Corgi-ears

Versatile queen.

Oh, we were so, so close to getting our first series champion who's a person of color.

Nothing against Christina Ricci, who I in fact love, but I feel like the adult version of Misty should be played by Natasha Lyonne.

Sounds like you really wanted to chew Molly out.

Lizzie's muppet cake was kinda awesome.

"It's time to get fingers dirty."

It's more likely the case that Cinda's assistant, Poppy, commits the murders; Cinda just takes credit for them.

I have the same problem, actually, on Mac OS 11.6, Safari 14.1.2.

Alison, the first chair bassoonist, was having an affair with Tim -- despite having a boyfriend, because she has a type -- and Jan wanted to poison her, but accidentally poisoned Tim instead? That's all I got.

Yeah, add me to the camp that much prefers Season 1, and even found Season 2 to be a different show. For much of this season, I felt rather guilty about feeling this way. Part of what made Season 1 so compelling for me was the season long arc, not just in terms of her relationship with Chris, but of Abby counting down her almonds. It was incredibly dark but funny. In Season 2, it was nice to see Abby mostly without strong suicide ideations, and generally doing better in terms of mental health. So I felt bad and wondered if my feelings boiled down to, "This show was more entertaining when Abby -- possibly both the character and the creator -- was...um...suffering?" But I think it was also a matter of tone. Many of Season 2's early episodes seem to have a tone of forced joviality? There seemed like there were a lot of parties, gatherings, "adventures," etc. where Abby interacted with people like she was doing a Catskills routine. I can't speak to whether this would have been emotionally accurate, but it at least made the show feel like it was about a different character, or at least a character who should be more removed in time than the one we saw in Season 1. Indeed, at about the midway point of the season, I started to wonder if there was some twist coming, whereby it would be revealed that the Abby we saw at these gatherings was just Abby's imagination of how she should be behaving, or wished she was behaving, at parties, etc. (This wasn't completely crazy on my part, since the season had a lot of "Abby sees and talks to younger/alternative versions of herself.") I'm still glad this show is on TV, and Abby is like no other character. But yeah, bumpy season.

So many shows do a big cliffhanger to end a season, and then start the next by resetting, by backing away from the cliffhanger. So it's really interesting so far how Frayed's Season 2 is progressing. Two episodes in, and they're really dealing with Terry's death -- and in a really intriguing back-and-forth-in-time way as well. I dig it!

Oh look, the instructions for the technical are brief and cryptic. It's Series 12, WE GET IT. Somewhere a TV exec is scribbling "breadstick jenga" in their notebook.

Seriously. I don't understand why they picked someone who has no discernible sense of humor for a comedy show. And Jeremy was already better in Season 2, by which I mean he cracked one joke in ten episodes.

Here is the show I wish Ted Lasso is: a story about a man of color, working at a football club. He is flawed, and not always easy to like; the show helps us understand why his upbringing leads to him now craving validation, and getting overbearing when he does get a smidgeon of it. He gets a break at work, and rises in the ranks, but things are frustrating because he works for an incompetent boss, who, after almost two years on the job still has not learned the basics of his job (like off-side rules) or anything about game strategies, and instead spends his time choreographing "wacky dances." This boss also never reads the room, and at important meetings is prone to bust out dumb jokes. But because of this boss' privileged status -- he's a "nice guy!" he makes dad jokes! -- he gets away with this incompetence, and everyone (in and out of the show) loves him. I know that's not what this show is, or what anyone other than I (or possibly others who have had the same experience at work) want, but that's what a headcanon is for 😑

Perhaps not every woman has or wants to have or needs to have straight, flat-ironed, glossy -- a.k.a. white, upper middle class -- hair?

Emeritus professors usually still draw salaries, albeit reduced (and retain their offices -- poor Joan!). The university was trying to get (Ji-Yoon to get) them to take voluntary retirement, which is different, and a greater cost-saving. I thought it was a lot more ambiguous. During one of their co-taught classes -- and the fact that Rentz was present for it already suggests that his motivations aren't so black-and-white, since many senior professors will not even deign to attend the classes that their colleagues co-teach -- the camera lingered on Rentz's face as he watched Yaz's leading the students in their drumming/singing activity. It didn't to me look like he was, say, straighttfowwardly sneery. Any sneery-ness was mixed with grudging admiration, perhaps some befuddled incomprehension, and maybe a soupçon of anxiety that comes from feeling threatened. I think there are two different (though interrelated) issues we were being shown. I think the student evals weren't so much being considered for (Yaz's and others') tenure cases, which does often neglect assessments of teaching in favor of assessments of research. But the evals, along with the even blunter instrument that is student enrolment numbers, were being taken to indicate which classes and teachers can draw students to major in English, and thus secure the department more funding.

