"Survivor", "Celebrity Apprentice", "Knight Rider", "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles", "Big Brother", "Law and Order", the Oscars and Barbara

OK, I'm catching up on about a week and a half's worth of shows, so this is going to be a long one with lots in it. Miscellaneous notes on other shows are at the end.


"Survivor" - previous week

On the way back from tribal council, Ozzy apparently caught a fish barehanded. What the heck with him? On the complete other side, the fans couldn't start a fire, even though they had flint. OK, so they're super fans, they've watched every single episode of the series. I've seen a lot of the series, and while I might not be able to start a fire, I know that hacking off chunks of the flint is not how you're supposed to use it to start a fire, not to mention that they wasted about half the flint trying to do it that way.

The fans were having a really hard time coming together as a group. They'd had no food or water, and the division in the group was shown literally when three of the members, the older group, decided to make a shelter just for themselves. The remaining group made their own shelter, with a fire finally started between the two shelters.

Meanwhile, on the favorites, Amanda and Ozzy's budding relationship was attracting attention, but Ozzy was wary of what people perceived. Umm, then you might want to watch you're doing then. They're perceiving what they're seeing, and they're seeing a lot. Don't assume that everyone's asleep and not conscious of what you're doing. If Amanda noticed and commented on James and Parvati, then it wasn't that hard for Jonathan and Cerie to figure out what was happening with Ozzy and Amanda when they started making out in the sleeping area.

On a completely different note, it was cool watching them eat the giant clam. That stuff is good! And you can't get any fresher.

When the two groups met for the next challenge, the fans applauded when they found out that John had been voted out the night before.

The challenge was for combined immunity and reward - fishing gear and a boat. It was funny to see Ozzy's reaction to that, so excited. Yeah, dude, like you need them - you caught a fish barehanded, remember?

The faves ended up winning the challenge, and they picked Kathy (who already had an immunity idol, thanks to Yau Man) to go to Exile Island. They were then told they had to send one of their own as well, and they picked Cerie. Kathy and Cerie went in search of the hidden immunity idol, but the clues led them to swim back and forth between two islands. It was fun to watch Cerie get exhausted since she didn't normally do much. I also thought that previously, whoever was sent to Exile Island wasn't usually back for the vote and so got immunity from tribal council, but in this case, Kathy was back before they had to go to tribal. While we saw them go back and forth in search of the idol, we don't know what happened, whether or not they found it, and even if they did, who would get it? In the past, there was only one person on Exile Island, so would it be a matter of who actually gets to the idol first?

At the fan camp, everyone commented on how poorly Chet did, and the larger group had decided they were going to target the three-member group, though Kathy would be able to use her immunity idol since this was her first time at tribal council. However, Joel decided he didn't like Mike taking charge, so he surreptiously campaigned to vote off Mary, who was in an alliance with Mike. It was funny at tribal council to watch Jeff question Chet, Mary, Joel and Mike with very pointed, on-target questions. It was obvious that he was seeing (or someone was telling him) about the footage from earlier in the day, so he knew exactly what buttons to push in getting responses from them. In the end, Joel's efforts paid off, and both Mike and Mary were blindsided when Mary was voted out.


"Survivor" - last week

After tribal council, Mike and Joel talked since Mike figured out that Joel was probably behind voting Mary out. There was no resolution since neither one really trusted the other afterward. Things weren't much different at the faves' camp as both alliances of four fought over Cerie. Cerie tried to figure out which side to align with, but she should be careful since it's happened before that the "swing vote" ended up being the person voted out when they played both sides and neither side could trust them. Being in the middle can be a powerful position, but it can also backfire on you. And I had remembered not liking Cerie from her previous appearance, but I couldn't remember exactly why. After seeing this episode, I remembered. She complained that neither side was really giving her special treatment, that they should be doing favors for her and other nice things, and they should carry her around. She said the last bit jokingly, but sorta not. Ummm, yeah, lady, whatever. I remember now that she was pretty lazy and didn't do anything and wanted other people to do stuff for her before, which was partly why I didn't like her, and that was back then, so her wanting it now shows she hasn't changed any. Yep, still want other people to do for you. How about doing for yourself?

The reward challenge involved fighting over bags, which the faves won, which earned them three groups of items that they chose out of a catalog. They again choose Kathy to go to Exile Island, and this time, they choose Aimee to go with her. Aimee was very enthusiastic about looking for the idol, but Kathy was understandably not as eager to go back and forth from island to island again. We still don't know if the idol has been found yet.

That night, the fans' shelter turned out to suck bigtime and provided no relief from the rainstorm. The team barely got any sleep, and they were still weak from lack of food. But in true you-never-know-what's-going-to-happen-on-Survivor style, even though the faves were fed and well-rested, the fans still did better in the immunity challenge and ended up beating the faves. The challenge was for half the team to be holding a net, and the other half of the team would be trying to toss coconuts into the other team's net, and whoever held on the longest won.

At the faves camp before tribal council, there was a lot of negotiating back and forth about who to vote out. Cerie was adamant about voting off Yau Man because she was sure he'd find the immunity idol on Exile Island if he went. Does that mean they didn't find it or was she just bluffing? I guess she was familiar with Yau Man's time on his previous show, as her desire to get him out seemed to be motivated by what a threat he turned out to be by the end of the show versus the non-threat he started out as. Cerie managed to get the alliance of two couples to vote with her, and Yau Man was voted off. I was confused that Aimee voted for Cerie. Not sure where that came from. I wonder if that will show up in the next episode. The preview for the next episode also hints that the immunity idol on Exile Island was or will be found.


"Celebrity Apprentice" - previous week

Team Hydra talked about how much they were enjoying working together, unaware that Donald Trump was about to re-divide the team members.

The new Hydra consisted of Piers, Omarosa, Carol and Lennox, and the new Empresario consisted of Tito, Marilu, Stephen and Trace. Marilu was understandably pleased with her new team, but whether or not Piers and Omarosa could work together remained to be seen.

The task was in Central Park, where they were to run a horse and carriage business with a team of 3 drivers. The going price was $34 per ride, but their challenge was to make as much as they could, so celebrity contacts came into play in the challenge again.

Trace was project manager of Empresario, and Piers was project manager of Hydra. All of the team members called their contacts to come out and bring money, and Piers informed his team that his decision in the boardroom would be based solely on who made the most money, so he was extremely happy when Omarosa was unable to bring even one person in. Even though they had decided to put their differences aside to win the challenge, a major blow-up occurred when Omarosa was filling out paperwork, and she spelled Piers' name wrong and barely acknowledged her mistake. She then said that Piers was petty because he got upset, but considering she never even acknowledged her error, and if she really didn't know, she could have asked. Also I expect that she would have been equally angry if he had spelled her name wrong. They had a heated fight in the van over, and Piers fired her, with Piers and Lennox getting out of the van to walk while Carol was left with Omarosa.

Empresario stopped to get roses and champagne for their business, and Marilu was really happy to be able to work with no drama. She was probably the happiest about the team redivision. Stephen called in yet another brother, Billy, who showed up, and they auctioned off a carriage ride with him. Tito was also able to bring in a celebrity, his girlfriend Jenna Jamieson, and for her contribution, she wanted to take a ride with him. We took a carriage ride when we were in New York in 2006, and it really was as beautiful as we saw during their carriage ride. I think our driver was from Ireland.

During the challenge, Omarosa was completely belligerent and insulting to Piers and ignored anything he said to her. She never acknowledged her part in creating the drama, and to me, she stooped much lower than was called for. She constantly referred to Piers' children and how they must be so disappointed in him and how another man was raising them. (I'm assuming Piers and his wife are divorced and she remarried and has custody of the children.) Omarosa had been dismissive of Piers many times previously, even though he had made a name for himself, not only for being a celebrity judge but in running a newspaper business, but Omarosa held herself up higher, even though her only claim to fame has really been from being on the show previously. But even with all that, at least it was about the individual person, and it was about business. Resorting to personal attacks that involved his children was really uncalled for, especially since she didn't do all that much during this challenge.

While Empresario was combining celebrity contacts with regular park guests as passengers, Piers decided to hold Hydra's carriages for the big spenders they were expecting. He wanted to make sure a carriage was available when the big spenders showed up rather than have all the carriages out for people paying less money, so the carriages sat there a lot, unused.

In the boardroom, the fighting between Piers and Omarosa continued, and the other team was shocked when Piers detailed Omarosa's attacks on his children. Piers said that he wouldn't quit, but he refused to work with her any more. However, even with all the problems on Hydra and all the harmony on Empresario, Hydra pulled off the win. Trump then decided to move Omarosa back to Empresario.

Trump was extrememly dismayed that Hydra won because he said that if Empresario had won, his decision would have been so much easier because they all knew who he would have fired on Hydra. I was surprised to hear that because it seemed like it would be a tossup between Omarosa and Piers. I think he might have picked Omarosa since she contributed nothing to that particular challenge, and she had failed during her stint as project manager. But since it was Hydra that won, he had no idea who to fire from Empresario. None of their members had anything bad to say about any of their teammates as well, so Trump made the decision, I think the right one, not to fire anyone, because no one deserved it for that challenge, and no one had a history that would have really played into it. It would have been a completely arbitrary decision of who to fire. At the end, he decided to move Marilu to Hydra, making the teams even again.


