BLOGS
August 2012 Archives
Hell's Kitchen aside, competitive cooking shows have never fared all that well on network television. While cable series like Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star and Chopped have lasted for multiple seasons and will probably run until the end of time, America's Next Great Restaurant and Iron Chef USA (the original, William Shatner-hosted attempt to bring Japan's Iron Chef franchises stateside) are just some of the many network-based shows that were... well, chopped after one season. Considering that history, the future for ABC's new cooking show Time Machine Chefs, which premiered a one-off special episode last night, doesn't look all that bright.
So there is life after Little Fockers
After my initial review, where we could all agree that Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is representative of Idiocracy dictating our lives, TLC brought back June and the gang for two more glorious episodes. Last night in "She Oooo'd Herself" and "I'm Sassified!" we saw some extreme couponing, pageant rehearsal, another round of weigh-ins, a baby shower, an anniversary date and Alana buy a new dress. And just in case you didn't watch but what to know the horrifying things that you missed, here are the episode highlights, or, more appropriately, "the signs of the apocalypse."
With so many absurd reality shows at our fingertips, we expected The CW's musical chairs-based reality competition to be delightfully stupid. Instead, Oh Sit!, hosted by Jamie Kennedy and Jessi Cruickshank and developed by Phil Gurin (the brains behind Shark Tank and The Singing Bee), is more boring than anything else. Sure, it's great that the show clearly doesn't take itself seriously and doesn't blatantly promote sexism like the equally mindless The Choice, but at the end of the day, Sit! is more of a sub-par Wipeout rip-off.
John Barrowman heads to The CW, Hilary Duff is coming to your television, and Kate Hudson joins Glee, most likely to make Rachel cry. We're all very excited.
Y'all, I still can't believe The Glee Project even got a second season, let alone picked Blake Jenner -- the only normal, tolerable and attractive contestant in a pool filled with horribly obnoxious misfits who Ryan Murphy seemed hungry to exploit -- as the Season 2 winner. I don't think I made it through one single episode this season without hysterically laughing (Zach Woodlee's weird T. rex hand pose alone got my every time), and if you missed a single episode, I strongly suggest going back and watching what I think is the best terrible show on TV.
NBC is cashing in on the post-Olympics "Go America" sentiment with this new pro-military show. And while initially we were suspect about how watchable this show would be, given that NBC's last new reality show was Love in the Wild, we were pleasantly surprised at how this had glimmers of Top Shot with some "celebrities" in the mix.
A Will & Grace alum is heading to Smash and no, Will is not the one joining the scarf-loving version of Grace.
TLC has a bit of an obsession with people of smaller stature. Little People, Big World and The Little Couple both focused on people who lived normal lives despite the challenges that came with their size. Then there was Little Chocolatiers, which combined TLC's love of the littler people with all of the zany antics that made bakery shows like Cake Boss so popular.
In the latest of Bravo's string of TV shows that aren't about Real Housewives in title, but do circulate around a group of over-privileged idiots, Gallery Girls premiered last night. The series is about several unpaid interns who work at various mediocre galleries throughout New York City. Based on both the pilot and the season preview, there seem to be some turf wars, money problems and probably a lot of other things that have absolutely nothing to do with art or anything remotely transcendent brewing.