Taskmaster, Ghosts UK, Yuletide
Taskmaster s16e04 -- this was enjoyably chaotic XD
Prize task: So the first thing that comes to mind, of course is Julian's Biggles Takes It Rough, which immediately made me think of philomytha and the rest of the Biggles brigade on my flist. Fandom streams crossing XD Both Susan's lava lamp and Sam's birth certificate were awful takes on "meant for a child, useful for an adult" task, Sue's nappy offering meeting the intent but unpleasant, and I find Lucy's bib-pack thing overscored at 5, though I'm not surprised it appeals to Greg. I would've definitely swapped Julian and Lucy.
Sausages task: That is INCREDIBLE that Sue's sausages were actually good; that seemed like such a disaster in the making. Julian's also looked quite respectable, in their edible underpants casings. Susan feeding Alex looked like yet another kink scene, and that was BEFORE she made Alex lick underwear; she just has an incredible vibe. I'm surprisedSam's managed to be the worst, as I thought the ingredients seemed fairly reasonable.
Team task with multiple tasks and buckets: I understand that each person had a number of tasks pinned on them, but I still think this is harder on the team of 2, since two people have to do the three distinct actions, and it's easy for one person to miss a task (like what happened with Susan) vs two pairs of eyes for each person covered in tasks, and since there apparently was no rule about the team of 3 not splitting up, Sam could wander off on his own and get the cereal, rather than the Sues always having to stick together because one had to be looking at the other. Like, team of two insisted on duplicating things that did not need to be duplicated (both eating cereal, doing 40 squats instead of 20), so they probably would've lost anyway, but still, it doesn't seem fair. But Sam lobbying for the "dynamite chicks" to get points was very sweet! And Greg's right, Sue's drill sergeant mode is great fun to watch. Team of three's regrets were the other memorable part of this for me: Julian saying it was cunnilingus and then reflecting in the studio that that's not really true, because he was really good at it, and I was amused that Lucy has apparently done exactly one thing she regrest in her life, because this is the second time she brought up the balcony poo story, and then Sam's regret being not-funny, not-a-bit not making the most use of his time in Croatia somehow looped around to be hilarious against this backdrop.
Post-it notes art task: Damn, these are all so good! except Lucy's obviously. I would've liked to see them compared to the real paintings, but I suppose there's some legal reason that wasn't practical. Anyway, The Scream was really great and I think possibly deserved an edge on Sue's Mona Lisa, although Sue's *was* impressively recognizable. I do think the "clever choice of abstract piece to emulate" ones, Susan and Julian, deserved 3 points as scored, so I mostly agree with Greg on this task.
Live task: animal dice -- oh, this is fun! Nice range of animals we got, nice balance of random guessing, chance, and perhaps some skill in rolling the dice. Best moment of course was the last question being "an animal that is the most like Greg" and Alex sayins again, "We know there's a mammoth." And then it turned out that Sam had put "human" on his die, because of course he did XD
And a tie-breaker, Sue vs Lucy, with Sue for the win -- that's Sue's second win on a tiebreaker, 2 for 2, and no non-tiebreaker wins so far.
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A Q&A with the BBC Ghosts gang showed up on YouTube, which reminded me that it was already October 6, and Ghosts s5 (and last :( ) had dropped, so I checked my sources (♥, qwentoozla) and L and I spent the next 3 days watching the new season, two episodes a night. It was lovely! Knowing it was the last season, I thought that the ghosts might get sucked off move on, at least some of them, and then when I heard from thisbluespirit, my dealer in Ghosts gossip, that there would be a Christmas special, I thought Alison and Mike would move out, which would leave them with the ability to visit for the special but disrupt the found family -- so I was in genuine suspense for spoilers from here both the penultimate episode, where the ghosts think one of them is going to go, thanks to Robin's caveman math epiphany, and the last episode, where it felt genuinely plausible that Alison and Mike would leave (after reconciling with the ghosts, but still). And I also knew/figured that there were two deaths/histories we hadn't explored yet and that this was likely coming (I quite like that the show never actually gave us any details about Mary's death; we knew how she died, from the start, unlike Kitty and the Captain, so it wasn't a mystery, and I do feel like it was respectful to focus on the, well, not life, the existence? growth? she had AFTER her death, with Annie, rather than the gory, or smouldering, as it were, details). So, anyway, I figured the Kitty and the Captain histories episodes were coming up and that they would also be poignant, and they certainly were. Both surprised me, but I think both were well done, and a nice mix of comedy and pathos, as with Thomas and Pat (although Thomas's death story remains my favorite, and the episode it's told it one of my top favorites as well, probably second only to "The Burglars" in terms of how much I enjoy it, and objectively-speaking, better than the burglars one in, like, storycraft ways -- it's a real masterclass in non-linear storytelling).
