After the last tribal council, Matty is mad that there was a third vote for him, and he figures out that it was Ken and is mad at him. After, Sugar and Ken and Crystal are talking, and they target Matty. Ken then talks to Bob and makes Bob feel bad about having tricked him, so Bob promises that if he wins the immunity idol, he'll give it to Ken if Ken is in trouble. I don't really get why Bob is feeling so bad, though. I mean, he felt bad after tricking Randy, so then he turned around and tricked Ken, and really, it's all part of the game.
For the reward challenge, the winner will go to a national park and be able to visit a gorilla sanctuary as well as having food, a shower and a bed to sleep in.
The challenge itself is an obstacle course where they have to go through a course to get a ball and then bring it back and shoot it into a hoop before doing it again. First one to get all three balls into the hoop wins. Matty is close, but Bob ends up being more accurate in making his last shot and wins. Jeff tells Bob that he can bring someone with him, and he picks Crystal. Jeff says he can bring one more person, and Bob picks Ken. Bob then has to send someone to exile, and he picks Susie.
Bob and Ken and Crystal enjoy a good meal with lots of food and then are able to take a shower and get something new to wear. They are then taken to the gorilla sanctuary where they get to spend some time looking at them - and being looked at.
In exile, Susie takes the comfort because she knows Sugar has the hidden immunity idol, so she enjoys the fruit and hammock.
Back at camp, Matty tries to turn Sugar, but Sugar is sticking to her alliance with Ken and Crystal, so Matty knows he's on his own. When Bob and Ken and Crystal come back, though, both Ken and Crystal are sort of laying into Matty, which gets Sugar's attention as she doesn't think they should be doing that, and she starts to question her alliance with them Ken and Crystal.
The immunity challenge involves having a mask at one end, having to make your way through some obstacles to the other end where there's a blank mask where they will have to bring three bags of mask pieces to recreate the mask - and they have to do it all blindfolded. Crystal spends some time wandering around into other people's lanes and even going outside the course, and then when Susie is going back for more pieces, she ends up overshooting and wandering around outside the course completely. Matty decides to get all the bags first before starting to assemble pieces while everyone else tackles one bag at a time. Ken's mask sort of looks like a Picasso painting after a while. Bob thinks he has it, but Jeff says no. After a little re-arranging, Bob ends up winning after all, making that his fourth consecutive challenge win. Now, he has to decide if he will give it to Ken.
Back at camp, Ken works on Bob to give him the necklace, and Ken tells the others to tell Bob that they're voting for Ken. But Ken says that when Bob gives him the necklace, they will vote Bob out. Sugar doesn't like what's going on, so she goes to tell Bob what Ken has planned and how she's had a change of heart about Ken and Crystal. They're targeting Crystal now, to break up the Ken/Crystal alliance.
Sugar wears her hidden immunity idol around her neck to tribal council. After some discussion, Bob says that he's going to keep the necklace because he doesn't think Ken is in jeopardy, which is how he had promised to give it to Ken, but Bob knows they're targeting Crystal, not Ken. After the votes, Jeff asks about the hidden immunity idol. Sugar looks at it for a while, and then she gives it to Matty, who plays it, so any votes for him don't count. (I thought you had to be in possession of the idol when you arrived at tribal council to be able to play it, but I guess not.) The two votes for Matty don't count, and the third vote for Crystal means she's the one voted out. There is a fourth vote for Crystal which goes unread, so I don't think the remaining players know that Crystal would have been voted out anyway, even if Sugar hadn't given her idol to Matty.
Five are left - Sugar, Matty, Bob, Ken and Susie. Who will be the final three?
I'm rooting for Bob to win, and then if not, then Sugar, Matty and Ken, in that order. I so don't want Susie to win.
The two-hour finale followed by the one-hour reunion show starts at 8pm on Sunday.
Showing posts with label Survivor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Survivor. Show all posts
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - December 4, 2008 episode
Right after last week's tribal council, Bob is mad that the others didn't just laugh at Randy but that they were making fun of him so much and revelling in his deception. Corinne ends up arguing with Sugar, again. Corinne makes some comment that she is usually nice to people she likes. I thought that was an odd comment. It made it sound like even with people she likes, she's not always nice to them. I mean, I get that sometimes, you just have a bad day or something, or someone you like might make you angry about a particular thing, but the way she said it, it was like she wasn't always nice to people she likes just because that's how she feels.
Bob and Ken catch a couple of really big fish, but because the meat is more delicate, they can't really cook it on a stick over the fire, so Bob fashions a grill for the fish, much to everyone's delight.
Right before the reward challenge, Jeff has a phone that has video from family for each tribe member. Each person gets to see and hear the short message, but the winner of the challenge gets to see and hear their entire video as well as to have pizza, beer and brownies.
They choose rocks to break down the group of 7 into teams of 3. Two team captains are chosen, and they have to pick people for their team. The interesting thing for me was that they had to choose people that they thought could help their team win, but it also had to be someone they could personally beat. Hard to weigh that. The two teams ended up being Sugar/Crystal/Bob and Matty/Ken/Susie. With Corinne left out, she was out immediately and had no chance to win. The two teams had to wade through a muddy swamp/bog to retrieve sprocket pieces and then put the sprockets together so that the wheels would spin and raise a flag. Thanks to Bob's physics background, the team with Sugar, Crystal and Bob win. They then each have a slide puzzle that they have to figure out, and Bob wins the round.
The others go back to camp as Bob sits down to his reward. He watches the video of his wife, who then gets up, says she has to get something and goes off camera. Bob is surprised and doesn't know what's going on, but he doesn't realize that she's actually coming up behind him. When he finally sees her, he is overjoyed, and presumably, they're able to share the reward together.
Back at camp, the other members see Bob and his wife approaching. As they get closer, Bob turns around and whistles, and the loved ones of the other tribe members show up. Everyone is able to spend a little time with their loved ones. Sugar's sister has brought some of their father's ashes, which they scatter in the river, and Sugar feels that she finally has closure about her father's death. Matty has had a lot of time to think while he's been there, and he takes the opportunity to propose to his girlfriend, and she accepts.
Much too soon, though, the loved ones have to leave, and it's back to the game. Bob and Corinne go to get tree mail, and they discuss targetting Matty. Meanwhile, back at camp, the other five target Bob since he's the strongest between him and Corinne.
Bob comes up with a plan. He tells Corinne that he will say that Marcus never actually threw the idol into the ocean, but rather, that he kept it and hid it and told Bob where it was, so Bob now has it. Randy was the one out in the water with Marcus, so he's the only one who might really know about the idol, and he's gone. Bob sets out to make another fake idol.
At the immunity challenge, each tribe member has to answer questions, and the more they get right, the more balls they get in which to toss at a target of sorts - the closest one to the middle wins. Sugar ends up getting the most questions right, but it's Bob who gets a ball in the second ring from the middle, so Bob wins individual immunity.
Back at camp, Bob and Corinne set their plan in motion. Corinne is talking to Ken, and she tells him about the hidden idol that Bob has. Ken starts to panic, and they decide to try to pull Crystal in to blindside Matty, who they see as a strong competitor. As they were showing the new fake idol, I couldn't remember what the real idol looked like that they threw in the ocean. They all got a pretty good look at it because it sat on the table for a while. Did Bob's second fake idol really look like a good replica?
Ken and Crystal decide to switch, but they play both sides. Ken will vote for Matty and Crystal will vote for Corinne. That way, they flush out the hidden idol from Corinne and they also take out Matty.
During tribal council, the first thing I noticed was the jury's clothes - what was up with them all wearing different shades of Easter pastel colors?
In any case, there is talk at tribal, and Crystal actually considers voting for Matty. When Jeff gets the votes and asks about a hidden immunity idol, Corinne doesn't play it since she knows it's fake, and Ken and Crystal are surprised. But, since Crystal did in fact vote for Corinne, Corinne gets four votes and is voted out. To the end, she was clueless about a lot of things. When it looked like their plan with the fake idol would work, she got cocky again about how stupid everyone was. Well, once again, she underestimated them, and this time, it was her head on the chopping block.
Everyone knows there were 3 votes for Matty. They expected Bob and Corinne, but that means one of them flipped, and they're going to want to know who did it.
One more regular episode this Thursday before the finale on Sunday.
Bob and Ken catch a couple of really big fish, but because the meat is more delicate, they can't really cook it on a stick over the fire, so Bob fashions a grill for the fish, much to everyone's delight.
Right before the reward challenge, Jeff has a phone that has video from family for each tribe member. Each person gets to see and hear the short message, but the winner of the challenge gets to see and hear their entire video as well as to have pizza, beer and brownies.
They choose rocks to break down the group of 7 into teams of 3. Two team captains are chosen, and they have to pick people for their team. The interesting thing for me was that they had to choose people that they thought could help their team win, but it also had to be someone they could personally beat. Hard to weigh that. The two teams ended up being Sugar/Crystal/Bob and Matty/Ken/Susie. With Corinne left out, she was out immediately and had no chance to win. The two teams had to wade through a muddy swamp/bog to retrieve sprocket pieces and then put the sprockets together so that the wheels would spin and raise a flag. Thanks to Bob's physics background, the team with Sugar, Crystal and Bob win. They then each have a slide puzzle that they have to figure out, and Bob wins the round.
The others go back to camp as Bob sits down to his reward. He watches the video of his wife, who then gets up, says she has to get something and goes off camera. Bob is surprised and doesn't know what's going on, but he doesn't realize that she's actually coming up behind him. When he finally sees her, he is overjoyed, and presumably, they're able to share the reward together.
Back at camp, the other members see Bob and his wife approaching. As they get closer, Bob turns around and whistles, and the loved ones of the other tribe members show up. Everyone is able to spend a little time with their loved ones. Sugar's sister has brought some of their father's ashes, which they scatter in the river, and Sugar feels that she finally has closure about her father's death. Matty has had a lot of time to think while he's been there, and he takes the opportunity to propose to his girlfriend, and she accepts.
