Oh right, Hugo nominations; also more Taskmaster
I saw ambyr's post about how Hugo nominations close in a little over a month (deadline in March 15) and went "OH SHIT", because the late Hugo voting season last year means I keep thinking it's several months before the Hugos start up again, but it doesn't work like that. So I spent Friday night making a list of Hugo-eligible things I have consumed, and, in the very few cases where that list had more than five things on it, whittling it down.
Novel:
- Winter's Orbit
- A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry
- A Marvelous Light
- We Are Satellites
- Perhaps the Stars
(this is very nearly all of the SFF books I've read that were published in 2021; the only one omitted is Wayfarers 4, which I didn't care for much, and which I'm sure will end up on the ballot anyway. But I did like to some degree all five of these, so might as well nominated, even though I only think one or at most two of these are "worty" enough to win. Every year the ballot is full of books I don't think deserve to win anyway, they might as well be books that I liked.)
Novella:
- What Abigail Did That Summer
- Fugitive Telemetry (no, Murderbot doesn't need my help to get on the ballot, and it wasn't one of my favorites, but still fun)
Short story:
- Rephrase? (thanks to cahn for the reminder that this is where it can go)
Series:
- TERRA IGNOTA!!! (if this does not end up on the ballot, I will be very cross :/)
- Rivers of London (I think has published enough stuff since 2017 to be eligible, even if a lot of it was short stuff)
File770 eligible series list for reference. I see Elantra, Graceling Realm, Grishaverse (lol), Kate Daniels, Simon Snow (lol), and Uglies are eligible, but of course I haven't read any of the recent books (and in some cases didn't really like the ones I've read enough to consider nominating them either).
Dramatic, Long form:
- Wandavision
- Mitchells vs the Machines
- Spider-Man: No Way Home
- Encanto
Dramatic, Short Form:
- What If: Episode 2 (T'Challa Became a Star-Lord)
- What If: Episode 4 (Doctor Strange loses his heart)
- What If: Episode 6 (Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark)
- Troll Bridge
(I also liked ambyr's idea of nominating The Owl House episodes, but because of how I binged them and wrote down overall impressions rather than individual ones, I don't remember which individual episodes were my favorite, and definitely my reactions were uneven.)
Fan Writer:
- rachelmanija
- skygiants
Fancast:
- Be the Serpent
- Kalanadi
- Worldbuilding for Masochists
Fanzine:
- Rocket Stack Rank
Lodestar:
- The Last Graduate
Astounding:
- K.A.Larkwood
- Micaiah Johnson
- Everina Maxwell
I was hoping Jordan Ifueko was eligible but looks like she had a short story in Strange Horizons as far back as 2017; alas. Freya Marske also had her short fiction published earlier and so is not eligible.
Anybody nominating anything interesting for Related Work? Or art ones? I have still not grown back my ability to consume narrative, so I don't think I'm going to be able to nominate anything else in the fiction categories, or the other ones that require consuming narrative, but the ones that don't are still a possibility to add to :)
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In other news, I've watched a couple more series of Taskmaster (who's surprised?)
When I posted about Taskmaster last, I was planning to continue on to series 3, since I had been happily going backwards until then, but instead of 3, YouTube threw series 1 at me, so I just started watching that instead. And it was interesting, but a good deal less fun than the other series I'd watched.
Series 1 -- spoilers
It was interesting to see the genesis of the show, and how different it was from the more evolved model I was watching earlier with the later series. Part of it was of course the difference between the Greg-and-Alex vibe here vs later -- their schtick at this point was awkward (meta) banter rather than all out abuse, lol. And Greg cracked up a lot more at other people's jokes, as well as his own. Greg also spends a lot more time on the contestants on this one, with the introductions in the beginning of each episode, especially the personal details he keeps sharing about Roisin (a personal friend, apparently). And the vibe between the contestants felt different, too, and was one I liked less -- they were more openly competitive, undercutting each other, and way less supportive than in the series I liked better. I feel like in the later series the antagonism got shifted to Greg-vs-Alex first and foremost, and then Greg vs contestants. Definitely the tasks felt different, too, both the prize tasks (I feel like in later series they wouldn't have, like, encouraged people to bring in things like a wedding ring or a blank check -- or maybe the contestants wouldn't have done it, because presumably winner does actually take all?) and I feel like the lab tasks had fewer safety boundary conditions than they would have in later seasons -- like letting Romesh rub hot sauce into his eyes. I actually had to look away from the screen twice in this very short series, compared to no times at all over the course of the other three -- for the hot sauce in eyes one and for Tim and Romesh eating watermelon (urgh). And the task-scoring and how points were reported out also changed.