General first look comments: Aww, the credits showing Mary getting sucked off! Also, either (some of?) the costumes or the lighting look different this series, or maybe it's the quality of the uploads I'm watching, because Thomas's bloodstained side is much more noticeable this time around, and I'd never noticed the splatter of blood on his cuffs before.
5x01 ("Fools") -- Both L and I thought Alison's prank on Thomas was way crueler than the benign ones she played or attempted to play on the others (well, I guess the one on Robin was also kind of mean, but the animals they pretended had come to life were small and they didn't keep it going for very long). I mean, I can't fault her for being sick of Thomas's BS, and it's clear it does still bother her, because that's the one she needed NO time to think of completely on her own, but we did both feel rather sorry for Thomas as a result in a way we didn't for anyone else -- the Captain and Kitty's excitement just made us go "awww" and we just laughed at the others. Oh, also, both L and I thought the April Fool's note would be under the dinner cloche, but it being on a T-shirt under Alison's shirt was of course far more brilliant. I also found it both funny and plausible that sweet, always-thinks-the-best-of-everyone Pat was ungettable in April Fools pranks because of his extensive experience with 10-year-old boys. Oh, and the ghosts' prank that kicked it all off was also great, and I think very succinctly shows how important the ghosts have become to Alison, in terms of setting up the season arc. The B plot, with Mike and the insurance claims agent was also very amusing, and a funny way to remind the viewers of how the last season ended. I did think Mike and Alison would get screwed over yet again as per usual, but I guess it being the last season, they are allowed to have some wins. Oh, and the pregnancy reveal, of course. I can't remember if I actually *knew* it was coming, or was just pretty sure it was, but the way it was done worked in either case, I thought. The way it explained not just the immediately preceding throwing-up but also the tears/emotional whiplash from the beginning.
5x02 ("Home") -- this one felt the least memorable to me, but was still sweet. The B plot with Julian and Pat fighting over North vs South stuff was pretty much lost on me -- maybe it would have more impact if I lived in the UK? Both L and I were surprised by the revelation that Thomas is Scottish apparently. The main plot with Thomas entering a poetry competition did work for me, and I was genuinely surprised that he chose to attribute the resulting poem to Fanny rather than claim it as his own -- like, of course Thomas wants to be recognized as a poetic genius for his own sake, but I was expecting him to have concluded that he had taken the dross base material of Fanny's words and transmuted them into brilliant poetry with his genius (while setting them down verbatim). Anyway, that was sweet, and I think a necessary emotional building block for the arc of the season, but on its own not as strong an episode as the rest. My favorite thing about it was actually Mike's anxiety dream and the way he imagines Robin.
5x03 ("Pineapple Day") -- the Kitty's death story one! (I mean, other stuff happened, too. Mike and Barclay being trapped in the vault together, which caused Barclay's change of heart because Mike shared his piece of candy fairly when he didn't have to, and Barclay's resultant insistence on passing on his granddaughter's stuff / dumping his garbage on Alison and Mike was sweet. And I guess Alison trying to manipulate Lady Button into giving up her room for the nursery made sense as the C plot echoing the B plot about negotiation. But it was mostly the Kitty's death story episode.) As thisbluespirit pointed out elsewhere, it's nice to learn that Kitty's death was more peaceful and less traumatic than we were all expecting given everything we knew about her horrible sister throughout the show-- that Kitty wasn't murdered by her sister, orby anyone at all, but died of a spider bite, and hopefully got to hear her sister's conciliatory words to her either while still alive or maybe after, as a ghost. And, like, not that dying of a spider bite is a great death, but it was after a day she enjoyed, and seemed quite peaceful. The ghosts putting on an investigation, complete with Robin saying he wanted his lawyer, was fun, but my favorite thing about this episode was Kitty striking Spider-Man web-slinging poses after learning how she died -- first of all, cutest image ever, and second, it seemed so likely that, in learning the truth about her death Kitty would learn something horrible about people she loved, but no, instead she gets to believe in a cool pop culture thing, aww!
5x04 ("En Francais") -- the other one that I found less memorable this season. On the one hand, I definitely did not expect that we would return to the story of Humphrey and his wife (and the fact that we did made me really concerned Humphrey was going to be the one to get sucked off in the next episode). Also, it's just kind of strange to introduce "Robin speaks a bunch of languages" so close to the end; I mean, it makes sense, and sets up the "Robin is actually the smartest/most knowledgeable of the ghosts" idea that makes the threat in the next episode plausible, but it was still kind of odd for where it is in the show. The non-ghost plot with Mike (now I keep trying to call him Kiell, lol) and his cocktail bar idea and the French developer lady and the translator was reasonably cute, but not as funny as the Mike-as-comic-relief plots on this show tend to be,IMO. (L was able to translate some of the French for me that goes untranslated. Robin's Russian is not terrible, but also not great/not fully intelligible.) Oh, and the ghosts' attempt at game shows was fun.
