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*sigh* Here are the Skull Standings following tonight's episode: After the latest set of Purgatories, the fun of speculating about someone getting left out of the final mission for not having a Skull is all gone. I'm thinking we get a final pair of eliminations next week, leaving us with a field of nine to run for the big money. With Bear and Josh off the table, I'm thinking Dee wins. This is a series where hope goes to die, and having someone banned from BMP and edited out winning the whole thing would make sense. The other bad scenario is Johnny winning, breaking his losing streak at six seasons. Last season, I wrote about how I noticed that not only had his luck run dry, nobody who beat him in elimination from IOTC to WOTW2 has won a title of their own. If I'm being honest, I was hoping a few players would have read that before shipping off to Prague, and started taking the theory seriously. But he beat Wes and he's been getting a good edit . . . so Title #7 seems too possible.

Some days, I hate this series. If The Challenge had a definitive image, it would be Johnny smirking about "all's fair in love, war and Challenges." It's not meant to be a fair game. Watching Aneesa get thrown under the bus for shit that happened ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS AGO was painful. Yes, her performance basically doomed Marky Mark Long to a third-place finish in Duel II. That aired in 2009. For God's sake, the series was Real World/Road Rules Challenge back then. And I don't think finalists have been partnered up since Dirty XXX. But no, let's watch Johnny and others talk about the horror of possibly being shackled to Aneesa at a crucial point in the finale, and then see her come up short yet again at the hands of a third-stringer like Bayleigh. Bayliegh got a shot at a Skull. So did Josh and Kyle. The irony is that the players basically let Bayleigh and Kyle volunteer for the losers' nomination with no fuss. With the prospect that the final mission was close at hand, you would think everyone would get cutthroat and deny slots to those without Skulls. Nope . . . fair play, all the way. And Josh gets an unearned spot on the Tribunal when Fessy talks Jenny into letting him on board. It was so predictable to see Josh and Kyle face off. I kept hoping someone would go off-script and make things interesting. I was hoping that Fessy decided to ease Cory's inexplicable butthurt at not getting on the Tribunal by taking on Kyle, denying Josh his shot. And before Josh stepped down, he was the deciding vote to send Aneesa into Purgatory. Yep, that was fair. I really hope she beat the shit out of Josh once they got away from the cameras. Oh, yeah. Josh lost. That was the only real good news of the episode. And he cried like a punk several times. The real kicker: this wasn't the penultimate mission. Everyone has a Skull. but there looks to be one more round before the finale. Seriously, part of the antiicpation of the Skulls format was that someone would get left out in the cold. Fat chance of that now. ETA: At least the mission and Purgatory were interesting. As was bringing in Rob Zombie and Cake on the soundtrack.

Dude. Not cool. And I’m sure the Mets would disavow the hell out of that lady.

I hate to say it, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. BMP believes in absolute values, meaning guys as awful as Bear or whiny like Josh are more important that a mentally-balanced guy who kicked ass in missions. I like the guy. I couldn’t hold a grudge over that business on BOTS2.

A bit late . . . I appreciated the team’s shock in finding the dead body. Pat's probably going to tell them that they'd be waist-deep in dead bodies if they were really serious about the superhero thing.

"What If . . . Veruca Salt decided that world domination was more important than a trip to a chocolate factory?" Jeez, Cindy isn't messed-up. She is genuine evil. The only person that can boss her around is her hood-wearing father, and you just know that's not going to last long. Sure, she looks like she belongs in a box with "MY FIRST ARCH-VILLAIN" slapped on the side, but she does make a good compliment to Courtney. The kids need to work on team skills. Individually, I think Courtney and Yolanda are good. Rick probably needs to work on fighting over brawling. Beth? She needs so much help. I mean, she's cute and all, but it's like you can't stare at her for too long without getting a headache. And I don't want to think what would happen if the owl gets involved. "Chuck, do you know where I can buy lots and lots of rodents?" Finally getting the deal of the janitor. Of course, since this is Blue Valley, he has a sword in his closet. Side note: have there been metal detectors shown at the entrances of the school? Maybe Principal Bowin thinks that if the shit hits the fan, she'd have her fiddle and the mentally-damaged sword-wielding janitor.

