TV Daze

Paper writing is hard. Watching tv is easy. Which do you think I've been doing?

But seriously, I've had some serious catching up to do with the idiot box (not that I was really deprived during the semester, but...), and thanks to the wonders of Tivo I've been able to stay on the edge of my seat with all of my favorite shows, including:

The Amazing Race: It's wrong how much I want Rob and Amber to win. They're sort of evil and ruthless, but they have so much fun doing what they do and they're so nice to each other and just so damn good at the whole business that it's hard not to root for them. Still, their competition is tough and also hard not to root for, mostly. For example, it was sad to see Meredith and Gretchen (the oldest couple to ever make it this far) last on the map tonight; they totally deserved to win. They did the incredible thing of taking longer than anyone to do almost everything, yet still they stayed in the race week after week. Uchenna and Joyce also deserve to win—happy, earnest, nice people who have worked well as a team and played completely above board the whole time. Plus, Joyce sacrificed her hair to win, so that's worth something. (Although, I really think she looked great after the hair came off—not that she didn't before, just that it didn't seem like a huge sacrifice, aesthetically-speaking, to me. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I was a woman and I had as much beautiful hair as she did....) Finally, Ron and Kelly. What's to say? As L. says, they were clearly set up to be America's Sweethearts (the beauty queen and the former P.O.W. in Iraq), but instead they've turned into America's Breakhearts. Overall I feel sorry for Kelly b/c Ron so consistently takes his stress out on her and it's awful. Kelly can be annoying, too, but how is she supposed to respond? So yeah, Ron's the bad guy there, I think. It's too bad. If they win it will be a little sad just because they are so clearly destined to not be together, whereas the other two remaining teams pretty clearly are. Not that the goal of the race is to reward the happiest couple, but...

America's Next Top Model (ANTM) 4; Yeah, I watch. You wanna make something of it? L. got me into it and at first I resisted, but then I kept catching the end and wondering why one woman was going rather than the others and I just got sucked in. This season I was miffed from the beginning that they dumped Brita so early, and then Rebecca and then Tiffany. I mean, who am I to judge? But Brita didn't even get a chance, Rebecca got knocked for why? And Tiffany, well, I thought she was really going somewhere for a while. Whatever. At this point my money's on Naima, but since I have no money, I'm not risking much by saying that. I'd guess maybe Brittany has a pretty good shot, too, but it seems inevitable that Michelle and Keenyah are going to be taking bows soon. Christina? Dude, who knew botox could take a woman so far?

Survivor: Palau: What a crazy season—one tribe never won a single immunity challenge. I was sad last week to see Stephanie voted off, but not surprised. Going into last week's show I thought I woudl be more disappointed if she got the axe, but after watching how she played the situation (or at least how they edited how she played it), I didn't have much sympathy for her. She needed to push a lotharder if she was going to make a power play against Tom, but instead she just “planted the seed” and hoped her sistahs would have the sense to play to win. It's getting old watching “strong” men run the tribes until the end, even if women do win in the end. Wouldn't it have been great if Stephanie would have pulled off a coup and picked off Tom, Ian, and Greg, one by one? That would have put the remaining women in places 1-4; now they're likely to go 4-7. Of course, at some point I imagine the three remaining men are going to turn on each other, and they're going to try to take a woman with them in the hopes they can dominate the challenges against her, and then that woman will win in the final vote. At least, that's the way it generally seems to go. Why do I even watch this show? Oh yeah, it's so much better than writing papers.

Oh, I've also managed to watch three more movies in the last couple of days (yeah, I am working hard):

• Sideways: Great show. I see now why it got so much buzz. Of course, I'm a sucker for any story about a failed or failing outcast writer, but the juxtaposition of the archetypal loser with the guy who seems to have it all but is really the losingest loser of all, well, it was very well done. Once L. told me why I recognized Virginia Madsen all I could think whenever she was on was “candyman candyman candyman,” but other than that, this was a keeper.
• Code 46: Oh man. What an awful awful movie. There's a reason you've never heard of it, so just forget I mentioned it. Once again I got suckered by the sci-fi premise, which was actually fairly interesting. The future world was well-designed in many ways, with its own language melange, good scenes and logical technical advances like viruses that can make you more empathetic, or make you immune to bacteria, etc. But the actual love affair between Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton? No. And the plot? Implausible doesn't even begin to describe it. Come on people! How about a little internal consistency here?
• Starsky and Hutch: It was on HBO, ok? Exactly what you'd expect from Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Exactly.

I really am going to write this paper. Really. Tomorrow. And no, my name is not Scarlet.

Posted 11:08 PM | Comments (6) | ai movies tv land