"Celebrity Apprentice" - last week

The new challenge involved QVC, and the teams were taken by helicopter to QVC's headquarters in Pennsylvania, where they would write and produce a 10 minute live segment as a commercial for a new product. Stephen was project manager for Empresario, and Marilu was project manager for Hydra. They had a choice of six items they could sell, and if both teams picked the same item, they would have to negotiate to see who would get it. Both teams initially picked the ladderkart, and Empresario had decided that if they both picked the same item, they would just toss a coin to decide since neither was going to give in. They did the coin toss, and Hydra won, so they got to go with the ladderkart. They decided to go with Marilu as the on-air person with the male host from QVC, even though Piers initially wanted to go with Lennox, but Lennox said he'd been overused. Empresario then chose the lightweight heavy-duty cordless sweeper and decided to go with Trace as the on-air person with QVC's female host. Omarosa wanted to rehearse before the segment, but Stephen said no. On a side note, why does she call everyone "son"? To me, it sounds condescending and belittling, but I'm told it can be an ethnic and regional expression that isn't necessarily intended to be that way. Maybe it's the tone in which she says it that gives me that impression. Or just because she seems to be a self-important raving bitch so much of the time.

Hydra had their spot first, with Lennox and Piers in the control room, and Marilu was excited and had a lot of energy, but it wasn't controlled energy, so she was pretty much just talking and talking and talking, even talking over the caller on the phone. She sort of demonstrated the item, but she pretty much did the same thing repeatedly, and she almost seemed to rely on her own love of the item to sell it rather than actually selling the item itself.

When it was Empresario's turn, Trace was calm and quiet and explained and demonstrated all the good points of the sweeper, and he also mentioned easy pay, which Stephen had gotten from speaking to a QVC guy, which allowed people to pay in 5equal payments instead of paying all at once.

In the end, Empresario won both because they had a higher selling price and because they sold more units. When Trump mentioned easy pay to Hydra, they were shocked to hear about it, even Carol, who had worked for QVC for five years and knew nothing of it. Trump told Marilu to choose the one person who wouldn't be coming back into the boardroom, and she picked Carol. Later, Trump said he didn't understand why she picked Carol rather than picking Lennox, and that even with Marilu's and Piers' assertions that Lennox was sleepy and not very helpful in the early part of the day, Trump mentioned Carol not knowing about easy pay. I wonder if he would have fired Carol had she been one of the two brought back, but then again, he also stated that Marilu as project manager was responsible for the task and she had also had a few hiccups in previous challenges, so in the end, Trump fired Marilu.


"Knight Rider"

A group of mens conned their way into the house of an inventor (Charles, played by Bruce Davison), who then had a heart attack and died. As the men searched the house, shooting an automated vacuum cleaner along the way, they encountered all kinds of different amazing electronic gadgets, but they were unable to stop the car, KITT, from getting away.

They then played the theme of the show, which was a cool re-done version of the original theme.

KITT then went to pick up Charles' daughter Sarah, who was at Stanford. Being a Cal grad, I will forgive the fact that she was a teacher at Stanford.

On another front, Mike Traceur had a car that had been used in racing, but he wasn't doing very well, and he owed his investors $90,000, who wanted to collect immediately, or harm would come to Mike and his friend/roommate.

Meanwhile, KITT 3000 (who used to be KITT 2000 in the previous show) had the ability to morph into a different kind of Mustang vehicle with different features and colors by way of nano technology, which is how KITT and Sarah escaped the men at Charles' house who were now after Sarah. KITT had been programmed to pick up Sarah and then find Mike, a friend of Sarah's since childhood, and when they discovered he was in Las Vegas, they headed there.

It turned out that the men were working for a group called Black River, a private security company who wanted Charles because of his work with Prometheus, a program for the military where weapons could be operated by remote control. They wanted to get control of Prometheus so they could control the weapons.

Sarah found Mike at the Montecito Hotel (which is the fictional hotel where NBC's show "Las Vegas" is based, and which is apparently used any time another NBC show has to go to a casino in Las Vegas). Black River's men came after Sarah and Mike, but Mike had previously been an Army Ranger, in special forces, so he was able to get himself and Sarah away from the men. After they got away, KITT wanted to go to the FBI, but Mike was against that idea. (On a separate note, they often showed shots of KITT talking by displaying various instruments on screen or showing the front of the car, which has lights that move back and forth. I couldn't help but think of the cylons from the original "Battlestar Galactica".)

FBI agent Carrie had been brought in to work with the County Sheriff on the case of Charles' death, but when she saw the body, she said that Charles was still alive. Charles had apparently been using a body double for some public appearances and other situations, and they showed in a flashback that it was the body double who stayed to confront the men while Charles escaped out a secret side door. After Carrie left, the County Sheriff was revealed to be working with the Black River men, and he passed on the information that Charles was still alive. Charles was running through the woods and ended up at a house, which we found out belonged to Jennifer, Mike's mother. Jennifer and Charles went to a hotel where he could call KITT, who then patched him through to Sarah, and Sarah relayed their whereabouts to Carrie, but the County Sheriff was also listening at the time, so he relayed the info to the Black River men. Mike ended up getting to Jennifer and Charles before the men did, and as they were escaping, Charles told Mike that he was in fact Michael Knight's son, and that he and his mother had to be left there for their own safety. The group ended up getting captured by the men, one of whom was hacking into KITT, and just before he got control of KITT, KITT shut down. In the ensuing melee, Jennifer was shot and died. The men left with Charles and left one man behind to kill Carrie and Mike and Sarah, but they overpowered the man and Mike drove KITT with Sarah in pursuit of Charles. During the ensuing chase, KITT was shot at, but because he was turned off, he could not use the nanotechnology to repair himself. Mike established eye contact with Charles at one point and then figured out what to do. He put KITT in the way of the car that Charles was in, and he had Sarah turn KITT on just before that, so before he could be taken over by the hacker, he was able to repair himself and make himself impenetrable - which was bad news for the car with Charles in it that ran right into them. Charles survived the crash, but his would-be captors did not.

On the way to Jennifer's funeral, Charles told Mike that he was resurrecting the Knight Foundation, and they wanted Mike to drive, but he refused. After the ceremony, when Mike was the only one left, he noticed a figure to the side, and when the figure came over, it was revealed to be Michael Knight himself. He said hello to his son and told him how he got involved in the Foundation, and he basically ended up talking Mike into driving for the Foundation. At the end, Mike was on to his first mission with KITT, with Charles, Sarah, Carrie and Mike's roommate, who was now working on KITT for the Foundation, bidding him farewell.


In recent years, there have been quite a number of "re-imaginings" of 70s and 80s television shows (like "S.W.A.T.", "Miami Vice", "Battlestar Galactica" and "Starsky & Hutch") where the new version pretty much completely ignores the existence of the original show. It's interesting that this year, there are two shows where it wasn't so much a re-done version as a continuing version. In this case, it's a passing of the torch, especially with Michael Knight's appearance and the new driver being his son. In the case of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles", it's a continuation of the story as we know it, filling in blanks of time we didn't know about.

I generally enjoyed the show, though they had some of the same problems inherent in the first episode of anything, where they had to do a lot of explaining of who everyone was and what their relationship was. You pretty much have to lay the groundwork before you can really do the fun stuff. I thought Justin Bruening was very good as the title character, and I think he's got the right combination of seriousness, charm and humour to pull off the role. I don't quite have a feeling when it comes to the voice of KITT. If I hadn't already known, I don't think I would have been able to figure out that it was Val Kilmer. There's been much speculation about how they would tackle KITT since his voice was almost more iconic than Michael Knight or the car itself. I like that they decided to go in a completely different direction, so that there was no direct comparison. Kilmer's KITT is more mechanical and inquisitive and literal, not snarky and "British", for lack of a better term, like his predecessor. This KITT is more like the good female terminator in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" or Data from "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

The movie apparently did very well in ratings, so there's a good chance it will come back as a series. I will be looking forward to seeing more of the show.


"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" - last week

Derek didn't trust Cameron because he knew she was a terminator, and he didn't want anything to do with her.

Charlie did his best to save Derek, and then he later wanted to know from Sarah why she left him. She said she didn't want to but she had to. Charlie later said that Derek needed blood, but he wasn't sure where they'd find the matching blood type. John offered his blood, which was a match, though neither John nor Sarah explained why. Charlie told Sarah that the FBI guy had come by to ask questions about her but he hadn't told him anything. John considered telling Derek who he really was, but ultimately he decided not to and just told Derek that Kyle died a hero, fighting to the last.

There were a lot of segments in the future time when the resistance forces were fighting Skynet. Derek and Kyle were together, and Kyle had the familiar picture of Sarah. Derek was then captured by the terminators and then put into some kind of holding area, where he met someone named Andy, who told Derek it was all his fault, that he was one of the people who had built Skynet. One by one, the prisoners were taken to what seemed like a torture chamber that had nice classical music, but we never saw what happened there. Everyone who came back was exhausted enough to be barely able to walk. Hopefully, we'll learn more about that later. Eventually, Derek was let go, and when he made it back to his underground tunnel, he discovered that the terminators had destroyed it. He was told by another person that John and Kyle were at some facility but then Kyle was gone. We know that's when John sent Kyle back to protect Sarah and John, but Derek didn't know that. In the future timeline, Cameron was also a good terminator who ended up taking out a terminator gone bad, and she ominously warned Derek that sometimes, they went bad for no reason. Derek then met up with John again and was sent on his own mission back in time to the present timeline. Because of his earlier conversation with Andy, Derek knew that he needed to kill him. Even though he told Sarah that he didn't kill Andy, it was shown that he lied as he was in fact responsible for Andy's death. But we still didn't know what happened to Andy's computer.

