That's on my TiVo?

Summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime

2013-07-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

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!

Go For It, People!

2013-02-26T21:40:00.000-08:00

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.

Odds and Ends

2013-02-20T19:30:00.000-08:00

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.

Oh Man! I Can't Keep Up.

2013-02-11T08:07:00.002-08:00

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.

Off The Beaten Path

2013-01-29T05:22:00.000-08:00

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.

New Year, New Episodes

2013-01-03T11:29:00.002-08:00

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.

Wrapping Up Before Christmas

2012-12-25T05:13:00.000-08:00

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.

And...There it is

2012-12-13T09:59:00.001-08:00

Hello fellow competition reality show watchers. It's quite the exciting season. I love the way the reality shows show they've had good planning by ending their shows right before the Holidays bump them or integrate the holiday theme into the show. Unfortunately, I haven't been faithful w/ this blog and have to cram more than one episode into my synopses. Oh alright, I'll get to it.

The Amazing Race went to the Netherlands. The racers acted more like high schoolers and also, it seems they no longer camp together at the pitstop. The alliance of 3 teams waited w/ baited breath to see who had survived after the double u-turn plan. Everybody rejoiced to see the goat farmers aka the Beekman Boys. They weren't really glad that they survived, they were just happy not to see the other white couple whom they didn't like. Hmm...kinda catty. The twins really showed they have no grace by yelling out, "We gotta lose these fools." BTW, after landing in the Netherlands, they had to drive themselves around so it started out like a caravan. The twins found you do need to actually learn to drive a stickshift and it might take more than 1 lesson. When they told everybody how they skipped out on things like tennis lessons or driving lessons, it told us a lot about them and it wasn't good. Maybe it was the editing but the twins seemed more and more immature and less fun. They may have been having fun but nobody else was laughing. So after watching the teams fix windmills and watching the taller of the goat farmers hit tennis balls, it seemed the twins had caught up, but to everybody's surprise, the goat farmers hit the mat next to last which isn't bad for a team who had previously been almost 12 hours behind at one point. So did the twins go home? Of course not. Tis the time for a non-elimination leg. Oh ok. So then the teams went to France and the funniest thing was, the goat farmers showed their huge advantage by knowing the language. All of sudden, they were everybody's friend. Now that is like high school. I have to say, France was boring. The teams plowed fields, fed dogs and searched for cultivated mushrooms. Isn't that what everybody wants to do when they go to France? The twins had navigation problems and kept showing up last to everything but the speed bump didn't help either. I think they were hoping their friends would wait for them but they didn't. Really? That's why you don't waste time making friends or enemies during the race. It's a freakin' race not a fight cancer walk-athon. Yeesh. The show took the time to showcase it's sponsor and really made the episode all about that car w/ it's cool features. Whatever. The great thing was the Chippendales landed on the finish mat first and won a car each. That was so fun to see. The twins found the race is kind of hard when you have to navigate yourself and landed on the mat last and were sent home. Everybody can shut up about cab drivers not knowing where they're going. I'm saving the finale for the next blog. All I can say is, we didn't have to listen to those bratty twins anymore.

Survivor was down to 6. Abi Maria annoyed everybody w/ ill manners and laziness. She's alone now and tries to connive and sweet talk at the same time. The problem is, she really sucks at it and the men aren't that dumb this season. So they had their usual auction. Surprisingly, everybody but Abi spent all of their $500 on food. She held out for the advantage scroll. Now that people can't pool their money, the person who saves their's can snap up that last item if everybody else is stupid. Abi was kind of smart by telling people it also had a clue to another HII. It didn't. I would think people would've suspected something when she couldn't show it. In the immunity challenge, it was a 3 part event and the advantage Abi got was to only have to do the last phase. It really was an advantage because by the time they got to the last phase, everybody else was tired and depleted. Each phase started w/ a trivia question but they only showed 1 round of that. If they got the answer wrong, they had weight added to them which made it harder to do the physical part of the phase. Because of the footage deletion, Probst had to do a lot of explaining. In the end, Abi showed that if she really wants to, she can actually win a challenge. The question is, did the other Survivors realize she hadn't been trying before? By that time I was really sick and tired of Abi telling everybody, in really bad English, how she has to look out for herself. So of course the people had to choose another goat to be butchered. It turned out to be Penner. He finally realized his wait and see attitude gave him the quick ticket to Ponderosa. I'll bet he was sorry he didn't jump on that alliance offering from Lisa. An offer like that is like getting a sucky present at Christmas. Even if you don't want it, you smile and act like you love it. The next show had the family members reunions. The luxury prize was no prize but Malcolm won it. The family members got to stay overnight on the island. Malcolm chose Lisa and Skupin to share the prize. If I were Denise, I might smell a rat but she seems very secure about Malcolm's loyalty. Ok, here's the thing. Loyalty doesn't really matter if you're the only other person from the original tribe and if you're gone. Man, people are naive this season. The most fun thing to watch was the family members being told to give up their clothes before they left. It went like this, "I'm taking your shirt." Well ok! The immunity challenge was quite physical and Malcolm pulled out the win. Lisa's family member had concocted a plan to blindside Malcolm and you know the adage about the best laid plans. You could see the "Oh crap" look on Lisa's face. It's a good thing none of the other people told Malcolm about it. Abi told the tribe she had found the HII and I kept wondering if they would fall for it. It seemed they did. The white guy w/ the rodent face who's pretty much been a bump on a log the whole season (Carter) immediately got the spotlight. The alliance of 4 stuck together and rodent face was sent to Ponderosa after a lot of stupid talk from Abi and a weak, "Could you just keep me around?" from rodent face. Yeah, go find your balls Carter. I think you left them in the corner. I thought for sure they'd split the vote to flush out Abi's idol. I suspect Abi's the keep to the end Villain. I wonder if she realizes she has a snowball's chance of winning. She thinks she'll get respect for outplaying but that only applies if you weren't a coattail rider. People should remember that evil skinny twig from Ari's season.

The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons was down to only 2 whole teams and 3 half teams. They had a bump around challenge which was freakin' hilarious. Unfortunately, after a brilliant showing by the girls, the boys of Brooklyn dq'd because they couldn't stay on their feet. San Diego pulled out the powerteam win. Las Vegas landed on the bottom. The drama in the house consisted of people grousing that Jonnae hadn't been in the arena yet and the Las Vegas 2, telling each other how much they hated each other. Yeesh. Note to Marie. Don't antagonize the girl on the powerteam, they may send you in the Arena. Uh, oh...too late. Team St. Thomas was sent to the arena and Marie then went on to tell how much she hated everyone and would forever. Everybody sat back and said, "Whatever" and Jonnae just grinned after having been saved by her new boyfriend, San Diego Zack. The arena teams had to do that puzzle and dunk thing. Las Vegas pulled out the win and sent the last of the St. Thomas team home. Bye! You did a great job, Marie, of making people glad you're gone.

Top Chef is proving Seattle thinks their cuisine is all that but, it's really not. First they had a challenge to make dishes from a restaurant menu but the twist was, the menu was from 1950. Really? I thought the judges wanted fine dining. I found it hilarious that the winner made sides for the courses. Har har. I guess giant potatoes and sherbet were fine dining in the 1950's. Yeah, there wasn't any jello or chicken ala king. It was fun to see Naomi Pomeroy judging the quickfire which had the chefs breakdown huge beef carcasses and make beef dishes. Zzzz... The Japanese girl chef was sent home for an underdone potato dish. She did have 4 hours but once again, it was a case of her helping everybody else and not doing her own dish well. Here's a clue people. The judges don't care who's the hardest working and most helpful person. It's a competition and you have to compete for yourself. I didn't feel sorry for her at all. The next quickfire had the chefts trying to put breakfast on a stick at a kind of farmer's market setting. They were able to buy small appliances. I was wondering why nobody bought a deep fat fryer because anything battered and deep fried can be put on a stick. Instead, they did crazy stuff like trying to put crepes, breakfast tacos and other fancy stuff on the sticks. Hello, I smell a whole lotta pretentious. I think the winners made breakfast sandwich on a stick. For the challenge, the chefs got dumb unique food items to make their dishes w/ like: candied salmon, cheese curds, rose petal jelly, spicy pickles. Really? I thought the judges wanted fine dining. Chefs hate pre-made food to cook w/ and even quirky fancy isn't liked. It wasn't a surprise that the judges didn't really like any of the dishes but to add insult to injury, Colicchio told the chefs that not only would nobody win, but 2 people would go home. Oy! It's not like the chefs have been getting fancy prizes for the wins anyway. In the end, fat ego white giant and his meek cooking partner went home for their burger. They had thought that if they made a great burger, the pickle (their ingredient) would shine. Unfortunately, they didn't make a good burger. In fact, the judges hated it. Next time, if you're going to use a crumpet for the bun, toast it first. Yeesh.

Redneck Island had a teabag game for food items and it was hilarious to watch. I remember playing something like that at camp. The people were dressed in huge foam teabags and soaked themselves. Then they squeezed themselves out as much as they could to fill jugs. The methods of squeezing was the funniest thing to see but I loved that everybody just went for it. Each jug represented part of a picnic and the rednecks earned themselves a good one except no booze. Awww... it was the last jug and they just couldn't get her done. The big challenge had the teams trying to hold up 1 member hoisted in the air by holding on to the rope. At time intervals, a team member was taken away. Unfortunately for one team, they sent home their dumb strong guy. Ooh, that was too bad. One girl literally fainted in the harness and it was tricky getting her to shore since she had been suspended over water. One team won and I can't remember who but the weird thing was, the person sent home was another guy. I'm thinking the women who are left are playing pretty smart.

The Next Iron Chef: Redemption had the auction challenge. It went just like last year even the very end outcome. If you forgot, they brought out food items. This time the items were huge and the factor was that breaking the food item down had to be considered in the time. The chefs auctioned time but the increments went down. Finally, each chef had to make their dishes and the winner from the last week taste tested, critiqued and then wrote down a name to go automatically into the elimination round. Last year, Anne Burrell met her demise when she wrote down Zakarian, then had the worst dish, had to cook against him and then was eliminated. This time Faulkner wrote down Appleman and the whole scenarion happened again. Poor Chef Faulkner; she was devastated to be caught in her own net. It was a weird deja vu moment. Lesson for this week? Go easy on the saffron and not just because it's expensive.

Well, that seems to be it for this week. The next blog will have a couple of finales. How exciting! Until then, stay tuned!

Who's Here to Play?

2012-11-27T03:40:00.000-08:00

Hello fellow TV watchers. I'm so sorry I haven't kept up weekly but instead, weakly. I chose the title of the post because I noticed people on the competition reality shows have noticed from past seasons that any show of bad behavior will be edited to make them the villain. Therefore, everybody is trying to be sweet, good and friendly. The problem is, they forget it's a competition. Where's the fierce competitiveness that people respect? Why do they feel the need to be friends w/ fellow competitors? It's not like they're going to be moving in next door or forcing each other to be put on Christmas card lists. Jeez.

The Next Iron Chef: Redemption has been really fun to watch. They have come up w/ original challenges and the chefs are quite competitive. They have a chairman's challenge and then the 2 or 3 people on the bottom have to cook against each other w/ a secret ingredient. The only thing about the show is, they seemed to have run out of fresh competitors. Truth be told, I'm kind of sick and tired of seeing some of these people lose over and over. Really? Are they that desperate for this job? Are these chefs not giants in their field? Really? I gotta look at Spike Mendelson's ugly mug again? I'm really rooting for Chef Liz Falkner. She is so cool and would be great to see in kitchen stadium. I do love seeing a chef refuse to share an ingredient. Most of the time there's plenty but the chefs just don't want to use up time hunting for it if they can just use some of their neighbor's. Because they're all on the same level, they also encroach on each other's territory, moving pots and pans around and turning burners high and low. That's when it gets funny because you know they do that to their sous chefs. They've all competed before so they should know to keep a close eye on their own stuff. Marcelle seems to have matured or they're not editing the show to make him seem annoying. So far, it's been a really good season. I'm already sick of seeing Donatella Arpaia again and again but I can't get enough of Simon Majumdar. He is so cool and sexy w/ his accent and bald head.

The Amazing Race has been in Russia. While in Russia, they had challenges that took place in libraries, university, athletic centers and theatres. You can tell it must be really cold outside cuz they're keeping everybody inside most of the time. The twins, Chippendales guys and the white couple seem to not like the other white couple and connive against them. Awww...the unliked white couple girl cries a lot about it too. The long hair lawyer/rockers really ran into bad luck w/ their cab driver leaving w/ their bags that had 1 guy's passport. That's the kiss of death in this game. The unliked couple buddied up w/ the goat farmers who really lagged behind until the white couple missed their flight and found themselves w/ the goat farmers. It got weird cuz all of a sudden, they weren't so competitive anymore and actually decided to wait for the guys to finish their tasks. That was dumb because time means everything in this race. In the next leg, they got u-turned. The group of 3 teams had a really great plan. Those twins are soooo smart. The first team would u-turn the unliked couple and then the next team would u-turn that first team to use up the double u-turn. If the unliked couple hadn't ran the race parallel w/ the goat farmers, they would've had time to complete both parts of the detour but nope the goat farmers finally hit the mat before them. The wussy part was, they felt bad that they had to leave their friends behind. Awww...WTF? Are you in the game or what? I'm loving those Chippendale's guys more and more each week. They're hilarious and fun. I had no idea one had a bum ankle in the race so they're not whiners either. Go dudes!

Chef Race UK vs USA has finally landed on the East Coast. They're down to 2 guys on each team. I love that the most hated chefs are still in it but that's the way nature works too. The predator willing to take down everybody else eats best. The show has become predictable. They edit and comment to make one team seem like they're going to win the first challenge and the other team wins. Then at the cook-off, they edit it so the judges rave about one guy and sound like they're giving a bad critique to the other and then the guy w/ the bad review wins and the guy they seemed to like goes home. Now all I do is roll my eyes and correctly predict the outcome. I'm still giving the edge to the US team and I think Cody will win it because of the homefield advantage, his great palate and his competitiveness. I love the crabby English guy. He's not there to make friends. He's there to cook and win. You go Dude!

On Survivor, we have the group w/ the jury members. People are finding it's not a good idea to turn on your own people. Jeff tried to oust Jonathan and found himself booted. The Yellow tribe booted RC and are now finding themselves on the bottom of the ladder. Pete and Abi Maria are getting their come-uppance. Each week Lisa declares she's not good at this game. Ha! She's great and plays the innocent girl very well. I'm glad to see Michael Skupin playing smart. He plays low key and flips when he needs to. He and Lisa went to Jonathan first to make an end alliance. He said he wanted to wait and see. Wow! Really? He lost a great opportunity there because Mike and Lisa then went to Malcolm and Denise to make the end alliance. I think they really just wanted Malcolm but Denise was there. There seems to be a funny pattern. The person voted out has always had the luxury challenge prize the day before. Meanwhile, Carter sits around like the retarded doofus he looks like. The Ponderosa scenes are just as fun to watch w/ RC not shy about showing her animosity toward her old tribe mates. You go Girl!

The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons has finally gotten more exciting. Team Brooklyn finally realized Sarah couldn't do everything herself and have become the power team. I love Sarah, she's nice, personable, funny, fun and has that gung ho attitude but is still nice about it. She's gracious losing or winning. They've played smart too. They had a puzzle that had to be replicated at another area quite a rough distance away. They were the only team to put it together while they had the solution in sight and then transported the pieces in order. The funny part was, there were extra pieces so the teams who just took off w/ all the pieces were quite confused at the other end. Alton seems to have forgotten how these challenges are. You live w/ everybody, compete and then kick them off one by one. He complains about living w/ the people and wants to go home but his team keeps him there. It seems when the teams get cut in half, it's not long before the other half goes too. Team San Diego keeps putting up the same guy to compete in the Arena and he's not liking it. I can't wait for him to give his teammates the big finger. You go Dude!

Top Chef: Seattle has a great bunch of chefs. They've also brought back 3 vets and one is Stefan. He's just as brashy big ego as ever. I love it. I just think he's totally sexy. Maybe it's that Swedish accent too. I like that the vets are proving they're not as great as people think. They landed in the bottom their first week but they do show their experience in the quickfires. The other male chefs seem to be too nice. The women are tough and don't want to seem pansy. The cooking seems to be pretty good too because the bottom dishes have to be nitpicked. The newbies better take a lesson from the vets and stop helping each other and concentrate on doing their dishes the best. I've seen some real kitchens. I want to hear some cursing people!

Project Runway Allstars had a crazy USA Today promotional episode. The designers had to do a look based on a picture from...oh who the crap cares? This was the lamest premise I've seen on the show. The designers didn't know if they had to incorporate the colors in the photo, the theme, or the feeling? Oy. I have to say, the designers just put their heads down and did the task as best they could. Once again, Casanova was robbed. Althea made pants that had a crazy crotch. They were perfect for a drag queen to hide his weenie in the folds. Kayne seems to have lost his sight because he turns out some seriously ugly stuff. But...this time, Andre ran out of luck. Anthony Ryan won again and I didn't really see anything special in his look. Oh well, what do I know?

Top Model had their finale. This time they had 3 girls in the final runway. That was weird and made the final judging long and crowded. I loved that none of the girls really liked each other much. The final fashion show was really weird w/ clothes that looked like aged grave cloths or iguana skins. Ick. Then they showed the final photoshoots at the final runway show. I loved the fight ugly Cutrone had w/ the photographer. She was imploring people, "Tell him not to treat me that way." He was standing right there too. Hilarious! Leila had a mighty fall on the runway and then literally stumbled right off the runway. Double hilarious!!! Laura stumped down the runway and Kiara had a great walk. I've never seen so much crying backstage. Yeesh. I loved seeing John James. He's gotten older but it's nice to see actors are human and don't always age glamorously. In the end, the judging was stupid as usual but Laura won. Huh? What do I know? Oh yeah, she was the tallest girl.

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team finally ended their season. The last few episodes were kind of boring cuz the competition was over. After that, it was just a love fest. Ick. The last episode had the girls trying to be real cheerleaders w/ a show w/ stunting and that kind of choreography. Oh! I see. The DCC are dancers and not really cheerleaders.

Redneck Island continues to be hilarious. The really funny thing is, they seem to be the most competitive but I think these people truly need the money and don't hide that fact. The games always seem to have a dangerous ouch factor. I loved the rednecks in liederhosen trying to carry glasses of beer across a slippery surface. There was much hitting of rumps and banging of heads on the ground. It was very cringeworthy but funny. None of the competitors complained or hesitated in the game. I'm very proud to see the rednecks voting smartly. They target anyone they think isn't really in the game or weak. Right now, that's the way to go. While you're in big teams, vote off your weakest links. I like that they vote off the people who whine, "I miss my family and want to go home." Yeesh. They didn't think they'd be away from their family? Do they realize they'll go home when the game is over? Bye, ya big wussbags.

Well, that's about it. The Christmas season is here. Lifetime and Hallmark always have great Christmas movies. I especially love the ones based on A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life. This season seems to be more about romance which is kind of sappy and icky. Oh well. Happy Holidays anyway. Until next time people, stay tuned.

Catching Up

2012-11-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I missed a week or so. Guess what, I have a real life where I actually make a living. This blog is going to be different. I'm still going to go through my shows but since I missed keeping you up to date for a week, I'll do a run through.

The Amazing Race seems to like to stay in the same country for a couple of episodes. It may be a sign of the economy because it's cheaper than purchasing those plane tickets every other day. The racers show less fatigue too because they don't have to fight jet lag as much. So far they've been in the Philippines and then Turkey. They had one non-elimination leg which kept the goat farmers in the race. I wish those guys would stop reminding us of their poor little lives trying to raise goats. Then they mention they saved their town. I'm not sure how that happened but whatever. The Monster truck couple kept trying to go against the flow and got caught by it by taking a flight nobody else took. Yeah, this time it wasn't in their favor. I was hoping the Monster truck couple would be the only one in the next country for a few hours. Oh well. Needless to say, even though the goat farmers had a speed bump to do, the Monster truck couple still came in last and were out of the race. That time, it was kind of hard for the editors to make the end a mystery as to who came in last. The goat farmers and the Monster truck couple did the same delivering baked goods detour. The goat farmers were finishing up when the Monster truck couple were starting. Yep, no mystery there. Meanwhile, the other racers were hauling long bamboo. It was hilarious w/ much whacking of people w/ the bamboo and many apologies. In Turkey, some of the racers had a turkish bath that was the funniest thing to watch ever. The twins are amazing in this race. They've been doing some of the most physical tasks and doing great at them. There seems to be some kind of grudge w/ the twins and one white couple toward the other white couple. I finally figured out, the white couple who's not liked is the one that could win 2 mill if they win. In the last episode, the teams went to Russia. I loved how they complained about the cold more than the heat in the last legs. Maybe it was editing. This time the goat farmers and the unliked white couple got way behind because of a missed plane. Oh boy! I'm noticing there don't seem to be as many airlines and flights as other seasons but there are always plenty of seats. Or so it seems. Once again, the tasks weren't anything tourists would want to do. It was hilarious to see the guys trying to do the synchronized swimming. It reminded me of that Saturday Night Live sketch a long time ago. Those Chippendales guys are getting cuter by the week. They seem to be overcoming their meathead image w/ good senses of humor, niceness and gung ho spirit. The long haired lawyer/rockers are in the crapper. Their cab driver drove off w/ their belongings which included a guy's passport. OMG! The episode ended w/ no elimination. We'll see what happens. The race staying in countries longer may work to their advantage.

Face Off had an awesome ending. The last 3 standing were Nicole, Laura and Derek. They picked 2 past eliminated artists to make their teams and then they had to make a fantasy witch and demon. But wait, the makeup really had to be well done because then those models participated in a stuntshow. It was so cool but the makeups had to last through crashmats, punches, flipping, swinging on ropes and rolling on the ground. OMG! All I can say is, all the makeups were really cool. Yes, we got the stupid sob stories about why each finalist thought they should win blah blah blah. Michael Westmore showed up to critique the work the artists were doing. It's always so cool to see him. It's like a visit from the king. They had a reunion show that basically asked everyone what their favorite challenge was which proved the fans were pretty unoriginal. I'm still wondering if the artists knew the brothers were twins. Finally, Nicole was declared the winner. I kind of thought she had the edge w/ Roy on her team w/ his knowledge and experience.

Survivor finally had their merge and the blue tribe of 2 was able to glom back together. Denise seems to be letting Malcolm lead her around. The pattern for the challenges, so far, seems to be teams for the luxury and individual for elimination. The first week of the merge, there was a female and a male winner. The yellow team seems to be divided and the men of the red team still want Johnathan out. There were a lot of candidates for the vote but none that I wanted. Abi Maria is totally detestable and that sometimes means she'll go all the way to the end cuz everybody else knows they're less hated and more respected than she is. At that first tribal w/ everyone, there were a lot of red herrings thrown around. Lisa is finding more of a voice and Skupin looked like total weenie. Johnathan wisely used his HII and RC was voted out. How come nobody liked her? Maybe it was her laugh cuz I found it totally annoying on the Ponderosa video. Last week Johnathan won the luxury challenge w/ some good people and the B team (bitches and bastards) were left to lay around and grouse at camp. Hee hee hee. Gawd, how I hate that Abi Maria and Pete's looking quite detestable too. Johnathan felt the pressure and stated that he was going to win immunity. Guess what? He was right. That guy's really good at puzzles. Lisa's trying to run some of the game and it's working a little. Pete tried to make her look like a liar but at tribal council, it was proved she was right and Pete's a liar. Haw haw. We'll see how that works in the next episodes. Malcolm was put on the chopping block but he announced to everyone before the vote that he was going to use it that night. He was really smart because that scared people into not voting for him and he didn't play it. Abi Maria showed everyone her HII. Now I know why Pete kisses her butt. Jeff was totally blindsided and voted out. Next, I hope that crosseyed rat faced blonde guy goes. He's so homely, I can't hardly take it anymore.

Chef Race: UK vs. USA headed West. They had to do BBQ sauce and sell it. The USA team was savy and sold to stores in cases. The UK team charged more for their sauce and gave it a kick ass name. Yep, they won and the USA team was whittled down to just 3 after the final cooking challenge. Then they had to make pizzas and sell them. Cody drove his team crazy w/ his laziness but they can't do anything about it as long as he cooks like a champ. I was wary about the UK teams pizzas cuz they put their cheese on the pizzas in cubes. Obviously, they didn't know how much Americans like cheese on their pizzas. The USA team did a better job selling whole pies. The UK team must be slow in moving the customers. Maybe they need to stop chatting people up. I never knew Brits were such yappers. The USA team won and the UK team was down to 3 also.

Project Runway Allstars has all the designers getting along but sniping about each other behind their backs. This season, I find that Casanova is getting robbed. I've been loving his designs and he hasn't won. Anthony Ryan seems to be the judges' darling and he keeps making sheath dresses. Whatever! One challenge was using 70's type high heels for inspiration. That ugly chick from the first season made a pre-teen hooker outfit and got the boot. We found she and Suede bonded; Ew! Good for them. Last week the designers had to make graffiti designs. The show tried to make it sound posh by calling it aerosol art. Yeah right. Does that include beehive hairdos and armpits too? I don't know how Andrae survived this elimination cuz his outfit looked totally like circus clown on Meth. In the end, Suede joined his BFF in the eliminated group. I don't know why, but I'm really liking the judges.

America's Next Top Model took the girls to Jamaica. Does Jamaica have fashion? I think it was a cheap place to go to. Leala is back and more fierce than ever. The bitchy white girl got the boot finally and so did the skinny girl w/ the curly hair. Laura runs hot and cold and Kiara seems to be getting better and better each week. They did a shoot w/ the stupid perfume and one on horses. I still hate the judges on either side of Tyra and that stupid You Tube ugly hippie looking guy keeps showing up. Ick. The show is more annoying than cool so I mostly watch it online so I can watch TV while I'm watching some of the show.

