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Current TV stuff: Reality show edition
I keep meaning to post about shows, and keep failing to do so, because new episodes of things keep airing and I'm always scrambling to catch up. I still have half-written posts about regular tv, but for starters, let's go with the reality shows:
Amazing Race, season... 20? Really. Okay.
Wow, the Big Brother team has got to go. Like, now. (Like five episodes ago, really, but retroactive elimination doesn't work that well.) I cannot listen to that woman anymore, and I feel so incredibly bad for the man. He clearly adores her, even though she is useless. "I'm sorry I'm just a girl!" (omg I went so stabby when she said that!) "You know I'm not good under pressure!" "I'm not good at math!" "I don't want to be here!" "I want to quit" "I will quit right now!" "our marriage is over" "why would you say I want to quit?" "why would you say I want to end our relationship?" "you have to stop being so mean to me!" "this was supposed to be a fun trip around the worrrrrld" as whinily as possible all the while sniveling and sobbing and omg SHUT UP.
There hasn't been an episode yet where I haven't gritted my teeth through their bits. At this point her poor boyfriend is just doing endless damage control, apologizing for things he hasn't done (seriously, dude? "She's just getting back at me for being mean to her" -- no, no she's not. Because you haven't been mean to her. She's a vapid, spoiled child who cannot handle stress of any sort, and is lashing out at you constantly and then berating you for not instantly stopping and coddling her with cookies and milk and a fresh mani-pedi right there in the street. And she is convinced that someone saying "I think [something different]" is yelling at her, and mean, and that therefore they deserve to be yelled at and treated shabbily. Each to their own relationship, but she is not remotely emotionally mature, and man, I would run so far, so fast. I'm just sayin'.)
(He carried her fanny pack so she wouldn't be burdened by the extra pound Sunday night. And she still berated him for being mean!)
Okay, I just read their bios to see if I was being unfair because she was only 18 or something, and no, she's 27, so really old enough to know better -- and both of them list the biggest challenge they will face on the Race as Brendon being "impatient". WTF, he has the patience of a saint!
... I will stop obsessing over this obnoxious team now. *kof* Onward!
The Kentucky boys are a riot, and I'm glad they're still in it. I was a little leery in the first ep, with all the screaming and shouting (I'm not big on loudness, really), but that seems to have just been starting nerves, yay. I think they'd really found their feet and would be in good position right now if they hadn't missed the info about the travel agency, argh. If they can get past the speed bump next week, I think they'll stick around for a while, though. I love watching friend teams race, and I like them a whole lot more than the Jersey boys.
How much do you think the border guards are regretting handing over their $10k right now? heh. Still, it was a tremendously sweet thing to do, and especially given that the one guy has a sick kid, and needs the money for her care. <3
Which leads me straight into the border guards, who are great except for the part where they're so obnoxious. Sigh. I could really do without them being so dismissive of the Big Brother team (... yes, I know, I just wrote paragraphs about how much I can't stand that team. They still have no reason to dismiss them the way they do, or at least they didn't during the first episode when they knew nothing about them.). Also they're stupid to keep announcing that they expect to win by virtue of being the self-defined smartest and strongest people on the race; smart and strong don't necessarily win the race. "We have fantastic luck with cabs" does a whole lot more, and if they haven't figured that out, they're in for some hard times. Especially when they start hitting countries where their fluency in Spanish does them no good at all. (Although I must say, I've been really happy to see them using Spanish regularly so far, even at the travel agency.)
The army captain and his wife -- man. It's clearly way too soon for him to be doing something like this, because he is being a total DICK, and it's getting worse the longer it goes. He was end-interviewing Sunday night that "we need to work on communication" because in his view the leg had been "an utter failure" (despite their coming in second), and he clearly blames it all on his wife's questioning him in any way -- even though she was right every single time. She held it together really well in the face of his sarcasm and dismissal, though, so go her.
The all-female teams are still mostly ciphers to me, oddly. The only interesting thing about the federal agents is that they're still pretending to be schoolteachers, and that's only interesting because it's, er, stupid. The cousins are just sort of there; the one who was talking about being... something (dirty? scared? frazzled? it was something vaguely negative but perfectly appropriate to someone running a pretty grueling race) on the inside but still trying to maintain a cutesy exterior caught my attention Sunday, but mostly to think "it's really time to stop trying to be cutesy, and just race". Still, they're sticking it out, and if they're still around for a few more legs I think I'll probably wind up liking them.