In the current timeline, Cameron was dismembering and taking apart the terminator that they had destroyed, the one that had been after Derek. She was going to pour some solution on it that would dissolve everything. Sarah later came in to check on her progress and was adamant that every single piece of the terminator be destroyed, but she was unaware that Cameron had saved the power source instead of destroying it.


"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" - this week

Cameron was dressed as a police officer on a motorcycle (what is it with terminators and motorcycles and leather and shades?) and deliberately caused a massive power outage in the city and then went to the police station, which was in disarray, and she went into the evidence lockers, and we found out later that she was looking for the terminator's hand.

The FBI agent (James Ellison) went to the mental hospital where Sarah had been held, and he watched video of her in one of her sessions. It was also revealed that he was in possession of the terminator's hand. When he was later away from his house, Sarah broke in, saw the tapes that he had, and took one of them. Later at the house, John stumbled upon it and watched it, which then upset him enough for him to leave the house. Sarah then discovered that he had watched the tape, which had been of her signing papers to give up John.

Meanwhile, Derek told Sarah that they needed to track down Dimitri, Andy's partner who taught the computer chess and who had disappeared. Sarah told Cameron that Dimitri's sister was a dance teacher, so Cameron signed up for her class, with the sister telling her that dance was the language of the soul.

Derek and Cameron were at the dining table, and Derek told Cameron that she could fool other people into thinking she was real, but she couldn't fool him. She then pulled a plate of pancakes to her and very deliberately took a forkful and ate it, which stunned Derek.

Ellison had gone to visit Dr. Silverman, who had retired after being Sarah's psychiatrist at the mental hospital. However, Silverman drugged Ellison because he thought Ellison might be a terminator from the future, so when Ellison came to, tied to a chair, Silverman decided to test him - by plunging a humongous knife into his leg. Silverman then believed that Ellison was human after passing that rather painful test. He then wondered if the apocalypse that Sarah had mentioned the machines would bring was the same apocalypse mention in the Bible. He said that he had been skeptical about everything Sarah had told him, but he became a believer when he saw the fight between the older, bigger terminator model and the newer, shiny, morphing terminator model. Unfortunately, he said he had no proof, so Ellison offered him proof - he had brought the terminator's hand, and it was in the trunk of his car. Once Silverman retrieved it (with Ellison still tied up - I knew he should have had Silverman untie him first), he said that the hand couldn't end up with the wrong people, so he gave Ellison a shot of something and then set his cabin on fire, presumably intending to leave Ellison to burn to death inside. As Silverman was leaving though, he encountered Sarah and apologized for not having believed her previously. Sarah decked him, said "apology accepted" and took off with the hand. (On a side note, Dr. Silverman was played by Bruce Davison, who recently portrayed the creator of KITT from "Knight Rider". Dude, you developed this super-intelligent car and yet you didn't believe Sarah was telling the truth that machines could become independently intelligent and do whatever the heck that they wanted? Yeah, yeah, I know. It was just messing with my head, like when I saw James Cromwell in "The Queen" just after he'd been revealed to be a bad guy on "24". Apparently, Prince Philip was a murderous treacherous liar and bad father. I kept expecting Prince Philip to kill people. But I digress.)

Cameron went back to see the dance teacher and intervened when a thug reappeared and threatened her. By gaining her trust this way, she then told the teacher she was looking for Dimitri and that she could help him, so the teacher took her to where Dimitri was, which freaked him out because he was afraid they had been followed. Dimitri told her that he had arranged to lose the final match to the Japanese by programming the computer to make a fatal error. He had already sold the computer and needed to get it out, and if they had won, he wouldn't have been able to do that. When Cameron asked who he sold the computer to, he handed her a business card. Sure enough, Dimitri then noticed that thugs had pulled up in a car, and they didn't know what to do. His sister said that Cameron would help them, and Cameron went out the door, but she just allowed the men through as they pushed past her in the hallway and went inside to kill Dimitri and his sister. Cameron heard their screams but she did nothing to intervene, presumably because she had already gotten the information she needed about where the computer went. She has mentioned on several occasions with regard to herself and other terminators that they set out to complete their mission and nothing else. Her mission had not been to save Dimiti and his sister, only to get the information, so she had allowed them to be killed. Cameron later gave the business card she had obtained from Dimiti to Sarah, so presumably, we'll find out more in the next episode.

Conversely, we saw that as Sarah was leaving the cabin, the windows blew out, and she heard Ellison's cries for help. We later discovered that she had gone back to rescue him. Her mission had been to retrieve the hand, and Ellison was really collateral, but her humanity could not let him die in that fire.

When Sarah returned to the house, she told John she knew he was mad at her for giving him up. She explained to him that right after she had signed the document, she knew it was a mistake, and she was in the middle of breaking out of the mental hospital when he had come to rescue her.

In a bit of fitting irony, Ellison then committed Silverman into the very mental hospital where he was formerly a doctor, and he was now the one ranting about the machines and the apocalypse. We then saw Ellison at a prayer meeting - was he covering for Sarah or did he just believe now in Judgement Day?

At the very end, Derek surreptitiously watched Cameron as she performed a ballet piece beautifully - and he cried and was appalled that she could duplicate the moves and feelings so well. There have been a lot of hints that Cameron is becoming more than just a machine, and that her helping John and Sarah is giving her the ability to learn a lot. That, coupled with her secretly keeping a piece of the terminator, sets up something going horribly wrong. I guess we'll find out next week in the two-hour season finale.

I hadn't realized it, but apparently, the actor who plays John Connor was also on "Heroes", as Claire's friend from high school who was filming her exploits of being able to heal herself no matter what.

It's been a really long time since I've seen any of the Terminator movies, so when Silverman was recounting the terminator fight he had witnessed, I hadn't really remembered him being there. I had to know, so we put a DVD of "T2" in and watched that whole sequence, and yep, there he was, standing against the wall during the whole thing. I think I had been too busy focussing on the main story to remember him having been there. What a great movie. We got as far as them getting to the parking garage and Sarah about to commandeer a car. We had to stop at that point, since it was already late, and I was getting so embroiled in the film again that I could have just watched the whole rest of the film right then and there.


"Big Brother" - Tuesday episode

Jen was extremely upset about having been nominated, so she tried to make a deal to be in an alliance with Amanda and that she would do whatever Amanda wanted her to. Meanwhile, Ryan assured Allison of his loyalty, that he wasn't going to lay down just to let Jen stay in the game.

We were then told that Neil had had to leave the house due to personal matters. There was no mention of what the reason was, and there has still been no real info released, but this story based on a myspace message posted by Neil has a little bit of information. It was also revealed that last week's evicted pair, Jacob and Sharon, had been at a sequester house (first I'd heard of that), so Joshuah could pick either of them to come back and be his partner. Joshuah knew how hated Jacob was so he picked Sharon. I was sad that Neil had to leave. I expect it had to be something fairly serious, so I hope all is well with him and his family. Neal and Joshuah were my favorite couple in the house. After Sharon came back into the house, Joshuah filled her in on Jen and Ryan, and she was furious that they had lied about their relationship.

Amanda flirted a lot and wanted a lot of attention, and she ended up being very friendly with Parker, which made Alex mad, because, as we later found out, he liked Amanda and was jealous of Parker. Amanda's really high-pitched voice really irritated me. I've never understood why that is supposed to be appealing.

Jen and Ryan were all over each other since they no longer had to keep their secret. If they wanted people to even consider keeping both of them in the house, they should have downplayed the relationship, not flaunted it. They went even further by having a quicky sex session in the bathroom, the only place without cameras, but they were discovered by Parker, who was going to use the bathroom and heard them through the door. Ummm, so there's only one bathroom in the entire downstairs area?

Chelsia knew about Allison's and Sheila's story that they were a lesbian couple with a son, so she told James, who didn't reveal all the details to Alex but just said he thought there was another secret couple in the house and that Alex should keep an eye out, so Alex was suspicious of Amanda and Parker, but when he confronted Amanda, she was angry and indignant and told Parker, and based on what Alex told her, she thought James had specifically pointed the two of them out, so Parker and Amanda were mad at James. Added into that mix was Chelsia being mad at Amanda for bad-mouthing James and Alex clarifying that James hadn't mentioned them by name but simply said to keep an eye out. I don't recall there being quite that much drama involving so many of the houseguests in the time that I've been watching.

For the veto competition, the HoH couple and the two nominated couples participated, and the other couple chosen to participate were Natalie and Matt, with Joshuah chosen as host. The challenge involved one member of the couple being strapped onto a wheel and having to keep a button depressed and the other member spinning the wheel, with the winner being whoever got to 300 revolutions first or whoever stayed on the longest without letting go of the button. Allison's hand accidentally dropped off the button, so she and Ryan were out first. Amanda and Alex were out next because she accidentally let go of the button, but she revealed in her diary entry later that she had done it on purpose. She reasoned that they were already targets because they were HoH, and she didn't want them to become bigger targets by winning the power of veto. In the end, Matt and Natalie were the winners of the competition by getting to 300. Matt later promised Parker that he would take him off, but ultimately, Matt and Natalie decided to not use the veto and let the nominations stand.


