As this season’s “Biggest Loser” on NBC hurtles toward its conclusion, I think we can agree on two things. One, the season has dragged on to epic proportions. And two, the alliances of the yellow team and gray team have gotten a bit out of hand. With that, here is how it all went down last night……
The show began with a clip of last week’s elimination (Victoria) and then host Allison Sweeney telling Koli and Sunshine that everyone would be invited back in for an announcement. That is, that the remaining seven contestants would be headed to Texas this week to help train and educated a population that has the most obese citizens per capita. They would be interviewed on radio stations and then lead anyone who cared to participate in a 5K run at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. There were a few inspiring stories among those who came down, and maybe some inadvertent casting for next season.
I didn’t think I’d be writing about something like this in Season 9, but here it is. No one on last night’s “American Idol” gave a performance worthy of getting booted off the show. In fact, now more than ever, you could point to the judges’ save of big Michael Lynche a few weeks ago as being premature, because they surely are going to want that save back tonight. Why? Because everyone brought it last night, to the point that the judges and host Ryan Seacrest wondered out loud how anyone could be eliminated. But it has to happen. So let’s look at the way it all played out, and this week’s mentor was country superstar Shania Twain. You may remember Shania was one of the judges for this season’s initial auditions. Now she had the pleasure of watching the contestants perform her songs. Would they butcher those songs or make her proud? Let’s read on….
First, let’s meet the two newest members of of the “24” cast:
– Jim Ricker (Michael Madsen), an ‘I can get things’ kind of guy, off the grid and on the wrong side of a favor to Jack. Official “24” nickname: Mr. Blonde, of course. – Mark Bledsoe (D.B. Sweeney), a ridiculously mustachioed private security agent who isn’t afraid to dabble in torture. Official “24” nickname: Toepick. My wife came up with that one, as you might imagine.
Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Now please, D.B., shave that damn thing on your face.
Do you want to know how busy Michael Madsen is? His appearance on “24” is already listed as the 34th most recent acting gig he’s done. That man’s a machine.
There is still something about President I.M. Weasels’ motives that bothers me. I’m convinced he still has at least one card, and maybe two, up his sleeve. He can’t just be looking for an image makeover, because he wouldn’t resort to extortion – poorly planned extortion, at that – in order to do it…would he? For as much as he’s supposedly playing the hardliner with the Russians, he’s also protecting them and himself by negotiating Starbuck’s release into Toepick’s custody, willing to live with the consequences in the event that “mistakes are made.” No, the extortion actually looks like a cover for something worse, possibly that he’s in league with the Russians, or a group that stands to take advantage of a post-treaty Russia. I don’t think we’ve seen the full weaselosity of Logan yet, which is saying something.
On the Starbuck front, something deliciously awesome just presented itself as a possibility: Jack and Buffy spring Starbuck, and the three work together to blow the lid on the conspiracy. Now, who saw THAT coming after Starbuck revealed herself to be a double agent? I thought her story ended with a bullet to the head, fired by her fiance. Now, they look like the “24” version of The Losers, government spooks trying to clear their name. Hopefully, this will turn out better than the movie.
“Well, self, are you ready to commit high crimes against the government?” “Bitch, please.”
Allison, once again, takes a look at the path of righteousness, considers changing course, but ultimately opts for rockier terrain after I.M. Weasel works his bad juju on Allison in private. Thank God, then, that Ethan stood up to her and showed her just how serious he was about the mistakes she’s making. I guess actors can hear me when I yell at the TV, after all.
Back to the Ricker character: the press release says that he will appear in the final six episodes, but I highly doubt that. It’s not like that can say that he’ll be in the next three episodes, because we’ll know that he dies in the third one. Earlier this year, they said that Annie Wersching was in 23 episodes this season, and we all know how that turned out. (*shakes fist at sky*) Nope, Mr. Blonde will only be able to take so many phone calls from Jack before someone sniffs him out. Which is too bad, because he has a pretty sweet lair, with all that gear and security tech.
The single best thing about tonight’s episode was that Jack knew that Chloe would double-cross him, worked that into his battle plan, and appears to forgive Chloe for setting him up. That is friendship, right there. And while the writers have sent Allison hurtling into WTF territory, it’s good to see that they haven’t lost their minds about what makes Chloe tick. She’s done underhanded stuff in the past, yes, but she wasn’t director of CTU then, saddled with a Presidential order. He knew she’d play ball, and he worked that to his advantage. Now when does he let her in on his ruse, and will she be so accommodating the next time?
