Static Zombie

Best... Season... Ever

Tonight I caught up on Survivor through the finale. If this season proves anything, it's that when you make a deal with the Devil, the man with the horns really comes through. There's no other way to explain the otherwise inexplicably great television Mark Burnett managed to pull out of people who supposedly really knew the game.

As far as Ozzy goes, you can't blame him for not playing his idol and trusting his alliance. The gloves hadn't truly come off yet. Ozzy had to know in his heart that he had no prayer of making it to the finals, that nobody would want to go up against him. But there was no reason for him to believe that an ally would turn on him then.

Jason, on the other hand, had no excuse. Having just seen the guy with the immunity idol get betrayed, he should have had a clue. For him to believe the women wouldn't vote for him was stupidity of the highest order. Or so I thought. Turns out it was only the second-highest order, and that another player would later change the Survivor motto to include "Out-stupid."

Where the heck did they find Erik? A cryo-chamber from the fifties? I didn't think they made people that naive anymore. As a lifelong fan of the show, the boy should have picked up some lessons. Instead, his eyes were too wide to see anything clearly, and he got hoodwinked by the biggest load of bull since Ferdinand. I don't think he would have won the game had he not thrown himself under the bus, but Parvati was right-- hands down the dumbest player ever. The best reaction was James, proclaiming that he-- having been voted out with TWO immunity idols in his pocket in his own season-- was no longer the dumbest player.

Speaking of James, as much as it sucked for him to be medically removed from the game, his only chance to make ti to the end was to win all the immunities. Not impossible, but unlikely-- he's just not as good an all-around player as Ozzy. So I don't feel like he was shafted as much as Jonathan was.

I don't understand why Parvati and Amanda voted Alexis out instead of Natalie when Amanda used the hidden immunity idol. Alexis might have seemed like a bigger threat with the jury, but with her injured leg she was a far weaker threat in challenges. The right move was to get rid of Natalie first, then make sure Alexis didn't get immunity and oust her next. It turned out not to matter, of course, but it was a baffler nevertheless.

As far as the final tribal council goes, I'm very surprised at how bitter Ozzy was. It's a game. Parvati made a move in the game. It doesn't say anything about how she values friendships outside of it. Again and again on Survivor and Big Brother, people get their feelings hurt when people they hadn't even met a month earlier decide to look after themselves first, when that's exactly the game they signed up for. TWICE, in Ozzy's case. And people like Eliza sit there with smug, holier-than-thou expressions on their faces, thinking they're above it all when really they're just bitter that their game wasn't as good as that of the people who haven't yet been ousted. I'm not saying I wouldn't be angry if my chance at a million bucks slipped away due to the machinations of others, but at least have the decency to respect the game and deal with it.

But what the heck was the deal with Natalie's question to Parvati? I didn't even understand it.

Parvati's game was definitely stronger than Amanda's, but I didn't think she had a chance with the jury. Looks like the women all respected Parvati's aggression and disdained Amanda's more passive approach. You have to feel a little bad for Amanda, who made it to the finals two seasons in a row and lost the final vote each time.

I wish Probst would have polled the jury to see how they would have voted had it been a final three instead of a final two. It would have been interesting to see how many votes would have gone to Cirie.

And finally... Parvati's actual last name is Shallow. You just can't make that up.

Petards, and Getting Hoisted Thereon

I was literally giggling with glee at the result of this week's Survivor tribal council, as Joel reaped what he had sown. The beauty of it is that even though he recognized the poetic justice of the situation a priori, once the axe came down on his head his final remarks indicated he could dish it out but couldn't take it. "How could they vote to keep someone like Chet?" he asked. He should know the answer to that, because he did it twice himself!. Joel went about the game all wrong from the start. The Fans should have banded together from the outset under the theory that the advantage would be with the Favorites' greater experience, and so they needed to remain united to have any chance. Instead Joel began by picking off the greatest threats to him personally, ignoring the larger needs of his team. Good riddance to bad rubbish, says I.

But let's talk about Cirie, who looked like she'd swallowed the canary during tribal council. That woman is playing the game harder than anyone else on the island, and none of the other players even know it. If they realized how crafty she's being, they'd bounce her in a heartbeat. She's doing all the right things. To stay alive, she has to band together with other "weaker" players and pick off the strong ones until the merge. While it's a team game, the physically weak are vulnerable, but once it becomes an individual game the equation inverts and the physical threats need to watch their backs while the weak cruise forward. Her game is all about surviving to the merge. I'm a little surpised Ozzy and Amanda agreed to oust Joel-- I'd have thought they'd have been confident enough to keep him around for the sake of a stronger tribe. All they have to do is make it to the merge and get reunited with James and Parvati, and the four of them are in a potentially great position.

I can't wait to see the faces of the other tribe when they learn that Joel was voted out. I'm predicting slack-jawed shock all around.

That was a brutal reward challenge. I suspect the producers had no idea it would become such an injury factory. But really-- Joel and Chet? How either of them agreed to that pairing is a mystery. I hope Jonathan isn't removed from the game because of his injury. That's just a horrible way to leave Survivor, not knowing if you'd have been able to make it to the end. But that wound looked nasty, and a choice between staying in the game and risking death is no choice at all.

Survivor: Fans vs Favorites

I'm not sure why they bothered with the "Micronesia" subtitle this season. Even Jeff Probst has dispensed with the tribe name malarky, just calling them Fans and Favorites.

Palau winner Tom Westman was the only previous winner invited to participate in this mini-All-Stars season, and he wisely declined with sage reasoning. He won his season without ever having a single vote cast against him. He has nothing left to prove, and playing again would only result in tarnishing that achievement. The rest of the Favorites are eager for a second shot at the million dollar brass ring. Except for Fairplay, who only deepened my disaste for him by taking up one of the coveted spots in the cast and then asking to be voted out (and had the gall to insist at tribal council that it wasn't a "quit"). Here's Osten's phone number. Have some drinks.

Jonathan continues to get a bad rap. As I remember it, the man never lied or backstabbed anyone during his season. He was simply tagged as being untrustworthy, likely because of his accent and pushiness, and it stuck. He's certainly shown more leadership and loyalty toward his alliance this season than others have.

I don't understand why the Yau-Man stick got so far up Cirie's butt as to impair her judgment. Yau-Man is definitely a weaker player physically, and from that standpoint a reasonable candidate for eviction. But Cirie wasn't playing that angle. She was so terrified of likable yet weak, one-dimensional Yau-Man getting the immunity idol, she sided with two couples to evict him. No alliance is a bigger threat than a couple. With only one other person to be loyal to, couple alliances don't fall prey to internal squabbling or playing one member off another. They're dangerous. When one member of the couple is one of the strongest physical players in the history of the game, that alliance is terrifying. When TWO such alliances exist, only a fool would pass up the chance-- the imperative-- to break them up. The possibility of that move paying off for her in the long run doesn't change the fact that strategically, it was beyond stupid.

I'd love to know how Ozzy managed to get everyone to agree to send him to Exile Island. If I were a Favorite, the LAST person I'd put within reach of an immunity idol is Ozzy. What the hell were they thinking? I really hope the guy wins-- he's a phenomenal physical player, and it's been a little while since we've seen one of those win the day. Taking a page from Yau-Man's book by creating a fake immunity idol is genius. I just hope someone falls for it!

Meanwhile, over at the Fans' camp, we have the biggest egomaniac ever to play the game. Joel was so bothered by the idea of someone else on the tribe calling the shots-- or thinking he was calling the shots-- that he twice opted to weaken the tribe rather than let that slight against his manhood go unchecked. Major props to Tracy, Yoyo-Ma to Joel's testosterone-riddled cello. Brilliantly played. Fear her.

Kathy, meanwhile, is so starstruck at meeting past players that she's blown the major advantage of being on Exile Island three times by completely bailing on the quest for the idol. When she gets voted out, she'll have nobody to blame but herself. That idol had her name written all over it.

Next week's shuffling of the tribes should change everything, depending on who winds up where. I'm quite enjoying this season. The mix of new and old faces struck a perfect balance, and all it cost was a tiny bit more of Mark Burnett's soul.

Torchwood

When the BBC brought back longtime favorite Doctor Who a few years ago, they made some very smart changes. Instead of a serial format where stories extend over multiple half-hours, stories became self-contained one-hour episodes. Production values were upgraded from what can only be called laughable to something much more in tune with what modern viewers expect-- ie, CGI instead of rubber masks. The baggage of thirty years of mythology was largely pitched, with key elements slowly reintroduced for modern viewers. But fundamentally, Doctor Who remained a family program suitable for early evening viewing.

Enter Torchwood. If you live in the United States and don't get BBC America, you've been missing out on the best new science fiction series since Battlestar Galactica. Torchwood spins off both a guest character and its name from Doctor Who (the two titles are anagrams), but ventures into darker, sexier territory than the Tardis ever explored. I like to describe Torchwood as Britain's answer to The X-Files, but without the endlessly strung-out government conspiracy / alien invasion hoo-ha dragging it down.

An impressive feat, since Torchwood itself is a secret government conspiracy. It's an agency established by Queen Victoria who, upon meeting The Doctor, realized that aliens could pose a threat to the world (and by extension, Britain). Torchwood exists "outside government" (much like the Bush administration) to monitor alien threats, recover alien technology, and prepare humanity for the 21st century when, according to the show's intro, "everything changes." The Cardiff branch of Torchwood is led by Captain Jack Harkness, an openly bisexual man with a mysterious past who, thanks to some shenanigans in the first season of Doctor Who, cannot die. His support team includes medical officer Owen, computer specialist Tosh, and admin Ianto. Police officer Gwen joins up in episode one and becomes the viewer's point-of-view character.

Torchwood isn't as cerebral or philosophical as Battlestar Galactica, nor as juvenile as Doctor Who-- it's a more mature detective-adventure romp with sophisticated storylines and character development. Even the sophomoric premise of episode two-- alien sex-fiend possesses humans and anyone copulating with it dissolves into dust-- is treated with surprising style and depth.