Much too soon, though, the loved ones have to leave, and it's back to the game. Bob and Corinne go to get tree mail, and they discuss targetting Matty. Meanwhile, back at camp, the other five target Bob since he's the strongest between him and Corinne.
Bob comes up with a plan. He tells Corinne that he will say that Marcus never actually threw the idol into the ocean, but rather, that he kept it and hid it and told Bob where it was, so Bob now has it. Randy was the one out in the water with Marcus, so he's the only one who might really know about the idol, and he's gone. Bob sets out to make another fake idol.
At the immunity challenge, each tribe member has to answer questions, and the more they get right, the more balls they get in which to toss at a target of sorts - the closest one to the middle wins. Sugar ends up getting the most questions right, but it's Bob who gets a ball in the second ring from the middle, so Bob wins individual immunity.
Back at camp, Bob and Corinne set their plan in motion. Corinne is talking to Ken, and she tells him about the hidden idol that Bob has. Ken starts to panic, and they decide to try to pull Crystal in to blindside Matty, who they see as a strong competitor. As they were showing the new fake idol, I couldn't remember what the real idol looked like that they threw in the ocean. They all got a pretty good look at it because it sat on the table for a while. Did Bob's second fake idol really look like a good replica?
Ken and Crystal decide to switch, but they play both sides. Ken will vote for Matty and Crystal will vote for Corinne. That way, they flush out the hidden idol from Corinne and they also take out Matty.
During tribal council, the first thing I noticed was the jury's clothes - what was up with them all wearing different shades of Easter pastel colors?
In any case, there is talk at tribal, and Crystal actually considers voting for Matty. When Jeff gets the votes and asks about a hidden immunity idol, Corinne doesn't play it since she knows it's fake, and Ken and Crystal are surprised. But, since Crystal did in fact vote for Corinne, Corinne gets four votes and is voted out. To the end, she was clueless about a lot of things. When it looked like their plan with the fake idol would work, she got cocky again about how stupid everyone was. Well, once again, she underestimated them, and this time, it was her head on the chopping block.
Everyone knows there were 3 votes for Matty. They expected Bob and Corinne, but that means one of them flipped, and they're going to want to know who did it.
One more regular episode this Thursday before the finale on Sunday.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - November 20, 2008 and November 27, 2008 episodes
November 20, 2008 episode
Bob is sort of on his own, so he seemed to feel comfortable telling Sugar that he made a fake immunity idol. I thought that was odd for him to volunteer. I'm wondering if there's some other kind of interaction they had that we haven't been shown.
It's auction time as each contestant is given $500 to spend, with no pooling of resources or sharing of items. Ken bids on an item which turns out to be a note, which says that he can send one person to exile and then he gets all of that person's money. He chooses to send Bob to exile, and since Bob hasn't spent anything, Ken gets all of his money. But then the weird thing is that Ken never actually ends up buying anything else.
Sugar buys chocolate and peanut butter. Susie buys a bath and clean clothes, and Sugar is amazed that Susie gets out before her time is up because she says she would have stayed in there until they told her she had to get out. Matty gets cheeseburger and fries.
Corinne had decided that she didn't need food but rather, a way to stay in the game, so when there is a mystery note that would help in the game, she goes for broke and pays all her money for that. Jeff says she will read it at the next immunity challenge.
Randy ends up getting the most stuff. He started off with peanuts and beer and then also gets spaghetti and wine. He then buys cookies for the tribe, but Sugar can't conceal her dislike for him and turns down his offer. When Randy has one cookie left and offers it to Sugar again, she takes it this time - but then hands it over to Matty, which makes Randy mad since the last cookie was his that he had offered to her. I get that she doesn't like him, and turning him down was one thing, but I did think it was pretty mean to then just give it to Matty.
Bob at exile still decides to take the clue rather than comfort since he hasn't figured out that the idol is gone, but when the clue is one he already had last time, he decides to just enjoy the scenery and takes a lovely walk of the sights. Back at camp, Matty is targeting Bob as the next to go.
Randy is still mad about the cookie and also for whatever reason just decides to go crazy and warns Corinne about it. He bad mouths everyone and behaves oddly, painting the biggest target on himself. He and Corinne are for some reason counting on the fact that Bob will get the hidden immunity idol on exile. Randy is hoping that Bob will give the idol to him, and then when they go to tribal, he can blindside Susie and vote her out.
At the immunity challenge, there's this two-part elaborate obstacle course they have to do. Corinne opens her note, which gives her a pass on the first round and takes her automatically to the final round. Yeah, it was kind of nice, but just because you're in the final round doesn't guarantee you anything. Ken and Matty win the first round and join Corinne in the final round. They have to stack dominoes so that they'll fall to trigger the winning move. It's a close race between Ken and Matty, but Ken ends up winning.
Sugar comes up with the idea for Bob to give the fake immunity idol to Randy, and Bob plays along, probably because he's got no in with anyone anyway, and he wants to stay in her good graces. Randy is thrilled when Bob offers the idol to him, and he looks forward to the fireworks at tribal. Corinne is still making derogatory remarks about Sugar, and once again, she underestimates Sugar. She's never going to learn that lesson.
At tribal, the votes are being cast, and Sugar is having trouble containing herself. I was wondering if she'd told the rest of the tribe. After Jeff gets the votes, Randy plays the idol, and he's grinning smugly from ear to ear. Jeff explains that it's not a real idol and throws the idol in the fire. (I was really surprised about that. Unlike the dumb stick previously, this was actually a nicely crafted fake idol that Bob spent a lot of time and effort on, and they usually do some kind of auction at the end of the show, and I think this would have been a nice collector's item.) At this point, the rest of the tribe, except for Randy, Corinne and Bob, are laughing outright - yep, Sugar told them. Randy is voted out, and Corinne is stunned. I'm thinking she's going to be pretty mad at Bob. I was surprised that Bob actually voted for Susie though.
November 27, 2008 episode
This wasn't a regular episode, but rather, a recap episode with stuff not previously shown and extras. They showed the audition tapes for some of the contestants - Sugar's was pretty bizarre. I'm glad she got rid of the rings in her nose - so not flattering at all for such a pretty girl. And Ken looks like he's 8 in his audition tape. They also recounted the disaster that was Fang and the triumph that was Kota. And while one of my co-workers hates Corinne, I've thought she was ok, but in the extra footage they showed of her, she's really not a very nice person. She has continually talked down about Sugar, mostly for superficial reasons, and she's even been kind of weird with her own tribe mates. It seems she bonded with Randy over their mutual dislike of Sugar, which is why Randy told her he was going to go crazy, which made me wonder why he told her, but that makes more sense now.
Bob is sort of on his own, so he seemed to feel comfortable telling Sugar that he made a fake immunity idol. I thought that was odd for him to volunteer. I'm wondering if there's some other kind of interaction they had that we haven't been shown.
It's auction time as each contestant is given $500 to spend, with no pooling of resources or sharing of items. Ken bids on an item which turns out to be a note, which says that he can send one person to exile and then he gets all of that person's money. He chooses to send Bob to exile, and since Bob hasn't spent anything, Ken gets all of his money. But then the weird thing is that Ken never actually ends up buying anything else.
Sugar buys chocolate and peanut butter. Susie buys a bath and clean clothes, and Sugar is amazed that Susie gets out before her time is up because she says she would have stayed in there until they told her she had to get out. Matty gets cheeseburger and fries.
Corinne had decided that she didn't need food but rather, a way to stay in the game, so when there is a mystery note that would help in the game, she goes for broke and pays all her money for that. Jeff says she will read it at the next immunity challenge.
Randy ends up getting the most stuff. He started off with peanuts and beer and then also gets spaghetti and wine. He then buys cookies for the tribe, but Sugar can't conceal her dislike for him and turns down his offer. When Randy has one cookie left and offers it to Sugar again, she takes it this time - but then hands it over to Matty, which makes Randy mad since the last cookie was his that he had offered to her. I get that she doesn't like him, and turning him down was one thing, but I did think it was pretty mean to then just give it to Matty.
Bob at exile still decides to take the clue rather than comfort since he hasn't figured out that the idol is gone, but when the clue is one he already had last time, he decides to just enjoy the scenery and takes a lovely walk of the sights. Back at camp, Matty is targeting Bob as the next to go.
Randy is still mad about the cookie and also for whatever reason just decides to go crazy and warns Corinne about it. He bad mouths everyone and behaves oddly, painting the biggest target on himself. He and Corinne are for some reason counting on the fact that Bob will get the hidden immunity idol on exile. Randy is hoping that Bob will give the idol to him, and then when they go to tribal, he can blindside Susie and vote her out.
At the immunity challenge, there's this two-part elaborate obstacle course they have to do. Corinne opens her note, which gives her a pass on the first round and takes her automatically to the final round. Yeah, it was kind of nice, but just because you're in the final round doesn't guarantee you anything. Ken and Matty win the first round and join Corinne in the final round. They have to stack dominoes so that they'll fall to trigger the winning move. It's a close race between Ken and Matty, but Ken ends up winning.
Sugar comes up with the idea for Bob to give the fake immunity idol to Randy, and Bob plays along, probably because he's got no in with anyone anyway, and he wants to stay in her good graces. Randy is thrilled when Bob offers the idol to him, and he looks forward to the fireworks at tribal. Corinne is still making derogatory remarks about Sugar, and once again, she underestimates Sugar. She's never going to learn that lesson.
At tribal, the votes are being cast, and Sugar is having trouble containing herself. I was wondering if she'd told the rest of the tribe. After Jeff gets the votes, Randy plays the idol, and he's grinning smugly from ear to ear. Jeff explains that it's not a real idol and throws the idol in the fire. (I was really surprised about that. Unlike the dumb stick previously, this was actually a nicely crafted fake idol that Bob spent a lot of time and effort on, and they usually do some kind of auction at the end of the show, and I think this would have been a nice collector's item.) At this point, the rest of the tribe, except for Randy, Corinne and Bob, are laughing outright - yep, Sugar told them. Randy is voted out, and Corinne is stunned. I'm thinking she's going to be pretty mad at Bob. I was surprised that Bob actually voted for Susie though.