5x05 ("Carpe Diem") -- OK, this was great! I knew we had to get an episode about the Captain's death, as it was the only one remaining a mystery after Kitty's death story was revealed. I was not expecting it to be only a small part of a very busy episode, though, and feel like it got a bit short-changed by that. I mean, a large part ofthe work of setting it up was already done in the earlier episode with Havers, but I would have still liked more than a few minutes of flashback for their reunion and the Captain'sdeath. I'd seen fan meta, or maybe questions to the cast, about the Captain's medal ribbon being a post-war decoration, so I knew he must have died after the war, and I think I remember reading about it being upside-down, too, which I did expect to be intentional in our universe but did not expect to be plot-relevant. I did not expect that the medal ribbon was stolen (how sad that he is stuck with incorrectly pinned stolen medals forever :( ), and also that the baton he is always holding and gesturing with isn't even his stick, although that's obviously emblematic of a happier thing. I did like the very efficient way all the reveals were bundled together in one very compact scene: the Captain's name (James! that fits him very nicely) and Havers's name (I guess "William" really was just code name for the project), that the two of them did get to see each other again and come to an understanding, the Captain's death,of course, and revealing his dark secret to the other ghosts -- and I really like that his "coming out", the secret that is weighing down on him, about which he wants to come clean if he were to disappear, is the misappropriated medals and the ignominous death, but Fanny telling him he is brave, for all that he is not a war hero, encompasses everything in it as acknowledgement -- that was very well done. (I still wish there had been more of it.)
The rest of the episode was also great. The whole premise, of Robin getting an epiphany and announcing someone was going to get sucked off before the end of the day was wonderful, since all the other cases of ghosts passing on have been completely sudden, and while Mary's departure afforded a really lovely exploration of grief for the others, this kind of thing, facing the prospect of ending their existence, was new and really interesting to explore! L and I both found Pat's scared-and-in-denial American accent hilarious. That Julian would want to go out a second time as he had the first makes perfect Julian sense, and both the scene with Fanny and him resorting to the Plague Ghosts were nicely funny. Fanny's own coping attempts were also great -- deciding she didn't need to try bungee jumping because she's done enough of that, attempt at skinny dipping thwarted by her clothes coming back before she could jump in, and finally going for a joy ride. The biggest laugh of the episode for me, though, was Thomas contemplating the books in the library "watching" him "with their judgemental little eyes... and A's, E's" etc. (I'm quoting from memory,so tht's probably not exactly right). Robin being the one who has no unfinished business to worry about, so all he has to do to put his affairsin order is to check on his family of mice was a nice touch. And I guess Kitty is still just thinking of what happens next as an adventure, and that was also nice. Anyway, I was expecting that Robin was right and someone would actually get sucked off -- the Captain, or maybe Pat, after trying to herd everyone together, or maybe Lady Button, as I thought she was getting a fair bit of development this season, or Humphrey, since we seemed to be spending a lot more time with him this season than in previous ones, but it makes more sense not to throw in a wrench like that at the end of the penultimate episode, and I'm certainly glad that nobody did get sucked off. The ending, with everyone, including Mike, line dancing was lovely. And this was also a case where I liked that the B plot with the humans took them out of the house, so all this intense ghost stuff was going on, and Alison had no idea. Alison insisting on Mike downing tequila shots as the "designated drinker" was also a hoot. And thematically it worked well for me to have the potential transition to whatever comes after the ghosts get sucked off be the A plot while Mike and Alison are confronting the major change coming to *their* lives with having a baby and having to act like grown-ups.
The whole thing was very nicely done, and I think this one will be joining my list of favorite episodes along with "Bump in the Night", "The Thomas Thorne Affair", "Perfect Day", and "Gone Gone" (and yes, it looks like my favorites are heavily weighed towards s2...)
5x06 ("Last Resort") -- this was an interesting one -- I guess, given the Christmas special, the big series finale stuff is being saved for that, because this felt like a more ordinary Ghosts episode, compared to the impactful previous one. A lot of it is spent on the funny throughline of Obi getting suddenly dumped (he thinks) and showing up to mope at Mike's until even Thomas is sick of it. The "serious" plot line worked very nicely for me -- Alison learning that Julian pushed her out of the window, and I do think it's plausible to be freaked out by that revelation even after living in harmony with the ghosts for 5 years, especially with a helpless baby on the way. I loved that it is JULIAN, of all people, who delivers the "aww let's hug him again" speech to Alison, and the degree to which "I'm not sorry I almost killed you" works as "we are all very happy we are in each other's ~lives" speech. Oh, and then there's the stuff with Kitty thinking she accidentally saw the sex of Alison and Mike's baby, trying to keep it a secret, but instead blabbing it to absolutely everyone, and then the Captain revealing it to Alison -- with the final very plausible reveal that actually Kitty has only a very vague idea of male anatomy and actually it's not known at all whether Alison is having a boy or a girl. L and I think it's likely to be a girl, after the fakeout in this episode, and that she will be able to see ghosts like Mike's niece in the Christmas special.
