The Good, the Bad, and the Boring

The Good, the Bad, and the Boring by Roxanne McDonald

Fall’s TV lineup brings a few nice surprises and lands a few duds at the same time.

For a good percentage of the population, fall is a time to stay inside more and get cozy with TV programming

targeting just such persons. Those who have been out getting some exercise and natural sunlight are primed for some quality TV. Those of us who stay inside year-round and are hooked to our sets by an invisible umbilicus are primed for new and maybe even better shows.
Eh. Some wishes fulfilled, some not so much.

“Tori and Dean: Inn Love” is one of those surprisingly engaging shows. For me, anyway. I had ignored the first couple of episodes thinking it was going to be another Jessica and Nick look-at-my-celebrity life kind of show, but Tori has such a cutesy sense of humor and an ambitious presences and Dean is industrious and equally well-humored, so the half-hour Lifetime TV segments really do have a gentle pull.

“The Reaper” I just accidentally fell into as it airs on the WB after “Beauty and the Geek”. So I gave it chance. It’s quirky and at times tries too hard to deliver the buddy-pic characters as innocuous everyman and best friend bozo with the yuck yucks. But it also has a quasi- “Charmed” or “Buffy…” meets “Smallville” appeal I bet will draw the teen, tween, and twenty-something demographic…with not only its youthful feel but its fairly original premise.

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The Best Shows Currently on TV

The Best Shows Currently on TV by Mike Liebner

It’s that time of year again! The time of year when my Tivo is stuffed to the gills with great programming.

There are so many great shows on TV right now! In fact my two Tivo’s are  stuffed with too much programming to ever to watch!

As a result my drive space is shrinking and my recording capabilities diminished.

That means some tough choices need to be made and as a result some TV shows I like will fall to the wayside.

Last year that happened with the O.C. of which I cleared all the stacked up episodes off of Tivo and cancelled my season pass. This year that is happening to The Amazing Race All Stars. Sorry, that show has been starting to get on my nerves! I just can’t take it anymore. I just deleted 3 episodes of Amazing Race which I wasn’t  watching anyways and before that, since Rob and Amber got eliminated I had started fast forwarding through episodes anyways. So just now, I went and deleted the Amazing Race season pass. So what! Survival of the fittest!

So what is all that great programming on TV right now? What do I think the best shows currently on TV are?

Well, to do that we need to take a look at my Tivo.

Here are my picks for top shows on television (on my Tivo boxes) right now!

In some sort of order along with brief comments

1. 24 - 24 is without question the best show on TV. I think it’s because the writing is so clever that it keeps getting better each season. What would seem like a constricting factor, I think he 24 hour timeframe actually brings out more creativity from the writers. This show is one of the few shows I MUST watch as soon as I can. Usually the same night it airs! (read more…)

Top 20: Most Popular TV of 2006

Top 20: Most Popular TV of 2006 by Roxanne McDonald

The mental manipulators meet reigning reality TV and comedies.

The scores are in at TV.com, for the 100 most popular TV shows of 2006. Surprisingly, the most popular are rarely reality TV shows, and still fewer are comedies

(though with the real-life drama enticing our primal sides and the mystery genre involving our grey stuff, maybe it is not so surprising).
Ranked on a scale of 1-10, here are the top twenty:

Smallville ranked number 1, with a mean score of 9.0.

Prison Break was number 2, with a rank of 9.3.

Lost, in third place, received a 9.2.

4th: The O.C. — 8.6.

5th: One Tree Hill — 9.0.

6th: Heroes — 9.4.

7th: Grey’s Anatomy 2005 - 9.2.

Tied at 8th and 9th are House and 24, both ranking 9.3.

10th: Scrubs — 9.3
11th: CSI — 9.2
12th: Gilmore Girls — 9.1
13th: Family Guy — 9.2
14th: Avatar: The Last Airbender — 9.3
15th: Desperate Housewives — 8.7
16th: South Park — 9.2
17th: Naruto — 9.3
18th: Charmed — 8.9
19th: Supernatural — 9.2
20th: The Simpsons — 9.2

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Congrats to Models who won Amazing Race!