Once again: if Matt and Trey decided to kill the show rather than deal with current events, I wouldn't blame them. Robot Chicken sketch centered on the Jonas Brothers. There are references to purity rings, and I immediately thought of "The Ring." Oh, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut came out in theaters 21 years ago today. Here's a clip counting all the f-bombs.

I’m watching The Great Debate, Baron Vaughan is hosting and Jonah Ray is a panelist, I do an obligatory check of MST3K on the cable schedule . . . and the last four episodes of S11 are On Demand, at least on Spectrum.

I DVRed and watched The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? Just a giant pile of WTF. It's like there's supposed to be a borderline arthouse zombie movie, but it got padded out by weird dance routines that were supposed to be sexy. Or, as Mike puts it during one of the numbers, "You know, the fourteen-year olds who snuck in with fake IDs, they've gotta be feeling profoundly ripped-off at this point." Oh, and the lead guy looked like Nicolas Cage long before his spiral into madness. Schedule from IFC.com: Wednesday, 3 a.m.: Women of the Prehistoric Planet Friday, 3:15 a.m: The Sidehackers Saturday, 5:30 a.m.: Catalina Caper July 7, 6:45 a.m.: The Wild Rebels July 11, 7:15 am.: Prince of Space ("Why We Love It" bit from the YouTube site) July 15, 7 a.m.: Space Mutiny ("Why We Love It") July 16, 7 a.m. Time Chasers ("Why We Love It") and Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (I haven't found a "best of" clip for this one, so I'm looking forward to it) No change with the On Demand choices. Nothing "new" in regard to the reboot either.

If you're going through withdrawal, I have a Tucker that could tide you over. This one has a lot more personality. Is there a postseason in the Premier League? Or is Liverpool FC the definitive champion? As a Mets fan, I'm happy for him. You gotta treasure the titles when you can.

Fun pair of episodes. The idea of Garfield getting killed and Jon burying him in the Pet Sematary seems so obvious in retrospect, yet I only hate myself for not thinking of it. Jonas Brothers sketch took me back to "The Ring," an episode of South Park from 2009. I blame the mention of promise rings.

Looks like we’ll be getting no end of “Florida Man” sightings. They couldn’t all be on the level, and yet I know that they were. Probably for the best that aired with no studio audience. They would have laughed themselves sick or vomited hearing the “let it all hang out” lady. I haven’t had Papa John’s in a while. I like that pizza. But now I gotta remember how he’s fucked up TikTok. 🙄

I’m going with the assumption there will be a male and female-based Purgatory in the next episode. Sadly, I can see BMP doing two sets of double elimination.

I'm up to the one with the TV studio and Karpy the Magikarp evolving into Gyrados. Usual dopey fun, though the one when cast members met their departed loved ones was pretty heavy. I mean, "heavy" for this franchise. Also: a bunch of Meltan (the latest rare Pokemon) destroy James' precious bottle cap collection. You know, I poke fun at him as much as the next fan, but I know . . . if you fuck with his caps? That's your ass.

That's me, minus the "dead" part. In my head: "Big Brother people are usually assholes . . . so how is Fessy an asshole?" From what I've gathered, that show does not cast for intelligence, and it has the same clouds of sexism and racism hovering over Survivor. Is Kaycee the BB version of Nicole Z? That's the vibe I'm getting now.

Nobody thinks that AoS is taking cues from Legends of Tomorrow? I see Sousa rightfully bitching about how the team seems to make things worse. That could have been followed by John Constantine about to get hung by the neck, all, "First time?" The teaser for next week has Coulson claiming dying is his superpower. Cut to Sara Lance watching elsewhere, gasping in disbelief. I've been watching, just not commenting. At least everyone seems to be having fun with the final season, especially with the different sets of credits. I like Sousa's future shock, while Coulson and Daisy get too into dressing for 1973. I also like how Enoch is basically as annoyed as a Chronicon can possibly get. I had to pause to see the list. At the very bottom was David Robinson. What, do the Chronicons want to take out the Admiral, aborting the Spurs' subsequent "dynasty"?