The good news is, the complete first season of Torchwood has just been released on DVD, and season two begins on BBC America this week-- so now's the time to jump aboard and see what you've been missing.

They're Still Pissed the Earth Doesn't Revolve Around Them

Wow. Just, wow.

But what can you expect from a culture that reveres Jerry Lewis?

Survivors Ready... Screwed!

I'm all for mixing it up a little, but this week's twist was colossally ill-considered. Tribes have gotten shuffled in all sorts of ways in the past, most commonly by random draw or a draft. The former, being random, is by definition completely fair. The outcome may wind up favoring some and disadvantaging others, but nobody is predisposed to wind up in either group. The draft is weighted toward the people doing the draft, but so much can change afterward that the advantage is relatively weak. Taking the two strongest members from each tribe and sending them over to the other side, on the other hand, is virtually guaranteed to punish the players who have arguably been the best players thus far.

At that stage of the game, the defectors are going to be outnumbered by the old guard in their new tribe. If that tribe loses an immunity challenge, it's a no-brainer to decide to pick off the defectors instead of eating their own-- especially because it happened late enough in the game that players can reasonably expect a merge to come before too long. Peigee's decision to throw the challenge and dump a strong competitor, as loathesome as it was, was spot-on correct. Assuming a merge is coming, it's downright brilliant. She's killing two birds with one stone, knocking out the strongest individual competitors while preserving the numbers on her original tribe. If that tribe holds together post-merge, it puts them in a position of great advantage. If her theory is wrong and the merge doesn't happen, it could be trouble-- but the merge has always happened in the 8-10 player range (and most often at the high end), so it's a reasonable gamble.

The problem is that the producers should have seen this coming. This shuffle was GUARANTEED to screw the players deemed the strongest. As a viewer I find it abhorrent. As a player, I might even find it actionable. I detest twists like this that arbitrarily screw a player's game. I'd rather players be allowed to pursue their strategies and play them out to their natural conclusions. But this twist is even worse-- it seems calculated to undermine or eliminate the players who are most dominant and threatening to the rest. And since those players didn't know it was coming, they had no chance to consider changing their play style beforehand to adapt to it. A strong player always runs the risk of being voted out prematurely, but they compensate for it by building alliances and winning immunities. This twist nullified those options and left the strong players to hang in the wind.

Mark Burnett, let the contestants play the game. Don't play them.

Heroes of a Thousand Cliches

Even without catching up with Nikki, D.L, Micah, Candice, or why-did-we-bother-creating-this-character-at-all-I-Can-Hear-The-Internet-Girl, there were too many balls in the air in the season premiere of Heroes. And most of them were worn and pock-marked from overuse. Accidentally meddling with history and being forced to make things right is the oldest time travel trope there is-- combining it with the "your hero isn't the hero you thought he was" chestnut doesn't make it any fresher. And... amensia? Really, that's the best you can do? <shakes head ruefully>.

So let's review the big picture plot threads: We've got a Very Bad Man Molly's having nightmares about. The Linderman conspiracy members are being stalked and killed by one of their own. A virus exists that depowers and kills Heroes. Meanwhile, Peter's got to regain his identity, Mohinder's infiltrating The Company, and Hiro's playing Sancho Panza.

The most intriguing moment was when Nathan saw a scarred reflection of himself. My first thought was that Peter had picked up Candice's ability, Nathan died in the explosion, and that was really Peter. Future Hiro, after all, said that Peter looked much different without his scar. Peter's appearance in the shipping container throws a wrench in that theory, but the flying kid hitting on Claire gives me a different take on that theory. Nathan? Still dead. But the explosion somehow split Peter into multiple people: the flying kid, amnesiac Peter, and guilt-ridden-Peter-as-Nathan. The kid was a little too interested in Claire right out of the gate (although, really, who can blame him-- Hayden Panettiere is a beauty), and his whole robot/alien thing sounded very Peteresque to me. While there's no reason two heroes can't have the same ability, we haven't seen any duplication yet-- so the fact that the kid can fly and has a special interest in Claire makes me wonder if he's a fragment of Peter.

Worst. Play. Ever.

After a long period of inactivity here-- and ample things to blog about-- what drove me to post was tonight's collossal strategic error on Big Brother.

After Dick nominated Jameka and Eric, I had a flash of excitement when I realized the coolest possibility. If Zach won the power of veto, he could rescue one of the nominees-- leaving Dick with no choice but to nominate Daniele. Zach and the rescued nominee could then vote her out! It would be a thing of beauty.

So when Zach actually won the power of veto, I was elated! I just hoped that he'd be smart enough to figure that out, or that Eric would think of it and convince him to do it. And watching Zach's expression, it looked like he'd worked it out on his own. When he stood to announce his decision, I thought he'd make the obvious play and split up the strongest alliance in the house.

Imagine my shock when he opted not to use the veto. What a lummox! The playing field would have been completely level with Eric, Jameka, Dick, and Zach remaining. Instead, Jameka and Zach are up against an unbreakable alliance, and Daniele is a fierce competitor who's won more competitions than anyone else in the house. What the hell was he thinking?

With Eric gone, Dick and Daniele are the clear favorites to win and the most deserving from a gameplay perspective. I have no patience for people who abdicate all personal responsibility to God, and as for Zach... how is he even still in the game? I can't imagine anyone actually voting for him to win-- making him a great person to bring to the finals. Sigh...

You're Now in the Hands... of the Blogger

Yes, the money. No question. But the other reason to go on a television game show is for the thrill ride of the experience. It's fun. It was just as much fun at the Play It! attraction at Walt Disney World. The crowd, the music, the drama, the tension-- that's juice, baby. As thrilled as I was to win big bucks, I couldn't help but be disappointed about not reaching the top prize. Not just for the money, but for the potential loss of future opportunities to play. The better I did, the greater the chance of being invited back for a tournament of champions or as a Wise Man. A chance to win more money would be great, but I'd do it even with no prize at stake. Playing a high-tension game in front of a live, cheering audience is exhilirating. For a game player like me, it doesn't get much better.

That tournament of champions may never happen, but Millionaire producer Michael Davies is behind a meta-tournament on Game Show Network called Grand Slam. Sixteen of the best players from game show history compete for $100,000 and bragging rights in a terrific high-pressure showdown. Sadly, despite winning more than some of the competitors, I wasn't invited. A shame, because I'd be really good at this format.

The game is played in four rounds-- trivia, numbers and logic, words and letters, and a final round combining all three. Players each get a minute on their chess clock, and time inexorably ticks away from one side or the other. A correct answer stops a player's clock and starts his opponent's. Incorrect answers, including "Pass!", incur no penalty beyond the time it takes quizmaster Pat Kiernan to read the correct answer and move on to another question. When one player's clock expires, the other carries his remaining time over to round four. Whoever wins that final decisive round advances in the tournament.

This is not a game for the faint of heart. It calls for extremely quick thinking, recall, and the ability to triage questions on the fly and recognize which are time sinks better passed than deliberated over. The numbers and logic round is particularly troublesome for many players, having earned their cash on the merits of their trivia or word skills. The roster reads like a Who's Who of modern game shows, and it's been fascinating to watch top players duke it out.

The broadcast could use some trimming. They seem to be going for the Iron Chef effect of comedically overwrought gravitas, but it doesn't really work. Dennis Miller seems out of his element calling the play by play, and his co-host Amanda Byram rarely has anything insightful to offer. Kiernan is stellar as always, but his banishment off-screen is baffling. In his recent stint on The World Series of Pop Culture he's demonstrated some great timing and charm, loosening up quite a bit since his run on the ill-fated Studio 7. If we can't trim out all the fluff and pack more game into the show-- expanding each player's clock by 30 seconds would make me very happy-- I'd love to see Kiernan in the booth as Miller's foil.

The rules could also use a little tweaking. Each player begins the match with three Switches which bounce a question to the other side. An opponent is allowed to Switch right back, however, and strategically that's going to be the right play virtually every time. They'd be far more interesting if a player couldn't Switch back, but rather had to give a correct answer before he could use a Switch of his own.

Game Show Network is running these every Saturday, and will run the whole shebang as a marathon before the final match on September 8, which should be a doozy. I hope GSN brings this back next year for another season, because it's got great drama and a high play-along factor. And hey-- Michael Davies-- put me in, coach-- I'm so ready to play!

Public Service Announcement

It is with great pleasure that I remind you that the best game show to appear in a very, very long time, The World Series of Pop Culture, is back for a second season on VH1. The ineffably droll and peculiarly charming Pat Kiernan returns to preside over the single-elimination knock-down drag out trivia fest, with inaugural champions El Chupacabra defending their title.

The budget seems a little bigger, but the format is unchanged. Perhaps the most winsome aspect of the show is that everyone really seems to be having a great time. Nothing is blown out of perspective-- they're all keenly aware that they're showing off knowledge that they really shouldn't be proud of having, and the fact that they're being allowed to do so is prize enough.

Whether you're a pop culture vulture like me or a mere dilettante, do tune in for a reminder of what game shows are supposed to be. And for a really fun trivia game, check out the World Series of Pop Culture web site and play Too Many Questions.

Stargate: SG-1 Finale

As uneven as Stargate: SG-1 has been in the latter half of its run, I'm sorry to see it go. It took a more lighthearted approach than Stargate: Atlantis, and that willingness to laugh at itself made up for a lot of the show's shortcomings.

The series finale was, I thought, beautifully done. The tone of cabin fever, determination to preserve the Asgard's legacy, paying off the obvious chemistry between Vala and Daniel, and the simplicity of the direction all worked perfectly. If there was one note they missed, it was Richard Dean Anderson's absence in a story involving the final fate of the Asgard. Given the history between them, Thor's farewell scene should have been with O'Neill instead of Carter. Given the nature of the mission O'Neill would certainly have gone, so perhaps they couldn't get Anderson for the episode.