November 27, 2008 episode
This wasn't a regular episode, but rather, a recap episode with stuff not previously shown and extras. They showed the audition tapes for some of the contestants - Sugar's was pretty bizarre. I'm glad she got rid of the rings in her nose - so not flattering at all for such a pretty girl. And Ken looks like he's 8 in his audition tape. They also recounted the disaster that was Fang and the triumph that was Kota. And while one of my co-workers hates Corinne, I've thought she was ok, but in the extra footage they showed of her, she's really not a very nice person. She has continually talked down about Sugar, mostly for superficial reasons, and she's even been kind of weird with her own tribe mates. It seems she bonded with Randy over their mutual dislike of Sugar, which is why Randy told her he was going to go crazy, which made me wonder why he told her, but that makes more sense now.
Monday, November 17, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - October 30, 2008 and November 6, 2008 and November 13, 2008 episodes
October 30, 2008 episode
At Fang, Crystal ends up spilling some rice, and with the rice shortage, she then refuses to eat to make up for it, clashing with Ace and Matty in the process. Meanwhile, at Kota, where they're mostly doing well, Dan is feeling a bit left out and for some reason decides to tell his tribe mates that. What, are they in second grade?
The reward challenge is for a helicopter ride to a picnic with a nice view. The task is to play keepaway of a ball from the other team, and the opposing team member is trying to smash the ball. Sugar is completely ineffectual during her turn, and Kota ends up winning three straight points to win the challenge, and they again send Sugar to exile. Kota enjoys a lovely meal, and they get the added reward of getting letters from home. Sugar's performance angers Matty, who wants to vote her out, but Ace wants Crystal out instead, and unbeknownst to them, Ken wants to get Crystal and Sugar to help him vote Ace out. Sugar reveals to the camera that she's been using Ace all along and isn't the bubblehead everyone thinks she is.
At the immunity challenge, they are told that both tribes will be voting out a member that night. The challenge is then for individual immunity and involves a log roll - whoever stays on the longest in head-to-head competition wins. They start off in pairs first, and then the last three (Sugar, Ace and Marcus) compete all at the same time. Sugar is the first to get knocked off, and Ace is knocked off just before Marcus, who wins immunity. Marcus is then told that he can assign immunity to a member of Fang, and he picks Sugar.
Back at Fang, Ken talks to Sugar about Ace using her, and when Ace later asks Sugar for the idol, exactly as Ken had predicted, her suspicions about Ace are raised. At tribal council, she does indeed help to blindside Ace, who is angry at having been voted out, but she just got to him before he got to her. Matty is also shocked at the results of tribal council.
Kota is having to make their own decisions about who to vote out. Dan is annoying many of them, but after Susie tells Corinne that she was going to vote for Corinne, Corinne wants Susie out. In the end, they decide to vote Dan off, but because they were afraid he might have the hidden immunity idol from his visit to exile, they split their votes so that if he had the idol, Susie would have been voted out. However, in doing so, they showed their hand to Susie and let her know in no uncertain terms that she's next to go. I get that they were concerned, but all they really had to do was convince Dan that they were all voting Susie out, and as long as he voted for Susie, it didn't matter if he played the immunity idol - Susie would have been out anyway since she would have been the only person with a vote.
November 6, 2008 episode
Kota is worried that Susie might not stick with them and might flip in the event of a merge. The remaining Fang members are united, but Matty is worried that he's the next to go. The two tribes have a feast on the beach and assume that it's their merge food reward. Ken sees a clue to a hidden immunity idol, but Charlie sees him looking at the clue and outs him. They all want to find it, but it's Randy who ends up pinpointing exactly where it is and digs it up. He says he doesn't want it, though, and offers it to anyone who wants it. Some people do, but they know it won't look good if they take it in front of everyone, and Marcus convinces them all to throw it in the ocean. I wonder if it will wash back up somewhere?
I was really looking forward to some kind of reaction from Kota when they discovered that Ace had been voted out, so I was disappointed that they didn't show anything.
After the feast, they open a box as instructed, which ends up reshuffling their tribes and it's not a merger as they'd expected. The new Kota tribe is now Bob, Marcus, Susie, Crystal and Ken, and the new Fang is now Randy, Matty, Sugar, Corinne and Charlie. It happens to end up that both new tribes consist of three old Kota members and two old Fang members, so old Kota is glad they still have the edge.
During conversation, it turns out that a very good friend of Marcus' is actually Crystal's cousin. How weird is that?
Matty talks to Sugar and tells her that Ace wasn't going to go after her, but that sure sounds like a lie because of what we were shown, but Sugar is upset that she voted Ace out. Randy voices an idea to Corinne and Charlie to throw the immunity challenge so that they can vote out Matty.
The immunity challenge is to hold two poles on the backside of each hand so that it's up against a higher shelf. Whoever holds the pole the longest wins immunity for their entire tribe. As various people drop off, it comes down to Bob and Matty, who fight it out hard, but in the end, Bob drops out first, and Matty wins immunity for Fang, much to the disappointment of Randy, Corinne and Charlie.
At Kota, Crystal and Ken are working on Susie to switch sides when Marcus targets Ken. In the end, Crystal is able to convince Susie, who helps Crystal and Ken vote out Marcus. Charlie is going to be very unhappy to have lost his boy toy.
November 13, 2008 episode
When the tribes show up for the reward challenge, Corinne and Charlie are shocked and dismayed to find out that Marcus was voted out. The reward challenge is for a visit to a Gabonese village where they will be treated to a dance ceremony, a meal and be able to spend the night there. The challenge itself is using a human-controlled slingshot to play golf, and the team that wins two out of three wins it all. Kota starts out well, but in the end, it's Fang who wins this time, and they send Bob to exile.
Back at Kota, Ken does some fishing for his tribe in Bob's absence, and Bob doesn't find the hidden immunity idol (since Sugar has it), but he fabricates something that looks like one, and it sounds like he's going to pretend to have found it.
At the immunity challenge, Jeff confirms that they're merged, so the challenge is for individual immunity. The task is to make a fire that will burn through a rope. Surprisingly, most of them have trouble starting a fire with flint and a knife and supplies, and only Susie and Sugar are even able to start a fire at all, with Susie winning. Jeff then tells them that their new tribe will be at the old Fang camp. They pick Nobag as their new tribe name, which is "Gabon" backwards. OK, that's a really dumb name.
Crystal and Charlie are targeted by each of the two factions, and Sugar ends up being the swing vote. Corinne thinks they have her on their side, and she dismisses Sugar as being dumb for being swayed so easily, but in the end, Sugar ends up voting with the other side and votes out Charlie (who was targeted by Ken), but at least Charlie is happy that he will get to spend three whole days with Marcus by himself as the sole members of the jury for that time.
People keep underestimating Sugar and then regret having done so.
At Fang, Crystal ends up spilling some rice, and with the rice shortage, she then refuses to eat to make up for it, clashing with Ace and Matty in the process. Meanwhile, at Kota, where they're mostly doing well, Dan is feeling a bit left out and for some reason decides to tell his tribe mates that. What, are they in second grade?
The reward challenge is for a helicopter ride to a picnic with a nice view. The task is to play keepaway of a ball from the other team, and the opposing team member is trying to smash the ball. Sugar is completely ineffectual during her turn, and Kota ends up winning three straight points to win the challenge, and they again send Sugar to exile. Kota enjoys a lovely meal, and they get the added reward of getting letters from home. Sugar's performance angers Matty, who wants to vote her out, but Ace wants Crystal out instead, and unbeknownst to them, Ken wants to get Crystal and Sugar to help him vote Ace out. Sugar reveals to the camera that she's been using Ace all along and isn't the bubblehead everyone thinks she is.
At the immunity challenge, they are told that both tribes will be voting out a member that night. The challenge is then for individual immunity and involves a log roll - whoever stays on the longest in head-to-head competition wins. They start off in pairs first, and then the last three (Sugar, Ace and Marcus) compete all at the same time. Sugar is the first to get knocked off, and Ace is knocked off just before Marcus, who wins immunity. Marcus is then told that he can assign immunity to a member of Fang, and he picks Sugar.
Back at Fang, Ken talks to Sugar about Ace using her, and when Ace later asks Sugar for the idol, exactly as Ken had predicted, her suspicions about Ace are raised. At tribal council, she does indeed help to blindside Ace, who is angry at having been voted out, but she just got to him before he got to her. Matty is also shocked at the results of tribal council.
Kota is having to make their own decisions about who to vote out. Dan is annoying many of them, but after Susie tells Corinne that she was going to vote for Corinne, Corinne wants Susie out. In the end, they decide to vote Dan off, but because they were afraid he might have the hidden immunity idol from his visit to exile, they split their votes so that if he had the idol, Susie would have been voted out. However, in doing so, they showed their hand to Susie and let her know in no uncertain terms that she's next to go. I get that they were concerned, but all they really had to do was convince Dan that they were all voting Susie out, and as long as he voted for Susie, it didn't matter if he played the immunity idol - Susie would have been out anyway since she would have been the only person with a vote.
November 6, 2008 episode
Kota is worried that Susie might not stick with them and might flip in the event of a merge. The remaining Fang members are united, but Matty is worried that he's the next to go. The two tribes have a feast on the beach and assume that it's their merge food reward. Ken sees a clue to a hidden immunity idol, but Charlie sees him looking at the clue and outs him. They all want to find it, but it's Randy who ends up pinpointing exactly where it is and digs it up. He says he doesn't want it, though, and offers it to anyone who wants it. Some people do, but they know it won't look good if they take it in front of everyone, and Marcus convinces them all to throw it in the ocean. I wonder if it will wash back up somewhere?
I was really looking forward to some kind of reaction from Kota when they discovered that Ace had been voted out, so I was disappointed that they didn't show anything.
