Category: TV (Page 113 of 595)

The Biggest Loser: returns with typical controversy

After a three-week hiatus due to NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics, “The Biggest Loser” returned with a bang last night, with lots of controversy. First, you may remember that they left us hanging three weeks ago with Cheryl and Darrell hanging on in squat position balancing an Olympic torch replica. Darrell’s knees finally gave out, and he went home, with Cheryl remaining on campus.

Then, host Alison Sweeney announced that the teams would no longer be couples but would be broken up into blue vs. black. They do this every season and it doesn’t get any less annoying. Really, do they have to keep confusing us and messing with the show’s format? Alison then announced the initial challenge, which would give one person control in the game. But first, before they agreed to play a game of Memory, they had to agree to the fact that with the game came the possibility of eating a lot of calories, mostly in the form of chocolate chip cookies that were worth 100 calories each. Behind each memory card were food items, and behind two of them were golden tickets that would determine the game’s winner. The only two that stepped forward to play were Michael and Andrea. After the game went back and forth, and after both consumed way more calories than they wanted to, Michael won…despite eating 2310 calories worth of cookies and other junk. He was then given the right to choose the teams, and he also would have the power to give immunity this week to either himself or to one other player.

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American Idol: the mediocre rise to the top

Last night on “American Idol,” the guys had to take their turn because Crystal Bowersox of the ladies’ contingent had to spend the night in the hospital with an undisclosed illness. The girls will sing tonight, and hopefully Crystal is feeling better and will be back on stage. As for the guys, though, it was another bland night, and they proved once again that the judges did an absolutely lousy job of picking the semi-finalists this year. A few of the guys improved from last week, and those that did looked very good based on the bar being set extremely low. Here is our take on the performances….

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Two thumbs up for Roger Ebert

I was really mad at myself for allowing myself to miss today’s “Oprah” segment with Roger Ebert, the first time he’s been interviewed for television since a series of extremely difficult surgeries following his successful cancer treatment left him unable to eat, drink, or talk. It’s also where he debuted — only briefly — his new computerized voice based on recordings of his voice taken from DVD commentaries.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to piece together a lot of via the excerpts at sites like the Huffington Post and this somewhat out of synch, undoubtedly sketchy video on YouTube where, at least for the time being, you can see a good chunk of the interview with Ebert and his obviously beyond devoted wife, Chazz.  There, my friends, is a real love story.

However, in all the talk about Ebert, his wisdom and good humor in the face of a fate none of us would want, the man who thinks more clearly than almost any of us about what movies really are, might get a little bit lost. Below, as time started to run out for his days of ordinary speech, he discusses his approach to criticism, “two thumbs up” and why he and Gene Siskel trademarked the phrase, and the ultimate futility of having to assign numeric ratings to movies.

Lost 6.6 – Sundown

As a fan of Sayid who was disappointed by how small of a part he played in last season’s events, it’s nice to see him actually factoring in to this year’s main storyline. Every member of Team Smokey is there for a reason, but while it may look like Sayid has gone over to the dark side, I’m not entirely convinced that he’s given up on being good. That would be just like Sayid to sacrifice the lives of Dogen and Lennon in order to ensure his cover isn’t blown, but then again, that evil smirk on his face seems to indicate otherwise. Whatever the case may be, you can’t say that Dogen didn’t have it coming. After trying to kill Sayid twice (first with the poison pill and then with his bare hands), Dogen decides it’s better to just let Smokey do it himself. What Dogen wasn’t expecting, however, was for Smokey to give Sayid an offer he couldn’t refuse.

The allure of bringing back Nadia was always going to win Sayid over, but who would have thought that he still wouldn’t get the girl in his mirror reality? Sayid claims that it’s because he isn’t good enough for her, but I found it a bit weird that he allowed his brother to start a family with her instead. There’s obviously still a spark between him and Nadia, and after his brother was put in the hospital by some loan sharks that he owed money to, I was secretly hoping they would just run away together. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a happy ending in “Lost,” so instead, Sayid went after the men responsible for the attack. It was nice to see Keamy back doing his usual sleazeball shtick, but I’m more interested in how Jin ended up trapped in his walk-in fridge. The last time we saw Jin, he was taken by customs for failing to report that giant wad of money in his luggage, so is Keamy involved somehow?

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It’s going to be awfully hard to find out now that Keamy’s dead, but at least we got to see Sayid kick a little ass. It was a nice parallel to the events on Earth-1, as Sayid has become a cold-hearted killer, seemingly because of the “darkness” inside him. I still don’t buy it one bit, but regardless of what may or may not be true, Sayid is working for Smokey now. And his first order of business is to deliver a message to the Others that Jacob is dead. They can leave the island if they want, but if they decide to stay, the outlook isn’t going to be very sunny. In fact, the moment Sayid drowns Dogen in the rejuvenation pool, whatever barrier that was keeping Smokey from entering the Temple is lifted, allowing him to wreak havoc throughout the entire camp. Amazingly, Miles manages to stay alive thanks to the well-timed arrival of Ilana and Co., but Kate is left behind when she tries to rescue Claire.

That probably wasn’t a very smart idea on the part of Kate, because not only does Claire seem furious to discover that Aaron was taken off the island and raised by a stranger, but Smokey seems a little perplexed she even stuck around. Is it possible that Kate may still have a part to play in this battle, or will Crazy Claire just slit her throat the first chance she gets? Anyone that knows me well enough already knows how I’d vote, but there’s no way the writers are going to ditch the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle any time soon. Ugh. At least this time around, there’s a good story to balance out the silly romance.

“Caprica” finally takes off

In my first impressions of the two-hour pilot for “Caprica,” I wrote the following:

While I’m certainly excited about Ronald D. Moore’s next project, I can’t help but be a little leery of a prequel. “Caprica” has the same challenge that the “Star Wars” prequels had: Everyone knows how it turns out. The question is whether or not the history is compelling enough to outweigh the certainty of the story’s outcome.

Were there any “Battlestar Galactica” fans clamoring for a prequel? I’m sure there were a few, but I hadn’t even considered the prospect until I heard that “Caprica” was already in development. How interested are we in seeing how Cylons were developed?

On the whole, I enjoyed the two-hour pilot, though I didn’t find it as compelling as “BG.” And the next two episodes consisted of a lot of mourning, religion and setup — in other words, it was a little slow. It wasn’t until the most recent episode — “There Is Another Sky” — that the series really took off.

And it would seem that most viewers out there agree. The series was getting consistent scores in the 8.2-8.8 range at TV.com, but the latest episode garnered a 9.2, the highest of the series. On the whole, “Caprica” is getting an 8.7 compared to a 9.2 for “Battlestar Galactica.” Some might argue that “BG” fans are being too hard on “Caprica,” but there is also probably some element of support for the show that wouldn’t otherwise be there. Those two factors may very well offset each other.

There are spoilers ahead, so if you recently gave up on “Caprica,” you might want to track down this episode and give it a go. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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