Mondrianyone

Here's a transcript of the grotto episode, for lack of a video: http://tv.ark.com/transcript/house_hunters_international-%28ostuni_vista,_bobbie%29/6324/HGTVP/Monday_July_06_2015/838280/ But it does prove there was a grotto! The HH's name was Bobbie Read, and you can look at her credits on IMDb. The dungeon mom in Paris is Katherine Fugate, and she was a screenwriter. Also very Googlable. You can watch her episode on YouTube for $1.99, but once was enough for me. ;o) Obviously I'm desperately trying to avoid work.

I think that the one with the grotto was in Italy, not France (although I do also remember the one in France where that mother put her daughter in the windowless dungeon room). The woman in Italy was a British costume designer who was retiring from her Hollywood career to a town called Ostuni in southern Italy. I just tried Googling it for you to see if the episode is watchable online, but I couldn't find anything. I didn't look for pictures of the grotto, though, so maybe you'll have some luck finding those.

I don't deny any of this. In fact, when he started smiling as the question was only partly read out, I thought it was because that's his local team, so he had to be making the Saints connection. I was shocked that he actually didn't know it. But his answer was so ridiculously creative that I'm forgiving everything else. And I rarely forgive anything on this show.

I know, I know. I even knew the right answer, and you can stuff all I know about football into a flea's ear. It just made me laugh. I'm a laugh ho, what can I say?

I'm inclined to cut the kid a break on that one, at least partly because he gave me the best laugh-out-loud laugh I've had all day. Week, maybe. For one thing, he's from Mississippi (or at least that's where he goes to school), where there aren't exactly a lot of Jews, so I forgive him for not knowing when Passover is. And he's probably not Catholic either, so there goes All Saints' Day. But if you have to come up with a religious holiday that makes some kind of crazy sense for football, "Passover" has got to be the best punt ever. Amanda really did seem to love the camera. I don't think I've ever seen a contestant look straight into it like that during the chat with Alex. I saw a video today that made me want to shoot myself. But it was well timed for some of these dopey guesses we've been hearing. Things are pretty bad out there in academia, apparently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRZZpk_9k8E

Obviously, we don't know the whole story, or how much of what we saw is fictitious. My impression based on what HHI showed us was that the mother was trying to help Sarah be in a position where she might be able to change herself. Encouraging her not to isolate herself, to have another try at living with someone not in her immediate family, both because it's a good thing to learn to get along with other people while you're still young enough not to be so rigid--theoretically, in Sarah's case--and because paying to carry her in a two-bedroom apartment that she refuses to consider sharing with a roommate is a pretty hefty burden, in addition to having paid for undergraduate and now graduate school--we all saw Sarah's sharp reaction of horror when Mom suggested she get a job! Whatever Sarah feels entitled to, Mom has to take a chunk of the blame for that, and if she encouraged Sarah's inclination to be a recluse, some of that is on her, too. But I don't think she's a villain because she wants her daughter to figure out how to be a person in the world and for Mom herself wanting to get out from under the crushing weight of Sarah's entitlement and dependence. FWIW, I would've killed for any of those apartments when I was going to school. Stairs or no stairs. ;o)

I just watched the Glasgow ep about five minutes ago. It's hard to imagine why anyone, including the producers, would want that particular house hunt memorialized on film. If I were Sarah's mother, I would've told her that I'd take responsibility for mailing out all of her vet-school applications. Then I'd have conveniently "forgotten" to mail all except the ones for schools abroad. But I'd definitely remember to make sure she had an up-to-date passport. See ya next year, Sarah.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that they were in the middle of negotiating for the next season, and the Slays thought they were worth more than TPTB thought they were worth, so maybe they walked off and TPTB told them, to their surprise, to stay off. And now the Slays regret playing hardball. But who knows, really? I don't think it should be all that tough to come up with a good replacement for them. Just not Casey, please.

When it looked as if Fred might be gone, I planned to make a batch of zabaloney to celebrate. I still may make some, but I think I'll spike it with dexedrine. You mean 1,213th this month, right? I think Bianca's son should've been there instead of Bianca. She certainly made a good case for that.

Yeah, but if he was disowned before they got married, and if she was really just after his (parents') money, why go ahead and marry him once his access to the money was gone? This merits more study, I think. Stay tuned for my forthcoming book, Deconstructing Dagwood. I still think that "mobile home" was the worst of all possible answers to the caravan clue. Sometimes those judges just seem to be messing with us on purpose.