Anyway, that was lovely, and it was fun to watch it together with L for the first time; I'm glad we both decided to synch our schedules and watch it together, rather than binging on our own. And after we finished the last episode, I asked L if she wanted to see more of Taskmaster series 15 -- I'd shown her one episode earlier, and she liked it well enough, but we did not continue, because then we had Ghosts. I chose s15 both because that ended up being one of my favorite series, and because I figured L would get a kick out of the contestants, individually and as a group, and because I figured I could lure her in with Kiell. She did also keep thinking of him as Mike it the first couple of episodes, and said the same thing I said when watching early s15, is that they must just turn Kiell loose on the set of Ghosts and tell him to be himself. Agreeing to watch episode 2, L said that it's basically like watching Mike and a bunch of different ghost characters, which, actually, I could absolutely see Frankie, Jenny, and Ivo making good ghosts -- they are weird and zany enough in suitably contrasting ways. (Sorry, Mae. You're not zany enough to be a ghost. But we already know they'd make a good medium, so that's what they can be in this AU.)
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Yuletide tagset is live! I was actually a bit underwhelmed when I looked through it -- I think it's because there were no "omg, I had no idea this could be a fandom and now I might have to offer it!" surprises like the last couple of years, and no evidence of unexpected relevant-to-my-interests character nominations in the fandoms I was nominating that would suggest the possibility of a good match in those fandoms, which was also something I was pleased to see in the last couple of years. But maybe there will be evidence of that once the letters go up. And regardless, it's still always fun to browse the tagset:
Chalion -- Adelis, Tanar, Bosha, Penric, Desdemona, Nikys, plus people from the other Five Gods books
Amber -- Luke and Merlin, Corwin, Fiona, and a bunch of others
Dead Djinn-verse -- Fatma, Siti, Hadia, Al-Jahiz
Dragaera -- 13 nominations including Worldbuilding, musketeers, and in addition to my nominations, Loiosh, Kragar and Teldra for the Vlad books (and probably some overlap)
Elder Race -- Nyr, Lyn, Esha, worldbuilding
Snake Fight FAQ is back with worldbuilding
Greenhollow -- Tobias, Henry, Mrs Silver, Maud
Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme with the Dish, the Spoon, and worldbuilding nominated
Venerable Bede XD
Interdependency with zero charaters
Kushiel's Legacy - including Imriel, Maslin, Sidonie, and Mavros
Light from UncommonStars with no characters
Ocean's Echo -- Surit, Tennal, Istara, Basavi
Philosopher series is nominated but I don't recognize any of the characters
Rivers of London including worldbuilding, Peter, Nightingale, Varvara, Abigail, Walid, Caroline, and some other characters
Asimov's Robots -- including Lije and R.Daneel
Scholomance including Liesl, Alfie, and Orion's parents among others
Some Desperate Glory has 11 nominations, which, besides mine, for Avi, Cleo, Lin, and Kyr, include Valery Marston, Yiso, Mags, Ursa, General Russell, The Wisdom, and worldbuilding.
Terra Ignota-- Mycroft, Bridger, Sniper, 9A, Carlyle, Cornel MASON, Apollo, Worldbuilding (what a fascinating selection)
Warchild -- Cairo, Jos, Ryan, Yuri
The Waste Land -- with an impressive 8 characters XD
Wind Will Rove (Sarah Pinsker's novelette) with worldbuilding
Winter's Orbit
Taskmaster RPF including Greg and Alex, Ed Gamble, Mark and Nish, Richard Herring, James Acaster, Rhod Gilbert, Charlotte, Kiell, Frankie Boyle, Mae Martin, Julian Clary, Sue Perkins, Susan Wokoma (though it looks like maybe James and Ed wandered in from Off Menu)
Fandom Creation Period anthropomofic (Creation, Nominations, Reveals, Sign-Ups)
Fonts anthropomofic (Times New Roman, Comic Sans, Papyrus, Wingdings)
Periodic Table is back with just chlorine and fluorine
Squishmallows (although not any of the ones we collectively own)
Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up - John Paul Brammer: Legends of the Great Below
Fawlty Towers (Basil, Sybil, Polly, Manuel)
Ghosts UK is too big but Ghosts US is nominated (Alberta, Hetty, Isaac, Pete, Susan, Trevor, and Jay and Sam)
Hercules: the Legendary Journeys is nominated with 2 characters, which I figured surely would be Hercules and Iolaus, but no, it's Ares and Iphicles, aka the two characters played by Kevin Smith, and I'm going to need to see what this person ends up requesting
I belatedly realized I forgot to nominate The Iron Children, and sadly no-one else did either. But I did finally figure out the third fandom I want to request while browsing the tagset, and have written that section of my letter, so, yay!