"Big Brother" - Wednesday episode

Further to Amanda's need to be the center of attention, she also gossiped a lot, about everyone and everything. I'm not even sure she necessarily realized what she was doing - she just needed to be talking all the time. She made some comment about Chelsia that made her mad at Amanda, and after Chelsia called her on it, Joshuah really went after her, screaming at her with obscenities and such. When someone made the comment that she should be given a noose (a common phrase to use, implying that one is going to hang oneself on his or her own words), Joshuah followed it up with "just like her father", making a reference to Amanda's earlier disclosure that her father had committed suicide by hanging himself. That outraged Amanda and brought her to tears, and it quieted the rest of the house. Joshuah's expletive-laden screaming at her was one thing, but that kind of comment was seriously uncalled for. I had liked Joshuah before, but his making that comment really affected my opinion of him.

Jen was trying to save herself from being evicted, so she told Sheila that Ryan was racist and that he didn't like the fact that she had previously dated a black man. Sheila eventually told Ryan what she said, and Ryan was really mad because it wasn't just about the game - it was about their relationship. Jen was then mad at Sheila for telling Ryan, and she denied having called Ryan a racist, even though it was caught on camera. I couldn't tell if Jen was actively lying or if she really didn't realize/remember that she had said that.

When it came time for the voting, it wasn't revealed what the individual votes were, which I thought was odd, but by a vote of 3 to 1, Jen and Parker were evicted. One thing that made me happy about that was that Matt wasn't going to have to say Parker's name anymore. His really strong Boston accent bothered me, and whenever he would say Parker's name, my initial reaction was to wonder who he was talking about, and it would take a second for my brain to filter that he was referring to Parker. So Jen and Parker were the second couple evicted, but because they had won the earlier challenge, they each got $5,000.

Another odd thing about the voting is that I think it was said that both members of a couple had to agree on who to evict, and if they couldn't agree, then they ran the risk of being evicted themselves. Since they've never had couples before, it was never an issue previously, and I guess they had to have some incentive for each couple to have to make a decision. I guess we'll see in the future what the consequences might be if a couple can't agree on who to evict.

The new HoH challenge was one where they had to guess how the majority of the house would answer certain questions, and whatever the majority picked would actually happen. So they had to pick between no hot water and no hot food, and they picked no hot water. That made no sense to me. You can have lots of decent food that's not hot, and it's only for a week, but to go without hot water for a week would be a serious issue for me. They also had to pick between there being no cups in the house or no utensils, and they picked no cups. That made no sense either. You can improvise for utensils, and there are lots of things you don't even need utensils for, especially if they had picked "no hot food", but it's harder to improvise when there are no cups. There was something about the women being in bikinis for 24 hours, and then they had to choose between a margarita party and something else, and they chose the margarita party, which is going to be really interesting considering they have no cups. Maybe they'll use spoons since they still have those? There was something else about women cooking dinner, and another where they chose to have no washing machine for a week, but at least they'd still be able to hand-wash, so that wouldn't be so bad. The winners of the HoH competition ended up being Chelsia and James, which really disturbed Amanda and Alex because of the drama earlier.


"Big Brother" - Sunday episode

James and Chelsia promised Matt and Natalie that they would not be nominated, which made Matt and Natalie happy. Instead, James decided to target Alex and Amanda, and he made an agreement with Ryan and Adam to get Alex and Amanda out next.

The houseguests were shown trying to improvise cups by using bowls for everything instead. We noticed that some of the footage they showed during this episode must have been from before because there were still cups lying around the house whereas at the end of the previous episode, when they went back in the house after the HoH competition, all the cups had been removed. We never saw anything having to do with the women in bikinis, but maybe that'll be shown later, in addition to the margarita party and the other effects of the HoH competition.

Allison and Sheila had previously told Joshuah their lie about being a couple, and Joshuah relayed their "secret" to Sharon. It turned out that Allison wanted to tell Joshuah and Chelsia the truth about her and Sheila, though she was afraid of how Joshuah would take their lie about their sexuality. They were pretty much doing what Jen and Ryan did when they revealed their relationship because they thought Allison was going to spill. In this case, Allison was afraid someone was going to use their lesbian story against them, so they decided to come clean first.

After the big blow-up from the previous episode, Amanda forgave Joshuah for his reference to Amanda's father, and she offered him an alliance. He said he didn't know if he could trust her, and she said he could, but he didn't technically accept her offer, though I think she thought he did.

Natalie revealed that she was falling for Matt. (Does it irritate him or anyone else that she refers to him as "Matty"?). While Matt said he could be attracted to her, he rebuffed her repeated advances because he didn't want to be distracted from the game.

The food challenge involved the six couples being divided into two teams, and half of the team would be holding individual nets while the other team members would be throwing fish into the opposing team's nets. How weird that this was almost exactly like last week's immunity challenge on "Survivor", except there were three individual nets rather than one group net and they were throwing fish rather than coconuts. The yellow team won, so that meant that the green team was on slop for the week. However, even though Chelsia and James were on the green team, they still retained full food privileges because they were HoH.

After the challenge, Amanda claimed that people still didn't like her and were picking on her because at one point, the opposing team members were all throwing fish into her net to get her to drop it. Umm, no, honey, the world does not in fact revolve around you. It was complete strategy. Your own team had already targeted and succeeded in bringing down Ryan on the other team, and your teammate James was targeted before you.

Up in the HoH bedroom, there was some tension and flirting between James and Chelsia. (I want to know what James' tattoos say. They must be really bad because they were all blurred out.) Chelsia and James engaged in their own make-out session in bed.

Allison and Sheila decided to tell Chelsia the truth about their lesbian lie, and then Chelsia had them tell James. Allison then later told Joshuah, and I loved Joshuah's line that with Allison and Sheila supposedly not lesbians and Joshuah was now sharing a bed with a woman, he wasn't even sure if he was gay anymore.

The nominated couples came as a surprise, moreso to some than others. Alex and Amanda were nominated, but Matt and Natalie were also nominated (even though James had said they wouldn't be), with James explaining that nominating them was the only way to guarantee that they would participate in the PoV competition and that the real targets were Alex and Amanda.


"Law and Order: CI" - A dentist who had an expensive private practice as well as a low-income clinic was found dead. The detectives tracked down two kids who had one of his credit cards, and they told the detectives that they saw a woman leave his office. It turned out that the woman's son had died after a visit with the dentist. At first, he only seemed drunk, but then it got worse. The dead boy's friend revealed that several of them had broken into the dentist's office, and they were drinking mouthwash to get high. However, it turned out that the dentist had contaminated mouthwash which had traces of a chemical found in anti-freeze in it, and with the large quantities that kids were drinking, the cumulative effect was killing them. The detectives discovered that the head of the company that made the mouthwash had a connection at the FDA so that any problems were covered up, but after the death of someone who was going to expose that connection, it turned out that one of the company executives who had felt ignored and devalued had purposely triggered an allergy attack from the man and then given him a fake inhaler. Yeah, OK, so I don't think I got all the details of the story. Truthfully, I was bored with the episode, so I didn't care that much.


"Law and Order" - An orthopedic surgeon who was attending a doctor's convention was found dead in his room. The detectives tracked down a woman who was advertising for some company, and it turned out that she and a partner had a scheme to scam married men out of money. She would seduce them and then they'd ask for hush money to cover up the affair, although in this case, the man had ultimately turned her down before he was killed. It turned out that the wrong person was killed. The dead man was staying in a room registered to another doctor who didn't end up going to the convention. The other doctor had made the acquaintance of a warden, who had asked him for help. The warden had been unable to find any local doctors willing to attend when death sentences by lethal injection were being carried out, so the warden had flown in this doctor from out of town to be the attending physician, but in one case, something went horribly wrong, and a man who had killed two people had instead been turned into a vegetable and used as a rallying cry/sympathy case by those opposing capital punishment. The person who killed the doctor turned out to be a relative of the people who the man had murdered. The relative had attended the execution, hoping for closure, but instead, he saw the person who had murdered his loved ones turned into a martyr. The doctor had refused to testify against him, but the DA's office decided to prosecute him for murder in two cases where the death sentences were carried out before all the appeals had been exhausted. Their real intention was to out him as a doctor who assisted in executions, a fact he had been trying to keep quiet. In the end, he was forced to testify, but because the man who killed the wrong doctor felt bad about what he'd done, he ended up pleading out. Yeah, I wasn't all that interested in this episode either, even though some of the premise was interesting.

I'm still hovering on stopping watching the shows. The preview for this week's "Law and Order" looked good, so we'll see how that turns out. It's been announced that Jesse L. Martin will be leaving the show, partly because he will be playing Marvin Gaye in the biographical film. I like the new guy ok, but he's still seriously new, so having yet another new guy, coupled with the new ADA and Jack not being Jack anymore, I'm not sure I can make it through another cast change.


80th Academy Awards

There have been years when I've eagerly watched the Oscars, but that hasn't happened in a while. My interest usually depends on how many of the majorly-nominated films I've seen. This year, the only movie I'd seen that was nominated in any major category was "Ratatouille", nominated for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Screenplay.

This year, I watched the show on DVR, starting with half an hour before the actual show started. I fastforwarded through the songs and the production numbers and the special tributes and most of the acceptance speeches. I only heard one or two of those. I also fastforwarded through most of the announcements of nominees and pretty much just stopped to hear the name of the winner. I was happy that "Ratatouille" won for Best Animated Feature and that "Juno" won for Best Original Screenplay. I listened to most of Jon Stewart's stuff, and I thought he was pretty good, and though I still would prefer that they leave all the political stuff out of it, he actually made comments about both sides. I stopped at various points to look at a few of the dresses that the women were wearing.