Who does that leave? *counts up* Oh, the dating divorced people, and the Jersey boys. Eh. I know both teams exist, but that's kind of it. Although for all their blandness, the boys are already on my next to last nerve with all of the "hot girls here. gonna be hot girls in the next country, too. woo!" crap. Yes we get it, you're straight. Oh, god, one of them also calls himself "Joey 'Fitness'", which I manage to repress every week till the show comes on and Phil says, "Joey Fitness and OtherGuy, you are Team Number Something" and I just want to smack him. What sort of grown man actually announces that he wants to be called "Joey Fitness"? Ugh.
... okay, the Jersey boys can go right after the Big Brother pair.
Unrelated to teams, has anyone noticed the weirdness with the mat? Last season, absolutely no one stepped on the mat, ever. They all stopped at the edge, and left the mat empty while Phil talked to them. I eventually decided that Phil had had enough of being mauled by overexcited racers and put the kibosh on them coming within arm's length. But this season, we're back to "jump on that mat!" and everyone having to be on the mat before he'll give them their position. Very odd.
Sunday's ep: I can't believe the Race sent them to Italy -- and made them drive Ford Focuses. *facepalm* (Okay, so I would like a car that could parallel park itself, as I suck at parallel parking and hence avoid it as much as possible. But still.) A few seasons ago, they got to drive Maseratis (link courtesy the imcdb -- Internet Movie Cars Database -- which has an entire giant photographic database of every car seen or driven in TAR. No, really. I love the internet SO MUCH.). You know those poor racers were thinking "yay, Italian cars! wooooo!" and dreaming of being asked to race Ferraris or something. And instead they got "you must push this button and allow your Ford vehicle to drive the car for you."
I'm a little baffled that both the border patrol guys and the army guy thought that the Fast Forward would involve actually being allowed to land an actual real helicopter. Who in their right mind would let that happen? Army guy's wife is clearly the most sensible person in this entire group, who guessed sight unseen that it would involve landing a toy helicopter somewhere. (And who in no way needed to "change her demeanor" for thinking so, and daring to say so! Arrrgh, army guy.)
On the plus side, the Race this season is keeping my interest. I think the only team I'm really rooting for is the Kentucky boys, though.
Project Runway Allstars
Is anyone else even watching this? I've been a bit eye-rolly at some of it, but at least most of the designs have been decent (with a few notable exceptions).
I figured Mondo was a shoo-in for the final three, and I'd assumed Austin would be, too, but I'm sort of shocked Michael made it. Although given the choice between him and Kenley, I'd take Michael; I can't stand Kenley. Still, I'd originally figured it'd be Mila or Rami, and I'm really surprised they went out ahead of Michael and Kenley. This definitely makes it a two-person finale, for all practical purposes; there's no way Michael can pull out a win over the other two.
I was a little weirded out by the change in judges and mentor, but according to TLo, Tim Gunn and Isaac Mizrahi basically can't stand each other, so if they wanted Isaac for a judge, that meant Tim got a break (which I suspect he badly needed; he's been looking/sounding pretty burned out).
I actually like Joanna Coles as the mentor figure, which I wasn't really expecting to happen. But I really appreciate that she keeps demanding to know how anyone is supposed to wear a bra with this outfit or that outfit, and "gently" explaining to the desires that many women prefer to wear underwear in general with their clothes. Because seriously, some of the flappy, backless, plunging-neckline (... sternumline?) stuff that's been going down the runway is absurd.
It's been refreshing all season to see mostly decently made clothes that someone could probably wear, although there have been some exceptions.
Austin did something for the "Godspell" challenge that everyone but me appeared to love; I thought his model looked like a Victorian street walker.
Jerell managed something so hoochie-bad that I don't even know how to describe it -- it's less bad in the photo than it was in motion. No, really. (Edited to add: This was not meant to be a Godspell costume, or a costume of any sort. This was meant to be an outfit a person would wear on the street. /edit) He kept going on about "ethnic" and "tribal" and I just wanted to throttle him, as he never once managed to narrow that down to a particular ethnicity or tribe. (Not just this challenge; he did that in most challenges. WTF. Leiderhosen are also ethnic, dude. Celtic knots are tribal. PICK AN ACTUAL SOURCE OF INSPIRATION.)
My favorite outfit so far of the season is courtesy Mondo, who nailed the Godspell challenge with this fabulous costume.