I enjoyed this series less / found it less addictive, partly because of the stuff above, but I think part of it was also that apparently I'd seen a large percentage of the most fun tasks when I was watching the clips -- the ice, the fake boulder, make a Swedish person blush (though not all the contestants for that one, it must've been in a highlights reel that just had Frank and Romesh). I did rewatch the tasks since now I had added context for them, but I did feel like I'd already seen some of the good stuff. I think my favorite task was a new-to-me one, though -- the meal with ingredients from every letter of the alphabet, and I also thought Tim and Frank's "blooper reel" was genuinely awesome.
My favorite contestant was Josh, who I did find charming most of the time, and just sort of likable (he also reminded me of a Hobbit, though in a different way than Bob Mortimer; less post-adventure Bilbo and more like a cross between Sam and Pippin, maybe?) -- especially when standing next to Greg with the trophy. I was impressed with his GPS etch-a-sketching, and liked his approach in the "move a fake boulder" task, felt sorry for him when he took out the inhaler for the balloon task even before he mentioned being scared of balloons (clearly he and Mark from series 5 need to bond over that, lol). Anyway, so I was happy Josh won.
From the others, I found Tim quite entertaining and Roisin mostly unintentionally funny but very amusing to watch. Frank was just kind of... there; I did like him better in the studio appearances than during the pre-filmed tasks, but that's actually not saying much. And Romesh was one of my least favorite contestants of the series I've watched, if not actually least favorite. I get that his angry deadpan was a schtick, but I found it a tedious and largely unpleasant schtick.
Between having a ton of work and not enjoying the show as much, it took me longer to get through the five episodes of series 1 than any other season. Then I went on to Series 2, and: That's more like it! As soon as I started watching the first episode, I was back in the rabbit hole.
Series 2 -- spoilers
Greg is still much nicer to Alex than in the later seasons, but you can see the later dynamic emerging in the banter. I really liked this bunch of contestants -- they were a good mix of different personalities and approaches, and I liked a critical mass of them:
Jon was my favorite heading into the show and I continued to find him very cute (his accent was also lovely to listen to, and found it interesting that Greg and maybe some other people immitated it for fun). I was therefore very happy that Jon was the one who got to do the extra tasks set by the other competitors, as the make-up tutorial and the William Tell thing were a lot of fun (I guessed Katherine and Joe's tasks correctly, but was sure that William Tell was Richard's, but Jon guessed everything right).
Doc grew on me over the highlights and I discovered from the studio bits that I really loved his smile (looking him up on Wikipedia, I learned he is the brother of Zadie Smith. Huh! Was this the sister who turned him off eggs by explaining they were chicken periods?? I kinda hope so!); also, Doc reminds me of a coworker of mine, DM, which is also a positive actually. I was happy when he finally won an episode and was victoriously barking in Katherine's "cool blue" dog anti-bark collar XD
Katherine was entertainingly ditzy while also looking really cute in her studio dresses. I did like watching her, and way to go challenging the "put on a tie" final live task ("Let's all put on a tampon!") -- I also liked the way Greg and the other contestants reacted, Jon proposing a (funny) skills swap, Richard moving a comma, and Katherine then fretting that she ruined the task (Jon: "Now we see the trouble that [sufragette] coin has gotten us into"). I will say that, early on, I was pretty surprised knowing that she won the series, because it seemed like Richard or Jon tended to be in the lead in the early eps, but I guess it kind of evened out?
Speaking of Richard, he was interesting! I didn't find him the most enteraining contestant, but some of his less orthodox approaches were quite fun to watch (like being the only one to bring the shopping trolley to the stuff, even though Joe was faster) -- I guess I liked him in a similar way I liked Hugh in s4, except without the underdog factor. His inanimate object that looks like himself was fantastic, and his moon landing silhouette was neat. And Joe, well, Joe made a good butt monkey, though not nearly as entertaining as Mark and Nish in series 5.
