See 'personal conflict' above: they think someone trying to cadge ingredients from other contestants during a pressure test is 'interesting TV' because of the human conflict angle. Just walking around some forest picking them up has no such angle.

There was like a half-second shot of an oil container and someone saying 'wow, that's not much oil!' or something.

"They seem to have foraged the wild mushrooms and edible flowers: why not show that?"

"Smacks too much of Survivor-style alliances and tactical strategy over cooking abilities."

(oh, to support that point, note that dessert is pretty much treated as a joke on HK: it comes up maybe once a season, and AFAICT, the teams don't even make the desserts in the dinner service).

"at least as far as fine dining restaurant goes"

"and people who go on Hell's Kitchen without learning hot to make risotto"

"How is Krissi still on this show?! Ugh."

Bought it Saturday when the news came out in the U.K. press. Read it over the weekend. I liked it. Good page turner, nice characters, keeps you interested, lays lots of ground for future books (she was clearly planning to keep the series going all along).

I heartily recommend not giving a shit about either thing.

I have a confession to make. I've been using NON-freshly ground black pepper for years.

One of the James Bond stories is called "From A View To A Kill". Starts off with Bond seeing someone. Winds up with him killing them. The more you know!

Is someone running a sweepstakes on what will be the first week of Savage Love without a 'wait, SL has comments now?!' comment?

It was the best fucking thing ever, but it would be hard to sustain a reality show with no interpersonal conflict on network TV, I think. Strip Search was helped by being a web series, so it could do all sorts of stuff you can't do on network TV, like contestant vs. judge badinage about dicks and which other…

She does this thing where she says something new instead of 'kickstarter' every time she means to say 'kickstarter'. 'Cumguzzler' was one of them, I'm pretty sure.

Watched every episode, funded the shit out of Abby's cumguzzler.

"I mean, I LIKE singing, but I wouldn't say it's my life's one goal or anything. I'm 16, I feel like there's gotta be more out there, you know?"

To give a bit of historical context, quangoes were something of a fad in British politics in the Thatcher and Major years (Mr. Robinson's Quango came out at the tail end of the latter). They were supposed to be sort of arm's length bodies to carry out various functions that came under the government's purview in an…

I don't know, I actually think Nigel gets a pretty bum rap around here. I hate to make the 'product of his environment!' argument, but the guy is a pretty old-school British entertainment industry type, I mean, look at that damn vest. If you've been watching SYTYCD for a long time it seems pretty clear that he tends…

Yeah, SYTYCD is one of the better reality contest shows in a lot of ways. They 'play the game' to some extent - they kind of have to, to keep getting renewed - but they do remarkably well in terms of actually getting art on TV. If you take a step back and look at the content of the show, it's a pretty awesome to get…