RealityTv-related stories
Posted Nov 6th 2009 1:00AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, Survivor, Episode Reviews
(S19E08) I know this photo might be considered sort of spoilerish for the front page. But since last week's
Survivor promo showed the merge going down, I know you all know Evil Russell will attempt to work everyone. Heck, that's what the guy does. To me, he comes off akin to a snake oil salesman. Yet he seems to get people to believe his wily ways. I bet he could have sold a lot of snake oil a century back.
Continue reading Review: Survivor Samoa - All Hell Breaks Loose
Posted Nov 4th 2009 7:29PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Animation, South Park
Even though the show has been on forever, I still enjoy my weekly dose of the new
South Parks. But lately, they seem to be running out of targets or have narrowed their focus too much on one particular evil: reality television.
The season opener featured a rather nasty swipe at Disney's Jonas Brothers. The recent "Dead Celebrities" chortle-fest took a much needed pot shot at
Ghost Hunters, aka, "the gayest f#*$ing show on television." And last week launched an all out attack on Discovery's
Whale Wars and
Deadliest Catch, particularly against
Whale Wars star Paul Watson.
The show has always been a bitch to write and making every episode a satirical masterpiece is impossible without suffering a full-on breakdown. But should the show lay off reality TV and take some bolder shots at reality, which as we all know are two completely different things?
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 12:41AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, The Amazing Race, Episode Reviews
(S15E07) Poor Ericka. In tonight's episode of
The Amazing Race, she didn't look quite like Miss America. Stress will do that to you. It seems each week a team or two make what might be a fatal error in the game. Oh, not something that could kill them -- just one which could lead to being Philiminated. This leg wasn't only tough on Brian and Ericka. One of the Globetrotters had to don a dress. Thankfully, it seemed to be specially tailored to fit him.
Continue reading Review: The Amazing Race - This is Not My Finest Hour
Posted Oct 30th 2009 12:50AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, Survivor, Episode Reviews
(S19E07) Even though we're down a Russell this week on
Survivor, I'll continue to refer to the remaining Russell as "Evil Russell." It just somehow fits even without a confusion of Russells. However, there is just one Shambo. Although she's a good worker in camp and works hard on the challenges, that might be a good thing. One Shambo is quite enough. Perhaps she's just too nice to be on the show. Perhaps she is a bit dim. I just don't know.
Continue reading Review: Survivor Samoa - Houdini Magic
Posted Oct 26th 2009 12:34AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, The Amazing Race, Episode Reviews
(S15E06) One of the many things I learned tonight on
The Amazing Race is that Dubai is probably hotter than anyplace I really want to visit. Every team was sweating; every team was complaining. At least those teams who didn't have a clue about where the Persian Gulf is or whether it's a country in and of itself will remember it now. If nothing else but for the heat. Oh. And the way cool six-story water slide into shark infested waters. At least one team will really remember that water slide.
Continue reading Review: The Amazing Race - Do it for the Hood! Do it for the Suburbs!
Posted Oct 23rd 2009 12:13AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, Survivor, Episode Reviews
(S19E06) Well, this was the most unusual episode of
Survivor I've ever seen. Mind you, I've seen all of them since the first season. I won't get into why it was so unusual until after the jump just in case you've missed all of the hype over the injured castaway in commercials all this week. But it wasn't just the injury which made it unusual. It was all discombobulated.
Continue reading Review: Survivor Samoa - This Is the Man Test
Posted Oct 19th 2009 12:40AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, The Amazing Race, Episode Reviews
(S15E05) Once again in the NYC viewing area,
The Amazing Race suffered a huge delay in airing due to football. Tonight, it started an hour and fifteen minutes late. And, after all of that, the Jets lost! It's a miracle this show keeps receiving Emmy awards when the CBS Sunday night schedule is so fickle due to every sport under the sun or inside a stadium. Speaking of sports ... who are the Brinkley Tigers on Flight Time's t-shirt? They can't be Christie Brinkley's ex-husbands, can they?
Continue reading Review: The Amazing Race - I'm Like Ricky Bobby
Posted Oct 16th 2009 1:55AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, Survivor, Episode Reviews
(S19E05) We're into the fifth episode of
Survivor and I'm still getting some of the cast mixed up. True, they're mostly on the larger Galu tribe -- the ones who keep winning, yet we only see a focus on a select few. We all know "Good" Russell and Shambo. Did you know that someone named Brett is on the Galu tribe? No. Really, I'm not kidding. He got some airtime tonight. At this point, they could stick in stunt doubles and we wouldn't know the difference!
