Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime

OMG, I'm so sorry I haven't posted in a long time.  Oh well, my hiatus is over and I'm back.  As always, I have been watching the shows.  I have to say, the reality shows are getting a little old and the new ones are getting boring and stupid.  I swear, they pick the dumbest people for these reality competition shows.  I'll do a quick run-down of the summer shows I've tried out or am watching.

There's a mystery show called Whodunnit?  I think they should call it, Who's Dumber?  A group of people try to figure out how a murder was done but w/out the why and who, it's just an hour long show of stupidity.  I thought for sure they'd play the show like the Mole w/ one person being the murderer and killing off the other contestants but nope, they'd never do anything that interesting on TV.  There's a new murder every episode and then the contestants are given clues so blatant a deaf blind person could figure them out in a minute:  poison, nails and 2 holes in the leg, hmmm...  The real mystery of the show is how they figure out who to send home.  Oh and the person who loses for the week is just sent home.  Boring!

Family Game Night is a fun show.  It's literally a show of clever party games w/ 2 teams of stars w/ 1 non-star.  Jane Lynch hosts and she's really funny but quick.  I hate hosts who take up too much time because they talk slow.  I like to see that the stars really try their best.  It's hilarious to note who's really good at party games like Alison Hannigan or Kristen Bell.  Ever wonder how good stars are at charades?  You'll find out if you watch this show.  Too much fun!

The Challenge is back w/ the show being called Rivals II.  They really should call it enemies.  Most of the couples can't stand each other but I admire them for sucking it up and working together through the games.  CT is back and didn't get kicked off the very first show.  I loved that the only unfit person on the show was eliminated w/ his partner the very first show.  The twist this season is that the girls choose the men's team to go up against the losers of the challenge, into the elimination game and vice versa.  This time, the women have a shot at eliminating the strong men's teams who can beat them in the finale.  Interesting.  I love this show and not because of all the fighting, but despite it.

Redneck Island has a group of savvy women.  As usual, they're not that deprived and were actually winning a lot of food in the beginning of the season but as they've eliminated their strong players, they're losing the food challenges which is kind of funny.  They've also included a couple of challenges that have an immediate ouster for the loser.  That has upset the applecart a couple of times but really makes the game interesting.  It seems the Rednecks are less friendly to each other but civil.  It makes the show look less fake that way.  This show is just fun to watch whether the rednecks are playing a game or not.

Another new show is Supermarket Star.  OMG, this show is so dumb.  It has 3 contestants presenting a product, getting critique and advice, tweeking the product and then trying to sell it to some executive.  Stacy Keibler is the host which is good cuz now that she's split from George Clooney, she has to actually work.  The panel of 3 celeb judges (Mrs. Fields, Michael Chiarello and some other guy) do give good critique and advice but the contestants rarely listen.  I think the producers wanted people w/ big egos but it just makes the people look stupid.  In the end, I thought, Eh, there's a 1000 products like that and I wouldn't buy it.  This show deserves to be ignored.

MasterChef is back and as usual, big egos reign.  How come all of the contestants say, "I'm going to be the next Masterchef."?  They all sound like egotistical jerks and when they show their cooking is crappy they look like total morons.  This season there's a couple of villains, a couple of schmucks, a couple of innocent wide eyed does and a good crop of men who can cook.  I don't make this show a huge priority because all of the challenges are pretty much the same as before and I'm sick to death of the judges:  Ramsey, Graham Bowles and Lydia's son.  Lydia's son must've had a talking to because he's much less of an ass-hole this season.  Hearing who's eliminated via the facebook page is good enough for me.  I hope a guy wins for once.

Project Runway is back and a lot of the contestants have a common theme.  They're really innovative and use odd materials.  OMG, there's one really weird guy who insists he wants to be natural, sustainable and creative.  He doesn't want to use electricity, man made or original fabrics and doesn't let his model use any products like makeup or hair stuff.  Good luck w/ that.  I'm waiting to see when he cracks or when his model goes ballistic.  Hee hee hee.  I was disappointed to not see Swatch in the first episode.  They should have him on screen every episode.  Tim Gunn is going to have more input in the final elimination decision.  I think that's good because sometimes the judges aren't told that the designer made another design, judged it to be crappy and made this look in 2 hours.  Also, there's no such thing as too much Tim Gunn.  That guy gets cooler every season.  I was very surprised to find the judges liked the design I liked in the first episode.  Wow!  Maybe I'm learning good taste and style. 

The Next Foodnetwork Star is back.  This is the worst bunch of candidates I've ever seen.  Three of the most likeable guys were already eliminated but even though they could cook and were fun, they couldn't give a clear concept of their cooking theme and that's the kiss of death in this competition.  There was one skinny chick who was literally repulsive on screen.  She stayed way longer than she should have.  One lady was a past contestant on Hell's Kitchen and couldn't cook then either.  She had a redemption episode where she won a chance to return to the competition, after being eliminated, and was kicked out again the very same episode.  Hilarious!  There's one lady who has a good concept and is so comfortable in front of the camera I can't see her losing.  She reminds me a lot of Sarah Moulton.

Hell's Kitchen is almost done w/ it's season.  It's been good w/ its usual villains, dummies and standouts. It's down to 1 white guy w/ huge ear guages, 1 black girl who can really cook and 1 white lady who has an annoying voice in the kitchen.  The chefs mind the annoying voiced lady just to shut her up so she does run the kitchen pretty well.  It'll be interesting to see who wins.  Last season a girl won so it's the men's turn to win.  We'll see.

Foodcourt Wars is a new show on the Foodnetwork.  2 teams of entrepreneurial cooks try to win a foodcourt restaurant that comes rent free for a year.  Tyler Florence hosts.  I have to say, it sounds fun but it's not.  It's boring.  Exactly the same things happen each episode w/ each team making the same mistakes.  I found the really boring part was watching the cooks come up w/ dishes.  The food doesn't sound new or innovative and it takes forever for them to come up w/ mac and cheese and salad.  Ugh, it's like watching morons adding 2 and 2 together.  You want to walk over to them, smack them in the head and shout, "4!"   The food that gets the most compliments loses.  Yeah, I only watch when I'm totally bored and absolutely nothing else is on.

American Ninja Warrior is back w/ the preliminaries happening.  It's nice to see the courses are new and more female friendly.  I thought it was unfair they'd have a log drop that the women couldn't even grasp or get their arms around because they were shorter than the guys.  Also the trampoline leaps are shorter so that the lighter people can actually make it.  I'm happy to see some women are actually getting past the first 2 obstacles.  They do the usual competitor profiles which are shorter this year and they show more wipeouts.  It's much better.  I'm glad to tune in every week.

America's Got Talent is back w/ 4 judges.  Heidi Klum and Spice Girl Brown have joined the Howards.  I'm not watching.  I did watch for about 15 minutes and found the talents were the same, the singers were worse than ever and the judges were too thinned out in time so you really didn't hear much from them.  I'm glad I'm not watching because America's got no  taste anyway.

There are even more reality shows on like So You Think You Can Dance, American Baking Competition and others.  Wow, I can't believe there are so many and it's only Summer.  Top Chef Masters starts this week and I'm excited for that.

Well, that's about it.  I hope I can post more often but things have picked up in my real life so we'll see.  Until then, everybody.  Stay tuned!






Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Go For It, People!

Most of the shows either had their finales or premieres so we're in the middle of the new shows except for 1 that did start this week.  There's quite a few, so I'd better get going.

The Amazing Race was in Bora Bora.  I can't believe the racers are actually staying in one place for 2 episodes.  They started out w/ a bit of delay due to water taxis not being 24/7.  In the meantime, there was a lot of talk about alliances and the who would get the 2nd express pass.  It was kind of stupid and boring; like watching people mingle at a corporate party.  Finally the first batch of racers got underway to find the wedding chapel and the shaman-like guy to get a blessing.  If I was one of the guys from the unmarried couples, I would've been very suspicious because who knows what the guy is saying?  They could've been accidentally married.  But...I guess not.  If you don't have an American license, you're not married.  Then they had the detour with a choice of finding 2 red pearls from oysters they had to dive for or setting up an underwater picnic thing.  Yo, twins!  When you can't swim, it's probably not wise to choose something you have to swim at.  I don't know why they didn't try the other detour after 10 minutes because the 2 detours were in the same spot.  Instead, they splashed, choked, floundered around and considered skipping and taking a penalty.  Meanwhile, everybody else finished the detour.  The next task was to use jetskis to find the roadblock on another little island.  Unfortunately, the Asian sisters had to do that alone and buzzed around the ocean, lost for quite awhile.  Well, Asian women aren't known for their sense of direction.  Meanwhile, back at the detour, the 2nd batch of racers had shown up.  They were the teams that chose to take the penalty in the last epidode.  By the time the twin doctors decided to switch detour tasks, it was too late.  Everybody had passed them up.  The roadblock looked like fun but the show made it look really hard.  A racer from each team had to kick a ball from one end of the sand to the other while on stilts.  It was all about technique.  It was obvious who had experience using stilts.  It was surprising the Asian sister didn't do well.  It looked like she had good technique and Asian women are known for having good balance.  Anyway, the hunky hockey brothers hit the finish mat first.  The twin doctors met their literal water-loo and were eliminated from the race.  Note to future racers; learn to swim for pete's sake.  For that matter, learn to ride a bike, ride an animal, drive a stick shift, climb rocks and rappell. It seems you're going to have to do one or more of those activities during the race.

