Fall TV 2010 - New Shows and Season Premieres Part 1

Dexter - Ooh boy. What a great season opener. Especially after the heart-wrenching finale last season. I love Bryan Cranston and all, but dammit, if Michael C. Hall doesn't get an Emmy next year I'll be pissed.

Amazing Race 17 - Watermelon face girl! I was happy to see that this famous viral internet clip happened in this episode, even if CBS chose not to show the melon actually exploding on the woman's noggin. I guess the FCC didn't want to scare the children? Anyway, it was a fairly enjoyable premier, from the start in Gloucester, MA to the aforementioned watermelon noggining. I was surely disappointed to see Team Wiz eliminated first though. I'm holding my judgement on this new "express pass" until after it's used. Does this mean that there won't be a Fast Forward?

Hawaii 5-0 - I went in with pretty low expectations, especially considering that Alex O'Showkiller was starring. But my love for Scott Caan is so strong, I thought I'd get through it anyway. And I was right - Caan is the best part about the new 5-0; but he's not the only good part. I really enjoyed the premier and am looking forward to the whole season. And I was so happy that they kept the original theme song.

Grey's Anatomy - A pretty flat season premier; especially considering how awesome and adreneline-filled last season's finale was. The was a bunch of good set-up for some story lines that could be pretty great though.

Bored To Death - gawd I love this quirky, whacked-out show so much.

Undercovers - Eh. I'll watch it because I like cheesy spy shows, JJ Abrams, and hot boys like Boris Kodjoe. But I think I was expecting something a little darker and heavier; the premier at least was a little too Nick&Nora frothy for me. But then again we got to see Boris shirtless which is NEVER a bad thing.

Glee - The 2nd season premier had the funniest opening 3 minutes of any tv show I've seen in quite some time. Way to make fun of yourselves and turn the negative criticism into your advantage Ryan Murphy and crew! I love the addition of Coach Bieste, and am looking forward to my boyfriend John Stamos showing up in the coming eps. I like this new kid played by Chord Overstreet; and I hope that's not the last we'll see of Charice or Cheyenne Jackson. Also, anytime you have a performance of one of my favorite guilty pleasure jams in the first 15 minutes you've kind of won me over for the season. Take note other shows that have disappointed me - all you need to do to win me back is to sing "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys.

Nikita - I'm a sucker for anything connected to the awesome French film La Femme Nikita. I even loved the Bridget Fonda remake; and I LOVED the Peta Wilson tv show of the same name that ran for 5 seasons on USA. So I was going to watch this new remake of the television show anyway. I like the new Nikita (Maggie Q - seriously, what's wrong with your real last name Quigley?), and it's nice to see Xander Berkeley working again, but there's a lot to this new version that I hate. Like Shane West as Michael. Why does this dude bug me so much? With the exception of maybe half a season on ER, I have pretty much hated everything that West has ever done. Anyway, I'm in for the long haul because again I like cheesy spy shows and their ilk.
Law & Order: LA - Y'all know I love Skeet Ulrich. And Alred Molina. And the Law & Order franchise. So why don't I love this new show? Yet. I'm going with yet. I'm definitely going to give it a chance to grow on me; much like Corey Stoll's mustache. Terrance Howard continues his scenery chewing acting methods which I usually find amusing but not so much here. I miss Sam Waterson. I also don't understand why this series is so heavily weighted on the "Order" side? Do we really need 4 of the 6 main characters to be DAs or ADAs? No, no we do not.

Reality TV catch-up: early April 2010

America's Best Dance Crew - the fifth season ended with a deserving final 2, but with the wrong crew crowned champion in my humble opinion.

While Poreotix were awesome little poppin' and lockin' munchkins, Montreal's Blueprint Cru totally deserved to win and were totally robbed of the championship. I think they absolutely suffered from the fact that Canadians couldn't vote, and the fact that a lot of the kids that watch/vote ABDC are strangely loyal to the West coast crews. They've been victorious for most, if not all of the seasons. Check out Sling.com's blog post about the show - they love ABDC even more than I do.

