Corgi-ears

I guess we should be grateful that this episode of Top BMW Chef wasn't: "the only heat source you'll have, chefs is...the car engine!"

I was moved when Matthew noted that, during the run of the show, he had an obsessive need to get laughs, and that he even felt like he would die if the audience did not respond to a quip. (Tellingly, Lisa, seemingly out of genuine concern, responded by saying that she never knew that.) The reunion ep, almost to illustrate this, also showed the gag where Matthew ran into the coffee shop after Matt LB kept messing up in hitting his marks. From that perspective, I actually felt kind of glad that Matthew was the most subdued of the six during the reunion. Of course, on some level I wished he was more like the wisecracking Chandler, with a joke a minute. But I took -- I am choosing to take -- his more subdued presence as a sign that Matthew was now being healthier about not needing the constant validation. Indeed, it was a nice touch that the show gave him kind of the last word in the episode, with his story about parties ending every time he would run into one of then other five. This was also a nice callback to Matthew having the last word of the regular series ("Where?"). In the end, I just hope that Matthew, and all of the six of them, are happy and well.

"Drinking or Not Drinking" would actually be a great studio task for Taskmaster.

I'm pretty sure it's more a reference/tribute to this Simon and Garfunkel song:

Cardoz died on March 25, 2020, so the show paid tribute to him via a title card last season, at the beginning of Season 17 Episode 2, "The Jonathan Gold Experience" (which was broadcast on March 26, 2020).

We're one year into a global pandemic but this episode is truly what made me lose the will to live.

If you're asked to devise a new system for remembering how many days each month has, is it in the spirit of the task to just create something tangible that you can look at (a...broken clock), or listen to (a voicemail)? If that's the case, why not just scribble a note, or, I dunno, give Greg/Alex an actual FUCKING CALENDAR? Surely the task should be about -- which is to say, surely Greg should reward -- those who created some sort of non-visible mnemonic? To give Lee only 1 point and Mike 2: madness! This gripe isn't even about Greg being "subjective" in his scoring, it just seemed like he didn't understand the task.

I've said it before, but Sarah Kendall is a dead ringer for Jason Segel. The correct ranking in the prize task should have been Sarah's fridge < Charlotte's bedding < Jamali's hot potato < Lee's children < Mike's tune. The episode's editing was brilliant, but what else is new. Sometimes they show what was going on under the table (because it was hilarious), and sometimes they don't, to better preserve the surprise of what emerged. I have no idea how Sarah didn't poke out Alex's eyes. And having people grin maniacally while looking straight at the camera -- otherwise known as the Joe Lycett memorial -- will never not be funny.

Karen Walker and Beverly Leslie, together again!

It's truly hilarious how Tina Burner staying out of the bottom two came down to the judges saying, "Rosé looks like total tasteless tacky shit, but...that's how Tina always looks...so...Tina is safe, we guess?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also: !

I'm so disappointed that, in response to Lawrence's outfit featuring his own skinned face, Ru totally biffed the "Lawrence, what is it you can't face?" line by pronouncing "can't" the American way.

It's lucky that Raj Bisram's magic trick was not one that involved sawing someone in half.

C'mon, she enunciates pretty well for someone with no teeth.

I thought Shirley was going to get twist-disqualified since they never showed her actually passing the thick, girthy pipe completely through the donut (much as Nicola's cactus was...just the tip).

No one can convince me that Phillipa and Mr Finch aren't meant to be live-action Wallace and Gromit characters.

So I guess Season 2 will see Cassie become a "human asset," and try to apprehend and/or absolve Megan, no doubt with help, somehow, from Miranda, and I don't know how I feel about that, though right now I would at least vote for no more of Sia's wailing to close out that season --

My memory's not what it used to be, so perhaps other things happened in 2020 that I don't remember. But right now, it feels like TAR's decline and its outcome was the worst thing ever in 2020? Will and James deserve each other. #Blessed

Madddddddison and Riley clearly jizz into each others' beards, right? And they obviously fuck the Travelocity gnome, don't they? /John Oliver voice At the mat, Phil should have said, "You know how we normally put memory tasks in the final so that there are consequences for who figures it out? Well, for this task, we are eliminating the last two teams to arrive. Surprise, motherfuckers."

Their dad was an asshole to Davey, probably because he was an alcoholic, homophobic bigot who turned his back on his son (hence, his saying that Cassie is "the son he never had"). Davey wasn't blaming Cassie for their dad "favoring" her; he was suggesting that Cassie refused to see the dad's behavior, and that she even took the opportunity, whether consciously or half-consciously, to bond with her dad by participating in the exclusion of Davey. And now Davey sees her as doing the same thing with his daughters: by bonding with them via a "secret" that again excludes him. I mean, he's got a point.

"The guy's just going in a loop." Yes, Riley, you volleyball llama, that's what we usually call "labor," or just "work." It's always funny watching someone claim that a strategy is stupid when they don't actually understand the strategy. C'mon! Use your brain!!

But the first part of the title is "Hare-oism in the Face of a Modern World...", which is worth a smol, bunny-sized LOL.

Look. The show might have worked had it committed to being a psychological study. There is an interesting germ of an idea here: a story of whether the friends and family of a psychopath "should have known," or what happens after you do know. It's certainly not a new idea; the series was basically We Need to Talk About Kevin, but with a killer husband, or The Good Wife, except way more stabby. But David Kelley tried to dress it up as a murder whodunnit, and one with terrible and nonsensical plotting that partly depends on domestic chores involving dishwashers and dry cleaners. He could even had completely subverted the murder whodunnit genre. This would have entailed, say, making Jonathan's guilt absolutely clear by Ep 2 or 3 (e.g., via an objective flashback to Jonathan actually committing the murder), and spending the rest of the series tracking how Grace and Henry struggled with this understanding, her dilemma about how best to protect her son from his monster father, etc.. In this version of the show, I might even have been able to overlook or forgive the courtroom shenanigans that Kelley has always loved ("What if the wife testifies, seemingly for the husband, and then, PLOT TWIST!?!?"). But no. Kelley had to stretch the whodunnit over five episodes, filling the story with stupid red herrings ("What if we make the entire Fraser family end up outside Elena's house?"), lots of gratuitous violence ("Let's show our embodiment of the Dead Girl Trope getting bludgeoned over and over!"), and only cramming the We Need to Talk About Jonathan denouncement into an episode. I guess at least I got to gaze upon Edgar Ramirez's marvellous hair. #FollicularGoals

The Frasers: so rich and privileged that their son does not understand that you can and should hand wash a murder weapon, not have a dishwasher do it for you. Twice. Grace: Put me on the stand! I'm a reliable narrator! Grace, on the stand: * Promptly mispronounces her own family name, again *

Katherine: "Careful with that blanket, Alex, I'm going to be lying on it." Also Katherine: