180 20080508000000 170697 25854 1 2008-05-09 10:01:17 Oscar is gone! And Miguel is still pissed that Michael is still around. The dancers are taken "shopping." Janelle has been around long enough and believes that it's cruel that they are being told that they are shopping if they're not really shopping. I may have to agree with her a little bit on that point. Well, cruelty prevails and they are taken to a mattress store.

]]> 55 20080508000000 25853 2 16 2008-05-09 09:56:00 47 20080508000000 169525 25852 3 2008-05-09 09:51:08 This week, Our Intrepid Heroes hit dreary Erie after a series of unwitting organ donors start popping up at area hospitals with their intestines spilling out onto the floors. Seems an immortal Frankendoctor's taken up residence in a remote hunting cabin on the outskirts of the mistake by the lake, and as part of his longstanding beauty regimen, he's been abducting local residents to slice out (and off, actually) various replacement parts for his own body. Heroic Action Sammy manages to track the monster down and rescue one of Frankendoc's victims, only to get his damn fool enormous self abducted almost immediately afterwards, and after a tremendously unnerving sequence involving a sterilized melon baller and The Super-Special Puppy-Dog Eyes, Dashing El Deano finally barges in on the festivities to save the day. Strangely enough, though, instead of ridding the world of Frankendoc by immolating the creep, Our Dear Boys choose instead to bury the freak in the middle of the woods, alive forever in a refrigerator, and I swear to God this has to be the fourth time I've seen that particular plot device on television this season.

]]> 37 20080508000000 25851 3 16 2008-05-09 09:41:27 44 20080508000000 25850 7 11 2008-05-09 09:32:39 45 20080508000000 169518 25849 7 19 2008-05-09 09:20:29 8 20080508000000 25848 2 15 2008-05-09 09:14:53 3 20080508000000 25847 16 13 2008-05-09 09:11:21 So it's Natalie vs. the girls for control of Erik. Both sides think they win when Erik promises to send Natalie to Exile Island if he wins the reward and she promises him the same if she does. Then Amanda manages to convince him to send Parvati to Exile if he wins and take her with him on the reward, and even though Erik claims to be mad at her for ripping into him during tribal council, that's what he does when he wins the challenge, a Survivor knowledge quiz. Erik and Amanda go off for some food, massages, and a real bed while Parvati lies around Exile and we don't see if she gets the idol or not. Natalie and Cirie return to camp, where Cirie screws with Natalie's head for the fun of it. Then Erik and Amanda return looking well-rested and refreshed, and Natalie is clearly pissed at Erik and he starts worrying about jury votes. Then he talks to Cirie about voting out either Amanda or Natalie at tribal, since Parvati will most likely have the idol and Natalie and Amanda are big jury threats. Natalie's standing right behind him and hears the whole thing, and then all the girls (sans Parvati) talk and realize that Erik's been promising them all the same thing, and they inform him that they can no longer trust him. Parvati returns for the immunity challenge, which is easily won by Erik, and it seems inevitable that Natalie will be going home tonight. Pretty normal, average show so far, right? But then Cirie jokingly suggests that Natalie get Erik to give her his necklace, and she says that's the stupidest thing she's ever heard in her life, but it's not like she has any other choice. So she talks to Erik and tells him that giving her immunity would show her and Cirie that they could trust him and then they'd all vote for Amanda. Erik's only concern is that Parvati will give the idol to Amanda, so he wants them to vote for Parvati. And here's where you start to think that Erik might just be stupid enough to go for this insane scheme, but then you shake your head and say, "nah! No one's that dumb!" The tribe reports to tribal council, where the girls lay it on thick that Erik has no chance to get jury votes now that he's screwed them over and the only way he can redeem himself is through actions and not words. And with that, he gives the immunity necklace to Natalie. That's right. HE GAVE THE IMMUNITY NECKLACE AWAY. Erik, who won the Survivor trivia quiz so you know he's watched several seasons of this show, GAVE THE IMMUNITY NECKLACE, HIS GUARANTEE TO GO TO THE FINAL FOUR, AWAY. It is a moment so epically and profoundly stupid that the jury breaks its silence and laughs out loud. Eliza's facial expressions went mad. The players remaining in the game can't believe it, and openly smile, laugh, and whisper to each other. Natalie tentatively touches the necklace around her neck as if not sure it's even there. Even Probst seems thrown. No doubt, the crew is behind the cameras staring at each other and trying to keep from laughing. We go to the vote, and Erik crosses his fingers and votes for Parvati, WHO MOST LIKELY HAS THE IMMUNITY IDOL AND THIS IS HER LAST CHANCE TO USE IT. DOUBLE MORON! And then, in an unprecedented (as far as the episodes I've seen, anyway) move, we see every single person's vote, because the comments these women make are just too priceless to cut. I think my favorite was Amanda, who just said "you know ~~~ " and then couldn't find any more words. In the end, Parvati does not play the idol, so either she didn't find it on Exile or she just knew there was no need to use it once Erik gave the necklace away. Probst reads the votes and sends Erik home, leaving four ladies with huge grins on their faces and an especially joyful James, who cheers that he is no longer the stupidest Survivor ever. Probst calls this a "life lesson," although if that's a lesson you need for your life I'm not sure how much longer you're going to be living it. Putting pants on in the morning has to be quite the brainteaser.

]]> 36 20080508000000 25846 4 13 2008-05-09 09:01:12 23 20080508000000 169523 25845 4 2008-05-09 08:26:59 5 20080508000000 169481 25844 4 11 2008-05-09 08:19:19 We switch back and forth between the freighter and Locke, Ben, and Hurley. The chopper arrives back on the freighter with Keamy and his military pals. The doctor (the one whose dead body washed up on the island two episodes ago) is there and ready to treat the wounded soldier. Keamy is hell-bent on destroying everything on the island after his encounter with Smokey. He's pretty aggressive with the captain, and kind of pulls rank on him, revealing new orders calling for death and destruction. Desmond and Sayid know that if they don't get the other Losties off the island, they'll all die, so they convince the captain to give them the freighter's Zodiac launch so they can start ferrying people out to the freighter. Except that Desmond decides to stay, because he's just about had it with the island. When he stays, he witnesses Frank telling Keamy that he won't fly the soldiers back to the island. Keamy's response is to slit the doctor's throat and throw him overboard, as a way of letting Frank know that he really will kill him if he doesn't follow orders. The captain pulls a gun on Keamy, but Keamy is faster and shoots the captain dead. So Frank takes the soldiers in the chopper and flies them back toward the island. When they pass over the Lostaways' beach camp, he drops a satellite phone out of the chopper, enabling the Losties to keep tabs on the people on the chopper.

]]> 31 20080507000000 25832 18 16 2008-05-08 11:22:39 4 20080507000000 169493 25827 4 2008-05-08 09:49:32 Somewhere it must make sense that, for an episode that lasted an inexplicable 75 minutes, the Top Chef challenges were reruns. Colicchio pops up early for the Quickfire -- relay race, two teams of four, repurposed from seasons past. Sides are drawn, and Spike, Dale, Lisa and Nikki compete against Richard, Stephanie, Andrew and Antonia in a whirlwind battle of knives: Supreming oranges, turning and cleaning artichokes, cleaning and filleting monkfish and making a quart of the dreaded mayonnaise. Although Lisa supremes a mean orange, Stephanie clinches a win for her team with her measured pour, her strong arm, and her well-whisked mayo. This makes Dale very, very, very angry.

]]> 9 20080507000000 169413 25826 10 2008-05-08 09:40:24 It's the final four! The girls are still in Rome, and while Whitney is glad she's survived another week and Anya and Fatima are feeling confident, Dominique is annoying all the other girls by eating all the time and being generally kind of tiresome. Whitney, Anya and Fatima speak for us all when they express their surprise that she's still in the competition. The girls head to a park, where they meet Paulina and a photographer who gives them some tips about the perspective from behind the lens. They have to take their new learning and shoot a real, live model -- Paulina herself! The girls each get five minutes to photograph her, and are judged both on how well they work with their model and how their photos turn out. Fatima and Whitney are both decent photographers and manage to direct Paulina in a pleasant and professional way, while Dominique lacks vision and Anya, like, makes Paulina throw a bunch of leaves in the air and generally needs to narrow her focus and stop being such a bubblehead. Fatima is the winner, and she gets an additional 50 frames for the week's photo shoot.

]]> 1 20080507000000 25825 7 38 2008-05-08 09:25:49 16 20080506000000 25812 6 14 2008-05-07 10:34:09 24 20080506000000 25811 4 6 2008-05-07 10:18:54 42 20080506000000 25810 1 16 2008-05-07 10:12:58 313 20080506000000 25807 9 18 2008-05-07 09:40:59 16 20080506000000 25806 6 XX 2008-05-07 09:38:13 1 20080506000000 25805 7 37 2008-05-07 09:19:06 22 20080505000000 169207 25790 1 16 2008-05-06 10:32:41 It's been two weeks since Georgina left the UES ... and went to Brooklyn, and was immediately adopted by Vanessa and Dan as her only friends. "Sarah" seems open to meeting Serena, but scheduling is a nightmare. The mysterious packages start up again, including a sex tape from the wedding that sent Serena running off in the first place, and eventually it's G, and not Sarah, that Serena has to deal with some more.

]]> 405 20080505000000 25788 1 14 2008-05-06 10:13:51 27 20080505000000 25787 3 18 2008-05-06 10:00:34 50 20080505000000 25786 12 8 2008-05-06 09:46:48 16 20080505000000 25785 6 13 2008-05-06 09:35:01 52 20080505000000 25784 3 27 2008-05-06 09:20:22 26 20080505000000 169199 25782 4 14 2008-05-06 09:01:01 House decides that the star of his favorite soap opera has a brain tumor based on the way he reads his lines on TV, and kidnaps the actor to try to prove it. He manages to keep him at PPTH long enough for new symptoms to show up, like a paralyzed foot, kidney failure, a high fever, and then a coma, but he can't figure out what's wrong with the guy and the Cottages have an annoying way of demanding proof for his diagnoses through tests that keep coming up negative. Meanwhile, Cuddy has an accreditation inspector on her hands and wisely assigns Cameron and Foreman to House-watching duty to make sure her favorite employee behaves himself. House uses the situation to get the doctor's lounge flat screen put in his office, all the better to watch his soaps and call it research with. As for Wilson, he doesn't have to worry about the inspector as he's with CTB all episode, bickering over a new mattress. She wants him to pick out whatever he wants~ he wants to give her whatever she wants. In the end, what he wants is a waterbed -- until he actually has to sleep on it, and realizes he hates it. Oh well! At least he got a sex scene out of the deal. As for the soap actor, House figures out he has an allergy to the flowers in his dressing room, and shoots the patient up with steroids before getting the test results back to prove it, risking the patient's life and Cuddy's job. When the results do come back, they realize that Evan the actor isn't allergic to flowers at all -- and yet, the steroids worked. It turns out Evan was allergic to the quinine in the tonic water his character drank. Cuddy is fined $200,000 for House's life-saving actions and takes back the flat screen TV. And Chase ran away from this episode in the beginning and was never seen again.

]]> 10 20080502000000 169629 25770 4 5 2008-05-05 09:25:35 On the Demetrius, Kara continues doing her irritating Kara shit, until the point a Cylon Raider -- hurting from Cavil's whole annihilation deal -- arrives bearing a random Cylon willing to deal, and help them find Earth. And that Cylon's name? Leoben, duh: The only possible thing that could make shit on the Demetrius even weirder and harder to administrate. Everybody, especially Athena, assumes that Kara is going crazy for the 85th time, thanks once again to good old Number Two, but he swears it's going to work out. Sam the Cylon is so happy to have a moment alone with Leoben to beat the frak out of him for settling Kara into her imaginary life on a pretend planet with imaginary wedding gifts, but it's made all ambiguous for him because he's a toaster now. Chief the Cylon continues to flip out, getting suicidal again and even flirting with the idea of seeking advice from Batshit Baltar but eventually going nuts on Baltar instead. Baltar's very sad "But why don't you like me?" speech explains once again why nobody trusts Baltar, but I can think of nothing funnier than if all the Final Fivers lose their minds so completely in the middle of Laura's ongoing transformation that Gaius Baltar starts looking like the safer choice. And finally, Starbuck's mutiny comes to a head when Gunny Matthias is accidentally killed. Kara removes Helo as XO, promoting Gaeta only to find that he -- surprise! -- doesn't trust her either.

