It was a joke. I was just being pain-in-the-neck technical about the
America thing. I had a Spanish teacher in high school who talked about visiting somewhere in Mexico or South
America when she was younger & not as fluent in the Spanish language, though what I'm getting at has nothing to do with fluency of language. And she made the mistake of saying something about "In
America...." And the people she was with pointed out that their country
was a part of (the) America(s).
On the show, it was pronounced the way you mentioned, MY-lee.