Worst Cooks in America had it's premiere.  I have to say.  This is the funniest show on the Food Network.  Some people say it's kind of a set up thing w/ fake contestants.  I have news for everybody.  After the first season of Survivor, all reality show contestants are fake; except for most of the chefs on the expert cooking shows.  Sometimes they seem unreal too.  But yeah.  Most reality show contestants have agents and are the people who'll do anything to be on a show because they have no real talent and have no other option but to be stupid on camera.  I don't care because the best part of competition reality is seeing people eliminated.  The candidates for the show this year are especially stupid and dramatic.  There's a guy who says he's a doctor but that's questionable because he's a chiropractor.  He's a glorified masseuse with more college credits.  The scary thing is, he's a complete dork when using any kitchen utensil.  There's the contestants w/ perpetual scared and puzzled looks on their faces.  There are the contestants who don't listen and therefore seem really retarded.  Then there are a couple of truly sincere people who's families have nominated them, had no idea they were bad cooks and really want to learn.  These are the people I love to watch because you know their families had to do interventions to convince them they were bad cooks.  They also seem to have bad palates and I can totally relate.  People hate my food too but I like it.  Poor Ann and Bobby have the task of teaching these people to cook and be the test tasters too.  I think some of the people are purposely chosen by the producers to drive Ann and Bobby nuts.  The funniest thing about this show is, they don't treat the cooks like first time cooks.  Some of the cooking challenges are really challenging to even real cooks.  I love the look of fear that comes on the cooks' faces.  The first thing was picking teams and then the cooks had to make signature dishes.  The black lady who's totally gaga over Bobby Flay lost her fake fingernail while cooking and I about fell out of my chair laughing cuz she thought it might be in her dish.  OMG!  Some of the dishes looked terrible, some sounded terrible and some were both.  Can you say mole marinara pasta?  Neither Ann nor Bobby threw up so they were actually edible.  One cook from each team was eliminated.  The lady who burned everything so she knew it was done and the guy who tried to make a dessert were sent home.  Bye!  You're still bad cooks.

The Biggest Loser was full of surprises.  First, it was announced that the fatties all had to lose 70 pounds altogether.  In early seasons, that would've been totally doable but I don't know what's happened to the huge weight losses they used to have.  I have a feeling they're not allowing fatties to live on diet shakes anymore.  For only 7 fatties, 10 pounds apiece made their blood pressure go way up.  Then the kids were brought in to save the day.  They had to do little challenges to lower the required poundage loss.  The kids did really well w/ the trivia, guessing caloric dishes and the physical challenges to see if they could improve their beginning of the show times.  Of course they improved.  It would've been really embarrassing for the producers if they hadn't improved.  After the kids, the fatties only had to lose 61 pounds.  Then a lot of revelations and drama ensued.  We learned Francelina and Jeff are getting close, aw...  Gina's a lawyer.  I knew there was something about her I didn't like.  And, there are a few weenies on the ranch this season.  That's bad because if you have really lazy schlubs around you, it's not hard to look like a hard worker when you're really not.  No wonder there hasn't been any really impressive weight loss.  Remember, the fatties have nothing to do but lose weight.  Jillian tries her motivation thing on Alex and instead of making her work harder, it makes the girl curl up and cry about her life.  Oy.  Gina is the whiniest cryingest fattie on the ranch and she looks horrible w/out makeup.  She also has the figure of a nesting doll.  She is especially bratty and whiny this week.  Maybe it's hormones.  It couldn't possibly be because she's just an adult whiny brat.  She has a thin skin around Joe and it seems he's kind of oblivious about it.  At this point, I think I did a little fast forwarding.  Then the fatties had to dig in a sand course to find arrows and eventually a flagpole they had to erect at the end.   They did it in time to earn 10 pounds knocked off of their required poundage loss for the week.  Then there was an in show commercial for a certain sandwich franchise.  The weigh-in turned out to be very surprising.  If the fatties did not lose 51 pounds altogether, there was a red line that eliminated the person who lost the least percentage of weight.  It turns out, the fatties should've been more worried than they looked.  Hey fatties, make sure and take a dump before the pre-weigh-in.  Yeesh.  The trainers were more upset by the low weight losses than the fatties were.  In the first seasons, 2 or 3 pound weight loss would've made people cry and panic but they didn't.  In the end, Francelina was eliminated and didn't even look upset.  Actually, she was probably the only fattie who didn't cry, ever.  Bye Francie.  Now we're stuck w/ Joe and the whiners.  It sounds like a 50's band.

Face Off seems to have a new guy to beat:  Eric F.  He may look Goth scary but he's very talented and managed to win the immunity.  The first challenge was take a fairytale girl and make her a horror character complete w/ story.  Eric F. made Little Red Riding Hood into a werewolf which totally gave a cool twist to that story.  I never thought that the wolf might've been biting people out of anything but hunger.  They only had like a half an hour too and he did a fantastically awesome job.  The other artists did well too but didn't twist their stories as well.  He also won a make-up box and I found out, pro boxes are very expensive.  Wow!  Worth thousands of dollars?  For the main challenge, the artists were shown cool colorful abstract photos.  They chose which one they wanted to work with and then it was revealed that each one was a microscopic close-up of a different insect.  Cooool...  The artists had to make a look that not only looked like their insect but used the patterns and color of the photo too.  One guy made a beautiful blue butterfly w/ huge impressive wings and won best in show. One guy made a firefly but didn't show the photo in his design.  Anthony disappointed everyone w/ a plain looking weird ant but was kind of saved by his model who worked the look.  Eric F. was lucky he had immunity because his wolf spider wasn't as scary looking as the real thing.  Some of the artists had bad luck which caused time management problems.  In the end, Alam's look that seemed okay to me was totally hated by the judges.  It's not ok to just tie wings on.  Ohhh...  She was sent home.  Aw...bye Alam.  I'll miss your Japanese cartoon inspired looks.

Survivor was so stupid.  They only did one challenge.  I hate that.  It was mainly conniving and planning on the unFavorites team and fighting w/ the ex-marine on the Fans team.  The unFavorites woke up and realized they'd better try harder at the challenge.  The challenge consisted of some pulling some on a raft to a platform where they dove to pull sticks to release rings.  The Fans made a mistake by having 3 women do the diving thing.  They might have pulled it off in calm water but skinny women fighting the ocean is a whole different thing.  Then they were pulled back to shore and had others had to do a ring toss.  This season, Malcolm isn't proving to be the hero in the challenges.  Then again, he wasn't in his season either cuz his tribe almost was wiped out.  He might be doing it on purpose because many times at the merge, the biggest threat is voted out first.  Anyway, the unFavorites won.  The Fans tribe is unevenly split and it's totally obvious.  There's a group of 2 romantic couples (4 people) who think they're the pretty people.  Then there's a group of 6.  I think the pretty people are pretty much sunk.  They shouldn't pick fights but they do.  Gawd, those jocks and cheerleaders are so stupid.  Although one of the pretty people guys did find the HII.  At Tribal council you could tell the people just wanted to vote and go home.  Jeff had to use the cattle prod to make them talk and then they really didn't say anything.  In the end, the blonde lady from the pretty people group was voted out.  I think they should re-name themselves sitting ducks.  The ex-marine guy is actually doing the smart thing in the heat.  He rests in the shade during the day and works in the cooler evening and night.  Unfortunately, nobody sees him working cuz they're wiped out.  Then the pretty people make the mistake of antagonizing him.  Don't poke the bear!  The producers are wanting to edit him to be the ass but I can tell that the large group of the tribe respect him.  I don't know his name yet but I'm rooting for him.  BTW, I'm not watching this show on TV.

On The Face, I can't tell you how tired I am of Carolina Kurkova's face.  It's kind of homely in a white rat way w/ pale skin, long pointy nose and buck teeth.  Everybody makes a big deal of the young girl w/ no modeling experience.  She has a beautiful face but boy, they're right.  She's very awkward and way behind in modeling skills.  The mentors aren't very good teachers and just tell the models what they want.  The first challenge is a quick snapping commercial shoot that gets to highlight Coco's posing talent.  A blonde model wins.  Whatever.  Then the models go home to fight for awhile.  The photoshoot is lingerie w/ each model showing a different aspect of an underwear model:  innocent, sexy, flirty, sophisticated.  Instead, the models all looked like they were trying to upstage each other.  I didn't see the differences.  Whatever.  Naomi's team won.  One model from each of the 2 losing teams is put up for elimination to be judged by the winning Mentor. Got that?  Ok, well, Carolina sent home Naomi's model last week so Naomi returned the favor this week and it seems the young inexperienced girl is the black hammer of the season so far.  These mentoring reality shows are kind of boring.