]]> 13 20080504000000 169109 25767 2 15 2008-05-05 09:06:31 A furious Sarah, a penitent Saul, and a defensive Graham fail to keep the bank from calling in Ojai's loan, so Sarah has 48 hours to come up with $20 million. She tells Nora first -- covering for Saul and taking the responsibility herself -- and after Nora viciously flips out on her, they go to Tommy and Holly, hat in hand, to ask for help. Tommy, for his part, isn't 100% psyched about Walker Landing taking on all of Ojai's debt, so he and Holly ask for a written proposal.

]]> 17 20080504000000 25766 4 14 2008-05-05 08:58:34 180 20080501000000 25754 1 5 2008-05-02 11:08:47 You are kidding me.

]]> 37 20080501000000 25753 3 15 2008-05-02 11:08:06 44 20080501000000 25751 7 10 2008-05-02 11:04:10 3 20080501000000 25749 16 12 2008-05-02 11:00:03 45 20080501000000 168873 25748 7 2008-05-02 10:57:22 Chloe comes to visit Clark and see how that whole "Going to Krypton, saving Baby Clark from the clutches of Braniac back in 1989 to preserve the future" thing is going. Turns out it's not. Clark is being all mopey and shitheaded about Lana again (stab me. Please. Stab me dead.) and has decided that the world would be better off if he'd never come to Earth. So he's decided the best course of action would be: to do not a damn thing. Action hero! Before you can say, "It's a Wonderful Life (But a Terrible Show)," Clark is shown the bullshit comic book "What if?" version of life without Clark. Lex is president (did we fast forward to when he's over 35 years old?). Kara did come to Earth, but was adopted by the Luthors and became a government agent who used her powers to help Lex become president. Chloe and Lana both met awesome guys~ Lana married a French dude and had kids, Chloe was about to get married to some other guy who isn't Jimmy, Clark, or Pete. Clark Kent exists, but he's a douchey farmboy with no powers. G-g-g-ghost Clark goes to the newspaper and finds that Jimmy is a bow-tie wearing photographer who pines after Lois, a much smarter Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who is trying to take down President Lex. Lois and Clark (who get a little flirty) find out that Lex has invented a nuclear threat to the U.S. as an excuse to preemptively executive his own nuclear strike. Clark goes to the White House and reveals himself to Kara. They both discover that the plan is even worse: Lex's right-hand-robot Braniac is calling all the shots and has convinced Lex to destroy the world, pack all the smart and awesome people into bunkers, and rebuild with a new world order. Braniac's own plan is simpler, though: make Lex the vessel for Zod and have him repopulate the planet with Kara. President Lex shoots Kara and Clark with Kryptonite bullets and it's Game Over, man, Game Over! Until Clark is pulled back to The Fortress, where he's given a stern lecture by Jarnelle about not being such a selfish, destiny-denying dickweed. Shamed, Clark goes to Krypton (which takes, literally, half a second), and saves Baby Clark by making sure the cute little tyke gets on that spaceship to Earth. Kara tries to kill Braniac, but does a piss-poor job of it, because at the end of the episode, she has some sort of attack in the Kent kitchen. It could mean that Braniac is taking over her body. Meanwhile, Lana is still not cured of her coma, leading Clark to be even more depressed, a situation that can't have been helped by Lois taking him out for beers. Want to feel worse about humanity sometime? Watch Lois Lane get drunk.]]> 55 20080501000000 25747 2 15 2008-05-02 10:51:33 47 20080501000000 168881 25746 3 2008-05-02 10:49:04 At the never-seen Bobby's prompting, Our Intrepid Heroes head to the teeny little burg of Milan, Ohio, where several residents over the last couple of weeks have been receiving phone calls from their dearly departed, including an 84-year-old widow who's been phone-sexing her Korean-War-casualty husband, a teenaged girl indulging in late-night heart-to-hearts with her recently deceased mother, and some suit whose long-dead high-school sweetheart's incessant badgering leads him to splatter his brains all across the walls of his tastefully appointed home office. Oh, and that teenaged girl's dead mom? Wants her to swallow every sleeping pill in the house so they can reunite on The Other Side, and I'm sure that randy old broad's been hearing something similar in between orgasms, because Milan's actually been afflicted with a Crocotta, otherwise known as an irrepressibly chatty little beastie from ancient times there to snack on the souls of those sad little nitwits he talks into committing suicide.