After the feast, they open a box as instructed, which ends up reshuffling their tribes and it's not a merger as they'd expected. The new Kota tribe is now Bob, Marcus, Susie, Crystal and Ken, and the new Fang is now Randy, Matty, Sugar, Corinne and Charlie. It happens to end up that both new tribes consist of three old Kota members and two old Fang members, so old Kota is glad they still have the edge.
During conversation, it turns out that a very good friend of Marcus' is actually Crystal's cousin. How weird is that?
Matty talks to Sugar and tells her that Ace wasn't going to go after her, but that sure sounds like a lie because of what we were shown, but Sugar is upset that she voted Ace out. Randy voices an idea to Corinne and Charlie to throw the immunity challenge so that they can vote out Matty.
The immunity challenge is to hold two poles on the backside of each hand so that it's up against a higher shelf. Whoever holds the pole the longest wins immunity for their entire tribe. As various people drop off, it comes down to Bob and Matty, who fight it out hard, but in the end, Bob drops out first, and Matty wins immunity for Fang, much to the disappointment of Randy, Corinne and Charlie.
At Kota, Crystal and Ken are working on Susie to switch sides when Marcus targets Ken. In the end, Crystal is able to convince Susie, who helps Crystal and Ken vote out Marcus. Charlie is going to be very unhappy to have lost his boy toy.
November 13, 2008 episode
When the tribes show up for the reward challenge, Corinne and Charlie are shocked and dismayed to find out that Marcus was voted out. The reward challenge is for a visit to a Gabonese village where they will be treated to a dance ceremony, a meal and be able to spend the night there. The challenge itself is using a human-controlled slingshot to play golf, and the team that wins two out of three wins it all. Kota starts out well, but in the end, it's Fang who wins this time, and they send Bob to exile.
Back at Kota, Ken does some fishing for his tribe in Bob's absence, and Bob doesn't find the hidden immunity idol (since Sugar has it), but he fabricates something that looks like one, and it sounds like he's going to pretend to have found it.
At the immunity challenge, Jeff confirms that they're merged, so the challenge is for individual immunity. The task is to make a fire that will burn through a rope. Surprisingly, most of them have trouble starting a fire with flint and a knife and supplies, and only Susie and Sugar are even able to start a fire at all, with Susie winning. Jeff then tells them that their new tribe will be at the old Fang camp. They pick Nobag as their new tribe name, which is "Gabon" backwards. OK, that's a really dumb name.
Crystal and Charlie are targeted by each of the two factions, and Sugar ends up being the swing vote. Corinne thinks they have her on their side, and she dismisses Sugar as being dumb for being swayed so easily, but in the end, Sugar ends up voting with the other side and votes out Charlie (who was targeted by Ken), but at least Charlie is happy that he will get to spend three whole days with Marcus by himself as the sole members of the jury for that time.
People keep underestimating Sugar and then regret having done so.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - October 23, 2008 episode
At Fang, Ace looks for another ally to strengthen his position, and he makes an alliance with Matty, who also includes Ken in the foursome, though it was unclear to me whether Ken knew or agreed to be included. The tribe is dangerously low on rice, without enough to ration amongst the tribe until the merge. Ace tells Sugar that he thinks the rest of the people know she has the idol because they must have gone through her bag, so she gives the idol to him for safe-keeping. I didn't understand that move at all. OK, so they know you have the idol, but if you give it to Ace, aren't they still going to want to get you out, but now, you don't even have the protection of the idol? How is giving it to Ace going to make a difference if they already know you have it?
Things are going much better at Kota, where food is abundant, but even still, tribe mates notice that Dan is eating much more than his share of the food.
The reward challenge has each team carrying a 200 pound cloth snake, and they have to race around a track to catch the other team. Members can drop out, but that leaves the rest of the weight for the remaining team members to carry. They've done a similar challenge before, except the team members had sacks of weight that they'd have to transfer to others when they dropped out. The reward is a variety of different pastries as well as the ability to make fresh coffee and tea.
The two teams start out fairly evenly, but members of Fang tire quickly. They manage to pick it up a bit when Sugar, Ken and Kelly drop out, leaving Matty, Ace and Crystal, but they soon falter as well, and when Crystal drops out, Matty and Ace struggle with the weight of the snake all on their own. Kota is able to easily overtake them and win the challenge.
Usually, when there's a reward food win, Jeff tells the winning team to take their stuff back to their camp with them. In this case, he takes the tray of pastries and offers them to each member of Kota, who each take something and eat it right there, in front of Fang, devastating Fang even more. Pretty evil on Jeff's part!
Crystal is especially defeated and cries a bit that it's hard to lose all the time, and Randy mocks her, which I thought was pretty mean. Yeah, it would have been a nice morale booster for Fang, but in terms of doing them actual good, the prize wouldn't have helped that much. It was all sugar and caffeine, no protein at all, so they would have had the sugar and caffeine high and then the inevitable crash.
When Kota gets back to camp, they decide to ration the pastries then and there, so each person can eat their share whenever they want, and the division is implemented mostly because they don't want Dan to eat more than his share. Dan still wants to have a regular meal in addition to the pastry treats though, a thought not shared by his teammates.
After the challenge, Fang again sent Sugar to exile, but she's no longer enjoying her "Sugar Shack". She's hurt and crying and she's tired that she keeps getting sent away from the rest of her tribe and that she has fruit to eat while the others are starving. Well, at least they have one less person to feed for their next meal.
Back at Fang, Kelly and Ace have gone for a walk, and Kelly is bad-mouthing Crystal for crying. When Crystal catches up to them, Kelly greets her with "How'd you get here?", and Crystal calls her on her stupid remark. Ummm, it's not like you guys climbed a huge mountain or teleported anywhere - it's just a path - what do you mean "how did she get there?"
At Kota, things just keep getting better for the tribe when they catch a fairly large turtle and make turtle soup, providing them with even more protein. I was sad for the turtle, though.
For the immunity challenge, tethered pairs have to run through obstacles to retrieve flagpole pieces, with each subsequent pair having an extra obstacle to conquer and farther to run. Kota has a decent lead after the first two legs, but Fang's last pair of Matty and Ken do an amazing job with the obstacles, and with obstacles that others are climbing through, they are instead just climbing on top, which is easier and faster. The last two pairs get back pretty much at the same time, so it's a race to untie the pieces and put the flagpole together. Kota is doing a good job of using teamwork to make quick work of the flagpole while at Fang, Ace tries to take over and stubbornly tries to keep fitting one piece onto the flagpole base, ignoring the fact that there are many other pieces, one of which might actually fit. He puts Fang at a standstill, and Kota easily wins. This is the second week in a row where Ace has lost the immunity challenge for Fang.
And when Fang gets back to camp, Ace criticizes Kelly's performance! OK, she wasn't great, but the team had made up any setback she might have created since they were tied when they started putting the flagpole together. But it was Ace who completely screwed up the challenge by taking over and refusing to let anyone else help him. But I guess that doesn't count. Ken wants Ace out, and he tries to talk various people into it, including Sugar, who then tells Ken that she gave the idol to Ace, which Ken can't believe. Sugar then later tells Ace that she's taken back the idol.
In the end, though, it's Kelly who is voted out after a very contentious tribal council discussion. I can't believe she didn't out Ace by saying at tribal that he had compared Crystal to GC, which might have turned Crystal's vote, and her outrage might have turned others' vote as well. I did laugh when they showed the vote, and they had to blur what I presume is the finger that Crystal gave to Kelly when she put in her vote.
In the grand scheme of things, it was probably smarter to vote out Kelly since she's weaker in the team, but Crystal is right in that even though they have Ace, they haven't won an immunity challenge since he's been there.
Next week should be a good episode, when both teams have to vote someone off, and machinations abound. It sounds like Sugar isn't quite as much in Ace's pocket as Ace thinks, but we'll see if that actually plays out. I would like Ace out of there - he's too arrogant and too much of an ass.
Things are going much better at Kota, where food is abundant, but even still, tribe mates notice that Dan is eating much more than his share of the food.
The reward challenge has each team carrying a 200 pound cloth snake, and they have to race around a track to catch the other team. Members can drop out, but that leaves the rest of the weight for the remaining team members to carry. They've done a similar challenge before, except the team members had sacks of weight that they'd have to transfer to others when they dropped out. The reward is a variety of different pastries as well as the ability to make fresh coffee and tea.
The two teams start out fairly evenly, but members of Fang tire quickly. They manage to pick it up a bit when Sugar, Ken and Kelly drop out, leaving Matty, Ace and Crystal, but they soon falter as well, and when Crystal drops out, Matty and Ace struggle with the weight of the snake all on their own. Kota is able to easily overtake them and win the challenge.
Usually, when there's a reward food win, Jeff tells the winning team to take their stuff back to their camp with them. In this case, he takes the tray of pastries and offers them to each member of Kota, who each take something and eat it right there, in front of Fang, devastating Fang even more. Pretty evil on Jeff's part!
Crystal is especially defeated and cries a bit that it's hard to lose all the time, and Randy mocks her, which I thought was pretty mean. Yeah, it would have been a nice morale booster for Fang, but in terms of doing them actual good, the prize wouldn't have helped that much. It was all sugar and caffeine, no protein at all, so they would have had the sugar and caffeine high and then the inevitable crash.
When Kota gets back to camp, they decide to ration the pastries then and there, so each person can eat their share whenever they want, and the division is implemented mostly because they don't want Dan to eat more than his share. Dan still wants to have a regular meal in addition to the pastry treats though, a thought not shared by his teammates.
After the challenge, Fang again sent Sugar to exile, but she's no longer enjoying her "Sugar Shack". She's hurt and crying and she's tired that she keeps getting sent away from the rest of her tribe and that she has fruit to eat while the others are starving. Well, at least they have one less person to feed for their next meal.
Back at Fang, Kelly and Ace have gone for a walk, and Kelly is bad-mouthing Crystal for crying. When Crystal catches up to them, Kelly greets her with "How'd you get here?", and Crystal calls her on her stupid remark. Ummm, it's not like you guys climbed a huge mountain or teleported anywhere - it's just a path - what do you mean "how did she get there?"
