Corgi-ears

Richie is Connor Ratliff's younger brother, and Annie is Jordin Sparks' younger sister.

Yes, he has. Examples:

It's the same house.

I also liked the plot more when the parts were played by Jennifer Aniston and Winona Ryder 🤷‍♂️

This episode mostly made me want a film/TV show about James Beard.

Trail blaze-her?! I hardly know her! (Ba-dum-tss!)

It's possible that there is just a min-story arc going on, one that culminates in a few weeks when the show has one of their quickfire challenges in which the chefs are blindfolded and have to taste and smell and identify ingredients, DUN DUN DUN!

Am I enjoying this CBC show, in which Yeah, it's entertaining in a low-key way. Am I however mostly starting this thread because I would like it entered into the record how bothered I am every week when host Aba Amuquandoh says, "They better not sweat the small stuff!" when OBVIOUSLY the better line is, "They better sweat the small stuff, because it's all small stuff!!" It's very possible that this is my only goal.

As with most shows set in the past nowadays, this didn't seem that interested in writing historically accurate dialogue. Given that film theorist Laura Mulvey only published her essay in 1975, it is unlikely that Joyce would be throwing around the inverse phrase "female gaze" four years before that; likewise, in the previous episode, it took me out of things to hear the expression "right side of history." But the clothes are on-point, and the (naked) bodies actually look like 70s bodies. And yeah, the plot, the entire scenario, and the characters were all pretty compelling. I liked it!

Dollars to donuts we won't see much of the I-Team ever again, except for James, as a love interest for Mikaela.

Why even bring them the chefs to Houston? Just let them stay in their own kitchens in their own cities, complete with the equipment they are used to, and with the assistance of their sous chefs and whatnots. The judges can just travel around and visit the chefs in their cities, and judge them that way. Yes, Bravo and Tom already tried this other version of the show, and it was boring and only lasted one season, but let's try again. And let the chefs cook exactly what they want every week, with no parameters. That's the only way to see what the chefs really are like. Let them cook. Let them cook. Just let them cook. It shouldn't be about making a TV show, though Top Chef is a TV show.

I genuinely do not understand why not telling a bunch of people that you just met your medical history would make you a dick. Especially when this medical history is one that gives you a disadvantage instead of an advantage. I don't get it.

I think about this moment every day at the end of my day.

Got it

I most enjoyed when the poor little baby donkey piñata was so scared of Dusty that it went ahead and shat out the clue, so much so I had to make a gif.

That was Enuka Okuma.

What man wouldn't want to wave his dick in the direction of a bunch of pincers?

I thought Kumail was terrible. Even just in the opening sequence, Will A. was feeding him all sorts of lines and set-ups ("Did you have a girlfriend in high school? What did you do?"), and Kumail kept going, "I would rather not say," "I don't want to tell you." It's like he's never heard of the first and only rule of improv.

Why a hypothetical Kinko's when it can be the slogan for Noah's dad's shop (which is completely real)? Though the slogan form really should be "[Name of Shop]: We put the pie in copies."

You literally can't spell copies without pies.

For me -- and I fully accept that it's just me -- the season has really, really propagated the notion of "self-care" and taken it to its commercialized, neoliberal extreme. The rebooted show (in contrast with the original incarnation) has from the start replaced the "simple" idea of makeovers with the larger rhetoric of "self-care," but this season has really been relentless in that regard (additionally arguing for its necessity Because Pandemic). There's nothing necessarily wrong with "self-care," but I'm certainly not the the only one uneasy with how much the notion does not get interrogated, and in the context of the show (of course, because it's a TV show) becomes just a kind of aspirational living (beautiful house, beautiful hair, beautiful clothes...so, beautiful self).

Brother-in-law, right? Given that his wife -- Sam's sister -- was serving homophobia with her "hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner" rhetoric about her own sister, I think it's not too difficult to predict the brother-in-law plot. Which is fine by me: I'm not expecting or wanting this show to have all sorts of over-the-top melodrama. In all, I was pretty entranced by the first ep. Even the fact that Bridget E. plays a much more subdued character than she is "in real life" made the show quite interesting for me. It added an extra layer, since this extra-textual knowledge conveyed a sense of the vibrancy of Sam that has presumably been snuffed out. Also: Mr. Treeger!!! I hope he's kept up with his ballroom dancing.

Directed by, hey, Melissa Fumero! That was the most Happy Endings-ish episode yet. Rapid-fire jokes, multiple plots (TWO dating plots that could perhaps have stood alone on their own, but here kicked up a notch by being subsumed to an overarching sub-plot about Young Black Romance Theatre 🤣), some hilarious absurdism (Sherm and the rapper throwing down with autotuned voices), and the pairing of Nicki and Sherm was predictably THE BEST pairing.

It seems to me, though, that Tan overwhelmingly uses "sexy" as his yardstick adjective. It's always, "Don't you feel sexy in that?!" I guess that's the aim of many people when they dress, but there are some people -- and there are some clothes, some occasions -- with other objectives. It wouldn't hurt for Tan to try, "Doesn't this outfit make you feel powerful?" or "Doesn't this dress make you feel professional?"

The kerning on the title really bothers me. #fontcop