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are chosen so now we just get stuff like shooting the swimsuit calendar. Those girls need some walking lessons. They had a swimsuit fashion show and they either looked like little old ladies missing their walkers or horses and not in a good way. I find it funny that Kellie Finglass is always saying she wants the girls to come off as All American classy but they barely have any clothes on in public. I really liked the dietician going to the girls' homes and finding everything from candy to cookies to frozen chimichangas in the freezers. Hilarious! Then again, the dietician also gave them a hard time for frozen vegetables too. Really? Anyway,the show's not as interesting now that the competition is over.

CMT has a show called Red Neck Island. I thought it would be something like Survivor. It's not hard living at all. The rednecks have an already built shelter, a bar, hammocks, luggage w/ clothes, an outhouse and food. The only things they don't have are phones, tv's and computers. The games are rednecky games which are funny to watch but dangerous to do. They really need to put that, "Do not try this at home." warning on the screen. I love the vote cuz they write names on cozies on beer cans and then put them in a cooler. The lady who had told everyone she wanted to go home and then changed her mind was sent home. Yeah. Who wants to listen to that again next week? Those rednecks aren't as dumb as they look.

Well, that's that. I love this season because Hallmark and Lifetime have really cheesy holiday movies that make me cry like a baby. Yep. I'm a schmuck. Until next time people, stay tuned.

Lady Luck Weighs In

2012-10-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody. Due to having to make financial cutbacks, I've had to downgrade my satellite package. Therefore, I get less channels. Don't be surprised if I don't write on some shows but I'm finding, I'm not missing the reality shows that I really like. The new season hasn't quite gotten into full swing. I still wonder why some shows don't return until November.

The Amazing Race went to Bangladesh. Everybody made it onto the same plane. I guess out of country flights aren't so plentiful out of Indonesia. At the airport, some teams got a jump on others by using the taxi dispatch. Wow! Whoda thunk it? Usually, it's better to do the NY style whistle and yell for a taxi but not this time. The Roadblock had 1 team member doing autobody work on a bus. They had a large area of the side of the bus that they had to spackle and sand. Then they had to haul 4 seats out of the bus to an area. All the co-ed teams had their men do the task but the twins really showed up the guys by getting it done in good time. The twin cheering on the other one really drove the other people nuts but it's probably because they were hot and tired. I thought it was hilarious because I love the twins' accents. The Monster truck guy had a good advantage because he repairs bodies of trucks. I don't know why, but I think this couple is really cool and find myself rooting for them when the other teams seem to diss them a lot. There was also a fast forward offered and shockingly enough, the first teams didn't go for it. Really? Do they know they only have to do 1 task vs. 2? The long hair don't care lawyers went for it. The fast forward consisted of gathering dead rats from 4 different places. Ew! I LOL when the laywers said they were used to working w/ rats. Ha ha ha Love it! After the roadblock, the teams made their way to a market stall w/ dried fish in huge bags. They had to find the red fish in the bag. I have a feeling each team got a new bag because they seemed to find it pretty quickly. Either that or the little guy manning the stall put a new red fish in the bags where it was found. The detour gave the choice of pounding metal or cotton. The teams could either make a huge spike by pounding the hot metal or make mattresses by pounding a pile of cotton to fluff it. The twins continue to surprise me in a good way by choosing the tasks that might seem not so suited for them and then really banging them out (no pun intended). They did the pounding metal and finished it in good time. Meanwhile, the long hair lawyers finish their fast forward and hit the finish mat first. Duh. I don't know why the 2nd place couple were surprised they weren't first. They didn't notice the lawyers didn't do the first task? I'm thinking more brawn than brains in the white couples. This time tall/small ran out of luck and came in last. I'm not sure where the hold up was except that they were really lame in the autobody repair task. Oh well. Bye! See you at the finish line.

Face Off was down to 4 artists and what a final four. These people have been really impressive all season. The challenge this week had the artists doing a kind of Grimm scenario makeup. They first found a crime scene and had to speculate what kind of creature did the murder. I was wondering who did the makeup of the murder victims because it was quite good. Did they really have to have the victims w/ open dead eyes? We don't need that much reality in this kind of show. They must've had a rule that they had to stick w/ the first crime scene they found because Derek didn't like the creature he had to do but he didn't go looking for another crime scene. Grimm creatures all are creatures that have human bodies but the heads are the creatures. This time, the whole body makeup that Roy likes to do wasn't necessary. I'm guessing the artists weren't that familiar w/ the show. Nicole made an incredible wolf face. Derek's bird guy was kind of sparse on the feathers. Laura made a scary bug like makeup. Roy made a lizardy creature. The judges even commented that all the looks were really good but Roy made a mistake in using a wig which proves he's not gay ha ha ha. Laura won and Roy was sent home. Not Roy! Noooo... Next week is the finale. Ooh, ooh, I can't wait!

The BBCA has a reality show on right now called Chef Race: UK vs US. It's kind of fun but it's definitely produced by Brits because you can see the production value is different. The hosts are relatively unknown and they utilize outdoor sets and natural lighting. Also, they like to show a lot of verbal fighting. The teams are in the USA which I think is kind of unfair since British and American palates are quite different. In the first few shows, the UK team would lose the challenges and then they put up 2 or 3 chefs from their team to cook against each other and the one w/ the worst dish would go home. So, needless to say, the UK team was getting quite whittled down. This week, the UK team got to take a chef from the US team. They chose Bianca because she was the only one they didn't have something bad to say about. Really? Not Cody? Hee hee. So the teams all had to sell food out of food trucks. 1 for each team. It was good the UK team had an American on their team because she was able to keep the food sellable. The US team had high pricepoints but probably too high for a food truck and for where they were (Tennessee). In the end, the UK team made the most money. The US team put up 3 guys. One of which had to be hospitalized for dehydration and heat exhaustion earlier in the day. That was so nice of them. After the cooking of fish and oysters, tasting and critiquing, the black guy w/ blonde hair was sent home. Bye! Wait, it was supposed to be a double elimination and the other 2 guys were tied. Really? They were given 15 minutes to make another bite of a dish. Oy! Cody came out on top and the Cuban guy was sent home. Bye! How funny is it that the team is left w/ the guy nobody on either team can stand. LOL! You know the producers made the judges keep Cody.

Survivor showed the tribes starving and standing around complaining about it. It seemed Skupin had been scoopin' up the rice right into his mouth eating it raw. Ok, I'd like to ask, why don't people forage for food? Here's a good rule, whatever those monkeys in the trees are eating, you can eat. I did notice there doesn't seem to be coconut trees like we've been used to seeing in other seasons of Survivor but they are right on the beach. There's no seaweed, kelp, crabs, or insects? What season of the year is this? Are the Survivors not allowed to wander the jungle or whatever the terrain is? We really don't see them going far into the trees much. I don't think that's fair for a show like this. If you were stranded on an island, there wouldn't be any restrictions on where you could go to find food and resources. Also, doesn't each team have fishing gear? Okay, so on to the luxury challenge. The teams had to play get the huge sphere in your goal. The game came to a huge stall when the players found they were too weak to push the big sphere when the other guy was leaning on it. Yeah, this game may have been better suited for the earlier days when the Survivors weren't so weak and hungry. I have to say though, some players have a lot of heart and gut it out (Lisa and Denise). So after an hour of no progress and everybody over the whole thing, Skupin and Penner make a deal. The red tribe would give the yellow tribe all their rice and the yellow team would let the red team win the prize. The prize was a picnic w/ huge sandwiches. Of course, the only people on the yellow team not going for it were the 2 dorks on the mat waiting to play their round. So the producers let the deal happen. The yellow team ended up w/ a bag of rice that was just as small as their's and the red team ended up w/ full bellies for only 1 day. We finally got to see the winning team enjoy their prize which they also found included letters from home. Penner had said he could catch fish. He did. Unfortunately, they were size of credit cards. He tried to do the Jesus thing and break them up to seem like more but it didn't work. My question is, why is Penner the only one trying to find food. These people are just as stupid as they are pathetic. Also, that white guy w/ the monkey face is getting homelier by the day. For the immunity challenge, the teams had to play catch the ball in your net shot from a slingshot. I would say the hero of the day was Lisa who was manning the slingshot. When Skupin told her to shoot to someone, she did. Wow! Somebody search her backpack. She's got protein bars or something in there. In the end, the yellow team won and the red team was sent to tribal council again. Before the tribal council there was a lot of vote planning and scheming but it's obvious the men are playing smart and kicking out their weakest links. At tribal, there was talk about the food decision and the obvious game play of making friends and then kicking them off; blah blah blah. In the end, the beauty queen was sent home. Bye!

On The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons, they showed the young people enjoying themselves except Alton. For some reason, the young guys were trying to pick fights w/ him and kind of being bullies. You could see on Alton's face, he was thinking he's too old for this. It does seem quite stupidly immature to bother someone on purpose when they're not bothering anybody else. It seems like envy or something. For the challenge, the teams had to do a series of events. The first was a chariot race w/ 1 guy pulling the whole team w/ a horse mask on. It was really funny to watch w/ the guys running into each other, falling and not able to get up. Hee hee hee For the next event, a girl hurled eggs over a wall while a guy caught them in a dog collar/cone. Even funnier! Finally, the top 2 teams jousted in their chariots. Team San Diego seemed to have the advantage w/ only 2 team members which made the chariot a lot lighter when the team was in it. San Diego proved they deserved to be in the game and pulled out the win. I'm not sure who the losing team was but it was one of the younger ones; maybe St. Thomas. Then Alton did something really dumb. He told a guy to tell the San Diego team he wanted his team to go to the arena. Really? I'm sure the rest of the team didn't want that. Even weirder, he didn't put himself in the arena, because of course San Diego obliged the request. The arena game was that strategy thing w/ the long rope in the jungle gym and tangling and untangling it. Las Vegas pulled out the win. I think Nany's anger at Alton really propelled her a lot. This is getting really interesting because that makes 2 teams of only 2 team members. Cool! Meanwhile, Alton's still there. Who knows what he's going to do but it's disappointing to see him caving in to the bullies.

Project Runway Allstars returned w/ a whole new bunch of vets. Ivy seemed more mellow. Andre wasn't a huge crybaby. Wendy was just as homely as ever. Kayne seemed to get more cool. And the rest were the rest. For the first challenge, the designers split into 2 teams to do collections. They were chosen by schoolyard pick and Wendy ended up as the cheese, standing alone ha ha ha. Her reputation really did precede her and the designers had good memories. Each designer was responsible for their own look in the collection so it wasn't really a team challenge. One team's collection looked black and blue and the other team's looked black and white. There was the visit to mood, a little work shown, the visit by Joanna Coles and then the runway. I was interested to see Aminat from Top Model in the show. She has a great walk but a dead face as usual. Anyway, Mondo was the guest judge and seemed to contradict the opinions of the other judges a lot. The black and white collection team were declared the winners. Andre made a cute quirky outfit and the judges hated it. Peach who was know for her good sewing skills landed in the bottom w/ an illfitting dress that was quite plain too. Suede who was still talking about himself in the 3rd person landed in the bottom w/ his handkerchief skirt dress; sooo 10 years ago. Anthony Ryan, Ivy and Casanova were the tops. Anthony Ryan was declared the winner w/ his sexy back top and white trousers. Peach was given the boot and rightly so. I think she knew it too because she took it well. I'm very excited for the rest of the season.

Ok, so I know I didn't watch Top Model. I got really mad at that show for last week's stunt. Also, NBC debuted a new show that sounded cool: Mockingbird Lane. See my review on it at tvjunkiejantina.hubpages.com and you can decide if you want to watch it or not. I'm really enjoying the Halloween episodes of my favorite shows. The Middle, The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family were really hilarious. Well, keep watching and until next time, stay tuned.

Fun Shows and a Finale

2012-10-20T04:43:00.000-07:00

The competition reality shows are rolling. I see a lot of different opinions about the shows on Facebook but not as many as there used to be. Is it possible people are tiring of reality shows? Maybe they've run out of ideas. All I know is, I'm still watching but have to admit, I see a lot of repeating of stunts and challenges. Maybe the real art of reality TV is figuring out how to be original after 10 seasons.

The Amazing Race was in Indonesia again. This time the roadblock involved one person carrying 20 dishes of food and placing them all safely on the table. The real hiccup in the race was the taksis trying to find the restaurant. I was impressed w/ the racers because very few dropped their dishes but when they did, it was hilarious. What you didn't see was the poor person who had to clean up the mess. Then the racers had to hop a train to the next place. Of course, that staggered the teams more. One team was just finishing purchasing their tickets when the train pulled away. They got their clue to the next place from a vendor on the train. The racers pounced on each one asking,"Do you have a clue?" Those poor guys. Most couldn't speak English so were quite taken aback. The clue notified the racers of an anonymous double U-turn. Oh boy! I was thinking, maybe now we'll see some action. Since a U-turn is a great delay tactic, I would think all of the teams would utilize it not just to delay teams from getting to the finish mat but to delay their starts for the next leg of the race. When they got off the train, the detour was a choice of either putting on huge costumes w/ big heads that they held in place w/ their teeth. Ick! Then they had to parade w/ people down streets and do some dance moves periodically. This is what I call the dum dum task because it takes no skills and yet will probably take the same amount of time for each team to complete. The other choice was, the teams had to pick up 4 eggs from a vendor, bring them back and have them scrambled in a pan over a fire held on the head of one of the racers. Oh boy! Then the team had to eat them. In this kind of task, the teams can alter their time w/ speed. Since it was only 4 eggs, it wasn't that hard. I would've thought the teams would've picked the eggs since it was also free food. The long hair don't care team was the only team to pick the eggs. Then the teams found the double U-turn sign. The double means 2 teams can be U-turned. That's dumb. Why only 2? Whatever. So team after team stepped up and declared they're not using it. Boring! People say it's because they don't want to make enemies. Really? It's anonymous and the racers can't respect each other to realize it's a competitive move? The only team to use it was the Monster Truck couple and they u-turned the tall/small sub teachers guys team. Luckily for the tall/small team, the 2 blonde girls were having a heckuva time w/ their transport guy. The racers weren't in car taksis but in bicycle taxi things w/ the people riding in a huge seat in front. The tall/small team had to do the egg cooking thing and while they were at it, the blonde girls arrived and ran around the area looking for the finish mat. Did they not recognize their fellow racers? Did they think that was the pitstop and they were having dinner? So needless to say, the very last racers were literally racing side by side to the finish mat until they hit a fork in the road. The blondes' bike taxi went left and the tall/small team's bike taxi went right. Right it was and the tall/small team lived to race another leg. What a finish! What great luck! Bye bye blondes. See you in the finale episode. Oh and that white young couple hit the mat first. No not that young white couple, the other one.

Face Off still had 5 artists. This time the challenge took the artists to a junkyard. They were told they had to make humanoid robots like Terminator, using items from the junkyard. The artists proceeded to throw all kinds of stuff into their shopping carts reminding me of homeless people who have snuck into the yard. None of the artists seemed to gather things w/ any real look in mind. Sarah started w/ the excuse that she was raised Mennonite and didn't know Terminator or robotic humans. Really? Are you still living at home? Have you not studied stuff pertaining to your career? Isn't she dating Ian from last season? I'm sure they've rented videos or seen other Sci Fi stuff on TV. Didn't she even watch his season? Well, if not, then I figured she oughtta pack her bags. So everyone proceeded to the workroom and started on their looks. I loved the back stories they gave their people. Of course Roy was amazing and did the whole body prosthetic thing again. He worked on a jaw that opened and closed electronically. Uh oh... He never has much luck when it comes to stuff like that. Sarah was bemoaning the fact that her person looked like a mechanical mish mosh. I was thinking she should go for a Frankensteiny human thing. Derek stuck a flashing thing w/ wires to his person's chest. Laura's model got sick in the chair taking up her time but she pulled it out. Nicole's look resembled a borg w/out all the tubes everywhere. It looked like Star Trek makeup and really well done. Nicole was declared the winner and Sarah got the boot. This time, you could really tell Sarah's look didn't look pro at all like the other looks and the ouster was deserved. Maybe she was overly fatigued and couldn't think anymore. Oh well.

Survivor showed the teams trying to survive the rain. The blue team of 2 people looked like 2 lonely drowned rats. Finally, they got off their duffs and searched for the HII and after many camera shots of it, I think they got the hint and found it. I'm thinking that camera guy got tired of the game and practically pointed out the HII to them because dude lady and long haired guy looked in, under, and around that rice container. Finally long hair Malcolm swiped at the box w/ the machete which knocked the HII off the top. OMG, that was frustrating. So then the tribes came together in front of Probst where he told the blue team they were to be split up and placed on the other teams. Instead of the dramatic picking of the buffs, they could've just flipped a coin. It was only 2 people. Anyway, Malcolm went to the yellow tribe and dude lady Denise went to the red tribe and they proceeded right to a luxury challenge. Yay! It consisted of 1 player from a team trying to knock a statuette off of the hand held platform of the other team's player. They went one by one. When the teams learned it really depended on who's statuette hit the ground first, Skupin came up w/ a brilliant move to throw his statuette high into the air while simultaneously batting the other guy's statuette right to the ground. After that, everybody tried the tactic. Abi Maria had to compete for once and was all whiny about getting her hair pulled. Awww... Ok, so the yellow team pulled out the big V w/ Malcolm being the hero of the day. The prize was all the stuff to make coffee and a huge platter of pastries. Did we get to see the team enjoy the prize? No. Oh come on! So back at red camp the people were trying to survive the rain. The skinny blonde pierced chick fell ill. So much that she finally had to quit the game. Johnathan had much empathy for her. Awww... Meanwhile, at yellow camp, Abi Maria is being mean. What else is new? For the immunity challenge, the teams had to navigate a short obstacle course, chop a rope to release big painted sticks. Some of the painted sticks had letters on them and they had to gather only those and then unscramble the letters to make a phrase. The beauty queen on the red team couldn't get her feet under her and really held them up. Yellow team w/ Abi Maria sitting out again, sailed through to the letter unscramble. I think when the other team is right beside you and has the same words to unscramble; you probably shouldn't shout out the answer. It helped, but not enough and yellow team pulled out the big win again. At camp, the red team really showed it was men against women. Denise wisely joined the men and the 2 remaining ladies were left in the cold; literally. Everybody pointed at the beauty queen. Mr. Baseball realized the black chick on the team could blow his pro cover and suggested her to go. Red team went to Tribal council for the first time. Probst seemed to be getting tired of trying to pull stuff out of the survivors and everybody seemed really tired. People are tending to keep stuff under their hats better this season. It must be frustrating for the editing crew to have no footage. Hee hee hee So on to the vote. The black chick was blindsided completely and had the creepiest torch snuffing I've ever seen. She stared at Probst while he was snuffing out her torch and then proceeded to lay a long hard kiss on him after. Ew... Even Probst was in shock. I was really in shock to see everybody voted for her. Even her friend the beauty queen. You could tell she wasn't expecting it cuz she didn't have her backpack w/ her. I guess the former blue team members aren't such big sitting ducks as I thought.

The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons started out at the arena w/ the Brooklyn team against the Fresh Meat team. Devyn and not Chet vs. fatty Eric and ugly Camilla. The game was mental and the teams each had to solve a memory puzzle. The girl would be at the puzzle in a harness being lifted into the air by how far the guy could descend into a vat of water. It was fun to watch Camilla get frustrated w/ Eric, yell at him, Eric give up and Camilla really verbally letting him have it between the eyes. OMG! It was good she was in the harness cuz I think she probably would've scratched his eyes out. So thus was the complete demise of the Fresh Meat team. On to the challenge. It consisted of a trivia contest w/ one person from each team sitting in chairs. When they answered wrong, they were unceremoniously dumped into the sea. It was hilarious but probably a bit painful for the players. Trishelle had to be medically treated for dehydration so didn't help her team. Maybe she should drink something other than alcohol. I can't remember who won but I know it wasn't Brooklyn, Cancun or Las Vegas. The bottom team was a really young team who I have no idea who they are. Brooklyn was thrown into the arena once again. How come nobody likes Brooklyn? This time the game was endurance which is the pushing the balls to the other team's side. All I can say is, the couple playing against Sarah and Chet were a tall thin gay black guy and a blonde chick who didn't try that hard. Guess who won. Yep, Sarah and Chet are really showing their stuff. You go people!

Project Runway had it's finale. Since the judges weren't that impressed by the mini show the designers gave them in the last episode, they were given more money to buy material and told to rev up things. I loved all the cute shots of Swatch at Mood. Awww...he's adorable. Melissa seemed to be the only designer to make a whole new look for her collection but it was just her same high collared dress in bright orange. Then the usual model picking, fitting, last minute sewing, styling, etc. was shown. I could've sworn I heard a designer complain models were too small for his clothes. Really? A model too skinny? Whoda thunk it? Fabio and Christopher lost their dumb wigs but Fabio stuck w/ his dumb shoes. No big drama like going overbudget or cheating. Onto the runway show. Dmitry's collection looked really cool but started to look all black and white until he showed some good pops of yellow. It was innovative and chic. Christopher's collection had that weird mud colored x-ray print. He cut down on it and everything he put w/ it looked dark and simple. he had a couple of innovative pieces but why no bright color? It looked like a fancy funeral collection. Zzzz... Maybe he was a one way monkey ha ha ha. Fabio was next w/ his watercolor skimpy resort clothes. It looked like some weird cult collection but it was innovative and refreshing. Melissa showed us her collection of looks she made during the season but in different colors. Most of her collection was black and white too. Was that a bathing suit I saw? Jennifer Hudson was the last guest judge. Didn't she do that another season? So the judges argued the good and the bad of each designer's collection. The editors have adopted the Chopped way of judging. First the judges say how much they like the collection but... Then they proceed to say what they thought was hideous, boring, cheap or ill fitting. After all the hashing and rehashing, Dmitry was declared the winner. Awww...he was so cute and gracious about it too. Yay!

I think I've been forgetting to tell about The Dallas Cheerleaders: Making the Team. The girls have gone through boot camp w/ some girls surprised to be sent home and some girls not surprised to be sent home. It was interesting to see how mirrors, space and proximity to other dancers affected the girls in their performance. This week, was the final week for Kelly and Judy to decide the team. They told us they had 37 lockers and 39 girls. Hm... The girls did some more practice on the field and then gathered round. No girls were eliminated and there are 39 girls on the team. Well, that was... unexciting. Then they showed the photoshoot for the the whole team picture. Finally they showed game day. I didn't see any major mistakes or mishaps and the fans always love the DCC. I was very surprised to find, this was not to be the last episode of the season. That means the show has changed from competition to voyeuristic. I wonder how many episodes are in the can? The DCC girls are so nice to each other, they're kind of boring if nobody gets eliminated anymore. I love when they have facebook scandal and Kelli calls them on it. Hee hee. I'm just wicked that way.

America's Next Top Model had the girls go on go sees. They went in pairs to different designers. Each designer would choose to hire 1 girl but each girl could be chosen by more than 1 designer. I was more impressed by how well the girls got from place to place in such a timely manner. That was good driving in L.A. The tall basketball girl bragged about playing basketball and her walk. The redhead shorthaired girl was shy and looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Victoria thought outgoing personality meant interrupting and talking over people in an annoying nasal voice. Also, she walked like her feet were too heavy. Meangirl Kristen did good in her first go see and then you could tell she was over it. Curly haired superskinny girl seemed a little scatterbrained but she was with Laura who was all put together. I was surprised to hear a couple of designers say the 2 skinniest girls were too small for their clothes. Really? I didn't think those words existed in the world of modeling. All the girls made it back in time. The only girls not chosen by 1 designer were the red short haired girl and Victoria. I guess she was more annoying than outgoing ha ha ha. 2 designers picked Laura and she was the winner of the challenge. She won a pile of designer clothes which made the green eyed monster come out in Kristen. For the photoshoot, the girls did mugshots in a prison. I thought they were more funny than fashion but oh well. In the judging, Tyra seemed to contradict all the other judges. What was up w/ that? Laura was declared the winner of this photoshoot and the 2 girls who didn't get picked by a designer at the go sees were in the bottom. For some odd reason, Victoria was liked more by the web viewers. The red short haired girl was in tears. Then Tyra announced a girl would be brought back in to the competition and picked by the online voters. This episode was called, "The Girl Who Came Back Into the Competition." Yay! I can't wait to see who it is. The eliminated girls come in and that's it. How very disappointing. They should've saved the title of the episode for next week. Bad Tyra!

I've been watching Dancing with the Stars but only the elimination shows. They always recap the dances a bit and we know all the dancers are pretty good cuz they've been on their own seasons before. A highlight was hearing Donny Osmond and Susan Boyle sing This Is the Moment from Jekyll and Hyde. The poor lady was so nervous, she was stiff as a board and clutched Osmond's hand w/ white knuckles. Actually, the real highlight of the show was Bristol Palin getting the boot. Bye and take your mother w/ you. Brooke is still the worst hostess ever. She's monotone, dull and boring.

Well, that's about it. I'm writing regular show reviews one by one on Hubpages too at tvjunkiejantina.hubpages.com If you want quick recaps of competition reality shows, stick right here. So keep watching and until next week, stay tuned.

It's Not Just the Weather That's Cool

2012-10-13T21:35:00.001-07:00

Hello fellow TV watchers. Or at least people who are interested in knowing what's going on in the land of TV. Some reality shows are wrapping up and some are just getting into the swing. Such is the ebb and flow of competition reality shows. I love that they do have beginnings and endings. Maybe one reason I don't care for voyeuristic shows is the feeling that they are never ending. Whenever I watch one, I'm always wishing someone would get eliminated. Oh well. On to the shows.

