No Phones, No Lights, No Motorcars – At Home!

One of the worst things you can probably say about a TV series may be that it is derivative. Everyone wants their show to stand out as original, or if not original then as the best of the type. I think that's why CSI and The West Wing became such huge hits when they debuted. They were original; they weren't derivative (of course the fact that the shows treated their audiences like intelligent human beings not only didn't hurt but helped). And maybe that's why there are so few reality shows that really pop. Most of the reality shows out there, particularly the summer reality shows, are as derivative as hell. A few years ago there was a deluge of The Apprentice clones, and only one of them worked. That was Hell's Kitchen, and it works not because of what is similar to The Apprentice but because of what is different. Unlike Trump, and the hosts of virtually all of the clones, Gordon Ramsay has his eyes on the donkey's every working minute of the process. Ramsay is very much a part of the process, and his personality – or at least the part of his personality that comes out when dealing with a crew of what are essentially novices that he is trying to mould into a team – is an essential part of the show, even more than Trump's personality shows up in The Apprentice. (Anyone who has ever seen Ramsay's big British show, The F Word, will have seen a different aspect of his personality; of course that show would never sell on FOX.)

In the new CBS show There Goes The Neighborhood the show being cloned is Survivor, with some Big Brother thrown in for good measure. Call this Survivor: Family Edition if you want to and you wouldn't be far wrong. Of course you can't whisk kids – some as young as 6 years old – off to a tropical hellhole paradise, so the show instead tries to replicate the tropical hellhole paradise atmosphere in their own homes. This is accomplished by erecting a concrete wall around eight houses in an Atlanta neighbourhood (it looks like the Berlin Wall without homey touches like the guard towers), and then cutting the power to the neighbourhood. The loss of power not only means no TV, no video games, no chargers for cell phones but also no electric stoves, no refrigerators, no hot water and no air conditioning. And they're in Atlanta. That makes it the next best (?) thing to a tropical hellhole paradise but without the poisonous snakes and man-eating fish. Of course in Survivor (and Big Brother) the real threat isn't from those things but from the people that you're competing with and on this show that makes things more than a bit complicated.

Casting in a reality show is essential of course. That's complicated in this case because they're actually casting a neighbourhood with both pre-existing relationships and pre-existing groups. It's not like they can bring people in to fill some real or imagined quota system that requires a certain number of each group. That said, the producers managed to find a street to do this show on that is almost surprisingly diverse, both demographically and interms of human interest stories, which is another aspect of reality show casting. There's a mixed race family (the Upshaws), a mixed faith family (the Schindlers – the father is Jewish, the mother is Christian – they go to temple and celebrate Christian holidays), a same sex couple (listed as the Mullenix family), a single parent family (Laurie Southey and her daughter), a family consisting of three generations (the Bussieres), and another where the wife's niece is living with them while going to school (the Johnstons). The human interest stories are there as well. Clarissa "Chris" Mullenix has her own son from her previous marriage and adopted her two nephews after her brother and sister-in-law were killed in a freak accident (only one of the nephews is participating in the show). When Susan Bussiere suffered a stroke in 2008 her mother moved in to help the family out and has stayed. David Schindler is a workaholic whose kids often don't see him as much as they'd like, and when they do see him he usually has his phone glued to his ear. The participants on the show range from 5 to 74 (Jake Bussiere and his grandmother Marcia Flerra, with most of the "adults" being in their 40s.

As you might expect most of the first episode deals with the players getting used to their new situation and throwing in the various twists – like the power going out – before the game part of the game really gets going. Losing the power, is a big thing of course. The children and teenagers primarily think about playing their video games, using the computer to communicate with their friends and being able to charge their cell phones. For adults of course the worries are more basic questions of survival; storing food (think how much of it goes into the refrigerator), cooking it, staying cool (think of how dependent all of us are on air conditioning), and even being able to do things after dark. It is very much like being on the island in Survivor. And of course that's where competitions come into play.