Congrats to the dude model boys who won Amazing Race! By Mike

Congrats model boys! You deserve the first place and the million bucks for winning the Amazing Race!

It just goes to show that you CAN experiment with DRUGS and get off track so long as you reign yourself back in and get back to the good way of life!

These 2 boys deserve the big prize! Rob and Kimberly would have been deserving as well but I am glad the boys won.

As for Alabama finishing 3rd - they should be proud. They had the most challenging time!

The season finale was fun to watch. The end was a slight bit anti-climatic as they did not play up the race to the finish but despite that it was still satsifying to see all the racers applaud them as the finished first!

Coming soon is Amazing Race All Stars! I wonder who will be on that? Rob and Amber???

Gulity Pleasure: The Late Late Show with Craig Fergusan

The Late Late Show with Craig Fergusan is a guilty pleasure.

by Mike Liebner

I must confess that The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn was not one of my favorite shows to watch.

In fact that guy Kilborn annoyed me with his arrogant demeanor and I just didn’t think he was funny. The only reason I ever watched that show with Kilborn was when there was a guest that I was interested in.

That said, it wasn’t exactly bad news when I heard that Kilborn was leaving the show. There was kind of a stir in Hollywood about who would be able to fill his shoes and if CBS whould even keep the Late Late show running. Who cared? Not me…

Time had passed and I lost interest in following what was happening and who would be hosting. I believe they did a stint of guest hosts waiting to see if someone stood out. I do remember a while back tuning in and finding a loud boisterous obnoxious Scottish guy hosting the show and I was perplexed how CBS could have settled on this Scott named Craig Fergusan, when surely half of Hollywood was trying to be considered for the gig.

I gave the show a shot and despite my initial dislike of Craig Fergusan, it didn’t take long before I warmed up to him. I had no idea he was on the Drew Crey show for 9 years prior to this gig (didn’t care for that show) so it took some getting used to the accent and his style. (read more…)

High Marks for Solitary

High Marks for Solitary by Roxanne McDonald

There are a number of characteristics about the reality TV show Solitary that make it an entertaining watch.

For one (and for a change), the players are all quite likeable. Unlike in many shows where there are the self-constructed villains, a**holes, and egomaniacs, in Solitary all are really pleasant, decent people—which of course makes rooting for a winner a bit more challenging but makes the viewing experience delightful nonetheless.

One player, Danielle, is a cosmetologist and former Fight Club member. A fairly slight thing, she will have to push the red button in her claustrophobic octagon only when the food supply overwhelms her in a special gluttony treatment by VAL, the computer who is at the forefront or the center of all the contestants do.

Another player, Florin (known as #4 on the show), is an unimposing writer in real life—or outside the reality TV life of Solitary. He speaks with a soft tone, is almost staunch in his participation, and is so intelligent that he wins the toughest of mind games (or what VAL calls tests or treatments).

Taralee, a fashion designer known as #3, is just as gentle, well-mannered, and endearing. She has the weakest bladder and has to pee constantly, but she also endures through all of the treatments with quirky facial expressions that suggest a self-effacing demeanor that agrees beautifully with her soft humor and soft voice—all of which make her, too, a favorite.

Number 5, Mark, a martial arts instructor, also has a wonderful sense of humor, works hard by chanting and meditation, and as well endears himself to viewers with his history (admittedly losing his wife in a divorce because he wasn’t as good a husband as he could have been) and with his tolerance of the grossest of treatments by the electronic leader—a gruesome movie of clowns, rats, explosions, destruction, and even meat being drilled.

Pamela, a 21-year-old who is #1 in the Solitary game, is so damned cute and so clever that when she “wins” an individual test or treatment (by, for example, figuring out the math involved in that gruesome movie test by laying out and lining up kernels of popcorn) we also cheer for her.