Prize task: So the first thing that comes to mind, of course is Julian's Biggles Takes It Rough, which immediately made me think of philomytha and the rest of the Biggles brigade on my flist. Fandom streams crossing XD Both Susan's lava lamp and Sam's birth certificate were awful takes on "meant for a child, useful for an adult" task, Sue's nappy offering meeting the intent but unpleasant, and I find Lucy's bib-pack thing overscored at 5, though I'm not surprised it appeals to Greg. I would've definitely swapped Julian and Lucy.
Sausages task: That is INCREDIBLE that Sue's sausages were actually good; that seemed like such a disaster in the making. Julian's also looked quite respectable, in their edible underpants casings. Susan feeding Alex looked like yet another kink scene, and that was BEFORE she made Alex lick underwear; she just has an incredible vibe. I'm surprisedSam's managed to be the worst, as I thought the ingredients seemed fairly reasonable.
Team task with multiple tasks and buckets: I understand that each person had a number of tasks pinned on them, but I still think this is harder on the team of 2, since two people have to do the three distinct actions, and it's easy for one person to miss a task (like what happened with Susan) vs two pairs of eyes for each person covered in tasks, and since there apparently was no rule about the team of 3 not splitting up, Sam could wander off on his own and get the cereal, rather than the Sues always having to stick together because one had to be looking at the other. Like, team of two insisted on duplicating things that did not need to be duplicated (both eating cereal, doing 40 squats instead of 20), so they probably would've lost anyway, but still, it doesn't seem fair. But Sam lobbying for the "dynamite chicks" to get points was very sweet! And Greg's right, Sue's drill sergeant mode is great fun to watch. Team of three's regrets were the other memorable part of this for me: Julian saying it was cunnilingus and then reflecting in the studio that that's not really true, because he was really good at it, and I was amused that Lucy has apparently done exactly one thing she regrest in her life, because this is the second time she brought up the balcony poo story, and then Sam's regret being not-funny, not-a-bit not making the most use of his time in Croatia somehow looped around to be hilarious against this backdrop.
Post-it notes art task: Damn, these are all so good! except Lucy's obviously. I would've liked to see them compared to the real paintings, but I suppose there's some legal reason that wasn't practical. Anyway, The Scream was really great and I think possibly deserved an edge on Sue's Mona Lisa, although Sue's *was* impressively recognizable. I do think the "clever choice of abstract piece to emulate" ones, Susan and Julian, deserved 3 points as scored, so I mostly agree with Greg on this task.
Live task: animal dice -- oh, this is fun! Nice range of animals we got, nice balance of random guessing, chance, and perhaps some skill in rolling the dice. Best moment of course was the last question being "an animal that is the most like Greg" and Alex sayins again, "We know there's a mammoth." And then it turned out that Sam had put "human" on his die, because of course he did XD
And a tie-breaker, Sue vs Lucy, with Sue for the win -- that's Sue's second win on a tiebreaker, 2 for 2, and no non-tiebreaker wins so far.
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A Q&A with the BBC Ghosts gang showed up on YouTube, which reminded me that it was already October 6, and Ghosts s5 (and last :( ) had dropped, so I checked my sources (♥, qwentoozla) and L and I spent the next 3 days watching the new season, two episodes a night. It was lovely! Knowing it was the last season, I thought that the ghosts might get sucked off move on, at least some of them, and then when I heard from thisbluespirit, my dealer in Ghosts gossip, that there would be a Christmas special, I thought Alison and Mike would move out, which would leave them with the ability to visit for the special but disrupt the found family -- so I was in genuine suspense for spoilers from here both the penultimate episode, where the ghosts think one of them is going to go, thanks to Robin's caveman math epiphany, and the last episode, where it felt genuinely plausible that Alison and Mike would leave (after reconciling with the ghosts, but still). And I also knew/figured that there were two deaths/histories we hadn't explored yet and that this was likely coming (I quite like that the show never actually gave us any details about Mary's death; we knew how she died, from the start, unlike Kitty and the Captain, so it wasn't a mystery, and I do feel like it was respectful to focus on the, well, not life, the existence? growth? she had AFTER her death, with Annie, rather than the gory, or smouldering, as it were, details). So, anyway, I figured the Kitty and the Captain histories episodes were coming up and that they would also be poignant, and they certainly were. Both surprised me, but I think both were well done, and a nice mix of comedy and pathos, as with Thomas and Pat (although Thomas's death story remains my favorite, and the episode it's told it one of my top favorites as well, probably second only to "The Burglars" in terms of how much I enjoy it, and objectively-speaking, better than the burglars one in, like, storycraft ways -- it's a real masterclass in non-linear storytelling).
General first look comments: Aww, the credits showing Mary getting sucked off! Also, either (some of?) the costumes or the lighting look different this series, or maybe it's the quality of the uploads I'm watching, because Thomas's bloodstained side is much more noticeable this time around, and I'd never noticed the splatter of blood on his cuffs before.