The series continues in two direct-to-video movies to be released next year. The first, The Ark of Truth, wraps up the Ori storyline, while the other is a self-contained time-travel story called Continuum in which Earth's Stargate program is erased from the timeline. I do loooooove me the time travel stories...

Exploding Tumors

Spoilers for Stargate: Atlantis follow

In a world of internet news and instant spoilers, it's rare for a major development in a television show to come as a complete surprise to me unless I've made a concerted effort, as I do with Lost or Heroes, to avoid seeing any spilled beans. So it's astonishing to me that Doctor Carson Beckett's death on Stargate: Atlantis came as a complete shock-- especially since the episode aired months ago in Canada and the UK. Shows how low the show is on the Hollywood food chain.

I've searched the net in vain for information on what spurred this baffling decision. Actor Paul McGillion's portrayal of the Scottish doctor was one of the highlights of the show, as he exhibited remarkable chemistry with everyone in the cast. Consequently Beckett became more than just the moral center of the series-- in many ways, he became its soul. You just couldn't help but like the guy, and any scene with him in it was richer for it. That kind of impact is rare, and excising it from your ensemble seems beyond boneheaded. Did they learning nothing from the debacle of killing off Daniel Jackson on SG:1 (only to bring him back a season later)?

Apparently not-- and history seems to be repeating itself. Fan reaction was swift and deeply felt, and producers have figured out a way to write the character back in for 2-3 episodes at the end of the next season with a possibility of a full-time return in season five. But that still doesn't explain why they killed him in the first place. It certainly wasn't because the story-- about exploding tumors, of all things-- demanded it.

On the bright side, next season Jewel Staite (Firefly's Kaylee) joins the cast. On the down side, Torri Higginson's Dr Weir gets downgraded to recurring character. And somewhere in between, Amanda Tapping's Samantha Carter also joins the cast. Tapping's Carter hits very few notes, so her voice brings little new to the table except for the inevitable conflict with McKay-- which will no doubt become tiresome quickly. It's a bit like Worf moving over to Deep Space Nine after TNG's conclusion-- not the character I'd prefer to see make the transition (either Vala or Daniel would be my choice), but I appreciate the continuity.

Hell's Basket Cases

"Casting? Hi, it's Kent over at Hell's Kitchen. We loved what you did for us last year-- where did you dug up that dopey low-rider Keith? This year we want to push the boundaries even further. No! Oh, God no-- stay the hell away from cooking schools or Michelin-rated restaurants. Don't get me wrong, the cast should all have some cooking experience-- we don't want anyone killing themselves, after all-- but nothing too advanced. If we actually got people who knew what they were doing, Gordon wouldn't be able to do his pissy yelling schtick. Give us two or three competent people so the finale has some tension, but otherwise go nuts. The more small-minded and petty they are, the better. And hey, I know you guys love a challenge, so there's an extra ten grand for you if you can dig up a cherubic minority pushing fifty who's sweet as can be but utterly incompetent and prone to bursts of uncontrollable weeping. Haha... yeah, okay-- make it 20 Gs-- but for that kind of money I expect some kind of freaky genetic anomaly thrown in as well. Oh-- and I can't stress this enough-- at least one of the women has to be smokin' hot. What? Sorry, no-- I know you didn't just fall off the truck. Okay, great. You're the best."

Ahoy, Reality!

It used to be that summer meant trips to the beach, tall glasses of lemonade, and long backups on 520 when the Mariners were in town. And perhaps it still means all of those things. But you really know that summer's arrived when all the reality competitions start reappearing on television. Not the best-of-breed Amazing Race or Survivor, mind you, but the one-offs and snark-fests. And I do believe I hear the catch phrases on the breeze.

Critics have keelhauled Mark Burnett's latest, Pirate Master, and for good reason-- it has a kind of Merchant-Ivory periodness that is ill-suited to the genre. Touches that must have sounded great on paper-- "We'll dress up one player as 'captain' and two more as 'mates', then give them clunky dialog to read!"-- just look dopey when real people are involved. The casting office was obvious hunting for another Rupert when they found Jamie. And in episode one, at least, the treasure hunting was thematic but unexciting.

But.

C'mon, people-- pirates! Yarrrrr! What more could you want from a cheesy summer romp? The payout structure, where the captain gets half, the mates each a quarter, and the rest of the crew splits the remaining quarter, was created to practically guarantee a mutiny. The first doofus to grab the captain's hat has seemingly never watched any reality TV competition. The idea that he might not always be captain seems to never have occurred to him until the possibility of a mutiny was announced, and so he made no attempts to foster good will among the other players. So already we have someone whose comeuppance shall be celebrated (zounds!). And while geek/goth-boy's compass ploy was clever, his utter failure to predict its ice-cold reception only underscored his lack of social awareness.

For you board gamers out there, this show is essentially a game of Junta for real money. As any good Presidente knows, the key to retaining power is keeping key players happy while lining your own pockets as surreptitiously as possible. It will be interesting to see if anyone on the show truly groks it before it's too late.

Sorry, Charlie

Well, things certainly happened tonight! Not a lot of questions got answered, of course, but the pieces sure moved around a lot.

I thought everything in the Looking Glass station was terrific. It hit all the right notes, with Charlie moving from confidence to hope to determined acceptance. I loved that as the water closed in around him, he had the presence of mind to communicate a key bit of information to Desmond. It was a good, noble death, and I thought the writers did a fine job here.

Hurley's cavalry charge was telegraphed, but I didn't expect the bus-- a great touch. Likewise for Sayid's thighs of death. Walt's reappearance certainly raises questions-- was it Walt, or was it the island? And if it was the island, does that mean Walt is dead (since all the other apparitions we've seen have been of dead people)?

Transforming the flashback to a flashforward was an unexpected twist, but that was a loooooooooooong way to go for that conversation with Kate and the revelation that the phone call was a mistake after all. So was Sawyer the man Kate was in a hurry to get back to, or was Sawyer in the casket?

I wonder, will they continue to flashforward next season, pulling a Galactica and jumping everything forward? Will the Oceanic survivors team up with Ben and the Others to fight the freighter occupants? If Penny's not associated with the freighter, who the heck is on that boat? What's the deal with Jacob anyway? And the real question: why the hell didn't the Others just talk to the Oceanic group in the first place and tell them what's what, instead of all this cloak and dagger nonsense? Well, the answer to the last question is "Then there would be no show." But I hope there's a reason for the characters to act stupidly beyond the requirements of the plot.

While Lost could definitely learn some lessons from Heroes in the moving-the-story-along-and-give-us-answers department, Heroes could learn a thing or two about finales from the Lost crew.

Heroes Season Finale

I've had a very busy three or four days-- about which, more later once I'm better rested. How busy? I'm so tired right now, I can't even bring myself to watch the Heroes finale because I want to enjoy it and not fall asleep partway through.

But I expect most of you have already seen it, so here's the place to comment. I'll follow up with my thoughts once I'm capable of having them again.

UPDATE: What a stunning disappointment.

There's a laundry list of failures for this episode, the most glaring of which is the anticlimactic final confrontation. In the alternate future episode we got a glimmer of what a fight between Peter and Sylar would look like, and it rocked. It was a tease, but we were OK with it because we knew the real show was coming in the finale. And then... fisticuffs? Really? With all the powers they've absorbed, Peter justs uses the super-strength he just picked up from Niki moments earlier, and Sylar just uses telekinesis? As viewers, we're entirely justified in feeling ripped off here. The show promised much, much more and failed to deliver. Other items on the list:

9-0

There was a lot of talk last night about Dreamz being smart, but come on. The guy can't string two thoughts together, let alone articulate them. You don't have to be educated to be smart, and you certainly don't need to be educated to realize that reneging on a public promise to a popular player will win you no friends. I'd wonder what he was thinking, but I know the answer-- he wasn't thinking. At least not coherently. When asked simple questions, the guy couldn't even give a simple answer. And when he did finally answer Probst's oft-repeated question, it was revisionist history and a blatant lie. It was clear from his interviews at the time that when he made the deal with Yau-Man, he fully intended to honor it. He understood the consequences, but he wanted the car and he claimed to value his integrity. But when the moment came, greed trumped honor. I certainly understand the dilemma, but a truly smart man would have realized that by reneging on the deal he was burning any chance of beating Earl in the finals. He simply couldn't win. A smart man would have realized that the winning play was to honor his deal. It wouldn't have been a million dollar win, but it would have allowed him to walk tall and possibly parlay that display of integrity into further opportunity as the man who decided his honor couldn't be bought. Instead, he revealed himself to be callow and untrustworthy and became one of the biggest losers in the history of Survivor.

In a world where the best player wins the money, Yau-Man would be a lot richer. His gameplay was brilliant, from sending himself to Exile Island to secure the second immunity idol, to sensing the trap his opponents had set for him and deciding on the fly to use the idol he had when he most needed it. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the show's automobile sponsor decided to give Yau-Man another truck for the positive PR value.

The jury was particularly bitter this season, notably-- and bizarrely-- Lisi. She practically voted herself out of the game, so where the hell is all that venom towards Cassandra coming from? News flash: EVERYONE's there for the million dollars. EVERYONE on the show is motivated by greed to some extent. Get over yourself. Another news flash for Boo: Tribal Council isn't exactly the forum for holier-than-thou Christian rhetoric. You all knew how the game was played when you signed on, and I don't recall anyone appointing Boo as Dreamz' spiritual guardian. I never got a good sense of who Boo was during the show, but that glimpse last night made me understand why everyone else wanted him gone.

If Yau-Man couldn't win the money, Earl was the right second choice. He may not have won any individual immunities, but he was definitely playing the game (unlike Cassandra, who was flying so far below the radar she had grass in her teeth). That he did so without ruffling any jury feathers is a remarkable accomplishment. Normally they show some of the voters' commentary during the final vote, and when they didn't do that this time I suspected it might be a sweep.