Number 7 is a school teacher with a Christian background. Thirty-five year-old Steven is wicked smart, too, and wins a couple of the tests, one of which, after the contestants have been starving for hours (or days?) wins him a massive prime rib dinner. Does he jump around and say how great and how kickass he is? No. He profusely thanks VAL in his sweet and humble way (which he would likely attribute to his devotion to Christ and Christ’s way.

The only Solitary contestant that gets anywhere near egomania is Cliff, a 25-year-old stud (also known as number 6 in Solitary). He wins the first game/test, and reminds VAL this is because he is so great. He also primps himself up often enough that when, as is typical of the game, select personal items are withheld by VAL just for the hell of it, he starts to go a little mad.

The braggadocio he displays for a number of episodes starts to subside, and by the time he gets to the eating treatment (where anyone who pukes has to hit the red “I quit” button and actually say, “I quit”) and his body just cannot take anymore and throws up the 14th or 24th course (I can’t recall, exactly) he refuses to hit the red button in his Solitary pod, saying he did not quit, saying this is reality TV and you cannot script it, and saying he wants his chapstick replaced if VAL has lost it. But even he is right…in a way.

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Viewers are Winners, Too, with the New Windfall

Viewers are Winners, Too, with the New Windfall by Roxanne McDonald

When a new TV show airs with a cliché premise and a lot of loud hype weeks before it airs, hype that includes “The show that ALL America is talking about” [NO, not everyone…ahem], we might balk and opt to avoid such a re-make, repeat, or reductive, derivative effort.

However, when the same kind of show pulls it off, makes a tired theme fresh, adds shock and sexuality and intrigue (if you will allow me such an antiquated term reserved for James Bond movies and Batman series announcers) in a an unexpected way, and/or brings back favorite Hollywood icons who are once again believable in the roles they play, we need to give the show another look. Such a show is Windfall, on NBC on Thursday nights.

Windfall features a number of competent, attractive, and uniquely engaging characters/actors. But Windfall also co-stars Luke Perry, the undeniably delicious bad boy of the long-lived and long since retired Beverly Hills, 90210—rest in peace Aaron Spelling). Luke as Peter is older, of course, has a couple of frown or brow wrinkles that thankfully he never had BoToxed out, and is as ever the fence-riding renegade of the bunch…

though 1) he is married and has married, mature responsibilities and concerns; and 2) he is not the baddest boy renegade as much as is one of the other characters, Sean (played by the suave yet sulky D.J. Cotrona).

Other characters are ordinary, beneficent, greedy, adulterous, while still others play the victim, play the villain, or play the arm chair detective, seeking information on the one who disappeared with millions of dollars or the one who is too young, too spendthrifty, or too much an outsider.

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Men in Trees: Fluffy, yet Fun

Men in Trees: Fluffy, yet Fun by Roxanne McDonald

Men in Trees … it’s Emma meets Northern Exposure. It’s quirky, clever, and unexpectedly entertaining.

That is, you don’t expect the jewels if you don’t know Men in Trees is created by the Sex in the City author, Jenny Bicks.

Anne Heche is Marin Frist, a psychiatrist, relationship coach, and popular author who is at the top of her social game. She is selling her books on how to get, find, keep, live with a man; she is engaged to Graham McCarthy; and she has devoted friends and fans.

But her perfect world, which she exploits to sell signatures on equally thriving book titles, shows itself a sham when she discovers groom-to-be (in like a week) having an ongoing affair. In Elmo, Alaska on a gig to help the men (who outnumber women 10 to 1 here) find relationships, Marin re-thinks her metropolitan lifestyle. Once she gets over the twittering birds that distract her from writing and the pesky raccoon that tears into and then runs off with her wedding dress, she starts to thinking about settlin’ down in the backwoods Elmo with the sexy yet simple straight men to her fumbling comic relief.

There’s a love interest already, though Marin is not directly aware of the fact (for, as like psychics who can’t read their own fates, this shrink can’t objectify her own love life behavior). And when the ex-cheater of course shows up in Alaska to get her back, saying he is sure she hasn’t done the same thing he has by sleeping with a man up there, that potential love interest/sexual-tension in a hunk speaks up (after speaking little, usually) and tells Graham he slept with Marin. If that isn’t profound enough for the pompous boob Graham, if Jack (played by the smoldering babe James Tupper) isn’t enough of a discouragement to send Graham back tail between legs to the city and his fling thing, the other Elmo men, one at a time, each state that he has slept with Marin, too.

