There is a fair comparison to be made to some 2009/10 dismissals of the Tea Party. Those aren't real citizens at the town halls, they're sent by the Koch brothers. Their grass roots are astroturf, there is no real anger at the administration. And so on.

Yup, normalizing.

Who told North Korea about Twitter.

Sandra at TC: "The queen stays queen."
Everyone else: "The queen stays queen." *writes down someone else*

If Survivor were scripted, completely different (that is, boring and nondescript) people would have been voted off all season. Since vote 2 it's been fan favorite after fan favorite in a bloodbath.

Yes, I think we were meant to be identifying with Clive.

The show should change his designation to "The Best."

In addition to stepdad picking her up being the Critical Clue, he had no idea that there was something to hide. Kid's friend died, it's sad but nothing to do with them, and she should talk to the police about anything that might have been going on in her friend's life with Unsavory Sorts.

I've never seen a vibing goth as the IT guy, and I liked it as a spin on the idea of recovering data from its corpse bits. He would need either small doses or fleshing out, but he could join the bitter police sketch guy.

I think they were hoping for useful triggers from their interviewee. But yeah, probably best he watch through the window.

His expressions while Liv recapped what a super job Clive did asking people questions at the bank were priceless.

It's the right timing to bring him in, and it's really delightful watching him try to apply this bizarre new filter to his relationships with Liv et al. Now that we expect serialized stories, cluelessness that's really funny in season one suggests painful stupidity combined with no-I've-never-read-TVtropes secret…

That's why I don't understand the pizza. It's a fat bomb that's likely to make you sick (kebabs at least make sense) and it's been sitting out in the tropical heat for a few hours.

In a way, it would be perfect. Finally, finally, someone flips things with the extra vote… and it's Debbie. We all wanted the move to belong to Cirie or Zeke, maybe Michaela, but no.

A minute before it happened, I thought he was channeling Sandra pretty well. Getting people to wonder if there was a Zeke-Ozzy alliance that could target them, making the reasonable point that the merge is probably next and no one wants to go into a merge with Ozzy, but doing it all calmly and with charm. Then he…

It is a reminder that the whole country has shifted considerably. In the moment it always feels like this month isn't that different from last month; when you can look at where things were a decade or two back—within the memory of almost everyone who can vote—there has been a real shift.

This. I have never understood "well he rubs his naked body on women to repel them, and we thought it was fun to film that and her breakdown after" as entertainment.

At base, it was an awful thing to do. Done as a ploy to sway a tribe full of people who I think most viewers would have guessed would be appalled at Varner and not Zeke, it had this awful extra layer of stupid. Like, there are individuals on whom that would have worked, where you could have played it as a Hatch-level…

I'm sure Republicans are counting on his being too clean to impeach, but he managed to get dragged into Flynn's mess right off. I don't think you can be in Trump's close orbit and count on staying clean.

Dean was really good about recruiting candidates even in red areas. Including people who, as you suggest, can win in red areas, which is not going to be the indigo-blue unicorns beloved of the bemoaning far left.