Jennifer Garner looked great in a beautiful dress and necklace, but Jennifer, get your hair out of your face. It doesn't look natural, it just looks messy. There were a few other women who had a similar kind of hairstyle as well.

Kathryn Heigel had on a great dress as well, slightly similar to Ann Hathaway's, but I liked Kathryn's better.

Jessica Alba wore a dress in a beautiful maroon color, but then she had some weird feathery stuff along the bodice line. I'm not a fan, but apparently others are, because other women had similar feathery stuff.

Amy Adams did the "hair draped over one shoulder" thing that a few of the other women were doing as well.

Helen Mirren had on a gorgeous dress, red in the body with sparkly sheer mid-sleeves. She looked beautiful.

John Travolta - What was up with his hair making him look like a vampire?


The Barbara Walters Special

After the Oscars, I watched the Barbara Walters special for the first time in years. I had noticed that Harrison Ford would be on, so I wanted to see that, but I actually enjoyed the entire show.

I don't know much about Miley Cyrus and didn't even know she was Billy Ray Cyrus' daughter for the longest time. I have of course heard of Hannah Montana and that whole madhouse, but I didn't know Miley had dark hair and wore a wig to play Hannah or that her concerts were six of one and half-dozen of the other. It was a really interesting interview. One of the questions Barbara asked her was with reference to other girls who had stardom at an early age (like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan) and the trouble they've gotten into and how was she going to avoid that. Miley's answer was that her faith and her family were going to keep her from getting into that kind of trouble. Even though she has perqs that most 15-year-olds obviously don't have (like having your own wing of the mansion), it seemed from what she said that she still had to deal with consequences when she disobeyed her parents, and they were actually still parents to her. She seemed like a very grounded kid, and it's nice to see that not all parents of celebrities are abdicating their responsibilities.

I've heard interviews with Vanessa Williams before, so it was just fun watching her again. She certainly has gone through so much since winning, and stepping down from, the Miss America title. I knew that she had an amicable divorce from former Laker Rick Fox, but it was funny to hear that at one point, she and Rick and her other ex-husband all shared her house for a period of a couple weeks. It was also nice to hear that they have all maintained a good relationship because of their shared children.

I didn't know much about Ellen Page other than that she was the star of "Juno" and that she was nominated in the Best Actress category at that young age (she just turned 21 about a week ago) opposite some really heavy-hitters. I had meant to see "Juno" but still haven't gotten around to it, so hopefully, I'll be able to catch it sometime in the next week or so. I also hadn't realized that she had been in "X-Men: The Last Stand", the third film in the trilogy, as the girl who could walk through walls. Hers was another very interesting interview, and she too is very mature for having just turned 21.

Harrison Ford has come across as being a bit odd in recent years, whether during various awards shows when he hasn't seemed quite all there or drunk or whatever, and then there was his bizarre recitation of Dr. Seuss' "Oh, The Places You'll Go" before last year's Superbowl. This was a very good interview, back to the Harrison that I'm familiar with. I had forgotten that part of what I love about him is that he and Ridley Scott had disagreed about Rick Deckard in "Blade Runner". While Scott insisted that Deckard was a replicant and fashioned the film that way, Harrison was adamant that Deckard was not and played him as not being a replicant. Yep, Harrison, you're right, he's not supposed to be a replicant. I'm really looking forward to seeing Indy IV.


Some good news has been released about "The Big Bang Theory". Now that the writer's strike is over, they will be coming back with new episodes, and because the show had been doing so well, they've already gotten an early pick-up for a second season. Yayyyyyy!!!!!


And speaking of the writer's strike, because it went on for so long and they didn't know when it was going to end, they had to come up with new programming, most of it reality shows since they don't require writers, and fruits of that labor are manifesting now on the schedule. Here are some of the gems you can look forward to seeing on a television channel near you: Amnesia, The Baby Borrowers, My Dad is Better Than Your Dad, Here Come the Newlyweds, and Just For Laughs.

"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles", "Big Brother" and "Law and Order"

The writers' strike just ended last week, and they'd been out for about 3 months, so I should have nothing left to watch anymore, right? Wrong. Whiskey tango foxtrot?


"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"

Sarah remembered that with all the training John got as a child, learning chess taught him everything he needed to know about winning a war, including strategy, being patient, and making sacrifices.

The terminator visited Sarah's ex, Charlie, to ask about her. Charlie said that he hadn't seen Sarah in years but didn't mention that he had seen John. It wasn't until his wife later asked him more questions that he admitted to having been visited by John.

Sarah was alarmed to find out that Andy had rebuilt his chess computer and had entered it into a contest - where computers played against other computers, and the winner got a military contract. Cameron said that Sarah should have killed Andy when she had the chance.

At school, a make-shift memorial had been set up for Jordan, and John explained to Cameron about grief and how expressing your feelings in a letter could be helpful, even if the person is dead and can't read it. Cameron's constant learnings about human emotions and behaviour reminds me of how Data was similarly used to address those issues. The principal was later interviewing students about Jordan and wanted to talk to Cameron because she was the last person to speak to her. When he asked what they talked about, he was surprised and alarmed when Cameron repeated the conversation, verbatim and in Jordan's voice.

Andy made it to the finals with his computer, and there was a tense battle with a Japanese team, but just as it looked like Andy had won, the Japanese team pulled it out to take the win. When Sarah then went to see Andy, though, she encountered someone coming out (who we later discovered was a resistance fighter, Derek) and found Andy dead and his computer gone. Sarah gave chase but Derek was caught by the authorities. Sarah later learned from Cameron that Derek had been tracking Andy and deduced that Derek killed Andy. As Derek was in custody, the FBI agent went to speak to him, but Derek gave nothing up. Neither one knew that another terminator had been sent to kill Derek, and he had arrived at the jail and arranged to get arrested. Sarah also got in to see Derek, who said that he neither killed Derek nor stole his computer - someone else did. He also revealed his identity to a shocked Sarah - he was Kyle Reese's brother and ultimately, John's uncle. Brian Austin Greene of "Beverly Hills, 90210" fame played Derek, and it was interesting to see him in this role. He actually wasn't bad. Wonder if he's going to be part of the regular cast.

Loved the line when Sarah, John and Cameron were off to rescue Kyle, and when John called "shotgun", Cameron responded with "I call 9mm." The three of them commandeered the van and took custody of Derek, but they didn't get away so easily. The terminator was still tracking Derek, and it came to a showdown between the terminator and Cameron. Cameron ultimately deactivated the terminator, "killing it", by taking out its power source, but in the process, Derek was seriously shot and wounded. They took Derek back to the house, and Sarah wanted to get a doctor from the hospital to help save Derek. When John objected, she revealed that he was John's uncle. John took off - and returned with Charlie, who was a paramedic, to help save Derek. Cameron, meanwhile, had been writing a letter in the background, presumably to express her thoughts about having killed the terminator.


"Big Brother" - Tuesday episode

In this ninth incarnation of the show, and the first time it was being aired not in summer (because of the just-ended writers' strike), there were 16 contestants, all of whom were single, and with the show starting so close to Valentine's Day, that was the theme for this show - where singles may be able to find love.

The women were called up first, and when the first group was let into the house, they went to claim their beds - only to find all the bedroom doors locked. When the second group was let in, they all wondered about the doors being locked and who else would be joining them.

It turned out that not all the houseguests would be strangers. Two people playing in the show were actually a couple, Jen and Ryan, who had been going out for about nine months and living together for seven months, but they were going to pretend not to know each other. In addition, Sharon, one of the girls, mentioned an ex-boyfriend, Jacob, that she broke up with because he cheated on her, and she talked about how difficult that was. Neither knew that the other would be in the house as well. Jacob was in the second batch of guys to go into the house, and when Sharon spotted him, she immediately reacted. A couple of the other girls noticed and she surreptiously pointed out her ex. Jacob then spotted her, and he was equally stunned.

After everyone was inside, Julie Chen, the host of the show, revealed the major twist of this game. All of the contestants would be playing as couples - sleeping in the same bed, being Head of Household (HoH) as a couple, being nominated as a couple and being evicted as a couple. In addition, they were told that their "soul mates" were in the room with them, and that was how they would be divided up.

As each couple was called off, they headed off to claim a bed. The pairings were as follows: Alex and Amanda; James and Chelsia; Natalie and Matt; Jen and Parker; Joshuah and Neil; Jacob and Sharon. Jen and Ryan were devasted to learn that they were not coupled, and Sharon and Jacob were dismayed to learn that they were. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be forced to be in the house with an ex, much less being paired with an ex in the context of that game.

The last two pairs were Ryan & Allison and Sheila & Adam. They were told that there were no bedrooms left, so they would just be sharing sleeping bags in the living room. Sheila had mentioned before that she was nervous when all the "nice" guys were being taken, and she was seriously upset at being paired with Adam, though he wasn't thrilled to be paired with her either. He also referred to her several times as "Ma", which upset her even further.

The challenge to be the "power couple" involved one person being held by a harness, and the other person was underneath and holding on as they were lifted. Whoever stayed up the longest was the winner. Sheila couldn't deal with being that close to Adam, so she dropped and they were the first couple out. They were followed by Neil & Joshuah, then Amanda & Alex and Sharon & Jacob.

