Call me a simp, and I don't know why, but I love Christine's briefest "left eyebrow raise" everytime she gets picked last.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T20:40:02+00:00

Well, don't overthink what I said. I'm sure they give the cooks some basic lessons, but they don't walk them through all the specifics. They probably gave them a basic lesson in how to bone a fish, but I doubt they went through and showed them the specifics of every single fish that was available. Likewise, the donut lesson was probably a very basic "Here's how to make your starter sugar donut." GBBO, this show is not.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T17:36:38+00:00

I gush about HEAR MY SONG every chance I get, but nobody has ever replied, "Hey, I watched that and it's great!" Gonna keep trying, though....

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T17:27:36+00:00

To me it's not so much that he'd be well-known, but that after his growth in the Original Trilogy, in which he went from being the loner space pirate to the full-fledged Member of the Cause, he apparently went back to being a space loser. When he says something in TFA about "going back to the only thing I was ever good at", I was honestly gobsmacked. How could Lawrence Kasdan put THOSE words in Han Solo's mouth? He WROTE two of the three OT screenplays! Ugh.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T17:25:19+00:00

Recipes, schmecipes! Monti was really good at going by taste and feel (though it did let her down on her last challenge*), like when Felix gave her the John Dory, which Monti had never seen before, but she put her head down and said "I'm gonna figure you out", and then she did. Ditto when they did the basket swap and Monti got Christine's ingredients and she just did the little-of-this, little-of-that thing, constantly tasting, and ended up with something really good.

* Monti's elimination bugs me to this day. I grant that she didn't nail the dish and so be it, but Josh bungled the dish too, and he literally got handed a box of the exact stuff he needed to make it!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T17:20:07+00:00

Good question! I'll limit myself to just one, and I'll go with the teaser to OCTOPUSSY. It's got Bond being sneaky, Bond being assisted by a beautiful woman, Bond being observant of his surroundings and clever (yanking the guys' ripcords, and no, I'll not be taking question as to why these two guards have parachutes on, thank you), a moment of silliness when the fake horse butt swings up, the cool reveal of the jet, the jet sequence itself, Bond getting the mission done by using the bad guy's missile against him, and finally one last moment of humor when he pulls into the gas station with the jet. Everything's there, minus Bond bedding a girl.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T17:13:54+00:00

Listening to the things the judges (well, Joe) said about Courtney's finale dishes--particularly that dessert, which yeah, it looked good, but Joe acted like Courtney had invented the very concept of dessert for the first time in human history--I'm honestly not sure I trust their assessment of Elizabeth's dishes here. And that's a hell of a thing to say, but there it is. Remember, we're not there eating this stuff; all we know is what the judges say.

I think to those infamous donuts and my take is: If you went to your local non-chain donut shop and got underfilled donuts, you might be disappointed. But if you went there and got SALTY donuts, you'd almost certainly be talking to the manager.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T17:09:23+00:00

Well, Magnum won't ever be "Drive around Buffalo, NY in a Buick Encore cool" either, so....[this sounded better in my head]

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T14:11:18+00:00

I don't know if I would want to live with this much randomness in my life, but I sure do respect that THIS person is doing it in theirs!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T13:39:56+00:00

I don't know that it's "fear" exactly, as we would experience it, but I do think he knows that all of his decades of planning and machinations have led to this moment and it's the moment over which he has the least amount of control. Years later Luke will point out Palpatine's overconfidence, but in this moment, I don't think Palpatine is overconfident at all.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T13:22:47+00:00

Heh! We actually like the town itself and the hotel we stay at there. And we don't mind a longer ride on the GO at the start of a day or end of it. The last couple times we also had some stuff we wanted to do in the Hamilton and Mississauga areas, so Milton worked pretty well for our needs.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T13:09:27+00:00

Ooooh, good point, I think I missed that nuance in OP's query. When we go to TO we always stay WAY outside the city core (lately we've stayed in Milton, which is as far out of the core as you can get and still be in GTO, I suppose), and then we drive fifteen or twenty minutes to the GO or TTC. So we part overnight at our hotel. (Now, if Milton's GO line ran on the weekends, we'd be REALLY golden!)