One of the more satisfying seasons of Survivor. Next, we'll see if Burnett can work his magic with pirates.

The Invisible Man

Leave it to Lost to answer some of the big questions about the island with a Ben flashback, but replace those questions with even bigger ones. Yes, Virginia, here there be spoilers.

We learn that contrary to what Ben's been telling everyone, he wasn't born on the island. Like seemingly everyone else who got marooned there, he had some serious issues with his parents. Loved the explanation for the VW bus and the skeleton (and beer!) inside it (and the fact that the writers thought ahead and gave us the bus episode in the first place to make this flashback more resonant). We didn't really find out more about what the Dharma Initiative was up to, and we know conclusively that Ben's group are the so-called Hostiles, but we have no idea who the Hostiles are and why they're, er, hostile. And how exactly was Nestor Carbonell seemingly unaged between the time he first met Ben and today? Or can we just chalk that up to not being able to make the actor more youthful?

The big question, of course, is what's the deal with Jacob? He clearly wasn't a figment of Ben's imagination. Locke heard him, and he definitely moved. But Ben didn't hear what he said to Locke, so he's not just invisible. I feel like we've crossed over into Heroes.

Ben is clearly threatened by Locke. Leadership of his little group seems to be dictated by the level of communion one has with the island. Locke's brand new to the group, and yet nobody interfered with his pummeling of Mikhail. They deferred to him. Ben is clearly not happy with the idea of losing control. Did his daughter know Locke was in danger from Ben? Is that why she gave him the gun?

We've seen a lot of ghosts on the island: Jack's dad, Kate's horse(?), Eko's brother, Ben's mom. Is Ben right about the "magic box"-- does the island provide people with the things they most desire?

Questions, questions, questions. But last night's episode cooked, and proved once again that the show's at its most interesting when it fills in the holes.

Million Dollar Gossip

I missed the first half of the Amazing Race finale, but unsurprisingly it didn't matter-- all teams were on the same flight to San Francisco. I don't mind that, per se... but for the final sprint to a million dollars, I want the last leg to be the hardest leg of all. I want teams to have the chance to come back from behind, to make big mistakes that cost them the victory, to use their wits to gain an advantage. What I want is for the whole shebang to be decided on the basis of which partner knows how their teammate would gossip about other teams.

That was a horrible, horrible final challenge. It would have been fine as one step of a longer chain of challenges, but as the last, winner-take-all obstacle, it was poorly conceived. First, the content. The answers for 2 questions were obvious (Rob and Amber), leaving only 2 real questions on the test. For each question only a couple of choices were viable. Assuming you went with Rob and Amber for the others, that leaves, say, 16 possible combinations to try. A smart team should have been out of there quickly. But it wasn't a test of intelligence, it was a test of how much each team gossipped about the other teams during the race. THIS is what we want to reward them for? Past final challenges have involved travel knowledge-- assembling a map, ordering national flags, and so forth-- which is in keeping with the show's theme. Once the challenge was completed, there was little chance for a trailing team to catch up-- it was just a straight shot to the finish (or so it seemed; these situations would benefit from a map graphic showing the origination and destination points). This was just an anticlimax on every level, including the identity of the winners, neither of whom displayed any redeemable traits over the course of the entire race.

The Amazing Race may be an impressive logistical feat that generates some great travelogue footage, but as a competition it is so seriously flawed that it boggles my mind that it consistently wins the Emmy for best reality show ahead of the far superior Survivor. But the Emmy is for the show, not the game. But really, would it hurt them to put a little more thought into the game before they throw a million bucks at someone?

Well, That Was Unexpected

Normally a show saves its big punches for the season finale, so you can imagine my shock at Parkman's cranial buzz-cut courtesy of Sylar in tonight's Heroes. I know some people don't care much for Parkman, but I have a soft spot for Greg Grunberg so I've always been rooting for his character. It saddens me to see him go.

Except, of course, that he hasn't. I'm lying. Parkman didn't have a run-in with Sylar. Nobody was killed in tonight's episode. A couple of people have told me that they were taken by surprise by my Heroes spoilers last week, so I'm just having a little fun at their expense.

This week's Heroes would have been a massive disappointment even if it didn't follow last week's tour de force. It didn't feel like anything really happened. I liked the scene in Isaac's apartment, but we got a lot of filler with Micah, Jessica and DL, Peter and Claire... it should have been called Contractually Obligated Filler Episode. Boo, I say!

Master of Deception

The Amazing Race's less confrontational gameplay helps it bring home the Emmy year after year, but last night's Survivor illustrates why Mark Burnett is the true master of the genre. For the first time in a long while, they got me. I was absolutely sure Yau-Man's number was up. The carefully-edited conspiratorial clips, combined with the genius of putting all Alex, Stacy, Cassandra, and Dreamz on one side of Tribal Council sold it. With all four of them framed together in a close-up shot, it was hard not to believe they were banded together to oust Yau-Man.

Everyone keeps harping about how Yau-Man's idol makes him a target, but there's a simple solution: don't vote for him. Let him get to the final four, then worry about him. The real problem is letting Earl get there along with him. If Cassandra, Dreamz, and Stacy were smart (Boo is clearly the next target), they'd blindside Earl to isolate Yau-Man and make him vulnerable when it's down to four. Nobody can afford to bring Yau-Man to the finals, because he'd be a shoo-in for the money.

Meanwhile, the question of whether or not there is a God may well be settled this Sunday when we discover if the horrible Mirna and Charla are allowed to win The Amazing Race.

Payoff's a Bitch

Damn! First Heroes makes with the stellar, now Lost. This is how the show should have been all along-- pay off on one storyline (Sawyer's quest for the con man), introduce a mystery on another (Jack and Juliet's secret). Most of had already connected the dots between Locke's father and Sawyer's quarry, of course, but Josh Hollaway and Terry O'Quinn are two of the show's strongest performers, so any show focusing on them has a leg up.

I really hope that before the end of the season, they explain what the hell the Others are up to. A conclave of people-- men, women, and children-- willing to not just allow a man to be tortured and killed, but to gather around and watch it happen? That needs some 'splainin'. "You're not the man we thought you were?" You mean a cold-blooded murderer? That whole sequence made no sense to me. They went through a lot of trouble to capture Locke's father and bring him to the island so Locke could make that grand gesture, a gesture than Ben apparently didn't even want him to make. I need some Cliff's Notes.

Meanwhile, I'll take Character Actions That Make No Sense for $800, Alex. No matter how ticked off she is at Jack, there's no way Kate would blab about a possible rescue in front of Juliet, who Kate clearly neither likes nor trusts. There are dozens of ways the writers could have had Jack find out about the former Las Vegas chickadee without making Kate do something stupid.

Quibbles, really, because the show as a whole was riveting. That's what comes of actually paying off the audience instead of stringing them along.

Save th-- Whaaaa?

I was so smug.

Weeks ago, I'd already figured out that the exploding man on Heroes wasn't Peter. It had to be Sylar. The price of his wanton gorging on other people's powers. Somewhere along the line he'd meet up with Ted, slice off his skull, and absorb a nuclear meltdown he hadn't counted on. The heroes would have to kill Sylar before he could go Hiroshima, and it would take Peter's yin to defeat Sylar's yang-- but perhaps at the cost of Peter's life (you can't leave someone as powerful as Peter wandering around in your universe unchecked-- there has to be some price to pay to rein in his abilities). That was the logical conclusion to all of this season's storylines. So when this week's episode revealed that Sylar was the bomb, I nodded sagely. I knew it.

When Nathan explained to Mohinder that he understood how things worked, that killing all the special people would unite everyone else, I was a little slow on the uptake. Knowing how things work is Sylar's trick. "Nathan's starting to sound like Sylar," I thought. I thought it was supposed to suggest that power and fear had twisted Nathan. So when Claire froze in her tracks and started bleeding, I was stunned. I didn't see that coming at all, and I loved it.

Alternate history stories are already among my favorite genre, but the success of this twist sealed the deal: Best. Episode. Ever. Even with Parkman's poorly-justified character transformations in service of the plot.

But now Hiro's got a problem. The comic book pages suggest that Hiro has to kill Sylar (and kudos for the completely sensible payoff to "Save the cheerleader, save the world"), but Peter's the one who actually blows up. Does Sylar somehow push him into it? Did saving Claire wind up saving the world both because Sylar can't heal and Peter now can?

I'm back to not knowing how this is going to end, which is exactly where I want to be.

Bad Decisions

A friend commented that I hadn't posted about The Amazing Race in a while, and that's largely because until last night I was three episodes behind. Now I'm caught up, and have these thoughts on that and other shows:

Frak! Frak, Frak, Frak!

There are only two categories of people who should read this entry: those who have already seen the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, and those who never plan to do so. If you're thinking that maybe someday you might watch this series that critics everywhere have been lauding to the skies even though it's based on a campy 70's science fiction show, read no further.

As for the rest of you... Baltar's acquittal was inevitable, but the manner in which it happened, with a grandstanding play by the defense that should never have been allowed, felt like a cop out despite the drama it created. But that's not what anyone's going to be talking about.

They telegraphed Tigh and Anders last week, so that was no surprise. But when Tyrol started hearing the music, I actually cried out, "Oh no, not him too!" Tory is pretty much a non-entity-- she's a minor character who's obviously getting elevated to the big leagues next season. But it is rather interesting that together they comprise the former leadership of the Resistance on New Caprica.

The revelations open up a mountain of questions. Do Cylons grow and age? Tigh and Adama have known each other forever, so just how long have the skin-jobs been around? The other Cylons-- the models we've known about all along-- don't know who the final five are (and, for that matter, the fifth is still a mystery even to us), so who created them? Why have they been living as humans all this time, unaware they were Cylons? How will the other Cylons react when they're revealed? And hey, doesn't that make Cally and Tyrol's child a hybrid like Hera? How has THAT not been detected?