Then another element was revealed. On the bed was a heart-shaped pillow. If they could pick it up with only their hands and they won, they'd get an extra $10,000. Jen managed to get the pillow, but Allison and Ryan were out because she tried to get the pillow. Chelsia also got the pillow, but she and James ended up dropping out as well. Jen & Parker and Natalie & Matt were the only ones left, so Jen asked them to drop since she still had a pillow and she promised them safety, so they dropped off, leaving Jen and Parker to win "power couple" and an extra $10,000 and have the sole right to evict one couple. Parker mentioned to the camera that he wanted to target Ryan because he thought Ryan was strong, just as Jen was mentioning that Ryan was 100% safe.


"Big Brother" - Wednesday episode

Adam works as a public relations person for an autistic children's society, but he referred to them as retards, which Sheila found appalling. For no reason that I could figure out, Jacob started teling Ryan and Jen that Parker was a snake and that no one trusted him. When Jen went to tell Parker, Parker called a house meeting, even though it was in the middle of the night. Upon questioning, Jacob refused to give up the name of the person he heard saying that, pretty much because he made it up. I can't imagine why he did that. He said he wanted to shake up the game, but why would you start bad-mouthing one member of the couple who had the absolute power to kick you off, especially when you weren't even on their radar, and Adam and Sheila already had a target on them? What an idiotic move.

Sharon tried to cover for Jacob and told Parker that it was Ryan who said it, so when Parker told Jen about this, she had no choice but to tell Parker about her and Ryan. After Ryan was told, he then felt the need to tell Allison.

Parker and Jen had to decide which couple to kick out, and while Sheila was painting a humongous target on herself and Adam by complaining constantly about Adam, Jen and Parker decided they couldn't let Jacob's action go, and they evicted Jacob and Sharon, even though Jen was extremely upset about evicting Sharon. This had nothing to do with the game, but Adam's eyes bugging out is just creepy to me. I don't blame Sheila for being upset at being paired with him, but if she wants to stay in the game, she really needs to shut up. She and Adam did realize that they would have been evicted if not for Jacob's actions and commented on their good fortune.

For the first Head of Household competition, a couple from a previous show came back to host - Eric and Jessica, who confirmed that they were still together. The couples played a version of the Newlywed Game, where they had to guess how their partner would answer particular questions, and the couple with the most points would be HoH, which Amanda and Alex end up winning.

Apparently, an autism group is demanding an apology from CBS for Adam's comments. Ummm, OK, so why would CBS need to apologize? They didn't say anything, and given everything Sheila said in response to Adam, it wasn't like Adam's comment went unchallenged. If they want something done, they might want to find out who Adam works for and have them fire his ass.


"Big Brother" - Sunday episode

When the houseguests went back inside after the competition, they saw that the memory wall had been put up, and it was commented that Jen's picture was first, but she made the huge mistake of saying it was "because I'm going to win". Everyone was taken aback by her comment, and Parker was one of several people who talked to her about her comment, eliciting apologies all around from Jen. Allison was still very angry about Jen and Ryan, partly because she had been interested in Ryan, and now she knew there was no chance of anything happening. In her rants, Allison threatened to reveal the secret if things didn't go her way, and she continued to complain that they were trying to dictate to her how to play. Ummm, ok, they just didn't want you to tell this one thing. The rest of the game is up to you. I really don't see why she was going on as much as she was.

Amanda revealed a different side of herself when she said that her father committed suicide, and that she survived that, so she can survive anything, and that was why she always tried to have a happy disposition. Alex's father had died as well, in the attacks on September 11.

There was also this segment involving the revelation to the houseguests that Adam was "uncut". What the hell? I can't imagine why he would even have told anyone that.

Jen and Ryan and Parker were concerned that Allison was going to spill the beans, so they decided to head her off at the pass by telling Alex and Matt. They all then told Natalie and Amanda, and then Sheila found out and had a conniption fit (all the while agreeing with Allison that Allison was not going to tell the secret), and then Allison told Joshuah and Neil, after which there was a big house meeting to tell everyone and to have everyone promise nothing else was going on. Allison and Sheila were later talking and came up with a plan to tell people that they were a secret lesbian couple, and they relayed this info to Joshua, who then immediately told Neil. I have no idea what the point of this was or what they thought it was going to get them.

Sheila continued to bad-mouth Adam constantly, and everyone was completely tired of hearing about it. But as much as Alex was annoyed with Sheila, when it came time for the nomination, he and Amanda put up Ryan & Allison and Jen & Parker for eviction.


"Law and Order: CI"

This was a ripped-from-the-headlines story that partly tracked the events of the lacross team members who were accused of rape. Several members of a football team were accused of raping a stripper at a party, and the second stripper (Asian) was going to testify to witnessing the assault, but she was found dead the morning she was supposed to testify.

The detectives followed a trail of a credit card to a Wall St. broker whose stepson had visited the strip club to talk to the two strippers since he was maintaining that no assault occurred. The detectives were further stone-walled when the ADA from another district refused to help them with their murder investigation since he was too busy in his determined obsession with prosecuting the team members. His wife was the press liaison, and they revealed that the Asian stripper had been raped as well but she wouldn't agree to charge them, only to be a witness.

One of the team members accused of rape was a great player from a poor family, and unlike most of the others, his family couldn't afford an expensive lawyer. He told the detectives that he was never interviewed or had his statement taken, and the detectives further discovered from the medical examiner's autopsy report that the Asian stripper was never raped and in fact was still a virgin. They discovered that she had been stripping to save money for a wedding, and notwithstanding her profession, she (and her fiance, who knew about her job) were very religious and had decided to wait until after marriage to have sex. She was not attacked by the team members, but she apparently saw the attack on the other stripper.

The detectives discovered that the other stripper was going to be suing the team members for a big settlement, but that was derailed when a rape kit showed no DNA match with any of the team members. She then finally revealed that she had made the whole thing up. She had been cheating on her current boyfriend with her ex, but when she tried to break it off with her ex, he was the one who raped her. Not wanting her jealous boyfriend to find out, she decided to accuse the team members of rape and justified it by saying that they were insulting and rude and mean to her when they were working the party. Ummm, ok, yeah, they said seriously horrible things to her, but that justifies being accused of something as terrible as rape? The Asian stripper was initially going to go along with the lie, but her conscience got the better of her, and the night before she was scheduled to go to court, she told her friend that she wasn't going to be testifying after all. The friend called the ADA to tell him, and suspicion then fell on his ambitious wife, who was hoping to get a lot of good political publicity from the rape convictions. It turned out that the wife had been pressuring the poor family to accept a deal and scaring them with stories that because they had no money for a lawyer, their son would take the brunt of the punishment while the others got away with it. Even after the wife knew that the Asian stripper wasn't going to testify, she still went to the player's mother to exert some more pressure, threatening her son with jail, and the mother went to see the Asian stripper to talk her out of testifying, and she inadvertently ended up killing her before she had a chance to tell her she wasn't going to be testifying after all.

Cynthia Watros (who some people might know as Libby from "Lost") and Peri Gilpin (probably most known for playing Roz on "Frasier") were both very good as the ADA's wife and the poor family's mother, respectively.


"Law and Order"

The show started with an immigration rally in Central Park which was interrupted by a shooting. The detectives later found a woman who was shot and killed, and when they finally tracked down her celphone, they found that she had recorded part of the rally and her own attack, and amid outcry that the police fired into the crowd at the rally, ballistics ended up showing that she was shot by the same type of gun that police used. A policeman who had been suspended for being caught on tape beating a random reporter identified another person on the tape as an auxiliary cop, but when the case was brought before the grand jury, the ADA blew the hearing, basically discrediting his own major witness, who had a shady history of his own. McCoy ended up firing the ADA. The ballistics report ended up confirming that the shot that killed the victim came from the auxiliary cop's gun. The auxiliary cop then said that he had been ordered to shoot.

On the stand, the auxiliary cop said that he and others like him went on the same patrols as regular cops, but they were not allowed to have guns nor did they get any respect, and he was very angry about it. Umm, ok, well, you're NOT a real cop. If you were a real cop, you would have gone through the police academy and passed their tests. But you didn't. So if you don't like the way you're being treated, either BECOME a real copy or quit - no one is forcing you to be an auxiliary cop.

The fired ADA, who apparently didn't prosecute cops, testified that McCoy was against cops, and he accused McCoy of abusing the system to further his own personal agenda, but McCoy took the stand and basically refuted everything he said, which eventually led to the auxiliary cop being found guilty.


"24"

Fox has announced that because of the writers' strike, the next season of "24" won't be aired until January 2009. *sigh* I want to know what's up with Tony. I have to wait a whole 'nother year. They'll be done shooting in May or June, and yet, I'll still have to wait another seven months after that.

"Celebrity Apprentice", "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles", "Survivor", "Law and Order" and "Knight Rider"

"Celebrity Apprentice" - last week

Tito was away at a fight, so the guys were down one person. Carol was appointed project manager of Empresario by Donald Trump, and Piers was chosen as the project manager for Hydra. The task was to develop a program for Crocs in which people could trade old shoes for new shoes, and the old shoes would be recycled and given to people in need of shoes.

Trace came up with the slogan of "Wear them, share them," which Piers immediately loved, so that became Hydra's catch phrase. Piers thought he saw the women next door spying on them, so he decided to do the same thing, and he and Vinnie staged an argument so that Vinnie could go next door as a Trojan horse and spy on them. And sure enough, when they saw Vinnie sitting outside both conference rooms and he told them Piers kicked him out, they decided to take him in. It was amazing to me that they didn't even question that it might have been a setup, that they were duped so easily. They said later that they felt sorry for him, but it sure looked like they didn't have confidence in their own abilities by agreeing to just take him in.