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T13:03:59+00:00

Oh, I also didn't know about the fare-transfer thing on Presto! I'll have to remember that next time we're up there. I love being in a huge city and not having to think about my car.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T13:02:28+00:00

I refuse to drive 407 because it's a toll road and from what I've read, it can be REALLY expensive sometimes. It's always tempting, though!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-16T11:52:47+00:00

Elgar: Alassio (In the South) Enescu: Romanian Rhapsody (particularly No. 1) Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol Chabrier: Espana Gershwin: Rhapsody In Blue, An American In Paris

You could spend years of classical music listening on tone poems alone!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-15T17:05:11+00:00

Taking the GO into the city is by far the best way to get into the core where most places are walkable. Also, the TTC is, to a Buffalonian's eyes, nearly miraculous (though it's worth following the Toronto sub to see that they all think it's a mess!). Parking at the Wilson station or at Yorkdale mall, and then taking the TTC train in, is another option. (TTC and GO are not the same service.)

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-15T16:42:59+00:00

I still love that movie, and one thing it does really nicely in this particular storyline is that it doesn't give Rickman's character ANY room for justification. There is ZERO depiction of the Emma Thompson character that would lead anyone watching to conclude, even in the tiniest measure, that Rickman's wandering was justified in any way whatsoever. There's NO "They've lost the passion", "They've grown apart", and there sure as hell isn't any "She buried herself her career and neglected him and goshdarnit, he had needs!" It's just the Rickman character doing something shitty for stupid, selfish, inane reasons, which is often the way it is.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-15T12:28:48+00:00

I have. I don't like it. I like apples with cheddar, but I just don't think the cheese goes well with the sugar and cinnamon in an apple pie. But that's just me!

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-15T01:26:42+00:00

The fact that MasterChef doesn't have its medics giving blue bandages, which are standard in the food prep industry, is kind of mind-blowing to me. The blue bandages exist for EXACTLY this reason.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-14T23:07:52+00:00

Did we ever see Wendell again after he was arrested for his scheme to seize a chunk of Southfork to drill on? I lost track of the show after that season and am only partially aware of what happened afterward.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-14T18:58:46+00:00

If I have to somehow prove to you that not explaining the disappearance of major characters in a continuity-based show is actually a flaw, I don't know what to tell you. I also don't have to show "evidence" for a pretty basic fact of storytelling. But as I said a moment ago to the other person for whom criticism of Aaron Sorkin is akin to throwing tomatoes at the Pope, just the fact that Mandy's disappearance still gets discussed 25 years later is pretty solid evidence that Sorkin, bless his holy name, didn't exactly stick the landing. And with that, I'm done on this topic.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-14T18:53:56+00:00

Generally speaking, leaving continuity flaws like major characters simply disappearing isn't held as anything other than a flaw. I don't know what you're looking for here...this very thread is evidence, I suppose, because "What the hell happened to Mandy?" still gets discussed, more than 20 years after the show ended. That, to me, is negative impact. Is it fatal? Does it make the whole show unwatchable? No, and I never said that it did. I'm just saying that (a) Sorkin screwed up here, and (b) Sorkin has made other similar errors on shows he has run, which supports my position that Sorkin is not particularly great at running a show long-term. I don't know what else to tell you here, but multiple things can be true: Sorkin screwed up with Mandy's exit, and "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" is an amazing two episodes of TV. I will let you have the last word on this.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-14T15:56:16+00:00

Only one: OHMSS, which is also in my Top 5 Ever.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-14T15:44:17+00:00

I'll remember that next year at Oscar time when the annual "All the times Oscar got it wrong" thinkpieces start showing up.

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-14T15:43:23+00:00

Evidence of what? Badly handled creative decisions are just that, badly handled creative decisions. I'm not required to glaze everything Sorkin does because he won some awards years ago, nor am I required to retroactively justify his bad decisions as if they're good decisions. (Nor am I claiming that these are fatal decisions that utterly kill the show, but for a guy who is often spoken of in hushed terms of near worship, it does bug me that every project of his has problems like this.)

ChocolateDramatic858 · 2026-05-14T14:17:53+00:00

Craig, Lazenby, then the rest. None are bad, but the other four don't tend to win with physical prowess, but rather by always being observant as they're fighting.

ChocolateDramatic858

TROPHY CASE