another great episode! spoilers below
prize task: jesus that was incredibly open ended. fascinating to see where everyone's minds went when the prompt was basically just "something that makes a big impact in a single word". julian's coat was hilarious, sue's greg(gs) was very tryhard but undeniably well done. lucy continues to be the weirdest person in the world
secret task: I liked this task as a fun little wacky variation on the series 5 "vote for who you want to win 5 points" task. it was entertaining to watch, the result was funny. all good! so uhhhhh why did alex hype this up for the entire series? I get that it turned out to be a clue because he was always asking when they were sitting in front of it. I get it. but it really felt like they were building up to a big reveal! I've seen all these theories like, "the secret task is to fool greg into thinking you haven't found it", "the secret task is to wear all gray in the studio", etc. taskmaster new zealand introduced this concept when chris parker found a secret task which was "do one of your other tasks soaking wet and get 5 points". I think you want a secret task to spill over into the studio or into another task like that. this was very self contained, and it was fun, but it was so undeserving of the 7 episodes of hype that it almost makes me wonder if there's another even secreter task. but I don't think so lmao
fortune trail: speaking of TMNZ, hey! kudos to alex for taking possibly the worst task of all time and making it actually fun. the original version also had the element of "make the superstitious choices and find the double-headed coin" but it was only on one step of the fortune trail and nobody found it. putting double-headed coins throughout with each step potentially leading you to one was way better. also I laughed really hard at lucy looking for double-headed coins by only checking one side, and when alex pointed that out, giving up completely. also also sue's "FUCK OFF" jacket was incredible
pretend sleeping: sam fucking campbell. I liked the idea of this task but holy shit way to elevate it a million times over. we were all watching that flamingo in the bed, thinking "what has this kid been told? what does she think she's judging for? how did she see that and think that it looked like a sleeping man?" and then that fucking reveal that his "sleep talking" was him promising to give her a hundred pounds... absolutely incredible. I'm glad greg gave susan 5 points too because her sleep acting was genuinely convincing. thirty grand, baby
idiom charades: I love a studio task where I get to play along at home 
my scoring
julian: 16 (+1)
lucy: 5 (-2)
sam: 15
sue: 10 (-1)
susan: 16 (-1)
series scores
julian: 125 (+2)
lucy: 101 (-5)
sam: 138 (+3)
sue: 82 (-24)
susan: 106 (-3)
I continue to marvel at how close my scores are to greg's (this is never how it goes! I had mel giedroyc winning series 4 with lolly adefope in second!), with one gigantic exception
