hamsterwoman: (Taskmaster -- Munya)
hamsterwoman ([personal profile] hamsterwoman) wrote in [personal profile] rionaleonhart 2023-03-22 03:28 pm (UTC)

I'm sure it must be possible to watch something without writing an essay about it, but apparently that's just not the person I am.

And I, for one, am very glad of that! :D

whether they're going to pull Alex's trousers down at every opportunity

to pick a purely hypothetical example of go-to problem solving technique (god, I love Rhod's approach to Taskmaster so much. It's not even the Alex torture, necessarily, but he is just so committed to doing the most insane thing with no regard for anything, including basic safety)

I also think the panels start feeling more like a coherent group than a bunch of individual people as the show goes on -- partly, I'm sure, it's the longer seasons, but my guess is they also got better at casting people as a group and got more freedom to pick from a large pool as the show went on. Series 1-3 feel like a bunch of individuals competing to me -- even on team tasks I'm not getting any kind of interpersonal vibe -- but starting with series 4 (as you say), the panel really feels like a panel rather than collection of individuals.

Josh is also my favorite on series 1 and Sara Pascoe on series 3 (although s3 is my least favorite series overall and she'd be quite middling if I were to rank all the contestants). On s2, I liked Doc Brown and Jon (and maybe Richard? it's close with Richard) more than Katherine, but Katherine was definitely the one whose task performance was consistently the most fun to watch (the pizza ordering task!!)

The general vibe of the lineup is 'four children's presenters and a murderer', and it's a strong one. Joe Lycett is probably my favourite.

Hahaha, you're not wrong XD Hugh is actually my favorite (partly because I feel like Greg kept underscoring him), but I absolutely love his vibe with Mel, and the team of three children is super entertaining to watch. (Somewhere around my DW is a cozy mystery AU a couple of friends and I brainstormed where Hugh is the serial killer, Joe and Lolly are junior detectives, Noel is the quirky medical examiner/pathologist sort of thing, and Mel is the amateur sleuth...)

I also love how Nish Kumar throws himself with great enthusiasm at every task and does terribly.

Nish is such an MVP! XD Not in the sense of earning any points, but for pure entertainment value, I mean.

Liza is one of my top contestants of all time, but I agree that the panel doesn't seem to have an identity and feels again like a collection of individuals, which is kind of weird. I liked Alice a lot, too, but it didn't look like she was enjoying herself after a while, which made it harder to root for her. So in the end, pretty much everything I like about s6 is down to Liza being a brilliant contestant.

Series seven: what the fuck

Yep! XD I love that James and Phil are pretty WTF on their own, in different ways, but then end up being relatively normal contestants when you also have Rhod as part of the lineup. Jess is actually my least favorite on the panel, but that's not because I don't like Jess -- it's just that everyone else would make at least my long list of favorite TM contestants overall (I do smile every time Alex refers to the stage bit as "the Knappett" :) I also feel like it's such a great lineup in terms of everyone bringing very strong, distinctly individual flavors -- Kerry the Bosh Queen, Phil bumbling along in slow motion, James being odd and often self-sabotaging (like reaching Nish Kumar levels of being led off for a little talk by Greg), Rhod being A TOTAL NUTCASE -- and I feel like Jess is sort of the well-rounded one in that bunch (but it's probably why she was the least memorable for me, because she doesn't have a particular "thing" dialed up to 11 the way the others do).

but Joe Thomas is my favourite; he just seems so confused and unhappy to be there.

He really has the vibe of a kidnapping victim/hostage throughout, poor guy XD Series 8 is another of my least favorite series, and I think either Paul Sinha or Iain's character arc was my favorite on it, but I did think Sian was the most likable.

but I'm relieved that Ed Gamble won, because I feel he might have murdered everyone if he hadn't.

Hahaha, especially after that CoC II duck task, I feel like that's a very reasonable worry XD (I don't know if you listen to Ed Gamble's Taskmaster podcast -- they're doing series 9 now, and last week the guest was Nish, who was speaking from the perspective of having both Ed and Rose Matafeo as close friends, and the episode is particularly hilarious.)

Series 10 would be on my list of top 3 weakest series, too (though I do get that they had to work around Covid, and I'm sure that was very hard). Mawaan was my favorite, too, and Katherine did make me laugh the most, probably ("Am I the spider?")

Series eleven: This doesn't have an especially strong cast dynamic but nonetheless manages to be a strong series.

I hadn't really thought of it till you said it, but yeah, it doesn't have a strong full cast dynamic... I wonder how much Covid is to blame for that; it definitely seems like it's harder to gel as a group when sitting 6 feet apart and presumably not really getting to hang out as much. I do think Mike and Lee as a team have one of the best ever team dynamics, both entertaining and functional (which two factors don't usually seem to go together XD) (For me, TM was the introduction to Lee and then I saw him on WILTY and was quite surprised by his persona, because he just seemed so genuine on TM!)

I love the grouphugs nature of series 12! It's another one that has a lot of contestants I like a lot -- Victoria was my favorite (if something ever possessed me to go on a show like Taskmaster, I would be very bad at it in a very similar way, lol), but I feel like everyone had a really strong distinct thing to contribute, too (Desiree and Guz were my other favorites, but really I liked everyone, and the team dynamic is really funny, too).

13 was the first series I watched as it aired, so I probably have some bias towards it, but it's one of my favorites as well. Such a great dynamic and individual flavors, and I feel like Bridget's interaction with Greg adds an added dimension to the general insanity. And, yeah, Ardal was also my least favorite of the lineup, but still very entertaining at times.

I think I was just dubious about the office worker vibe he gives off)

I think my first reaction to him was that he looked like a lost accountant :) Kearns grew on me quite a bit over the course of the show, but still ended up being my least favorite -- but that's because I liked this lineup a lot -- Dara somehow managed to make his extreme competitiveness and terrifying efficiency endearing anyway (I genuinely don't know how, because he does absolutely remind me of my own "compatative dad", which is not an endearing quality!), and Sarah was just so funny and chill, and Fern so delightfully odd, and you'll never guess who my favorite s14 contestant was :P But Kearns was still really memorable and really funny, and his dynamic with Dara, Fern, and Munya was really great.

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