Britt's On

You know, I have a small bone to pick with Jeff Probst. I love the dude, don't get me wrong, and I'm very much part of the faction of people that believe Survivor will be half the show it is now if he leaves. I just...don't want it to stop. Ever! Seriously, few other shows have managed to engage me for 20+ seasons (because no shows have that many seasons), and make me as delighted as I am on a weekly basis to watch a bunch of loons on an island of the non-Canadian persuasion. Plus I still feel like they have a fair bit they could do: Survivor Couples (wherein each pairing of teammates are split onto two tribes)! Celebrity survivor! Bring back all the former winners that actually want to come back (and see if Sandra can make it a threepeat)! ARCTIC SURVIVOR!

Anyway my beef is that JP has whinged about the strain it takes to shoot Survivor, given he's off in some remote destination for 40+ days. That's right, Jeff Probst works (remotely anyway) for about 90 days a year, because let's face it, he doesn't have a bunch of other successful gigs lined up for him. Phil Keoghan of Amazing Race fame however, probably works for about six to eight weeks, and spends the rest of his time riding bikes and writing books. The difference is, Phil is zipping all around the world for those six to eight weeks. No doubt he's staying in nice hotels, but dude is suffering from the same amount of jet lag and travelling from challenge destination to challenge destination to make the race happen. So Probst, can it and keep on doing Survivor! Although how cool would it be if they swapped jobs for a season? I digress.

Another note on The Amazing Race. This is the first year they lost their Emmy. It's also the first year Survivor was NOT nominated, which is so bizarre it hurts after coming off of a pretty phenom season like 'All Stars'. Perhaps it's because Samoa was a pretty terrible season (sans Russell's world domination) and they don't consider 'All Star' seasons to be as creatively charged as brand new casts. It's just a tragedy because they lost to Top Chef of all things, which as far as I know doesn't even air in Canada. Lametown. That being said, I'm not in disagreement - TAR has a pretty weak year last year, with way too much time spent in one general area (Asia) and pretty lame casting.

Much like Survivor, the secret to a good reality show is in the casting. It needs to be a balance of gimmicky (see: acrobatic little people, Kentucky coal miners, beauty queens, etc.) and explosive (see: every violently angry couple on the show ever), with a dash of heart and goodwill (see: the hippies that won their respective seasons) and 'relative' hotness in the form of relatively douchey male teams (see: almost every season where a team of beefcakes was entered, they won).

This year it seems the folks on TAR are reallllly pushing for an all female team to win, with FOUR entries into the mix and NO beefcake male teams to speak of. The last time they did this was Season 14, with the flight attendants, the antagonistic but athletic (except for swimming) black sisters, and the former redheaded NFL cheerleaders (who ultimately placed second). Unfortunately none of these female teams had the charisma and fan base that Dustin and Kandice, the two-time second-place finishers had, and thus it was kind of okay that another chirpy, happy, intelligent brother & sister duo won (shortly after Ryan & Starr a season or two earlier).

Of the ladies on the race this year, I suspect the doctors or the volleyball girls have the best chance. Brook was annoying as all get out this episode, and I suspect Clare will lose enthusiasm as the race continues to NOT include taping thirty-minute segments while fondling some jewels. The mother/daughter reunion team is just all kinds of awkward, and beyond that, they don't have that competitive "We've both wanted this for SO LONG!" spirit that the majority of the other teams have. The doctors preformed solidly and calmly throughout the episode, making them a touch boring, but at least commendable. The volleyball chicks will likely be able to bring a bit more interest to the table, and they're buff and gorge, which will help them throughout.

Other than that, I think the male/female couples all have some interesting and potentially explosive dynamics. Nicky & Vicki are America's Best (idiots) so while they provide good entertainment value their time on the race is going to be short. Jill & Thomas (I keep on wanting to say jack & jill) may be interesting as well after a solid finish on the first leg, I'm curious to see how the Express Pass plays out, and whether the set-up dynamic for him being Ivy League and her being a beautician will come into play. She certainly got them across that lake fast enough, which contributed to their win. Finally I can't remember their names, but team 'Roid Rage' as I've dubbed them promises to be the couple 'most likely to be reconsidering things' after the race. I get squeamish at the verbally and physically abusive couples, but I hope it's at least a wake-up call for them.