Top Chef had it's finale part 1.  Kristen, the winner of last chance kitchen, was brought back but she earned it.  Take that, Josie!  They did a really boring thing of showing the chefs at home w/ their families.  Zzzzz...okay, so they cook at home.  BFD.  I also don't give a rat's patoot what their family is like either.  So no quickfire and right to the elimination challenge.  The chefs had to just make a 3 course meal.  OMG!  Boring!  Kristen made simple French dishes which were delicious but the judges didn't think were too creative and her dessert was just a big bowl of chocolate.  Kids would've loved it.  The Hawaiian guy made something that wasn't Asian and was totally raked over the coals for not showing himself in the dishes.  Yeah!  They wanted spam and pineapple.  Brooke can do no wrong and the criticisms of her dish were really dumb and weird.  I think the judges wracked their brains coming up w/ something negative to say.  In the end, the Hawaiian guy was sent home and now we're definitely going to have a female Top Chef this season.  Ho hum...it's been a boring season so they may as well keep it that way.

Project Runway finally broke up the big teams and made the designers work in teams of 2.  Some of the designers were able to choose who they wanted to work w/. The Aussie guy got stuck w/ the mole faced lady who had the worst looks in the previous challenges.  The black haired lady who thinks she's all that and doesn't want to help other people really showed her lack of talent this week.  The designers had to make looks for a country singer star.  I think Miranda Lambert.  All I know is, she's white and not wafer thin.  1 designer in the team had to make a stage look and the other had to make a red carpet look.  The curlique mustache guy made some honky tonk gown complete w/ frayed edges on the hems.  The judges hated it.  The Aussie guy made a gorgeous gown and proved he did know how to do strapless construction.  Meanwhile, his partner, the loser lady w/ the mole on her face made a cute fringey outfit. Performers love clothes that have movement because it gives more energy to the whole stage look.  The black haired lady not only made an outfit that looked boring but it made the model look fat.  Terrible.  Aussie and Mole Face were declared the winners and black haired unhelpful lady was sent home.  Bye!  Hee hee.   I love when people get their just desserts.

King of the Nerds had the Nerds making music.  Oh boy!  First they had to create a song, then learn to dance.  It was a little painful to watch but not too painful to laugh at them.  I keep mixing up the teams and it seems it was the blue team who won last week and are 3's company.  They're name is actually Blextrophy.  The Orange team is something like Ruler's of the Golden Orb.  I know there's Orb in their name.  I'll just call them the Orb team.  The pink haired girl from the Orb team has gotten some kind of ego and she's probably the dumbest on the team.  Ohhh...she's an expert gamer. Well, so is the 2 ton schlub who lives on his mother's couch.  I was also wrong about who went home last week.  The curly haired leader guy stayed and the brunette arrogant guy went home.  Pink haired girl didn't get along w/ him so after he left, she partied and danced around in glee.  So back to the challenge.  The teams then had to perform their song and do a dance to it in front of judges.  Oh boy!  I thought they both did a good job.  One of the judges was that ukelele playing girl who does quirky characters on sitcoms.  I had no idea she was part of a singing duo.  Anyhoo...the judges couldn't get Blextrophy's song out of their head and the dancing was equally bad on both sides.  Somehow, Orb team or orange team was declared the winners.  Huh?  The curly haired girl and the guy on the team were sent to the dual.  They had to do a dance dance revolution kind of thing.  The guy turned out to be less awkward and more experienced at the game and curly haired girl met her demise.  Aw...bye.  Sorry to see her go cuz of all the nerds, she seemed the most cool.

Well, that's it for this week.  I didn't talk about Joe Schmoe Show because it's just more of the same.  They are bringing back Lorenzo Lamas for another episode so that should be fun.  ABC used The Middle to promote their telecasting the Oscars.  The show was still funny.  So until next time people; stay tuned.









Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Odds and Ends

Hello all.  Well, it's been a fun week.  There have been some finales and some premieres.  I have to say, some of the older reality shows are starting to show their wear.  TV shows aren't meant to last forever.  Ask the producers of Law & Order.  Reality shows seem to last a little longer due to the changing of the cast every season but they still get old and seem to run out of original ideas.  If you notice, voyeuristic reality shows have even shorter lives.  Oh well, let's get going on the run-downs.

Rachel and Guy's Celebrity Cookoff had it's finale w/ Dean McDermott and Carnie Wilson battling it out to see who was the best cook.  They had to make 3 courses of their favorite dishes and feed friends and family of Rachel and Guy.  I don't know about you, but I was fed up w/ hearing about Rachel and Guy and the show seemed very narcissistic of them.  I wasn't impressed at all to see their friends and family and didn't think many of them qualified to be food judges.  What's the matter Food Network?  You don't have the celeb chef respect like Top Chef?  Anyway, Dean made rather upscale fancy dinner food w/ multiple components on the plates.  Yes, he cut it close w/ time management but still managed to pull the dishes off.  I forgot to mention he and Carnie both got an assistant who was a friend and not a former contestant.  I have a feeling this was one of the few shows that actually let their eliminated contestants go home because once they were gone, they stayed gone.  Carnie seemed to choose food you'd find at a poor white picnic.  She used canned tuna and other foods regular chefs would never touch.  The judges were stupid and raved about the dishes that didn't look very good and then kind of dissed the good looking stuff.  It was probably really stupid editing.  In the end, Dean won.  Yay!  His charity made out like a bandit and Dean was able to promo himself as a chef.  Okay...

Cake Boss:  The Next Great Baker had it's finale.  The last 3 bakers went to Vegas:  Jen, Ashley and something Ann.  I can't remember her whole name but who cares anyway?  The show seemed to be a huge commercial for a certain Italian themed casino in Vegas.  They showed the girls shopping, frolicking, eating, and luxuriating in their rooms at the casino.  Uh huh.  Oh, and they even did some baking.  They had the usual pick helpers, bake your stuff and sell it challenge.  Something Ann sabotaged her fellow competitors by messing w/ their ovens.  I'm surprised nobody noticed and ratted her out.  She claimed she was just being competitive but it was very poor sportsman and proved she didn't have enough confidence in her own talents to just play fairly.  A fun moment was seeing James and James from the Amazing Race buying pastries.  They were in their Chippendales collars and cuffs too:  Woo hoo!  After all the yelling and selling, the tickets were counted and Jen was knocked out of the finale.  The weird thing was, before commercial breaks, Buddy did about a minute of a live looking thing which showed a tote board of some kind of voting by viewers but it was stupid because after Jen was knocked out, she was still on the board to win over something Ann.  Wow!  Dumb.  Then they brought all the rest of the contestants back and the last 2 finalists chose their teams to make their grand finale cake.  It had to showcase Vegas, them and their journey.  I felt really sorry for the finalists because at this point, they were so fatigued you could see their eyeballs swimming.  The funniest part was how crabby Ashley got.  Something Ann got more teary and cried a lot.  The cakes came out incredibly well except the transexual Elvis on Ashley's cake was rather creepy.  At the very last judging, Buddy let past contestants ask questions of the 2 finalists.  The questions sounded scripted.  Ashley got the one asking her why she thought she was qualified to be the winner.  Unfortunately, the person who asked the question was her most unfavorite former nemesis and she let him have it between the eyes complete w/ curse words and glaring looks.  The whole place was in shock.  I loved it and thought it was hilarious.  After everything was hashed over, Ashley was declared the winner.  Well duh.  She had the best palate, good skills and a good eye for decorating style.  We'll see if she actually works in Buddy's bakery.  Congrats and you go girl!

The Biggest Loser finally broke up the teams and went to individuals.  Yay!  Now everybody really has to work and the lone wolf from Jillian's team can breathe a small sigh of relief.  Also, Jillian isn't in jeopardy of being eliminated from the show too.  Finally!  The fatties had a real temptation challenge.  They were put in a room w/ each one having their own table full of sweets.  The lights were put out and whoever ate the most calories got a 2 pound weight advantage and then could give the prize also to another player.  I was surprised they could eat so neatly in the dark.  I was expecting it to be obvious who ate after the lights were turned back on cuz they'd have cake on their face and food stains on their clothes but no.  Anyway, only 3 people ate and Francelina won the contest.  At least she looked guilty about it.  Gina was the one who just clinked dishes around and panicked the others.  How funny was that?  They did show the kids again doing more activities and Bingo getting his footcast/boot off.  I have to say, the kids are looking skinnier so they're showing good discipline.  I forget what the next challenge was but Jillian's lone wolf girl won.  The prize was skyping w/ family and she gave her prize to Gina and the white former football player guy.  Awww...  That was smart.  I would totally do the same thing because it doesn't really give you any advantage to keep it but really gives you respect points if you give it away.  At the weigh-in, they brought back the old yellow line.  Francelina and I think his name is Mike were on the bottom.  He's the one who was given the skype prize.  Mike was voted out by his fellow fatties and sent home.  Oh well.  I'm so proud of the fatties this season for really doing the losing weight game instead of conniving game.  I'm sure the producers are totally embarrassed that they can't even use Jeremy from last year because he's regained his fattie status.  Hee hee, well it's their fault for doing friends and family for more than 1 year.