The competition in the first episode required one player from each team to wear a T-shirt covered in mud and another player from the team to unravel a tangled fire hose and use it to wash the mud off the shirt, revealing three numbers printed on the shirt (water supplied by a fire engine on the other side of The Wall). Once the numbers were revealed the two team members had to run to a box locked with a combination lock – the three numbers on the T-shirt were the combination to the lock, but they had to be put into the correct order to open the lock. It was a close race, but in the end it was won by the Nelsons, the self-described "Southern Family." They became "Kings of the Neighbourhood, which carried both a Reward a Responsibility. The Reward in this case was a refrigerator full of food powered by generator, probably on "the outside." There's also a plentiful supply of food, and of course the Nelsons are expected to share with their neighbours. The Responsibility is to nominate two families one of which will be removed from the game. The Nelsons choose the DeGirolamo family (a competitive but overweight poker player) and the Mullenix Family. Chris Nelson (the father of the family) has some rather interesting logic in making his selections. He believes that the neighbours will see the Mullenixes as being weak competitively – he sees Chris Mullenix as being a bit of an emotional basket case – so that they will vote to keep them and eliminate the "strong" team," the DeGirolamos. After the nominations are made, the other families adjourn to their homes to talk about which of the families they wanted to keep. Voting was done by handing in photos of the family they wanted to keep. As Chris Nelson predicted all but one of the teams – probably the Southeys – elected to keep the Mullenixes.

I'm not entirely sure what to think about There Goes The Neighborhood. On the surface it seems like a rather ordinary reality-competition show, a reworking of an older, superior, format that manages to rise slightly above the level of most such reworkings of originals. It's not on the same level as Hell's Kitchen when it turned the format of The Apprentice on its ear, creating – in my opinion at least – a product that is in some ways superior to the original (or maybe I just like Gordon Ramsay's personality better than I like Donald Trump's – Ramsay would have appreciated Annie Duke over Joan Rivers in a second). On the other hand the show is much better than that ersatz version of The Amazing Race that NBC put on the air called The Great American Road Trip. Quite frankly, as viewers we basically know what to expect from There Goes The Neighborhood; there will be competition and interpersonal conflicts and from a purely detached point of view there's nothing really to object to. The show isn't cheaply done or badly thought out. It is, in its own way, as comfortable for the viewers as an old boot.

My problem with this show isn't with the show as television, it is with the concept itself. In most reality-competition shows the relationships are transitory. With relatively few exceptions the people who appear on these shows have no previous exposure to each other, no bonds to be tested, and after the event they will have as much or as little connection as they wish with each other. Famously, Rob & Amber got married after their time together on Survivor: All Stars (and in July of this year became parents of a daughter, Lucia Rose), but I have no idea of how close Amber is with her fellow Survivor: Australian Outback competitor Elisabeth Hasselbeck. These are, by their nature mostly transitory relationships so that the disagreements and battles and other relationship stressors cease to matter outside of the context of the game. A major exception is The Amazing Race in which team members have pre-existing relationships, but the teams are competing against people with they don't have a history. That's different in There Goes The Neighborhood. There are pre-existing relationships, friendships or at least acquaintances. Chris Nelson was able to make the strategic move that he did because he knew his neighbours, both the ones he nominated and those who would be doing the voting. That's where the show seems somehow unsavoury. There will come a time when, despite the fact that everyone knows that it's just a game and that what goes on in the game stays in the game, feelings are going to be hurt in a way that goes beyond the game, and that after the game things aren't going to be the same. I find it vaguely unsettling that the production company was willing to take that chance with people's lives. I find it even more unsettling that the producers were able to find eight families willing to risk their friendships.

As a detached TV viewer I find There Goes The Neighborhood to be an competently executed, if not particularly compelling, summer reality-competition; the sort of thing that will hold your interest for a while but which you won't particularly miss when it's gone or care about when it's not back next year. But part of me is disturbed by the voyeuristic aspects of this show. It's one thing to see people who don't know each other brought together in a highly stressful environment and watch how they interact because they know that once they're done with this show they don't necessarily have to see each other again. It's quite another thing to watch the possible disintegration of existing relationships. Somehow it makes me feel just a little unclean. But maybe that's just me.