Actually, skimming around the Lifetime site, Austin's been weaker than I remember in general; his stuff's put together well, but has been a little off more often than not. Which is good news for Mondo, unless Mondo completely chokes on his own negative headspace...
Top Chef
I'm getting more meh about this show every season, and I'm not sure why I keep watching, other than habit. It's less interesting, even though I do think that the caliber of chefs is pretty consistently going up; there seemed to be some great food this time around. But I was mostly bored or annoyed, and once it was clear that Nyesha wouldn't be coming back, meh. I still don't even know the names of most of the contestants, and the season is over now.
Contestants aside, I was seriously annoyed by the tenor of the later challenges, which had a decided Amazing Race feel to them -- "ride this bicycle around while gathering supplies and carry them to a location to do a task", "chop food out of a block of ice with an icepick", "perform silly versions of Olympic sports to win ingredients", bleah. Those sorts of things have nothing to do with being a good cook, or coping with challenging cooking situations; they're designed to hand the challenge to whoever is physically the strongest in a given ability. And that seems to be the direction they're heading now, after too many seasons of trying to find new challenges.
I'm totally okay with challenges that are about things like "you only have a sterno can and a camp mess kit" or "cook at high altitude" or "cook on a yacht at sea" or "cook in a food truck" or "you have to use / are not permitted to use this ingredient" -- all of those are situations a chef could find themselves in, and a top chef should be able to roll with it and still come up with something great. (Like Hubert Keller, making pasta in the steam from a shower because he didn't have a cooktop to boil it on. <3 ) When they pull something like that, all the chefs are on the same footing, and the only people who have advantages are the ones who've cooked under different conditions -- which means they're better qualified in their field, so that's great.
But "I ski better than you, and therefore I'm a better chef"? No. Just no.
So I'm not sure about next season; maybe I need a break from this show.
There, reality tv covered! Now let's see if I can manage to say anything about regular tv before I fall yet another week (or month) behind on things...
Amazing Race, season... 20? Really. Okay.
Wow, the Big Brother team has got to go. Like, now. (Like five episodes ago, really, but retroactive elimination doesn't work that well.) I cannot listen to that woman anymore, and I feel so incredibly bad for the man. He clearly adores her, even though she is useless. "I'm sorry I'm just a girl!" (omg I went so stabby when she said that!) "You know I'm not good under pressure!" "I'm not good at math!" "I don't want to be here!" "I want to quit" "I will quit right now!" "our marriage is over" "why would you say I want to quit?" "why would you say I want to end our relationship?" "you have to stop being so mean to me!" "this was supposed to be a fun trip around the worrrrrld" as whinily as possible all the while sniveling and sobbing and omg SHUT UP.
There hasn't been an episode yet where I haven't gritted my teeth through their bits. At this point her poor boyfriend is just doing endless damage control, apologizing for things he hasn't done (seriously, dude? "She's just getting back at me for being mean to her" -- no, no she's not. Because you haven't been mean to her. She's a vapid, spoiled child who cannot handle stress of any sort, and is lashing out at you constantly and then berating you for not instantly stopping and coddling her with cookies and milk and a fresh mani-pedi right there in the street. And she is convinced that someone saying "I think [something different]" is yelling at her, and mean, and that therefore they deserve to be yelled at and treated shabbily. Each to their own relationship, but she is not remotely emotionally mature, and man, I would run so far, so fast. I'm just sayin'.)
(He carried her fanny pack so she wouldn't be burdened by the extra pound Sunday night. And she still berated him for being mean!)
Okay, I just read their bios to see if I was being unfair because she was only 18 or something, and no, she's 27, so really old enough to know better -- and both of them list the biggest challenge they will face on the Race as Brendon being "impatient". WTF, he has the patience of a saint!
... I will stop obsessing over this obnoxious team now. *kof* Onward!
The Kentucky boys are a riot, and I'm glad they're still in it. I was a little leery in the first ep, with all the screaming and shouting (I'm not big on loudness, really), but that seems to have just been starting nerves, yay. I think they'd really found their feet and would be in good position right now if they hadn't missed the info about the travel agency, argh. If they can get past the speed bump next week, I think they'll stick around for a while, though. I love watching friend teams race, and I like them a whole lot more than the Jersey boys.