Face Off didn't have a mini challenge but jumped right into the big one.  The artists worked in teams of 2 to produce a giant fairytale character like one that would be in Jack and the Beanstalk.  It was nice to see people acting professional w/ good work ethic.  You didn't really see anyone just sitting around letting the other do all the work.  Nobody really did any fighting but there were times when people should've edited the other person but when a mistake was made, it was interesting to see how the other person worked to either correct the mistake or made it work.  Eric F. (goth looking guy) really showed innovation by drawing his character on the floor.  The looks all looked great but Eric F. and his partner truly made a giant and the model's face was used in a Jack character in the giant's arms.  I loved the small things they had like the Jack character poking a giant needle into the giant's hand.  Once again though, the model was good and worked the whole look well too.  The pink haired girl's numb hand problem proved to be her waterloo.  Her partner couldn't keep up w/ her mistakes so the look really suffered in the technique.  The thing is, the look still looked okay but not to the keen eye of the expert judges and she was sent home and felt rightly so.  Truly, I think this is the best season ever.  Even the bad talent is really good.  The 2 main judges are the same but they seem more empathetic and have actually said they've been in the same situations.  That's nice to hear cuz everybody has bad luck days too.

Joe Schmoe Show is really getting redundant and stupid.  I think the producers have a contest w/ themselves.  How stupid can they be before they blow their cover?  We're no longer laughing w/ them, we're laughing at them and Chase doesn't seem as much stupid as gullible.  He's still wide eyed and innocent w/ a deer caught in the headlights look perpetually on his face.  Poor dear.  He's so desperately sincere because you can tell he really needs the money.  Awww...  This week, the dumb girl w/ the dead husband sob story blew her cover w/ a skype prize.  Then she dropped the charade and showed herself to be a conniving cunning liar.  Then Chase wrote in his notebook that he thought she was acting.  Well of course she was acting but the producers made it look like he suspected everybody of acting but that wasn't the case.  Chase just thought she was acting.  Maybe he is stupid.  Oh well.  In the end, they booted her.  I have to say, the blonde guy who's playing the a-hole this season does a really good job because when he's out of character, you can tell he's actually fun and nice.  I think it helps that his eyes are close set.  All I can say is, Chase must live in happyland cuz I've seen worse a-holes and Chase is just dumbfounded by this guy.  Hee hee.

Survivor is back and it's dumber than ever.  They're doing another season of Fans Vs. Favorites.  The problem is, the favorites aren't favorites.  There are only a couple of people that viewers actually liked.  They should call it Fans Vs. Irritators.  Ugh.  I'm not even wasting my time watching on TV and only catching it online when I have time.  So blah blah blah, introductions, challenge we've all seen before or a mild variation on one, finding beach, setting up home, a little arguing, a little strategic talk, immunity challenge we've all seen and more conniving.  The only thing interesting was Cochran's major sunburn and the Fans team making fire w/out flint.  The Favorites were first to tribal council which consisted of Probst trying to poke the bears of old frenemies.  In the end, Francesca was booted off the island first, again.  Nobody cared.  Man!  What a boring season this is going to be.

Top Chef was down to the final 3. We're all screaming, "When's the last chance kitchen winner coming in?"  We all know it's going to be Kristen and we can't wait to see Tom Colicchio get all moony over her again.  The contestants had to get to the top of a mountain and they did it by helicopter and dogsled.  Brooke proved she's one big freakin' chicken.  She's afraid of everything:  boats, water, flying, heights.  Jeez.  Good thing she's not afraid of fire.  I'm thinking, suck it up.  You're on TV.  The quickfire consisted of making a dish w/ the pantry items at the mountaintop camp.  BFD.  The pantry looked better stocked than most households of today; especially in this economy.  For the elimination challenge, the chefs had to make a dish inspired by the moment they knew they wanted to be a chef.  Hmmm...this sounds familiar.  It sounds like something from the Masters finales.  Mr. Curlique mustache had the event of his life w/ his wife giving birth back home.  His dish was foie gras 3 ways w/ 1 way the judges didn't like.  Um...trying to make a dish that you know takes 3 days, in only 8 hours is not a good idea.  Brooke made a chicken and quail dish and just made a good story to go w/ it.  Brilliant!  The Hawaiian guy made...  well who cares cuz Brooke won and Curlique mustache was sent home.  Bye!  After Stefan was sent home, this show has become one heckuva snoozefest.

Project Runway had it's innovation challenge sending the 2 teams to a flower shop and a hardware store.  I have to say, these teams made some awesome stuff.  First though, to even up the teams, Dream Team was able to grab 2 Keeping It Real members.  Keeping It Real took one away from Dream Team.  It proved to be the turning point.  It seemed Dream Team indeed chose the classy and talented and Keeping It Real didn't.  Haw haw.  Dream Team did it right by coming up w/ a concept and plan first  and then integrating the materials into it.  Keeping It Real decided to just get materials and try to put stuff together.  That's bad because you never really know if you have enough flowers or nails or whatever odd stuff and you can't get more.  I was so proud of the Dream Team winning this weak.  All their dresses were innovatively beautiful.  They had an ingenious idea to trap vegetation between mesh to look like material.  Wow!  I loved the girl who did that because she put the vegetation in the skirt at the last hours and her team was panicking about the see through mesh the night before.  They also made very good use of flowers, unlike Chloe's season, if people remember.  Keeping It Real made some good stuff too but were felled by just one designer having time management problems.  I was glad to see that the snooty brunette who always thinks she's all that and doesn't want to help others was in the bottom w/ the slow blonde lady.  In the end, the judges had no mercy and didn't care what problems caused the time management problem.  The slow blonde was sent home.  Bye!  I'm really liking this teams season.

King of the Nerds finally had a challenge the orange team could win.  They put together huge 3 D puzzles and soduku.  There was a little heavy lifting involved and I was sure the blue team would win cuz they had that big curly headed guy but nope, Orange pulled out the win.  Yay!  Maybe it's because they unloaded ugly Alana the week before.  Blue team finally had a little infighting cuz the arrogant brunette guy sat out the challenge and is hated by the pink haired girl.  So the 2 guys from the blue team were sent into the dual.  It consisted of a huge concentration game.  Unfortunately, the blond curly haired guy who seemed to be the leader of the team found his luck ran out and lost.  He was sent home.  Awww..  Now the team is stuck w/ 2 whiny girls and 1 arrogant guy who's not as brilliant as he thinks.  I have dubbed team orange 3s Company cuz it's the blonde weird guy w/ 1 blonde and 1 brunette chick.  Too cute!

The Amazing Race is back.  Y'know what?  It's getting a little old.  This season, the twist was the team that came in first in the first leg got a challenge pass for them and another team but don't have to declare it until later in the season.  So blah blah blah introductions, race to the airport.  They landed on some hot tropical island.  The fist task was to find a clue in a bunch of sandcastles but if they broke into a sandcastle, they had to rebuild it.  That was ingenius because people coming later couldn't tell which sandcastles had already been looked in and gave poorer odds of finding the clue for the later teams.  I'll bet in past seasons it was a huge advantage to come later at search challenges like when they had to unroll the haybales.  The next challenge was to kayak to a spot and get the next clue and then find the pitstop on the beach.  Wow!  Talk about tight logistics.  The real drama was seen at the sandcastle site because 3 teams had a really tough time and you could tell they were getting heat sick.  One team came up w/ a brilliant idea to have them and the other 2 teams quit and take the penalty.  I love that white couple w/ the tough white chick.  She looks nice but she's really smart and competitive.  At one point, the teams had to sign up for helicopter rides.  The 2nd to last team were so stupid and signed their name on the last line instead of the next line on the list.  That white couple w/ the smart chick went right up and signed on that line.  Yay!  It seems that any other season, the team would've pointed out the mistake and let the other team go before them. No!  It's a race; not daycamp.  So a white couple won and the redneck firemen were sent home.  Thank you, producers, for not making it a non-elimination leg.  Phil needs to eat a sandwich cuz the backside of his trousers is looking baggy.

Well, that's about it for this week.  Next week, Worst Cooks in America starts and it's always hilarious.  Until then, people;  Stay Tuned.













Monday, February 11, 2013

Oh Man! I Can't Keep Up.

I'm in hog heaven w/ all the fun competition reality shows that are on, right now.  I'd better just get going.

Rachel and Guy's Celebrity Cookoff or something like that, was down to the final four.  This show is kind of stupid w/ some celebs obviously on the show just for exposure.  Some of the celebs try to brag about how good they can cook but when you see their food and hear the description, you're glad not to have to eat it.  Meanwhile, Rachel and Guy run around trying to look like celebs.  Here's a good rule for Food Network producers.  One hyper annoying host can be okay and make the show fun.  2 hyper annoying hosts is just really annoying and you don't know who to aim at first when you shoot your TV.  Anyway, Guy had only Dean left on his team.  Meanwhile, Rachael had Carnie Wilson, Kathy Najimy and Hines Ward (Who?) on her team.  The challenge was to feed a bunch of starving moochers from food trucks.  Racheal's team decided to make food that sounded like tailgating stuff.  Dean had his foodtruck all to himself but had to do all the work too.  He made some kind of wrap that he called a taco.  Okay...  Lou Diamond Phillips returned to be a judge.  Y'know, for a bunch of free food bums, those customers were quite critical of the food.  Hine's had to remind people he was a star by telling people he played football and won Dancing With the Stars.  None of the people were over 80 so just gave him blank stares.  When you play a game where everyone wears the same outfit and helmet, it's hard to tell who anyone is.  People had no clue who he was.  So finally, everyone gave their vote as to who's foodtruck they preferred and Dean pulled out the win.  Yay!  Good thing too cuz if he's gone, it turns into the Rachael's team show.  The final cookoff involved all 3 celebs from Rachael's team and they had to make...  Well who cares?  Carnie won and it will be Dean and her in the finale.  Oh boy!  It should be good cuz Dean has proved he can cook.  You know Carnie can cook cuz she didn't get to be over 300 pounds by eating bad food.