Are We There Yet?

Anyone who is anything more than an occasional view of The Amazing Race will tell you that the Family Edition of that show was undoubtedly on of the worst viewing experiences ever. Coming off of what might have been one of the show's best seasons, which featured the Machiavellian efforts of Rob Mariano and his then fiancée (now wife) Amber Brkich and the eventual triumph of "good" (in the form of Uchenna & Joyce) over "evil" (Rob & Amber), just about anything would have been a let-down, but the show's Family Edition was a let-down of the "watch that first step, it's a lulu" variety. Foreign travel was limited to an excursion to Central America – Panama and Costa Rica, with a trip to Belize being cancelled due to the threat of a hurricane – and a trip to Canada. Most of the travel was done by car or by RV, and the challenges were by in large pedestrian; things like climbing a ladder to the top of the biggest office chair in the world, or searching the holes of a golf course to find balls coloured to match your motorized golf cart. And the "villains" of the piece weren't villainous because they were sneaky and conniving because this family acted superior to others (because they were "Christians" though you'd be hard pressed to prove it by their actions in the race) and frequently insulted other players (at one point they laughed at one opponent because he drove a garbage truck and in another they threw an apple core at the vehicle of another team). And although "right" triumphed it was less that a team that deserved to win was victorious than that the team that annoyed the life out of competitors and viewers alike were beaten down. Had the producers not been wise enough to realise that this season was a dog, the Family Edition might have been enough to kill The Amazing Race. At the time that the Family Edition of The Amazing Race aired, it was suggested by some people that perhaps the problem wasn't entirely the format but the timing. Maybe, they said, if something like the Amazing Race Family Edition was run during the summer, outside the ordinary rotation of the show, it would work better. Amazing Race producers Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri wisely decided not to try but slightly less than four years after the CBS show ran NBC has brought its own version of the show to the air. Based on the first episode the NBC show, called The Great American Road Trip, won't be any more successful than what preceded it.

Hosted by comedian Reno Collier, who apparently is well known on Comedy Central (I confess I've never heard of him; he bears a vague resemblance to Andy Richter) the show sends seven families on a road trip down Historic Route 66, the so-called Mother Road of America. Although the road has been officially decommissioned following the completion of the interstate system the road has been maintained in many states in various forms, and still holds a place in popular culture thanks to the old TV series and the Bobby Troup song. The seven teams consist of a mother and father and two teenage (or younger) children from diverse backgrounds. Starting from Wrigley Field in Chicago the teams are each ushered to a motor home. Each of the motor homes has the name and pictures of the family that occupy them and decorated in a manner deemed "appropriate" for the family. For example the Pollard Family (from Alabama) has a motor home decorated with empty shotgun shells. The seven teams are:

• The Coote Family from Lockport Illinois: Keith, Jennifer, Cassidy (12) and Jake (9). Keith is a former marine who is now a carpenter, Jennifer works during the day and goes to school at night. Cassidy is described as "an academic princess" while Jake is called "high energy" (I have other words for him, none particularly flattering).
  
• The DiSalvatore Family from Yonkers New York: Silvio, Amy, Mason (16) and Blake (13). Amy is a medical insurance administrator, while Silvio is a stay at home dad. He frequently seems overly concerned with his hair. Blake is the one who tries to settle family disputes, while Blake has never been separated from his video games for more than three days.
  
• The Favery Family from Long Island New York: Lenny, Dee, Dylan (15) and Ashley (10). Lenny is a Manhattan doorman who's a stickler for routine, while Dee is a special education teacher's aide. Ashley is a committed student with a taste for the better things in life, which the family can't afford particularly in these economic times. Dylan is a musician who breaks the tension with humour.
  
• The Katzenberg Family from Westport Connecticut: Marc, Hyleri, Sami (15) and Andrew (14): Marc and Hyleri aren't married yet but they already have blended their family. Described as "active philanthropists." The kids are Marc's son and Hyleri's daughter who bonded over accusing each other of being high maintenance.
  