Amazing Race Season 16 - Who knew that I'd end up cheering the most for the two teams of brothers?! Seriously, I don't care who wins this season. I really hope that Jeff and Jordan are at the finale party (TARcon) in NYC next month.

Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Fresh Meat 2 - oh my God this show! Every season gets more fawking ridiculous. But I still can't help watching and loving the hell of these dumbasses! It could have something to do with the big galoomp above right here - I love me some Kenny. No matter how misogynistic, scheming, dastardly, and douchey he gets, I always love him; it's because he's in on his own joke - he totally embraces how ridiculous he is and he doesn't care. God love him.

Project Runway - As usual I looked at and over analyzed the 2010 Fashion Week collections back in February trying to determine who was a real finalist and who was a decoy collection. I guessed pretty well, totally having predicted this season's top 4.

I really really really want Seth Aaron to win, but I also wouldn't mind Jay. Despite his ENORMOUSLY inflated ego, I've liked almost all of the work Emilio has done this season but his fashion week collection is so damn lame. Like "Meredith Viera shops at Chico's" boring. And I hate everything about Mila's point of view so bleh. Which means that she'll probably win the whole thing.

Seriously, except for Jay McCarrol's win in the first season (and somewhat Sibilia's S3 controversial win), I've never been truly satisfied with any of the PR ultimate winners.

Go Seth Aaron FTW!

Catching up

I've been so damn busy this week practicing and preparing for our Christmas show this Saturday that I really haven't had a chance to breath, much less watch television or read. Basically I've been getting home close to midnight and trying to fit in a little Tivo or reading before collapsing into a deep sleep each night this week.

So although I know that most of the items in this post have already been discussed or dissected, I'm still going to share my opinion with y'all. Here's what's on my mind this week.

Movie news:

You know I love anything Jane Austen, even shitty movie adaptions or poorly written Austen sequels/adaptations. And now there's news that Natalie Portman will star in the upcoming film adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith's mash-up of Austen's Pride & Prejudice and Zombies. I'm okay with this choice, actually even sort of excited about it.

I'm not excited about Avatar; and you can't make me be.

TV:

SYTYCD eliminating down to the 6 in the finale - Although Ashleigh totally deserved to go (hey America, remember we talked about this shit?!), I was okay with Mollee leaving us this week. What I wasn't okay with? The fact that Legacy went home before Ryan or even Russell totally bugs me. Sigh...well I'll see him on tour at least.

This week in reality television competition finales - I was truly happy with the Amazing Race and Top Chef finalists. And ultimately satisfied with Meghan and Cheyne winning the 15th season of TAR, although I was hoping for Bryan and Ericka to eek out 2nd place ahead of the gay brothers.

On Top Chef however, I think the wrong Voltaggio brother won. Bryan clearly won 2 out of the 4 courses and split the judges on the other two. But Michael still won?! Was it because he takes more "risk"? **eyeroll** Who cares? I hope Bryan at least is consoled that he's the nicer, more competent brother.

On the RW/RR Challenge I was happy to see the Champions win only because it meant that Susie got the most money which she totally deserved for having to put up with Johnny Bananas dumb ass. My former boyfriend Kenny and Evan didn't deserve shit though. It still totally pisses me off that neither of those douches ever went into the Ruins and pretty much controlled everything from the get-go. At least Derrick was able to take some money home to feed his kid, because God knows he's too dumb to earn money any other damn way. And as much as I hate Kellyanne's crazy ass, or Sarah's crying desperate one, they really did awesome in the final challenge and nearly snatched the win right out of the Champs hands. Oh how I would've loved to have seen Kenny and Bananas faces if that had happen, but Susie would've been ripped apart which wouldn't have been good. But seriously this show is my crack. And where else would you be able to see grown "straight" men throwing golf balls at each other's bare assess and pouring hot wax on their bodies? For no apparent reason, other than to pump each other up for the competition? Excellent.

Glee autumn finale - I'm still in denial about this gem not being back on the air until fucking April but at least I have the latest volume of music to comfort me a little.
And the knowledge that the first part of this season will be on DVD the end of this month. I'll definitely be rewatching these episodes over the winter.
I really liked that they revealed Terri's fake pregnancy and the fact that Finn isn't the baby-daddy before the end of this mini-season. I'm looking forward to seeing how the "Road to Regionals" goes come April. Especially since Jonathan Groff will be joining the cast as the leader of rival group Vocal Adrenaline. Yay!