How much do you think the border guards are regretting handing over their $10k right now? heh. Still, it was a tremendously sweet thing to do, and especially given that the one guy has a sick kid, and needs the money for her care. <3
Which leads me straight into the border guards, who are great except for the part where they're so obnoxious. Sigh. I could really do without them being so dismissive of the Big Brother team (... yes, I know, I just wrote paragraphs about how much I can't stand that team. They still have no reason to dismiss them the way they do, or at least they didn't during the first episode when they knew nothing about them.). Also they're stupid to keep announcing that they expect to win by virtue of being the self-defined smartest and strongest people on the race; smart and strong don't necessarily win the race. "We have fantastic luck with cabs" does a whole lot more, and if they haven't figured that out, they're in for some hard times. Especially when they start hitting countries where their fluency in Spanish does them no good at all. (Although I must say, I've been really happy to see them using Spanish regularly so far, even at the travel agency.)
The army captain and his wife -- man. It's clearly way too soon for him to be doing something like this, because he is being a total DICK, and it's getting worse the longer it goes. He was end-interviewing Sunday night that "we need to work on communication" because in his view the leg had been "an utter failure" (despite their coming in second), and he clearly blames it all on his wife's questioning him in any way -- even though she was right every single time. She held it together really well in the face of his sarcasm and dismissal, though, so go her.
The all-female teams are still mostly ciphers to me, oddly. The only interesting thing about the federal agents is that they're still pretending to be schoolteachers, and that's only interesting because it's, er, stupid. The cousins are just sort of there; the one who was talking about being... something (dirty? scared? frazzled? it was something vaguely negative but perfectly appropriate to someone running a pretty grueling race) on the inside but still trying to maintain a cutesy exterior caught my attention Sunday, but mostly to think "it's really time to stop trying to be cutesy, and just race". Still, they're sticking it out, and if they're still around for a few more legs I think I'll probably wind up liking them.
Who does that leave? *counts up* Oh, the dating divorced people, and the Jersey boys. Eh. I know both teams exist, but that's kind of it. Although for all their blandness, the boys are already on my next to last nerve with all of the "hot girls here. gonna be hot girls in the next country, too. woo!" crap. Yes we get it, you're straight. Oh, god, one of them also calls himself "Joey 'Fitness'", which I manage to repress every week till the show comes on and Phil says, "Joey Fitness and OtherGuy, you are Team Number Something" and I just want to smack him. What sort of grown man actually announces that he wants to be called "Joey Fitness"? Ugh.
... okay, the Jersey boys can go right after the Big Brother pair.
Unrelated to teams, has anyone noticed the weirdness with the mat? Last season, absolutely no one stepped on the mat, ever. They all stopped at the edge, and left the mat empty while Phil talked to them. I eventually decided that Phil had had enough of being mauled by overexcited racers and put the kibosh on them coming within arm's length. But this season, we're back to "jump on that mat!" and everyone having to be on the mat before he'll give them their position. Very odd.
Sunday's ep: I can't believe the Race sent them to Italy -- and made them drive Ford Focuses. *facepalm* (Okay, so I would like a car that could parallel park itself, as I suck at parallel parking and hence avoid it as much as possible. But still.) A few seasons ago, they got to drive Maseratis (link courtesy the imcdb -- Internet Movie Cars Database -- which has an entire giant photographic database of every car seen or driven in TAR. No, really. I love the internet SO MUCH.). You know those poor racers were thinking "yay, Italian cars! wooooo!" and dreaming of being asked to race Ferraris or something. And instead they got "you must push this button and allow your Ford vehicle to drive the car for you."
I'm a little baffled that both the border patrol guys and the army guy thought that the Fast Forward would involve actually being allowed to land an actual real helicopter. Who in their right mind would let that happen? Army guy's wife is clearly the most sensible person in this entire group, who guessed sight unseen that it would involve landing a toy helicopter somewhere. (And who in no way needed to "change her demeanor" for thinking so, and daring to say so! Arrrgh, army guy.)
On the plus side, the Race this season is keeping my interest. I think the only team I'm really rooting for is the Kentucky boys, though.
Project Runway Allstars
Is anyone else even watching this? I've been a bit eye-rolly at some of it, but at least most of the designs have been decent (with a few notable exceptions).