As for Roslin, either she's the last Cylon-- which would be both too pat and too inconsistent-- or the transfusion of Hera's blood created a connection to the Cylon subconscious. That creates some interesting implications, and I hope the writers have the characters realize this and act on it (specifically, inject some more people with Hera's blood and try to gain further insights into what the Cylons are about).

In a way, I was disappointed to see Starbuck show up at the end. I never truly believed she was gone-- all that talk about a destiny made that improbable-- but because it seemed so obvious, I hoped I was wrong. Her Deus Ex Machina return feels neither clever nor unexpected, and I hoped for better. And they'd best have one hell of an explanation for how she survived the explosion of her viper (or did she? Her ship wasn't playing well with Draedus, and she had a kind of glow about her). I don't buy the notion that she's the fifth Cylon-- not after they spent an entire episode on flashbacks of her childhood.

I will give the writers props, however, for violating one of the cardinal rules of series television. When you have a show whose premise is "Survivors of a spacefaring human civilization search for Earth," you're not supposed to have them actually find it. It looks like they're reinventing the show next season, and that raises all sorts of interesting questions. How would a modern Earth react to the arrival of a) an advanced, spacefaring culture? b) an advanced, spacefaring culture that desperately seeks asylum and help, and c) an advanced, spacefaring culture that desperately seeks asylum and help and leads a bloodthirsty, lethal race of artifical life forms bent on humanity's destruction to their doorstep? How will the Cylons react to finding Earth? What's Hera's and Baltar's role in all of this? Is the show leading to a conclusion where Cylons and humans coexist in peace? Will the final Cylon turn out to be someone on Earth (in which case the writers have some 'splainin' to do), Baltar (thus explaining his visions of Six, and hers of him), or a minor flying-under-the-radar character like Doc Cottle?

Alin Sepinwall has a nice blog entry about the finale, including a delightful theory about how everyone in the series is really a Cylon. He also raises an interesting question about how four characters could all know "All Along the Watchtower" as a song from their childhood. Is everything really inverted? Instead of Earth being the lost thirteen colony, a splinter group broken off from this spacefaring civilization long ago, were the twelve colonies really a diaspora of our descendants? Is the show actually set far in the future? Are they coming to Earth to discover a planet destroyed by an ancient human/AI conflict? The Cylons have been saying that everything that's happening has happened before...

Whatever Ron Moore's planning, it will undoubtedly bear as little resemblance to Galactica 1980 as this show does to its forebear. Which can only be a good thing. But... 2008? Frak!

It's a Spelling Thing

From first to last and out, Rob and Amber bid farewell to Amazing Race All-Stars and their fourth attempt at a million bucks. And I couldn't be sorrier to see them go. Granted, Amber is little more than the contractually obligated second teammate and faithful sidekick on the Rob Show, but Rob has always impressed me with his understanding of the game. He recognizes it's a competition for a million bucks and not a sisterhood of the traveling pants. He never cheats, but exploits every opportunity to seize an advantage. The race without Rob will be a far less interesting journey.

But the lummox brought it on himself in an uncharacteristic lapse of gamesmanship. He chose the wrong task for the Detour, opting for the obviously more complex task merely because it involved hammer and nails. When told his sign was wrong, he said, "This better not be a spelling thing," and then-- incredibly-- did not appear to go back and verify all his spelling was correct. Amber, one assumes, was too busy signing contracts for a CBS Rob and Amber Pass Kidney Stones special to actually check Rob's work. She did try to convince Rob to switch to the other task, but Rob was too frustrated to see the wisdom in cutting bait. Instead of taking a deep breath and thinking through the problem, he flailed around at random hoping to get lucky. And this time, his luck ran out.

At this point, the only satisfying outcome left to the race is for Mirna and Charla to plummet to their deaths in a freak funicular accident in the Alps. Their behavior toward each other and everyone else in this race has been singularly dispicable, and I'm heartened by the certainty that the only way for that mean-spirited partership to win the race would be to be the only team not to board that ill-fated funicular. With Romber and Kentucky gone, I'm now rooting for either Uchenna and Joyce or Dustin and Candice to win.

But what I really want to see is Rob and Amber go up against Big Brother's Mike and Will in a game of The Mole.

Jeopardy! Round: Robin

As many of you learned a few years ago, watching game shows is vastly more entertaining when you're emotionally vested in the outcome. Robin, a college friend, fraternity sister, and Static Zombie reader/commenter will be appearing on Jeopardy! on Monday. Tune in to root her on, won't you? I'll even bet it wouldn't take much cajoling to convince Robin to post some commentary about her experience after it airs. Which, we hope, won't be for many, many days.

Middle Chef

The only Top Chef from this season is Sam. Nobody else-- certainly neither Marcel nor Ilan-- has the maturity to claim that title. Marcel seems to have some genuine cooking chops, but I can't see him leading or inspiring people. And Ilan is a one-trick caballo. It's not Top Cocinero-- come out of your Spanish safe zone and show you have some versatility, man!

The capriciousness of the judging is irksome. They talk about it being all about the food, then get rid of someone for not showing enough initiative in spending his equipment allowance. They drone on about the qualities of a top chef, then ignore issues like maturity, leadership, and history in a fit of food-centric tunnelvision. From what we see, it's unclear how well the basis for judging each challenge is explained to the chefs. Nobody told Sam he had to apply heat to anything. If it wasn't a stated criteria, he shouldn't be dinged for serving two raw dishes. Is it all about the food, or isn't it? Did the food taste good? Shouldn't that be what matters?

Booting Sam was a mistake. And a huge number of viewers seem to agree. There are over two thousand comments on Tom Colicchio's blog for this episode. At least Sam won the $10,000 fan favorite prize, and the exposure from the show has likely opened a lot of doors for him.

It's hard to imagine Marcel being called Top Chef, yet he actually seems more skilled and versatile than Ilan, whose adolescent antagonism of Marcel demonstrates he still has a lot of growing up to do.

Train Wrecks and Vacuums

One of my guiltiest pleasures is back on television for its third season. Beauty and the Geek pairs brilliant but socially clueless guys in their twenties with gorgeous but not very learned women of similar age. But it's not a dating show. Each week both sexes undergo challenges to push them out of their comfort zones, with contestants ostensibly reinforcing their partner's efforts with encouragement and mentorship. The genius of the show is that although there's $250,000 on the line for the team that makes it to the end, this isn't a cutthroat eyes-on-the-prize competition. And while the show isn't above capitalizing on its contestants' limitations for humor, it doesn't try to humiliate them. The whole framework stresses the value of the experience itself, of having the opportunity to grow beyond the stereotype nature and society have trapped them in.

When they come in, both sides are train wrecks in their own ways. The guys clearly have it worst, since most of them wear their geekiness like a badge. Upon meeting his attractive teammate, one of the geeks informs her that he's proudest of being able to recite a stupefying number of digits of pi. Another earnestly declares that if he had to make a choice between Star Trek and a woman, he'd choose Star Trek. These guys have no idea how to dress, talk, or act outside of a graduate program, and watching them embody every negative stereotype of smart people is sometimes viscerally painful.

But the women are equally bad in their own way. Most are stunning, but their very beauty has kept them from realizing their own potential. One proudly displays her practiced pouting technique which, she says matter-of-factly, is usually all she needs to get her way. And she's not alone. Many boast that they use their good looks to get what they want. One claims she hasn't read a book since fifth grade. These women exist inside a bubble containing little else but themselves and their beauty products. They rhapsodize about how happy shopping makes them, but can't identify our vice president, the square root of 100, or Tony Blair.

Week by week couples are eliminated until only one remains to claim the money. But along the way, some amazing transformations occur. It's hard to tell how much the women gain from the experience-- it's hard to overcome a lifetime of flirtation with a couple of weeks' worth of cramming and positive reinforcement. But for the guys, there's the sense that their time on the show might genuinely have helped them break out of their shells and become more social. A couple of weeks in, the surviving men get a fashion makeover that blows your mind. It's astounding what a good haircut and a stylish outfit can do to even the geekiest man's image. It's then up to the men to live up to it by not flashing the Vulcan salute to every pretty woman they meet.

If you missed the first 2-hour episode, don't despair-- the CW is rerunning it later this week, so it's not too late to set the TiVo. Perhaps the best thing about watching Beauty and the Geek is that one finds oneself truly rooting for these people to overcome... themselves. And I can turn to the gf and point out, "See? It could be so much worse."

Yul Log

Let's be clear about something. Ozzy was robbed. There's no question that Yul is a deserving winner. It's been a long time, in fact, since the finals contained two contestants who were both worthy of the prize, and had I been on that jury I'm not sure how I'd have voted. Yul played a brilliant game, but Ozzy dominated the challenges and you have to respect that.

Ozzy wasn't robbed by Yul, or by the jury. He was cheated out of his million by Mark Burnett.

In any other season of Survivor, Ozzy would have won the prize. But this time, three people made it into the finals. And while Becky was a complete non-factor in the vote, that rule change cost Ozzy one million dollars. I make that statement based on a key assumption, which isn't at all far-fetched-- that like every other individual immunity challenge this season, Ozzy would have won the additional one required to pare the final four down to three. We already saw that he won the final endurance challenge. Assuming the four to three transition went as we saw it, with a fire-building tie-breaker eliminating Sundra, Ozzy would have had the ability to choose the person to stand next to in the finals. Only a complete idiot would take Yul along for the ride, and Ozzy's not a complete idiot. So had the game progressed to its normal conclusion, Ozzy would have beaten Becky 10-0. Instead, Ozzy never got a chance to get Yul out of the game, and lost the big bucks by the slimmest possible margin.

It's one thing to throw surprises into the game, but to change the fundamental structure of the endgame without telling players in advance is dirty pool. Those guys are forming strategies based on everything coming down to a final two contestants. The dynamics of a final three are completely different, and people might have played differently had they known that was the game they were in. The players knew something was up when Brad made the jury so early, but in their wildest speculations I doubt they thought there would be three finalists. At least Ozzy got the car, thus keeping the curse of the car alive.