Finally we have a scattered remaining group. I love the Gleeks! LOVE! I will be putting them in my early teams to root for that's for sure. They had a rough start but pulled off a very respectable third-place finish despite being on the second flight, so kudos there. Just as the race has never had an all female team win, they've also never had a parent/child team win, and I've loved many of the parent/child teams. So I'm also waving a small flag for our two parent/child teams - the Asian internet Sensations and Little Miss Sunshine & her dad. Truthfully I wasn't too sad to see Tony the Tiger & Ron leave. Their musical antics sounded interesting in the interviews but I was kind of yawning at their raceplay. There are other teams I want to see more of and it was nice that all of the female teams made it past leg 1.

Overall because of the solid casting here and the drive of the producers to have some very strong female contenders for the win, I'm giving TAR a promising thumbs up for the season to come. The Express Pass is an interesting twist / alternative to the underused Fast Forward (remember the first two seasons??) and not quite as dramatic of the Medallion of POWAHHHH! on Survivor, so I'm happy they shook up the game a bit. I'm wondering if they'll keep on popping more of those passes in the race or not, but content with the one for now. It's much better than the damn 'team' detours they throw in every once in awhile.

I'll also mention that Dancing with the Stars has fallen by the wayside. The cast just wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped in comparison to last season, and quite frankly watching that show without a PVR to skip through the excessive ads is not my cuppa tea. It's a very spoilerrific show and I'm very much an internet surfer, so watching it the next day on my laptop just isn't a good option either. I also skipped Desperate Housewives' premiere this week, as I feel the show has become a mockery of what it set out to be all those seasons ago. Easy come, easy go.

A friend of mine watched the new JJ Abrams show 'Undercovers' and being a mega-Alias fan was quite disappointed. I haven't heard the best things about it, and frankly, Abrams isn't a guaranteed hit-maker (and will jump ship once a show has launched to a higher ground) so I'm not chancing it. I am planning to tune into the new drama premiering tonight, 'No Ordinary Family', about a family of superheroes. Sort of like Heroes meets The Incredibles. It hasn't gotten a lot of buzz, but perhaps it'll build if the first few episodes are good.

That's a wrap on my fall round-up. We're in the home stretch for summery shows including Mad Men and Project Runway (seriously WTF TO MAD MEN THIS WEEK?), which is fine and good because a bunch of awesome-sounding movies are coming out right away. Stay tuned for my thoughts on four of fall's biggest movies: Easy A, The Town, The Social Network, and Let Me In!

- Britt's On!

I don’t want to talk about Lost anymore. I have alternating feelings of contentment and furious frustration…I guess I’m not as invested in the show in some ways because I really only invested a year and a half of guessing and wanting answers, unlike the poor saps that first started watching the series in 2004. I also generally enjoyed the series enough that although the ending was far from satisfying, it didn’t totally ruin the show for me…until I start taking what’s revealed (or not) in the finale and applying it to my unanswered questions from the entire series and coming up short. Way short.

What was that about being done talking about Lost? Oh right. Well my PVR is blissfully nearly empty, other than the last run of Parenthood episodes (I’m about 5 or 6 behind), a few of TSN’s great 30 for 30 documentaries for the boyfriend, and a few more installments of the incredible ‘Life’ series currently airing on Discovery. A few of my perennial summer shows are starting next week – Little Couple! Toddlers & Tiaras! – to keep me entertained between my movie project and finally finishing Arrested Development…but I can’t help but think of next fall.

So far, none of the prospects for fall 2010 are enticing to me. I’m sure Entertainment Weekly will have an excellent fall TV preview issue that may make me reconsider, but as someone feeling more tapped into the biz these days (I blame it on the aforementioned subscription) I watched the fall scheduling carefully and was mostly disappointed. If anything, I want to shed a few shows off my weekly viewing. In some cases the decision has been made for me – bye Lost & Flashforward! - In others, the decline of some long-time favourites has led me to seriously contemplate deleting them off my PVR.


Namely, Desperate Housewives. I lamented the death of Edie a year ago, and the show has continued to spiral down. Whenever they so much as mention season 1, whether through Rex Van de Kamp’s illegitimate devil spawn or the obligatory Mary Alice Young flashback, I wince at how far the show has fallen. Season 1 of DH was an inspired, satirical take on suburbia. They eschewed the term ‘soap opera’ saying it reminded them of bad lighting and serial drama (especially for daytime soap starlet Eva Longoria). After a stumble in season 2 the series came back around, but it never fully rebounded from the Applewhite horror. Now the show is a parody of itself, with words like ‘madcap hijinks’ springing to mind when I describe the current plotlines.

