TVSquad

So they were down to the final two on the Hell's Kitchen season finale last night, Danny and Paula. Watching the early episodes I didn't think that Danny would even make it that far. Here's the whole episode if you missed it. Did the right person win? (Video also here.)

(S06E10) "...but understand, you are nothing more than a fly on one of my many shits." - Pezuela

The beginning of the end. We've got one more season of The Shield to go and I have to say that I'm pretty excited for what's been set up. It's going to be a lot to cover with only thirteen episodes remaining in life of the series. Then again, this season only had ten installments and look how many different stories came out of it. From the aftermath of Lem's death to the biggest conspiracy the Farmington district has ever seen, we got it all in season six.

(S06E09) "Too many shit-heads. Not enough pillows." - Vic

Despite the fact that I love Vic Mackey, I still laugh a little any time he makes some comment about people in jail. The luck this guy has had! He could just as easily be behind bars. But as this episode taught us, it more often than not just falls into his lap. You'd think karma would have come and bit him in the ass by now, but his good fortune never seems to cease.

(S06E08) "We're not clean in this either. And I'm not spending the rest of my life wearing state property." -Ronnie

I'm gonna make a bold statement that'll probably insult some readers: If you don't watch this show, you're dumb. Plain and simple. Nothing else on TV is as well-written, layered, and intricate as The Shield. There's another well-known cable drama with a prominent anti-hero about to end its run. Something about the Jersey mob and its high strung boss. You know that guy I'm talking about? Well, he can't hold a candle to Vic Mackey.

(S06E07) "He's not going to say anything to anybody because I know everything he's done." -Shane

There it is folks. The one thing that can actually make Vic Mackey look terrified. The knowledge in Shane's (apparently not so small) brain. We knew this was coming though. It's almost like watching an episode of Survivor. An alliance has been broken and now it's every man for himself. Who knows what and how they can use it to gain leverage.

I'll be honest though. Shane is proving to be far more effective in covering his tracks than I would have ever imagined. It almost makes you wonder how many times he's gone over this type of scenario in his head, even before the incident with Lem. The guy has put plenty of thought into his actions and it seems like Vic may have a legitimate reason to worry. How do you stop a guy that knows exactly what you know?

(S06E05) "You ever think about just coming clean? About everything?" -Shane

I suppose I should be used to it by now, but with the ups and downs that most great shows go through, it's weird to watch something and never be disappointed at the end of it. The Shield is just always good and I think it's remarkable.

So if that didn't spell it out, I liked this episode - a lot. Just solid from all points. Plenty of vintage Dutch, a blast from the past with the return of Vic's old partner, and a gut-wrenching confession from Shane made for one hell of an hour.

(S11E12) Next week is the season finale and I'm thankful for that. This has been my least favorite season of The Amazing Race (I didn't watch the family season). For the most part, the drama has been in the airports with teams constantly vying for the best flights. The challenges, for the most part, have been pretty lame. Very few of them have been physical and therefore have not been all that much of a victory for teams when they complete the tasks.

This week's detour was an exception. The teams traveled a whopping 7,500 miles from Macau to Guam. There, only one team (Charla & Mirna) chose the challenge that actually meant anything. They packed up supplies and got to go on a military mission to drop them. The flight looked like so much fun! Of course, their task put them in last place so the other teams were smart not to choose it.

(S11E11) Did everybody catch the Travelocity ad at the very beginning of the episode? Sheesh. It took a few extra minutes to get into the race so Oswald and Danny could show off the vacation they won last week.

Ooooh... I loved the whole Yield drama at the beginning of this episode. The beauty queens had already used their Yield but Danny & Oswald really needed cash so they offered to Yield whomever the queens wanted in exchange for cash. I was clapping with glee when the whole thing played out because I really don't like Eric & Danielle.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

(S06E03) "This thing's gonna get a lot uglier before it gets better." -Vic

Well... it's official. I'm fairly certain I can't say a bad thing about this show. It's too good. Period. I'll even go as far as saying that it might be one of the finest cop dramas ever to be made and there's still 20 episodes (7 this season and 13 in the final) left before it's over for good.