5x01 ("Fools") -- Both L and I thought Alison's prank on Thomas was way crueler than the benign ones she played or attempted to play on the others (well, I guess the one on Robin was also kind of mean, but the animals they pretended had come to life were small and they didn't keep it going for very long). I mean, I can't fault her for being sick of Thomas's BS, and it's clear it does still bother her, because that's the one she needed NO time to think of completely on her own, but we did both feel rather sorry for Thomas as a result in a way we didn't for anyone else -- the Captain and Kitty's excitement just made us go "awww" and we just laughed at the others. Oh, also, both L and I thought the April Fool's note would be under the dinner cloche, but it being on a T-shirt under Alison's shirt was of course far more brilliant. I also found it both funny and plausible that sweet, always-thinks-the-best-of-everyone Pat was ungettable in April Fools pranks because of his extensive experience with 10-year-old boys. Oh, and the ghosts' prank that kicked it all off was also great, and I think very succinctly shows how important the ghosts have become to Alison, in terms of setting up the season arc. The B plot, with Mike and the insurance claims agent was also very amusing, and a funny way to remind the viewers of how the last season ended. I did think Mike and Alison would get screwed over yet again as per usual, but I guess it being the last season, they are allowed to have some wins. Oh, and the pregnancy reveal, of course. I can't remember if I actually *knew* it was coming, or was just pretty sure it was, but the way it was done worked in either case, I thought. The way it explained not just the immediately preceding throwing-up but also the tears/emotional whiplash from the beginning.
5x02 ("Home") -- this one felt the least memorable to me, but was still sweet. The B plot with Julian and Pat fighting over North vs South stuff was pretty much lost on me -- maybe it would have more impact if I lived in the UK? Both L and I were surprised by the revelation that Thomas is Scottish apparently. The main plot with Thomas entering a poetry competition did work for me, and I was genuinely surprised that he chose to attribute the resulting poem to Fanny rather than claim it as his own -- like, of course Thomas wants to be recognized as a poetic genius for his own sake, but I was expecting him to have concluded that he had taken the dross base material of Fanny's words and transmuted them into brilliant poetry with his genius (while setting them down verbatim). Anyway, that was sweet, and I think a necessary emotional building block for the arc of the season, but on its own not as strong an episode as the rest. My favorite thing about it was actually Mike's anxiety dream and the way he imagines Robin.
5x03 ("Pineapple Day") -- the Kitty's death story one! (I mean, other stuff happened, too. Mike and Barclay being trapped in the vault together, which caused Barclay's change of heart because Mike shared his piece of candy fairly when he didn't have to, and Barclay's resultant insistence on passing on his granddaughter's stuff / dumping his garbage on Alison and Mike was sweet. And I guess Alison trying to manipulate Lady Button into giving up her room for the nursery made sense as the C plot echoing the B plot about negotiation. But it was mostly the Kitty's death story episode.) As thisbluespirit pointed out elsewhere, it's nice to learn that Kitty's death was more peaceful and less traumatic than we were all expecting given everything we knew about her horrible sister throughout the show-- that Kitty wasn't murdered by her sister, orby anyone at all, but died of a spider bite, and hopefully got to hear her sister's conciliatory words to her either while still alive or maybe after, as a ghost. And, like, not that dying of a spider bite is a great death, but it was after a day she enjoyed, and seemed quite peaceful. The ghosts putting on an investigation, complete with Robin saying he wanted his lawyer, was fun, but my favorite thing about this episode was Kitty striking Spider-Man web-slinging poses after learning how she died -- first of all, cutest image ever, and second, it seemed so likely that, in learning the truth about her death Kitty would learn something horrible about people she loved, but no, instead she gets to believe in a cool pop culture thing, aww!
5x04 ("En Francais") -- the other one that I found less memorable this season. On the one hand, I definitely did not expect that we would return to the story of Humphrey and his wife (and the fact that we did made me really concerned Humphrey was going to be the one to get sucked off in the next episode). Also, it's just kind of strange to introduce "Robin speaks a bunch of languages" so close to the end; I mean, it makes sense, and sets up the "Robin is actually the smartest/most knowledgeable of the ghosts" idea that makes the threat in the next episode plausible, but it was still kind of odd for where it is in the show. The non-ghost plot with Mike (now I keep trying to call him Kiell, lol) and his cocktail bar idea and the French developer lady and the translator was reasonably cute, but not as funny as the Mike-as-comic-relief plots on this show tend to be,IMO. (L was able to translate some of the French for me that goes untranslated. Robin's Russian is not terrible, but also not great/not fully intelligible.) Oh, and the ghosts' attempt at game shows was fun.