5 Things I know are true - TAR edition

1. The roadblock with the ringing telephones would've unhinged me. I can't stand ringing phones. It's such a horrible sound. Especially old school rotary phones. But I will say one thing. If I did have to suffer through that torture I certainly would've fuckin' figured out that the letters were an anagram for "Franz" as in KAFKA, one of the 20th century's most famous writers!! WTF?! How did no one recognize this? How was Big Easy there for almost 3 hours(!) before giving up and taking a 4 hour penalty? The only person I may give a small pass to is Brian who was drunk on absinthe. And he figured it out before anyone else anyway. Sigh.
2. Gay brothers Sam and Dan are ASSHOLES!!!!!!!!!! I understand that it's a race for a million $$. And I'm not saying that Dan should've given Big Easy the answer at the Roadblock...except yes I am. If Dan didn't want to share information he shouldn't have agreed to do so. Making that deal with the Globetrotter and then being a colossal dick when he lucked out with the answer (he certainly never harnessed enough brain power to figure out that the word was the first name of a famous author) was a totally bogus move, race or not. And don't get me started on the cab thing with Meghan and Cheyne. I totally defended the brothers last week when they took Brian and Ericka's cab because it's a race and really it was the cab driver that made the final assy decision to leave with the brothers. But to then have the tables turned with Meghan and Cheyne trying to, politely I might add, get the brothers' cab and for them to again be such assholes makes me want to kick them right in the nuts. And they really need to stop whining and yelling at each other. I really need Karma to bite these dudes. Sam and Dan better be glad I'm not going to the finale party this year.
3. Drunk Czechs are funny. And annoying. Who knew that the Czech Republic consumes the most beer of any country in Europe. See? Reality tv can teach you something. I have to say that I really enjoyed this "Prague at night" leg of the race.
4. I kind of love Brian and Ericka. Oh my god their beer Detour was so frustrating for them but entertaining for us. But seriously they are really supportive and patient with each other. I would love to see them finish in 2nd place. (see below)
5. Meghan and Cheyne deserve to win this season of The Amazing Race. I find them rather boring but boy have they raced well and more importantly been very consistent and logical.

Weekend TV catchup

Seattle had one of the nicest fall weekends I can remember; with sunny but crisp cool temperatures, and I got to spend a lot of quality time with friends laughing, eating and singing. Consequently I didn't watch a lot of tv but that's not stopping me from talking about the couple of shows I did see.

10/2 Saturday Night Live hosted by Ryan Reynolds with musical guest Lady Gaga - if these two weren't exciting enough they were joined by surprise guest stars Madonna, Scarlet Johansson, Elijah Wood, and former SNL cast member Darrell Hammond. With all that talent it should have been a home run right? Yet not. Aside from Gaga's inspired and ridiculously over-the-top performance art pieces, the show was a surprising dud. My babe Ryan has such good comedic timing that I thought for sure he'd hit it out of the park. Maybe I'm being too harsh on Ryan when I really should be blaming the writers. Most of the jokes and skits fell flat. Aside from the "porCEElane fountain" sketch, and a send-up of So You Think You Can Dance featuring K-Fed, almost nothing else worked. Ryan was still real nice to look at though - that Scarlet is one lucky bitch.

The Amazing Race 15 -
Ok seriously, how annoying are Lance and Keri?! Yes, he's an arrogant know-it-all meathead, but she bugs me just as much what with her continued mispronunciation of Ho Chi Minh City ("Ho Chi MON city") and insisting they were in said city for some reason even though the clue said to take a taxi into the city and her fawking witless squawking - "...it's just a bullet. Where's the clue? Tell 'em to give us our clue!". Sigh...I did enjoy the poignant moment with Marcy (BTW I love her whistle) reflecting on the beauty of Vietnam and thinking about her dad who was a U.S. general POW who was shot down, too bad they were eliminated. And the Globetrotters are still a delight.