The Amazing Race went to Indonesia. All but the Monster truck couple team took the same flight. Sometimes that's a help and sometimes it's a mistake. It's interesting to note, they commented that they didn't know if they were ahead of everybody or behind everybody. We, the viewers, knew so it just made us feel bad for them. Luckily, everybody got to a stopping point w/ starting time tickets for the next day. The next morning, the teams had to do some kind of race w/ motorbikes vs. bulls pulling a human sled thing. Each team had to go one at a time so no getting ahead or falling behind there. I think the producers realized it wasn't a real contest because we only saw 1 race and then the rest of the teams just showing up at the end of it to get their clue. The roadblock had 1 member of the team pedaling a kid's ride to make it go while creating balloon animals and art cuz a lot of the balloons turned out to be hat types and that's not animals. I think the people who pedaled the merry go rounds had the advantage because they didn't have to get off the machine to give the balloon art to the next child. So when they had given each child a balloon art thing, they could move on. It was just as hard as it looked and the order of the racing teams really changed in this task. The one tall and one short men's team really fell behind because he just couldn't get the knack of those balloons. So the Sri Lankan twins and the young white couple were first out of the gate and the detour had the choice of hauling long ice blocks or setting up a fish display. The twins were the only team of the day to pick the fish and I have to say, they were impressive keeping an eye out for details and special instructions. The rest of the teams found difficulty in just finding the place w/ the detour clue. Once again, in a foreign country, make sure you have a taksi guy w/ a cell phone. 3 teams found themselves very lost and the Monster truck couple didn't take it well. I wonder what that taksi guy did to keep them in it? The finish mat happened to be right outside the market where the fish stand was and where the ice was to be delivered. The twins hit the finish mat first and they were hilarious and fun to watch. Surprisingly, the tall/short men's team who left the roadblock last were not the last to hit the finish mat. Wow! It really does prove you should never give up in this game. The young white couple couldn't overcome their bad taksi luck. No not that young white couple, the other one. It's early in the season and at this point, I'm just waiting for a few people to be weeded out so I can keep them straight.

The Food Network is having it's annual Halloween Wars competition. They take teams consisting of one pumpkin carving artist, one sugar artist and one cake artist. I'm not sure how these teams are created but some you look at and go, "They're going to kill it." and others you just hope they don't embarrass themselves. This season, the team of Ruccolo, Garcia and their pumpkin guy seem to be the shoe-ins. Richard Ruccolo has never lost a competition he's entered. Last year he did that ultimate cake competition, dropped his cake, got the boot, won his way back into the competiton and won the whole thing. How impressive is that? I love how calm he works too and he still bangs out beautiful work. The judges, I'm not too familiar w/ but I'm just grateful not to see that sour faced English lady. In this episode, Team Garcia ran away w/ the competiton winning both challenges. I knew the writing was on the wall for one team when they ended up w/ one heckuva ugly fat clown. It looked like Santa drunk at a Bar Mitzvah. Yep, the team got sent home. I don't think they were surprised either. The sugar guy was Dana. Hey, didn't he win the cake boss competition? What's going on? They're recycling contestants now?

Face Off had a really cute challenge. This time they only had one big one. The artists had to make Dr. Seuss characters from The Sleep Book. Is this an old book I never heard of or is this something from the archives of Dr. Seuss because I'm pretty sure he passed away? Since the characters were already drawn for the book, the artists didn't have to completely come up w/ the concept. The makeups were so cute w/ a lot of upturned noses, tufty hair and lotsa body fur. Roy made the whole body form and left his creature w/ a bare belly that looked a lot like a Buddha belly. It didn't seem too kid appealing to me. Laura covered her creature in black and white fur. Nicole's was a cute red thing to match her hair. The twin brother recreated the Grinch and Alana couldn't make her yellow puffball creature work. It didn't help that she started out with a feeling of failure at the very beginning. She was totally missing Rod. I didn't realize how much moral support he gave her as well as advice. The guest judge was Ron Howard's producing partner, Brian Grazer. He still has that signature frightened hair look. The artists should really ask him how he does that. Anyhoo, Nicole was declared the winner and Alana was sent home. I really think she looked exhausted and was probably ready to go home anyway. Bye! I'll miss...nothing actually. I hated her neon red hair and nose ring.

Survivor really focused on people making ousting plans and arguing. It was a little pointless since the blue team was still there. Yes, they're half the size of the other teams but they're still there. At least they showed people gathering food and cooking. On the red team, Johnathan took 2 guys to go fishing and they seemed to get quite chummy. The women of the tribe noticed. For some odd reason, I felt like all the men were speaking w/ forked tongues to each other. On the yellow team Lisa seems to be getting friendlier w/ her tribe. I don't know why they keep wanting to get rid of Skupin. He didn't win his season, he's a good worker and good in the challenges. What else does he have to do? I would also be all over that guy but I kind of have a thing for bald guys. Abi Maria showed her meangirl thing when she jumped all over her "friend" when the HII clue was found amongst the friend's spilled backpack contents. What they didn't know was, Peter just threw it on the pile and let the girl take the flack. What a turdy thing to do. Sometimes a big show of emotion can ruin your social game. At Blue team's camp, they were stating the obvious, "We need to win." No kidding! The game of the day consisted of each member carrying big balls milkmaid style over a rope obstacle and putting them into holders. They had to do one at a time. Then one person swung a ball on a rope to hit and break those balls. I was thinking, Hey! Blue team might actually have a shot at this. After all, w/ 3 teams, you don't have to win. You just have to not be the loser loser. This time the first prize was steaks and fixins. 2nd prize was fixins w/ no steaks. 3rd prize was no food and a trip to tribal council. Here's where it got unfair. Since the yellow and red teams had twice as many people as the blue tribe, they got to sit out any 3 players each. Oh come on! Give the Blue team a break. I think they should've either made all the players play or require at least 1 woman to play. I know that if all the players had to play the blue team members would've had to carry balls twice but they had heart and huge incentive to win. As it was, the yellow and red teams sat out all the ladies. OMG! At the beginning of the challenge, it seemed the red team found one of their men was kind of girly and fell way behind. In these games, you also need luck and once again, blue team didn't have it. The yellow team won the big prize and the blue team headed for tribal again. Poor Russell did not have the fortitude of Job and beseeched, berated and cried out to God for all the failure and unfairness of his Survivor life. Awww... it freaked out a lot of people including Jeff Probst. LOL! The red team traded their fixins prize for another tarp. With all the rain, who can blame them? Once again, we didn't get to see the tribes enjoying their prize. Too bad. I love to see starving people eat and it always makes people nicer to each other. At blue camp, Russell scrambled around looking for the HII. I loved the camera panning to it every 5 seconds. Too bad Russell didn't notice that. He was caught by the lone lady of the tribe. Let the 3 way conniving commence! It was predictable and amusing. What can I say? I got a kick out of it. At tribal, the Survivors were so tired and beat down Jeff had to drag stuff out of them. So we all wondered how the vote would go. Would the men vote for the lone woman? Would the 2 white people stick together? Would the older people vote out the younger? Would there be a 3 way tie? Well, Russell's luck ran out and he was voted out. Now he has even more complaints for God. As for his remaining tribe members, I think they're just fodder for the mill. If they join the other tribes or are mixed up in tribes, they're still gonners because they haven't been able to bond w/ the other players. I kind of feel sorry for them. Their only hope will be to win all the immunity challenges. Sigh...

The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons seemed to focus on the fatty Eric and his new found love from the Brooklyn team. Knight seemed to want to stir the pot by throwing peoples' laundry in the pool and generally messing w/ it. The girls were not amused. I'm not sure if he was drunk but it didn't seem so. I'm thinking he might be a natural douchebag. There were a few shots of Alton and Sarah but not much so maybe they're doing a really good job of being clandestine. Too bad cuz they're such a cute couple. For once, Trishelle hasn't latched onto a guy but the season is early. There was some fighting, shouting, hooking up and general drunkenness but what else is new? For the team challenge, it was a strength and endurance thing. Half the team was up on a platform holding onto a rope that had a large wood box on the end. The other half of the team gathered large rocks to put in other teams' boxes. Meanwhile, the people holding onto the rope had to keep the box from touching the ground. Eric proved he does have some muscle but it must all be in his legs. The other teams didn't give team Fresh Meat a break at all and filled their box first. Oh come on! It's not like Camilla can carry 2 rocks at once. Eric's rope started around his waist and he held that box of rocks up for a long time but when it came to armstrength, it was over. I loved the look of utter disgust he gave to everyone else. Being out first gave Fresh Meat an automatic place in the Arena. Oy! Team Cancun outlasted everyone and won the day. I wonder if it says anything about how strong their alliance is? Anyway, here's the part that pissed me off. The show wasted the rest of the hour showing more drunkenness, shouting, fighting and hooking up instead of the Arena. Ack! I hate that! It looks like they're shifting the sequence of the show and now the arena eliminations will start the shows. Ugh. I can't wait to see the arena because it's going to be Devyn and not Chet against Camilla and Eric and the game will be mental. Hmmm...

Project Runway was 1 show away from the finale and I have to say, it was the biggest waste of time since the finale when Mondo lost and wretched Gretch won w/ her granola collection. The 4 designers were sent home w/ time and money to do their final collections w/ the reminder from Heidi that not all of them would make it to fashion week. Oh Liar! We all know that the top 8 or so designers all get to show their collections at fashion week to throw off anyone who might notice who's who on the show. Tim Gunn proceeded to his usual visits. Christopher made a print from his mother's x-rays. Someone else has already done this and Christopher's was less cutting edge and more creepy. Also, all the clothes he's made are varying shades of black and mud. Tim also points out his love of sweetheart necklines. He encourages him to keep on working. Dmitry has lost his job and home but not heart. His designs looked quite skimpy w/ a lot of see through material and some tops that only a flatchested woman could wear. Note to Dmitry; wearing underwear as clothes was so 80's that Seinfeld made fun of it. His collection also seems to be a lot of black and white. Fabio made a bohemian resort collection w/ pastels. Tim questions the pants and asks if they can be made out of organza. I have to admit I was asking, "What's organza exactly?" I was questioning the Frankenstein's monster boots. Fred Gwynn would be so proud. I noticed the designers doing the blogs really loved this collection. Okay. Finally, Mellissa showed she's run out of original ideas. Her designs look like remakes of stuff she's done during the season. The difference is, everything is black and white. Ok! Of course each visit also has Tim meeting various people or seeing the area. The designers then come back together in a really nice place in New York. After a clinking of champagne glasses, they went to the workroom to do finishing touches on their looks. They had to pick their 3 best looks for the judges to see. Here's where it got really funny. They didn't do that. 2 designers actually admitted they didn't show their best looks. Really? Why are you holding back? It's like when they say, "I could've done better." Well why didn't you? Why are you holding back now? Then the judges pissed me off. Nobody was eliminated. Oh come on. You have 1 job to judge who's the worst and kick them off. If you can't, then I say, bring on new judges. These are worn out. So everybody hugged it out when they found they were all going to fashion week. Whatever.

A new show I found is Arrow. OMG, it's quite cool and filmed in a dark way like the last seasons of Smallville. It was the pilot episode so it established the backstory and origin of the superhero. It had a quick pace but not so quick we couldn't keep up. I've always felt that Green Arrow always was pissed off at something and now we know why. He survived a shipwreck that involved his Father, chick of the day, and others. It didn't turn out to be a Gilligan's Island thing because he was the lone survivor. He was on the island a really long time. I think his friend ticked off about 8 superbowls he missed. On the island was where he honed his archery and acrobatics. When he returned, he found his mother remarried, his girlfriend pissed off and his friends untrustworthy. Hmmm...Let the vigilanteism commence! All I can say is, I was wanting more archery and less running around. I'm hoping that in subsequent episodes, they have the 'giving the bad guy his due' thing more. In this time of tense times and nutballs coming out of the woodwork, this is a great show for something that we know we can never do. We want to see bad guys get what they deserve. God knows the police take forever cuz they have to be sensitive and PC. The courts hand down light sentences and too many bad guys don't get what they deserve and are laughing about it in their cells. It's frustrating and we want justice! We want to live vicariously through this superhero. So I hope the producers keep him mean and green and don't make him a huggable character.

Well, that's it for this week. What did you think about the shows? Do you hate non-eliminations as much as I do? Keep watching and until then, stay tuned.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2012-10-06T16:04:00.002-07:00

Fall TV has returns of oldies but goodies, premieres of some good and some bad and then there's the rest. In this day of modern TV programming, the networks aren't very patient. In the old days, they listened to somebody else and gave a show a chance to be noticed. Sometimes, by the time I hear about a show or find it, the network has already cancelled it and I only get to see 3 or 4 episodes. It's such a shame. Note to the network execs. Don't always listen to the critics. They seem to be old crotchety uptight ultra sensitive people or so young all they want is fast moving action. A lot of times you don't really know how good or bad the show is until a few weeks go by. That's when you see if the writers are rehashing or stealing old ideas. Ok, well on to the shows.

The Great Food Truck Race had it's finale w/ Nonna's Kitchenette (Jersey girls) and the Seoul Sausage truck (Koreans). This time, they didn't just race around a big city, they raced from town to town. It was kind of impressive but I'll bet it was exhausting. You know a lot of time was spent on the road and I don't think they can do prep or any cooking while the truck is rolling. At least when they film, that's what it looks like. Of course they had a truckstop and the Jersey girls won a 3 hour headstart while the Koreans had to shuck clams. The Jersey girls commented that the Koreans kept parking next to them. Yeah, I wondered about that too. How come they weren't told to find their own spot? It seemed rather lazy to me but the Jersey girls kind of got back at them by telling the customers in line, that the Korean service was slow. Here's a clue; if you're parked across town, it's tough for the competitor to steal your customers. One town they had to go to was very small, so the trucks were told they had to sell items for $2 or less. That's better than the $1 items last season. I liked the ending better because it didn't come down to who made it to the finish line first. Ok, yes, I realize it's a show w/ Race in the name but still it's food trucks and the name of the game is selling food. This time the winner was determined by who had made the most money. It was close but Seoul Sausage truck won and got to keep their truck and a good chunk of money. They got a bag full of bills and I expected them to roll around in it but nope. Once again, they didn't serve any sausage. That's kind of weird and as a customer, I would've been quite disappointed. It reminds me of the time my family traveled to the East coast and found a place called The Fisherman and it was a burger joint that didn't serve any fish. Weird. My parents never learned to ask locals about good places to eat.

The Amazing Race is back and I think they've started in California. I think the producers have given up on different start cities because Phil didn't even say what city they were in to begin. The teams are diverse but kind of like other seasons. There's the Father/Daughter team, Twins, the quirky, the gay team, the white trash, the married couple, the engaged couple, etc. So the teams set out for China after rappelling down a cliff to get their first clue and making a mad dash for the airport. At the airport, one team ducked under the lane ropes at the gate to get ahead of other teams. Hey, I say good for them. I like to see fierce competitors who shun social manners and remind the other pansy racers that it's a race for crying out loud. I may be in the minority of viewers in this day and age of kinder and gentler. Yeah, ick. I also hate that No Child Left Behind thing too. In China the first task had 1 team member playing pingpong against a very young person who used funny items like saute pans, tamborines and clipboards for his paddle. I thought it was hilarious. They had to play in turn w/ the Chinese player moving to the next table after a point was lost so the task took longer than you'd think. The black sisters team had one yelling at the other a lot which unnerved the Chinese. You could tell the Chinese player got fatigued because the teams seemed to win all at once. Then they had to go to a place and eat frog fallopian tubes. Double Ick!!! They looked nasty and I wondered if they tasted nasty as well. The clue told the racers they weren't able to pick up the serving vessel which forced them to either use the chopsticks or their fingers. Every team followed the clue except the monster truck white trash couple and he had to eat twice as much as the other teams. Ew. Then the teams showed whether they had any intelligence or not. They had to find a lady using an abacus. I loved the clips of teams running back and forth right in front of the lady. It was obvious they didn't know an abacus from a hole in the wall. I wondered why people didn't ask strangers if they saw her because I don't think that's a normal thing to see someone just sitting outside w/ an abacus. The smart teams were able to get ahead at this point. One leading team asked another team about it and they were dumb enough to tell them. There's a cool twist to this season. If the team who comes in first in the first leg of the race ultimately wins the whole thing, they get 2 million semoleans. This was not a time to give any help to another team. I would've been mean enough to really misdirect them like, she's in a boat and the abacus is colorful chopsticks. It was a crucial mistake because the team that asked, made it first to the finish mat just by being faster on foot. I have a feeling the producers won't have to shell out the 2 mill cuz this team isn't very bright. The father/daughter team came in last and thank you producers for not making it a non elimination leg. I got so tired of those last year that I actually did skip a few episodes and watched them weeks later on-line. I have hopes for an exciting season and I hope the teams take their gloves off and keep their eyes on the prize. We'll see.

Face Off had cool challenges. First for the quick challenge, they brought back eliminated artists and had them do makeup w/ a Dia de la Muerta theme. You could tell the people who were very familiar w/ the theme and who weren't. Ultimately, all the makeup looked pretty good but Nicole was declared the winner and was brought back into the competition. WTG girl! For the main challenge, the artists were paired up w/ children who had drawn their own vision of a monster. It was quite whimsical and interesting to note, even though the monsters had scary stuff like big teeth, multiple body parts or horns, they weren't scared of their monsters. I have a feeling these children were fans of the movie Monsters Inc. Billy Crystal's voice could never be a scary thing. The artists worked very well w/ the children really fleshing out their ideas from the crude drawings and having a real description from the kids. The artists final sketches were so cool; I was flabbergasted by their talent. Then the artists had to make the look. I kept wondering what Roy was doing. He's wicked talented and they only showed about 15 seconds of him working and hid his work by filming him standing in front of it. Again, I was impressed by those who made a great overall look that didn't look so anthropomorphic. Laura, who's really quiet but fierce made a fuzzy body that she didn't think would work. Roy literally had a face on one arm of the monster; crazy cool. Unfortunately, his monster had technical problems. Alana has a weird fixation w/ pink paint and tends to use it on all her looks. Maybe she likes to match her hair. Sarah somehow pulled all her look together in the last hour. Wow, she must be some kind of speed demon. I was surprised to note the artists had all their models standing up straight. I would think this would've been a time to have a look on a crouching model. If the models weren't so skinny, the looks probably would've been less human looking. Oh well. In the end Laura won w/ her green fuzzy bodied Jabba the Hut and Rod was sent packing. Bye Rod. You were so cool and fun, I'll miss you. BTW, you rocked! I thought your monster was cool, but maybe too human looking.

The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons was sans Team Austin. Nobody seemed to notice. The show loves to show pairings and we saw fatty Eric getting cozy w/ Devyn, Jonnae w/ a white guy I can't remember his name, Sarah getting really cozy w/ Alton and a couple of younger players rekindling their romance from their season. I say, Yay Sarah. She deserves a nice guy after futiley chasing after douchebags in previous seasons. She also gets dazzled by strong athletic guys and that's Alton, alright. Meanwhile, Trishelle thought Sarah had ulterior motives. Really? I call that projecting cuz Trishelle would totally use a guy to get ahead in the game and use him as a shield from the arena. Ok, so on to the challenge. It was quite precarious w/ the teams having to make their way across a steel hill of bars w/ only big iron hooks. BTW, did I mention the big steel structure was high in the air over water? All I can say is, the builders are quite impressive and seem quite handy w/ the welding torches. Since Team Las Vegas won the previous challenge, they got to determine the lineup. That poor Fresh Meat team was sent in first again. Fatty Eric showed everyone what it looked like when a person fell from the steel structure; looked painful. You'd think in his spare time he'd be doing pushups or lifting weights. So once again, Team Las Vegas won and Team Fresh Meat was in the very bottom. It seems to be a running theme and I'm afraid it's going to stay that way until that Fresh Meat team is eliminated. I like that the losing team is automatically in the Arena and don't get to determine their opponents. For the Arena, Las Vegas sent in Team Brooklyn (Sarah's team) after much arguing. You can't blame Alton for wanting to spare Sarah but I don't think Sarah told him to do that. Trishelle not only told people Sarah was using Alton, but that Sarah wouldn't volunteer to compete in the Arena for her team. Well, Trishelle was wrong hee hee hee. Way to show those balls Sarah. The Fresh Meat team couldn't make up their minds who should compete cuz Cara Maria didn't want to take her turn. Las Vegas got to choose and gave fatty Eric a reprieve and sent in Cara Maria and Brandon. They also chose the strategy game. It looked really tough. The teams had to tangle a big old long rope that was tied to them all over and around a dome shaped jungle gym. Then they switched and had to untangle what the other team had done. This game required intelligence, stamina and athleticism which really describes Sarah. She did a really good job of leading Chet and Chet did a really good job of letting her lead. Was it a surprise that Sarah and Chet won? Nope. Cara Maria pointed out that now ugly Camilla was stuck w/ fatty Eric. Yowza, what a team. If next week's challenge involves eating, team Fresh Meat may have a chance. I wonder if the producers will skew it that way or not? We'll see.

Survivor is getting dull because each show is looking like the previous one. They need to show more scenes of camplife because it just looks like the people are standing around conniving but aren't very bright about it. The thing that separates this show from Big Brother is the primitive living. We know a lot of the game is social manipulation but so are most of the other reality game shows. This time there wasn't so much rain. The tough talking hispanic lady w/ the accent found the HII (hidden immunity idol) but then let the guy have it and proceeded to brag she found it. He didn't look amused and I wonder if she let him keep it w/ him? Bad mistake if she did because if it's not in your possession, you can't use it. This season is showing an obvious winner team and an obvious loser team. The blue loser team pointed out the obvious, "We're down to 4.", "We need to win." On the yellow team, Lisa's agreeing to vote out Michael if they go to tribal council. Yeah...I don't think so. On the red team, they speculated Johnathan had the HII and he finally just told them he did. Then they proceeded to plan a blindside if they went to tribal council. Yeah...I don't think so. Ok, so on to the challenge. It involved people retrieving round floaty puzzle pieces from a rope somehow tied to the bottom of the ocean. I wondered how they did that cuz the contestants weren't able to just pull the rope up to get to the floaty pieces but they were able to use the rope to help them descend under water. Then the floaty pieces were strung on a rope in puzzle fashion and a word was unscrambled from letters on the pieces. Got that? I knew it was trouble for the blue team when it involved swimming and stamina. Par for the course, Russell proved to be quite lame and Angela, Ashley or whatever her name was, was hampered by her own implanted flotation devices. So really, the blue team only had 2 people doing all of the work. Michael, on the yellow team, busted his water goggles right in his face by diving into the water w/ them on. There must be a technique to it cuz Olympic swimmers do it all of the time w/ out breaking their goggles. Hmmm... He looked quite the primitive warrior w/ blood running from his orbital areas. Luckily, he didn't damage his eyeballs. Okay, so long story short, the red team won first and got a big fishing kit, canoe and immunity. Yellow team came in second and won a small fishing kit and immunity. You guessed it! Blue team won nothing but a trip to tribal council. There was a little back and forth between blonde girl or Russell. The other 2 couldn't decide who was the weaker member. At tribal, the whole thing was hashed out and blonde girl tried to make her excuses but only dug her grave deeper. Russell was tired and weak and talked in circles. In the end, the team decided the blonde girl was the weakest link and voted her out. I did notice that at least the votes make a little sense this year. The team is trying to retain it's most athletic people but it doesn't help when the team was weak people from the very start. I think the show will let the team whittle down to 2 people and then just put them on the other tribes. Maybe they'll mix up the tribes cuz if they just distribute the last 2 blue members to the other tribes, they're going to be dead meat. We'll see. Meanwhile, Zzzzz...

The debate between Obama and Romney was a good reality show in itself. I realized how spot on Jay Pharoah's impression of Obama is on SNL. How come I never noticed that growling Ughhh... sound before Obama speaks, before? Sorry to say, after all the finger pointing, promises and mild digs, I still think both speak w/ forked tongues. I think Romney practiced a lot lot lot and he was declared the winner by well... almost everybody. Wow! WTG Willard! Also, I appreciated how they kept it short and didn't bother the TV lineups. Yay! I liked them a little more.

I watched Life After Top Chef and y'know what? I discovered, I didn't really care much what happened to the chefs after Top Chef. We have Twitter now and I didn't learn anything new and watching people cook w/out instruction and competition is kind of boring. There wasn't even a dinner rush scene like they have on Kitchen Nightmares. How come the people don't seem as interesting and exciting as they did during their Top Chef seasons? I'm thinking the editors and producers of Top Chef are better than I thought. To sum it up, I suggest you don't watch the show and just follow the chefs on Twitter. At least they tell you there, what they're cooking.

Project Runway was down to 5 designers and kept saying this was the show that would determine the finalists. I didn't believe them. The poor designers were looking very exhausted w/ big undereye circles and droopy shoulders. They also smile less. They still haven't recovered from those stupid baby dolls from the last challenge. Curses on the producers for doing that to them! I hope every baby they encounter pees, drools or vomits right into their mouths. Ok, I'll shut up about that. So the designers were told they'd go to a far far away place. I too thought they'd take a cool trip like they did in Jeffrey's season. Nope, they went to a castle that I've never heard of and didn't even get to go inside. Whatever. It's a stupid makeup themed challenge. Didn't they already have one of these this season? It's not like the models don't wear dramatic makeup during the regular challenges. The makeup company showcased a fantasy line and they based them on kind of fairytale women: evil enchantress, artsy muse, mystic, huntress or something like that. You get the idea. I was thinking they would make fantasy Barbie dresses like you see during the Holidays. At Mood, Swatch was underfoot but unharmed. Probably because everyone gravitated to the gaudy materials. Oh and the designs had to be avante garde. When I think avante garde, I think a lot of Vivien Westwood w/ her outlandish but cool looks that only Lady Gaga would dare to wear in public; artistic but not wearable by the normal person. Poor Sonjia found her main gold lame material missing. I wondered why she wasn't able to retrieve it but then I learned the bags from Mood are given to PA's to take back to Parsons. Maybe the bag was lost in transport. If so, she should've been able to buy the material again. Totally unfair! Fabio worked on what looked like a transparent dress and a coat you could wear upside down. It reminded me of that upside down shirt dress made in a previous season. None of the rest of the looks looked even close to avante garde. Dmitry made a short dress that looked gorgeous and cool but not fantasy or avante garde. Christopher's black gown looked better going than coming w/ strange feathers on the arms. He has a stick figure model and made her look fat and shapeless from the front. It didn't help that she has no shape to fill out the clothes and she's dull as dishwater on the runway. Fabio made his transparent dress into palazzo pants that I swear gave the model camel toe. Ew. Sonjia ended up w/ a green dress that had way too much opaque flesh colored mesh that didn't match the model's skin. Kors hated it to the max. Melissa had a colorful gown w/ a high collared vest. Heidi shocked me and made me LOL at the same time when she said, "I can't decide who's look is uglier, your's or Fabio's." to Melissa. Oh dear, that was kind of harsh. Even though it wasn't very avante garde, the judges loved Dmitry's look. Then the designers were asked who they'd want to go to Fashion week w/ them. I hate that. You know it's tough on the designers because they've all become close. It's hard to say something like that in front of the person you're talking about. But they did it and I noticed nobody said Sonjia's name. Awww...why not? Dmitry was declared the winner and poor Sonjia was auffed. Well shoot. I was really hoping to see her collection. Bye Sonjia, see you at the reunion.