I figured Mondo was a shoo-in for the final three, and I'd assumed Austin would be, too, but I'm sort of shocked Michael made it. Although given the choice between him and Kenley, I'd take Michael; I can't stand Kenley. Still, I'd originally figured it'd be Mila or Rami, and I'm really surprised they went out ahead of Michael and Kenley. This definitely makes it a two-person finale, for all practical purposes; there's no way Michael can pull out a win over the other two.
I was a little weirded out by the change in judges and mentor, but according to TLo, Tim Gunn and Isaac Mizrahi basically can't stand each other, so if they wanted Isaac for a judge, that meant Tim got a break (which I suspect he badly needed; he's been looking/sounding pretty burned out).
I actually like Joanna Coles as the mentor figure, which I wasn't really expecting to happen. But I really appreciate that she keeps demanding to know how anyone is supposed to wear a bra with this outfit or that outfit, and "gently" explaining to the desires that many women prefer to wear underwear in general with their clothes. Because seriously, some of the flappy, backless, plunging-neckline (... sternumline?) stuff that's been going down the runway is absurd.
It's been refreshing all season to see mostly decently made clothes that someone could probably wear, although there have been some exceptions.
Austin did something for the "Godspell" challenge that everyone but me appeared to love; I thought his model looked like a Victorian street walker.
Jerell managed something so hoochie-bad that I don't even know how to describe it -- it's less bad in the photo than it was in motion. No, really. (Edited to add: This was not meant to be a Godspell costume, or a costume of any sort. This was meant to be an outfit a person would wear on the street. /edit) He kept going on about "ethnic" and "tribal" and I just wanted to throttle him, as he never once managed to narrow that down to a particular ethnicity or tribe. (Not just this challenge; he did that in most challenges. WTF. Leiderhosen are also ethnic, dude. Celtic knots are tribal. PICK AN ACTUAL SOURCE OF INSPIRATION.)
My favorite outfit so far of the season is courtesy Mondo, who nailed the Godspell challenge with this fabulous costume.
Actually, skimming around the Lifetime site, Austin's been weaker than I remember in general; his stuff's put together well, but has been a little off more often than not. Which is good news for Mondo, unless Mondo completely chokes on his own negative headspace...
Top Chef
I'm getting more meh about this show every season, and I'm not sure why I keep watching, other than habit. It's less interesting, even though I do think that the caliber of chefs is pretty consistently going up; there seemed to be some great food this time around. But I was mostly bored or annoyed, and once it was clear that Nyesha wouldn't be coming back, meh. I still don't even know the names of most of the contestants, and the season is over now.
Contestants aside, I was seriously annoyed by the tenor of the later challenges, which had a decided Amazing Race feel to them -- "ride this bicycle around while gathering supplies and carry them to a location to do a task", "chop food out of a block of ice with an icepick", "perform silly versions of Olympic sports to win ingredients", bleah. Those sorts of things have nothing to do with being a good cook, or coping with challenging cooking situations; they're designed to hand the challenge to whoever is physically the strongest in a given ability. And that seems to be the direction they're heading now, after too many seasons of trying to find new challenges.
I'm totally okay with challenges that are about things like "you only have a sterno can and a camp mess kit" or "cook at high altitude" or "cook on a yacht at sea" or "cook in a food truck" or "you have to use / are not permitted to use this ingredient" -- all of those are situations a chef could find themselves in, and a top chef should be able to roll with it and still come up with something great. (Like Hubert Keller, making pasta in the steam from a shower because he didn't have a cooktop to boil it on. <3 ) When they pull something like that, all the chefs are on the same footing, and the only people who have advantages are the ones who've cooked under different conditions -- which means they're better qualified in their field, so that's great.
But "I ski better than you, and therefore I'm a better chef"? No. Just no.
So I'm not sure about next season; maybe I need a break from this show.
There, reality tv covered! Now let's see if I can manage to say anything about regular tv before I fall yet another week (or month) behind on things...
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We're watching, but the host model makes me twitch. I don't know what it is, but the way she talks/enunciates....
Yeah, Top chef, the Amazing Race stuff was silly.
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Oh, hah, I completely failed to mention her because she disturbs me so much I ff through all her scenes, and it's like she isn't even there for me. Somehow I seem to blank her out during the judging scenes. She was really a terrible choice.
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Michael - meh. I felt for him in his season, and I still feel like some of the more grating behavior is cultural, but there's no getting around that it's grating nonetheless. And he just isn't as good overall. I can't see any way he wins unless Mondo has a complete meltdown and Austin designs everything for the Junior League set ca. 1987.