I had also seen a bunch of these tasks before, but they were tasks that stood up better to revisiting than I think any other series. The potato-into-the-hole task was amazing across the board -- Doc and his contraption that he was hefting like some kind of futuristic weapon, Jon and his adorable little run, Katherine and her potato-on-a-string and trying to navigate the task in a maxi skirt, and of course Joe's disqualification after the hole in one, with the competitors deciding whether to let him keep the five points (Jon, after voting to disqualify him: "We fought for you, mate"). The different approaches to getting information out of a Swede were also very fun, especially Katherine phoning a friend (and then getting stuck on lingonberries anyway XD), and Joe's deep sigh right from the start, and also the really great chemistry with Doc ("Croupier? No? ... I've really got to change my lifestyle" and the heartfelt moment later on: "What would you say to describe me?" "[Swedish]" "Did you describe me as tall? Brown?" "No." "Thank you. Friendly? ;)") and Jon (especially guessing at the description), and Richard's charades/20 questions-honed approach, which I found genuinely impressive. The nursery rhyme one I'd also seen before in highlights, and Doc's fish-punching rap was still amazing, but I was also impressed with Jon's "Three Blind Mice" wordless performance, and Katherine's original dental hygiene PSA. The pizza ordering task was also great even on rewatch ("I'm not from England"), especially the different approaches to getting the pizza person to say "bubbles". I think the "conceal a pineapple on your person" was the very first task I watched, and it was funnier with the added context of knowing the contestants and knowing Alex even better. I had also seen the last prerecorded task with the stuff under the table and Jon bemoaning the fact that he didn't follow through on the name of the little boat ("under the table"), and the egg-eating task -- actually it feels like I saw almost all of the non-live tasks, except for the team ones.
Of the new-to-me tasks, I loved the team see/hear/speak no evil potato delivery task (though it does seem a little unfair that Jon and Richard had a previous winner's help AND already had each other's numbers). I also really enjoyed the potato tower live studio task. Dunno why all my new favorites were potato related, LOL. This series had a lot of potatoes in it in general -- there was also the stop motion animation team task ("28 Weeks Tater" zombie movie and "Spec Tater" Bond parody), and the bridge in the final task was also meant to support a potato.
Weirdly, series 3 had been less plumbed than any of the others in the highlights and YouTube clips -- or maybe just less memorable, because there turned out to be more of them as I watched, I just hadn't remembered; I'd seen the snowman task (Scoopy!!), but that was the only one I remembered going in, although I did also recognize the "surprise Alex" task once that got underway.
Series 3 -- spoilers
Unlike series 1, where I did find some of the contestants quite fun but didn't enjoy the tasks as much, in series 3 I thought the tasks were petty fun -- the snowman task! balloon popping with bonus Morse code! domino rally! weird food prep! -- but I found the contestants pretty meh, and so the whole thing was less enjoyable, because tasks come and go, but you're stuck with the same 5 people the whole time, including in the studio segments.
So I'd mentioned with series 6 that it took me a while to get over my antipathy towards Howard Russell's face; well, Rob's is SO MUCH WORSE, and he does not wear glasses to balance it out, and also, while I found Russell to be easier to watch in the studio segments when he wasn't competing, I just found Rob annoying throughout. Not like in a way where he was doing anything wrong, just his whole appearance and persona was offputting to me. Knowing that he was going to win the series made me enjoy it less probably, too...
I liked Dave and Sara best out of this lineup, I guess, but I liked them to a degree where I would've liked my second or third favorite in a different season -- there was nobody I was liking enough to be actively rooting for them. And while in many tasks I enjoyed watching Dave best, his willingness to cheat made the whole thing less fun for me. Like, Tim in series 1 was also occasionally trying to cheat, but at least he copped to it when caught; I find the cheating thing unsportsmanlike and unfair to the others, so it was a huge mark against Dave every time he did it, and him trying it again in the "carrying water between two buckets" task eclipsed the things I'd gotten to like about him (like his comment about Hugh, "Is everyone else getting someone dressed as their future self?").