Cake Boss:  The Next Great Baker was down to 5 bakers.  For the taste challenge, the bakers had to make a dessert w/ alcohol or based on an alcoholic drink.  I didn't really hear Buddy say they had to use booze but maybe he did cuz they all did.  The blonde white chick said she didn't drink so it was interesting that she knew what a mudslide was.  Chad made something so intricate, it became cluttered.  In the end, Ashley won.  Everybody can tell Buddy is keen on Ashley so when they have a challenge and there's no clear winner, Buddy seems to give it to her; or so everybody thinks.  Then Buddy split the bakers into 2 teams of 1 guy and 1 girl.  Ashley chose to join the Italian bald guy and the blonde chick.  That left Chad and the white brunette lady.  Oh boy!  The challenge was to make a birthday cake for Kelly Ripa.  Why?  She certainly doesn't look like she's ever consumed any cake before.  So the team of 3 listened carefully to Kelly's co-star and the team of 2 didn't really.  Off they went and like bad little elves, they fought and whined more than they worked.  Chad took the opportunity to blow his own horn whenever he could but he forgot that pride goeth before a fall:  cough, cough.  Finally the 2 cakes were brought before Regis' protege to be judged.  What a freakin' ditz.  It was obvious which cake was the winner.  The one that had her favorite colors, things and looked modern.  Not the cake that looked like a wedding cake for geriatrics.  Whatever.  Kelly tried to be nice to both teams but just came across as wimpy and dumb.  She was probably very glad not to have to eat any cake.  So long story short, Chad was sent to the boxtruck.  Hee hee.  Who's bragging now?  What a big headed dumbass.

Face Off had a fun minichallenge.  The artists had to put facial hair on women.  It was hilarious but clever at the same time.  They all did a good job but this time, Anthony didn't win.  For the spotlight challenge, the artists were shown a Willy Wonka set full of candy.  They had to make a character and use candy in the makeup.  OMG!  I LOL seeing the artists just shoveling candy into their mouths.  It was interesting cuz some of the candy was huge:  gummies, lollipops, licorice ropes, etc.  I have to say, the I thought they all did a good job but there was one glaring bad standout.  People and judges really respect the work more when there's more work put in it.  Just painting a face and sticking a few pieces of candy on wasn't going to cut the mustard in this competition.  I'm not sure what happened because that girl didn't complain about anything going wrong.  One guy had little horns jutting out of his creature's face made out of candy corn w/ candy corn fingernails on the hands.  Wow!  One guy made a melting gummy creature.  Wow!  I'll bet they smelled good too.  A lot of the work was clever w/ epaulettes made out of lollipops and licorice.  I'm telling you.  Project Runway designers could've been schooled by these people.  In the end, Anthony wasn't the winner and the blonde chick who made the lame makeup was sent home.

Joe Schmoe Show:  The Full Bounty is in full swing.  I love the way they make a teaser making the audience think the cover is blown.  Poor Chase is so innocent, he just doesn't suspect that he could be being duped.  The guy has a lot of heart and doesn't catch on, even w/ all the bad acting going on around him.  They had him chained to a prisoner.  That actor did a pretty good job being scary and keeping his background story straight.  They had an escape incident.  You'd think Chase would think the guards were pretty lax and stupid.  It's obvious he's never been to a jail or prison.  But then again, he looked nervous as a cat the whole time so maybe he didn't have time to muddle things over.  The Asian girl must've had another acting gig cuz she wasn't even on the show for half the episode and then was "eliminated" at the end.  The show's producers seem to push the boundaries and almost hope Chase will blow the whole show.  My only gripe is, why don't they re-run the episodes at least once?

Top Chef finally got interesting but it's because they left Seattle.  Wow!  I usually don't use the word super like most people but Seattle was super boring and not synonymous w/ fine dining at all.  First the chefs cooked on a cruise ship making dishes w/ iceberg lettuce.  Can you say lettuce cups?  The Hawaiian guy was on a roll.  He won again.  Then they had to make fried chicken.  Yo!  Stefan!  Chicken Cordon Bleu is not fried chicken. The judges also didn't appreciate chicken planks or nuggets.  So anyway, Josie finally got her just desserts and was given the boot.  I think I heard the whole world cheering.  The curly-q mustache guy made really good fried chicken and won.  Wow.  Really?  For the next quickfire, the chefs had to make the tasties for the Bon Voyage party.  Oh boy!  The Hawaiian guy won again.  Then the chefs had to make a surf and turf dish.  Brooke made frog legs and some kind of seafood.  The judges weren't too picky.  Stefan made pork belly that was too crunchy for American people and about broke Tom Colicchio's teeth.  The hot Aussie chef was back to help judge and he loved the crunchy pork belly.  The Hawaiian guy was judged harshly for making a usual surf and turf dish.  In the end, Stefan was sent to the hold.  Awww...  I'll miss you Stefan, you sexy thing.  The next challenge had the chefs landing in Juneau and cooking sourdough and salmon.  I didn't know Alaskans were so crazy for sourdough but ok.  There shouldn't have been any budget problem for salmon cuz at that time of the year, the streams are crammed full of spawning salmon but it seemed they were still buying it off of the boats and only seemed to get 1 or 2 fish each.  Really?  The bears couldn't share?  Anyway, all of the chefs, except 1, made soup to go w/ their bread.  Lizzie made salmon sliders but was too chintzy on her fish serving.  She got the boot.  Awww... I'll miss her cool accent.  Now it's down to 2 guys and a girl.  I'm wondering if those judges are sick of fish yet?

The crying fatties of Biggest Loser aren't really having those temptations like they used to.  Why not?  I loved them; especially if they were required to eat something.  I wish they'd have the person who consumes the most calories have immunity.  Man, then you'd really see some good eating.  No, the show focused on the kids talking to their peers about bullying.  I'm sick to death of people trying to talk people into not bullying.  Until people are put into their own plastic bubbles, it's never going to end and kids will always be kids.  I do have to say though, the kids are already looking thinner.  Back at the ranch, the challenge for the fatties had only 1 from each team trying to cross a beam over water and match calorie placards to dishes on the other side.  It was quite hilarious and I'll bet it took a looooong time.   They started w/ huge swinging balls knocking the fatties off of the beam.   Then they stopped the swinging balls.  Then the balls were gone altogether.  There was a lot of falling into the water and you know that everytime they did, they had to climb back up again.  I'd be interested to know how long it took to film that.  Finally, the lone wolf on the white team won the weight advantage.  At the weigh in, in order to make things more fair for once, only 1 team member's weight counted for the whole team and it was determined by a roll of a dice.  It was kind of funny cuz they still made Jillian roll a dice even though she only has the girl on her team.  For the first time, the blue team lost the weigh-in.  Lazy Jeffrey paid for his sins this time but it was the older lame guy who was sent home.  I'm just wondering how long Jillian's team can stick around.

King of the Nerds had a debate.  Each person had a different topic and were assigned the pro or the con.  I have to say, it was totally nerdy subjects:  the legality of superhero actions, if the presence of superheroes affects the criminality of the city, etc.  It was really quite hilarious and made even more funny by the fact that the nerds took the whole thing so seriously.  I'm not sure how they studied, but they studied.  The guys who played Jay and Silent Bob helped judge the debates.  The blue team won.  Somehow Virgil convinced the blue team not to vote him into the dual, even though they consider him a strong threat.  Ugly Alana couldn't understand why her teammates keep voting her into the dual.  Hmmm...maybe it's because at the very beginning, you deemed them the weakest team and insulted them.  Maybe it's because she's just freakin' annoying w/ her unfounded arrogance.  She bragged about how smart she was, what a good swimmer she was and how she was so good at this and that.  Then when it was part of a challenge, she sucked.  If I was on her team, I would've killed her while she slept after that first week.  Anyhoo, the Asian girl, who crapped out at the debate, and Alana were voted into the dual.  The dual consisted of comic book trivia.  Alana thought having a room full of comic books gave her enough knowledge and didn't study.  It proved to be her downfall and she lost and was sent home.  Yay!  Bye Alana.  Go get that face and personality transplant that you so desperately need.

Project Runway was a huge never ending commercial for Heidi Klum's perfume.  I love the way Heidi uses this show to sell all her crap.  One season they're making a look for her clothing line, the next season they're making a look for her baby clothes shop, this time they're making looks to go w/ the perfume in public appearances.  Yeesh.  What's next?  A Heidi Klum fertility package?  The designers had to stick to pink, black and gold w/ a hard and soft theme.  The Dream Team made some looks that weren't so dreamy.  That older lady makes a lot of crap and this time she made the crappiest thing out of bright pink shantung shiny.  Ick!  The Aussie blonde guy must've sat on his arse until the last hour cuz boy was he scrambling to assemble a dress that looked like a 2nd grader could've made it in 10 minutes.  It was strapless and so poorly made that I was sure the model was going to have a major wardrobe malfunction on the runway.  I kept wondering how that bodice stayed up.  I liked that that one bitchy lady who always thinks she's so great got totally raked over for her fugly dress.  The Keeping It Real team did a good job of helping each other and critiquing each other.  They had a couple of really gorgeous gowns and of course a couple of duds too.  The Native American lady made a cool checked leather textile thing.  She's really quite the artist and I've loved her work so far.  In the end, the older lady, Cindy, on The Dream Team was sent home.  Bye!  See you at the old folks home.  I'll bet she's great at making culottes.

Well, that's about it for this week.  Sugar Dome had the people do an alien theme and that guy w/ the crazy hair from Ancient Aliens was on to help judge.  How cool was that?  It's also award show season.  Les Miserable, Silver Linings Playbook and Argo seem to be the big winners.  The BAFTAs were hilarious and fun to watch. 

Fun fun fun!  See you next time people.  Until then, stay tuned.







Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Off The Beaten Path

Man, how time flies.  Sorry for not writing a post for so long.  Because I've skipped a few weeks, I'm going to kind of summarize the shows to the present.  They've come up w/ some new fun shows and revamped old ones.   So let's get to it.

I finally saw the final shows of Redneck Island.  All I have to say is, those Redneck men were smarter than the average bear.  I thought for sure their time was up when it was down to 2 men and 4 women.  Unfortunately, the women worked against themselves w/ their cattiness and grudges.  The men jumped on the opportunities and managed to oust all but 2 women.  Then they had a challenge where they answered trivia questions and w/ each correct answer, got to shoot a plate belonging to another player.  Each player had 5 plates and when all th plates of 1 person were shot, that person was sent home.  I loved it.  Talk about being on the spot.  It gave the people the opportunity to save themselves by being smarter.  Once again, the men played smart by just letting the women go at each other but the last shot was dealt by Justin and he really did show his hand.  That night, the ousted Rednecks returned for a potluck and Kelly was not over her ousting.  Oh boy!  It really didn't matter.  She was still out of the game.  The only thing she did was make the atmosphere awkward.  The final challenge was a huge obstacle course and Wade won by being more fit and stronger.  Way to go dude!  I liked that it wasn't about a final vote.  He totally earned his win.

Face Off is starting a new season and I have to say, it's even cooler than previous seasons.  Micheal Westmore, the god of character makeup, is taking the mentor role and will be on every episode.  He is so cool and it's like having Yoda on the show because his criticisms are wise but not harsh and he gives pointers on how to make the makeup better instead of just telling the artists they need to make the makeup look better.  It's also cool to see the warmth between Mackenzie and her Dad.  The talent on the show gets better every season.   There seem to be more older artists.  There are also a couple of people who seem to be wearing character makeup already.  One guy looks like Wolverine and another guy looks like a goth Comic Con guy.  As always, the challenges do come down to time management and luck.  There seems to be one guy who's the one to beat cuz he's won all the challenges so far.  They've done makeups for Kings of different fantasylands, and Queens w/ different crowns.  It's all so cool and as usual, I can't judge the good stuff from the bad cuz all the looks look awesome.  A couple of the models do a good job of selling the looks and others just stand there.  I think it would be fair to let the artists choose the models every week because those models who really work the look are a huge advantage.  So far, the black guy and the guy who looks like Wolverine have gotten the boot.

Cake Boss: The Next Great Baker was down to 3 guys and 3 girls, last I looked.  There are so many shows on Mondays that I often have to see the show in it's reruns so I'm usually a week behind.  I'm surprised that the contestants are actually better cake decorators than Buddy.  He's always been judged pretty harshly on Food Network cake challenges for uneven piping work, sloppy fondant work,  and unoriginality.  The weird thing is, he's done a few piping demonstrations and you can still see he's not very precise and quite sloppy.  Yet, he brags about how great he is.  Uh huh.  Some of the mini challenges have been quite funny w/ the bakers piping cakes in the freezer or trying to copy party cakes and having them trashed for 1 little mistake.  One challenge had the guys vs. the girls.  The women had to make a cake for a sweet sixteen party and the tall model girl thought a monster would be cute.  Huh?  I think she just wanted to sit down and just mold a character while the other 2 women covered and decorated the whole cake.  It didn't go over well w/ Buddy at all.  This season has a lot of incidences of the person w/ immunity trying to deliberately sink the ship.  That's really not fair.  Oh well.

The crying fatties are back and so is Jillian.  Welcome back to The Biggest Loser in the original format w/ a bit of a twist in the voting.  Finally, the producers have gotten smart and seen the error of their ways.  They started out w/ 2 teams of five and of course have been whittled down week after week.  Poor Jillian, her team has been decimated.  People comment on how she yells and berates her fatties but the contestants they're cranking out don't seem to be as aggressive as the ones in the first few seasons.  I'm so glad they've done away w/ literal teams of 2 w/ either family members or friends.  This season, it's every man or woman for themself and that's the way it should be.  There's no self sabotage, no falling on the sword and none of those people who just hang back and let everybody else fight and do the work.  It was getting to be a joke how the winners of the show were still fat at the end.  Also, it was kind of turning America's opinion of people causing disrespect of fatties, not just on the show but in society too.  This season, the fatties are seen as sincere.  The theme of this season is childhood obesity and it's a nice break to see the kids in their real lives.  It's kind of fake of other kids to be so nice to the show's kids because they're celebs now.   The voting is different too.  Immediately after the weigh ins, they are, one by one, made to vote in a booth.  There's no discussion w/ the other contestants.  No boo hoo, "I need this." or "Save him and send me home."  speeches.  No last minute conniving.  It's kept the contestants more honest and the lowest producing contestants have been sent home.  That's as it should be.  So far, the red team is down to 3 people, the blue team is still at it's original 5 and the white team has 1 lone member.  I also notice there's a lot less product schilling.  Thank you producers, for a much better show.


The Joe Schmoe Show is also back.  This season the fake show is Bounty Hunter and it's hilarious.  The Joe thinks he's competing for a Bounty Hunter job and a prize.  How funny is it that the Joe's name is Chase?  As usual, they've got the usual variety of characters:  slutty flirty girl, stupid innocent girl, dumb meathead guy, the buddy, the nasty hateful guy and the gay guy.  This season, they threw in some fun characters starting w/ Lorenzo Lamas who was totally hilarious but was sprung after the first episode.  OMG, I couldn't believe he was handing out skimpy men's underwear LOL!  He played the stereotype of actors that was making the other actors cringe; the arrogant doofus.  They've also added a deaf girl w/ her signing translator.  It's hilarious but the actress keeps making character breaks and almost gives up the ruse.  Ralph Garman is hosting again and even funnier than ever playing a former bounty hunter w/ his slutty wife who he has no respect for.  He brags and struts like a rooster and I'm LOL the whole time he's onscreen.  The Joe is the most innocent good guy they could find who apparently doesn't watch TV much but has a lot of heart.  Instead of looking like a dumb dupe, he seems more like that innocent altar boy who just doesn't see duplicitousness in anybody.  He evokes a lot of awww.... moments.  They have the funniest and most absurd eviction ceremony you've ever seen and a huge double entendre and the Joe still buys it.  OMG, I can't wait for the reveal at the end of this season.  I wish they'd show more of the fake voting cuz some of the stuff the actors write on their ballots is so hilarious.  One fun fact;  the buddy guy is Jim Belushi's son.  Cool!

TBS has a fun show called King of the Nerds.  Yep, being a nerd has really become cool thanks to The Big Bang Theory and all the technical shows like Numbers, CSI, etc.  They brought together nerds of all kinds from scientists to gamers to Comic pros and split them into 2 teams.  The show is hosted by 2 Revenge of the Nerds actors who are totally playing their characters.  They chose their teams by having each subsequent chosen member choosing the next person.  Alana was the last person standing and rightly so.  She's weird, full of unsubstantiated arrogance and a face only a mother could love.  It got kind of funny when she was told to declare the weakest team and then was assigned to them ha ha ha.   Not only did the blue team have disappointed faces but so did she.  The first elimination challenge was life size chess.  The cutest guy on the blue team put himself up for the challenge and all the rest of his team was like, "Go for it dude."  Alana bragged she was in the chess club.  Whatever.  He chose her as his consultant.  The orange team put up their ugliest nerd.  In the end, the cute guy lost and was sent home.  What did Alana do on her chess team?  Carry the towels?  Then the real shows started and the first challenge of the show is always some nerdy thing like coming up w/ fantasy characters.  OMG, it's too funny and awkward.  Then the elimination challenge is only between 2 people and usually something that takes brains and a little luck.  Alana was able to send the orange ugly guy home just w/ huge luck.  I totally enjoy this show because I get the nerdy jokes, understand how they think and am totally intrigued by their weirdness.  If they're getting rid of the homely people, Alana should be next.

Top Chef continues to be very uninteresting w/ it's stupid Seattle setting.  The chefs had their restaurant wars.  The way it turned out, it was men vs. women w/ the Asians as executive chefs.  Poor Kristen got stuck w/ Josie and par for the course, Josie was no help.  The men had only 3 on their team and Stefan was wearing a lot of hats.  The men made the mistake of giving free wine and ran into the problem of moochers not wanting to leave.  I loved Stefan yelling, "I don't give a f___!  Get them out of here!"  By the time the judges showed up, he was over the whole thing and kind of had an apathetic attitude to everything.  I kind of loved it.  Hee hee hee  I could just see it on Stefan's face:  VIP, whatever.  It took a little air out of the judges' balloons and I was LMAO!  Meanwhile, on Kristen's team, she declared herself to be in control of every dish. At judging, she stuck to it and refused to expose Josie as the dumb dork she is.  Sometimes it's all about luck and Kristen's ran out.  She lost the restaurant war and was also sent home.  Wow!  Unbelievable.  Her main flaw was, she didn't really run her chefs like she should've.  Really?  She told Josie to start roasting the bones the night before and Josie put her off.  At that point, she should've said, "Get it done right now!"  But she let her chefs do their thing and it was totally her downfall.  Then again, if chef means chief, she didn't act like a chief.  She really needed to kick some ass.  Poor Stefan lost his wifey.  I don't know why, but Stefan is really winning me over this season.  He's that cool Senior guy who you just want have around.

Project Runway is back and this season all the challenges are going to be in teams.  OMG!  Most designers hate team challenges.  Yes the designers are in 2 teams but each designer had to do their own look.  Ohhh....   Ok. That's better.  If they're going to stick to that format, they can't have 1 person being the workhorse and 1 person doing nothing but just being bossy.  The teams share the money for the fabric and notions, confer about designs, help each other, critique each other and pay for not helping their fellow designer because if your team loses, no matter how great your look is, you can't be the winner.  I kind of love it.  Zack Posen has replaced Mr. orange glow Kors.  Nina's rat face is still in the judging chair and Heidi is more critical than ever.  The show is showing Swatch at Mood and I love that.  The designers are interesting.  I hear they're going to have to do a men's wear challenge.  Good!  Men's wear is harder than it looks and you can't make a bunch of holes in your design and call it fashion.  I think this season is going to be better than we thought.

After years of competiton reality shows, producers have really honed the craft.  They've gone back to showing the work instead of the drama.  It's great because unlike voyeuristic shows, these contestants should be respected for their work and competitive spirit.  I still hate dating reality because it's not really reality.  Those contestants are so far from real.

So that's it.  Until next time TV fans:  stay tuned.






Thursday, January 3, 2013

New Year, New Episodes

Ok, well, the new seasons of the reality shows really haven't picked up.  There seems to be only about 4 competition shows on right now but I'm watching.  So here we go.

The Food Network has a cool show called Sugar Dome.  They make teams consisting of 1 cake decorator, 1 sugar artist and 1 pro in another media field like special effects, costume design, sand sculpture, etc.  3 new teams for each episode compete for one big cash prize.  They start out w/ a basic task like create a fairy tale themed scene or a scene of a Dr. Seuss story or just recently, create a scene from The Wizard of Oz.  Of course the teams know the artistry of each person on the team needs to be seen.  Instead of rounds, they let the people keep working on the scene but add challenges like made a tasting element, make a certain kind of creature, make a figure fly or use fire in your scene.  It's quite cool and fun to watch.  Richard Ruskell won his episode again.  I swear that guy never loses and anybody who competes against him should be scared.  That mean girl from Top Chef Just Desserts was in an episode.  The judges are a little pretentious and I love when they have a celebrity regular guy as a guest judge because most of the time, they just appreciate and are impressed by everything.  Thank you Food Network for not having that sour faced English lady as a judge.  The show is really fun and looks delicious.

On Cake Boss:  The Next Great Baker, the bakers first had to make desserts using Oreo cookies.  The weird thing was, even though everybody made their own dessert, they still were in 2 teams.  That was dumb because there was only 1 winner but I suppose they had to put some competition in there somewhere.  The skinny white brunette chick won w/ her giant cookie made out of Oreos.  Hmmm...  Everybody can tell Buddy likes this chick and the other bakers have noticed too.  For the elimination challenge, the 2 teams each had to make a lifesize cake of a comedienne.  One was Carol Liefer and the other was not as well known to me.  Carol Liefer is such a hoot but she's also very nice.  The bakers actually did pretty good jobs except instead of fixing a problem like a leaning cake, they justified it.  Really?  In the end, the team that did the Carol cake won but not before the 2 ladies gave a little stand up.  Once again, you didn't see anybody eat the cakes.  I have to say, when the losing team is in front of Buddy, he seems more harsh this season because these bakers are much better than they've had in past seasons.  Anyway, I think the fat white guy was sent to the box truck.  Last week was just a clip show which was nice since I missed some episodes.  I didn't even know the show was on until about the 4th episode.

Top Chef: Seattle had the chefs working w/ aluminum foil.  For the quickfire, all their pantry fresh ingredients were wrapped up in foil and whatever they grabbed, they had to use.  How funny was that?  "Is this fish?  No, it's bacon."  "I hope this is a lemon."  Ok, so not only that, but they had to use the foil to cook in too.  Oy!  No frying things this time.  Bart was innovative and made a bowl molding the foil on his head.  Kristen baked cake in foil which came out looking like crumbs.  The dishes didn't look too bad.  Kristen won.  For the elimination challenge, the chefs had to work in teams of 2 and make a dish inspired by a member of a sports team.  The Seahawks?  The Redskins? No, a roller derby team.  That wasn't disappointing at all.  Each lady had a funny name like Jalapeno Business.  Hee hee.  The funnier scene was the people trying not to pair up w/ Josie.  Poor Bart drew the short straw and was Josie's partner for the day.  Stefan had a good chuckle about that.  The chefs got to see a derby match and were really dull.  Josie was the only one w/ any spirit.  The other chefs reminded me of that group of grungy kids who don't really participate and act too cool for school.   Whatever.  Unfortunately, Josie got quite tipsy, the other chefs commented and things got a little loud.  The next day, the chefs were in the kitchen to prep their dishes.  It seems someone includes forbidden rice in their dish in each episode.  It must be the grain of the year.  So finally the chefs served their dishes outside.  Josie and Bart had the forbidden rice and their dish couldn't make up it's mind if it was Asian or Cajun.  John and Lizzie declared their dish to be fun in the mouth.  Ok!  Mr. curly stache and Hawaiian guy made tempura something on a stick which didn't go over well.  In the end, Lizzie and John won and poor Bart was Finnish and not because he's from Finland ha ha ha. Underseasoning was his achilles heel.  Next time, taste the food.  We don't mind.

 Project Runway Allstars had the designers making ready to wear w/ special fabrics.  I'm not sure where the fabrics came from but they had something to do w/ Elie Tahari.  Most of the designers chose fabrics w/ color and patterns but Uli chose white and it was really pretty.  Her end design had nice work that made the dress classic but not plain.  Mr. Tahari visited the working designers w/ Lady Gunn and Ivy was suggested to make her dress shorter.  We didn't realize her maxi dress was actually pretty short due to the length of the cloth but Ivy wanted to use the whole cloth because of the landscape pattern.  She obviously didn't find a way to make it work better.  Her model looked like she was wearing a hand me down gown.  Josh made a bright pink dress that looked cool on the mannequin because the chest wasn't filled in yet.  I thought he'd do a cool chest block in thing but he didn't and it just looked droopy booby. Then, he made a mistake w/ sewing in the zipper and the model had a bubble butt.  Oy!  Anthony Ryan made his usual sheath dress and Emilio made a really cool mustard colored dress that his model, Aminat, worked like crazy.  Stacey Kiebler guest judged.  In the end, Anthony Ryan won, Uli was robbed and Ivy finally got the boot.  Bye Ivy, don't come back.  Your nice girl act this time didn't make up for your nastiness in your season.  I'm glad Michael Costello went a lot farther than you in his Allstar season.

Redneck Island was quite exciting.  It started w/ Justin and his buddy destroying a lot of stuff out of anger and frustration.  I'm sure they wanted to do that to Nick's neck but they're nice guys ha ha ha.   The next day, the rednecks got a chance to win food but it was an all or nothing thing.  They had to recreate a beach bbq scene exactly.  Too bad, they didn't get it right and went back to their part of the island empty handed.  Awww...no beer again.  No worries people, they still had staple food like macaroni and tuna.  You can tell this isn't Survivor.  The rednecks aren't losing weight.  For the elimination challenge, the rednecks each had a huge beer coozy, suspended over water, that they had to hang on to as long as they could.  Justin's Buddy won immunity.  Good for him. At camp, there was some scrambling.  Justin and his buddy feared for Justin's life so they had a visit w/ the 2 brunette girls.  I was thinking it was probably a lost cause but a good try.  At the reckoning, I about fell off my chair when Nick was voted out. Wow!  Y'know, these rednecks play better than those dumb Survivors.

So that's about it.  I'd like to thank the Disney company channels for providing nice movies and shows for Christmas and New Years.  The Rose Parade was really cool.  The floats were mostly done by charitable organizations and cities, there were a lot more horses, there was a soldier reunited w/ his surprised family and a wedding.  Uggie the dog rode one of the floats looking freezing cold but obedient.  He was so cute.

So keep watching and until next time, stay tuned.








Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Wrapping Up Before Christmas

Merry Christmas fellow competition reality show watchers.  I promised to do some finales and they were quite exciting.  So let's get to it.

The Next Iron Chef: Redemption was one of the most ironic shows ever.  It seemed everytime someone won the week before and then got the advantage the next week, they got the boot.  The only chef who seemed to be immune to that was Amanda Freitag.  The chefs were in Las Vegas and they had to make fusion dishes w/ things like peppermint candy and fish, fruit and fish, gorgonzola and candy and well...you get the idea.  The best part was seeing the grimaces on the faces of the chefs as each pairing was revealed.  Marcelle had won the week before so he got to mete out the pairings to the chefs.  Well, long story short, Chef Meta didn't really do anything w/ his skittles except reshape them and Appleman must have a weird palate cuz he keeps landing on the bottom too.  They had to cook big fat shrimp dishes on a teppan.  Hilarious!  I was fascinated to watch Meta using his bare hands instead of utensils to move his food around on that hot grill.  Wow!  Anyway, Appleman made a sauce inside the shrimp head and the judges loved it. Ick.  Bye Chef Meta.  Drink an energy drink and maybe you won't bore us to death.  So they were down to 4 and the chefs were challenged to do a Vegas buffet but work in 2 teams of 2.  Marcelle and Guarnacelli were on one team and Appleman was chosen by Freitag to be on her team.  I think she was thinking that if they lost, she could easily beat the pants off of Appleman. What a smart lady.  So blah blah blah, Vigneron and Guarnacelli land on the bottom.  It was no surprise that Guarnacelli beat Marcelle in the Chairman's challenge.  Bye Marcelle. No soup for you!  Ok, so finally the finale.  I couldn't believe how much they crammed into 1 hour.  First the 3 chefs each had to make a dish using one of the judges favorite foods.  Whatever!  Eh, so Appleman came in last and he was sent home right off.  Then Guarnecelli and Freitag went to Kitchen Stadium for the last battle and it was kind of just like the real Iron Chef show except they had a lot of different ingredients to choose from cuz they represented the 3 main iron chefs:  Flay, Morimoto and Symon.  Well!  If I were the newer Iron Chefs, I would've been very peeved to be so obviously downgraded.  Well, so anyway, after cooking and tasting of 3 dishes from each Chef Guarnacelli was declared the winner.  Ok.  So who's going to be the soux chef for Zakarian?  Oh well, at least I won't have to see Arpaia's big teeth anymore.

Survivor had it's last episodes too.  We saw the final 5 return to the beach where stupid Abi Maria profusely thanked everybody for keeping her around.  Hmmm...I wonder if she realized she kind of gave away the fact that she didn't have an hidden immunity idol after all.  So she proved she's not only a dumb liar, but really just dumb.  Everybody picked up on it.  The luxury challenge had the survivors balancing and putting puzzles together.  At one point, Malcolm was really behind everybody and he still pulled out the win. He chose Skupie and Lisa to join him and they ate and swam w/ huge whale sharks.  I wonder if they waited a half an hour before swimming after they ate.  Back at the beach, Abi Maria was trying to buddy up to Denise who she's been really rude to all the time.  Also, she was trying to intimate she has her HII.  Uh huh...no fooling these people twice you twit.  You can tell Denise is a mental therapist cuz she is really good at looking like she's listening when you know she can't stand Abi.  We can't stand Abi!  For immunity, the survivors had to do that get the balls on the paddle into their little spots.  Malcolm wins again!  Wow, the guy is on a roll.  Actually, we just didn't want Abi to win.  This time, the survivors were smart and finally gave Abi the boot but not before Jeff let her blather on way too long.  I loved the shot of Skupin dancing back to the beach.  Too funny!!!  The next day, everyone revelled in their Abi free lives.  So no more luxury challenges.  It was time to get down to brass tacks.  They had that stupid fallen comrades thing that's kind of like a suppository; just a necessary thing to get the crap over with.  It was interesting to note Denise knew every single person.  So they get to their final immunity challenge and it's a hold skinny cylindrical sticks together as long as you can.  The weird thing is, Malcolm had won an advantage and it was that he'd get a restart if he messed up.  It was very surprising to see Malcolm use it up and be eliminated first.  Skupin pulled out the win, but kudos to Lisa for coming in 2nd.  So it came down to 2 members of the blue tribe and 2 members of the yellow tribe.  Denise asked Malcolm to stick to loyalty and even the vote and she'd fight it out but Malcolm ho and hummed. Ding!  Denise picked up on the fact that she might be the odd man out so she went to Lisa and Skupin and convinced them that they wouldn't win against Malcolm cuz he's just the coolest guy on the beach.  Yeah...  At tribal, the survivors sounded the most intelligent I'd heard all season.  Surprisingly enough, Malcolm got the boot and he was not happy.  So finale time.  The trio had their fancy breakfast, burned camp and then went to meet Jeff and the jury.  Oh blah blah blah.  Abi and Penner turned out to have the biggest chips on their shoulders but Abi made no sense and needs to work on her English.  Penner revealed to all the youngsters that Lisa was a childstar.  Everybody else was pretty forgettable.  I wish they'd quit asking, "Why do you think you should win?"  Yo, cuz they want the million dollars.  Anyway, in the end Denise came out the winner.  Wow!  I'm glad for her.  She had a tough game, gave every challenge her all and really did a good job of trying to be diplomatic.  I have to say, the reunion show was very unsatisfying w/ a lot of people ignored.

The Challenge:  Battle of the Seasons also had it's finale.  The final teams were San Diego, Brooklyn and little Las Vegas.  They went to Namibia and had to trek through the desert w/ periodic stops to do a puzzle.  Sarah was the hero of her team but you're only as good as your weakest person as other teams from other season have found out.  Devyn proved to be the bag of rocks on her team.  Meanwhile, Las Vegas couldn't get along.  Sam was prodded verbally by her team.  In the end, the guys of San Diego shoved Sam up the last hill and they won.  Awww...I wanted Brooklyn to win and they came in 3rd.  Well Heck! 

Cake Boss:  The Next Great Baker has a really nice and professional bunch.  One lady looks just like Minerva from last season.  I'm sure they put her on the show just to watch Buddy crap his pants.  Everybody hated Minerva.  One guy is totally hot and then there's the usual assortment of small business owners, pity party single mothers, and fresh out of culinary school newbies.  One guy already bowed out of the competition due to illness.  The challenges are exactly the same as other seasons but the cakes are looking cool.  We all watch just to see the work being done.  It's like magic and I wish the show would cut Buddy's talking and show more of the work.  I do like that first there's a taste challenge and then an artistic one.  You never really see anybody eat the cakes from the art challenge.  One skinny brunette lady seems to be the emerging star talent of the show.  I do have to say, they're turning out cakes that look better than Buddy's.

Top Chef keeps proving Seattle cuisine is the equivalent of Jersey Couture.  Both are oxymorons w/ emphasis on the moron.  I'm sorely disappointed w/ this season.  The judges ask for fine dining but yet pick simple dishes.  The chefs can't seem to do the basic cooking right and the challenges are really quite boring.  The only fun thing on the show is Stefan.  Once again, he's flirting and chasing the lesbian.  His arrogance is just hot air and peacock posing.  It totally cracks me up.  One week Brooke won both challenges and the next Kristen won both.  None of it was very interesting.  Maybe the show has become old because now all the food seems to start looking alike.  Nobody does anything cool like the Voltaggios or Richard Blaise.  Nobody cares who gets kicked off.  Zzzzz...

Project Runway Allstars had the innovation challenge.  The materials all came from a Christmas store.  Cooool.  They were warned not to make their looks look like Christmas though.  I couldn't believe the cool looks that the designers made.  Poor Josh literally made his outfit out of ribbon and trim.  Eeek!  It was cool and I liked his hotpants.  Casanova couldn't pull it together and wasted so much time and material that he literally slapdashed a look out of scraps from other designers.  The judges noticed and he got the boot.  Awww...poor Casanova. After being robbed so many times he finally hit the wall.  The next show had the designers make a look inspired by the 1920's.  Hmmm...I was expecting some sack dresses.  The designers embraced the beads and fringe of the flappers and that was about it.  Uli seems to be on a roll.  Anthony Ryan made his usual sheath cuz it's working for him.  This time Laura Kathleen's palazzo pants look didn't work for the judges and she was given the boot.  Yeah...not too many of those big pants were seen in the 1920's.  Ivy's been getting away w/ some fugly designs.  Whatever.

Redneck Island showed the rednecks being homesick and the women getting sick and tired of going natural.  I loved the chicken wire rollers they made.  I think my Grandma had some curlers that looked like that.  The island was down to 4 guys and 5 women.  They were able to win some foods by shooting arrows on a board and it was hilarious cuz the only thing that was hit was lettuce, eggs and lobster.  Top Chef contestants could really go gourmet w/ those items but not these rednecks and I was LOL.  For the final challenge, the rednecks had to do a trivia challenge but the twist was, the loser would immediately go home and there would still be a reckoning (vote out).  I wish they'd do this on other shows cuz it's essentially double elimination but one person really deserves the boot.  The winner got immunity cuz there aren't any teams anymore.  One of the guys got immunity.  The blonde lady proved she was dumber than a box of rocks and was eliminated.  ATV does not stand for American TV.  The final vote looked like it might be totally split 4 guys against 4 gals but everyone was shocked when one of the guys was voted out.  Whoa!  Interesting.  That was better than Survivor.

Ok, well that's about it.  The Christmas movie season is upon us and the running theme is romance.  Ugh.  I like the Groundhog Day, It's a Wonderful Life and Christmas Carol themed ones.  Hey, that's everything else.   Oh well.  Maybe next year.  Merry Christmas everybody and Happy New year. Until next time, stay tuned.