America's Next Top Model stopped showing Kristen as a mean girl. That was nice of them. For the challenge, the models traveled in RV's in 2 teams, made pitstops and had to do random acts of modeling. It was a hilarious concept but some of the girls didn't understand it. You have to look like you're doing an everyday thing but do a pose while doing it. Also, they had to film a snip of a commercial w/ another girl holding the filming Ipad. So after a lot of running around, snapping photos and such, Laura was declared the winner. I think her prize was having her snippet shown on website. Hmmm...I wondered if she got paid for it? During the show, we also realized that Victoria has a scary attachment to her mother. If her mother should die suddenly, that girl will be royally screwed. Being away from her mother has even made her taste buds die. The other girls comment on her weight loss and she is looking more wan. The photoshoot was strange w/ the girls in cute dresses but in gross situations like laying in a dumpster of trash, licking soda off of the floor, puking in a toilet, etc. Ugh. Not only that, the girls didn't get a break after the runaround challenge from the day. They did a really great job at not looking exhausted, but they are young. Victoria always makes a scenario to go w/ her shoot and this one was rambling and hilarious. Maybe that's what exhaustion and being undernourished does to you. Judging has become predictable and boring. It seemed ugly Cutrone and that dumb male model have finally given in to Tyra and gave similar scores to Tyra's. This time, they showed only nice comments from online people. That was nice of them. Sometimes I wonder what they're looking at. Victoria's photo looked like tired girl sitting on the toilet. They loved it. Huh? In the end the girl who's photo was licking the soda off of the floor was sent home. Yeah, I kind of saw that coming cuz she was in a pose that didn't show off her body and then failed to engage the camera. Laura was also on the bottom 2 but I think her challenge win saved her.

I was able to see The Middle. Man, are those writers up w/ the times. Frankie was let go from her job and I felt for her when she voiced big plans and then realized, deep down, she didn't want to do them. The rest of the season should be funny to watch Frankie wrestle w/ what she can do vs. what she should do vs. what she wants to do. Also, the family will be living on less which is a theme widely known in this economy. The Big Bang Theory was bumped to a late night viewing by the local network for football. I hate football. Those guys can't stick to a time schedule to save their lives. 5 minutes on the clock turned into 40 in real life. Ugh. At least the stupid Cardinals were spanked by the other team. Raising Hope is officially back and funny as usual. It was really cool to see the Mother/Daughter team of Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffith on the show. I never knew how funny Hedren is. She was the funniest corpse since Weekend at Bernie's. I've been trying to watch Elementary but something always goes wrong. The network showed Hawaii Five-O instead once and they cut it the next time.

Well, that's enough for now. I know I didn't cover a lot but hey, I gotta stop before the blog becomes an encyclopedia. Keep watching and until next time people, stay tuned.

It's Fall, Not a Fail

2012-09-30T11:32:00.000-07:00

Autumn is here and so are the new seasons of our favorite and familiar shows. Of course we go through the cycles of finales and premiers but it's all a part of the TV show life. It makes it all so exciting.

The Great Food Truck Race took it's 3 teams to Cleveland. The truck stop challenge really made no sense and the producers really scrambled to try to use the sponsor (a certain restaurant chain), a seasonal item (beefsteak tomatoes) and the locale all at once. To boil it down, the teams had to come up w/ a good dish using a huge tomatoe. Note to the Jersey girls, green tomatoes are best if you're going to deep fry them. The Pop-a Waffle guys made bruschetta and won. Well duh. How come nobody made salsa or pasta w/ marinara? Don't overthink. You don't have time for it. This time, the prize was money for the till but not as much. The Waffle guys also got 3 more hours to be open for business. So of course everybody parked, cooked and sold. You can tell the teams have learned a lot about utilizing their time and resources. I'm sure they're sending one of their members out to buy new groceries every now and then, but you don't see it. I also noticed the other trucks take cues off of the Seoul Sausage truck. I'd like to ask the Koreans where's the sausage? I've seen a lot of fried rice balls but not much of the one food that's in the name of your truck. Whatever. Anyway, kudos to the Koreans for carving their own path in the race. So, the speedbump consisted of making the trucks move in the middle of service. Oh well. Toward mid afternoon, business always dies down a little. The Pop a Waffle truck got nervous about it and decided to go chase a better rainbow. It was a crucial mistake because they ended up stuck in traffic when dinner time rolled around. Where the heck were they going? The thing to remember is, when you're rolling, you can't sell any food cuz it's hard for people to throw the money to you. In the end, even though they won the extra money, Pop a Waffle made the least money and was eliminated. Next week will be the finale w/ Nonna's Kitchenette against Seoul Sausage. May the best food truck win!

Face Off never ceases to impress me. They had a spotlight challenge w/ just overly dramatic makeup. The men all commented about how they weren't good at it. I had forgotten that makeup artists do have to do regular beauty makeup for people too. A good example is Star Trek. Yes, they made a lot of interesting aliens but the humans were done well too. You could tell cuz they'd take people who weren't all that good looking w/out makeup and they'd be really good looking on the show. I was disappointed that they didn't show any footage of Roy doing his makeup because it was awesome and he won. What did he win? He won what every contestant wants: immunity. For the big challenge, the artists had to make a look for a character in the video game Dishonored. This was the first time I'd heard of steampunk. It's edgy old fashioned style. The artists got to choose which type of character they wanted to do and then they did amazing work. I was impressed by how some made black guys into white guys, women into men, skinny guys into meaty guys and...well, just Wow! I was wondering if they really had to make the clothes. Rod had a model who was so good looking I could hardly take it. Tommy left 2 hours worth of work for his last looks time which was only 1 hour. It's not good when the judges say, "Oy vey!" About your work. Derek made Rod's usual face for his character. Roy's look was amazing as usual. I have to say, I couldn't judge the looks if my life depended on it. They all looked crazy good to me. In the end, Derek won and Tommy was sent home. A lot of times in these games, it's all about time management and luck. Bye Tommy. You proved you weren't such a douchebag after all. You had a douchebaggy teammate in that first challenge.

Hot Set had the production designers design a throne room set for an evil queen. The show looked a lot like last week's w/ the same work going on. Yawn. The producers tried to make drama by showing one sent looking quite bare on the 2nd day but the team was working like the Amish. They built the walls and stuff apart then put it all together in one blow. Poof! Done! One set looked aquatic and the other looked mechanically Star Warsy. Both sets lacked a throne. The set that seemed more bare won. Okay...whatever. I sense more boredom to come.

Ok, I'm sorry I said one team on Survivor was green but it's actually blue. Whatever. I should just rename them the loser team. Well, anyway they showed what the Philippines have a lot of: rain. Here's a good piece of advice. Moving around helps you stay warm when it's cold. Unfortunately, the Survivor contestants are all pretty stupid and can't seem to hunt and gather to keep their nutrition up, so they weakly sat around and shivered and whined like pitiful chihuahuas. The buxom blonde on the blue team cuddled up w/ the young guy and had the rest of the tribe speculating that they were the next Amber and Rob. The black seminary girl pointed and complained to everyone about it. She was like a lot of christians; judgemental w/ an acid personality. She also sat around a lot and prayed out loud. Ugh. I hate that. No wonder primitive people kill the missionaries. For once, dumbass Russell was laying low and just let her vent to him. On the yellow tribe, the people sat around complaining about the cold and rain. Guess what the red team was doing. Yep, same thing but in a cave away from camp. It allowed Jonathan to scramble around to look for the HII (hidden immunity idol). When he finally found it, he danced around and shouted. You would think the tribe would've realized he found it since there's not much else going on in the camps. Man, these people are stupid. Once again, the producers had the luxury challenge and the immunity challenge all rolled into one. Really? Some dumbass must've told them, "We wanna see more whining and less action." Who was that person? I want to poke their eyes out. So the challenge was actually 2 rolled into one w/ half of it physical and the other half mental. The teams had to first drag a sled and gather puzzle pieces and then of course, put the puzzle together. No food in this win so the goal was just to not come in last. The blue team proved they're short on both fronts and headed to tribal council for the 2nd time. Back at blue camp, there was no looking for the HII and there was no real strategizing. Instead, there was a lot of fingerpointing and excuses. At tribal council, everyone was so tired Jeff had to drag people out of their shells. We basically heard the same stuff that they said at camp. It looked like the vote would be close but it turned out not to be. Everyone was annoyed by the lazy loudmouthed seminary girl and they gave her the boot. Bye. Go off and tell everyone what a blessing from god that was.

Top Chef Masters had it's finale w/ Chris Cosentino and Kerry Heffernan as the final 2. Doesn't Kerry have the same name as the wife on King of Queens? I digress. As usual, the chefs had to make a whole dinner w/ courses. This time it was linked w/ letters: love letter, apology letter, thank you and letter to self. Here's the key. Just make great dishes and good stories to link them to the stupid letters like, I made a pile of crap to apologize to my wife for not walking the dog. You get the idea. W/ the help of their own soux chefs, Kerry made classic and clean looking dishes and Chris went w/ his usual offal offerings. The real difference was, Kerry had to adjust his dishes when he only shopped at one place and they didn't have everything he really wanted. Chris was able to make exactly what he wanted and one thing was blood sausage. Ick. The judges table consisted of the snootiest food critics they could find. The pickiest one was really fat so I'm guessing he must really love deep fried butter. Kerry presented and described his dishes like a maitre'd while Chris presented his dishes w/ so much heart, it made everybody choke up. It worked cuz he won. Yay! He won good publicity for his restaurant and a lot of moolah for his charity. WTG Chef Cosentino. I thought you'd pull it off from the very beginning and everyone has forgiven you for yelling at Art.

The Challenge: Battle of the Seasons had a cool challenge. Of course a lot of the show showed a lot of shenanigans in the house w/ fighting, drunkenness and hookups happening left and right. What else is new? For the challenge, they had a good old oil wrestling w/ people going 1 on 1. I could tell from the changing daylight that it took a looong time to do all of the matches. For each match, the winner got 1 of 4 pieces of the team's picture icon and got to choose the next matchup. The goal was to get the 4 pieces to finish the icon. I loved the way the teams figured out how not to really have to play. A lot of matches were obviously thrown but who can blame them? I was surprised there weren't a lot of wardrobe malfunctions. I was waiting for someone to pull down a guy's pants as they fell. Those editors probably had a huge pile of footage on the editing floor ha ha ha. The alliances were shown and held up w/ the danglers on the bottom. It was team Austin losing in the end which wasn't a surprise since half their team was eliminated last week. They automatically went to the arena. Another young team won the top spot and sent the fresh meat team, w/ fatty Eric on it, to the arena. The game chosen was endurance. Actually, I was disappointed to see the arena game didn't require that much endurance. It consisted of 2 people from each team shoving balls on ropes to the other team's side. Whoever had the most balls on their side lost. The taller people had the advantage cuz they really didn't have to move too much. In the end, fatty Eric and ugly Camilla won for their team and the last of team Austin went home. Bye! I could tell they really didn't want to be in the game anyway.

Project Runway had the worst challenge ever. Heidi took the opportunity to advertise her baby clothing line by making the designers make outfits for...wait for it...babies. Ugh. Dmitry cracked me up so much this week, my stomach still hurts from laughing. The funniest thing is he says his hilarious comments w/ such a straight face: "Heidi has like 105 kids.", "It's like making clothes for cats; literally." Ok so the designers also got toddlers w/ their mothers as clients. Poor Christopher got stuck w/ the head of lettuce who liked to throw around designer names. The cloth and appliques were provided to fit into the already existing clothing line. Heidi showed up in the workroom and literally told Christopher to drop his idea and make a dress w/ flowers all over it. Christopher was no idiot, he took the idea and ran w/ it. Once again, Melissa made her design way complicated. Oh by the way, did I fail to mention the designers had to do their work w/ those annoying baby dolls they use to teach teens what it's like to be a parent? I thought that was totally unfair cuz the designers were overly fatigued already. I would've thrown the dumb doll into the refrigerator. Then another twist; they had to make a companion look for the Mothers because god forbid the mothers go down the runway in their own clothes. Luckily, they wouldn't really count. You mean those stupid kids can't toddle down the runway by themselves? Aww...why not? So Mood did get it's promo spot. I loved when Elena asked why Swatch couldn't be her baby. No kidding. The look on Swatch's face was, "No way!" Okay, so back at Parsons, the producers had mercy and let Tim Gunn take the baby dolls away. It was so nice of them to make the designers have to have them overnight. That was just not right. The designers did an amazing job of slap dashing outfits and dresses together for the mothers. Christopher's toddler mother must've been told to stop being a diva cuz she was much more accepting and cooperative. Runway time! Fabio's little boy had a cute overall and cap thing. Dmitry's toddler was barefoot and in a red onesie hoodie that made him look like a teletubby crayon. Melissa's had a white too tight dress w/ a vest that was totally not made for an active toddler. Christopher had made the exact dress that Heidi told him to make w/ a jacket. Elena made a cute outfit but didn't match the colors well at all. Sonjia made the cutest grey pants outfit w/ black patches on the elbows and knees and a cute baby pullover top underneath. People commented that the neckline was large. Well yeah. It has to go over that huge head. In the end, there were 2 winners (for boy and girl) and it was Sonjia and Christopher. Elena's luck finally ran out and she was sent to designer purgatory. Bye Elena, you got eliminated when we started to like you. Oh well.

America's Next Top Model seems to have less teaches than usual. Okay, yes the audience has seen them all but these models need the teaches. Oh well. Instead, they're showing a lot of drama in the house. Some of the girls are above that so it seems the less intelligent girls fight amongst themselves. The photoshoot consisted of steampunk. Wow! This is the 2nd time in the week I've heard of this after never hearing of it before. How old am I? So this time, steampunk meant the girls wore edgy vintage looking clothes w/ edgy gothic type makeup in front of a steam engine and holding an owl. The owl was the coolest participant and seemed to outpose a few of the models. The blonde meangirl got freaked out by the owl; probably cuz the bird was way smarter then she was. Yvonne was bored on set and made the mistake of showing it which made the Asian blogger guy blow up at her. She apologized but he wouldn't let it go. OMG! Calm down. It's not a real world photoshoot. Unfortunately, most of the girls seemed to be blind to their outfits and surroundings and didn't give fierce attitude in their pictures like they should've. They really need the teaches. Mr. Jay was really good at pinpointing what the girl would be doing wrong or what she would be lacking. This new guy doesn't have that so even though we're halfway through the group, they haven't improved in their pictures. One girl literally looked like Hermione Granger waiting for the Hogwarts Express. So the judging ensued and you can see a lot of bias w/ the judges at this point. I like that the judges give a numerical judging because it makes the bias really blatant. Anyway, it came down to the viewer votes and Yvonne was sent home. Yeah, nobody likes a pre-model diva w/ an attitude like that and we could tell, she was over this competition anyway. Bye! Go and take a good nap. You need it.

OMG, I was so happy w/ the premieres of The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, How I Met Your Mother and Mike and Molly. They were all exciting and hilarious. Big Bang has Wolowitz in space but still being screamed at by his mother. Hilarious! The only thing was, his hair would've been fly-away in zero gravity which would've really been funny. Think Wolowitz as Einstein. Hee hee hee. Modern family had everybody finding out about Gloria's pregnancy. Phil said the best line, "Anyone could do it w/ Gloria." No kidding. I'm straight and I'd do her. It was a great episode: funny, warm, clever and also heartfelt. I'm thinking they'll probably win an Emmy for it next year. How I Met Your Mother had the new parents stupid and delirious from lack of sleep due to the new baby. Thank you, producers, for not showing the baby. I hate shows w/ babies. It was funny but got a little annoying halfway through the show. Mike and Molly were ending their honeymoon but the funniest part of the show was the drunken family taking advantage of their absence. I find it weird that Mike and Molly are married now but still going to live in her mother's house. Ew. Why? They both have good jobs. 2 Broke Girls was also back and actually kind of funny. This time they focused on the rich girl's world which is much more fun and the guest star was Steven Webber. He's funny but his lifted face is getting kind of creepy. I hate when Survivor is on at the same time as The Middle cuz I always have to enjoy that show in re-runs. Two and a Half Men actually just rehashed an old script from when Charlie was on it. I'll bet Lorre thought nobody would notice. Time to put that show to rest if they're going to do that. I still say Kutcher's no Sheen. I'm very disappointed by the dramatic offerings by the networks. What's up w/ so many crime dramas? W/ our society getting crazy by the economy and high stress from it, we don't need reminders of situations that could happen tomorrow. We've realized the corruptness of law enforcement in real life so seeing them on TV is not appreciated. Sometimes I wish the TV cops would get killed off. It's time for heartwarming and cozy family dramas like The Waltons again. We want to dream of happier times.

Okay, well I'm off my soapbox. This week's going to be a little frustrating w/ even more political crap on tv including the debates. I have a feeling my TiVo's going to go nuts. Oh well. Keep on watching people. Until next time, stay tuned.

Waking the Sleeping Giants

2012-09-23T08:01:00.001-07:00

Hello everybody. I'm loving the return of the oldies but goodies in the world of competition reality shows. OMG, I'm just so excited. The only thing that's bad is, they're all stacked in the beginning of the week. Then there's absolutely nothing on Saturday. Whatever.

The Great Food Truck Race went to Nashville. There was only 4 teams left. The first challenge was to cook something southern. The hilarious part was none of the teams were Southern food cooks at all. The Koreans, Alaskans, Waffle guys and the Italian girls were all scratching their heads. So they tried to come as close as possible and everyone ended up cooking fried chicken. I fell on the floor laughing at that. I think I heard a reference to a certain Southern Colonel's restaurant chain. The Alaskan blondes pointed out they were the only team not to win a challenge and they didn't win this one either. The Pop a Waffle guys won but not w/ chicken and waffles. Once again, they got an item that was worth money in the till. Really? How original. It was a guitar from an artist who Tyler had to convince the people, was famous. Uh huh. Anyway, the teams made their way into the town. You would think that w/ only 4 trucks, they could find plenty of room away from each other but no and the Italian girls trying to fit into a crowded city area was a wreck; literally. Finally! An accident happened. They totally crunched into a car and the girls were panicking and in tears. Aw... You can tell the remaining teams are really learning the business. They got less money to start w/ and yet bought very wisely, when they sold out, they went and bought again and cooked again. They left their trucks to call in people to eat. Then Tyler called to tell them only the chef of the truck could be in the truck and he had to work w/ 2 cooking students. It turned out to be a good thing. It showed things really move along quickly when people know the basics about cooking. It also pointed out that a lot of the people in the trucks didn't know the basics of cooking ha ha ha. The students proved they were future chefs by trying to tweak the dishes but the truck chefs stood firm. In the end Pop a Waffle won by making the most money but a lot of it was due to that challenge win. The Alaskans finally used up all their luck and made the least money. Bye! Next time do Alaskan food and maybe people won't be so disappointed to find you've only made white trash food.

Face Off had a cool challenge. The artists were put into teams of 2 and they were shown different kinds of vehicles. I say vehicles because one was a motorcycle w/ a side car. Their makeup to do was superhero w/ a sidekick inspired by their vehicle they chose. I was hoping to see some really cool stuff. There were big plans. Roy was paired up w/ that weird pink face pierced girl, Alana. Jason and Rod were a team. Derek and Sarah were together and finally Laura and Tommy. Roy had to do a lot of directing and instruction. Yeah, it doesn't pay to have to much detail and take 2 days to make your mold. At the same time, he got his look totally done and he made the coolest troll creature. Rod was warned by V. Neil not to do the same face on his character that he kept doing. It seemed Mussolini's fat head floated in front of his face whenever he created his characters. Rod then really really tried to change the look of his character's face and somehow, still produced the same face. Sarah and Derek had one disaster happen after another and ended up using Elmer's glue and putty to do their makeups. The judges were not kind. Laura proved she has more talent than Tommy. Her character's look overshadowed his so much, his looked even crappier by comparison. Jason made a body makeup and then put a suit on the guy. Really? BTW, I forgot to mention Kevin Smith was the guest judge and lent humor to the panel. Derek made a mask w/ a mouth that didn't articulate and was slipping. The judges hated it. Once again, Roy made an amazing look and still didn't win. Instead, Alana won and didn't give Roy the credit he should've had since he directed her how to make it. I really wanted to smack her for that. Jason was sent home for his poor choices but I think was offered a job by Kevin Smith. Bye Jason, I still don't know who the heck you are, but you're cute.

Hot Set is a new show set up like Chopped. 2 production artists are given 2 days to make a set for a movie scene w/ their own teams. The host is an actor I've seen in bit parts and the judges are people I'm not familiar w/ but I guess they know their stuff. Okay, I gotta say, it sounded interesting but wasn't. To begin w/ the show is what I call one shot to lose. Each episode is independant w/ a winner declared each time. the production designers are really unknown people and just seem like bossy people who don't do a lot of their own work. I guess it's more like Iron Chef except the production designers are totally different each time. So they got their scenario which was some astronaut landing on an alien world that wasn't so good. A bad thing is, there are no live things on the set so there's not a lot of movement except for the astronaut. The female PD was kind of weird and didn't use her team to their full potential. I really think they need to do a sketch for the team to see but she just tried to describe the melee in her head and ran off to buy the big props. Whatever. The male PD had his team start the huge set background and did do a sketch to show the team what he had in mind. That was smart except he didn't pull on the reigns and his team kind of got away from him and went off the reservation a little. So big rocks, trees, skeletons, dead astronauts and broken equipment littered the sets but at the same time, they kind of looked the same. The actor did exactly 1 minute on film that looked way too cheesy to even be a spoof of Star Trek. The guy wanted his set to seem like a living being but it didn't. The woman's set looked like a piece of Death Valley and not alien at all. In the end, the woman won and I didn't understand at all. Even worse, I didn't care. I don't think this show is gonna fly like Face Off. Nobody really likes to watch people be bossy and then get all the credit for the work. I was just glad I wouldn't have to see those contestants again.

Survivor is back and in the Philipines. The twist this season is 3 past contestants who were ejected by fate were brought back. 2 of them, we never really wanted to see again. Jonathan was a douche and still is. That black guy who kept passing out so much in his season they flew him off, and we weren't sorry to see him go was back. The only guy I was always wondering why they never brought back was back; Michael Skupin, the Australian Outback contestant who fell in the fire and ran into the yucky water. As usual, the group came in all together to do their 5 second intro of themselves. They were split into 3 teams w/ stupid names. So stupid that I'm gonna call them by their colors; green, yellow and red. We saw Lisa Welchel is trying to do the reality show thing. So the tribes found the boat they were on was full of useful items like live animals, food, pans, buckets, etc. Jeff gave them 15 minutes to grab as much as they could before they had to jump off the boat. As usual the tribes lost a lot of stuff when they tried to jump on the rafts they threw their stuff on. Boy, I can tell they've got another season of idiots again. They made their way to their camps and thank the gods, they weren't living together and there wasn't any 2nd chance island. Yeesh. Right away, black returning guy declared that he wasn't the leader but he proceeded to tell everyone what to do and how to do it. A lot of eye rolling commenced behind his back and on this side of the TV screen. I would've told him, if you're not the leader then shut yer yap. His tribe is the green tribe and full of connivers. Skupin is older and wiser. On his tribe, he got the TV star and he layed low but w/ a good work ethic. His tribe is the yellow tribe. Finally, the red tribe has Jonathan and he stood back and watched everybody like a vulture. Nobody trusts him and he doesn't trust anybody. The green tribe made fire first which was amazing. Jonathan and the black returning guy found clues to the HII (hidden immunity idol). There was only 1 challenge again and it entailed rowing, gathering, swimming and puzzle solving. The black returning guy on the green team told everyone their roles even though they protested. They didn't like it. So off they went and in the end the red team won first, the yellow came in 2nd and the green team went to tribal council. The green team had a retarded Forest Gumpy guy who told everyone he's ok going home but would like to stay too. What a dumbass. In this game, anyone who says they don't want to be there is quickly obliged. It's an easy vote because nobody feels guilty doing it. Tribal council gets dumber every season because the people know to keep their yaps shut except if they're especially stupid. The black returning guy and Forest Gumpy were exceptionally stupid and talked nonsense. At least the black guy admitted he was at fault for choosing the people to do stuff in the challenge. Forest Gumpy was sent home and the black guy has a huge target on his back w/ the women grumbling at his bossiness. BTW, the prizes for winning the challenge were fire making kit for 1st place and flint for 2nd place. The losers got flint after Tribal council so BFD. Hm... I do like that they returned to the original format but I'm not sure about the 3 tribes and I really don't like Jonathan or that black returning guy. But I'm intrigued and watching.

The Challenge is different w/ teams made of the seasons of The Real World. That's pretty cool and they're calling it Battle of the Seasons. I'm guessing they figured out that Road Rules hasn't been on for so long the people from that show are getting kind of old; and I mean age wise. So they're in a place close to the Middle East which is kind of scary when you think how hedonistic these people can get. Before they do the challenge part, they show a lot of household shenanigans and these young people are already swinging, fighting, shouting and getting drunk. Right before the challenge, a new team is brought in and it consists of vets: Fatty Eric or Big Easy, crying creepy Cara Mia, homely Camilla and well...I can't remember the guy but I know he's not been on a lot of seasons. The team members have to climb rope ladders hanging over water to beams that they have to balance and cross. When I say they have to balance, I mean it. If one team member moves forward faster than the other at the other end, the beam will tilt. OMG, good thing these people are pretty young. A couple fall and smack the water hard. Fatty Eric's team DQ's cuz he can't climb the the ladder. I wasn't at all surprised to find Alton and Trishelle's team was the fastest cuz he's practically superhuman and none of the other teams has a ringer like him. So the loser loser team automatically has to do the elimination challenge and the winner team gets to choose who competes against them. Alton's team (Las Vegas seasons) chooses Wes's team. Wes has matured but he's still hated by everybody. The thing is, even though he isn't aggressive, he still baits people into trying to fight him. Ok, so this year there are categories to the elimination challenges: physical, mental, endurance and speed or something like that. Alton picks physical to give Fatty Eric's team a chance. The contest has a person at each end of a tunnel running at each other to get to the bell at the other end. Only 1 girl and 1 guy from each team have to compete. Cara Mia does a really good job but has speed and agility on her side against that schlubby girl from Wes's team. Cara Mia wins. Wes looks like one of those football dummies on the sleds but there's nowhere to go cuz Fatty Eric takes up the whole tunnel. Poor Wes loses and has a quick end to this season. I have a feeling Alton will win this season. Then TJ tells them they can't use that elimination challenge category until the others have been used. Oh boy! The next weeks should be really interesting. I can't wait. Bye Wes and schlubby girl.