Along similar lines, Al Murray's approach of just throwing money at every problem, including bribing Alex, made him both boring and offputting to me. I mean, people in other series also tried to hire cabs and couriers, but it tended to be a one-off thing; with Murray it really seemed to be his go-to strategy, and I had to cheer when Sara pointed out that this was, like, the Donald Trump approach to Taskmaster. If not for Rob also being on this series, Al would've ended up as my least favorite, but at least he didn't annoy me when he was just sitting there.
And finally, Paul. So there always seems to be the odd man out/odd duck in the lineup (it's starting to get pretty noticeable how often that odd person out is the one non-white comedian, which... :/ ). Sometimes that person works for me -- Nish in series 5 was the best example, but I think in part because it wasn't just him being singled out, it was very often him and/or Mark; and I think Hugh was in that role in series 4 (refreshingly), and kind of middle-of-the-road for me was Joe in series 2 (not a favorite/not someone I found particularly funny, but not actively UN-funny either) -- but mostly it hasn't been: Romesh didn't work for me at all in series 1, and Asif was one of my least favorites in series 6. OK, I guess tallying it up, it would be fair to say that it worked for me about half the time, which is more than I was expecting, but overall still feels more negative to me. Anyway, what I was trying to say was, Paul was this series' odd duck, and I just didn't find him that funny? Because of his deadpan delivery, I found his failures -- the slushie bunny "snowman", the clothes-scattering task -- baffling rather than entertaining -- and his occasional successes (e.g. the genuinely amazing domino rally) were so unexpected, I couldn't even really cheer for him, because they just came out of left field -- like, they didn't seem to fit the Paul "narrative" and so felt almost like a random new person having that success suddenly, if that makes any kind of sense.
For all that, there were definitely some moments I liked. The domino rally task was really cool -- like my favorite tasks, it was both a neat range of approaches (Dave's literal ~500 dominoes, Rob's domino rally made out of people, Al's attempt at spelling out "BEST" with dominoes when the task was to build the best domino rally, Sara's little morality play, and of course Paul's winning Rube Goldberg machine for breaking an egg) *and* some genuinely impressive results (Dave's, Al's on the second push, and Paul's). I also liked the "make a meal out of a flag" task, but wish it had been giiven to a zanier set of competitors. As it was, I really liked Dave's Jolly Roger out of cauliflower and squid ink, fueled by a bottle of champagne, but thought the other entries were fairly boring, even though I was impressed by Sara's rendition of a maple leaf out of licorice. I also felt like the team tasks were less fun than in past series, even though I liked the beards' special effects one. It didn't feel like the teams ("the beards" and "the Aryan twins" XD) had enough range between them, so it didn't feel like watching two different personalities working together, the way Hugh and Mel in series 4 did, or Jon and Richard in series 2, or Mark and Nish in series 5.
The only other notable thing I marked down is that Episode 3 marked the first appearnace of Greg using "Little Alex Horne" to refer to Alex -- but clearly it did not become a thing until later, because it then did not recur.
So, in a weird backwards-and-forwards way I have caught up to the point where I started, and have now watched all of the first 6 series (and started series 7 the other night, which is being a lot of fun so far). I think I can also pretty easily rank the series I've watched to date. 3 and 1 are my least favorite, quite easily. I think 5 is my most favorite, with 4 and 2 as the next, and 6 after that probably. So: 5, 2, 4, 6, 1, 3, from most to least favorite. And favorite contestants so far (not ranked, just listed): Liza Tarbuck (6), Joe Lycett (4), Jon Richardson (2), Doc Brown (2), Mark Wtson (5), Nish Kumar (5).
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Other than watching Taskmaster, I've been spending my leisure time on "GAS" (genuinely approachable Sudoku) featured by the Cracking the Cryptic guys (I don't bother watching the videos, because it's Mark doing them, I don't find his approach either entertaining or enlightening, but I've solved probably over a dozen puzzles over the last week, which have been taking me between 15 and 30 min, so that's quite a lot of Sudoku hours still), and nursing my Wordle streak.