At Kota, things just keep getting better for the tribe when they catch a fairly large turtle and make turtle soup, providing them with even more protein. I was sad for the turtle, though.
For the immunity challenge, tethered pairs have to run through obstacles to retrieve flagpole pieces, with each subsequent pair having an extra obstacle to conquer and farther to run. Kota has a decent lead after the first two legs, but Fang's last pair of Matty and Ken do an amazing job with the obstacles, and with obstacles that others are climbing through, they are instead just climbing on top, which is easier and faster. The last two pairs get back pretty much at the same time, so it's a race to untie the pieces and put the flagpole together. Kota is doing a good job of using teamwork to make quick work of the flagpole while at Fang, Ace tries to take over and stubbornly tries to keep fitting one piece onto the flagpole base, ignoring the fact that there are many other pieces, one of which might actually fit. He puts Fang at a standstill, and Kota easily wins. This is the second week in a row where Ace has lost the immunity challenge for Fang.
And when Fang gets back to camp, Ace criticizes Kelly's performance! OK, she wasn't great, but the team had made up any setback she might have created since they were tied when they started putting the flagpole together. But it was Ace who completely screwed up the challenge by taking over and refusing to let anyone else help him. But I guess that doesn't count. Ken wants Ace out, and he tries to talk various people into it, including Sugar, who then tells Ken that she gave the idol to Ace, which Ken can't believe. Sugar then later tells Ace that she's taken back the idol.
In the end, though, it's Kelly who is voted out after a very contentious tribal council discussion. I can't believe she didn't out Ace by saying at tribal that he had compared Crystal to GC, which might have turned Crystal's vote, and her outrage might have turned others' vote as well. I did laugh when they showed the vote, and they had to blur what I presume is the finger that Crystal gave to Kelly when she put in her vote.
In the grand scheme of things, it was probably smarter to vote out Kelly since she's weaker in the team, but Crystal is right in that even though they have Ace, they haven't won an immunity challenge since he's been there.
Next week should be a good episode, when both teams have to vote someone off, and machinations abound. It sounds like Sugar isn't quite as much in Ace's pocket as Ace thinks, but we'll see if that actually plays out. I would like Ace out of there - he's too arrogant and too much of an ass.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - October 16, 2008 episode
They start the show with a recap of what's happened so far. Ummm, ok, a little early for a recap, isn't it? Running short on this episode?
Sugar arrives at the Fang camp and is happy to be reunited with Ace, but she is surprised and disappointed to see Kelly there, which meant Jacquie had gotten voted out.
At Kota, they catch an electric fish among other types of fish. I was wondering if they were going to get some use out of it being electric, but nope. That was funny to watch in any case, as the people got shocked. The husband and I talked about what our cat Orkid would do with an electric fish. We agreed that she'd get shocked. Over and over and over again.
Back at Fang, the group see/hear an elephant grazing nearby and watch it for a while, in awe of nature being so close. Ace and Matty seemed to want to get even closer to nature as they paddled out on a kayak to get a better look at the huge elephant. OK, yeah, cool and all, but I didn't think it was really that smart to do.
The reward challenge is for an herb garden (self-replenishing since it would continue to grow), salt and oil, and they can keep their fruit from the challenge. The challenge is that some team members have to throw various fruit (cut watermelon, whole pineapples, whole oranges, etc.) through a particular opening in an overhead fence, and their teammate has to catch it. Meanwhile, someone from the opposing team has a bat and tries to whack the fruit away instead. Whoever ends up with the most fruit by weight at the end wins. Ace is doing a terrific job for Fang by rejecting almost everything Kota tries to throw past him. Kota finally finds a way around him by throwing two fruit pieces at a time, so he can only reject one, but the other gets through. Kota manages to make up a lot of ground with this new method, and in the end, they end up barely beating Fang. They choose to send Sugar back to Exile, to what she has deemed the "Sugar Shack", and she doesn't really care that much, because she likes it there - shelter, food she doesn't have to share or work to get, no work to be done, just relaxing and actually having some time to herself.
At Fang, they're still running out of rice, so they get very small portions, and GC is still complaining about how little food they're getting. Crystal does what all the viewers and probably most if not all his teammates want to do and tells him to just stop complaining and eat his food. (She later goes and tells him she was just kidding, but really, he needed that beat-down and more.) GC disappears in a canoe shortly before it's time to leave for the challenge, and many of his team members are yelling for him, and right before they have to leave, he comes back, without a care that he almost missed leaving with them. Ass.
The immunity challenge involves dropping big balls made of twigs/branches over a cliff, and the balls will hit other obstacles as well, and then they will roll into various pockets, each worth a different amount of points. A member of the opposing team will be trying to block the other team's ball, but the defender will be blindfolded and will be guided only by a caller. For Fang, Ace is the defender with Sugar as the caller, and for Kota, Dan is the defender with Randy as the caller. Both sides manage to block a ball or two that the other members toss off, and Randy and Dan actually have a very good rapport going with very definite instructions. When it comes to the last ball, Randy is able to get Dan to stop Fang's ball, but Ace seems on his way to stopping Kota's and with Fang in the lead, that would have led to Fang's win. In a brilliant move of thinking fast on his feet, Randy yells out to Ace to freeze, which Ace does, allowing Kota's ball to continue into a pocket, giving Kota the win. It was a great tactic on Randy's part, but it was an incredibly stupid move on Ace's part. Did he not remember that his partner was Sugar? Randy sounds *nothing* like Sugar. Ace should have just been listening for Sugar, not anyone else. It would have been different if both callers were the same gender and had the same kind of voice, since they would have been harder to distinguish, but between Randy and Sugar, there can be no confusion. I did notice that earlier in the challenge, Randy would periodically yell out Dan's name along with his instruction, so maybe he realized that yelling the name got the person's attention more. And Sugar is not faultless in this, because she stopped saying anything. She didn't tell Ace to keep moving, to ignore Randy, nothing. She just let Ace stop and stand there.
At Fang, the team has to decide what to do at tribal council. GC says he's fed up with the game and the suffering and work and personalities and lack of food, and he's ready to leave. While GC is off and Ace and Sugar are swimming, the rest of the team are talking about whether Sugar has the idol, and Crystal actually rummages through Sugar's bag and finds it, confirming for everyone that she has it. They then discuss voting off GC or blindsiding Sugar to get rid of the idol since she's dangerous in possession of it.
At tribal council, I was really expecting Jeff to ask about why Ace listened to Randy or why Sugar didn't say anything, but there was nothing, or at least if there was anything, it wasn't included. I was totally bummed because I wanted to hear them talk about it, since their joint blunder effectively caused Fang to lose. In the end, Fang ends up voting out GC. That was ok too. He really is an ass and a whiner and just has too much attitude. And he complains about the conditions. Really? You applied to be on "Survivor", and you had no idea what you were getting yourself into, that you'd have to work and get food and that there would be no fully-stocked fridge to help yourself to all the time, AND that it's a social game? Why the hell did you apply to be on the show? Good riddance.
Sugar arrives at the Fang camp and is happy to be reunited with Ace, but she is surprised and disappointed to see Kelly there, which meant Jacquie had gotten voted out.
At Kota, they catch an electric fish among other types of fish. I was wondering if they were going to get some use out of it being electric, but nope. That was funny to watch in any case, as the people got shocked. The husband and I talked about what our cat Orkid would do with an electric fish. We agreed that she'd get shocked. Over and over and over again.
Back at Fang, the group see/hear an elephant grazing nearby and watch it for a while, in awe of nature being so close. Ace and Matty seemed to want to get even closer to nature as they paddled out on a kayak to get a better look at the huge elephant. OK, yeah, cool and all, but I didn't think it was really that smart to do.
The reward challenge is for an herb garden (self-replenishing since it would continue to grow), salt and oil, and they can keep their fruit from the challenge. The challenge is that some team members have to throw various fruit (cut watermelon, whole pineapples, whole oranges, etc.) through a particular opening in an overhead fence, and their teammate has to catch it. Meanwhile, someone from the opposing team has a bat and tries to whack the fruit away instead. Whoever ends up with the most fruit by weight at the end wins. Ace is doing a terrific job for Fang by rejecting almost everything Kota tries to throw past him. Kota finally finds a way around him by throwing two fruit pieces at a time, so he can only reject one, but the other gets through. Kota manages to make up a lot of ground with this new method, and in the end, they end up barely beating Fang. They choose to send Sugar back to Exile, to what she has deemed the "Sugar Shack", and she doesn't really care that much, because she likes it there - shelter, food she doesn't have to share or work to get, no work to be done, just relaxing and actually having some time to herself.
At Fang, they're still running out of rice, so they get very small portions, and GC is still complaining about how little food they're getting. Crystal does what all the viewers and probably most if not all his teammates want to do and tells him to just stop complaining and eat his food. (She later goes and tells him she was just kidding, but really, he needed that beat-down and more.) GC disappears in a canoe shortly before it's time to leave for the challenge, and many of his team members are yelling for him, and right before they have to leave, he comes back, without a care that he almost missed leaving with them. Ass.
The immunity challenge involves dropping big balls made of twigs/branches over a cliff, and the balls will hit other obstacles as well, and then they will roll into various pockets, each worth a different amount of points. A member of the opposing team will be trying to block the other team's ball, but the defender will be blindfolded and will be guided only by a caller. For Fang, Ace is the defender with Sugar as the caller, and for Kota, Dan is the defender with Randy as the caller. Both sides manage to block a ball or two that the other members toss off, and Randy and Dan actually have a very good rapport going with very definite instructions. When it comes to the last ball, Randy is able to get Dan to stop Fang's ball, but Ace seems on his way to stopping Kota's and with Fang in the lead, that would have led to Fang's win. In a brilliant move of thinking fast on his feet, Randy yells out to Ace to freeze, which Ace does, allowing Kota's ball to continue into a pocket, giving Kota the win. It was a great tactic on Randy's part, but it was an incredibly stupid move on Ace's part. Did he not remember that his partner was Sugar? Randy sounds *nothing* like Sugar. Ace should have just been listening for Sugar, not anyone else. It would have been different if both callers were the same gender and had the same kind of voice, since they would have been harder to distinguish, but between Randy and Sugar, there can be no confusion. I did notice that earlier in the challenge, Randy would periodically yell out Dan's name along with his instruction, so maybe he realized that yelling the name got the person's attention more. And Sugar is not faultless in this, because she stopped saying anything. She didn't tell Ace to keep moving, to ignore Randy, nothing. She just let Ace stop and stand there.
