all the other bachelorettes into a barracks for a couple of weeks and see how they do.

I mentioned how much Marigold looks like Bertie just as an aside (and as a reason Bertie's mom might bond with her), and it probably was just coincidental casting, but I could certainly imagine rumors that Bertie is the father. Conceivable imo that he and Edith could "adopt" her and possibly never even tell Marigold she was adopted (not that unusual to keep that a secret from the child)--more believable imo than Matthew's late fiancee's father leaving his estate to Matthew in the nick of time to save DA!

Having way too much time on my hands, I googled "Marigold Downton" and found under the images link a lovely post-show photo of Laura Carmichael kneeling down with the twin actresses who played Marigold, and also searched "Bertie Downton" for images. Marigold looks so much like him imo--coloring, hair, forehead--that Bertie's mom would have to fall in love with her. Edith and Bertie could easily let people think she was Bertie's child by just not explaining who she really is with the ward of the Crawley family cover story.