Speaking of which, this was a neat video about Wordle solver strategies: Solving Wordle using information theory, and I was first very confused by the information theory use of "entropy" and then very amused by the possibly apocryphal story (featuring von Neumann) of why it is used like that.
Novel:
- Winter's Orbit
- A Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry
- A Marvelous Light
- We Are Satellites
- Perhaps the Stars
(this is very nearly all of the SFF books I've read that were published in 2021; the only one omitted is Wayfarers 4, which I didn't care for much, and which I'm sure will end up on the ballot anyway. But I did like to some degree all five of these, so might as well nominated, even though I only think one or at most two of these are "worty" enough to win. Every year the ballot is full of books I don't think deserve to win anyway, they might as well be books that I liked.)
Novella:
- What Abigail Did That Summer
- Fugitive Telemetry (no, Murderbot doesn't need my help to get on the ballot, and it wasn't one of my favorites, but still fun)
Short story:
- Rephrase? (thanks to cahn for the reminder that this is where it can go)
Series:
- TERRA IGNOTA!!! (if this does not end up on the ballot, I will be very cross :/)
- Rivers of London (I think has published enough stuff since 2017 to be eligible, even if a lot of it was short stuff)
File770 eligible series list for reference. I see Elantra, Graceling Realm, Grishaverse (lol), Kate Daniels, Simon Snow (lol), and Uglies are eligible, but of course I haven't read any of the recent books (and in some cases didn't really like the ones I've read enough to consider nominating them either).
Dramatic, Long form:
- Wandavision
- Mitchells vs the Machines
- Spider-Man: No Way Home
- Encanto
Dramatic, Short Form:
- What If: Episode 2 (T'Challa Became a Star-Lord)
- What If: Episode 4 (Doctor Strange loses his heart)
- What If: Episode 6 (Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark)
- Troll Bridge
(I also liked ambyr's idea of nominating The Owl House episodes, but because of how I binged them and wrote down overall impressions rather than individual ones, I don't remember which individual episodes were my favorite, and definitely my reactions were uneven.)
Fan Writer:
- rachelmanija
- skygiants
Fancast:
- Be the Serpent
- Kalanadi
- Worldbuilding for Masochists
Fanzine:
- Rocket Stack Rank
Lodestar:
- The Last Graduate
Astounding:
- K.A.Larkwood
- Micaiah Johnson
- Everina Maxwell
I was hoping Jordan Ifueko was eligible but looks like she had a short story in Strange Horizons as far back as 2017; alas. Freya Marske also had her short fiction published earlier and so is not eligible.
Anybody nominating anything interesting for Related Work? Or art ones? I have still not grown back my ability to consume narrative, so I don't think I'm going to be able to nominate anything else in the fiction categories, or the other ones that require consuming narrative, but the ones that don't are still a possibility to add to :)
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In other news, I've watched a couple more series of Taskmaster (who's surprised?)
When I posted about Taskmaster last, I was planning to continue on to series 3, since I had been happily going backwards until then, but instead of 3, YouTube threw series 1 at me, so I just started watching that instead. And it was interesting, but a good deal less fun than the other series I'd watched.
Series 1 -- spoilers
It was interesting to see the genesis of the show, and how different it was from the more evolved model I was watching earlier with the later series. Part of it was of course the difference between the Greg-and-Alex vibe here vs later -- their schtick at this point was awkward (meta) banter rather than all out abuse, lol. And Greg cracked up a lot more at other people's jokes, as well as his own. Greg also spends a lot more time on the contestants on this one, with the introductions in the beginning of each episode, especially the personal details he keeps sharing about Roisin (a personal friend, apparently). And the vibe between the contestants felt different, too, and was one I liked less -- they were more openly competitive, undercutting each other, and way less supportive than in the series I liked better. I feel like in the later series the antagonism got shifted to Greg-vs-Alex first and foremost, and then Greg vs contestants. Definitely the tasks felt different, too, both the prize tasks (I feel like in later series they wouldn't have, like, encouraged people to bring in things like a wedding ring or a blank check -- or maybe the contestants wouldn't have done it, because presumably winner does actually take all?) and I feel like the lab tasks had fewer safety boundary conditions than they would have in later seasons -- like letting Romesh rub hot sauce into his eyes. I actually had to look away from the screen twice in this very short series, compared to no times at all over the course of the other three -- for the hot sauce in eyes one and for Tim and Romesh eating watermelon (urgh). And the task-scoring and how points were reported out also changed.