Continue reading Survivor Samoa: Walking on Thin Ice
Posted Oct 14th 2009 9:31AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: OpEd, The Biggest Loser, Watercooler Talk
Eliminations on
The Biggest Loser are always heart-wrenching. Much as the contestants hate being away from their families, they've made the decision to try out for the show, and once they're there, the last thing they want to do is go home and back to their unhealthy habits.
Many of them truly are fighting for their life, and you just know that without the motivation of laying it all out there on TV -- not to mention the grueling paces that Bob and Jillian put them through -- some of them might never gain control over their weight.
Continue reading The wrong person went home on last night's Biggest Loser
Posted Oct 14th 2009 9:02AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Programming, OpEd, Celebrities
Apparently, I've gone over to the dark side and have somehow morphed into a person who watches the E! network. I've commented on
the Kardashians,
Leave it to Lamas, and
Chelsea Lately (which I love by the way). I've finally moved to the bottom of the barrel --
The Girls Next Door.
Here's the thing about this show. Who really knows what goes on when the cameras are turned off (or possibly, we don't want to know), but it seems like Hugh Hefner is a really nice guy. All of his girlfriends and ex-girlfriends have only good things to say about him, and they rave about how cool it is to live at the Playboy mansion.
And if you can get past the part where he has several girlfriends at the same time, and is, like, 103 years old creepily having sex with 19-year-old girls (if he can still have sex, that is), he just seems like a nice guy. The kindly grandfather girls have sex with. Oh, and he loves to scrapbook.
Continue reading Hugh Hefner is like the kindly grandfather girls have sex with
Posted Oct 13th 2009 5:31PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, Programming, OpEd, Celebrities
I caught an episode of E!'s new reality show,
Leave It To Lamas, the other night. All I could think was, 'Does anyone really care about these people?' Maybe that's the point. We don't care, and thus don't mind watching them all implode.
I'm betting that a lot of people have never even heard of the Lamas family. I remember Lorenzo from
Falcon Crest; now he looks like a washed-up porn star. His daughter, Shayne, was recently proposed to by Matt Grant on
The Bachelor: London Calling (the engagement is off -- I'm guessing it was all done for publicity for
this show).
Continue reading Leave it to Lamas - Does anyone really care?
Posted Oct 12th 2009 12:40AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, The Amazing Race, Episode Reviews
(S15E04) You'll have to bear with me tonight. You see, I'm cranky. Yes, I'm cranky about tonight's episode of
The Amazing Race. Perhaps I'd be a bit less cranky had the show started anywhere near on time. No, it's a Sunday show and here in the NYC viewing area, any sport played during the day can run over and delay the entire Sunday evening primetime line-up. On a night like tonight, delayed 45 minutes, it wreaks havoc with other shows I'd like to watch and my review writing time. But that's not the only reason I'm cranky.
Continue reading The Amazing Race: Sean Penn Cambodia Here We Come
Posted Oct 8th 2009 10:53PM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, Survivor, Episode Reviews
(S19E04) So far we've had one of those lopsided seasons on
Survivor. We've seen this happen before -- one tribe keeps winning, the other keeps right on losing. The numbers on the latter are decimated going into the merge which allows the stronger tribe to keep picking them off one by one. I prefer things a bit more evenly matched. The tribal losses affect both the strong and weak players across the board. Once a tribe keeps losing every challenge, morale goes down. Then they lose some more.
Continue reading Survivor Samoa: Hungry For a Win
Posted Oct 5th 2009 12:20AM by Jackie Schnoop
Filed under: OpEd, The Amazing Race, Episode Reviews
(S15E03) Gee, it doesn't seem like we're already three episodes into
The Amazing Race. But last week's two-hour season premiere with its two Philiminations, counted as two episodes. I'm still getting to know the teams. I think, so far, this season has more teams that I'd really like to see stick around for a while. There is only one team who really annoys me. With my luck, they'll be around for a good long while. I want them to implode. Nah, I'm not talking about Zev and Justin.
Continue reading The Amazing Race: It's Like Being Dropped on Planet Mars
Posted Oct 4th 2009 3:30PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd
If you've been watching the current season of
The Real Housewives of Atlanta, you've seen an uptick in the nastiness. Wig-pulling, sniping, one wife referring to another as a monster, bad singing ... It's been a wallow in bad behavior. As shocking as what's been on the air, this news yesterday was shockingly real:
A.J. Jewell, the fiance of Real Housewives of Atlanta's Kandi Burruss, died after a parking lot brawl Friday night.
On the show, Kandi is the newest wife (although she was not presently married), and the successful singer/songwriter in the course of this season, she's been struggling with her engagement to A.J. He had six children from a previous relationship, and Kandi's mother has been against her daughter marrying him. Mama even refused to have a picture taken with A.J.
The news that this man has died is truly surprising and sad.
Continue reading Death and the Real Housewives of Atlanta
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