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.