I enjoyed this series less / found it less addictive, partly because of the stuff above, but I think part of it was also that apparently I'd seen a large percentage of the most fun tasks when I was watching the clips -- the ice, the fake boulder, make a Swedish person blush (though not all the contestants for that one, it must've been in a highlights reel that just had Frank and Romesh). I did rewatch the tasks since now I had added context for them, but I did feel like I'd already seen some of the good stuff. I think my favorite task was a new-to-me one, though -- the meal with ingredients from every letter of the alphabet, and I also thought Tim and Frank's "blooper reel" was genuinely awesome.
My favorite contestant was Josh, who I did find charming most of the time, and just sort of likable (he also reminded me of a Hobbit, though in a different way than Bob Mortimer; less post-adventure Bilbo and more like a cross between Sam and Pippin, maybe?) -- especially when standing next to Greg with the trophy. I was impressed with his GPS etch-a-sketching, and liked his approach in the "move a fake boulder" task, felt sorry for him when he took out the inhaler for the balloon task even before he mentioned being scared of balloons (clearly he and Mark from series 5 need to bond over that, lol). Anyway, so I was happy Josh won.
From the others, I found Tim quite entertaining and Roisin mostly unintentionally funny but very amusing to watch. Frank was just kind of... there; I did like him better in the studio appearances than during the pre-filmed tasks, but that's actually not saying much. And Romesh was one of my least favorite contestants of the series I've watched, if not actually least favorite. I get that his angry deadpan was a schtick, but I found it a tedious and largely unpleasant schtick.
Between having a ton of work and not enjoying the show as much, it took me longer to get through the five episodes of series 1 than any other season. Then I went on to Series 2, and: That's more like it! As soon as I started watching the first episode, I was back in the rabbit hole.
Series 2 -- spoilers
Greg is still much nicer to Alex than in the later seasons, but you can see the later dynamic emerging in the banter. I really liked this bunch of contestants -- they were a good mix of different personalities and approaches, and I liked a critical mass of them:
Jon was my favorite heading into the show and I continued to find him very cute (his accent was also lovely to listen to, and found it interesting that Greg and maybe some other people immitated it for fun). I was therefore very happy that Jon was the one who got to do the extra tasks set by the other competitors, as the make-up tutorial and the William Tell thing were a lot of fun (I guessed Katherine and Joe's tasks correctly, but was sure that William Tell was Richard's, but Jon guessed everything right).
Doc grew on me over the highlights and I discovered from the studio bits that I really loved his smile (looking him up on Wikipedia, I learned he is the brother of Zadie Smith. Huh! Was this the sister who turned him off eggs by explaining they were chicken periods?? I kinda hope so!); also, Doc reminds me of a coworker of mine, DM, which is also a positive actually. I was happy when he finally won an episode and was victoriously barking in Katherine's "cool blue" dog anti-bark collar XD
Katherine was entertainingly ditzy while also looking really cute in her studio dresses. I did like watching her, and way to go challenging the "put on a tie" final live task ("Let's all put on a tampon!") -- I also liked the way Greg and the other contestants reacted, Jon proposing a (funny) skills swap, Richard moving a comma, and Katherine then fretting that she ruined the task (Jon: "Now we see the trouble that [sufragette] coin has gotten us into"). I will say that, early on, I was pretty surprised knowing that she won the series, because it seemed like Richard or Jon tended to be in the lead in the early eps, but I guess it kind of evened out?
Speaking of Richard, he was interesting! I didn't find him the most enteraining contestant, but some of his less orthodox approaches were quite fun to watch (like being the only one to bring the shopping trolley to the stuff, even though Joe was faster) -- I guess I liked him in a similar way I liked Hugh in s4, except without the underdog factor. His inanimate object that looks like himself was fantastic, and his moon landing silhouette was neat. And Joe, well, Joe made a good butt monkey, though not nearly as entertaining as Mark and Nish in series 5.