Day Break

I'm a sucker for time travel stories. I think I'm attracted to the attention to detail such stories require, especially when traveling into the past and back. The beauty of it is that as a viewer, I'm willing to let the screenwriter define whatever rules he wants to, and I'll believe the universe works that way. Is time fluid and mutable? Is time fixed, with the effects of time travel already incorporated into our view of history? Does a new timeline branch from each decision point? Can you visit the same point in a timeline more than once, or do you only get one shot? How much energy is required? How much mass can you take with you? Who remembers what? Are changes instantaneous, or do they ripple forward? I don't much care what the screenwriter decides, but I love watching for the minute details that indicate he really thought through all the ramifications.

Day Break is ABC's mid-season replacement to allow Lost to return uninterrupted in the fall, and it hasn't fared very well in the ratings. That's a shame, because the series-- I should say mini-series, since it was designed to be 13 episodes and out-- is doing some very nifty things with its high-concept premise: what if a man had to live the same day over and over again until he got it right? The idea was famously tackled in the movie Groundhog Day, but where that Bill Murray vehicle mined it for comedy, Day Break plays it straight. Police detective Taye Diggs gets framed for murdering a district attorney, and the people responsible are sufficiently connected that they can murder his girlfriend, threaten his sister and her children, and pluck him from a prison cell in the dead of night to try to coerce his capitulation. Not a very good day to be living again and again.

We don't know why this is happening to him, but right away some rules are established. Each day is a complete reset for everyone but him. Not only does Diggs remember everything that happened in the previous loop, but he has to live with the physical after-effects too. When he gets beaten up in a quarry, he wakens with bruised ribs. When he gets shot in one loop, he wakes up bleeding from the wound in the next. Brute force is therefore not a solution-- whatever he needs to do to break the pattern, he'll have to do it carefully.

Cleverly, each episode's title (not shown onscreen, but visible in the Tivo data) is of the form, "What if he ___?" and the episode plays out the answer to that question. What if he just ran away? What if he let his girlfriend go? What if he could change the day? That last question shaped the most recent episode, in which Diggs helps his partner out of a jam and, at the start of the next loop, receives a phone call from her that he never got in any previous loop. Is this the way to break the cycle? Will he need to fix all the broken pieces of his life in order to crack the conspiracy?

Day Break is a tight, nimble serial, and the qualities that elevate it may also spell its doom. Viewers have already rejected serialized crime dramas this season, and Day Break requires diligent attention and loyalty. It's impossible to understand what Diggs is doing unless you've seen what he's already done. That's fine for a 2-hour movie, but it makes it hard for a 13-hour serialized program to pick up new viewers along the way. Day Break may be one of those shows that is best experienced on DVD, where you can watch multiple episodes back-to-back (as I did with the first 4 hours-- thank you, Tivo!). Fans of serials like Prison Break or 24 should not let this one slip under their radar.

How to Win $100,000

I thought Jonathan was crazy for switching tribes a couple of weeks ago on Survivor. Even if the members of his old tribe distrusted him-- and many did-- they didn't outright hate him. Abandoning them for another group guaranteed that whichever of them survived to the merge would be gunning for him. And on his new tribe, he'd be the odd man out. When they had to vote someone off, who was more likely to go-- the people who'd been bonding with each other for days, or the new guy who already demonstrated that he had no tribal loyalty at all?

Except, miraculously, Jonathan's new tribe voted out three of their own in successive tribal councils and kept Jonathan. He survived to the merge. And then stabbed his new tribe in the back by flipping AGAIN and voting with his old tribe!

I'm not sure what game Jonathan's playing, but it sure isn't one that ends with him winning a million bucks. There's nobody left on that island who likes him now. I'm wondering if Jonathan switched game plans and, instead of trying for the million, decided to play for the $100,000 second prize. Because if his opponents play smart and not emotionally, he's a shoo-in. Which of them wouldn't want to stand next to Jonathan in the final two? The genius of Yul's move-- revealing to Jonathan that he had the hidden immunity idol-- is that Jonathan couldn't tell his new tribe about it. Because they would have no reason not to make sure Yul knew Jonathan blabbed, thus guaranteeing that Yul's crew would vote for Jonathan. So Jonathan had to remain silent. He could have still voted against Yul and taken his chances with his new crew, but I wouldn't be surprised if he saw that his chances for the million are slim and decided to maximize his chance at the second prize instead.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Show Me the Shatner

With Howie Mandel on Deal or No Deal and Bob Saget on 1 Vs. 100, the game show trend du jour is using comedians as hosts. Comedians are used to ad-libbing and interacting with audiences, lending their performance a less cheesy quality than, say, your Todd Newtons or Wink Martindales. But the choice of comedian is important, lest you saddle your show with a [shudder] Louie Anderson. The mind still boggles at that decision. So traumatic were the Louie years that the producers of Family Feud ultimately replaced him with an actor, Home Improvement's Richard Karn, instead of another comedian. And when Karn left the show, the producers tapped Seinfeld's John O'Hurley-- who at least has hosting experience from the short-lived Celebrity Spelling Bee and the revival of To Tell the Truth. For the new game show Show Me the Money, the producers went with what can only be described as a Hail Mary play and tapped William Shatner to be the host.

When you hire Shatner, you know you're getting a guy who not only has the image of a buffoon, but who has given in and embraced that image to make it his own. You're hiring high camp, on a show giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not the direction I might go, but ok. When you hear that Shatner's hosting, you might expect the producers to have crafted the show around his particular style and talents, giving him ample room and opportunity to ham it up and grab attention. But you'd only be half right. As last night's premiere proved, Shatner is relaxed and not afraid to goof with the contestants, but in today's market a marquee host and big money are apparently not enough. After all, Howie Mandel doesn't open briefcases himself-- he's got two dozen attractive models to do that for him. But models just stand there and look pretty. What game show viewers really want to see are sexy, gyrating dancers, and ABC delivered.

Shatner is joined on stage by thirteen "Million Dollar Dancers" who strut their stuff on three levels of platforms. Each platform-- and dear God, I'm not making this up-- is equipped with a gleaming pole for the dancer to incorporate into her routine. Shatner and the thirteen beauties dance their way in and out of commercial breaks.

It's like High Stakes Laugh-In.

The structural problems of the game itself (the contestant has three choices of questions to answer at each level, but can choose to pass on two of them with no penalty and no dramatic tension) are dwarfed by the absurdity and cheesiness of the presentation. The models on Deal or No Deal are unnecessary and the gameplay is brainless, but at least it's sharply assembled. This things looks and feels like what it is-- a slapped-together knock-off of a successful format that fails to appreciate what made the original successful. Ultimately, what keeps Deal or No Deal on the air isn't the array of fashion models it trots out each week, it's the drama of watching someone push their luck and either hit it big or walk away disappointed. Show Me the Money strips all of that away, leaving us with... Shatner meets Solid Gold.

Show me the moron who greenlighted this turkey.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

When Sports Night first aired, I ignored it. I don't care about sports themselves, let alone television shows about sports. A television show about a television show about sports? Please. I'm not into politics either, but I gave The West Wing a chance anyway-- and discovered that it actually made the world of politics interesting. So when Sports Night popped up in reruns on Comedy Central, I gave it a shot. Turns out it wasn't really about a sports show at all-- that was just the backdrop for a very sharply-written comedy. This season Aaron Sorkin's taken the ensemble hour-long drama format of The West Wing, crossed it with the behind-the-scenes-of-a-television-show setting of Sports Night, and produced Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip-- a show that threatens to crumble under the considerable weight of its own gravitas.

The West Wing was essentially a wish-fulfillment show, offering a look at what it might be like to have incredibly smart, dedicated people in the White House committed to making the country a better place without kowtowing to big business. Martin Sheen's President Jed Bartlett was always the smartest guy in the room, backed by a staff of brilliant and preternaturally quick-witted over-achievers. It offered viewers a glimpse into a mysterious world that affects us all yet about which we know very little. The White House backdrop opened the doors to provocative, relevant storylines that often had real-world analogues, and viewers could play "what-if?" along with the show. It was fantasy-- no White House could ever be as competent and idealistic as Bartlett's-- but a fantasy that resonated with American's yearning for government the way it "ought" to be.

Studio 60 is also a wish-fulfillment show, positing a network president who actually stands up for creative expression and freedom of speech, who goes to the mat for her producers, and who cares about quality and integrity at least as much as she does ratings and market share. But nobody outside of the television industry cares. Oh, sure, I wish there really were network execs like her, imposing a coward tax on advertisers for pulling out in the wake of the protest du jour. But in the end-- and this is me saying this-- it's just television. Viewers can only be expected to invest so much of themselves in a show about a sketch comedy show. These people are not fighting for education reform or keeping terrorists from blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge. They're performing "Pimp My Trike."

Bradley Whitford and Matthew Perry are outstanding, and Amanda Peet is also interesting. But Timothy Busfield is criminally under-utilized, Stephen Weber's corporate chairman hits only one note and cries out for some nuance, and none of the "big three" performers in the show-within-a-show seem as talented as we're told they are. We should never see any of the actual skits being performed-- they're forever doomed to be less funny than those concocted by cadres of cannibalisticly competitive writers and performers on real sketch comedy shows. The action should remain behind-the-scenes, and therein lies the problem. As great as the characters might be, as fantastic as the writing might be, the premise cannot sustain the life-or-death tone we've seen so far. This show needs to be more Ally McBeal, more Boston Legal. Sports Night worked because it was all about the funny. It took us behind the scenes to find humor in the characters, to laugh at the antics of a third-rated show on a third-rated network.

Unless you work in television, I question whether anyone can really empathize with all the hand-wringing about focus groups and market share and audience retention and how much of a pressure-cooker putting on a weekly sketch comedy show really is. Studio 60's crisis-laden tone comes off as the latest example of self-infatuated Hollywood navel-gazing. The writers, actors, and producers of the show eat and breathe show business. It's their entire world, and they seem to believe that viewers with no stake in the industry will care about it as much as they do. And by the way, I've got this great idea for a television show about the pressures and machinations behind the scenes creating software at a major software company.

