#taskmaster 18

series 17:

his favourite was Nick Mohammed (mine too!)

he liked John Robins more than i expected (and more than i do), but honestly i should have expected it because he likes competitive contestants as long as they’re very pathetic about it (eg. Ed Gamble)

he really liked a lot of the tasks this series, and almost always spotted the “trick” to them right away

he absolutely loved the Nick/Greg of it all, but was completely unsurprised because he immediately fancied Nick himself and was like ‘well, obviously Greg would too, look at him, he’s adorable’

series 18:

during episode 2 he said “I miss Nick. I’m gonna go pour myself a glass of white wine with a single ice cube.” and then he did

his favourite was Andy Zaltzman (??? baffling to me, mine is Emma Sidi, and I find Andy a bit annoying) but he thought this was a really solid cast with no duds, second favourite was Rosie Jones and he rates the other 3 highly as well

at one point he said “I don’t know why anyone has trouble with Rosie’s voice, I think she’s just Northern” AND HE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW SHE MADE THAT JOKE

he liked the hotdog costume wildcard thing a lot

he also really loved that Babatunde Aléshé was too unfamiliar with the show to know he was supposed to hate Alex and just befriended him instead, like it showed that Baba took Alex’s persona at face value and his response to it was “wow this boy needs love and encouragement”

halfway through he asked me if Jack Dee was Greg’s comedy hero because of how reluctant Greg was to go after him, when I said he was actually Alex’s hero and not Greg’s we had a whole long convo about how Greg’s authority is actually quite fragile but he’s so adept at reading the contestants that he rarely goes after someone who’s actually going to respond by stepping to him and shatter the illusion

series 18 is kind of oddly full of self-assured and naturally dominant characters, like all of them stood very firm in Greg’s presence

we also had a long convo about Greg’s career trajectory and teaching, bc my husband assumed since Greg was a drama teacher that he actually quite liked kids (and enjoyed being silly with them), but I explained that he seems to genuinely dislike children and mostly became a teacher because his father was one and he really saw his dad as a hero, and being a drama teacher was kind of a compromise between being a performer and practicing the family trade

my husband over-identifies with Greg and happens to see his own dad as a hero, but he never once considered going to uni for social work (he studied classics and intended to be an academic in moral philosophy), so that is a big difference between he and Greg (he also does like children)

series 19:

What's your favorite Series/Season? Bracket style.

Part 9.

s17

s18

On Jack’s end it’s like watching a loving but long-suffering father go along with his chaotic daughter’s antics and trying not to show how delighted and/or annoyed the whole thing makes him.