• The Montgomery Family from Montclair California: Darius, Alecia, Darius Jr. (15) and Tyiler (11). Darius is a former Marine who served in Iraq while his wife Alecia is a pre-school teacher. Their kids are both strong students and Darius Jr. also excels athletically, while Tyiler shows signs of following in his footsteps.
  
• The Pollard Family from Newton Alabama: Ron, Amie, Aaron (17) and Anslie (12). A typical close-knit southern family. Ron is a homebuilder who loves hunting and fishing, while Amie is a radio host, who describes herself as wearing the pants in the family. Aaron is an athlete who plays varsity football and baseball and joined the gymnastics team to meet girls. Anslie is the "apple of his mother's eye" who has won several beauty pageants.
  
• The Rico Family from Katy Texas: Ricardo, Erica, Danielle (13) and Ricky (8). Ricardo and Erica are both in the advertising business but Erica is the more forceful of the two. She owns her own business and is the "dictator" of the family, while Ricardo describes himself as the spiritual sort who is the family peacekeeper. The kids are both involved in sports.
  

Reno makes it perfectly clear that this is not a race, and emphasising the fact is the police escort that the teams get from the Chicago police from Wrigley Field. That is the escort they get when they're able to get started. Silvio it seems wants to drive the motor home but is unable to get the thing started, which holds up the four teams parked behind them. It's only when Amy takes the wheel – and refuses to give it back to Silvio no matter what he wants – that they get on the road. Their first objective is the Illinois state capital of Springfield. Because this is not a race, the fact that vehicles pass each other is of little or no import, and the only real action is kids and parents being impatient with the trip. I'm not sure which is worse, the various kids asking "are we there yet?" or Silvio being impatient with Amy driving and the flat countryside that they're passing through.

The teams spend the night at the Illinois State Fair Grounds getting to know each other (and learning how to empty the sewage tanks in the RV – something that Silvio doesn't want to be anywhere near, apparently out of fear of what it might do to his hair, and no I'm not kidding. before their first challenge at Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield. The first challenge is cheesier than anything in the Family Edition season of The Amazing Race. The Presidential Race. One of the adults from each team has to carry as many "ballots" from the starting point to their Ballot Box. They can't stuff the "ballots" into their clothing. Getting to the Ballot Box means travelling through one of the most pathetic obstacle courses you're ever likely to see on TV, escorted by the kids as "Secret Service Agents." First they have to walk through their "Reflecting Pools" – really kid's wading pools. Next they have to pass through the "Rose Garden" – a zigzag passage for each team, decorated with artificial roses. Then they have to get past "The Cabinet" – a barricade of desks that they have to climb over. Finally there's the "Red Tape" which was one of those obstacles where you have to step over ropes – or red tapes – without tripping. There's one more thing; the person carrying the ballots has to wear a giant presidential caricature head, including Washington, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush (the Younger), and Obama, which restrict their vision. The Pollards are positively ecstatic that they got the Bush. The objective of the thing isn't to get to the Ballot Box first, but to get to the Ballot Box with the most ballots before the three minute time period for the event is completed. The Katzenbergs (dad is wearing the Obama head) complete the course first, but it was the Coote Family who carried the most ballots. Their father was smart enough to use his team jersey to carry the ballots. Amy DiSalvatore complained but it didn't count as stuffing the ballots into their clothes. Still it bred a bit of conflict between the two teams. The Coote family earned a special reward, while the three teams with the slowest times had to participate in an elimination challenge.