The over the top drama of the last couple of years in particular (take this season’s horrid ‘mysterious new resident’ yarn re: Angie the eco-terrorist as a key example) has even seemed to take its toll on the actors that once made this show what it was. Felicity Huffman’s strangled delivery of lines while her newborn baby was being strangled by an umbilical cord in the midst of being held hostage by the season’s serial neighbourhood strangler pretty much made me want to throw a book at Felicity’s head and tell her to ask to get written off the show. Career suicide!

While Teri Hatcher moving off the lane because she couldn’t pay her bills was an inspired (however randomly handled – where is Susan’s strip club money???) reflection of the real issues in suburbia these days, the show is notorious for wiping the slate clean and I don’t anticipate this will be a particularly permanent set-up.

The final nail in the coffin for me with the finale was the big cliffhanger – someone’s child isn’t really their child. Oh the possibilities with that one…none of which I care about. This is a classic soap opera gag, and not one I care to see on my weekly primetime supposed sharp-eyed satire on suburban living. Between plane crashes, tornadoes, bombs, and stranglers…I’ve had it with Desperate Housewives and will be deleting the program from my PVR. I threatened to do it at the start of this season, and nothing that happened this year convinced me to do otherwise.


The other big red alert for me when it comes to ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ is how much I anticipate watching the show. Reality series obviously have the best advantage here because the potential for spoilers is dramatically higher. But there are a number of scripted shows I watch that also demanded my attention this year – Lost of course, and also (surprisingly) Life Unexpected. While I would let episodes of Gossip Girl (still amusing enough to keep watching), One Tree Hill (if it doesn’t end this season I might delete it for a follow-up season), and Saturday Night Live pile up, I couldn’t get enough of LUX. I tend to champion one series each year (Mad Men! FNL!) and I think I may purchase S1 of Life Unexpected just to convert more people to my cause.



Another show that’s on the bubble? Parenthood. I picked it up to watch my beloved Lauren Graham in action once again, and I’ve been meaning to blog on it for about a month now but um, I’m pretty behind as mentioned. I’ll give the point form version of that entry. Watching Parenthood is like watching the Cameron Crowe movie ‘Elizabethtown’. Not a whole lot happens, you find most of the characters mildly annoying, there’s a guy who works at a shoe company but it doesn’t really factor into his everyday life, and there’s a sweet enough soundtrack and interesting enough character interactions that you actually kind of dig it. Particularly when you have the option to watch episodes in a mini-marathon, as I’ve been doing in chunks over the season.

Here’s my thoughts – I do enjoy the show and crave watching more once I pop an episode in. Peter Krause and Monica Potter drive me batshit crazy with their helicopter parenting and weird suburbanite obsession with their sex lives. Lauren Graham is still adorable but I pine for the days of Gilmore Girls, when her daughter was much cuter. I want Erika Christensen’s husband to have more of a personality and life, and I enjoy the drama related to the slutty zen mom. Craig T’s wife is also a zero on the personality scale, and has zero connection with her children. I surprisingly love Dax Shephard’s storyline with Jabar, although I wonder whether Reed from the OC will ever return.

My conclusion? I will watch the backlog of episodes I have on my PVR before I come to a decision. Parenthood might be too sleepy to compete with my PVR’s 60 gig download limit during peak television season, but I’m not totally sold either way yet.


Another bubble show? Dancing with the Stars. I watched it for the first time this season out of casting curiosity more than anything and generally enjoyed it. Kudos for finally giving Nicole Scherzinger a vibrant, sweet personality compared to her typical vacant demeanour! The show is cheesy, drawn out, anti-climactic, and I fast forward about 45% of each episode, and 95% of each results show…but if the casting is as good as it was this year I will probably tune in again next year. After all, I’m only watching 60% of three stupidly overdrawn hours of weekly programming! Plus, at least the right person won (although many have speculated this is the first season that didn't feel like a high school popularity contest).


One final show in contention for elimination. ANTM. I’m sort of sick of it. I don’t really care about whether the models succeed after the show…I’m just kind of done with the format of the show in general, I feel like it reached its creative peak a long, long time ago and doesn’t really have anything to offer me. Someone I’ve really liked from the beginning hasn’t won in something like 7 or 8 cycles…that’s probably a sign. Also the fact that I can't for the LIFE of me figure out what this cycle's winner was named and therefore can't post a photo of them...KRISTA! That's her name. Well too damn bad, I just uploaded a generic ol skool photo of Tyra with a sign.

Till then, I’m off to ride into the blissful summer scheduling of one or two shows per week.