Top Chef Masters was down to 3 chefs: Chris, Kerry and Lorena. The quickfire had the chefs trying to direct an unknown person on the other side of a barrier. They all must've seen the previous season and no one screamed at their partner. As it was, the unknown people were the show's judges. What was Lorena thinking? She didn't even start her pasta until 5 minutes until time was up. Really? So she tried to make a dish w/ the sauce. Uh huh. Chris was paired w/ Oseland and it was hilarious and cute. They made a prawn dish. I think it was prawns. If it was shrimp, those shrimp were monsters. Anyway, the best part was when their dish was tasted and Curtis declared Oseland's dish a little better and he said, "Shut the F___ up." Which made Chris collapse in laughter. Also, their dishes looked very similar. Kerry and Ruth were paired up and she put a big pile of the chicken on the plate but Curtis said they both tasted similar and very good. Finally the Asian skinny guy Lam and Lorena were up and actually Lam's dish looked better but Lorena said her dish was what was intended. Really? You wanted your dish to look like day old vomit? Curtis said they were good but needed the pasta. Kerry was declared the winner which surprised me but ok. For the elimination challenge, the chefs had 2 cooking school students to make a dish worthy of being served in their restaurants. They couldn't do any of the cooking at all. The funny thing was when the students presented dishes to the chefs. Chris's kids made pork which was right up his alley but they put boring stuff w/ their pork that made the dish look like something a midwestern housewife would serve up for supper. Kerry's kids made a weird chicken roulade thing w/ string cheese and spinach which they called Florentine. Yeah, it wasn't. Kerry's look on his face when he tasted it was hilarious. You could tell he wanted to spit it out but didn't want to hurt their feelings. When he swallowed it was just like Lucy's Vitameatavegamin commercial. OMG, I couldn't stop laughing. Lorena's kids made lasagna which didn't look too bad. I loved the way Lorena said lasagna w/ her Venezuelan accent. The chefs proceeded to find out about their young cooks and then give them lessons on food pairings, shopping, ingredients and prepping. They made their dishes. Chris underestimated the efficiency of his cooks and they plated too soon. Kerry's cooks did a really good job of producing exactly what he wanted. Lorena decided to serve the lasagna and salad family style which didn't go over too well w/ the judges. Yeah, you don't see fine dining being served family style. For all the people who do like family style, don't ever eat w/ me cuz most likely, you'll be having your kids at the table and I hate that. Anyhoo, the judges had a bit of fighting but in the end Kerry won and Lorena was sent packing. Aw...bye Lorena. Say hi to Art for me. Next week; the finale woo hoo!

Project Runway always has at least 1 tacky costume challenge and this week was it. The designers had to make a costume for the Rockettes. Okay so maybe it wasn't soooo tacky. The designers bemoaned the fact that they had very little money for expensive stuff like beads, crystals and sequinned material. They frantically ran around so much at Mood, Swatch stayed in hiding. Back at Parsons, Sonjia proceeded to use feathers to make a skirt. Cute but not functional for the Rockettes at all. Dmitry made the funniest chicken comment. I love Dmitry. LOL!!! Fabio made some metallic body suit thing in a hideous bronze and silver color. Ven made a boring grey shiny netting costume w/ a figure skating skirt. Elena made a bright blue gaudy majorette costume. Christopher made an interesting costume with the chest and abdomen covered by the New York skyline but in white. Melissa made a weird square collared hotpink thing which she tried to cleverly colorblock w/ black sequins but it turned into a big 1 on the chest. Finally, Dmitry made a gorgeous navy blue geometric design costume w/ a fringe skirt. It was cute, classy, sexy, chic and very dancy. Tim Gunn must've had a serious talk w/ the producers after seeing the designers' work and hearing them say, "I wanted to buy this and that but didn't have enough money." The designers were given more money and a 2nd short trip to Mood. Ven and Fabio turned it down. Dmitry was totally robbed cuz Christopher was declared the winner. Really? When the Rockettes wear his costume, I don't think the people in the balcony or back rows will even be able to see the neat design because of the white but oh well. Finally, Ven was told his costume was ugly and was sent home. Yay! Bye Ven, work on being less of a total douchebag.

America's Next Top Model showed a lot of arguing, bickering and talking behind people's backs. They had a runway challenge. I have to say, these long legged girls can really look gawky and awkward. There was something about Alicia Keys and of course one girl just had to sing in front of her. Yeah, people really shouldn't do that cuz music stars have big egos and really don't want to hear them. So the winner of the Runway show was the tall athletic black girl who seems fun. For the photoshoot, the girls wore cheerleader outfits and had to pose as they were thrown into the air by guys. Fun! These girls are tall and skinny. All of us were afraid they were going to break something. As it was, the landings did produce a couple of injuries to the guys and the girls. The funniest thing was, the girl who actually was a cheerleader had the stiffest looking picture. At judging, it was interesting to note that Tyra was looking for the girls to look like models and the rest of the judges were looking for the girls to look like cheerleaders. Tyra won out cuz the girl who got the best picture of the week had a more modely looking picture and the gap toothed girl was sent home. Bye!

Speaking of cheerleaders, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team was in it's 2nd week of bootcamp. The girls were deemed the best group of hopefuls ever by Kelly. That was impressive. So because of that, Kelly and Judy were really nitpicky. They did dancing in the studio then broke up into 4 teams w/ Judy's daughter heading one of them. That wasn't a surprise. There was no sign of her bum knee either. There was a part of the show they showed a group of vets having fun w/ the Olympic shooting team w/ a skeet shooting contest. You can tell this year's crop of hopefuls are very dedicated because they looked like they practiced a lot. There was also basic costume fitting which was interesting. Man are those costumes skimpy on the bottom. It's hilarious that the most coverage is the sleeves. The girls also had to do the kick line and for some odd reason, they didn't seem like they practiced that. That's a signature thing for the DCC so you'd think the girls would really practice that. Anyway, finally at the end of the show, the girl who showed least improvement and the girl who blew out her knee were cut. Bye! See ya next year at auditions again.

Well, that's about it. You can tell the new seasons of the shows are coming next week because the re-runs showed the season finales from the last season. Ooh ooh, I can't wait. I've missed the shows. So until next time people, stay tuned.

Cooking, Racing and More

2012-09-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

Hello TV fans. I know the summer has been mostly full of re-runs but there is fun stuff. Let me get to it.

I'm sorry to say, I haven't kept up w/ America's Got Talent because, well, I'm kind of tired of talent shows. A singer usually wins anyway. Except for Terry Fator, I haven't seen any winners in Vegas.

I'd like to apologize to Pop-A-Waffle on the Great Food Truck Race. I said last week they went and it wasn't them. I was totally wrong. It was the Pizza Mike's truck. Okay so this week the trucks went to Fayetteville, Arkansas. The first challenge was a huge commercial for a certain breakfast toaster pastry. The teams had to make a dish w/ them to be judged by a college student. It was interesting w/ the Koreans really scratching their heads wondering what to make. The Jersey girls of Nonna's Kitchenette used the pastry's as the coating for french toast and won the prize which was a huge scary mounted ugly razorback pig head. But it was worth money in the till so they were happy to receive it. Then the trucks had to just sell. The Alaskans proved they left their brains in the last city cuz they planned on serving tacos and failed to buy tortillas. If they actually made their own tortillas, they'd make a lot more money and sell more too. Then when they went to park, they opened their awning and then backed up knocking over a streetlight w/ the awning. OMG, these ladies are sooo blonde. So blah blah blah, sell, cook, sell, listen to redneck accents in the end, the Jersey girls won by making the most money and the southern black people went home. Bye!

Hell's Kitchen had it's finale. It was between Christina and Justin. Poor Justin, he had the laziest piece of ugly fat on his team called Clemenza. Not only that, Clemenza has some kind of ego and even menu planning was a hassle. Personally, I'd have punched him in the face and used the rest of the team to help me throw his fat ass out on the street. Justin's a lot nicer than I am. Anyway, after the planning, it was time to cook for the customers. Christina had to deal w/ Robin messing up and then blaming it on others. Dana suddenly thought she had the say in the kitchen and would argue about the quality of the food contradicting Christina's critique of the food. Christina did a good job of not letting her chefs roll over her. Meanwhile, Justin seemed a little timid. Clemenza was shoveling out his usual sloppy cooking and Ramsay had to encourage Justin to get some balls and tell Clemenza he was sucking big time. You could see how much Ramsay wanted to kick Clemenza's ass. Barbie was having a bad night on the meat station that she is usually very good on but those ribeyes must've been cut thinner than usual. Of course Brian was there to lighten the load and the mood. Sooo...everyone did get fed and the usual behind the door thing happened. Christina stepped through the winner's door. Congrats girl! She really deserved it.

MasterChef had it's finale too and it was between blind Christine and big nostrils Josh. They just had to cook their own 3 course dinner for the judges while the ousted cooks watched. It was as exciting to watch as fat ladies at water aerobics. Josh made a southern style dinner but tried to make it look fancy. Christine made Asian food. As usual, the judges tasted and raved and dissed this and that blah blah blah and in the end, Christine won. Yay! I think it's amazing she made it through the competition w/ only cutting herself once. I'm just glad we don't have to look up Josh's huge nostrils during any future promotionals. Is it just me or does this show get more boring every year? I think it's because the cooking challenges are the same every year.

Face Off had a cool challenge. The artists had to take an Alice in Wonderland character and make them zombie. Or make them look like they were in the movie that had that flesh eating virus. I am always amazed by the work done. They even made body prosthetics and props. Then they have to make a costume too. Those designers on Project Runway should really shut up. The one thing I notice is, the artists are very self aware and critical of themselves. One girl just had a really bad day. I always say, you need some luck in these competition shows. Because molds and prosthetics have to have time to dry, timing is really critical so if an artist falls behind, they really feel it. Anyway, all the looks were really cool but the one older guy w/ the hat seemed to not make his look gory enough. One look had it's character w/ a mouth that didn't open and shut. The judges really hate that. I liked the queen that was modeled by a guy. Also, the models this season are really good at working w/ the makeup and putting some life into it. Unfortunately, the girl that had the bad day; well, her day got worse cuz she was given the boot. Finally, Roy won. He always makes a whole body makeup prosthetic thing and was ending up the runner up every time. This time, he got his kudos. Yay!

Top Chef Masters was down to 4: Chris, Patricia, Kerry and Lorena. The quickfire entailed a different cooking challenge. They split the kitchen into 2 sides. One side had the stoves, ovens and prep table and the other had the pantry, small equipment and refrigerators. The chefs were doubled up into 2 teams w/ Chris and Patricia together and Lorena and Kerry together. The catch was, the chefs had to stay on their own side of the kitchen and make their own dishes while depending on the other chef to cook for them or get stuff for them as the case may be. Chris and Patricia worked very well together. Poor Lorena. Kerry has proven to be a selfish chef thinking only of doing his own dish well w/ no regard to anyone else's. He also swamped Patricia's boat during that Thai restaurant challenge. If Lorena would've had a better memory, she would've made a ceviche and not had Kerry cook anything for her but nope and Kerry literally put her food on the back burner and didn't get it done. This time he didn't look sorry about it. The funniest part was, the win didn't depend on both dishes and since Kerry's dish was judged best, the team won. Okay, so they won moolah for their charities. For the elimination challenge, the chefs had to make a 3 item picnic basket family style thing for dinner en blanc which is some French thing w/ people coming together for free food. Sounds like a church potluck dinner but it's made fancy w/ people all dressed in white and drinking wine. Whatever. It's still a bunch of moochers and French food is basically a small pile of crap covered w/ a fancy sauce. The food all had to be served cold because it was cooked the night before and then packed up. Chris made a terrine w/ his usual animal innerds and some marinated mushroom thing. Patricia tried to impress people w/ her world travel tales and made a 3 dish travel of Marco Polo. The 3 dishes didn't seem to hang together and maybe they should've played that Marco Polo game. Marco! Polo! Also, one of her dishes she wished had been served warm. Ew... Kerry tried to impress a table of people by speaking French and was met w/ totally blank looks. I LOL at that. He made a cold soup and something else but he was smart cuz he also passed around baguettes. Lorena couldn't let go her Latin cooking and made a sweet chicken salad and a chocolate chile mousse. Unfortunately, her mousse deflated overnight but it must've tasted amazing cuz a few ladies had their faces stuck in the container. In the end, the judges raved and raved over Kerry's food and Chris won. Huh? He aced it w/ his terrine. Then the judges totally dissed Lorena's food and Patricia was sent home. Huh? It must've been opposite day. Anyway, Patricia wasn't that upset to be sent home. I think she was just so darn tired and worn out. Bye Patricia! Get a good sleep.

Project Runway had it's make your own patterned material challenge. I still miss the models being chosen but they don't even tell their names so they must not matter anymore and nobody gets to dump their model if she's terrible. I have to say, some have some really crappy walks. Sooo...the show brought in significant others or some family member to give history and inspiration to the designers. OMG, I hate when they bring in the "loved ones" cuz it usually means a lot of tears and hugging which eats up the time. Ven's material was white w/ big pink hibiscus flowers on it but the flowers looked really gradeschool drawn. Gunnar's depicted his escape from a life of harsh bullying w/ skeletal hands w/ a hazy dove flying between them. Unfortunately, the print was too small and hazy and from afar, it looked like pencil smudges and houndstoothy. Dimtry had a cool print but it was a little loud. He was very smart to use a little of it in his dress and as usual, he made a really cool and well fitted dress but w/ a jacket this time. Melissa's print was some red flowery thing. Fabio's was boring cuz I didn't remember it. Sonjia's wasn't that interesting either. Elena's was blue and yellow depicting the Ukrainian flag colors and...well who cares? For once, the judges hated Ven's dress. What's w/ him and flowers? He must've been an old lady in his past life. Elena let go her big shoulder thing and actually made something kind of cute. Finally! Dimtry won. Yay! Poor Gunnar. I didn't think his dress was bad but the judges did and he was sent home. Awww...bye Gunnar. You know you're a nicer guy than the show showed. I like ya.

America's Next Top Model continues to be boring. The girls aren't liking socially awkward Victoria but she is really strange. She really needs to shut up about her mother all of the time. So this time the girls had to do some outlandish character acting while walking down Hollywood Blvd or something. They had Tyler Perry and Tyra feeding them lines. The whole thing was really dumb but showed who would give it their all for the prize. The tall black pretty diva who portrayed a diva won. Ooh, big surprise. For the prize, she got a walk on role in Perry's next movie. BFD. The girls were excited but walk on means just that. She'll be practically unrecognizable and in the background for 1 second. For the photoshoot, the girls were zombies. Weird. The whole house was offended by that white blonde diva who liked to pick fights. She had a bad shoot because she didn't take any advice. The shoot director isn't as aggressive as Mr. Jay so the girls kind of disregard him. I've found the shoots very weak this season. Sooo...as usual, one girl won and Destiny (short haired black girl) found her destiny wasn't to be the next top model and was sent home. Bye! Now you can smack that white girl cuz you're off the show anyway.

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team had it's very first show of the season. I love this. They did a good job of showing the really crappy dancers, the fat girls who were delusional, and the clumsy girls who we loved to laugh at. Then they did interviews and a lot of the new girls turned out to be cheerleaders from other pro teams like the Rams, Jets, Tigers and such. Then they whittled out the no chance in hell girls from the real tryout girls. Then they made them all dance on the field w/ the vets too. There were comments about weight gain and untoned bodies for the vets. Hmmm... Then they had them do their individual dances which were interesting. Finally, the bootcamp invites were named and people were surprised at the vets left out. Cassie Tramell had a huge knee injury and still made the bootcamp. Really? I guess it doesn't hurt when her mother is one of the directors of the cheerleaders. You could kind of tell Kelly wasn't too cool w/ it but she has to work w/ her mother and probably doesn't want that tension. Judy kept saying she's had surgery and is healing well. Do they know that she'll have a bigger chance of blowing out that knee again? Oh well.

Well, that's about it for the reality shows. I'm kind of sad cuz the sitcoms on TV Land and ABC Family are on hiatus. Until then, we'll enjoy these shows. See ya next time folks. Stay tuned!

Winding Up and Winding Down

2012-09-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

The new seasons of the reality shows from the big networks are coming so the summer's shows are winding down. Then again, some are still in the midst of the fun. Let's get to it.

The Great Food Truck Race went to Texas. They seem to go to Texas every season but I can't remember the town. I suppose the Texas people can really eat so there are probably a lot of customers for the trucks no matter where they go in Texas. I do know they had a baseball stadium because that was the theme of this week. First, the teams had to make a baseball stadium food. I was expecting the chefs to make some hotdog thing. Only 2 trucks did. The others just said their food could be served in a baseball stadium. I suppose. Heck, you can get sushi and gumbo in baseball stadiums these days. So some doofus looking guy went around and did the tasting and judging. He raved about the hotdog from the southern food truck but the Koreans won w/ a kimchi burger. Huh? Whatever. What did they win? A key. Then the food trucks parked and started serving. A call came, along w/ a boot on their trucks. Ohhhh...the key is for the boot. Those lucky Koreans. They were able to move to the stadium when their customers ran out. The other trucks made the boot their excuse and instead of beating the street to bring over customers, they sat in their trucks and cried about not getting customers. Whatever. These people are terrible at business. Meanwhile, Pop a Waffle ran out of food. Instead of leaving their truck and going to get more w/ the days profits, they closed shop w/ 7 hours to go. OMG! Why didn't they just leave their truck? It's not like someone could steal it w/ that boot on it. Anyway, needless to say, the Koreans made the most money and won again and Pop a Waffle made the least and were told to hit the road w/out a truck. Haw haw.

Hell's Kitchen was down to 2 and a half chefs. I say 2 and a half because the show started out w/ an elimination. Camera shouter, Dana, was given the boot. Bye Dana, back to school for you. Then the last 2, Christina and Justin, retired to the dorm. Oh puh-leeze. There's no rest for the contestants. They were called to Ramsey's office and told they were going to Vegas. I love the way Ramsey says the announcements in crafty ways; but not really. So Vegas vacation? Oh puh-leeze. So Justin and Christina are enjoying a Penn and Teller show and of course right in the middle were given the challenge to cook against each other and judged by famous chefs. Hmmm...that sounds very familiar; like it's been the same for 4 seasons now. I was happy to see Wolfgang Puck but I didn't know who the heck the other chefs were. After all the tasting, hemming and hawing and voting for him, him, her, her. Christina pulled out the win. Maybe the chefs heard Justin bragging about himself to the camera. Ok, so in past seasons, at this point, the chefs returned home and eliminated chefs returned to be chosen by the chefs to work as their kitchen brigades. Well, well, well, that's exactly what happened this time too. Surprise! Zzzzz The only fun thing was watching Robin and Clemenza standing last for the schoolyard pick. Justin chose well except he got Royce and Clemenza. If he puts them on stations they don't suck on, he may be ok. I'm not sure what that would be except the dishwashing station. Oh well. I can't wait to see the finale. Christina's picked mostly the ladies and they're terrible about wasting time fighting. At least that ugly faced Tiffany isn't there.

MasterChef was down to 3 cooks; blind chick Christina, bad skin Becky and mongo nostrils Josh. They each had a book w/ a paper cover that looked like the book was their own recipe book. That was kind of cheesey and the cooks made a huge deal over it. Wow! I'll bet you could give them fake vomit for Xmas and they'd absolutely love it. So the chefs only had 1 cooking challenge; cook their best dish. Ok! Unfortunately, Becky already used up her best recipes and had nothing to pull out of her hat. Yeah, when you don't have a plan and just grab whatever in the pantry, you're pretty much done at this point in the show. So the chefs did their tasting frowning, scowly, smiley thing but just a lot slower than usual. Christina won and Becky was given the boot. Bye Becky. Get a freakin' facial for pete's sake. Meanwhile, Josh is so full of himself, he needs a colonic. Even though I was hoping a guy would win this season, I hope Christina wipes the floor w/ him. Next week finale; Yay!

Face Off had a team challenge again. The artists were paired up randomly. I think they're not letting them pick their partners because of the twins. The funniest thing is, nobody knows they're twins. So the challenge this week was to make a chinese dragon like creature using the chinese zodiac signs of each artist in the pair. This was soooo cool and I love how professional the artists are. There's not a lot of ego even though there are older artists w/ a lot more experience. Nobody seems to be lazy. Nobody seems to be stupid and nobody seems like they've been chosen to be on the show just because they're good looking. I pointed those out cuz it seemed to be that way in past seasons. Once again, the artists were so amazing it would only take an expert eye to tell what was wrong. I loved the team that did the ribbons on the head and the judges were right, it did make the look Chinesey. Is that a word? Some of the dragons weren't very dragoney but incorporating both zodiac animals and then the dragon too would've been too much. The goats were kind of funny. In the end, it was ironic w/ one twin's team winning the challenge and one twin's team losing. Sad to say, the losing twin, Eric, was sent home. I thought at that point, they would've told the rest of the group that they were twins but they didn't. Oh well.

Top Chef Masters was down to 5 chefs; Kerry, Patricia, Lorena, Chris and Takashi. I loved the quickfire cuz it was the mis en plas. This time they had to grate a pile of cheese, separate eggs and cut precise weight steaks. Kerry was very wise and took a little more time to get things done right. He also cut his steaks bigger cuz he pointed out, it's easier to trim the meat than to add. He was right cuz even though Chris and Patricia were done first, they cut their steaks too small and didn't have any meat leftover to make steaks again. Haste made waste; literally. Takashi and Kerry were correct and done before Lorena. Then they had to make a dish w/ the just prepped ingredients for 3 losing chefs to taste and judge. Takashi's winning streak ended and Kerry won w/ his sage brown butter which really does sound good for a steak dish. For the elimination challenge, the chefs had to cook head to head w/ 1 ingredient. Kerry won immunity so got to sit in the judge seat w/ Ruth, Curtis, James and the guest judge, Sugar Ray Leonard. Yes, the boxer cuz we all know how qualified retired pro boxers are to judge a cooking show. Whatever! It was a huge production w/ a boxing ring and a bell. So Takashi and Chris were up first w/ the ingredient bacon. Chris went w/ a breakfasty dish and Takashi did some kind of salady thing. Since the judges were hung over from the night before, they went for the breakfasty dish and Chris won the round. Up next were Lorena and Patricia. I have to say, Patricia is kind of bitchy in her state of fatigue which doesn't look good for us older oriental women. Their ingredient was bacon too. Boy, those producers went cheap on the food in this challenge. They probably spent all the money for this episode on the guest judge, the setting and the props. Patricia made a salady thing and Lorena made a soup. The judges weren't into light fare and Lorena won the round. Go Lorena! So then the winners cooked against each other w/ the ingredient sugar. Wow, even cheaper than bacon. Chris admitted he wasn't very good at desserts so he did what every Italian knows how to do; zabaglione. Lorena pulled out all the stops and made a 3 part dessert w/ chocolate cake, some dulce de leche thing and something else. It paid off and she won the top prize of money for her charity and a huge cheap looking belt to go w/ those ingredients. Finally, Takashi and Patricia cooked against each other. The ingredient wasn't sugar and I'm not sure what it was but it didn't really matter. Patricia went simple and Takashi went complicated. After all that food, the judges went w/ the simple and Takashi was sent home w/ all his past winnings. Bye Takashi, I'll miss your cute expressions and accent.

Project Runway had another team challenge. The best part of the announcement of the teams was the expressions on the faces. OMG, Christopher had a look of fright when Gunnar was named to his team. Dimtry had a look of venom when Elena was named to his team and I was ROFLMAO! It was too funny. Obviously, Elena lost her sensitivity chip a long time ago so she didn't care. Poor dreadlocked Alicia was caught in the middle of the dysfunctional couple. So do they get to go to Mood? Yes, but not yet. First they had to make crafty fashion items to sell on the street to get money for fabric and notions. OMG. I actually liked the stuff Christopher's team made. It looked really cool. I think the teams would've sold more if they would've modeled their own stuff but, oh well. After earning their dough, the teams went to Mood. Swatch was passed out on the floor and splayed out. I thought he was dead for a minute but nope, the cutest thing on the show is still alive. The teams had to make 2 looks for Fall. Ven's team made the most money but I was surprised to see them choosing cheap looking fabrics and a pink one too. Ew. So back in the workroom, the teams get to work. Blah blah blah, they work, criticize, fight, Tim comes in, the models come in and it's runway time. The team of Christopher, Gunnar and Sonjia made the cutest dresses and coats that looked fresh, chic and pricey; Winner! The team of Elena, Dimtry and Alicia made one pants outfit and one dress w/ coats for both. Dimtry made the dress and actually a shawl all by himself. Except for the external darts, it was really cute and shawls are a cool thing if done in a chunky way like Dimtry did. If a shawl is done delicately, then it looks like a granny thing. Elena's coat, once again, looked like something made for Frankenstein's monster. Unfortunately, Alicia wasn't able to make a knockout outfit to go under it and the top looked like my 8th grade sewing project. The team of Ven, Fabio and Melissa made some seriously ugly clothes. The judges seemed to like the jacket that Melissa made, but I thought it was plain and so 90's. I think I still have something like that in my closet. The rest of the clothes looked like impoverished Amish. Ven made the ugliest skirt in a crap color. Since when is light rose pink a Fall color? Loser, but not loser enough cuz poor Alicia was sent home. Awww...go get rid of those stupid dreads girl. They're not fashionable at all. Elena gets the prize for the most delusional and throwing the most people under the bus.

