9/9 Show Thread **Live Feed Spoilers**

[MFWalkoff]

I read the show spoilers from the East Coast last night & I was surprised that what I saw didn't come acrossed that way.
Rachel comes on strong, all the time. What you see is what you get. I kind of like that about her. She doesn't like Regan, but she welcomed him with a hug & was willing to try to tolerate him & get along, grudgingly.
I saw it as Regan starting the arguement. He is very passive-aggressive. He very calmly cut her down unnecessarily. A kind or friendly word would have gone a long way toward getting along, but no, he had to start putting in digs.
He went there first, calmly & unemotionally, but he deliberately baited her.
She came back in typical emotional Rachel form & came off looking like the irrational one. He set her up!! He knows exactly how to do that from his "Communications" skills. She's the one who stopped the arguement by walking away & saying she didn't want to go there again. He, on the other hand was perfectly willing to continue to cut her down.

I know this trick. I was married to a guy like that. I saw right through it last night.

But he never would have gone there if she hadn't attempted to hijack his story. He was talking about his real job as a professor, and she deliberately interrupted him with questions meant to turn the conversation about her, as in "Do you think I played a bad social game?" She couldn't stand him being the center of the room for 30 seconds, so she thought she would (once again) try to make some "good TV". Trouble is, she's incredibly bad at it, and you can see right through her. If I were Ragan, I would have no patience for it either. She's a self-absorbed phony. She walked away because as usual, her tricks weren't working on him.

[TheIrishEyes]

But he never would have gone there if she hadn't attempted to hijack his story. He was talking about his real job as a professor, and she deliberately interrupted him with questions meant to turn the conversation about her, as in "Do you think I played a bad social game?" She couldn't stand him being the center of the room for 30 seconds, so she thought she would (once again) try to make some "good TV". Trouble is, she's incredibly bad at it, and you can see right through her. If I were Ragan, I would have no patience for it either. She's a self-absorbed phony. She walked away because as usual, her tricks weren't working on him.

Yeah, I thought she started it after he said he had the PhD in communications and she interrupted and said "do you think that helped you in the game" -- it seemed to me she said it in a baiting manner, he calmly responded no, that he didn't really think book smarts helped much in the game, and then she just ran with it.

[andee]

Great stuff, Walkoff and Irish. However, watching the same interactions,
and thinking about the topic throughout, I come up with a somewhat different view:

For a minute, I thought she was being sincere when she asked a perfectly reasonable question about whether his degrees in communications helped him in the game. I'm sure he anticipated that question from someone, and the same topic may have come up before, in the house or with Julie. I thought his answer was a little too pat and rehearsed sounding since people who go into his field are often able to read people to some extent, their body language and tone, at least. The field has more applied aspects than the pure social sciences from which it is drawn, depending partly on specialization. Ragan's writings, from a very cursory look, involve aspects of people in the real world interacting and identities they adopt.

Yes, Rachel did interrupt him and turn the conversation toward herself.

These two people just don't get along. It hardly matters what either of them says, the other will interpret it negatively.

[andee]

Adding: Don't get me wrong, I find Rachel extremely obnoxious.
As I've said before though, with ten years and two degrees more than Rachel, Ragan has been
by far the biggest disappointment of the season to me. I used to think if he didn't win he
was a cinch for the AC 25,000 prize. I expected more from him since we happen to share the same
profession, different fields.

Caveat: If I was in the house, I have no idea how I'd act and don't pretend I'd do well at all.