I had also seen a bunch of these tasks before, but they were tasks that stood up better to revisiting than I think any other series. The potato-into-the-hole task was amazing across the board -- Doc and his contraption that he was hefting like some kind of futuristic weapon, Jon and his adorable little run, Katherine and her potato-on-a-string and trying to navigate the task in a maxi skirt, and of course Joe's disqualification after the hole in one, with the competitors deciding whether to let him keep the five points (Jon, after voting to disqualify him: "We fought for you, mate"). The different approaches to getting information out of a Swede were also very fun, especially Katherine phoning a friend (and then getting stuck on lingonberries anyway XD), and Joe's deep sigh right from the start, and also the really great chemistry with Doc ("Croupier? No? ... I've really got to change my lifestyle" and the heartfelt moment later on: "What would you say to describe me?" "[Swedish]" "Did you describe me as tall? Brown?" "No." "Thank you. Friendly? ;)") and Jon (especially guessing at the description), and Richard's charades/20 questions-honed approach, which I found genuinely impressive. The nursery rhyme one I'd also seen before in highlights, and Doc's fish-punching rap was still amazing, but I was also impressed with Jon's "Three Blind Mice" wordless performance, and Katherine's original dental hygiene PSA. The pizza ordering task was also great even on rewatch ("I'm not from England"), especially the different approaches to getting the pizza person to say "bubbles". I think the "conceal a pineapple on your person" was the very first task I watched, and it was funnier with the added context of knowing the contestants and knowing Alex even better. I had also seen the last prerecorded task with the stuff under the table and Jon bemoaning the fact that he didn't follow through on the name of the little boat ("under the table"), and the egg-eating task -- actually it feels like I saw almost all of the non-live tasks, except for the team ones.
Of the new-to-me tasks, I loved the team see/hear/speak no evil potato delivery task (though it does seem a little unfair that Jon and Richard had a previous winner's help AND already had each other's numbers). I also really enjoyed the potato tower live studio task. Dunno why all my new favorites were potato related, LOL. This series had a lot of potatoes in it in general -- there was also the stop motion animation team task ("28 Weeks Tater" zombie movie and "Spec Tater" Bond parody), and the bridge in the final task was also meant to support a potato.
Weirdly, series 3 had been less plumbed than any of the others in the highlights and YouTube clips -- or maybe just less memorable, because there turned out to be more of them as I watched, I just hadn't remembered; I'd seen the snowman task (Scoopy!!), but that was the only one I remembered going in, although I did also recognize the "surprise Alex" task once that got underway.
Series 3 -- spoilers
Unlike series 1, where I did find some of the contestants quite fun but didn't enjoy the tasks as much, in series 3 I thought the tasks were petty fun -- the snowman task! balloon popping with bonus Morse code! domino rally! weird food prep! -- but I found the contestants pretty meh, and so the whole thing was less enjoyable, because tasks come and go, but you're stuck with the same 5 people the whole time, including in the studio segments.
So I'd mentioned with series 6 that it took me a while to get over my antipathy towards Howard Russell's face; well, Rob's is SO MUCH WORSE, and he does not wear glasses to balance it out, and also, while I found Russell to be easier to watch in the studio segments when he wasn't competing, I just found Rob annoying throughout. Not like in a way where he was doing anything wrong, just his whole appearance and persona was offputting to me. Knowing that he was going to win the series made me enjoy it less probably, too...
I liked Dave and Sara best out of this lineup, I guess, but I liked them to a degree where I would've liked my second or third favorite in a different season -- there was nobody I was liking enough to be actively rooting for them. And while in many tasks I enjoyed watching Dave best, his willingness to cheat made the whole thing less fun for me. Like, Tim in series 1 was also occasionally trying to cheat, but at least he copped to it when caught; I find the cheating thing unsportsmanlike and unfair to the others, so it was a huge mark against Dave every time he did it, and him trying it again in the "carrying water between two buckets" task eclipsed the things I'd gotten to like about him (like his comment about Hugh, "Is everyone else getting someone dressed as their future self?").