There's just so many layers and subtle things that make this show so great (this episode in particular), that I know I won't recall all of them. That's how you know a show's good.

So we picked up with last week's kidnapping of Nadia (Guardo's girl) and Vic was forced to go to some extreme lengths to find the peace he's been looking for.

(S11E10) So much of this season has been about jockeying for position on flights and very little has been about challenges. Finally, after we spent a lot of time in the airport at the beginning of the episode, we got to see some really cool challenges. The first Detour was Lost in Translation or Kung Fu Fighting-- with ninjas! I would've chosen that, too. The challenges, unfortunately, were super simple for everybody, but at least they were entertaining to wtch.

This week, teams flew more than 1,500 miles from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Hong Kong.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

(S11E09) I can't believe we're already down to five teams. This week, the teams flew a whopping 5,500 miles from Krakow, Poland to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

What is wrong with people that they don't yield people? It's a tool in the game to get ahead of the other teams. And then, teams that do get yielded are personally insulted!

This week, we saw a strong team break down, another strong team make a fatal mistake and a team that has been stumbling finally found its footing.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

(S06E01) This is why I love TV. This was the second time I've seen this episode (you've got to love press screeners) and I was just as riveted as the first time I saw it. With the way last season ended, people have been waiting a long time for this. It was worth the wait because last night's season six premiere of The Shield was arguably one of the best episodes of the series to date.

Picking up just about a week after Shane killed Lem, the late Det. Lemansky has been buried minus the pomp of a proper police funeral. Turns out that Aceveda and his new political cronies made sure that the city knew Lem was "dirty." Naturally, Vic is not thrilled with that and along with Shane and Ronnie (who now has a much more expanded role), they begin looking for whoever killed Lem.

(S11E06) Tonight we began in Mozambique, Africa. Teams flew to Tanzania where I swear we witnessed the weirdest race ever! First of all, three teams were nearly an entire day behind the other top teams as they were stuck in the Johannesburg airport. There were three-hour time differences between the racers who left to Zanzibar by boat. The teams didn't get to a challenge until 32 minutes in the show because so much of this week was spent just trying to get the hell out of Johannesburg!

At least both challenges were on the island of Zanzibar so not much more travel was required. The first was a quick little puzzle and the second was a really tough-looking axe-throwing challenge.

Without giving anything away before the jump, I wonder how next week is going to work out with such a huge difference in the finishing times between the teams. I think the final team is going to leave about 12 hours or so later than the first team.

*SPOILERS* AFTER THE JUMP:

(S11E05) Who are you rooting for? The race is narrowed down enough that it's easier to pick a favorite. Right now, I'm partial to Oswald & Danny but I think this episode was edited in their favor.

This week, the teams all caught the same flight from Argentina to Mozambique, Africa, where they found rats. I actually thought this was one of the more interesting challenges since I had no idea that rats were used to sniff out land mines. And the names of the rats were quite funny: Tupac, Nelson, Twinkletoes, and Xena? Hilarious!

The second challenge was a lot more along the lines of Amazing Race-style challenges (finally!). Teams had to either give manicures or fill 45-pound bags with coal and carry them to a location. Most of the teams opted for the porter challenge and I think that's because they were afraid to interact with the locals.

Anybody know why the teams had drivers while they were in Africa?

What is wrong with NBC? And don't say "Jeff Zucker", because that's too easy.

The network is currently airing You're the One That I Want, which is a contest to choose the new 'Danny' and 'Sandy' for Grease on Broadway. The show keeps proclaiming that America will choose the winners, but on Sunday night, the judges on the show nullified America's votes. Instead, they kept the bottom vote-getters and tossed the second-to-bottom vote getters off the program. NBC is proudly calling it a "twist" but it sounds more like a "sham" to me.

I'm sure Americans would be super pissed off about this incident if anyone was actually watching the show. If this happened on American Idol, there would be rioting in the streets by now.