America's Next Top Model continues to be quite boring. It was makeover week. Homely Cutrone showed up to give the girls the choice of getting the makeover or not. 2 girls said no which made me LOL! Really? Do they know that of they're really working, they'll probably have 3 different hairstyles in one day complete w/ cutting, extensions and dyeing? Most of the makeovers weren't too shocking except one girl getting totally bleached out and 1 short haircut. The blackgirl w/ the long skinny braids had them cut off and a new smooth weave put in and she looked less...hood. One girl got a totally ugly haircut but seemed to like it anyway. Really? Who has That Girl hair and in red no less? But if you're a true model, you can rock anything. The girls who didn't get a makeover were given a talking to by Wednesday Cutrone. Then that ugly bearded weird u-tube guy showed up. I really wish Tyra would kick him to the curb. He's creepy and gross. Then house drama ensued w/ crying on the phone, girls talking about each other, yada yada yada. The photoshoot was a nude posing w/ a male model thing for art. It was so boring, I quit caring after the first minute. That new photoshoot director is terrible and lets the photographer do all the work while he sits back and says, that's good or that's not good. I think they could've hired a hobo off the street for much less money for that job. Also, the male model was the judge. Really? That guy's boring too and not good looking enough to make up for how boring he is. Anyway, there was judging and critique and...the girl who didn't get a makeover won for not even looking like herself at all. Of course a girl went home and I couldn't tell you who if my life depended on it cuz a lot of those girls look alike. I think it was the black girl who got rid of the braids. Bye! Nobody will remember you next week anyway.

Well, that's about it. The stupid primaries are over. God, what a lotta hot air. The Dems criticized the Reps for not having different races at their convention. Maybe they were there but they don't point their differentness out. Maybe the minorities were resting at home because they have jobs they were tired from. Maybe they acted just like the white people and weren't noticed. Hmmm... Shove it w/ that minority racial difference crap. As for Obama promising to bring jobs and a better America. Well, you had 4 years, Dude. What were you doing, picking your ass? That's a nice work ethic. You're not really going to do your job until the last hours of the day? Whatever. All I know is, our country can't survive another stimulus package and bailout. Ok, I'm getting off the soapbox.

The Fall premier season is coming soon and I can't wait! Woo hoo! Until next time people, stay tuned.

Reality Summer Lovin'

2012-09-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

Wow! I can't believe how many fun reality shows are on. Most are pretty good and some are going downhill. There are quite a few, so I'll just get to it.

The Great Food Truck Race went to Flagstaff, Arizona. The teams learned their lesson from last week when only 1 team actually made any profit. They're learning to plan ahead better, do better pricing for their product and think strategically for customers. One truck decided to park at Sam's Club but found the customers were more concerned w/ getting their groceries home than eating. I should say so. If you've got a bunch of bulk food that's frozen or cold, you gotta get home. For the first challenge, the foodtruck people had to cook a dish w/ nopales or cactus paddles. Beau MacMillan came all the way from Phoenix to do the tasting and judging. The dishes were interesting. You could tell nobody really knew how to use it. I thought the best use was the grilling done by the Aussie chicks. The waffle truck guys pulled out the win. I have to say, those waffle guys proved anything can be good on a waffle. Their prize was immunity. So the rest of the show was about the trucks cooking and selling. One truck of chicks were mad at another truck of chicks for not saving them a spot. Oh whatever. Get to the spot earlier. You know the early bird saying. So in the end, it's all about who makes the most money and who makes the least. Once again, the Korean guys made the most and the Aussie girls finally ran out of luck and were sent home. Awww...Bye girls. I'll miss your cool accents.

Hell's Kitchen was down to 4 chefs. The challenge this week was to make a dish for the most profit. They got $15 to buy ingredients. They each went for a different protein. So a lot of running around commenced, followed by frantic cooking and then the judging. I think Ramsay is just dragging in anybody and saying words like Michelin stars and James Beard award. Well blah blah blah cuz I didn't know who the heck those judges were but whatever. They liked all the dishes but had to be minutely critical. They also gave prices of how much they'd pay for a dish. Really? Where the heck do these guys eat where they'd pay over $25 for an entree? Barbie was the only one who's dish looked large enough to even be that much. Well, Dana won and was sent to go cook w/ one of the chefs who judged. All I have to say is, he looked like a greasy spoon cook in a clean apron. Ew. Then she got to eat w/ her parents. Meanwhile, for punishment, the other chefs had to pick through the trash and sort it. Now that was totally made up cuz you didn't see anybody else doing this the whole season and there have been plenty of shots of the dumpsters. At dinner service it was the time for the chefs to each run the pass. It was the usual thing w/ some dish being done wrong. Everybody did pretty good except Dana missed the sugar Ramsay dumped into the risotto. I figured, man they must get pretty full by the end of the evening if they have to take a bite of each dish that goes out. Dana seemed to be the most uncooperative w/ the chefs but then again, if it takes 8 minutes to cook something, how can you rush that? This time, all four chefs were up for elimination. Barbie was sent home and I'm not sure why. I think Ramsay saw that she just didn't garner any respect in the kitchen. Bye Barbie. I still don't know why everyone disliked you but I admire you for handling those haters really well.

MasterChef was also down to 4 cooks. They paired up and had to cook an entree and a dessert for fancy guest judges and of course the regular 3 judges. Ok, the guest judges were impressive: Boloud, Bocuse and another one just as impressive. All the food was good but it came to missed plating. The ladies were on one team and the guys the other. On the entree course, the ladies failed to get part of the dish on all of the plates and the judges noticed. On the dessert, the men failed to make all the plates look the same and failed to get all the sauces on all the plates and the judges noticed. The women won the day which meant Frank and Josh had to cook in the elimination round. They had to cook 3 different kinds of souffles in an hour. Really? Jeez, they had to grate cheese, separate and beat eggs, cut up and melt chocolate and cook down raspberries and then bake the souffles in only 60 minutes? It seemed quite impossible. I wasn't surprised that they didn't have time to powder sugar the tops of their dessert souffles. Josh saved time by putting his raspberries whole in his souffle. The souffles looked even in consistency but it came down to the flavors and Ramsay and the 2 buddies liked Josh's best. Bye Frank. I'm thinking a lady's going to win again.

Face Off didn't have a mini-challenge. Instead, they devoted all the time into the main challenge and it was very nice. Westmore must've told the producers that the art would be better if the artists had enough time. Hey! Tell that to the Project Runway producers. The make-up artists had to make looks w/ sea and nautical themes like seaweed, daggers, crabs, barnacles and stuff like that. These people are impressive and the techniques are shown better this season. I think the producers finally realized we want to see how it's done. The artists even have time to make arm and leg prosthetics that look really cool. They also make whole body suits. That's really impressive. So in the end the girl who's the girlfriend of Ian from last year won w/ her oozing sea urchin creature and that girl who didn't know what a barnacle was, was sent home. Once again though, even the bottom looks look awesome.

Top Chef Masters was down to 6 chefs. For the quickfire, they had to do aphrodisiac dishes w/ Dita VonTees as a judge. All the dishes looked really good and Dita gave each one a kind of sleezy/slutty critique. Poor Curtis blushed redder and redder the whole time. Takashi made an oyster and uni dish and was declared the winner of immunity and cash for his charity. The Chefs found it was the week for restaurant wars but this time, no war. They had to open a Thai restaurant and each make a dish. I kept wondering where the restaurant was supposed to be and it turned out to be the Top Chef kitchen and dining area. The chefs were sent to a famous Thai restaurant in Vegas w/ an authentic Thai chef who didn't speak a word of English. They all oohed, ahed, kissed some butt and some took notes. Then they shopped like crazy people. If the dishes have to be so specialized, why didn't they just get their proteins from a butcher and then shop in an Asian market? Instead, one group was at the regular food store and they yelled that they couldn't find their special Thai ingredients. No kidding. This time, they didn't have to decorate their restaurant either. That was good. The next day the chefs did the bulk of their cooking and space seemed limited w/ Patricia coming down on Lorena for taking up stove space for food prep. I'm thinking Patricia didn't get enough sleep. Also, all of the chefs wanted to be line cooks. That's hilarious but finally, Art and Lorena were put in charge of front of house. They did a good job. Kerry was made expediter and seemed very amateur which was really weird considering he has his own restaurants. The dishes were all judged to be delicious but some more than others. Poor Art, this was not his forte at all and he described his dish as Thai food and Art inspired. Actually, he should've turned that around and had Art's food inspired by Thai and it would've been better. Instead, he had chicken chunks w/ cashew halves all over them. Lorena made Thai soup. Takashi did the crispy noodles. Chris made Larb beef tartar. Kerry made lamb w/ Taro puree. Patricia who lived in Thailand for 2 years made a duck curry thing. Unfortunately, timing was off and she had her dishes ready when Kerry was throwing his on the grill. I think she had to serve her dishes to other people and start new ones. Then Kerry was done and she wasn't so she served her duck too soon and the judges really noticed. James Oseland will eat anything. It was a really bad sign when he sent his dish back. Yikes! At judging, the judges raved about Kerry and Chris's dishes and Chris was declared the winner. Patricia was reluctant to throw Kerry under the bus so he told what happened. Poor Kerry, he looked like a hang dog all that time after Patricia told him it was his fault her duck was underdone. You could tell he felt terrible about the situation. Is that guy Catholic? Jeez, you'd have thought the priest had told him he broke a commandment. Anyway, Art got the boot for his un-Thaied chicken and Lorena was in tears. Bye Art, I'll miss your deep fried and biscuit dishes but not your namedropping and reminders of your weight loss.

Project Runway went to Lord and Taylor where the designers saw a collection of cocktail dresses and gowns made by previous contestants. I have to say, Bert's gown was stunning. I also liked Nick's dress cuz it had color. Chris March made a dress for a fat gypsy. Jay's dress looked like the dress that was kicked off last week. The designers were to make a dress to fit into the collection that would be in the window and sold at L and T. They didn't have to go to Mood cuz L & T provided the material and notions too. That was kind of nice but also kind of limiting. A lot of the designers chose the black materials. Christopher did his shredding thing on the ugliest pink material. Gunnar decided to use black lace. Ven made an ugly black fabric rose right in the middle of the upper chest. Dmitry's dress looked inside out w/ the seams standing up. Elena made some racer front leathery looking hideous dress. Melissa made an interesting dress that had one side of the hem way too long. Alicia made a sack dress w/ an ugly front box pleat in the front. Sonjia didn't make her zipper long enough and cried trying to get her model into the dress. Once it was on though, it looked great. I loved that it took 3 different people to pull it onto the model. Fabio also made an asymetrical thing but it was cute. Christopher won w/ his granny gown. The judges raved over Elena's dress which surprised her so much she burst into tears. I was surprised too. They also raved over Alicia's dress and then didn't seem to like Gunnar's. Really? Then I really don't know fashion. Gunnar's dress was cute and timeless. He makes more modest designs but they look cool and classy. Nobody was sent home due to the 2 quitters in the beginning of the season. Yay! I would've been mad if Gunnar went home for making such a cute dress. Elena seems to be getting nicer in her fatigued state. Ven's still suffering from hoof in mouth disease. They didn't show any funny comments from Dmitry. Aw...too bad.

America's Next Top Model had it's real first challenge and photoshoot. The challenge consisted of the girls walking around a pole and a hanging hoop in front of a leering and cheering crowd. If I was an intelligent college girl, I would be very offended at being objectified in such a blatant way. The stage wasn't long enough to be a runway and therefore, the whole scene looked like a pole dancing club. Some of the girls picked up on that vibe and then were criticized for being too sexy. Uh huh. Confused! So...one girl won and didn't really win a prize. I guess the win is the prize. Whatever. Other girls complained that they were better, naturally. That one skinny pale white girl gets a lot of airtime w/ her arrogance. For the photoshoot, I always have to pause in memory of Mr. Jay. No, he's not dead but he is gone and I miss him terribly. The guy who's doing his job is so boring, I hardly notice him and the girls don't seem to notice him either. This photoshoot was really dumb. The girls stuck their heads through a hole and had to look like a mounted and stuffed model head on the wall. I felt sorry for them cuz it wasn't a good opportunity to show angles and they couldn't move around at all to change any position. The posing options were look left, look right, look up or look straight ahead. It really came down to expressions. At judging panel the judges beside Tyra were so dull, Tyra looked like a meat sandwich w/ corpse bread. I think she's planned it that way cuz she got tired of people liking her companions better than her. I really miss Nigel. Anyway, blah blah blah, the bottom 2 girls were the ones w/ the least expression. The only girl I liked, Jessie, was sent home. Rats! Tyra's running out of ideas and is down to the really stupid ones. Sorry to say, but this show has run it's course and is getting old and boring.

Well that's about it. The networks will be starting their new seasons soon. Last week was the Republican Conventions w/ a lot of speeches and stumping. Clint Eastwood did one and wasn't too bad for an 81 yr old guy. Wow, a Republican Hollywood actor. That's a rare thing. This coming week is the Democrats w/ their speeches and stumping. I wonder if Obama will show since he's so camera shy? Har har. After that, the networks will show their returning or new shows. I can't wait but at the same time, some shows are getting a little old. I'm also sick and tired of single camera sitcoms w/ shaky cameramen. Tell them not to drink on the job for crying out loud. Well, I'm done. Until next time people; stay tuned.

It's Raining Reality Shows!

2012-08-26T23:34:00.002-07:00

Wow! After quite a summer lull, reality shows have popped up for great entertainment. Okay, I'd better get crackin' cuz there's a lot to cover.

Hell's Kitchen was down to 5 chefs. The teaching challenge returned but this time the students were past Miss Teen USA's. I admired that none were squeamish and really did try their darndest. Nobody complained about chipping nails or getting splattered or even dirtying their hands. The girls were quite competitive too. The dish was chicken parmesan. I thought Clemenza probably had this in the bag but he didn't. Dana thought there's no such thing as too much mozzerella cheese. Nuh-uh. In the end, Barbie won and chose Justin to share the prize w/ her. That was to be expected. He's the only person who didn't treat her badly. The prize turned out to be lunch at a restaurant which they totally milked. There was much moaning w/ pleasure over the food and expressions of ecstasy. Yeah, that food didn't look that great. I think there was some off camera directing for that cuz some of it was overdone and I don't mean the food. I also don't think it's classy to have overhead camera shots when someone is wearing a lowcut dress. For Pete's sake, I thought an underdress shot would be next. Yeesh. Meanwhile, for punishment, the other 3 chefs had to make a lot of fresh pasta for dinner. When Justin and Barbie returned, they made a nice pasta dinner which wasn't appreciated at all by the other 3 chefs. I have a feeling that was done accidentally on purpose ha ha ha. For dinner service, the chefs just had to run one kitchen and not compete. Clemenza was his usual inept self and Barbie left her brain in the dorm. For some odd reason, it took her several tries to get the risotto correct. I'm thinking she may have been a little hung over from that lunch. Even w/ all the mishaps, dinner was served but it was a painful ordeal. So of course Barbie and Clemenza were on the chopping block and at least Barbie really deserved it this time. Clemenza finally used up his 9th life and was booted to Hell's purgatory. Bye Clemenza. Take a shower for goodness sake.

MasterChef was also down to 5 chefs. It was mysterybox time again but this time the cooks chose their own ingredients for any dish they wanted to make. The twist? It was mysterybox exchange! They had to take on their neighbor's ingredients. Oh boy! Okay, here's the deal. If you're any kind of cook at all, you can take any ingredients and make them taste good so I really wanted to tell the cooks, "Stop your whining." At about this time in the season, this show gets kind of mundane. As usual, one cook won, got an advantage for the next cooking challenge, didn't have immunity, one cook won and finally, Monti was sent home. That last cooking challenge was to replicate a dish by Graham Bowles. Hey Josh, don't tell a chef you're improving his dish. Chef's have an ego and don't like that. Oh well. Bye Monti. I'll miss her cuz she looked just like Anne Hathaway.

Face Off is back. This season's makeup artists seem to be just as talented as last season's. I have to say, I'm really wowed by their work. First they had a kind of pool party mixer and found they were meeting their models. I wonder if they got to choose? Shawn Astin was there w/out furry feet, to give out the first challenge. Use items at the party to make a cool makeup. I liked that they showed a lot of the makeups and not just the top 3 and bottom 3 (hint hint to Top Chef). The twin brothers landed in the top. I don't think the other artists have any idea they're twins or even brothers. Hee hee hee. Of course the twin won ha ha ha. I think the prize was immunity cuz he didn't have first choice of anything. For the real challenge, the artists were paired up by random draw and had to make a creature to fit into the cantina scene of Star Wars. This was cool cuz the creature could be anything from anywhere. One thing I noticed was, there are middle aged experienced artists this season. Hmmm...interesting. I expect much professionalism and innovation from these guys. Well, they passed my expectation. I was totally amazed by the creatures that were turned out. There were female alien slaves, monster types, animalistic types and one w/ the creature sitting in his machine which was all on a model. OMG! Sooooo....cooool. Of course there was 1 pair that didn't get along w/ one guy getting on the nerves of the other. Here's a clue. When working w/ someone else, you have to nail down what you agree w/ because if you keep hedging, the other guy can't make up his mind and you end up w/ mishmash in the last few minutes. That's exactly what happened. The artists also did a good job of giving their creatures background stories and showing how they illustrated their imaginations. Incredible! I totally thought the little creature sitting in his machine was going to win but the judges loved something else. Ok, they should know. The winner was one of the experienced middle aged guys. Yay! Of course the bickering couple were in the bottom. Nobody was sent home because the older guy of the Bickersons decided to call it quits. I was surprised cuz I thought the younger guy would quit. Oh well. I can't wait to see what these artists crank out each week.

Top Chef Masters brought in yet another old musical group to judge the quickfire: the Indigo Girls. Looking at them made me feel really old. Anyway, the chefs had to make a dish and then a vegetarian version of it. Patricia thought 45 minutes was a generous amount of time, which when you consider last week, they only had 8 minutes for the quickfire, does seem like a long time. Man, Art knocked out biscuit crusted pot pies which was impressive when it was shown he had to remake them due to forgetting which was which. Who hasn't done that? Everybody did really good except Patricia didn't get the broth in her bowl for the pho and Thierry made a side dish. I was puzzled how Lorena made a soup and then her other dish was a sandwich. That's the same dish? Takashi stuck w/ his Japanese cuisine and won the immunity and cash again. For the elimination challenge, the chefs had to do brunch for a pool party but in canape size. Oh, yay. What's w/ the eating outside all of the time? The show jammed the shopping and cooking into less than 15 minutes to show the bacchanalia of slutty girls and hoochie boys at the pool. James Oseland decided he wanted to prove he's out of the closet and not ashamed of it. His antics were kind of skeevy considering his age. I don't even want to know what happens behind his closed doors. All the food was deemed delicious and this time, the bad word of the day was, "curious." Art proved his prowess w/ the biscuits again and made teeny turkey burgers w/ them. Lorena won the day w/ her bunuelos which looked very different than what I'm used to but maybe that was the Argentinian version. It proved fried foods work when eaten poolside w/ a lot of booze. Oh yeah! Chris, Patricia and Thierry landed in the bottom. All 3 of these dishes were called curious for one thing or another. Chris tried to be too gourmet for that white trash crowd. Patricia promised pulled pork but chopped it instead. Not the same at all. Thierry promised a croque madame and did not make it the usual way. That's the problem w/ making familiar dishes. If you change them, then they're not what you promised and people don't like that. Thierry was told to pack his knives. Awww...bye Thierry, I'll miss your cute French accent.

GameShow Network introduced 2 new shows. The first was a Bible trivia Challenge w/ 3 teams of 3. It was interesting w/ the questions really easy in the first 2/3 of the show but that last round was no joke. I learned there are some cool female names in the Bible. I forgot there was a girl Michael. The exuberance of the winning team made the show fun and Jeff Foxworthy was a host who actually knew the Bible. Foxworthy has that Dick Clark forever youthful quality and he's really fun. The 2nd show was a cooking competition putting regular people in a family cooking their signature dishes against celeb chefs not cooking their signature dishes called, Beat the Chefs. This time, the chefs have to cook what the regular people cook. It's an interesting twist but kind of boring. There's a lot of hamming it up in front of the camera, a lot of posturing and bragging and a lot of non-cooking. I was hoping someone would cut or burn themselves so that they'd shut up. Someone did cut themselves and they still didn't shut up. Eric Roberts seemed to be doing a friend a favor and was on the judging panel. Funny thing was, he didn't seem to eat anything. The other judges were unknowns and I figured, there was a reason they couldn't sell this to the Food Network. Oh well, better luck next time GSN.

Project Runway had it's real woman challenge. This is a good challenge to see if designers can actually dress something other than a mannequin. The cool thing was friends put up their friend to get a makeover. Some of the friends on the runway initially were men and I think some of the designers were shaking in their boots. Nope, all the people being designed for were women. They weren't chosen by the designers either and Ven pouted and pissed and moaned about getting a larger sized lady. Really? She was smaller than Ven and she was so nice that when he constantly spouted backhand compliments like, "You surprised me by how great you looked after the makeover." "These belts are all too small for you." "The black will make you look thinner." She didn't say anything back. Yeesh, Ven had major hoof in mouth disease. Christopher was making that cut it out sign to him a lot. That poor lady was totally offended and reduced to tears as well as her friend w/ her. Everyone else was nice to their ladies. Gunnar proved he's only a douchebag to his competitors and made the cutest black dress for his large lady and was very gracious and nice. Dmitry continued to say his hilarious comments. I wonder if he knows he's funny? He also made the cutest turquoise colored dress for his red-headed lady. In the end Fabio won for getting his oriental butchy slouchy girl into a cute colorblocked dress. Ven proved you can't design well w/ a bad attitude and got a scolding from Heidi and didn't seem to learn anything from it. That black guy w/ the crooked teeth was auffed for making a dress his client told him how to make. She had really bad taste and I swear, I've seen that dress on Brittany Spears 10 years ago. These judges don't like old fashion.

America's Next Top Model returned w/ all college age girls. The sponsors are totally new and the absence of Cover Girl, Elle and Vogue are pretty glaring. I have a feeling the agency agreeing to take on the winner told Tyra they didn't want anyone over 25 like the last 3 winners. There's was a new judge and a new photoshoot director. The Jay's were nowhere in sight and I missed them terribly. These new guys are boring and forgettable. The other twist was the fans had a voice via twitter and facebook. Yeah, I don't buy that cuz we all know Tyra determined all the winners in the past. That's why Janice and Paulina were disgusted w/ the job. I also missed seeing Nigel on the panel. Tyra must've gotten tired of not being the sexiest thing on the panel. Instead, she kept that dogfaced Kelly on the panel. Ugh! So, the girls did a runway show and then a photoshoot and then appeared in person in front of the panel for a little Q and A. All the girls are supposed to be college students but some were questionable cuz they didn't prove they had much in the brains area. The top 13 girls were announced and there were quite a few surprising leftouts. I'm liking Jessie who's quirky, smart and humble. We'll see how all the changes go this season.

NBC debuted 2 new comedies: Animal Practice and Go On. I can't say enough how tired I am of single camera comedies. How about finding one cameraman who can keep the damn thing steady. Anyway, Animal Practice is actually a cartoon w/ real players. It's trying to be Scrubs w/ animals as patients. Guess what, it's too dumb and unlike Scrubs, isn't like real life at all. They try to use that cappuccine monkey as much as they can and that gets really old and kind of creepy. The main vet guy seems like one of those doctors in commercials who say, "I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV." The comedy was low grade and the physical comedy was hokey. Yeah, I'm not watching. Go On has Matthew Perry in an anger management kind of group w/ crazy and weird people. Much rolling of eyes and sighing is what Perry's script consists of. The writing was disjointed and not really that funny w/ the audience actually laughing at people who shouldn't be laughed at. Uh oh. I'll bet the boards lit up like Xmas trees. Perry's going to need rehab for sure, after this show.

Well, that's about it for this week. I know there are a lot more reality shows showing but I don't watch some like Bachelor Pad, Glass House and Big Brother. I also refuse to watch anything w/ the word Jersey or Karcrashian in it. If I'm going to watch white trash, it had better be funny and cute like The Beverley Hillbillies. See you next time TV lovers. Until then, stay tuned.

Back to Real Life; So to Speak

2012-08-21T16:55:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well, the reality shows picked up and some are returning. It's so much fun! Here we go.

Hell's Kitchen had all the chefs on one team. It was time for the recreate the dish challenge. The chefs paired off into interesting teams: Justin and Barbie, Christine and loudmouth braggart Robin, Dana and Clemenza. I wasn't suprised that Dana and Clemenza won since Clemenza ate most of the demo dish. Veal; Ick. For the prize, they were treated to a jetski and beach picnic date. Awww...Ew. I'm sorry but Clemenza is nasty looking and a date w/ him wouldn't be a treat. For punishment, everybody else had to press linens, polish glass and silver and tolerate that French maitre'd all day. There was much eye rolling and sighing. For dinner service, the chefs had to compete against a whole kitchen full of past season runner-ups. Actually, it was kind of nice to see them again and it seemed they had mellowed. Maybe because they weren't sleep deprived and on their last nerve. For some odd reason, they had Robin and Clemenza on cold apps and floaters. Talk about a non-dynamic duo. They not only messed up their dishes, but got in the way and messed up other peoples' food too. Poor Dana. She was forced to accept help w/ her scallops from Clemenza due to Ramsay yelling in her face, "Let them help you." Clemenza has a record w/ scallops. He only cooks 1% of them right. Eek! Meanwhile, Robin was doing her usual, screw up and blame others thing. So of course sweathog chef Clemenza messed up the scallops and Dana got pulled aside to get yelled at by Ramsay. Really? He chastised her for not overseeing the people helping on her station. Really? Who has time and it's not like these people haven't cooked before. Yeesh. I felt really bad for her and felt her frustration through the TV screen. I expected Dana to give Ramsay the big finger when he turned his back but I guess she's classier than I am. Meanwhile, the other kitchen of well rested and non-stressed experienced chefs are banging out their dishes like a well oiled machine w/ so little drama, the producers literally had to fabricate some. In the end, the past chefs won the night and that was that. Loud mouth braggart and sweathog were put up for elimination and rightly so. Ramsay finally showed he wasn't suckered by Robin's boasting and loud promises of, "I can do this." and sent her to Hell's washroom where she will sit until they need chefs for the last challenge. Bye Robin and shut up already.

