By Couch Baron
First off, I missed the first few of minutes of the episode due to a mad vacation-related scramble, and was thus forced to assume that the way twenty-four directors got whittled down to eighteen was actually addressed. That apparently was not the case, so my apologies for not mentioning the glaring omission. The good news about that is that it isn't likely to matter for very long, as last night's ratings were so far down they were looking wistfully up at the toilet. But we are still here, at least for now.
The sound is horrible at the beginning of the show, to the point where you can't even hear what the hostess is saying, and I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that I think that's a mixed blessing. The credits show us each director's picture and name, and if you're listening, Mark Burnett, I can't keep track of this many people on Survivor, let alone here. Adrianna starts off by butchering Carrie's surname, and then we get a silly, boring, repetitive rundown of the films from the night before, the message of which is that women can't make films, and that it takes a discriminating filmmaker to pull off fart humor. They also tell us that "Getta Rhoom" was a hit with the audience members, which, given that those audience members sounded the same level of "here's a Quaalude; clap when the producers show you something shiny" after each film, you'll take as foreshadowing combined with some revisionist history. We then actually have to endure footage of the contestants drinking after the show in their shared space, and I might care about this if I knew any of their names. Probably not, but still. Phil was offended by Jason's short, since his little brother is disabled. They have an "I statement" discussion about it, segueing into a stupid segment of Adrianna asking live questions, and we get our first taste of "Well, the audience loved it" from Jason. He may not win many awards, but I can tell you he's taking home the first "Dead To Me" statuette of the season. Some people think they're going home, and some people pretend not to think they're going home. The contestants are divided into three tiers, each of which contains someone from the Top Three and someone who's going home, to wit: