Is it live or TV?

There's always a lull in the middle of Reality TV shows where we know the people and we're just waiting for the chaff to blow away. Then we can wake up and root for our favorites.

RuPaul's Drag Race had a challenge where the "ladies" had to sing and dress up as rock stars. Our ears were still bleeding from Tyra Sanchez's singing from last week. When RuPaul told them they were going to sing for real, I think we all had an 'uh oh' moment. Most drag queens are used to lip synching because they're not supposed to be themselves. Jujubee was supposed to be a great singer but that doesn't mean she's a great performer and this show is all about the performance. They had a huge block of time showing the guys working with some lady rockstar who I didn't recognize, but whatever. I don't know who wrote the song, but it was terrible. We had to listen to it being sung 6 different times; eeeeek! Surprisingly, Jujubee was not only dead and boring in her performance, but didn't sing well either. She was in the bottom two but the other guy/girl was sent home.

This week the crying fatties (AKA Biggest Loser contestants) had challenges that actually gave the black team a chance to win. You could see the relief on Sam's face. Not only is he the only guy on his team, but all the women are getting lighter too. So the first challenge was food trivia. They do this every season. Isn't it obvious that these people don't pay attention to calories? They also don't read food labels. The blue team won. For a team of almost all guys, it was hilarious to see them win a spa day. I admired the guy who actually swam in the spa's pool. I think he's keeping his eyes on the prize. The next challenge was a cooking challenge to make a low cal great tasting meal. The blue team was missing Michael, due to a family emergency, and they blamed their loss on his being absent. Sooooo...what does that mean? All you fat guys have someone else cooking for you? It was very surprising that even with a prize of 5 pounds credit during the weigh-in, the black team lost the weigh-in. I think the younger women on the team are banding together because Sherry, the last older woman was voted out. Sam better keep winning the immunity or he's a goner too. I have a feeling the producers are cutting out the catty moments or not filming at the right times.

Shear Genius is losing the genius in the show. I'm sorry to say, it's getting boring. The first challenge was to give high school girls prom hair to go with their dresses. I don't get it. They criticized Brig for going too couture. When is a better time to go couture than when you have girls in gowns trying to outshine each other? Matthew did some ugly helmet head thing; ew. Janine is proving she's the one to beat cuz she keeps winning practically everything. For the elimination challenge, the hair stylists had to do a red carpet do for guests for a party and it had to be reminiscent of the 60's and 70's. I was expecting beehives and there wasn't one in the bunch. Matthew did Mary Tyler Moore hair. Ben did 2 tone hair that Jonathan Antin said looked like a heroine user who forgot about her roots. Brig went conservative which didn't go over well with the judges. Janine did the big airy fro look. She won. It wasn't that impressive but well done, I guess. Ben was sent home. Too bad cuz he was quite the hottie. Matthew and Janine showed their bitter disappointment when they saw Brig wasn't eliminated. Brig's great. She keeps the show from being too uptight.

Project Runway had a team of 2 challenge again. Material at Mood? $300. The look of sheer terror on the faces of everybody thinking they may have to work with Mila? Priceless. Anthony chose Maya, Amy chose the guy with the glasses, Emilio chose Seth Aron while simultaneously revealing a mancrush on him and poor Jay was left with Mila. He took it as well as a prisoner going to the electric chair; meek and defeated. The teams were given the choice of places in New York to go. Where else were they going to go? Duh! There was a lot of pointless footage of the teams looking at architecture, graffiti, and ugly apartment buildings. Only Emilio and Seth Aron seemed to note the fashion of the people in their area. Poor Amy, she can't catch a break. I didn't think her look was that bad. Okay so her model's butt did look bigger all she had to do was loosen the belt cinching the top. Mila can't seem to make anything with color but had to put orange leggings on her model to match Jay's look. She and Jay were very businesslike and just avoided each other and did their thing. Seth Aron made another pants and jacket outfit. I'm waiting for the judges to say, "We've seen this look before." Emilio's dress moved funny and had a zipper up the whole front of the dress that begged for a wardrobe malfunction. Emilio and Seth Aron were deemed co-winners and giggled and danced for joy. Amy was aufed and thank the gods, Jay was saved. Personally, I didn't think Jay's look was that bad. Oh well.

On Models of the Runway, the models seem to be getting more opinionated and bold. Brandise professed her love for Mila. She's the only one who does love Mila. The women were to have a night on the town to party. The 2 underage models were left home. I loved seeing them stuff their faces with junk food. It was great: milkshakes, burgers, onion rings and french fries. I remember when I was young and had a good metabolism too. Those were good times. When the older models were together, I noticed almost all of them had foreign accents. Hmmmm... At elimination, the losing designer's model was not chosen and sent home. Emilio got first choice and took the opportunity to take Lorena who's been designated the best model for the past weeks. I thought that was brilliant. Maya was not amused that he took her model.

America's Next Top Model made 2 episodes out of 3 so I'll recap all together. This season has very quirky girls. One was raised in a sex cult and looks like it with the weird sheared head. One has Groucho Marx eyebrows. There's a reject from last season who looks 30. One is a total Tyra superfan. A couple of girls are kind of homely. One girl is a half African American who looks totally caucasion but she does have the ghetto attitude. There's also a goth girl. The girls got their makeovers right after settling into their New York digs. I'm not a fashionista but it's still weird that the girl with Groucho Marx eyebrows kept those eyebrows and the girl with the sheared head had her eyebrows bleached. Can you say billiard ball? The girls were all cut, colored and styled by Sally Hershberger herself. Wow! Too bad all the girls are too young to know about the shag; Ms. Hershberger's signature haircut. Instead of giving Angelea a haircut to make her look younger, she got longer straight hair that makes her look even older. Now instead of looking 30, she looks like a 35 year old man in drag. Whatever. Each season, Tyra has the girls do a nude photo shoot of some kind. It turned out to be the very first photoshoot for the girls. This time, they didn't hide the private parts and there was a lot of blurred out bits on the photos. The black girl who looks white couldn't get that fiery personality to transfer to her photo and she looked awkward and dead in her photo and was sent home. Then the girls had a runway lesson with Miss Jay. They had to walk across a New York street while taking off their jacket. The New Yorkers expressed their pity and watched with looks that asked, "What is this skinny bitch doing undressing in 40 degree weather?" The challenge was a fashion show with a runway with swinging pendulums. You know we were all waiting for someone to get knocked off with the pendulums and it happened. To really make it good, the girl first slipped on the stairs and fell down them. I couldn't stop laughing. The photoshoot was outdoors. First the girls were in flimsy scarflike dresses, spritzed with blue liquid on their neck and then had to pose while water and wind flew in their faces. I swear, Tyra's trying to give the models pneumonia. The new judge of the season is an authority on fashion and modeling. It's a middle age African American guy who I've seen in crowdshots of fashion shows. Okay then. Most of the photos were pretty funny with the girls looking like those dogs getting bathed at the groomers. Nahdua proved you can't actually copy poses you've seen in magazines and was sent home. Darn! I was hoping to hear more outlandish stories of her weird cult life. Her unique accent was totally So Cal at times too. If you're going to be a character, don't go on a reality show cuz you have to keep up the acting for a long time. Yes, there was footage of fights and complaining but it's still the SOS (same old shit) we've seen from other seasons. I don't understand why Tyra seems to wear a lot of black catsuits since she's lost so much weight and looks great. Nigel Barker is just as sexy as ever. One thing I'm noticing; the girl who cries at judging and says she doesn't want to go home is always saved. Hmmm...there might be a lot of that to come. We'll see.

The Amazing Race stayed in France. First the racers had to find the statue of Joan of Arc. Miss Teen Caitlin thought it was Noah. Her boyfriend, had to tell her, "It's Arc, not ark." Oh boy! These 2 must share a brain and he had it that day. For the roadblock, a racer had to go down into a deep cave, find a champagne and then sabre it open. Unfortunately, the cute cowboy team thought they were supposed to go to champagne and went to the wrong town. Maybe they can't read in the early morning hee hee hee. At least they realized their mistake and remained in the middle of the pack. For the detour, the teams went to a champagne winery. The racers were smart enough to ask French people where the place was. Obviously, the French aren't too bright because all of the racers got a bum steer and initally went to the wrong town. Yeesh. The Dad and daughter team crunched the front fender of their Mercedes and proved you can fix anything with duct tape. At the detour, they could either hunt for a marked bunch of grapes or make a champagne glass pyramid and do the cascade pour. The hunt was the best option due to the fact that it really wasn't grape harvesting season and the only bunches of grapes were obviously tied on the vines. Since the bunches were sparse, it was easy to see them. Miss Teen ditzy couple first started to hunt and then switched to stack the glasses. Oh boy! I loved the look of horror when the pyramid crumbled during the pour. It was great! Like watching someone accidentally knock over their domino line after setting up dominoes all day. It was really too bad that with all the experience with champagne, hardly anybody had any to drink. The cops hit the pitstop mat first with an annoying mime greeting them with Phil. My wish came true and the Big Brother ditz and her boyfriend were sent home. Yay! The cute cowboys are still in it. Does anything else really matter?

The Celebrity Apprentice episodes are 2 hours long and I hope it doesn't continue. Unlike the Biggest Loser, there's just not enough different things to show for 2 hours. First, we started out with Bret Michaels talking with diabetic kids and then handing his big check over. OMG, I thought the sappy stuff was never going to end. It was quite vomit inducing. The celebs had a challenge with Kodak to make a showcasing event. The men lost sight of the fact that the point of a sponsored challenge is to showcase the sponsor's product, not the celebrities. Sinbad was the leader of the project. His type of leadership wasn't really Brett's type so I think Brett drank that energy drink for nothing. It seems Sinbad likes to plan, set up behind the scenes first and then pull everything out concretely the 2nd day. It's like the kid who looks at his blocks for an hour and then Wa-lah; he's got a great building 5 minutes later. It did make the team very nervous to not see anything put together at the end of the first day. Blagojevich was fixated on the goldenrod balloons. I think he only loved them cuz they had 'rod' in their name. Meanwhile, the women were led by Maria Kanellis. I kept wondering why she was wearing a red cowpie on her head and a towchain around her neck all day. I admired her for not letting the other women veer her off her course. She proved she had a good plan and it worked. The women had only 2 celebs do photo ops with customers and then the others did the hawking. The men actually had no hawkers and 5 of the men did photo ops while Blagojevich and Sinbad took pictures. When you have a Kodak sponsor, you might want the customers to actually go home with a photo of some kind. The men just handed out cards with the website and instructions. The women actually short circuited their place using the Kodak printers. The poor customers also had to fight a crowd to paw and hunt through pictures to try to find their's. Both teams had chaotic messes. Since they weren't being judged on how many people they could jam into their event, they could've done a station to station line. Oh well. In the end, the Kodak people liked the women's event better. Well duh! The women actually showed and explained the greatness of Kodak products to the customers. The only bad thing the women did was have a sick Sharon Osbourne cough and hack all over the cupcakes she was handing out to the customers. Nice. In the end, Sinbad was sent home for his unorganized and weak leadership. But, he did get in a lot of good funny lines in. There was a ton of redundancy in this episode and I even think they just showed scenes more than once. I mean, come on! How many putz faced New Yorkers do we have to see getting their photo taken and do we really have to see every kid they can dig up in the charity hawking scenes? Hey NBC, find another show for Sunday night to help fill the hours.

Okay, hopefully things will get better with Survivor returning and Dancing with the Stars starting. I already know who I don't like on the happy hoofer hooker show. See you all next week.