You’re thinking that Josh and Kyle battling at the end is inevitable, a fair deal in an unfair game. In theory, those two and Bayleigh could be shut out of Purgatory. Think about it: what if Kyle and Josh make the final Tribunal? I was thinking aloud last week on Facebook during the episode, and a few posters in the Challenge-centered group suggested that the other member(s) of the Tribunal would vote on who would get to step down into Purgatory. Or maybe one of the three Skull-less players would get shut out from the Tribunal, by the Tribunal, and in the “loser” vote. If Bayleigh doesn’t make Tribunal, her fate would be up in the air. If Josh and Kyle don’t make the Tribunal, one person confident in his abilities could send himself in, and the one on the outside winds up dismissed (and probably) dissed by Teege. But yeah, it’ll probably be Josh/Kyle next week. Go, Kyle, because Josh winning is a terrible thought.

I don't watch Big Brother, so I have to ask: how fucked up is Fessy? We've seen Christopher be an asshole, Bayleigh lost her got-damn mind tonight, and a helluva lot of shade is going to be thrown on Kaycee. I've been under the understand that all Hamsters are mentally damaged goods. Is Fessy the exception? I actually remember the mission being used in Battle of the Seasons way back in 2002. I think the biggest difference was that the cars had to be pushed, as opposed to driven. As usual, both sides had to make it dramatic. Bayleigh is insane. Josh is still a dumbass. Johnny is still causing trouble. If any episode could have been scaled to sixty minutes, this would've been it. Once the result was announced, Nany was automatically going to Purgatory. After the others voted in Melissa, I don't see why we needed a Tribunal, aside from them picking Bayleigh, and her responding by ripping on Nany. Purgatory was interesting, but poorly thought-out. We could have ended in a situation where Nany and Melissa grabbed each others skulls and placed them on their respective pedestals five times, and the winner would have been decided by who was faster with the final skull. Melissa gets the win here, but you have to be worried about her unborn daughter. I mean, she didn't know she was pregnant, so seeing her drink a shot and wrestle Nany was a bit nerve-wracking. Looks like double elimination next week. The question is if it'll be guys/guys, or two final Purgatories with the men and women.

Article I wrote for Saniac. A few things I should mention. One, it had been on the shelf for a while. I wrote it before some of the major moments from this season. Two, it’s a bit morbid. I wrote some funny stuff, but I took a unique and somewhat depressing view on the series. Let me know what you think of it. 🤓😀

Good episode, and we get the money shot shown at the end of COIE. Young Justice has already elevated Sportsmaster and Tigress beyond schmuck status, but I like the live-action version turning them into the ultimate sideline parents. Can you imagine what would have happened had Artemis taken a topless selfie that spread throughout the school? Half the student body would have been killed inside of a week. I like Chuck. Beth needs work. She's just way too precocious, even for a superhero show. I'm sure she'll grow into her role (and not follow EVERY beat the original Dr. Mid-Nite took), but she's just so cringey. Also bad: "Hi. Listen, I know that Blue Valley is teeming with honest-to-God supervillains, but my stepdad wants the stuff back. Apparently, he's not into the whole thing about finding other teenagers and arming them with special weapons and powers. Lame, right?" I like to think Gambler dances to hit music when he knows no on is watching. "It's Going Down" was a fun choice. How come we only got Ke$ha doing the chorus?

Heads up: MTV is doing "Flashback Friday" this week. Included in the mix: three-hour block of the original Real World starting at 11 a.m. Just wanted to put that out there.

Got another like. Sent a response. Waiting to see if anything happens.

I was thinking that with more stadiums, maybe there would be enough in “safe” places to host MLB games with no audiences. The minors are kaput this year no matter what. And yes, “safe” is not guaranteed anywhere, but at least there would be more options.

I’m happy Mitch got to play, even if he went 0-for-2. Is it practiced where kids are named after books from the Bible? “Exodus” would not have been my first guess. @saber5055: I didn’t notice anything with “Goldenboy” announcing. I’ll have to remember to see if he misses his “t’s.” It’s a pity that they didn’t know American Ninja Warrior would probably be taking the year off. Matt & Akbar could have fun covering Titans, though I bet DJ (seriously?) would make them mess their pants.

Maybe games would be played in empty minor league stadiums, in places where the numbers are going down safely?