Ciao,

B

Awhile ago a friend of mine (actually several) were horrified when I suggested one of the defining trends of the first decade of the 2000’s – much as mod represents the 60s and bad hair the 80s – would be reality television. But really, in a decade that was all about technological advancement and the wide-reaching fingers of the internet, the emergence of reality TV – despite a return to more basic television production – was a natural evolution of entertainment. We are the generation of ‘instant’, with word of mouth and online news rapidly, virally spreading messages in a matter of mere minutes. We don’t expect, we demand to know the ins and outs of our celebrities’ lives.

But yet…as we begin a new decade, it seems the honeymoon is over with reality TV. The market has become increasingly saturated, and a huge number of reality shows are starting to become stale, and in some cases, are leaving the air (sianora ‘The Hills’).


Consider the increasing absurdness of America’s Next Top Model, a show that once promised lucrative rewards in high end magazines and advertising campaigns, which now continually ‘breaks the rules’ of the modelling industry, and ultimately produces models that are hardly at the top of their game (save for Cycle 6’s Danielle and Cycle 1’s Elyse).


Or the lack of pulse-pounding intensity that once dominated The Amazing Race. Although the show still gets props for pushing the envelope in where they send their contestants, what challenges they have to do, and is still an incredible feat to pull off season after season, it’s ultimately become a little lacklustre over the last few years. Part of it is casting – some generally unlikable and improbable teams have continually made it to the end over the last few years, while fan favourites (if there are any) have continually been eliminated a few legs shy of the finish.

In fact TAR suffers from same-ism that ANTM tries extremely hard to fight – if you look at the history of the series, five of the fourteen winning teams are young, fit males (six if you count the mostly male Linz family on the family edition), two of the teams were brother/sister couplings that generally breezed through the race, and the rest were couples that generally won quite handily. In fact, the last time I remember being really excited during a TAR finale was the adorable hippies TK & Rachel in Season 12. There have been no successful parent/child, or of course, all female teams, and it’s frustrating!


Project Runway has also suffered from two relatively ho hum seasons. Last year’s ill-advised trip to Los Angeles resulted in the worst season to date, with three blasé designers in the finale. Don’t get me wrong, I actually liked all three designers, but I felt like they were better suited to be picked up to design new lines for Club Monaco than Barney’s. This past season wasn’t quite as boring, but it felt like you could pick the final line-up from the earliest weeks, and none of the final three collections were quite as awe-inspiring as past years. It almost felt predestined - as per, how could Emilio ever get past the hardware challenge with the atrocious pink string (literally) bikini he sent down the runway is beyond me...other than the judges wanted to see him in the finals (to be fair, he did do really well before and after this challenge but still).


I liked Seth Aaron Henderson’s stuff, and I quite liked him, but I still wasn’t mesmerized by it. A credit to the Canadian edition of the show – despite the fact it was pretty obvious Sunny would win the last season, I literally had no clue who would go home, or even who would be in jeopardy each episode. That’s good editing.


There are exceptions to the rule. After a couple of lacklustre seasons following the incredible Fans vs. Favourites, Survivor bounced back in Samoa thanks to the devilish casting of Russell Hantz, and followed it up with another great all stars instalment, Heroes vs. Villains. I feel like H vs V has let me down only slightly in that it’s almost sped by too fast, and maybe came on the heels of another all star edition a little too soon (as per the endless complaints about how many third-timers were on the show this time), but in general it’s been a great, surprising season, although many of my favourites are gone.


Also Dancing with the Stars continues to dominate, thanks in large part to the boomers that keep it going. I tuned in as a regular viewer for the first time this season thanks to the actually quite recognizable cast compared to other seasons, and I’ve enjoyed it. I fast forward through about 25% of each episode’s fluff, and about 80% of the results shows, but I’ve liked watching the stories unfold, the relationships, and the progression of the dancing. Great, great casting this year that gives this show a new breath of life. I don’t imagine it will last forever – as this post proves, these shows are running their course, but as a late follower, I’m thinking it’s a big pile of cheesy fun. Plus Nicole Scherzinger has finally made herself a relatable, interesting character rather than a vapid pop tart!

Anyway one can only guess what the next decade will bring us beyond these granddaddies of the industry. I’m a big fan of reality television – not so much on the afterboom of minor celebrity – and I hope it doesn’t disappear altogether. It will be a sad day when Jeff Probst isn’t gracing my screen on a weekly basis.

Till next time,

- Britt’s On