]]> 8 20080501000000 25745 2 14 2008-05-02 10:23:36 5 20080501000000 168876 25744 4 10 2008-05-02 09:53:47 So Jack's sudden illness? It's appendicitis. Juliet is ready to remove his appendix, but she needs Sun, Jin, Daniel, and Charlotte to go to the medical station to get all of the necessary supplies. On the way, Jin realizes two things. First, that Daniel likes Charlotte in that special way. And second, that Charlotte can understand Korean. So he takes the opportunity to tell Charlotte that if she doesn't arrange for Sun to get off the island, he'll take it out on Daniel (and his fragile finger bones). Jack, acting as butch as he possibly can, insists on being awake during the surgery so he can talk Juliet through it. And how will he see his own appendix? By making Kate hold a mirror. This doesn't go well, as he naturally freaks out when Juliet's cutting into his belly. She ends up knocking him out and sending Kate out of the room. In the end, the surgery seems to be a success. And Juliet tells Kate that she thinks Jack is crazy about her (Kate).

]]> 36 20080501000000 25743 4 12 2008-05-02 09:43:26 23 20080501000000 168879 25742 4 13 2008-05-02 09:30:17 25740 2008-05-01 18:07:15 25739 2008-05-01 17:32:27 9 20080430000000 168739 25726 10 2008-05-01 12:02:04 As the final five continue their tenure in Rome, Fatima thinks she's all that while Katarzyna is universally considered to be the dullest dullard in Dullsville. The girls arrive at ancient ruins where they see gladiators -- including one lady gladiator! -- duking it out. They get some lessons in gladiatorocity, and learn how to fight with composure, elegance and fierceness using giant popsicle sticks. They change into gladiatrix attire thinking that their challenge might entail another pose-off, and so are surprised when they see the Jays, who tell them that this is a photo challenge. They each get five frames in which to be tough-pretty while wielding a sword against a very muscly armored man named Ferdinando. Fatima totally forgets all of her gladiator moves, while Dominique tries out some crazy body language. The winner of the challenge is Whitney, and she gets 1000 euro to spend on a shopping spree. She can either pick a friend or go by herself, but does the nice thing and shares her wealth with Anya.

]]> 31 20080430000000 168645 25725 18 15 2008-05-01 10:25:28 4 20080430000000 25723 4 8 2008-05-01 10:16:39 The quickfire challenge is one enormous product placement for Uncle Ben's, but since this is a show about family I guess it is appropriate. The contestants have fifteen minutes to create an entr~~e that features the heat-and-eat rice and is impressive enough to dazzle the palate of guest judge Art Smith. Yes, that Art Smith. Oprah's personal chef Art Smith. Don't pretend you don't know. Mark, Stephanie, and Lisa make up the bottom three with boring, dense, and boring food, in that order. Antonia and her hot-cold rice salad over steak wins immunity. And, no, I have no idea what rice salad is, what it tastes like, or why Art Smith keeps saying hot-cold when he talks about it.

]]> 1 20080430000000 25719 7 36 2008-05-01 09:48:42 20080429000000 25708 7 35 2008-04-30 11:35:30 24 20080429000000 25701 4 5 2008-04-30 10:05:50