MasterChef was down to 6 cooks. For their first challenge, they separated into 2 teams w/ all the women on one team and the men on the other after the choosing. Interesting. They had to cook in a kitchen preparing the restaurant's signature dishes. It was a contest of which team could bang out their dishes and how well they could cook. I have to say, the dishes were...different. There was no using their Mom's recipe here. The women were crack up funny because Christine is blind and Monty has a hearing impairment. Really? That was news. No wonder she talks loud. I'm sure the men were hampered w/ David's slowness and disorganization. He's also a slob and I would never let him cook for me. The men had a very slow start and made their diners very disgruntled. That always makes the food taste worse than it usually is. In the end, Becky, the women's team leader made it all work and they won. The men were up for the elimination challenge which was cooking steaks to the right temps. Wait! First Frankie had to decide who got to sit out of the challenge. He did a little maybe him and maybe him but eventually chose himself. Duh. He's no dummy. I don't know if they didn't have enough time but neither David or that tall black guy got their well done steaks well done. My sister would've been screaming, "It's still alive!" Finally, David met his waterloo and had nowhere to hide and was sent to the MasterChef purgatory. Bye David! Take a shower and learn to cook burgers.

Top Chef Masters had a make a salad quickfire. This show must love the B-52's cuz I swear, they seem to show up in one form or another every season. Find some other vegetarians. I'm sick of these guys. Not only did the chefs have to make a salad but they had to do it in 8 minutes. Really? Why didn't they just tell everybody they didn't want anything cooked? Lorena still found time to throw cauliflower on the grill. She proved cooking actually counts in a cooking competition and won the immunity. For the elimination challenge, the chefs were flown in helicopters to the Grand Canyon to cook in the wide open desert. Oy! I loved the way the chefs all raved about the situation but I'll bet it was a lot of editing. Either that or the chefs are really nice, compliant and related to Pollyanna. They also were paired in teams of 2 and had specific Native American proteins and vegetables to work with. Interesting. Patricia and Chris always pair up whenever they can and so do Art and Lorena. I'm not sure how good a strategy that is because if they land in the bottom, one of them is going home. Thierry and Takashi teamed up. Thierry's veggie was Yucca but it wasn't the root starch that we all think of. The problem was, Chef Aussie Curtis pronounced it Yu-ca and not Yuck-a. Yucca is a spiky tree looking cactus that grows in the desert. The part you eat is the fruit and it's kind of like a firm kiwi. It threw him for a loop but he recovered well. I loved the surprised look on Thierry's face when he cut into the Yucca fruit. Takashi had venison which was cool cuz you don't hear of much venison in Japan. The weather threw a wrench in some of the cooking but the chefs adapted pretty well. The judges were joined by Native Americans to judge the food and they ate on the edge of a cliff. Art and Lorena should never be able to present their food first cuz they like to gab about themselves, their friends, their family, their cultures, their habits, the goo between their toes, etc., while all the rest of the food is getting cold. You could see Chris wanted to shove them off the cliff. All the food was judged to be delicious and it looked great for having been cooked in the great outdoors. In the end, Thierry and Takashi won and Clarke was sent home. This time he really didn't do anything wrong, he just wasn't as spectacular as the others. Usually they say keep it simple but it didn't work this time. Bye Clarke, now you can hang out w/ your love bunny Mark. Awww...

Project Runway had another team challenge. Everybody hates team challenges; especially the designers. They were split into 2 teams and rat faced Garcia was brought out to promo Elle and blah blah blah. The designers had to make a collection for a fashionable working woman. One team had 6 members and the other had 5 members, so were dubbed team 6 and team 5. I'll let you figure out which was which. Brilliant? Not so much. The designers first caucused to figure out who's going to do what and much posturing and bragging ensued. Raul bragged he coud do anything. Really? All he's proved so far is he can do crap. Team 5 decided each designer would work on their own look w/ similar material in each look. Team 6 decided to piece out the work w/ someone doing all tops, another doing all skirts, etc. Only Dimitry and that blonde chick did their own dresses. The designers go to Mood where they run around crazy and yell out for each other. Poor Swatch hid out so as not to be trampled. When they returned to the workroom, they were told they only had 8 hours to work and that was it. OMG! Really? Chinese sweatshop workers are thinking, "Geez, I have it easy." Dimitry gave the best commentary lines ever: "He's one way monkey. No, one trick pony." "Even when people say they like Elena, they don't." I was LOL so much, I had to rewind 3 times. Dimitry, you're kind of creepy looking but I still love you, hee hee hee. Meanwhile, he made a beautiful black and navy blue colorblocked dress. Raul's team tried to give him some advice but he wouldn't listen. Y'know, when you've already been kicked off once, maybe you should take some advice. On the runway, there weren't any disasters. Gunnar's model needed a bra. The guy on team 5 who usually wears a turban had a dress that only a midwest 4-H mother would love. Raul showed he made crap again and Sonjia proved her skirts can make a crappy top look like a great outfit. The teams were tied for points but in the end, Team 6 prevailed and that blonde chick won w/ her beautiful blue shift dress and Daniel Vosovitch collar. Gunnar and Raul landed in the bottom but Raul was awarded the boot. Bye Raul, next time you audition for a reality show, make sure you can actually do what the show's about. Oh yeah and get rid of that ugly Squiggy hair thing you've got going on. It's not attractive or stylish whatsoever.

America's Got Talent is really whittling down the acts and this time, it seems America is saying, "We're sick and tired of singers winning all of the time." I was very surprised that unique artistic acts were kept by the voters. I loved when the singers would look like, "I've got this in the bag." and then would find they were booted. Yay! The animal act, earth harp guy, sand artist, light show, and young dancers were among those who were kept for the next round. I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe I'll actually watch and not just the results shows.

The Great Food Truck Race has a new thing. The racers don't have any experience working a food truck. Nope, the racers are cooks or chefs who want to start a food truck. They're given food trucks and sent on their way. The first challenge is just to learn to stock, drive and park their trucks. It was really interesting to see and made us realize that it is more complicated than they've shown before. We can see these people also may not have any business experience either so it's really learning on the go. The food concepts were stuff we've seen before so it was clever of the producers to put this new twist on the competition. It's almost like a whole new show. Hopefully, the Koreans won't cheat this year. As always, the elimination comes down to money earned. The pie truck people went too low on their pricepoint for their product and made the lowest amount of money I've ever heard in this show. They were sent home and their truck confiscated. Bye and take your stupid sob story w/ you. For goodness sake, why don't people do a little research and practice before a competition show? It's not like they spring it on them all of a sudden. Yeesh.

The Closer ended and it's spin-off, Major Crimes started. First, I'd like to say, I'm going to miss The Closer. It was a great show w/ great writing and spectacular acting from everyone from stars and regulars to guests. I have to say, it was the saddest ending to a series ever. Brenda's Mother died and her Dad had cancer and faced coping alone. Even Joel, the cat, looked sad. So the Major Crimes show started and I was very hopeful. Even though it's the same team of guys, it's not the same. The show has a different rhythm, energy and chemistry. They've made Provenza gruffer and louder when he was much funnier saying things under his breath. The chemistry seems tense. Mary McDonnell drives me crazy w/ her slow and precise line delivery which shows she's really a stage actor. Everytime she speaks, the scene slows to a snail's pace. I don't care for the bratty kid. Find his mother and send him on his way already. He shows no range so we're not sympathetic to his plight at all. I'm thinking his Mother abandoned him for a darn good reason. The concept of the show is kind of frustrating. They do solve the murder cases but it's all about plea bargaining which never gives the audience that satisfied feeling. It's reality that we don't really want to know about. The scenes that work are the scenes that have always worked: analyzing the crime scene, scenes w/ the M.E. and grilling the suspects. Everything else feels like hot air and filler. I hate to say it, but they need to change the lead. I know how producers want to keep from having an all male ensemble but if the show is great, we don't mind. It's better than making the woman be the only hated character.

Well, that's it. I'm really excited to see Face Off and America's Next Top Model are going to be kicking off their new seasons. Woo Hoo! Until then people. Stay tuned.

During the Olympics

2012-08-14T09:06:00.001-07:00

Hello all. I know the Olympics are over. Thanks to NBC re-running it's primetime telecast and poor production, I was able to see my fave shows but some shows were chicken and ran re-runs themselves. The Olympics telecast wasn't great. NBC has a really bad habit of showing more talk and in show commercials for it's shows than actual competition. I watched a lot more NBCSN (sports network). Michelle Beadle was a great host who knew what she was talking about but didn't have to hog the camera time. Also, she always seemed fresh and fun too w/ that glint in her eye that told you she wasn't taking anything too seriously. They also showed a really wide variety of events on that channel too. I heard the name of our champion swimmer wayyyy too many times. How come it took a whole week to hear the British National anthem when Great Britain had won 5 gold medals already? I love to hear everybody partying and singing; even if it's not Americans. NBC needs to get rid of it's old dinosaurs like Bob Costas and Al Michaels but not bring in dumb twits like Ryan Seacrest. At least they didn't do all those athlete profiles they loved to use to waste time. With today's internet, we can look up bios ourselves. Oh well. I hear they have the Olympics contract through 2020. Good Lord. Maybe by then, we'll be able to see the games in virtual reality or something and won't have to even hear the letters NBC.

Ok, enough of the ranting. Let's get to the shows that actually had the stones to air during the Olympics.

Top Chef Masters had a wedding episode. This time it wasn't a wedding wars. No teams and everybody had to do their own dish. Oh wait, they couldn't start w/out hearing the bride and groom's sob stories: dead maid of honor and scammed out of venue deposit. Really? That was it? I've heard worse. At least there's leeway w/ the food because the couple is Asian and not vegan, diabetic, heart healthy or some other weird dietary quirk. So the chefs pow-wow a bit and then set off to shop for ingredients. I love this section of the show cuz some chefs run around like madmen (Chris Cosentino) or women and some chefs toodle around like a day in the park (Thierry and Art Smith). Ok, so the chefs got cooking. Art Smith worked on the cake and it was pineapple upside down. Really? For a wedding? These people are Asian not white trash. He also made sure to drop some famous names to really make his cake taste good. Geez. He and Cosentino also got into it over the ovens. I think Cosentino is the only person who doesn't let Art sweetly steamroll over him in the way those southerners can do. At the wedding, the chefs all helped each other plate and all of the food seemed to be delicious. Patricia Yeo (I think that's her name) was declared the winner w/ her spoonful of tasty treat. The bottom 3 consisted of the unfortunates. The people who just didn't have luck w/ them that day were Art who had the leaning tower of cake, Mark w/ his unplanned sashimi salmon and the blonde chef chick who grilled her cabbage. The blonde chick left and I still don't know her name. Bye!

Last week on Top Chef Masters, the chefs had a quickfire, unlike last week when they just gave them more time for the wedding. The quickfire consisted of cooking any type of seafood they wanted except w/out heat. A lot of crudo, ceviche and carpaccio ensued. The funniest part was when the chefs noted that Chef Takashi had the advantage. I loved the face he pulled at them. It was LOL classic. Well guess who showed up to judge; Brian Boitano. Patricia thought he was a good judge but we didn't get to see him taste her dish. Long story short, Takashi won and nobody was surprised. I loved the fact that he mainly did his garnish and sauce the whole time and in the last five minutes cut the fish and plated. He made the whole thing look easy and unstressful. For the elimination challenge, the chefs had to work in teams of 3 and cook teppanyaki style. Oh boy! Art and Chris landed on the same team after the knife pull and I was just hoping Chris wouldn't put his fist through Art's face somewhere down the line. The frantic shopping trip went off w/out a hitch except Thierry stopping to get a 1 minute massage while at the store. Chris had a bit of a fit w/ that one. As it turned out, each team had 30 minutes to cook and serve all their dishes. Yikes! Now you would think chefs who are not young have experienced and observed teppanyaki food before but maybe their lives are all about their own food and work. Whatever. The white team is up first. Heffernen made something Asian, Mark made scallops and Lorena made flied lice. Lorena was the time caller which made sense since she was the one who had to cook last and in order to have her own time, she had to push everybody along. Unfortunately, they didn't want to taste test their food in front of the judges. Well why the heck not? I had a teppan chef taste his fried rice in front of me and it didn't bother me a bit. If that's what it takes to make the food taste good, go for it. I also wasn't sure about mango juice in the fried rice. Ick. Next up, yellow team which was Takashi w/ immunity, Patricia and Mark's Husband. Takashi made a squid dish w/ pancake but instead of using rice flour which would've made them delicate, he used wheat flour which made them more crepey. Mark's Husband threw lobster tails on the grill in their shell. That was different. Patricia made some Korean golgi which was smart since a lot of Korean meat dishes are grilled on a flattop. Finally, the red team of Art, Thierry and Chris were on. While setting up their carts to push out to the grille, Chris gave Art one task which was to put the mandoline on his cart when he was done w/ it. That seemed easy and why didn't Art have his own mandoline? So Art made cheesey grits and shrimp. I love that he intended for his grits to be in cakes but when they fell apart, he just went with it and served them in a little pile. Since Art likes to give long narratives about his food, Chris had to push him along. Chris cooked next and found Art didn't leave the mandoline for him and a nice curseword was issued. Hee hee hee. I wouldn't have let Art use the mandoline in the first place. Chris learned his lesson. Anyhoo, Chris made a Korean meat dish too and Mary Sue Miliken who was judging, gave a smile when she saw him tasting his sauce. Thierry ended the day w/ dessert and made crepes. He found it's very hard to babysit a lot of crepes at once on a very hot grill. When it came to judging, the judges remarked that they didn't get to see much showmanship from some of the chefs? Are you kidding? They only had 10 minutes and no practice. They didn't even get tips from a teppanyaki chef. The red team won the day. Of the red team, Art came out the winner. He set alcohol on fire and the judges called that a show. Ok. Art Smith took it w/ the giddy elation of a little girl at her birthday party. The white team landed on the bottom. They were criticized for not enough seasoning and not enough show. Mark was sent home for overcooked scallops. Too bad. He always made me think of what Macauly Culkin should've looked like as a grown up. Bye Mark, go home and practice cooking seafood.

Project Runway didn't hide out either. The challenge for the week was to make a red carpet dress but work in teams of 2. Oh and they had past season contestants as clients. I'm not sure why, but they met their clients in different parts of town. Wouldn't it have saved time and money to just have them meet at Parson's? It's not like they took inspiration from the meeting place. Oh but they did get in the car commercial by having the teams pair up around a car and demanding the car color be part of the dress. It was kinda cheesey. I felt really bad for Gunnar and Kooan the Kooky Kabuki. They met w/ Irena and she's just as bitchy as ever. Ven and his sewing partner met up w/ Kenley who lied about herself w/ a smile plastered on her face, "I'm classic and vintage but modern and fashionable." Uh huh. I think she invented quad oxymoron. Dmitry and his girl goth partner had purple haired goth girl from a past season. Michael was paired up w/ haggy old Andrea and they had Anya who basically told them not to copy her, but in a nice way. The depressed Russian girl had that crazy English punk girl and their client was Laura who wasn't pregnant and much nicer than usual. Finally, Sonjia was paired up w/ that black guy and their client was Valerie who was really nice as usual. So on to Mood and we got to see Swatch trying to avoid the cameraman. Awww...who's a shy little puppy? Back to Parsons and those cheap brother sewing machines. Halfway through the work Tim Gunn showed up w/ each client to peruse the work. A lot of I don't like that, I don't think you should use that, and that doesn't look right happened. I think the clients were told not to give any design advice or help. The porkpie hat, Raul, and girl team really needed help cuz both said they only did menswear? Really? Even the girl? So instead of making a killer suit, they attempted a gown. Not smart; Doh! Gunnar and Kooan had to repair a saggy butt thing on the gown they made for Irena and to hide the backside mess, they threw a train on her. Valarie looked great in her gold sequined gown. I didn't understand goth girl's gown which looked like a square of satin draped on her w/ the open back. Laura looked like the mother of the bride w/ some weird pink sheeth covered by black diaphanous pleated something but it did have big shoulders. Poor Anya, who can make a potato sack look good, had to wear that crap colored dress that made her look like the homesewn wallflower at the prom. Even though her dress was too short and made of weird bathrobe material w/ puckered seams, she made it work but the look on her face said, "God, how I hate this mess." Kenley beebopped out in a navy blue short dress w/ cool constructed bodice and poodle skirt w/ out the poodle. Finally, Mila came out in her badly constructed black dress w/ red piping made by the people who only do men's wear. Unfortunately, she looked like an amateur drag queen. Somehow Gunnar and Kooan made top 2 teams. Really? Was Irena holding a large handbag in front of her dress? Ven and his partner were also on top and w/ a lot of giggling and nasally gushing from Kenley, they won. Poor Ven was declared the ultimate winner w/ the prize being attending the Emmy's w/ Kenley. Is that a prize or a punishment? The porkpie hat guy and girl who dressed Mila were declared the losers and the Raul, the porkpie hat wearer, was sent home. In the last 2 minutes of the show, we found Andrea was MIA. Yay! The whole show became much better looking.

Last week, they let the Project Runway designers work alone again. I'm glad to see less group projects. The designers hate it and we feel for them. First though, what happened to Andrea? Nobody knew except one lady who found her missing in the middle of the night. Kooan was also not looking well and said as much. The designers met at Michael Kors' studio and the group was told Andrea's fine but gone. I found out that when designers are eliminated, they don't really go home. They're sequestered in another place but still have to hang around the designers so people can't see who's been eliminated. The way Andrea left, she basically escaped. I guess those cameramen sleep after all hee hee hee. WTG and I hope they don't sue her for breach of contract. So for the challenge....wait. Kooan wants to leave too. Oh boy! He graciously bows out; literally. Well bye then. He was cannon fodder anyway. The challenge was given; make a look for a woman on the go. What the heck does that mean? Is that a traveling woman? Is it a woman who works in an office til late and then wants to have cocktails after work? Is that a sporty woman? Is that a woman who chases kids around all day? Tim and Mikey told everyone it's all about non-wrinkle material. Ohhhhh.... On to Mood and we saw Swatch dart in and out of 1 shot while the designers ran around like mad. At Parsons, Raul was brought back to make up for the missing designers and proceeded to look like a dumb schmuck by bragging how good he is. Uh huh. Ok, so they showed a lot of sewing, Gunn's critique and the usual designer panic. Raul was the last out of the room and literally threw accessories onto his model. Raul landed on the bottom w/ his ugly pants and weird no shape top. So did that English punk girl who had a poorly made pink sheath covered by a diaphanous black overlay. Hey, wasn't that kind of what she made last week? Except the pink dress last week was made by the Russian girl who can sew. Also on the bottom was the turbaned black guy who's dress I didn't mind too much. On the top was Sonjia w/ the cutest charcoal grey dress, Dmitry w/ a cute charcoal grey dress (I'm sensing a theme here) and someone else. Sonjia is declared the winner and Buffy, English punk girl, is auffed. Bye! Work on your sewing skills on your downtime. You never know if you'll be pulled back onto the show again.

Well, that's about it. Next post will review the new spin-off of The Closer; Major Crimes. Until then loyal TV watchers. Stay tuned.

Things Are Picking Up!

2012-07-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

Hello all. I'm so glad to see the return of Top Chef Masters and Project Runway. At the same time, other shows had their finales. So here we go.

Food Network Star finally revealed the winner. First, they gathered all the past contestants from the season to show clips and snips; some of which were totally hilarious. We got some insight toward the downfalls of the contestants from the judges' points of view and we got to see the bloopers. The total professionalism of the season showed in that I didn't really hate to see anybody return to the show. There were a lot of times in the show when I would say, "Ohhh...that explains a lot." Ok, so in the end, Justin was declared the winner and he seemed in shock. I don't know why because we're all ready for his funky coolness in a show. He was quite gracious and the show ended 2 minutes after the announcement. Jeez, not a lot of time to see him be congratulated. WTG Justin, I'm expecting good stuff from you.

America's Got Talent is still whittling away at the acts. I'm happy to see some really cool stuff that isn't all singers that have a real shot. I just hope the American people vote for them. I hope that light show act wins. That kind of thing is really cool to see in a Vegas show. I'm very glad to see the judges pointing out the value of the multi layered acts.

American Ninja Warrior had it's finale w/ the group of guys who completed stage 1 moving on to stage 2. OMG, it was a freakin' blood bath. Only 1 guy finished the course. Then he went on to stage 3 which was all about hand strength and endurance. Unfortunately, we have no American Ninja Warrior this year and for some odd reason, I did love it when Matt announced, "See you next year." Watching the whole thing really made me admire those Japanese guys who finished the course in Japan. They were totally awesome! In the meantime, all you Ninja Warrior wannabes; practice practice practice.

Hell's Kitchen had a Southern food show. Each chef partnered up w/ a chef from the opposing team and were given ingredients to work w/ like catfish and grits, etc. Then they made a dish each to be judged head to head. What? No Paula Deen? The only annoying thing was the gospel choir singers announcing each ingredient. That got tiring after the first one. Anyway, most of the dishes were judged as pretty good but the red team pulled out the win. BTW, aren't balls of meatloaf called meatballs? For the prize, the red team had the photoshoot for the magazine cover and a spa day. The punishment consisted of cleaning the dorms. For dinner service, the theme was of course; wait for it...Southern food complete w/ catfish, grits and fried chicken. Well, at least they had a day off from scallops. Unfortunately, the catfish seemed to be harder to cook than the chefs realized. It was burned, raw and sometimes both. Everybody thought Kimmie would be stellar since she bragged about how great she was at Southern food but then again, she's bragged about being a great cook of everything else too. We always knew Kimmie had help from Tiffany but we never knew how much because w/ Tiffany gone, Kimmie had nowhere to hide. In the blue kitchen, everybody had problems. Robin precooked her garnishes and hid them in the oven which really ticked off Chef Ramsey cuz his big thing is freshness of food. She took up a lot of time fingerpointing again, blaming members of her team for telling her to use the warming oven blah blah blah. Justin got killed by the meat station and Clemenza couldn't get consistency on his apps. Ugh. I thought Chef Ramsey was going to have a stroke. In the end, both teams were told they were losers but it was Kimmie who got the boot. Bye Kimmie, go bully someone in your own place. The next day the chefs had to do the cooking relay. This is always an interesting challenge because the chefs can't hide their ineptitude. Clemenza drove his blue team crazy by wasting time during his 10 minutes of cooking to tie his apron just so. OMG, really? Everybody was surprised that none of the dishes came out good. Some were undercooked, some were overcooked, and there was sauce and garnish missing. Chef Ramsey was not only shocked but very disappointed and I would add, enlightened. Most of the problem was terrible disorganization. The teams just couldn't seem to get it together and maybe that's the problem at dinner services. There was no winner and all the chefs had to do the punishment. I loved that Chef Ramsay told them what they would be missing for not winning. What a way to kick them when they're down. Hee hee hee. The punishment consisted of cleaning all the cars, and the red carpet area. There was a lot of complaining and shouting. At dinner service the blue team got through the apps but Brian got killed by that meat station. The red team, of just 3 ladies, completed their dinner service and Barbie was called to the red team's kitchen to pull their fat out of the fire; which she did. WTG Barbie! I still don't understand why the girls don't like her. So needless to say, the blue team lost and the whole team had to present themselves for elimination. Brian got the boot. Yep, he used up his last chance. Bye Brian. You're cute and funny but those aren't things Chef Ramsay values in a chef.

MasterChef brought back past eliminated cooks to see who could earn their way back. Everybody was disappointed to see Ryan back. Man, that guy has one heckuva big ego and can't shut up. He totally got booted and was still bragging about what a great cook he is. So they did the mystery box thing but the cooks each had to pick an ingredient to go in it. There were some crazy choices and no starch. How funny was that? In the end, there were quite a few desserts presented to the judges. It's lucky the cooks don't have to use all the ingredients like on Chopped. I was impressed w/ Stacey making pasta and the judges loved her dish. In the end, Josh w/ the big wide nostrils and Ryan were the last 2 standing. Then they had to each make a fruit tarte which was to be judged by the top 6 cooks. That meant those cooks couldn't watch and throw out digs while the guys cooked. Josh pulled out the win and all the other cooks rejoiced because Ryan was sent home again. For the next challenge the cooks had to work w/ live prawns. OMG, it was the funniest thing to watch w/ a lot of screams and squeals. Those buggers were really active. I was thinking someone dumped Red Bull into their tanks. Shockingly enough, David won the round but he was smart enough to use the shells to make a sauce. The next test was to make a dessert w/ a specific ingredient. David's advantage was to pick the ingredient and then see 3 examples of desserts made w/ that ingredient. He chose corn and then chose to make a rice pudding made w/ corn in it. Then he got time alone to pick his ingredients for his dish in the pantry. What an idiot. He forgot to get rice. OMG, well instead of making it work and making another kind of dessert w/ corn, he stood around and begged people for rice. Nobody thought he was much of a threat and Becky gave him some rice. Good thought cuz his dessert turned out to be worse than dog food. He said it tasted just like his Mom made at home which earned a huge glaring look from Judge Joe. It made me think maybe his Mom can't cook either. Becky was declared the winner and David proved he must have a lucky charm in his pocket cuz Felix was sent home for her really dense profiteroles filled w/ popcorn. Ick. Bye Felix, I'm sick to death of seeing you cry so go sit in the corner.

Love In the Wild had it's finale w/ Ken and Yanina and Ben and Michelle the last couples standing. Once again they had to run around the island doing various tasks in various modes. Wow! This show is redundant and boring to the end. They tried to show Ben and Michelle always being close on the heels of Ken and Yanina. The overnight was hilarious w/ the people trying to build shelters and cook meals and not caring about how they turned out. They were totally exhausted from the day and one thing we noticed was not much cuddling going on at that point. I think lack of a shower contributed too. In the end, Ken and Yanina hit the finish mat first w/ their statues. It proved the show lied and Ben and Michelle were never close enough to overtake them. Yawn. They did give updates on the relationships. BFD, I didn't care and I hope to never see these people on TV ever again.