Empresario came up with "Share the love" as their slogan to use, and while Vinnie and Marilu were on their way to the construction site to design their shoe container, he managed to toss a paper to Hydra with his notes on what Empresario was going to do. Stephen was antsy about having the paper, so instead of picking it up himself, he went into their conference room and got Lennox to go outside and pick it up. To me, that seemed hypocritical. It he really wanted nothing to do with Vinnie's note, he would have either just said nothing about it and kicked it to the side or picked it up and just thrown it away, and no one else on Hydra would have known about it. But by getting Lennox to pick up the note, he could benefit from whatever he thought might be on the note, but he could technically keep his hands clean since he wasn't the one who actually picked up the note. He was basically getting someone else to do his dirty work.

On the car ride over to the construction site, Vinnie got an attack of conscience and confessed to Marilu that he was supposed to be a spy, but now, he was really flipping to be on the women's side. He got Marilu to agree to keep his original intentions quiet. But Vinnie didn't know that Piers had already revealed to Nely that he was aware of their slogan by constantly telling her to "share the love", and Nely realized that Vinnie had betrayed them and then told the rest of the women that Vinnie had been telling Hydra everything they were doing. Omarosa called Marilu and then summarily dismissed Vinnie.

Vinnie then went back to Hydra and had it out with Piers for both "making him" be a spy and then for outing him to the women. I think Vinnie was a total hyprocrite when he said that Piers "made him" spy on the women. Ummm, no, he asked you to, and you were all for it. You went along with the whole charade. You could have said no. You could have gone and then not given any information back to the guys. You made the decision to do what you did, but it's much more convenient to place the blame on Piers instead. Besides, as it was, it was really just a harmless joke. It wasn't like Hydra used the info they got about Empresario to do anything different with their own plan. They already had it worked out. They really just ended up unnerving the women and distracting them by showing they knew their plan. But in the end, it wasn't enough of a distraction because the women's idea to build a giant Croc as a shoe depository with model Carol next to it won the challenge. But Vinnie was still upset, enough that he decided to resign. And then he tried to retract his resignation. And then tendered it again, so Trump accepted his resignation.


"Celebrity Apprentice" - this past week

Fallout from the last challenge continued, and Stephen Baldwin decided to talk to Donald Trump to tell him that he couldn't work with Piers anymore and wanted to quit. What's with the whole quitting thing? But Trump decided to put him on Empresario instead. When Baldwin went back and told Hydra that he would rather be on the women's team even if all they wanted him to do was have him get coffee, Piers and Lennox were disgusted by his declaration. And then it got worse. The women weren't all that happy to have him, but on top of that, Stephen told them he was unavailable for most of the next day because of a prior commitment. Omarasa was particularly angry and told Trump that they didn't want him. I expect they were still stinging from the fiasco with Vinnie. But Trump told them they had to have Stephen.

This time around, the contesants meet Vera Wang and a representative from Serta mattress, for whom Vera Wang is designing a mattress, and their task is to create a living window for this new product. Omarosa was the project manager for Empresario, and Lennox was the project manager for Hydra. Empresario immediately went with a bridal theme which included a little scene with a bride and groom (since Stephen was expected to return later in the evening). Hydra felt that they were at a disadvantage since they knew nothing about Vera Wang, but after their meeting with her, Trace pinpointed the idea of romance and came up with a Cleopatra theme. I find it seriously amusing that Trace is generally fairly quiet, but he then just comes up with these amazing ideas - this is the second week in a row that he's done that.

There was some dissension in Hydra since Lennox as project manager ran everything by a vote, not making any decisions of his own at all, which drove Piers crazy, but even though it also annoyed Trace, and the rest of the group, it mostly seemed good natured overall.

Empresario wasn't necessarily having a better time, and there was some drama with Marilu as she had some trouble communicating with the window construction guy. Omarosa and Nely commiserated together. Stephen finally arrived at 6pm, and he was not so much interested in getting coffee for the women. Instead, he tried to re-work the entire concept that late in the game, which the women didn't particularly appreciate.

When it was time to present their window, Empresario had a whole wedding party scene, with the bridesmaids coming in and throwing rose petals, and then Stephen as the groom carried Carol as the bride in over the threshhold. Vera Wang was really loving the scene.

When it came to Hydra's turn, they had Cleopatra's lair with Cleopatra and Marc Antony being fed fruit by a servant, but there were modern touches as well, like a plasma television and a celphone and a laptop. Vera was ecstatic about the new scene and positioning of her product.

In the end, as much as Vera loved both windows, it appeared that the deciding vote came from the Serta executive, and Hydra won. For me, as much as the bridal theme was beautiful, I would think it would mostly attract just women but the Cleopatra theme would appeal to both men and women.

In the boardroom, Omarosa reverted to form and tried to deflect blame everywhere else. When she was told that the bridal theme was old and uncreative, she admitted to coming up with the idea (sort of - what she actually said was that she "signed off" on the bridal idea rather than outright admitting that it was her idea in the first place) but that she hadn't gotten enough guidance from Nely or help from Marilu, who was too scattered. When it came time for her to decide who to bring back into the boardroom with her, she mentiond Stephen because he wasn't there for most of the day, but then Trump compared her to Gene Simmons and said that she shouldn't bring someone who didn't deserve to be there and who he can't fire because they weren't responsible for the loss. Trump also basically gave her a huge hint by saying that you can't help but remember history when it came to making that decision, that past performance had to be in play. Trump had made it clear that Nely would have been fired if Simmons hadn't been obstinate, so Omarosa did what Simmons wouldn't - she played Trump's game and effectively threw Nely to the lions by bringing her back with Marilu, figuring that Nely was a bigger target than she was. Nely protested her inclusion and rankled at Trump's constant mentions of her prior work, but Trump still ended up firing her.


"Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"

The show started with Sarah telling the story of Golem, a monster who was created and then turned on his creator, making an obvious comparison to the terminator. The terminator who was after John arrived at the office of a plastic surgeon, and true to form, he killed the doctor as soon as he'd gotten what he wanted. He then had the same face as another of the doctor's patients, and since he was caught on tape leaving the doctor's office, the police ended up picking up the guy himself for questioning. But it wasn't until after he was cleared that the terminator arrived at his house and killed him, taking over his life, so when the FBI agent showed up to tell him he was clear, the FBI agent was unaware he was actuall talking to the terminator.

Meanwhile, John was still upset about the girl at the school who jumped, that he wasn't able to do anything to help her or stop her. But Cameron had other concerns - she figured out that the terminator who was after John was in their time and still after John, and she relayed this information to Sarah and John. John decided that he wanted to do something this time, not just keep running, and they found out about a shipment of the alloy that the terminator endo skeleton is made from, so they went to where the shipment was to lie in wait for him. However, they ended up finding another terminator who arranged for men to steal the shipment of the alloy. John ended up accidentally getting trapped in the truck, and while Sarah and Cameron initially tracked the truck via John's celphone, they eventually lost him when the phone broke. They ended up questioning one of the accomplices to figure out where the shipment was going. Cameron did something to terrorize the initially-reluctant guy into helping - what the heck did she do to him? He looked terrified of her. Once they get close to where they needed to go, they left him in a minefield. They discovered that the second terminator was stock piling the alloy for use after Judgement Day, and Cameron said that was the very facility where she was built. They all managed to get John out, and the three of them left with the truckful of the alloy and traped the second terminator in the military bunker which eventually became the terminator manufacturing plant. Cameron plunged the truckful of alloy down a cliff - but wasn't she destroying the material that she was eventually made from? How did she know that they wouldn't have then run out of the alloy before they got around to making her?


"Lost"

I watched the first three seasons of the show, and as much as I liked the first season, I was really not happy with the second season, and while the third season was better than the second, there were still things that infuriated me, so I was done with them. I wasn't planning on watching the season premiere this year, but the husband was watching it while I was in the other room, so I heard bits and pieces of it. I liked the scene where they had to tell Claire about Charlie, but other than that, I'm not sorry I didn't really watch it. I didn't see any of the second episode, and the husband said that was a good thing because I would have hated it. I really just want all of them to get eaten by the "Cloverfield" monster.


"Survivor"

When I first heard that it was going to be fans vs. favorites, I thought that would be a lot of fun. And then I heard who the returning people would be. And the list included John, the person I've hated the most in all of "Survivor", who I can't even stand to see, hear about, anything really, unless he's getting his ass kicked by Danny Bonaduce. And as much as I wanted to watch the show, I had a real dilemma because I didn't want to see him. I thought about waiting until he was kicked off, and then I'd start watching. And I'm wondering - he's not a fan, and he's definitely not a favorite - what the heck is he doing on the show?

A couple friends who saw the first episode and knew how I felt about John said that I really needed to watch the show. And the husband happened to spill that John was the one kicked off, so I decided to deal with watching him in one show. When they introduced the favorites, it was nice to see some familiar faces. But Ozzy cut off his nice hair!

It was fun that the fans didn't know they'd be competing against the faves, but I wonder what they thought when they were taking the boat trip over and there were only 10 of them. They're all fans of the show so they would have known that wasn't enough people. I don't remember anything about Tracy, but I loved her line that she wanted just "one moment to kick John". It was kind of funny to watch the torrential downpour during the whole opening. I don't remember that happening before.