5x05 ("Carpe Diem") -- OK, this was great! I knew we had to get an episode about the Captain's death, as it was the only one remaining a mystery after Kitty's death story was revealed. I was not expecting it to be only a small part of a very busy episode, though, and feel like it got a bit short-changed by that. I mean, a large part ofthe work of setting it up was already done in the earlier episode with Havers, but I would have still liked more than a few minutes of flashback for their reunion and the Captain'sdeath. I'd seen fan meta, or maybe questions to the cast, about the Captain's medal ribbon being a post-war decoration, so I knew he must have died after the war, and I think I remember reading about it being upside-down, too, which I did expect to be intentional in our universe but did not expect to be plot-relevant. I did not expect that the medal ribbon was stolen (how sad that he is stuck with incorrectly pinned stolen medals forever :( ), and also that the baton he is always holding and gesturing with isn't even his stick, although that's obviously emblematic of a happier thing. I did like the very efficient way all the reveals were bundled together in one very compact scene: the Captain's name (James! that fits him very nicely) and Havers's name (I guess "William" really was just code name for the project), that the two of them did get to see each other again and come to an understanding, the Captain's death,of course, and revealing his dark secret to the other ghosts -- and I really like that his "coming out", the secret that is weighing down on him, about which he wants to come clean if he were to disappear, is the misappropriated medals and the ignominous death, but Fanny telling him he is brave, for all that he is not a war hero, encompasses everything in it as acknowledgement -- that was very well done. (I still wish there had been more of it.)
The rest of the episode was also great. The whole premise, of Robin getting an epiphany and announcing someone was going to get sucked off before the end of the day was wonderful, since all the other cases of ghosts passing on have been completely sudden, and while Mary's departure afforded a really lovely exploration of grief for the others, this kind of thing, facing the prospect of ending their existence, was new and really interesting to explore! L and I both found Pat's scared-and-in-denial American accent hilarious. That Julian would want to go out a second time as he had the first makes perfect Julian sense, and both the scene with Fanny and him resorting to the Plague Ghosts were nicely funny. Fanny's own coping attempts were also great -- deciding she didn't need to try bungee jumping because she's done enough of that, attempt at skinny dipping thwarted by her clothes coming back before she could jump in, and finally going for a joy ride. The biggest laugh of the episode for me, though, was Thomas contemplating the books in the library "watching" him "with their judgemental little eyes... and A's, E's" etc. (I'm quoting from memory,so tht's probably not exactly right). Robin being the one who has no unfinished business to worry about, so all he has to do to put his affairsin order is to check on his family of mice was a nice touch. And I guess Kitty is still just thinking of what happens next as an adventure, and that was also nice. Anyway, I was expecting that Robin was right and someone would actually get sucked off -- the Captain, or maybe Pat, after trying to herd everyone together, or maybe Lady Button, as I thought she was getting a fair bit of development this season, or Humphrey, since we seemed to be spending a lot more time with him this season than in previous ones, but it makes more sense not to throw in a wrench like that at the end of the penultimate episode, and I'm certainly glad that nobody did get sucked off. The ending, with everyone, including Mike, line dancing was lovely. And this was also a case where I liked that the B plot with the humans took them out of the house, so all this intense ghost stuff was going on, and Alison had no idea. Alison insisting on Mike downing tequila shots as the "designated drinker" was also a hoot. And thematically it worked well for me to have the potential transition to whatever comes after the ghosts get sucked off be the A plot while Mike and Alison are confronting the major change coming to *their* lives with having a baby and having to act like grown-ups.
The whole thing was very nicely done, and I think this one will be joining my list of favorite episodes along with "Bump in the Night", "The Thomas Thorne Affair", "Perfect Day", and "Gone Gone" (and yes, it looks like my favorites are heavily weighed towards s2...)
5x06 ("Last Resort") -- this was an interesting one -- I guess, given the Christmas special, the big series finale stuff is being saved for that, because this felt like a more ordinary Ghosts episode, compared to the impactful previous one. A lot of it is spent on the funny throughline of Obi getting suddenly dumped (he thinks) and showing up to mope at Mike's until even Thomas is sick of it. The "serious" plot line worked very nicely for me -- Alison learning that Julian pushed her out of the window, and I do think it's plausible to be freaked out by that revelation even after living in harmony with the ghosts for 5 years, especially with a helpless baby on the way. I loved that it is JULIAN, of all people, who delivers the "aww let's hug him again" speech to Alison, and the degree to which "I'm not sorry I almost killed you" works as "we are all very happy we are in each other's ~lives" speech. Oh, and then there's the stuff with Kitty thinking she accidentally saw the sex of Alison and Mike's baby, trying to keep it a secret, but instead blabbing it to absolutely everyone, and then the Captain revealing it to Alison -- with the final very plausible reveal that actually Kitty has only a very vague idea of male anatomy and actually it's not known at all whether Alison is having a boy or a girl. L and I think it's likely to be a girl, after the fakeout in this episode, and that she will be able to see ghosts like Mike's niece in the Christmas special.
