Fair's fair. The former Bitsie Tulloch acted pretty well in all the unexpected exchanges.

"Apologies for the shift in format this late in the game. I’ll be doing
discussion posts for the remaining handful of episodes, and will return
to a full review for the series finale."

Turn on closed captions.

Right. Their symbols were just being used as some sort of key-code in the map. Still, so far the implication is that this was a centuries-old practice dating back to at least the middle ages, Teutonic-knights-type of secret order, with the stick and shroud maybe going back even further to earliest Christian (or…

You know she'll be back for the last few episodes. The question is: how many? I'd guess 4 or 5. Which means she'd be back in 3 or 4 weeks' time, excluding any weeks without Grimm.

He locked the front door of the hotel just as attack-time approached (one of the misdirections that pointed to him as the Alpe), so he was indeed helping the Alpe, his boss.

The point of a constitutional monarchy such as Britain's is that the first loss of absolute power to parliament, let's say back in the 17th century, led to more and more losses, such that by the end of Victoria's reign, the monarchy had absolutely no power whatsoever. They're just figureheads with crowns that the…

No. Refrigerate if open to air, otherwise not. If the barrels are metal barrels filled to the top and securely stoppered, they should be OK, I think. When you buy maple syrup in cans (Canada) or bottles, you don't need to put them in the fridge until you open them.

Good location for suggesting Zimbabwe, which is what this, the Mugabe dictator figure, and as a place where everyone there might understand a homily in English, implied to me (as one of many possibilities, I guess)

It has decent wine, though.

Well, un pape, but, yes.

I like argument no. 3. Although they could have answered that the Pope was God's rep on Earth, so God's time is the Pope's time. But they'd probably never been asked that question before, so she stumped them. In their confusion, they were gracious in defeat, it seems. Well done.

Now that sounds plausible.

Was a reason given for this? Did he lose a bet or something?

I was wondering if perhaps Ernst, as the older son and presumably due to become Grand Duke or whatever of his own principality, might be an inconvenience and possible source of conflict of interest: simultaneously Royal Consort of the UK and reigning over Coburg. Albert, as younger son with the right pedigree but…

Yes.

They may get longer to prepare for the finale? So she might have had that 4 hours.

I haven't seen that one. I'll look out for it. I agree on the casting.

I'm really surprised that the reviewer (and commenters, so far) have not mentioned or compared the recent movie The Young Victoria (2009) that covers roughly the same ground and probably another couple of episodes (up through the early years of her courtship and marriage to Prince Albert). That starred Emily Blunt,…

The 18th century was long over before this started.