Jeff announced that there were two individual immunity idols on the island that could only be used on the owner's first trip to tribal council. The idols were draped over the end of two canoes, but people were looking everywhere on the island for them. John finally got there, and he figured it out, but he picked up the idol from the wrong team. Yau Man saw what he did, and they both went for the other idol, and how funny was it that Yau Man basically slammed John into the boat and got the idol? The little old Chinese man kicked John's ass. Do we even know that John wouldn't have been allowed to keep the other idol, that it was one idol designated for each tribe? John had dropped the other idol, so it was just lying on the ground. As Kathy walked by, Yau Man told her to pick it up, so she ended up with the other one.

But then Kathy is amazed that she's met and will be on the same tribe as a gay man and wonders what it will be like since she's never known one before. Ummm, ok, she was treating him like an alien species. It's not that big a deal. It wasn't like she was going to notice any big differences, any more so in that everyone has their own quirks.

The faves showed that experience helped as they were immediately able to work together to build a shelter and get food. Parvati, the notorious flirt, connected with James, and Amanda bonded with Ozzy.

On the fans' beach, though, their shelter wasn't working so well, and they were beaten up all night by the storm.

Eliza saw the foursome/two couples that had formed, so she made an alliance with Yau Man, Jonathan and Ami. They decided to target Parvati, wisely realizing how much of a threat she was with her social skills and since she was basically wrapping James around her little finger already. Both sides tried to court John, even though they didn't really trust him, and he really ended up playing both sides. They showed that experience helped even more as the faves started a fire with Yau Man's glasses.

When they showed the tree mail, my first thought was - are they all going to practice with the message puzzle wheel, because that's probably going to be important. During the challenge, the faves had a wipeout with their vehicle and Eliza got hurt. I hope she got that looked at. I was laughing as they were all digging in the sand for the planks, and one of the fans was flinging sand onto the faves as they were digging. Even with all the experience and food and rest that the faves had, the fans ended up winning.

John said that he had a girlfriend who was seven months pregnant and he missed her and was concerned about the baby and said that he wanted to be voted off. OK, why would you leave her? If I was seven months pregnant, I wouldn't want the father of my baby to disappear and be basically unreachable for a long period of time. Even with John being voted off first, it's not like he could return home immediately. He wouldn't be able to come back until they were all done or until the first episode had aired, whichever happened first. I loved Yau Man's speech when he made his vote to offer to be a child consultant for John. John was voted out unanimously and hugged a seemingly-reluctant Jeff on the way out, but he was still delusional in his last speech as he talked about how everyone liked him and he had everyone eating out of his hand. Yeah, whatever, at least I don't have to see him again until the reunion episode. Got help his baby with a father like that.

And in the preview for next week's episode, it looks lik Ozzy and Amanda get hot and heavy. Not so much a good idea for the game, but maybe the game becomes not as important if they've made some kind of real connection. We'll see.


"Big Brother"

During "Survivor", there was a preview for the next installment of "Big Brother", and the twist is that apparently, they get paired up and have to live/sleep with another total stranger, and voting might be by the pair as well. Hmmm, wonder how that pans out. It's going to be a very busy schedule, though, "Big Brother" usually only runs during the summer, where three nights a week isn't an issue because not much new content is on anyway. This installment is being aired now because of the writers' strike, but with the strike now settled and writers on their way back to work, we'll see how the show fits into the schedule when the new episodes of regular shows start being available again.


"Law and Order: CI" - The story started out with a homeless guy who was basically extorting money out of people either by in-your-face confrontation or even the threat of violence. He played into the story because Bobby bought the brick he was using, and Bobby ended up using the brick later. They then showed a prison where a guy was tied down in solitary confinement, and he eventually died from that treatment. Then Bobby's homeless brother Frank made a return appearance, and he had come to ask for Bobby's help with his son Donny, though Bobby never knew he had a nephew. The nephew was busted for possession, but Frank said the drugs weren't his, so Bobby agreed to look into it and has Bobby transferred to his precinct temporariy. During Bobby's discussion with Donny, Donny said that the prison he was in was purposely killing people, and it turned out that it was the same jail shown earlier. When Donny was sent back to that jail, Bobby feared for his life and so he got a fake ID, filed off his prints to hide his true identity, and arranged to get himself arrested and sent to that very jail. The prison doctor injected him with sodium pentathol to get answers from her non-responsive patient, and under the effects of the truth serum, Bobby started to give his true identity and true purpose for being there. The doctor denied the allegations and seemed concerned about what Bobby was saying, but she let it go. She does later show that she was trying to protect the prisoners from the torture going on at the prison, though why she didn't report it or actually do anything to stop it was not addressed. Bobby ended up getting sent to isolation and endured the torture we saw inflicted earlier, torture which the warden condoned and presumably even ordered. Alex and their captain get to Bobby in time, and he was able to testify to the torture he was personally subjected to. The authorities said they would investigate the matter but chastised him for his methods, to which he responded that he had no other choice, and that the consequences he endured were necessary and worth being able to expose the torture. He was still suspended under further notice, and Bobby went in search of his nephew, who had escaped from the prison. The abruptness of the ending seemed a bit odd, so I wonder if the nephew will be a continuing story, not to mention having to resolve Bobby's suspension.


"Law and Order"

This week's story was timely in that it involved a guy who scammed people whose houses were in danger of getting foreclosed. Under the guise of helping them with their credit, he got them to "temporarily" quitclaim their houses to him, and while they thought they would eventually get their house back, he sold the house to other people, with the stipulation that $50,000 would be paid in cash, which he pocketed. The detectives set up a sting operation where they were both people in trouble and the buyers to catch him, with the help of the title company employee who had been unwittingly helping him. Soon thereafter, though, both the scammer and the mob guy who was also in on it were found killed. It turn out that the title company employee was in on the deal the whole time, and she was responsible for killing the two people. She was taken to trial but managed to seduce her public defender lawyer into helping her try to escape. When that failed, she turns to the FBI and claimed to have been witness to financial terrorist activity, so the Feds wanted to take her into custody as a potential witness. The detectives than arrested the FBI agents for kidnapping her, and they agreed to trade the FBI agents in return for getting her back into their custody. However, she decided to testify at the grand jury hearing, and she managed to charm the grand jury into feeling sorry for her and believing her lies, so she was not indicted. The public defender then offered to testify that she told him she had killed the people, in exchange for dropping charges against him, which might help him not get dis-barred. The new ADA was willing to go through with it, even though he knew the confession probably didn't happen, but in the courtroom, he couldn't go through with it and withdrew his motion for her indictment. The detectives then discovered that she was using a false identity, so they had no idea who she really was, but she was no longer their problem - she was now in Federal custody.


I haven't been particularly excited about "Criminal Intent" and "Law and Order" this season. I missed last week's episodes because I made a taping mistake, and I kept meaning to go to the website to watch them, but I just never found the motivation. I'm not engaged in the shows like I used to be, and I really miss Jack McCoy. I'm going to give it another week, but with "Big Brother" soon to occupy three hours of my week, I'm not sure I'm going to keep watching these two shows. I do still like "Special Victims Unit" enoughth that I expect to keep watching that.


"Knight Rider"

When I first heard that they were doing a new version of "Knight Rider", I wasn't sure that I'd be watching. Yeah, I liked the old series, and it was fun, but now, I don't know. And then I heard who they had cast as the new "Michael Knight" - Justin Bruening. Many people won't know who he is, but I know him because he had been playing the role of Jamie Martin on "All My Children" for a number of years but left last year. He apparently landed a pretty good gig in getting the lead in this new show, which is just a movie at this point but could be turned into a series. I've like Justin on AMC, but Jamie could be a very limiting character. I want to see how Justin handles the role, so I'll be watching when the movie airs on Sunday, February 17.

Here's a poster for the new show. You can see Justin, but not very well.





Here's a better picture of Justin in character from NBC's website. He definitely looks the part to me, very different than he's looked on AMC.





And here's a picture of Justin with wife Alexa Havins, who he met when they were both on AMC. His hairstyle and look in this picture is definitely not Knight Rider!





Here's a trailer for the new show. I think Justin captures the right mix of scepticism and humour, so I'm looking forward to seeing it.





Here's another trailer I liked.





And here's a good interview with Justin Bruening. If this show takes off, I think Alexa is going to be fighting off a lot of new fans of Justin's!





One very recent development about the show is that they had to go back and re-do all of KITT's lines. Will Arnett (who I'm not really familiar with) had already completed his work as the voice of the talking car, but apparently, he has been doing voice-over work for General Motors for quite a number of years now, and since the new KITT is being "played" by a Ford Mustang, GM objected and asked Arnett to withdraw from the project, which he did. But don't worry. They've found someone else to do KITT's voice - Val Kilmer. They're going to have to work fast to get his lines done! (BTW, I am assuming that the voice of KITT in the trailers is Arnett since I don't think there's been enough time for the changeover to Kilmer.)

Someone else made a connection regarding the new show that I hadn't realized, but I was able to make it go full circle. Michael Knight was previously played by David Hasselhoff, who was at one time married to Catherine Hickland, probably best known for playing Lindsay on "One Life to Live". After they divorced, Hickland was later married to Michael E. Knight, and they are currently in the midst of an amicable divorce after having been married for quite some time. Michael E. Knight has for many, many years played Tad Martin on "All My Children" - father to Jamie Martin, who was played by Justin Bruening, who is now playing the new "Michael Knight". All that and Kevin Bacon wasn't even involved! :)