Heroes

The last time I was this excited about a television show they handed me a check for a quarter of a million dollars. I'm talking about Heroes, NBC's new superhero show that plays as straight drama instead of high camp. People around the world are discovering they have superhuman powers: flight, invulnerability, regeneration, precognition, teleportation-- all the usual suspects are here, but without the spandex or invisible jets. Each of them reacts differently, if not entirely believably. Teen cheerleader Claire, for instance, is horrified to discover she's an invulnerable "freak" with homecoming just around the corner. Japanese sci-fi/comics fan and salaryman Hiro, on the other hand, is ecstatic to find he can bend space and time and is not the same as everyone else.

Hiro's not the only one who can speed up time. The producers have shamelessly ripped a page out of the Lost playbook to create links among these seemingly unconnected people. But instead of learning about these links over the course of many episodes, they dump them many of them on us in the first sixty minutes. Ok, so perhaps nuance isn't in the cards for this show. Can the heroes avoid the nuclear armageddon foretold by the painting precog? Will the Indian genetics professor figure out what's creating these superhumans? And what does the sinister government agent-type have to do with all of this? Tune in next week, same Bat-time...

I'm a sucker for certain linchpin moments in genre films, like the moment of disaster and the immediate aftermath as seen in The War of the Worlds. I love watching how characters react to outrageously unlikely events. In Heroes, we get to see how a bunch of different people respond to the manifestation of superpowers, and for me that's an E-ticket ride. There are a gazillion ways that ride could fly off the rails. I'm hoping the creative team manages to keep it on course and deliver on the show's promise.

The Amazing Hosage

I have little to say yet about the new season of Survivor, except that the whole race brouhaha is a tempest in a teapot. The real question is what happens once the tribelets merge. Since that happened in week three last time, we shouldn't have long to wait. Survivor doesn't really get interesting until a few people have been ousted, anyway.

I was ready for the Muslim pair to leave The Amazing Race after all of five minutes, but even I thought they got the shaft. Admittedly, a fairly small one-- I don't think they could have sped up their progress much, but if they knew they were under threat of elimination perhaps they would have. It'd be nice to know what the players were told about the rules of the game before the race began.

With that cat out of the bag, however, I think this could be a huge improvement to the race. If ANY point along the route-- not just pit stops-- could be an elimination point, the tension and drama amp up dramatically. I was hoping they'd really play this angle up and remove all "the last team to check in may be eliminated" language so that teams really felt like an elimination could happen at any time, but that doesn't appear to be the direction they're going. It seems like an in-route elimination will be a rare surprise rather than a systemic change, which I think is a shame.

Next season, however, I hope one of the surprises they introduce into the race will be NOT casting a stereotyped gay couple, a pair of male models or beauty queens, or a bickering couple with an abusive man.

The Numbers Explained

I'm not sure why they decided to relegate information so central to the Lost mythos to a web site instead of the actual television series, but fans will want to watch this-- the culmination of a summer-long promotional game on hansoexposed.com.

Somewhere in Hollywood, a Set Builder is Ticked

When Danielle was nominated, Will made sure she didn't have a chance to talk to Erika. He should have done the same thing this week to keep Erika away from Janelle. With nothing to lose, Erika was bound to spill everything and make Janelle realize that she'd been played. And to her credit, Janelle finally smartened up and made the right play. As much as I wanted to see Will pull off the impossible, Janelle is the other worthy candidate.

Meanwhile, shortest... endurance challenge... ever. I feel bad for the craftspeople who put that volcano together and then never even had it erupt. Perhaps they'll recycle it next season. And Mike... you're no Richard Hatch.

So here's the thing. Neither Erika nor Mike can possibly take Janelle to the end, because no matter what people think of her, they respect her. How can you not? She's only still in the house because every time she was in danger, she won the necessary competition to keep herself safe. Taking her to the finals is tantamount to handing her the check. And if Janelle wins HoH, I don't think it matters who she takes, If the final two are Erika and Mike, I'm not sure who wins. Neither was a power player. Erika floated below the radar until the late game, and Mike hid in Will's shadow. The jury's pretty pissed at Will, and that animosity might well carry over to Mike. On the other hand, they might feel that while Mike was part of a masterful campaign to survive and manipulate others, Erika was just not worth anyone's time to evict.

Chances are it won't matter. Janelle's come through in the clinch time after time this season. She'll be bringing her A-game to parts two and three of the HoH competition, and I certainly wouldn't bet against her.

I Smell a Repeat

The players on this season of Big Brother are, without question, the dumbest group of "all stars" ever assembled. If the Landers twins were to walk in, the collective IQ of the women in the house would skyrocket.

Everyone in that house either watched Big Brother 2 or heard second-hand how persuasively charming and deadly Will was. And yet, week after week, players have refused to nominate him or vote him out. Worse, his cloak of protection has enveloped Mike as well, leaving a strong 2-player Chilltown alliance intact to wreak havoc behind the scenes all season long. Will and Mike were helped immeasurably by the existance of four players from season 6, and they wisely leveraged that threat to distract attention from themselves while throwing competitions to avoid appearing theatening. That, and the producers' weekly sacrifice of a goat on a blood-stained altar somewhere in the bowels beneath the house.

Oh yeah-- and the unmitigated stupidity of everyone else in the house. But the grand marshall of the Stupid Parade is Erika.

Ok, so she's making kissy-face with Mike. But how can she possibly believe that Mike would take her to the finals instead of Will? Will and Mike are close friends and business partners. Nothing is going to come between them-- especially because I'll bet Mike thinks that people would vote for him instead of Will in the finals. Erika is delusional if she thinks for a second that Mike's loyalty is to her and not Will. Her smartest play would have been to get rid of Will, thus leaving Mike with no choice but to stick with her. I don't think she had the votes to do it, mind you, but ousting Danielle-- who was clearly gunning for Will and trusting Erika-- was crazy. Erika needs Will gone, and the only scenario now under which that happens is if Erika herself gets nominated and wins the power of veto. The HoH is safe this week, but it's the veto winner (assuming the HoH doesn't win) who holds all the power as the only vote deciding who goes home. Nobody but Erika would both put Will up and vote him out. If Janelle wins the vote, she's canning Mike or Erika. Mike or Will will get rid of Erika or Janelle.

This is Janelle and Erika's last chance to make a smart move and team up against the guys. If they don't pool their resources, Chilltown's waltzing into the finals where Will will become the first reality show repeat champion.

And the thing of it is, he deserves it. The man has been nothing short of brilliant to not only survive this long, but engineer virtually every eviction throughout the season. It's been astounding to watch the puppetmaster pull everyone's strings so subtly that none of them even felt the tug. Janelle's been a phenomenal competitor, but Will's the true master of the game.

Who Wants to Be a Superhero?

Unless they're distributing flight belts to the winners of this one, I'm positive that I appeared on the right "Who Wants to Be a" show. Fortunately for creator and host Stan Lee, there's no shortage of attention-starved media whores willing to don spandex and make utter fools of themselves to gain a brief national spotlight. Who Wants to Be a Superhero? is a show strangely at odds with itself. In its opening minutes we're treated to a freak show of oddballs with absurd make-believe powers, auditioning in a star-chamber-like hall where Stan Lee grills them from a giant plasma screen. Even he doesn't want to be physically near these people, and in fact borrows this page from John Forsythe's book throughout the show, appearing only on flatscreens and communicators, never in person, as if he couldn't be bothered to actually travel to the set of his own television show.

Before long we're introduced to the contestants, many of whom come off as actors desperate for exposure. There's lantern-jawed Major Victory, who mugs for the camera to deliver his motto: "Be a winner, not a weiner." There's Lamuria, voted onto the show by Sci-Fi.Com readers seemingly for her ability to fill out a gold lamé catsuit. Monkey Woman climbs trees and screeches like a simian, while holding all the hopes and dreams of her native Seattle (go, Monkey Woman!). The Iron Enforcer is a Vin Diesel wannabe overcompensating with a giant prop gun strapped to his arm. And let us not forget Fat Mama, harnessing the force of a coronary attack for truth and justice.

The show kicks off in high camp, rendering each contestant in comic-book style and challenging the viewers to take things seriously. And then the flatscreens turn on and Stan Lee rebukes everyone for smiling, having fun, and socializing with each other, sternly informing them that superheroes don't act that way. Which isn't at all the impression I got from Marvel's Avengers or Fantastic Four comics, but Lee's getting on in years so we'll cut him some slack. His role seems to be to get the players to take this farce seriously as he "tests" them in various ways to see who's got the right superhero stuff. The challenges are meant to test their character-- honesty, integrity, compassion, and so forth. Right off the bat, one contestant is eliminated for having his words twisted by leading questions into seeming like he's only there for the money. Which is patently absurd, because EVERYONE is there for the money-- if not directly, then from other opportunities the national exposure might provide.

I'm down with reality competition shows. I love me the Survivor, Amazing Race, Big Brother, Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, and Treasure Hunters. But the truth is, Who Wants to Be a Superhero may well be the guiltiest pleasure of them all. The whole concept is absurd, made all the more so by the tone of dire importance lent to it by doddering codger Lee and the eagerness with which the contestants pledge to make him proud. Honestly, it's an hour of laughs-- and in the world of summer television, that's a superheroic feat of its own.

He Doesn't Have to Shoot You Now

Tonight's Big Brother was quite possibly the most interesting in the show's 7-year history. That's certainly true for the veto ceremony, which is usually a big no-op snooze-fest. The ONLY player I knew I wanted to see in the All-Star season was Will, because he's a double threat-- a good player, and good television. The American public has a very short memory (or else everyone who watched the first couple of seasons has moved on to greener pastures), but I was still stunned that he didn't get voted in by the audience. Thankfully the producers are more savvy, and thus we were treated to the most brilliant speech ever on the show.