And all this after using her hair dryer shuts down all the power in town for hours. (read more…)

Mythbusters on Discovery, They Blow Stuff Up

Mythbusters on Discovery

is one of my favorite shows. Why? Because in almost every show they BLOW STUFF UP!

On a recent episode the assistants of Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, the hosts of Mythbusters on Discovery, explored the myth of a farmer’s exploding pants. It seems that in the early 1900’s there was an outbreak of farmers that had their pants blow right off their body. In researching the myth, the Mythbusters team discovered a concoction of chemicals being used as an herbicide in the area plagued by the exploding pants.

In their testing at the Mythbusters “lab”, an industrial warehouse, discovered this mix of chemicals would produce an impressive bang with only a small amount being impacted by a hammer. Good thing the were wearing goggles!

In true Mythbusters fashion the team pushes the myth to the limit. In the final test they visit the explosive rang of the FBI, their crash test dummy Buster in tow. The Mythbusters fill the pockets of Buster’s pants with large quantities of this fantastically volitile mix of chemicals and leave him to his fate. (read more…)

Is the Last Comic Standing Really Funny?

Last Comic Standing is Josh Blue! 

It’s not that you need a PhD in the psychology of humor to write about such television programs, but it is tough to capture or encapsulate the appeal of really good comedic shows.

I mean, if I could translate with any accuracy and effectiveness the likes of, say, Seinfeld, with its hallmark repetition of lines for comic effect or its relatedness of events, instances, and issues the characters share, for example, then I would be ON the show…or WRITING it.

So it goes with a blockbuster entertainment show like Last Comic Standing. 

Still, I feel impelled to sing the praises of the efforts to bring back some damned levity (if not outright raucous laughter) to our pitifully stressful, overworked, overburdened, overwhelmed lives. (read more…)

Big Brother All-Stars is an Exercise in Arrogance!

BB7 Article by Roxanne McDonald

I was speaking with an associate (or emailing back and forth with him) today, and as usual we were discussing one of our favorite pastimes, reality TV. 

We agree on many points and about most characteristics when it comes to the granddaddy of reality TV shows, Big Brother, or as it is this season, Big Brother All-Stars (BB7).

We two, like many viewers, imagine Will and Jase are gonna tear up the game,

tear apart weaker (but seemingly stealthy) alliances, and will likely, if they stay in “character”, tear new ones for those competitors they see as the greatest threat. (read more…)

America’s Got Talent and the Gong Show!

I couldn’t stand The Gong Show when I was growing up and it was on in syndication, and I’m having an equally hard time staying as faithful to America’s Got Talent as I am to umpteen million other reality TV shows I am utterly hooked on. 

America’s Got Talent, though, is apparently another much-needed show by middle America (get the name similarity, which is dubbed for a reason).       The Gong Show and Star Search hybrid is not as silly, nor is it as savvy (up on and aware of its nature as panning other talent shows) as I would assume.

In fact, yesterday on Reality Remix, they posted the top six episodes of the week (July, 2006) and

America’s Got Talent was Number One, with so many more million viewers than So Think You Can Dance (which took two places) and Rock Star Supernova (which of course took last as there are fewer rockers than bible thumpers in the nation—ugh). (read more…)

Jenna Morasca has a TV Journal

I was just buzzing along looking at the latest news in TV and found that one of my ultimate dream girls Jenna Morasca, winner of a million bucks on Survivor, has her own TV Journal at the CBS News site!

Very interesting!

In “Jenna’s TV Journal” she dishes out her opinions on such shows at Treasure Hunters, Hell’s Kitchen. Rock Star: Supernova, Last Comic Standing, Big Brother: All-Stars, Project Runway, So You Think You Can Dance, America’s Got Talent and Who Wants To Be A Superhero! (read more…)