At Fang, the team has to decide what to do at tribal council. GC says he's fed up with the game and the suffering and work and personalities and lack of food, and he's ready to leave. While GC is off and Ace and Sugar are swimming, the rest of the team are talking about whether Sugar has the idol, and Crystal actually rummages through Sugar's bag and finds it, confirming for everyone that she has it. They then discuss voting off GC or blindsiding Sugar to get rid of the idol since she's dangerous in possession of it.
At tribal council, I was really expecting Jeff to ask about why Ace listened to Randy or why Sugar didn't say anything, but there was nothing, or at least if there was anything, it wasn't included. I was totally bummed because I wanted to hear them talk about it, since their joint blunder effectively caused Fang to lose. In the end, Fang ends up voting out GC. That was ok too. He really is an ass and a whiner and just has too much attitude. And he complains about the conditions. Really? You applied to be on "Survivor", and you had no idea what you were getting yourself into, that you'd have to work and get food and that there would be no fully-stocked fridge to help yourself to all the time, AND that it's a social game? Why the hell did you apply to be on the show? Good riddance.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - October 9, 2008 episode
After tribal council, Kota is discussing the events of the night, and Ace realizes that Kelly voted for him, so Ace targets her next.
At Fang, Randy sees that the rice is still being depleted too quickly and wants to cut down to one meal a day, but again, he clashes with GC. Randy then forms an alliance with Dan, Susie and Matty against GC, Ben and Crystal.
The tribes are gathered and are asked to rank their individual tribe members from top to bottom according to importance to the tribe. Each member fills out their own questionnaire, and then the results are tabulated. For Kota, the order of importance is Marcus, Ace, Bob, Charlie, Jacquie, Corinne, Sugar and Kelly. For Fang, the order is Matty, Dan, Randy, Crystal, Ken, GC and Susie.
Jeff then tells them that they're mixing up tribes, with Marcus heading up the new Kota tribe and Matty heading up the new Fang tribe. The new teams are as follows:
Kota - Marcus, Dan, Charlie, Randy, Corinne, Susie and Bob
Fang - Matty, Ace, Crystal, Jacquie, Ken, GC and Kelly
Charlie was just entirely too happy that he was chosen to be on Marcus' team, but then again, Charlie is in love with Marcus. It was totally funny that GC was the last picked on his team. And I guess Ken decided to vote for the underdog since he is often on, and he picked Kelly, over Ace's objections.
Since there's an odd number of contestants at the moment, Sugar is left unchosen. She is sent to Exile, where she will stay until after tribal council, and she will join whichever tribe ends up sending a member home. Since she's already found the hidden individual immunity idol, she chooses comfort and gets to enjoy the hammock and the fresh fruit. She's actually the perfect person to go there since she's going to be there for a little while, but she doesn't have to spend all that time working and looking, but instead, she can just relax. She hopes that Fang ends up at tribal council and that they vote off Kelly so she can be with Ace again.
Kelly, meanwhile, is completely happy with her new Fang tribe since she doesn't like her old Kota teammates.
At the immunity challenge, it is a sort of field hockey (or jai alai) on the water. Each of the members has a small round float, and they have a paddle with holes at the bottom. Jeff will toss a ball into the water, and they have to get to the ball and pass it to other team members to score a goal in the opposing team's net. First team to score three wins. Kota kicks complete ass on this challenge, as Marcus is motoring around just fine, getting the ball each time. And each time, he manages to get the ball to Randy, who is positioned near Fang's goal. Randy ends up making all three goals for Kota. The first one, he had to shoot around goalie Ace; the second one, he had a free shot because no one was protecting the goal; and the third one, he had to fight some since Fang was finally putting up a fight, but in the end, he managed to score the winner. Most of the members of Fang just sat around, either not being able to move their floats or not even trying at all, just sitting and staring. The husband figured out the problem some of them might have been having when a couple of the floats flipped upside down. There was a big plastic keel on the bottom, so if someone was paddling with the wrong orientation, they wouldn't really be able to move. They'd have to know to paddle with the keel facing forward. Ben mentioned that he just kept spinning in circles, so the husband figures he was paddling facing the wrong side, which would have made him to that.
As Fang is coming back into their camp, there is a shot of Jacquie and Kelly, and with them both wearing a swimsuit top and shorts and their team buff around their midsection like a tank top, and their blonde hair braided, they almost look like twins. An alliance of sorts is formed among Matty, Crystal, Ken and GC. They initially want to vote out Kelly because she's so weak, but Kelly has told the others about Ace's closeness to both Sugar and Jacquie, and they know that Sugar will be joining their tribe, and they're concerned about the threesome as a team. They think about voting off Ace but decide that they still need him to help the team, so they target Jacquie instead. When Jacquie hears about this, she does a valiant effort of pleading her case to Matty and Ben and Crystal, but in the end, it's in vain, and she's voted out, with Sugar due to then join the Fang team.
At Fang, Randy sees that the rice is still being depleted too quickly and wants to cut down to one meal a day, but again, he clashes with GC. Randy then forms an alliance with Dan, Susie and Matty against GC, Ben and Crystal.
The tribes are gathered and are asked to rank their individual tribe members from top to bottom according to importance to the tribe. Each member fills out their own questionnaire, and then the results are tabulated. For Kota, the order of importance is Marcus, Ace, Bob, Charlie, Jacquie, Corinne, Sugar and Kelly. For Fang, the order is Matty, Dan, Randy, Crystal, Ken, GC and Susie.
Jeff then tells them that they're mixing up tribes, with Marcus heading up the new Kota tribe and Matty heading up the new Fang tribe. The new teams are as follows:
Kota - Marcus, Dan, Charlie, Randy, Corinne, Susie and Bob
Fang - Matty, Ace, Crystal, Jacquie, Ken, GC and Kelly
Charlie was just entirely too happy that he was chosen to be on Marcus' team, but then again, Charlie is in love with Marcus. It was totally funny that GC was the last picked on his team. And I guess Ken decided to vote for the underdog since he is often on, and he picked Kelly, over Ace's objections.
Since there's an odd number of contestants at the moment, Sugar is left unchosen. She is sent to Exile, where she will stay until after tribal council, and she will join whichever tribe ends up sending a member home. Since she's already found the hidden individual immunity idol, she chooses comfort and gets to enjoy the hammock and the fresh fruit. She's actually the perfect person to go there since she's going to be there for a little while, but she doesn't have to spend all that time working and looking, but instead, she can just relax. She hopes that Fang ends up at tribal council and that they vote off Kelly so she can be with Ace again.
Kelly, meanwhile, is completely happy with her new Fang tribe since she doesn't like her old Kota teammates.
At the immunity challenge, it is a sort of field hockey (or jai alai) on the water. Each of the members has a small round float, and they have a paddle with holes at the bottom. Jeff will toss a ball into the water, and they have to get to the ball and pass it to other team members to score a goal in the opposing team's net. First team to score three wins. Kota kicks complete ass on this challenge, as Marcus is motoring around just fine, getting the ball each time. And each time, he manages to get the ball to Randy, who is positioned near Fang's goal. Randy ends up making all three goals for Kota. The first one, he had to shoot around goalie Ace; the second one, he had a free shot because no one was protecting the goal; and the third one, he had to fight some since Fang was finally putting up a fight, but in the end, he managed to score the winner. Most of the members of Fang just sat around, either not being able to move their floats or not even trying at all, just sitting and staring. The husband figured out the problem some of them might have been having when a couple of the floats flipped upside down. There was a big plastic keel on the bottom, so if someone was paddling with the wrong orientation, they wouldn't really be able to move. They'd have to know to paddle with the keel facing forward. Ben mentioned that he just kept spinning in circles, so the husband figures he was paddling facing the wrong side, which would have made him to that.
As Fang is coming back into their camp, there is a shot of Jacquie and Kelly, and with them both wearing a swimsuit top and shorts and their team buff around their midsection like a tank top, and their blonde hair braided, they almost look like twins. An alliance of sorts is formed among Matty, Crystal, Ken and GC. They initially want to vote out Kelly because she's so weak, but Kelly has told the others about Ace's closeness to both Sugar and Jacquie, and they know that Sugar will be joining their tribe, and they're concerned about the threesome as a team. They think about voting off Ace but decide that they still need him to help the team, so they target Jacquie instead. When Jacquie hears about this, she does a valiant effort of pleading her case to Matty and Ben and Crystal, but in the end, it's in vain, and she's voted out, with Sugar due to then join the Fang team.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - October 2, 2008 episode
Things are not going well at Fang, where they're running out of rice because they've been having three meals a day. Ummm, do none of them know that there's not a grocery store around the corner and that they have to ration their food? Randy suggests that they change to only having two meals a day, which most of the tribemates agree to, except GC, who then challenges Randy about being the new leader of the group. Seriously, GC just has too much attitude and is generally an ass.
At Kota, things are going better, but Paloma is not liking Ace and the fact that most people seem to follow what he's saying, even though he generally says perfectly reasonable things that make sense.
The reward challenge is for comfort - blankets, hammock, pillows and mat. One member wraps themselves around a pole while two members of the opposing team try to strip them off and drag them across a line. Ace does really well gluing himself to a pole on the first round for Kota, but Paloma is picked up like a rag doll. In the final round, Fang manages to unhook Ace and score a win for the first time. They elect Sugar to go to Exile.
Sugar knows that Fang sent her to Exile because they think she's stupid and won't have a shot at finding the idol. She foregoes comfort and elects to get the clue. Unlike Dan, she actually does manage to find the sandy crater and find the subsequent clues, culminating in finding the hidden individual immunity idol.