Along similar lines, Al Murray's approach of just throwing money at every problem, including bribing Alex, made him both boring and offputting to me. I mean, people in other series also tried to hire cabs and couriers, but it tended to be a one-off thing; with Murray it really seemed to be his go-to strategy, and I had to cheer when Sara pointed out that this was, like, the Donald Trump approach to Taskmaster. If not for Rob also being on this series, Al would've ended up as my least favorite, but at least he didn't annoy me when he was just sitting there.
And finally, Paul. So there always seems to be the odd man out/odd duck in the lineup (it's starting to get pretty noticeable how often that odd person out is the one non-white comedian, which... :/ ). Sometimes that person works for me -- Nish in series 5 was the best example, but I think in part because it wasn't just him being singled out, it was very often him and/or Mark; and I think Hugh was in that role in series 4 (refreshingly), and kind of middle-of-the-road for me was Joe in series 2 (not a favorite/not someone I found particularly funny, but not actively UN-funny either) -- but mostly it hasn't been: Romesh didn't work for me at all in series 1, and Asif was one of my least favorites in series 6. OK, I guess tallying it up, it would be fair to say that it worked for me about half the time, which is more than I was expecting, but overall still feels more negative to me. Anyway, what I was trying to say was, Paul was this series' odd duck, and I just didn't find him that funny? Because of his deadpan delivery, I found his failures -- the slushie bunny "snowman", the clothes-scattering task -- baffling rather than entertaining -- and his occasional successes (e.g. the genuinely amazing domino rally) were so unexpected, I couldn't even really cheer for him, because they just came out of left field -- like, they didn't seem to fit the Paul "narrative" and so felt almost like a random new person having that success suddenly, if that makes any kind of sense.
For all that, there were definitely some moments I liked. The domino rally task was really cool -- like my favorite tasks, it was both a neat range of approaches (Dave's literal ~500 dominoes, Rob's domino rally made out of people, Al's attempt at spelling out "BEST" with dominoes when the task was to build the best domino rally, Sara's little morality play, and of course Paul's winning Rube Goldberg machine for breaking an egg) *and* some genuinely impressive results (Dave's, Al's on the second push, and Paul's). I also liked the "make a meal out of a flag" task, but wish it had been giiven to a zanier set of competitors. As it was, I really liked Dave's Jolly Roger out of cauliflower and squid ink, fueled by a bottle of champagne, but thought the other entries were fairly boring, even though I was impressed by Sara's rendition of a maple leaf out of licorice. I also felt like the team tasks were less fun than in past series, even though I liked the beards' special effects one. It didn't feel like the teams ("the beards" and "the Aryan twins" XD) had enough range between them, so it didn't feel like watching two different personalities working together, the way Hugh and Mel in series 4 did, or Jon and Richard in series 2, or Mark and Nish in series 5.
The only other notable thing I marked down is that Episode 3 marked the first appearnace of Greg using "Little Alex Horne" to refer to Alex -- but clearly it did not become a thing until later, because it then did not recur.
So, in a weird backwards-and-forwards way I have caught up to the point where I started, and have now watched all of the first 6 series (and started series 7 the other night, which is being a lot of fun so far). I think I can also pretty easily rank the series I've watched to date. 3 and 1 are my least favorite, quite easily. I think 5 is my most favorite, with 4 and 2 as the next, and 6 after that probably. So: 5, 2, 4, 6, 1, 3, from most to least favorite. And favorite contestants so far (not ranked, just listed): Liza Tarbuck (6), Joe Lycett (4), Jon Richardson (2), Doc Brown (2), Mark Wtson (5), Nish Kumar (5).
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Other than watching Taskmaster, I've been spending my leisure time on "GAS" (genuinely approachable Sudoku) featured by the Cracking the Cryptic guys (I don't bother watching the videos, because it's Mark doing them, I don't find his approach either entertaining or enlightening, but I've solved probably over a dozen puzzles over the last week, which have been taking me between 15 and 30 min, so that's quite a lot of Sudoku hours still), and nursing my Wordle streak.
Speaking of which, this was a neat video about Wordle solver strategies: Solving Wordle using information theory, and I was first very confused by the information theory use of "entropy" and then very amused by the possibly apocryphal story (featuring von Neumann) of why it is used like that.