With the series planning a big-screen conversion, you would think that Jack and Chloe and the series on a good note, but for that to happen, it means that Dalia Hassan has to find out the truth about Allison covering up Russia’s involvement for the sake of the treaty. If that happens, Allison will be disgraced, just like Logan. My question is: does Allison deserve that? Yes, she’s making some major mistakes here, but she’s no I.M. Weasel. Is there a way that Logan can take the fall again, but Allison can be redeemed before it’s too late? I honestly hope so. It doesn’t seem right that she goes down as a baddie.
Tonight’s blog title comes courtesy of Aimee Mann, the unofficial title track to her 1996 pop classic I’m with Stupid. Mann has stated that she hated working under the major labels’ thumb, but as much as it pains me to say this, she also did her best work when she did. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that she has been able to make a living outside of the system – in fact, she’s made far more money on her own than she ever did working for the Man – but A&R men are not always wrong when they tell their client that they don’t hear a single. Just sayin’.
Remember how I opened last week’s blog by saying, “This, my friends, was one hell of an episode, offering up multiple moments which will almost certainly inspire me to say the same of future episodes”? I couldn’t have been more right: not only was this the best episode of Season 3, but it was one of the best installments of “Breaking Bad” to date, serving up moments that were nailbiting to the Nth degree and an ending which left me screaming at the TV, demanding that next week’s episode start right now, dammit!
Well, it’s about time the Cousins got legitimately threatening again. They’ve just kind of been hovering in the background lately, glowering but not really doing anything specific to match their completely bad-ass look. Now, to be fair, it’s not like they haven’t wanted to seriously fuck some people’s shit up…specifically, Walt’s shit…but they’ve been held at bay by their attempts to maintain some semblance of civility within the organization. That whole pre-credits sequence was nice and nerve-jangling, but its conclusion, with the seamless sonic blending of one cousin biting into a piece of fruit and the other dropping his axe into the officer’s skull, was just another example of the show’s ability to get a laugh out of some seriously dark shit. The next time we saw them, they were sitting in Gus’s fine, upstanding establishment, back to their usual all-you-have-to-do-is-look-at-us-to-know-that-you-shouldn’t-fuck-with-us schtick, but, hey, if it works, why change it? It was instantly obvious that they had no intention of going anywhere until Gus gave them what they wanted…which, of course, is why he eventually did just that.
The TV Land Awards are not an “and the winner is…” kind of award show extravaganza. They’re more a series of honorary nods to the very popular shows of television’s illustrious, time-killing past with an emphasis on glitz. And so a bunch of us media types were invited to add to the hub-bub at the Sony Studios back lot on a breezy April, waiting on a red carpet for whichever celebrity was escorted to our assigned spots, with those from famed print and broadcast outlets obviously getting the first dibs. In the case of this lowly pixel stained wretch, I felt honored to chat with a few really terrific performers who, each in their own way, had made quite an impression on me personally.
That most definitely applies to Jane Leeves, the comedically gifted actress best known as Daphne, Niles Crane’s Manchester-born one-true-crush and eventual wife from “Frasier.” After confessing that I’d had a crush of my own on her since before her famed “Seinfeld” turn as “Marla, the Virgin” her response was typically blunt-yet-charming. “I’m not that old!”
“Neither am I!,” I blurted. (I later learned that Ms. Leeves birthday was the following day. My own birthday was two days prior. I guess age was on both of our minds.)
Aside from being no non-TV star herself, Ms. Leeves was there to promote her now show, coincidentally to be aired on TV Land in a rare foray into original programming, “Hot in Cleveland.” The show teams Leeves with Wendy Malick (“Just Shoot Me”) and Valerie Bertinelli (“One Day at a Time”). The three play “very L.A.” career women with show business-related backgrounds of various types. (Leeves plays an “eyebrow plucker to the stars.”) Feeling a bit aged out of the L.A. game, they attempt a trip to Paris, but instead find themselves marooned at the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They quickly realize that beautiful, middle-aged women who can refer to celebrities by their first name are actually in fairly short supply in the midwestern metropolis and they decide to stay and be big fish in a smaller glamor pond. Betty White costars as a neighbor, perhaps a wacky one. Cue the glib comparisons calling this a “younger ‘Golden Girls.'”
Nevertheless, fans of Ms. Leeves should rest assured that her character is no retread of Daphne Moon. “She’s focused her whole life on her career and has forgotten to have a life. She’s the sort of smart aleck, wise-ass of the group, so it’s very different.”
Then, perhaps feeling a bit star-struck, I went with the fallback question I frequently steal from our esteemed Will Harris. What project has she done that she doesn’t feel has gotten enough attention.