Top Chef Masters is back w/ some really cool chefs for example: Chris Cosentino, Lorena from the Taco Bell commercials, a thinner Art Smith, Chef Takashi, Chef Leo and more. OMG, I'm totally impressed and excited. It looks like they're sticking w/ the format from last season so I'm expecting some really tired and grouchy chefs toward the end. The show's in Las Vegas this season and they're using the gambling motif. For the quickfire Chef Stone pulled out cards w/ ingredients. The chefs were paired up into teams and given 2 random ingredients. I didn't understand why the chefs thought quinoa and shellfish would be hard to work w/. The real problem was the time constraint of just 15 minutes. Oy! I saw the problem cuz the quinoa would take 20 to make. Casino dealers were brought in to taste and judge and deemed the team of Cosentino and Leo the winners w/ their catfish and beef dish. Wow! That was some impressive cooking since they had to take a little time to break down their meats. For the elimination challenge, the chefs were put into 2 teams by Curtis saying, "Split the group there and you on that side are one team and you on that side are a team." That's hilarious cuz some of the chefs were standing by their buddies. The teams then caucussed (thank you Tim Gunn) for their buffet dishes and then shopped for ingredients. I loved Art Smith saying he didn't know what a budget was cuz he cooks for billionaires. Oh boy! When the chefs returned to the kitchen, they got a really big surprise cuz that's when Curtis handed them the curveballs. They got scratch tickets that had various "prizes": immunity, lost time, switch teams and money. I thought the money was to go to their charities but no it was supposed to go for more ingredients: hint hint. Then the teams were given their food themes. I felt so sorry for the blue team for getting Indian cuisine because there are no Indian chefs this season. Too bad Suvir wasn't there. I was thinking the blue team would send someone to load up on spices and yoghurt but nope, nobody was sent to the store. The red team sent Art who didn't complain at all about the trip taking time out of his cooking time. I have a feeling he already had a plan to make a simple and fast dish. Someone knows how to play this game. One chef totally skinned her hand on the mandoline and had to spend the day in the ER. It was cool that not only did her teammates finish her dish, but did a good job of it too. So after seeing a bunch of Vegas show people going through the chefs' buffets and make dumb comments the judges finally tasted the food. I loved the little argument between Ruth and James over the lemon dessert. I don't know why, but I really like James. He's geeky in that cool way. Anyway, the red team's Mexican buffet was declared the winner which was no surprise since the blue team didn't have anything that was really Indian. What? Nobody knows how to make a curry? In the end, the Chef who mangled her hand announced her inability to stay in the competition and that blonde lady chef who wished her theme was Mexican was sent home. Well Luck wasn't w/ her. Both teams lost a chef and it turned out to be a double elimination show. Yay! I love those.

Project Runway had it's unconventional challenge. The show was an hour and a half and I thought, yay! They're finally going to show model choosing again. Nope, they didn't. Aw...shucks. I don't know why, but I've always liked that part of the show. Maybe they've cut out the modeling competition part of the show. One thing they did cut was the cash prize. The winner gets a prize package of stuff from a computer company, a car and an opportunity to show their line. There was a spoiler on 2 people who just up and quit the show and now I know why. If there's no cash prize and you have all the stuff anyway, what's the point of winning except for bragging rights? Anyway, back to the show. The designers had to work w/ candy. There was a good 10 minute in show commercial for a certain candy store and then the designers were let loose w/ a certain amount of money. That's new. I've never seen a money amount except at Mood. I have to say, I was totally impressed w/ the designers this year. There was very little whining about the materials and really only 4 people who had cloth material showing. Kooan, the kooky kabuki, seems to be the Santino of the season and can't help but over embellish his designs. That boring middle aged white lady made all kinds of excuses and had very little candy on her dress. She was totally raked over the coals by the judges. Ven made a gorgeous dress and I loved his instructions to his model to not bend, sit down or even brush up against anything. I really liked the dress made by the winner from the last challenge and thought it looked like something Kristen Stewart would wear. I was surprised he didn't end up in the top 3. Sonjia isn't pronounced Sonya but she made a gorgeous aqua themed dress that probably smelled really nice w/ gummy sharks, jordan almonds, jawbreakers and jellybeans. I couldn't believe she got all that stuff glued onto that dress. Gunnar finally put his money where his mouth was and turned out a cute checkered dress made out of licorice but that peplum was quite large. The judges weren't loving hats which I can't understand since Princess Kate is making them look so chic these days. Ven was declared the winner. Finally, that boring white middle age lady ran out of excuses and chances and was auffed. Bye, whoever you are. Not only are you gone, but forgotten too.

Well, that's about it. I'm glad to see Lex Medlin will be back at Drop Dead Diva. Even though he's gained weight, he's still quite a cutie. We lost 2 great TV actors this week: Sherman Hemsley and Chad Everett. They will be missed but will forever live on in TV land and in our hearts.

See you next time people. Until then, stay tune.

Tragedies and Triumphs

2012-07-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

The huge news of the weekend is the shooting at the Batman: The Dark Knight Rises movie. For a nation that feels like it's teetering on the edge of sanity w/ a bad economy, shaky employment, housing foreclosures happening left and right, scammers running rampant and a season of mudslinging politicians; we have a huge tragedy happen to an area that already got smoked out by Mother Nature. I think the major question to every god is, why? Our hearts go out to all the victims of the terrible event. I say all the victims because the people who died or were shot weren't the only victims. Families lost loved ones and people will live w/ the nightmare that they witnessed. As a nation, we've lost more of our trusting and innocence. I mourn for all that has been lost and for all the lives that have been negatively impacted by one person's inhumane actions. I'm sure you're asking why this is in my blog. It's been all over my TV since the early morning of Friday and our lives are changed by what we hear and see from the TV.

Ok, so on to the real subject.

Food Network Star was 1 episode away from the finale. The last 6 contestants were told to make a segment and promo for their show and their number would be cut in half for the finale. So there was a talk w/ their mentors and they had a couple of practices before the real filming. Yvan made a really gross pedestrian dish w/ canned cream corn and mac and cheese w/ his brother in the kitchen. Ok, ick to both. The brother may as well have been a turnip sitting on the counter and the dish looked like something a hobo would cook up. Yeah, sorry Yvan but your show would only get 1 viewing. Nikki did her Grill Next Door thing that nobody seems to think is cute more than once. We have too many grilling shows and she looked stiffer than a 2 day old corpse. Next! Ippy did his Hawaiian laid back thing but it was so forgettable, I forgot the name he came up w/ for his show. He also mentioned he's half Italian. Yeesh, that was confusing. His dish looked good but it seemed redundant. If you've run out of ideas for new dishes already, this job isn't for you. Marti is possibly the most irritating Southern lady since that christian girl from Steel Magnolias. She named her show Marti w/ the Party which sounds a lot like Aarti Party. She made a shrimp salad looking thing that looked like it should've been a lot easier to make than she showed. Also, her party looked like a church potluck. Where was that set, behind the dumpsters? Next! Michele was trying her darndest to sell her New England food show. I agree w/ some facebookers that that subject is kind of limited but for a West Coast person like me, it's intriguing. Her dish was a huge bowl of steamed clams and bread. Hmmm...so it's home cooking huh? She did really good w/ her on-camera persona though. Finally, Justin showed a snippet of Alton's old show and then showed us how to make Caesar Salad in a new way. I have never heard of Caesar Salad made w/ a chicken stock based dressing and there was no hint of egg or anchovies. When the word aspic is used in the dish, it gets a gross rating from me. So actual Food Network stars were brought in to view and judge the videos of the contestants. In the end, the judges totally lied and now there are 4 people in the finale. They only cut Ippy and Nikki. Really? They couldn't make up their minds about Alton's team? They're pretty lame judges. The winner will be chosen by viewer votes. Cool cuz the last time they did this, Guy Fieri won and he's one of the few winners I've liked. Dan and Steve, Aarti, and the Sandwich King are the others. I'll be interested to see who suckered the most people.

America's Got Talent was in New York. They still have a huge group of acts so they showed similar ones but only about a 3rd of them. Once again, the judges were very good. They were honest and right to the point telling people when it didn't work. Some of the acts proved that they really are showing talent. The magicians are looking very amateur even when they do big things like make helicopters appear. The escape artist shows he knows how to create the drama. I'm glad they got rid of that weird contortionist/dancer guy. It grosses me out to watch him. The circus couple who can lift each other were amazing and did an aerial act that showcased their strength and grace. The got rid of some of the singers which is good because that batch of acts really needs paring down. The elderly acts didn't fare well at all and were all cut. I agreed w/ the acts that were kept and cut. Way to go judges. You have talent too. The talent to know crap from gold.

Hell's Kitchen had one huge episode in 2. I hate that because they take up 2 nights. Anyway, for the team challenge, they finally got around to the blind taste test. Before that though, Ramsey brought in Joey Chestnut to compete in a hotwing eating contest w/ 4 of the chefs. We already knew Joey would smoke everyone but it was really hilarious to watch. You could tell Ramsay was LOL the whole time too. In the taste test, we found Kimmie's a chicken cuz she opted to sit out. Robin and Tiffany have terrible palates and can't tell corn flakes from cat litter. Brian and Justin have amazing palates. I did include Brian because even though he thought the shallots were onions, I say close enough on that. Ramsay was really impressed that Justin got 100% correct which hadn't happened in any season of Hell's Kitchen. The blue team won and for the prize, the team had a waterpark all to themselves for a day. Meanwhile, the girls team had to tend all the deliveries for the day. At midnight a package was delivered and I was wondering why everyone wasn't in bed. Anyway, the chefs got instructions to make their own menus to be served at dinner service. Red team came up w/ rather ordinary but easy to make dishes. Blue team was more fancy but more difficult. For some odd reason people were really cranky during the prep time the next day but it was probably due to lack of sleep. Man, the dirty looks were shooting everywhere. At dinner service the women did a pretty good job of banging out their dishes w/ a few hiccups and Tiffany trying to cook in a dirty pan. She only had 4 stacks of saucepans in front of her but she was probably too lazy to heat up a new pan. Barbie did a really good job of taking the fat out of the fire a few times when her team would hit a glitch. On the blue team Robin ran out of stuffed squash blossoms due to messing up a few and then tried to blame it on Justin's prep. She wasted a lot of time fingerpointing and whining. Meanwhile, Clemenza and Justin couldn't seem to get the fish and meat in sync. In the end, Ramsay wasn't satisfied w/ either team's service. The red team put up Barbie and Tiffany. The blue team put up Robin and Clemenza. Tiffany finally blew her last chance and was sent home. Bye Tiff, see you at McDonalds.

MasterChef had the cooks team up in 2 teams and cook steaks for cowboys. Monty and Frank chose their teams and then those team members were switched to the other team. LMAO! Anyway Monty was frantic w/ a rather unsupportive team. For some odd reason, most of the cooks dislike Monty. I have no idea why but maybe she sneezes on people's breakfast or something that we don't get to see. Frank's menu was homey and rather easy w/ mashed potatoes and corn on the cob and it went over really well w/ the cowboys. It didn't help that Monty's team ran out of mashed sweet potatoes halfway through the service. All they had was green beans to go w/ the steak and if you ask most cowboys, they're not too keen on green veggies. So in the end, Monty's team lost and had to do the cooking test. Felix was given the immunity by Monty which the tall black guy and Becky weren't happy about. I don't know what was going on, but the black guy's nostrils looked extra large this episode. So the trio were each given 6 eggs. 1 was to be poached, 1 was to be soft boiled, 1 was to be cooked sunnyside up and the last 3 were to be made into an omelet so there was no testing or dropping allowed. I like when a cook admits their mistake because it means that's not what they intended. Monty admitted her omelet wasn't good looking but at least she seasoned well and her soft boiled egg was really beautiful. The other 2 cooks were too cautious on their soft boiled eggs and Becky basted her sunny side which also had that brown lacy edge that chefs hate to see. The black guy overcooked all of his eggs except the boiled one and he was sent home. For the mystery box challenge the cooks had to cook something southern because Paula Deen announced it after stepping out of the big box. Frank won w/ his grits and steak roulade dish. An Italian who can make polenta; who da thunk it? Anyway, the cooks then had to reproduce a sushi plate but in teams of two cooking tag team style and Frank got to pick the teams but not participate. Yikes! Sushi chefs take years to learn how to make sushi and they wanted the cooks to do it in an hour? Stacey and Christina had the worst disadvantage because not only did Christina work slower than others just out of caution w/ her disability, but she also couldn't give any instruction or verbal help when Stacey was cooking. Felix and Monty won w/ one gorgeous sushi plate. Even though Becky and David's plate looked like cat food, they still won, over Stacey and Christina who left the maki roll off of their plate. Stacey was sent home. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to cover up her ignorance of Japanese cooking.

Love in the Wild was down to 3 couples. Once again, the couples had a whole course of stuff to do to find 5 map pieces to get to a destination. I finally realized they've been on the same island or whatever for the whole season. Well that's boring and they're pretty dumb if they need a map after all this time. I noticed the afraid of heights princess who looks like Melissa Rycroft was missing. Well, that's what she gets for changing her guy every week. So the teams ride horses, run through the jungle, cross a river, swim in a lagoon and carry stuff; again. The team that started out first didn't finish first. I'll call the winners team 1. Team 1 got to choose who's in the finale w/ them. The ballsy blonde chick decides to be bitchy to team 1's guy which wasn't smart. Team 1 chose the other team and there it was. This show's kinda dumb and it took me all season to realize it. I do like that the people left have foreign accents. That's kind of cool.

Around the World in 80 Plates had it's finale too. Liz, Snookie and Avery made their way to Uruguay where they had to first shop in 3 places and then make a local kind of dish in the time left of the 2 hours they were given. Snookie got advice from the local ladies who pointed him to premade stuff like chorizo and carmelized onions in jars. I have a feeling they were selling him the more pricey stuff. Avery wanted to cook fish but no pescado in a butcher shop so got chicken instead. Liz forgot to buy salt and nobody would give her any. Whatever! Cat and Aussie were the judges. They could tell Nookie's dish had premade stuff and totally knocked him for it. Avery was declared the winner and was able to choose her opponent for the last challenge. She chose Liz much to everybody's surprise and delight. They headed for California for the last leg of the trip. They then had to shop at certain stores and when they got there, they got to choose a past eliminated chef from a group of 3. Liz ended up w/ Chaz and John. I thought those were terrible choices since both guys proved they couldn't cook their way out of paper bags; especially Chaz. Also, Chaz has the palate of a sick monkey. Avery chose Jenna and Nick. They had to serve 3 dishes to a group of award winning and well known chefs. Avery proved experience helps a lot and the proof was in the eating. No conniving votes here. Avery was declared the winner, everybody congratulated her, they brought out her family, she cried and that was that. Whatever. I was just glad Chaz, Jenna or Keven didn't win.

Project Runway is back w/ some really interesting contestants. I like that there is one really serious and professional minded guy. They also included one kooky kabuki Japanese designer and he's hilarious just w/ his broken English. When the judges give him their critique, you can tell he only understands half of what they're saying. Gunnar from last season is back and very prancy gay w/ a diva attitude. Not at all appealing. I thought a lot of the designers made some dogshit stuff but what do I know? The lady who got ousted worked w/ knits. I didn't hate her stuff as much as that other lady's muddy stuff but the judges were bored and that's the kiss of death. Klum seems to be in better spirits since her split from Seal. Nina got a better hairstyle that keeps her face from looking so rodent-like and Kors isn't as orange as he used to be. It should be a fun season.

Charlie Sheen's new show Anger Management is showing. Ok I have to ask. How come they always name his character Charlie? Is it because he can't remember any other name? For a show that shouldn't sound dull, this one is. Sheen still seems like he's working despite being stoned and his co-stars act like they're humoring him. The writing is spotty w/ some characters having funny moments despite aggravating personalities. I don't know what's going on but it seems the writers stole dialogue from Sheen's previous show. Chuck Lorre should rain down some hurt on them w/ a girl named Sue. Yeah, this show's not a winner.

There's nothing really new on. Dallas is continuing to be really good and exciting and Drop Dead Diva is breaking my heart these days. The Olympics are on next week and the next. Hopefully the TV world won't be intimidated cuz I'm going to hate it if there's nothing new on for 2 whole weeks. I've already said what I think of the Olympics in this modern era. Borrrrrring!

See ya next time people. Until then, stay tuned.

Slim Pickins For Summer

2012-07-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. I'm sorry I may have missed a week. I'm just going to go w/ what I've seen this week so don't be surprised if you've been watching the shows and I have gaps.

American Ninja Warrior is finally in Las Vegas and showing the first stage of Mount Midoriyama. I totally LOL when Matt Iseman says it because his voice changes to a gruff tough voice and it's hilarious. They've only shown the bottom half of the men and some have proven to be quite impressive. They also included some women as wildcards but they were disappointing. The furthest a woman got was the jumping spider which she fell on. I especially like when a cocky guy totally goes in the drink. Haw haw. Some of the guys w/ the bigger sob stories i.e. homeless, diabetic, jobless, etc. really make you say, "Aw..." when they fail. It's still exciting to watch and when a guy finishes the course, you really know he had the right combination of preparation, determination, luck and skill. I can't wait to see the top finishers and see who gets shaken out.

America's Got Talent finally got done in Las Vegas. Thank you Sharon, Howie and Howard for making good decisions. I'm sorry but even though the rapping granny and rapping casio carrying grandpa were cute, they really didn't merit going any further. The judges showed good taste. I was surprised that some acts did worse w/ no audience. For some reason, opera singers didn't do it for the judges. I have a feeling that's the difference between Piers and Howard. On to New York. I hope the acts are more prepared and spectacular. Maybe this year the winner won't be another singer.

Food Network Star had a challenge that was a little different for each contestant. They had to do a live presentation to an audience and then the judges gave them glitches to throw them off. Yvan did the best w/ his microphone going on the fritz and then having production people trying to fix it. I was surprised Marty was able to keep her presentation down to 3 minutes but maybe it helped that she had ingredients missing because she couldn't go on and on about them. Ippy had an audience walkout, the grill girl had a blender malfunction, Martita had wrong ingredients, Justin had a heckler and Michele had a PA who gave her completely wrong time cues. I really thought Michele had the hardest one because each time the guy held up another time cue, she had to take that second to read it and process it. Then they told her time was up and then to stretch it. I think at that point I would've pointed out the complete stupidity of the time cue guy. Poor Ippy lost the air in his balloon when the audience started leaving. Justin looked totally pissed off at the heckler. He really should've just taken 10 seconds to tell the audience he would take questions after the presentation. Instead of joking about wrong ingredients on the table, Martita got perturbed. Rule #1 in TV, never let them see you sweat and look happy at all times. Luckily, the food wasn't being made onstage that was served to the judges. In the end, Alton's team was declared the winners w/ Yvan told he did the best. So Ippy and Martita had to do the judges final challenge. I declare Ippy the black hammer of the season. For the final presentation, they got a mystery ingredient they had to do a bit on. By this time, the contestants should know Bob and Susie want anecdotes regarding the food. Ippy had one that made no sense and Martita didn't. The ingredient was oranges. Ippy told something about making bug juice which had something to do w/ tangerines. At the end, nobody knew what bug juice was. Anyway, Martita was sent home for not being engaging. I'm finding the people seem to be losing what they had in the beginning. What's happening? Are they sleep deprived? Are they nervous in a smaller pool? Are they second guessing themselves? It's so weird. Also, is it just me or is Ippy getting bigger in size each week? I don't know. I still miss Emily. Come back Retro Rad Girl!

Hell's Kitchen is rehashing cooking challenges from past seasons. This time they drug out the craps table w/ the alphabet dice. Robin gave the funny ingredient which made her whole blue team groan and the women thought they had the challenge in the bag. The men made the fruit ingredient work and pulled out the win. Someone on that red team has a weird palate and it shows. For the win, the blue team went to Las Vegas for the night and had a great time. It was also a good commercial for the casino except they really didn't show any gambling. Probably because nobody's there gambling. I also wondered why they didn't have the Hell's Kitchen jet. Is the show economizing? For their punishment, the women had to babysit a BBQ all night and there was no getting away from it due to a really loud alarm that went off every hour. OMG, those women looked so tired, I was expecting lots of fighting and grouchiness. For dinner service there were celebs in the kitchen. At least in the blue kitchen. Who the heck were those people in the red VIP seats? Just because they were one time contestants on another Fox reality show, doesn't mean they're stars or famous. In the Blue VIP section was David Beckham and his son. Of course Victoria wasn't there. She doesn't eat real food. The guys did so poorly that Ramsey took them in the back room to have a conference leaving Robyn to bang out the apps by herself. It was hilarious w/ Chef Scott asking and demanding this and that and Robyn trying to keep up. The women may have been too tired to fight and did a really good job of getting all the food out. There was a note of pride in Ramsey's voice when he pointed out to the men the empty ticket rack on the women's side when they hadn't even gotten done w/ 1 main course. So Ramsey brought the women over to help finish the service. The men were split as to who to put up for the elimination and it came down to Robyn who didn't want to piss off the guys. As it was, Clemenza and Royce were up. Once again scallops were a problem for Clemenza and Royce couldn't seem to cook any meat correct. Royce finally used up his chances and was sent home. It was about time.

Sorry, but I passed on MasterChef to watch American Ninja Warrior. I did hear through the grapevine that Tali was finally sent home.

I watched Craft Wars which is hosted by Tori Spelling. They must've caught her between buns in the oven. This show is a little like Cupcake Wars for crafters but it's a little ludicrous. They have 3 different people every episode. They have an hour challenge and then after booting 1 person, they have a decorating kind of task w/ extra helpers and 5 or 6 hours. In this episode, they had the crafters make birdhouses using items from a junk drawer. Ok. When it came to the judging, that's when the show got stupid. Really? They wanted the birdhouses to be functional and long lasting? The people had only an hour. I don't care how small it is, a house made out of quality long lasting materials can't be made in an hour and look good. Geez. I think I would've used my birdhouse to hit the judges over the head. Then the crafters had to use beachy stuff to make furniture and stuff to make a decorated beach area. You really didn't see the crafters utilizing their extra help very well but it's hard because decorating and crafting is kind of a design as you go thing. Tori seemed to just get in the way of the crafters. The judging criteria was confusing and the end products weren't that impressive. Really, that chaise lounge made out of boogie boards didn't look comfortable at all. I wasn't surprised that the guy won cuz he used major construction tools like welding and power saws so his stuff was bigger and well made. Whatever. It was a boring show.

Around the World in 80 Plates went to Argentina. Avery paired up w/ Nookie cuz she was tired of losing the run around challenges, which left John and Liz as a team. First they had to make 80 empanadas and then they had to sell 150 pesos worth. I'm not sure what was going on but it took Liz and John forever to make the empanadas. Maybe because John was standing around like a wooden indian statue. He blamed Liz for burning the first batch of empanadas but she was busy mixing and cooking the filling and rolling and cutting the pastry. Hey John, where were you? You couldn't tell from the smell that the stuff in the oven was done? I think I would've punched him in his big nose if I were Liz. Finally the teams hit the streets to sell the meat pockets w/ Liz and John way behind. Liz and John started selling 2 for 5 pesos and began to catch up. Nookie finally got wise and sold the last of his team's empanadas to a vendor for a low price. That was a good deal for the vendor. So the Nook Man and Avery win and got the exceptional ingredient which turned out to be lessons on how to cook the native dishes. John commented on how great he thought that was which was odd since he got that kind of exceptional ingredient before and never used it. Whatever. Was he tired or just stupid? So all the contestants then went to a restaurant and sampled the local dishes. John failed to notice everything had meat in it and decided to cook a no meat dish for the final challenge. Avery did the offical BBQ of the goat, Nookie did the skirt steak w/ chimichurri and Liz did empanadas. I couldn't believe Nookie cut his steak into strips instead of slanted against the grain. Yeesh. John made the comment, "I knew Argentinians ate meat but I didn't realize that's all they eat." Yep, landlocked people tend to do that. Liz made innovative empanadas that impressed the locals so much, they were asking for the recipe. Of course the producers tried to throw off the viewers w/ the interviewing of the locals but in the end, Liz was named MVC. Hee hee! It was great cuz the triumvirate had to eat one of their own. In the end Avery saved her BFF Nookie and John's trip ended. By John! Use the money you've earned for a nose job. It'll help your cooking cuz you'll be able to smell when something's done in the oven. Next week is the finale and I can't wait. Go Liz!

ABC Family channel has a new show Baby Daddy. Yep, a baby is left w/ 3 bachelors. There's a girl who drops by and has a crush on the main guy and the main guy's mother drops in to criticize or give advice. Wow! How long ago was 3 Men and a Baby? The energy is high and some of the scenes are funny but it all seems really re-hashed and unoriginal. Finally, they did have an episode w/ the funniest part not being about the baby at all. I knew it was going to happen. I hate to say it but Taj Mowry and Melissa Peterman seem to hold up the whole show cuz when they're not in the scene, we're tuning out. Also, the baby is boring and we're sick to death of poopy diaper and spitting up jokes. Ick!

ID channel has brought out a whole lotta new shows but there's something wrong. They're all about stuff we've already seen on other shows for the past 2 years. Really? There's no new crimes? Hey writers, start doing your research cuz the news is full of new crimes all of the time. I miss Law & Order. Not only were their stories ripped from the headlines but they were ripped from recent headlines.

The Closer is back and many people missed it because the time was changed. Brenda has such an unhealthy fixation on that lawyer who she thinks is a rapist that she can't seem to focus on the discussions at hand. It's very weird and not like her very intelligent character. We also missed her chocolate fixation. I hope they bring back her parents for at least 1 episode before the series ends. I know they're planning a spin-off but if Brenda's not in it, I doubt her parents will be showing up. They mentioned Pope but didn't show him. Was he off doing his insurance commercials? Oh well, here's hoping the last 5 episodes are really memorable.

Well, that's about it. Remember, Dallas and Drop Dead Diva are totally worth watching. See ya next time and until then, stay tuned.