Thanks. ;o)

I think that if Fred Yawn--I mean Vaughn--hadn't ended up winning, they would've had to bring him back, because that was a very bad ruling on the caravan clue. I even looked it up during the commercial, expecting them to make some kind of adjustment after they came back. The British dictionary I checked defined a caravan as "a ​wheeled ​vehicle for ​living or ​travelling in, ​especially for ​holidays, that ​contains ​beds and ​cooking ​equipment and can be ​pulled by a ​car." Which is a lot closer to an RV than to a mobile home, which isn't really meant to be mobile in the usual sense at all. Anybody who reads a lot of British lit (guilty) knows what a caravan is.

Well, there is that. But then again, Blondie has like a six-inch waist. Look: So maybe she's not in it for the sandwiches. Maybe Dagwood has . . . other attractions that we don't get to see. ;o)

I never understood what Blondie saw in Dagwood.

All true, and yet I came to embrace their ridiculous tackiness. Casey the cousin, on the other hand, is so boring he practically doesn't exist. He just happened to be a handy person to step into the gap. I don't see the show staying with him any longer than it takes them to find a replacement.

Hi back at you, netlyon2! I realized after posting above that Catrina and Casey aren't a couple (I remembered seeing his actual wife on the houseboat episode, but hey, things can change!). The new opening credits do make them look like a couple, though, so I wasn't sure if they really had hooked up or not. But the Slays really are off the show--I Googled her Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/suzislay) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/p/-wsBuTMdDSOe9ht2zoPXCA0trfuUdkvSmbMK80/0), and they've announced in no uncertain terms the fact that they're not coming back for the next season. No reason given for why that is--at least as of when I last checked. No mention of why they disappeared in the middle of this one either. But they're gone. And all of it handled pretty awkwardly by the show, IMO.

Hi, all. First time posting in here. I've been watching Texas Flip & Move since the start. It's one of those shows I'd never admit to watching, but there's something really mindlessly enjoyable about it. Very weird about the original married couple, Cody and Suzy (I think those are the right names). They just disappeared midway through a recent episode, replaced by the husband's cousin (who used to be their house mover) and his wife (who used to be the contractor for the Snow sisters). No idea what happened to them. Usually people go away at the end of a season, not in the middle of a single show. Anyone here know what that's about? It's like getting a new Darren on Bewitched, and everyone pretends nothing's changed!

I missed the first five minutes because I didn't know the regular station was showing a hockey game and they'd switched the broadcast to a sister station. So even though we're dodging the snowstorm, they still managed to find a reason to screw up Jeopardy! Part of the clue mentioned one of the two survivors being sent to recruit more troops, so I think it was fairly clear that the event in question was probably a battle. I hope Dr. Ben Carson finds his inner gas pedal tomorrow. He didn't even seem to be able to describe his own work without dozing off between words. He seems like a nice man, but . . .

To be fair to all those degreed morons, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who really is on the Supreme Court, stole JJ's lace-collar look. So it's a semi-honest mistake. If you're an idiot. Congratulations on having dodged a bullet, Teebax.

I'm gonna guess that it took a lot of courage for Ava to go on Jeopardy! I don't think I'd have been able to do it. It's scary enough without all the extra baggage of being some kind of pioneer and to know that people are going to talk about you afterward, just for who you are.

I'd read here about what a jerk that Dallas guy was, and I had to go watch the episode, since it was hard to believe anyone was really that bad. Turns out he was worse. The wife said she was from Poland, but she had no accent, really, so that kind of diminishes the likelihood she married him for a green card. It's hard to think of why else she would've wanted to. With some couples you get the feeling that the bickering is fun for them and a sort of foreplay. Not with this guy. Someone should tell her she can do a lot better. Out of a vast pool of assholey HHers, this one may be the assholiest.

I thought it was dik-dik, too. But I kind of had my doubts they would end the year with that as the answer to FJ. Johnny also reminds me of John Fiedler from the old Bob Newhart Show. And someone else who I still can't dig out of my brain. This may become my life's work if I'm not careful. Happy New Year, all!

Thank you so much for this! ^ ^ ^ It was driving me nuts. I even looked up lists of character actors, trying to figure out who he reminded me of.

My husband said Bob Denver for FJ. Fortunately, he has other good qualities.

It really is confusing, since there are two different names to begin with, and then autocorrect adds a whole new layer of craziness. Appropriate, I guess, considering what the name represents!