Meanwhile, back at Kota, the tribe is targeting Paloma as their weakest member, and Corinne pulls Bob into her alliance of four, at least for the time being.
At the immunity challenge, team members have to go down a slide to retrieve a tile, and then the final member has to use the tiles to solve a math puzzle. Bob the physics teacher is pitted against Ken the professional gamer, and Ken comes out ahead, giving Fang their second win in a row and their first immunity win.
When Sugar gets back to camp, she leads everyone to believe that she didn't find the idol, but she privately tells Ace that she does have the idol. He immediately claims co-ownership of the idol, which Sugar doesn't object to. Paloma knows she's being targeted, and she puts up her own fight, trying to spread suspicion and distrust to Corinne about Ace. The other tribe members are worried about what Ace, with Sugar in tow, will do come time for the merge, but it's entirely too early to be worrying about the merge now.
In the end, Paloma's efforts fail, and she is voted out.
At Kota, things are going better, but Paloma is not liking Ace and the fact that most people seem to follow what he's saying, even though he generally says perfectly reasonable things that make sense.
The reward challenge is for comfort - blankets, hammock, pillows and mat. One member wraps themselves around a pole while two members of the opposing team try to strip them off and drag them across a line. Ace does really well gluing himself to a pole on the first round for Kota, but Paloma is picked up like a rag doll. In the final round, Fang manages to unhook Ace and score a win for the first time. They elect Sugar to go to Exile.
Sugar knows that Fang sent her to Exile because they think she's stupid and won't have a shot at finding the idol. She foregoes comfort and elects to get the clue. Unlike Dan, she actually does manage to find the sandy crater and find the subsequent clues, culminating in finding the hidden individual immunity idol.
Meanwhile, back at Kota, the tribe is targeting Paloma as their weakest member, and Corinne pulls Bob into her alliance of four, at least for the time being.
At the immunity challenge, team members have to go down a slide to retrieve a tile, and then the final member has to use the tiles to solve a math puzzle. Bob the physics teacher is pitted against Ken the professional gamer, and Ken comes out ahead, giving Fang their second win in a row and their first immunity win.
When Sugar gets back to camp, she leads everyone to believe that she didn't find the idol, but she privately tells Ace that she does have the idol. He immediately claims co-ownership of the idol, which Sugar doesn't object to. Paloma knows she's being targeted, and she puts up her own fight, trying to spread suspicion and distrust to Corinne about Ace. The other tribe members are worried about what Ace, with Sugar in tow, will do come time for the merge, but it's entirely too early to be worrying about the merge now.
In the end, Paloma's efforts fail, and she is voted out.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
"Survivor: Gabon" - September 25, 2008 episode - season premiere
This season of "Survivor" is set in Gabon, Africa. The two oldest members of the tribe, Bob and Gillian are chosen as tribe leaders. They each choose a team member, who each in turn choose another team member until everyone is picked. Michelle has the distinction of being the last one picked.
Bob's team is named Kota and has the yellow buffs. Gillian's team is named Fang and has the red buffs.
The first challenge is for individual immunity, which is at the top of a hill. The first one from each tribe to get there gets an individual immunity that can only be used at their first tribal council. But the twist is that while both teams will get some ration of food, the first team to get all their members up the hill will win additional food. Marcus from Kota and GC (whose real name is Danny) from Fang get individual immunity, but Gillian is lagging behind and as much as her teammates try to help her, Kota gets all of their team up first and gets the extra food.
Both teams find at their respective camps that they had pre-made structures which just needed some shoring up, which was definitely an advantage over some other locations. At Kota, I thought Jessica, otherwise known as "Sugar", was being a little annoying, but the tribe members thought Ace was being too bossy. Bob, however, is able to contribute a lot to getting camp working better. Meanwhile at Fang, Gillian is being a bit overbearing while Randy puts a big gash in his head from walking around in the dark and not seeing a branch. And Michelle is just complaining about how cold she is and how uncomfortable it was to try to sleep since she's thin and has no padding.
At the immunity challenge, six team members are tied together, and they have to make their way through an obstacle course, at the end of which they have to dig up three bags of puzzle pieces, and then the three remaining team members have to solve the puzzle. Kota kicked ass on this challenge, with Bob helping to breeze through the puzzle, as they solved one bag at a time. They won the immunity idol as well as flint to start fire with. Fang failed at the challenge mostly in digging for the puzzle pieces. They were digging in a small section and just going deeper rather than looking in a wider circle, and some of their members got tired and would take breaks.
At Fang, they have to decide who to vote out that night. Geek Ken has been the only person that Michelle talks to, and he is flattered by her attention, so he wants to keep her, but pretty much everyone else doesn't like her. She says that she hates her tribe and that they're all stupid. Yeah, nice way to fit in.
At tribal council, the chaos on the team is evident, and GC is nominated as team leader, which he accepts. As expected, Michelle is voted off, but the tribe gets fire to take back to camp with them. It was kind of weird to not see Michelle's final comments, but the husband says they usually show it over the end credits, so since this was a two-hour episode, they didn't show it. There was a note that her final comments could be seen online. The video of her final words can be seen here. Yep, she's still a clueless, bitter, delusional bitch.
At Kota, a love relationship is definitely forming. Well, a one-sided one at least. Charlie is completely in love with Marcus and hangs on his every word. Too bad for him that Marcus doesn't swing that way.
At Fang, GC is taking his leader role to heart and is giving instructions and advice about what people should do. Randy is not happy with that particular development. A four-person alliance is struck among Charlie, Marcus, Corinne and Jacquie. (Corinne just kept reminding me of a young Karen Allen.) GC is up early the next morning, making noise, and more people get up and talk, and Gillian complains about the noise so early in the morning when others are still trying to sleep, but GC complains that a number of people were snoring so he wasn't getting any sleep anyway. GC is frustrated and decides to resign his position as team leader. GC's attitude is seriously getting on my nerves. The team then decides to bond by painting their faces using the charcoal from the fire, to give them a boost at the next challenge.
The next immunity challenge includes a reward - a full set of fishing gear. The team has to push a huge boulder through a series of gates and obstacles, get sets of keys, undo locks and then put the boulder on a stand. Again, Kota wins, and they also get to pick one person from Fang to send to Exile Island, and they choose Dan. Maybe Fang needs to pay more attention to actually working together to win challenges rather than just painting their faces and looking tough.
Kota makes good use of their fishing equipment, and soon, they're feasting and partying and basically having a great time.
Not having such a great time is Dan, who's sent more to Exile Area-of-land-away-from-camps since it's not an island. He gets the choice of either comfort (apple and shelter) or a clue to the hidden individual immunity idol. He picks the clue, thinking it'll be easy, but he doesn't pay careful enough attention to the instructions and ends up looking completely in the wrong place. There's no indication that he got the idol.
Things are going a little better at Fang, where the members are actually working together a bit more. Randy fashions a make-shift fish hook from his glasses, and people are out digging for worms as bait, and they actually manage to catch a couple of fish that way. When Dan returns, though, they are suspicious of whether he found the immunity idol.
At tribal council that night, Gillian is voted out.
Bob's team is named Kota and has the yellow buffs. Gillian's team is named Fang and has the red buffs.
The first challenge is for individual immunity, which is at the top of a hill. The first one from each tribe to get there gets an individual immunity that can only be used at their first tribal council. But the twist is that while both teams will get some ration of food, the first team to get all their members up the hill will win additional food. Marcus from Kota and GC (whose real name is Danny) from Fang get individual immunity, but Gillian is lagging behind and as much as her teammates try to help her, Kota gets all of their team up first and gets the extra food.
Both teams find at their respective camps that they had pre-made structures which just needed some shoring up, which was definitely an advantage over some other locations. At Kota, I thought Jessica, otherwise known as "Sugar", was being a little annoying, but the tribe members thought Ace was being too bossy. Bob, however, is able to contribute a lot to getting camp working better. Meanwhile at Fang, Gillian is being a bit overbearing while Randy puts a big gash in his head from walking around in the dark and not seeing a branch. And Michelle is just complaining about how cold she is and how uncomfortable it was to try to sleep since she's thin and has no padding.
At the immunity challenge, six team members are tied together, and they have to make their way through an obstacle course, at the end of which they have to dig up three bags of puzzle pieces, and then the three remaining team members have to solve the puzzle. Kota kicked ass on this challenge, with Bob helping to breeze through the puzzle, as they solved one bag at a time. They won the immunity idol as well as flint to start fire with. Fang failed at the challenge mostly in digging for the puzzle pieces. They were digging in a small section and just going deeper rather than looking in a wider circle, and some of their members got tired and would take breaks.
At Fang, they have to decide who to vote out that night. Geek Ken has been the only person that Michelle talks to, and he is flattered by her attention, so he wants to keep her, but pretty much everyone else doesn't like her. She says that she hates her tribe and that they're all stupid. Yeah, nice way to fit in.
At tribal council, the chaos on the team is evident, and GC is nominated as team leader, which he accepts. As expected, Michelle is voted off, but the tribe gets fire to take back to camp with them. It was kind of weird to not see Michelle's final comments, but the husband says they usually show it over the end credits, so since this was a two-hour episode, they didn't show it. There was a note that her final comments could be seen online. The video of her final words can be seen here. Yep, she's still a clueless, bitter, delusional bitch.
At Kota, a love relationship is definitely forming. Well, a one-sided one at least. Charlie is completely in love with Marcus and hangs on his every word. Too bad for him that Marcus doesn't swing that way.
At Fang, GC is taking his leader role to heart and is giving instructions and advice about what people should do. Randy is not happy with that particular development. A four-person alliance is struck among Charlie, Marcus, Corinne and Jacquie. (Corinne just kept reminding me of a young Karen Allen.) GC is up early the next morning, making noise, and more people get up and talk, and Gillian complains about the noise so early in the morning when others are still trying to sleep, but GC complains that a number of people were snoring so he wasn't getting any sleep anyway. GC is frustrated and decides to resign his position as team leader. GC's attitude is seriously getting on my nerves. The team then decides to bond by painting their faces using the charcoal from the fire, to give them a boost at the next challenge.