Plus it was not at all clear that the Bob Balaban character, Rentz, was in any intentional, malicious way trying to sabotage Yaz's tenure case. He was right that Promotion and Tenure committees often distrust letters that only speak glowingly about a candidate; frequently they do indeed want to hear about the limitations of the candidate's work, which seems to be what Rentz was doing in writing about her research ("While she has published in top-tier journals..."). In fact, it wasn't really clear to me -- which is a compliment to the show -- that the way Yaz taught was faultless. She certainly had a good rapport with the students, and supported and uplifted the students of color in particular. But asking them to tweet their favourite lines? Ok, Yaz had a point that it's "just an activity," and maybe even a way to have students show that they did the reading. But Rentz wasn't out of line to point out that this encouraged them to treat the work as a series of soundbites. Likewise, when we do see Yaz in the classroom, she was...what? Getting students to drum and sing and perform? Which, again, was perhaps just a rousing engagement activity, and perhaps they had to do historical research into the period (though everything they did seemed pretty anachronistic). But was it clearly good, substantive literary teaching? Unclear. (The snippets we got of the classroom teaching styles were actually quite illuminating. Ji-Yoon was positioned as being somewhere in the middle, passionately asking students to think about word choice in a poem. She wasn't just a staid, stand-at-the podium lecturer like Rentz, but also wasn't in the Yaz mode where, arguably, there was a bit more focus on style than substance in terms of classroom activities. It subtly explained why Ji-Yoon would have been elected as department chair, but also what Yaz feels that she was a bit too uncompromising and in the old-school told.) The details specific to English Dept-ness were generally spot on too: the name of the top tier journal in which Yaz published (PMLA), the fact that the journal does gives an award for the best essay of the year, the fact that winning it would be a big deal. And, of course, the fact of Yale being fucking Yale.

It's all intersectional, yada-yadda, but given how much this show is about class and privilege, it seems more likely that Olivia is upset with Paula for consorting with "the help," that after all that Olivia has done to help Paula climb the socio-economic ladder, here she is "slumming it," etc. Along the same lines, I would love it if the mystery body being loaded onto the plane turns out to be a hotel employee that we never really even meet; it could be the show's way of subverting audience expectations that it must be a main character who dies, and commenting on how we tend to be less invested in the people who actually keep the place running.

Maybe this is the beginning of the build-up? At some point this season, Áine says jokingly to Shona something to the effect of Richard being a sad white man that women can't resist. I wonder if the story over the next few seasons (assuming there are some) will have to do with Áine realizing that her mental health issues partly come from some kind of attachment to grief, and that her health might improve if she chooses Bradley instead of Richard. (I'm of course not endorsing the idea that improvements in mental health come simply by choosing a partner who is not grieving, depressed, etc. I'm just wondering if the show might explore that idea.) Interestingly, Kadiff Kirwan, who plays Bradley, also serves a script editor for the show.

Did Maria even make the cabinet? From the way she expressed it ("I have this cabinet"; "a cabinet"), and from the looks of the cabinet (which only ever appeared on camera fully formed), I'm going to guess no? So she cut bell pepper shapes out of foam -- using a knife, after breaking the foam cutting tools -- and stuck one on top of the cabinet during the multiple hours she had. Wait: I guess she wrote up some recipes too. Well, at least she was accountable enough to tell us, "that's on [her]." Had she not done so, I would have sooooo confused about who to blame and to boot for that terrible "make."

I guess the show is doubling down on being "feel good" and "positive" and never giving any actually useful critiques. I mean, are these baskets...good? Are they...even round?

I think there's a difference between not finishing a garment during a pattern challenge, and not doing so during a M2M (or a transformation) challenge. During a pattern challenge, all the sewers are on a level playing field, making the same thing; presumably the pattern can be done in the stipulated time. So an unfinished garment should certainly bring up the rear. However, during a pattern challenge, I think it's fair to penalize someone for deviating from the pattern as much as someone who didn't finish. Damian has been a hoot, and I would be happy to have him continue to be on my screen. But this week, he himself admitted that he opted not to put an overlock zip into his Dirty Dancing dress because it was a new technique, and learning it would probably mean he wouldn't finish his dress. (As Farie didn't.) So there's clearly an argument to be made that when someone deviates from the pattern or instructions, they are also "not finishing" the garment. With a M2M challenge, part of the process and what the sewers are being assessed on is whether they have a good understanding of their design or pattern, the time and effort it would take to execute it, etc. So when a sewer doesn't finish a M2M, then it should weigh more heavily against them, since it suggests that their sewing knowledge isn't as strong as it should be. And if memory serves, Farie has mostly finished her M2Ms, and even won garments of the week with them.

It would have been interesting if, in the second round, Byron and Maria decided to help Dawn overcome her accident not by jumping in to help redo her plates, but by both agreeing to also only send up nine plates of food each. I'm a bit surprised that the challenge didn't incorporate more of a strategy angle: "will each chef decide to prep three dishes, or will anyone be confident/cocky enough to let it all ride on just one?" lt looks like a few of them did focus more on one or two dishes (e.g., Dawn admitting that her dessert wasn't fully conceptualized), but it wasn't built into the challenge. I guess it's typical of how this is a kinder, gentler Top Chef nowadays.

The second season has started in Australia (three episodes have dropped), so will hopefully be on Netflix eventually.

There have perhaps been a few too many transformation challenges this season where the raw material is simply "fabric" (sarongs, scarves, curtains).