Everyone recognizes that Will is a very strong player, and in all likelihood the best Big Brother player ever. And yet nobody seems to be in a big hurry to boot his pale heiny off the show. Frankly, I don't understand it. The floaters might think that he and Mike are necessary to combat season 6, but what are the season sixers thinking? Mike and Will are an unbreakable alliance. Nothing will ever drive a wedge between them. They will also be voting as a team and competing as a team. They're clearly the strongest threat, and yet season six is trying to keep them around! It makes no sense.

But Will has clearly discovered that his poop, miraculously, doesn't stink. And so he's turned up his game. He's done exactly what he said he did-- made the target on his back so big that it's invisible. By saying he hates everyone and promising to throw every challenge, he's made it seem like he really doesn't care about winning the game. He's defanged himself in his opponents' eyes. If he's going to throw the competitions, why vote him out when you can get rid of a more threatening competitor like Jase? Even better, Will's put all his cards on the table. He's told everyone his plan, he's told them he hates them, and so when he makes it to the final two he'll be able to say that he never lied to anyone. He showed them the knife-- can he help it if they placed their neck beneath it and shimmied back and forth?

The only question now is whether the other players will wake up in time to disarm him.

Droll Hosts and the Producers Who Love Them

Last year at this time, Pat Kiernan presided over a regrettably short-lived game show called Studio 7. The show didn't take off, but the mondo-droll Kiernan definitely had the goods. So when he sold VH1 on The World Series of Pop Culture, producer Michael Davies tapped Kiernan to assume the hosting duties.

Kiernan's ultra low-key delivery grounds the show with a certain credibility perhaps unwarranted by the subject matter. It would have been easy for the show to go in the other direction, sailing over the top with wacky, zany antics, über-geeky contestants, and an absurdly enthusiastic host. Instead, the show manages to be both whimsical and dignified, celebrating pop culture without mocking the players devoted to it.

The format, while simple, works. Each of two three-player teams sends one player to the microphone to compete head-to-head in a best-of-six trivia contest. All the questions belong to the same category-- Spielberg Films, TV Spinoffs, Hip-Hop Music, etc. If a player can't answer a question, it bounces to their opponent for a steal. The player answering the most questions eliminates their opponent. The last team with uneliminated players wins the match and continues in the tournament. The last team standing takes home $250,000.

Big Brother: Let the Game Begin

Nakomis? Really, America? Nakomis, Diane, and Erika? What, not enough personality-challenged talking heads for you on television now that Bravo's jettisoning Katie Lee Joel for next season's Top Chef? And self-centered Jase over megamaniacal Will? Take the cell phones away from the hormone-crazed teenyboppers and hand them to viewers who actually want an interesting season.

Thankfully, the producers came to the rescue, saving the nation from its own folly and throwing Danielle, Will, Mike, Marcellas, and Alison into the house where they belong. I'm glad they put George into the house as well, because Will and Mike had it exactly right-- he's a minnow among sharks, as out of his league here as the Hanlons were on Treasure Hunters. Ironically, he's such an underwhelming threat that he's likely to survive in the game for quite a while.

Unlike Danielle, who made her move far too early and overplayed her hand. She needed to recede into the background and try and disprove her reputation for evilness. To the extent that anyone in an All-Stars game can fly under the radar, that would have been her best strategy. The two biggest targets are the Season Six alliance and the unbreakable Will/Mike friendship. Like Janelle said, Danielle wasn't even on the radar-- until she opened her mouth and painted a target on her forehead. Alison just got caught in the crossfire. Fortunately for Alison, everyone wants Danielle out more. On the other hand on Big Brother, unlike Survivor, people often choose to keep the bigger threats around for a while under the theory that they'll be easy to get out later since everyone wants them gone. Which is a great plan if you're the only one using it, but if everyone's on the same page it means the big threats stick around and the small fish get fried.

The Witless Hanlons

The casting director for Treasure Hunters must have said an extra prayer of gratitude the night the "Wild" Hanlons' audition tape arrived. In all the seasons of Survivor, The Amazing Race, and Big Brother (and yes, I've watched them all) nobody-- and I mean nobody has been as inept, ill-suited for the game, or more guaranteed to generate good television than the Hanlons. They personified every negative stereotype of the southern hick, and like swine at a cocktail party seemed blissfully unaware of how out of their league they really were. The list of their blunders-- after only three episodes!-- is too long to list. The Browns had it exactly right-- the Hanlons wouldn't let the Browns ride on their boat, but the Hanlons then wanted to ride on the back of the Browns. Unbelievable. Their luck or their karma finally ran out tonight. I'm deeply sorry to see them go. They had less hope of winning than Walter Mondale, but they were a hoot to watch.

Does anyone else the lighthouse on that box artifact looks like a stylized Eiffel Tower? I think the teams will be going to France, and we'll be seeing the box again then.

Big Brother 7: All Stars

When it comes to trashy summer TV, nothing's trashier than Big Brother. If you watch Big Brother, you pretty much have to either pretend you've never heard of the show or stand loud and proud. I've watched every season. As a game guy, I'm always interested in the competitions the creators devise, and the backstabbing politics is an added bonus. I eagerly awaited Survivor's all-star season, but the same concept on Big Brother gets a muted yawn from me. Survivor seems more about having a strategy and playing the game, and as such it was interesting to fill an island with veterans and see how they fared the second time around. But not only is Big Brother's stage much smaller, but its contestants are less endearing. There's almost nobody on the nomination list that I'm interested in seeing again. I'd much rather meet a new batch of players.

But that's not an option. From the list of 20 nominees, there are only 8 I'd pick: Alison, Danielle, Howie, James, Janelle, Kaysar, Marcellas, Will. I'm betting that attention whore Mike will also make it on, although one season of his limelight-hogging was plenty. I have no idea what Cowboy and Nakomis are even doing on that list (the latter was a complete non-entity the first time, and the former makes my ears bleed), but I'll give a small prayer of thanks to whatever gods kept Holly off. I hope loud-mouth Monica doesn't make the cut-- anyone who still uses the phrase "keeping it real" is dead to me (ack! On browsing the Big Brother web site, I see that Danielle not only "kept it real" but intends to continue "keeping it real 24/7" this season. Et tu, Danielle?)-- and frankly, five years hasn't made me pine for Chicken George any. If I had to fill the 3 remaining slots, I'd go with Bunky, Dana, and Lisa.

My predictions on the 3 men and 3 women America will pick: Kaysar, Howie, Will, Alison, Janelle, Ivette. And if he doesn't get picked by America, the producers will absolutely put Marcellas in the house.

Voting closes June 28.

Treasure Hunters

My most frequent complaint about The Amazing Race is the lost opportunity represented by the frequently lame challenges the teams are asked to perform. With just a little more effort, the inane needle-in-a-haystack searches or purely physical challenges could be transformed into simple but satisfying puzzles that with both physical and mental components. It's clearly not hurting the show's ratings, but I can't help feel that the game aspect of the show could be stronger. Enter Treasure Hunters, NBC's new reality show that is most easily described as "The Amazing Race with puzzles."

As a primetime network show, the puzzles are pretty simple-- Morse code, a substitution cipher (with provided code key), an electronic combination lock-- but so far nicely devised. The lock in particular-- positioned within view of Mount Rushmore and opened by entering the ordinal sequence of the four presidents carved thereon-- felt elegant in its simplicity and integration with the environment. I was a bit disappointed that none of the teams figured out the image on the map they received, since I recognized it as an anamorphic image immediately (there was an exhibit of such images when I visited the Salvador Dali museum in Figueras, Spain). The Geniuses and Young Professionals seemed particularly dense when, confronted with a cylinder that looked remarkably like the one already in their possession, they never connected the dots.

Production values are high, and I was particularly pleased that viewers are told how far behind the leader each team is, so we're not left to wonder if teams were very close to each other or just edited to look that way. The product placement is particularly egregious, however-- is there anything unique about Ask.com's search technology?-- and my attention span isn't so short that I need to see the cell phone videos more than once, thanks. But Treasure Hunters shows real promise, and I hope the ratings are strong enough to warrant a second season and an audition opportunity for the pirates of Briny Deep ("PIRATES: Seattle, WA").

Hell's Kitchen

Somehow Hell's Kitchen flew completely under my radar last season. Now that Top Chef has drawn to a close, I need my weekly fix of "reality" cooking-- and Hell's Kitchen caught my Tivo's attention. The buzz on the show has always been that chef Gordon Ramsay is an abusive tyrant to the aspiring contestants, but when you consider what's at stake-- a position as executive chef (with a share of the the profits) at a mulitmillion dollar restaurant at Las Vegas' new Red Rocks resort-- the contestants have ample reason to grin and bear it. But after seeing the dozen hopefuls, you have to wonder if Red Rocks' human resources shouldn't stick to a more traditional interview process. Most of the candidates seem woefully underqualified for the job. Then again, I'm sure the legal eagles have made sure the "executive chef" title can be honorary at the restaurant's discretion if the winner proves not to be up to the task.

I've been told the set for the show is a television studio that was completely remodeled for the show, incorporating a fully-functioning restaurant with double kitchen (so two teams can compete) and a dormitory for the contestants to stay in for the duration. They did a terrific job-- the restaurant looks fabulous. I'm particularly fond of the colored tile work and may use something similar for my upcoming kitchen remodel.

The show almost lost me at the outset, however, when Ramsay began sampling the players' signature dishes (which he gave them 30 minutes to prepare). He was gratuitously cruel, eviscerating each dish before even tasting them and subjecting the chefs to pointless degradations. That kind of mean-spirited television may be Fox's bread and butter, but it's not my cup of tea. But I started to wonder if that group humiliation process was casting Ramsay as the drill sergeant and the players as the army recruits fresh off the bus-- a bonding experience to bring the chefs together against