The next immunity challenge includes a reward - a full set of fishing gear. The team has to push a huge boulder through a series of gates and obstacles, get sets of keys, undo locks and then put the boulder on a stand. Again, Kota wins, and they also get to pick one person from Fang to send to Exile Island, and they choose Dan. Maybe Fang needs to pay more attention to actually working together to win challenges rather than just painting their faces and looking tough.
Kota makes good use of their fishing equipment, and soon, they're feasting and partying and basically having a great time.
Not having such a great time is Dan, who's sent more to Exile Area-of-land-away-from-camps since it's not an island. He gets the choice of either comfort (apple and shelter) or a clue to the hidden individual immunity idol. He picks the clue, thinking it'll be easy, but he doesn't pay careful enough attention to the instructions and ends up looking completely in the wrong place. There's no indication that he got the idol.
Things are going a little better at Fang, where the members are actually working together a bit more. Randy fashions a make-shift fish hook from his glasses, and people are out digging for worms as bait, and they actually manage to catch a couple of fish that way. When Dan returns, though, they are suspicious of whether he found the immunity idol.
At tribal council that night, Gillian is voted out.
Monday, September 1, 2008
2008 fall television season
Since today is Labor Day, that means it's September, and September means that the start of the new fall TV season is imminently upon us. Here's a run-down of the shows that I plan to be watching this year, which means, unless I get another really bad case of writer's block when it comes to TV shows, these are the shows I will be blogging about.
America's Toughest Jobs - Monday, 9pm, NBC - I really don't need another reality show to watch, but the previews for this show intrigued me enough to watch the first episode. I like that this show isn't just about made-up challenges - the challenges are actual jobs that the contestants have to do, and these aren't run-of-the-mill desk jobs. The first episode involved going out on crabbing boats and being on the water for 24 hours with very few breaks and amazing swells and lots of heavy ropes and cages to lift and sorting through crabs and just a ton of work. It definitely made me appreciate all the work that crabbers have to go through, and it made me annoyed with the people who just wouldn't do the work. I did think it was funny that the person on each team who did the best was a woman, especially since some of the guys had been smack-talking about how it was hard work and it was no place for girls to be. Yeah, dude, shut up and just do the work. They've shown previews of the other jobs/challenges that will be coming up, so I'm looking forward to seeing more.
90210 - series premiere Tuesday, Sept. 2, 8pm, CW - I loved the old "Beverly Hills 90210" show, so I'm going to give this new show a shot. I'm not sure I'm still going to be interested in high school antics, but we'll see. If nothing else, I have to see what they do with Kelly's and Donna's characters.
Kitchen Nightmares - season premiere Thursday, Sept. 4, 8pm, Fox - I have to remember not to eat while watching this show, or at least not look at the screen too closely, but I like this alternate side of Gordon Ramsay. The first episode, showing this week, is supposed to revisit some of the restaurants featured on previous shows, to see what has happened to those restaurants since the shows aired. That should be interesting to see.
Hole in the Wall - series premiere Sunday, Sept. 7, 8pm, Fox - This is the American version of the Japanese show Human Tetris. I've been looking forward to seeing this, though I'm not actually sure how long it's going to be able to retain my interest since the games will be fairly repetitive. But maybe watching people trying to contort themself without having to think too hard about the show might be a nice weekly break.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - season premiere Monday, Sept. 8, 8pm, Fox - I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the new season of this show. The end of last season was quite explosive, literally, so I want to see how they explain some of the new developments.
Fringe - series premiere Tuesday, Sept. 9, 8pm, Fox - I'm not entirely sure what the show is about, and I haven't even really seen a trailer for the show, but seeing the billboards has intrigued me. I'm not particularly in the J.J. Abrams fan club, but I'm curious enough to give this show a try.
The Big Bang Theory - season premiere Monday, Sept. 22, 8pm, CBS - I'm looking forward to seeing the show this season, to see where they take the Penny/Leonard thing, and to hopefully see them build on the great start from last year. This is my only sitcom this year, so I need it to provide me with lots of laughs.
Heroes - season premiere Monday, Sept. 22, 9pm, NBC - They've already told us what to expect this year by subtitling the show "Villains", and apparently, Nikki isn't so much dead. I didn't think last season was as good as the first season, but I'm still liking the show, and the previews look great.
Knight Rider - series premiere Wednesday, Sept. 24, 8pm, NBC - I enjoyed the movie earlier this year, so I'm glad the show got picked up. Go, Justin Bruening! Looking forward to seeing this show.
Survivor: Gabon - season premiere Thursday, Sept. 25, 8pm, CBS - I've been watching the show now since the end of the first season, but I actually haven't decided whether I'm going to be watching this season. I've gotten a little tired of it, so it will probably be a matter of whether the previews interest me and if the first couple of episodes make me invested enough to keep watching. Sometimes, the people are just too stupid and aggravating to me for me to enjoy the show.
Desperate Housewives - season premiere Sunday, Sept. 28, 9pm, ABC - Since the new season continues the five-years-ahead jump that ended the last season, I'm interested in seeing what all the new developments are, especially since Edie didn't leave like I thought she had.
There are two other shows that I'm looking forward to seeing, but they won't be on for a while.
24 - Yes, the stupid writers' strike meant that last season didn't happen at all, so I have to wait until January 2009 for the new season to start, though there's supposed to be a movie in November, I think. Need to see Jack Bauer again!
Dollhouse - The show isn't currently on Fox's schedule, but it's expected to start airing probably sometime in January. The premise sounds interesting, and I like both Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku, so I've definitely got to give the show a try.
These are the shows that I'll be watching, and here's an article that has the season/series premiere dates for all the returning and new fall TV shows so you can find the ones you're interested in.
America's Toughest Jobs - Monday, 9pm, NBC - I really don't need another reality show to watch, but the previews for this show intrigued me enough to watch the first episode. I like that this show isn't just about made-up challenges - the challenges are actual jobs that the contestants have to do, and these aren't run-of-the-mill desk jobs. The first episode involved going out on crabbing boats and being on the water for 24 hours with very few breaks and amazing swells and lots of heavy ropes and cages to lift and sorting through crabs and just a ton of work. It definitely made me appreciate all the work that crabbers have to go through, and it made me annoyed with the people who just wouldn't do the work. I did think it was funny that the person on each team who did the best was a woman, especially since some of the guys had been smack-talking about how it was hard work and it was no place for girls to be. Yeah, dude, shut up and just do the work. They've shown previews of the other jobs/challenges that will be coming up, so I'm looking forward to seeing more.
90210 - series premiere Tuesday, Sept. 2, 8pm, CW - I loved the old "Beverly Hills 90210" show, so I'm going to give this new show a shot. I'm not sure I'm still going to be interested in high school antics, but we'll see. If nothing else, I have to see what they do with Kelly's and Donna's characters.
Kitchen Nightmares - season premiere Thursday, Sept. 4, 8pm, Fox - I have to remember not to eat while watching this show, or at least not look at the screen too closely, but I like this alternate side of Gordon Ramsay. The first episode, showing this week, is supposed to revisit some of the restaurants featured on previous shows, to see what has happened to those restaurants since the shows aired. That should be interesting to see.
Hole in the Wall - series premiere Sunday, Sept. 7, 8pm, Fox - This is the American version of the Japanese show Human Tetris. I've been looking forward to seeing this, though I'm not actually sure how long it's going to be able to retain my interest since the games will be fairly repetitive. But maybe watching people trying to contort themself without having to think too hard about the show might be a nice weekly break.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - season premiere Monday, Sept. 8, 8pm, Fox - I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the new season of this show. The end of last season was quite explosive, literally, so I want to see how they explain some of the new developments.
Fringe - series premiere Tuesday, Sept. 9, 8pm, Fox - I'm not entirely sure what the show is about, and I haven't even really seen a trailer for the show, but seeing the billboards has intrigued me. I'm not particularly in the J.J. Abrams fan club, but I'm curious enough to give this show a try.
The Big Bang Theory - season premiere Monday, Sept. 22, 8pm, CBS - I'm looking forward to seeing the show this season, to see where they take the Penny/Leonard thing, and to hopefully see them build on the great start from last year. This is my only sitcom this year, so I need it to provide me with lots of laughs.
Heroes - season premiere Monday, Sept. 22, 9pm, NBC - They've already told us what to expect this year by subtitling the show "Villains", and apparently, Nikki isn't so much dead. I didn't think last season was as good as the first season, but I'm still liking the show, and the previews look great.
Knight Rider - series premiere Wednesday, Sept. 24, 8pm, NBC - I enjoyed the movie earlier this year, so I'm glad the show got picked up. Go, Justin Bruening! Looking forward to seeing this show.
Survivor: Gabon - season premiere Thursday, Sept. 25, 8pm, CBS - I've been watching the show now since the end of the first season, but I actually haven't decided whether I'm going to be watching this season. I've gotten a little tired of it, so it will probably be a matter of whether the previews interest me and if the first couple of episodes make me invested enough to keep watching. Sometimes, the people are just too stupid and aggravating to me for me to enjoy the show.
Desperate Housewives - season premiere Sunday, Sept. 28, 9pm, ABC - Since the new season continues the five-years-ahead jump that ended the last season, I'm interested in seeing what all the new developments are, especially since Edie didn't leave like I thought she had.
There are two other shows that I'm looking forward to seeing, but they won't be on for a while.
24 - Yes, the stupid writers' strike meant that last season didn't happen at all, so I have to wait until January 2009 for the new season to start, though there's supposed to be a movie in November, I think. Need to see Jack Bauer again!
Dollhouse - The show isn't currently on Fox's schedule, but it's expected to start airing probably sometime in January. The premise sounds interesting, and I like both Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku, so I've definitely got to give the show a try.
These are the shows that I'll be watching, and here's an article that has the season/series premiere dates for all the returning and new fall TV shows so you can find the ones you're interested in.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
"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.
"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.
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