Anyway, that was lovely, and it was fun to watch it together with L for the first time; I'm glad we both decided to synch our schedules and watch it together, rather than binging on our own. And after we finished the last episode, I asked L if she wanted to see more of Taskmaster series 15 -- I'd shown her one episode earlier, and she liked it well enough, but we did not continue, because then we had Ghosts. I chose s15 both because that ended up being one of my favorite series, and because I figured L would get a kick out of the contestants, individually and as a group, and because I figured I could lure her in with Kiell. She did also keep thinking of him as Mike it the first couple of episodes, and said the same thing I said when watching early s15, is that they must just turn Kiell loose on the set of Ghosts and tell him to be himself. Agreeing to watch episode 2, L said that it's basically like watching Mike and a bunch of different ghost characters, which, actually, I could absolutely see Frankie, Jenny, and Ivo making good ghosts -- they are weird and zany enough in suitably contrasting ways. (Sorry, Mae. You're not zany enough to be a ghost. But we already know they'd make a good medium, so that's what they can be in this AU.)
*
Yuletide tagset is live! I was actually a bit underwhelmed when I looked through it -- I think it's because there were no "omg, I had no idea this could be a fandom and now I might have to offer it!" surprises like the last couple of years, and no evidence of unexpected relevant-to-my-interests character nominations in the fandoms I was nominating that would suggest the possibility of a good match in those fandoms, which was also something I was pleased to see in the last couple of years. But maybe there will be evidence of that once the letters go up. And regardless, it's still always fun to browse the tagset:
Chalion -- Adelis, Tanar, Bosha, Penric, Desdemona, Nikys, plus people from the other Five Gods books
Amber -- Luke and Merlin, Corwin, Fiona, and a bunch of others
Dead Djinn-verse -- Fatma, Siti, Hadia, Al-Jahiz
Dragaera -- 13 nominations including Worldbuilding, musketeers, and in addition to my nominations, Loiosh, Kragar and Teldra for the Vlad books (and probably some overlap)
Elder Race -- Nyr, Lyn, Esha, worldbuilding
Snake Fight FAQ is back with worldbuilding
Greenhollow -- Tobias, Henry, Mrs Silver, Maud
Hey Diddle Diddle nursery rhyme with the Dish, the Spoon, and worldbuilding nominated
Venerable Bede XD
Interdependency with zero charaters
Kushiel's Legacy - including Imriel, Maslin, Sidonie, and Mavros
Light from UncommonStars with no characters
Ocean's Echo -- Surit, Tennal, Istara, Basavi
Philosopher series is nominated but I don't recognize any of the characters
Rivers of London including worldbuilding, Peter, Nightingale, Varvara, Abigail, Walid, Caroline, and some other characters
Asimov's Robots -- including Lije and R.Daneel
Scholomance including Liesl, Alfie, and Orion's parents among others
Some Desperate Glory has 11 nominations, which, besides mine, for Avi, Cleo, Lin, and Kyr, include Valery Marston, Yiso, Mags, Ursa, General Russell, The Wisdom, and worldbuilding.
Terra Ignota-- Mycroft, Bridger, Sniper, 9A, Carlyle, Cornel MASON, Apollo, Worldbuilding (what a fascinating selection)
Warchild -- Cairo, Jos, Ryan, Yuri
The Waste Land -- with an impressive 8 characters XD
Wind Will Rove (Sarah Pinsker's novelette) with worldbuilding
Winter's Orbit
Taskmaster RPF including Greg and Alex, Ed Gamble, Mark and Nish, Richard Herring, James Acaster, Rhod Gilbert, Charlotte, Kiell, Frankie Boyle, Mae Martin, Julian Clary, Sue Perkins, Susan Wokoma (though it looks like maybe James and Ed wandered in from Off Menu)
Fandom Creation Period anthropomofic (Creation, Nominations, Reveals, Sign-Ups)
Fonts anthropomofic (Times New Roman, Comic Sans, Papyrus, Wingdings)
Periodic Table is back with just chlorine and fluorine
Squishmallows (although not any of the ones we collectively own)
Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up - John Paul Brammer: Legends of the Great Below
Fawlty Towers (Basil, Sybil, Polly, Manuel)
Ghosts UK is too big but Ghosts US is nominated (Alberta, Hetty, Isaac, Pete, Susan, Trevor, and Jay and Sam)
Hercules: the Legendary Journeys is nominated with 2 characters, which I figured surely would be Hercules and Iolaus, but no, it's Ares and Iphicles, aka the two characters played by Kevin Smith, and I'm going to need to see what this person ends up requesting
I belatedly realized I forgot to nominate The Iron Children, and sadly no-one else did either. But I did finally figure out the third fandom I want to request while browsing the tagset, and have written that section of my letter, so, yay!