The Cootes get their reward at the next camp site in Madison, Illinois; a ride in a fire truck to the middle of the Chain Of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River, right on the border of Illinois and Missouri where they'd have supper with the Mayor of Madison. The next day the teams pull into St. Louis and on the grounds of the Gateway Arch the elimination challenge is staged. One member of each team is strapped into the center of a giant inflatable ball. The team then had to manoeuvre the ball through five replicas of the arch, not unlike croquet hoops. To complete the course the ball has to travel completely through the final arch. The problem is that the ball is attached to the starting point with a rope, and if the team ran out of rope before they got the ball completely through they'd have to try a different route. Naturally there was only one route that left them with enough rope. Teams couldn't watch as the teams before them went through the course The Favery Family went first and had some troubles with it, but it was the Katzenbergs who had the most difficulty. It took them over forty minutes to do a course that the Faverys did in just over fifteen minutes and the Montgomerys flew through in under three. This meant that the Katzenbergs were the first team to go home.

The Great American Road Trip may not be the worst reality TV show ever. Some of the attempts to clone The Apprentice probably deserve that title, as does an early NBC attempt at the reality competition form called Lost. It is certainly the worst Amazing Race imitator – but then that's a pretty small group. The only other Amazing Race like show that I can think of was Treasure Hunters, a show that was vastly superior to this mess, even when it seemed like an extended product placement for Motorola Phones, Orbitz, Ask.com and Genworth Financial Services. The fact that this is not a race renders all of the travel segments essentially meaningless. They could just as easily be transported from point to point in limousines – which would probably be sounder for the environment than the motor homes. The only thing that having these people go from point to point in motor homes provides the viewer with is a chance to see the kids, and some of the adults, being annoying. If the first episode challenges are typical then the competition aspect is reduced to the pathetic. And remember the competitions are the deciding aspect of this show. It doesn't matter how well they navigate, if for no other reason than the fact that most of their route is preordained – Route 66. So it is left for the competitions to be involving and they aren't. This show would have been so much better if they had found a competition designer who was able and willing to both make the challenges fit the location and to make them – well challenging. Tasks like the "Presidential Race" are downright infantile. Like the challenges, this show could have been so much better than it is. Compared to this the Family Edition of The Amazing Race is absolute poetry. Don't watch it.

Get Those Celebrities Off My TV

I have something better than a review of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – pelicans.

I shot this photo at the weir in Saskatoon. And let's face it Pelicans have made a greater contribution to art than the producers of this show have simply by being the inspiration for Dixon Lanire Merrith's poem (misattributed to Ogden Nash):

A wonderful bird is a pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week;
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

What have the producers of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here given us? A location, described by one of the participants on the show as "absolute torture," that any cub scout let alone anyone who ever appeared on Survivor – including Elizabeth Hasselebeck – would call the lap of luxury by comparison to what they had to deal with. A bunch of challenges that substitute the gross-out factor for any need for actual physical ability. A group of people, most of whom most viewers have never heard of, who have so little to do in the day that the only thing they are left with is annoying the crap out of each other. And us. These people, who are living proof of the saying that "hell is other people," are frequently self-centred, self-important and suffering from overinflated egos, who take offence at the least little thing. I'm not even going to mention Heidi and Spencer from The Hills except to say this – watching them on the first episode of this show not only gave me a headache but I'm pretty sure contributed to the nauseous feeling that came over me after the show.

The simple fact is that there have been reality shows that not only weren't renewed (like Treasure Hunt) but were pulled off the air before they completed their run (Pirate Master) that were better than this steaming pile of crap. I was struggling with what to write about this show all week before I finally came up with this, and I'm more than slightly concerned that I've wasted more electrons with this than the show deserves.

But at least it gave me a chance to post a picture of pelicans.

Please Sir, I Wanted Something More

In most fields of endeavour there are people who inspire awe, fear, anger, and tremendous respect. In the field of food and restaurants, Marco Pierre White is one of those people. He trained some of the great chefs of the world including both Mario Batali and Gordon Ramsay. White's behaviour in the kitchen is legendary: he once made Gordon Ramsay cry after the young chef made a mistake and White shouted at him (White on the incident: "I did not make Gordon cry. He chose to cry."); when a young chef complained about the heat in the kitchen, White cut open the back of his chef's jacket and pants with a sharp paring knife; and he once hung a young assistant from a hook by the man's apron strings. Certainly Anthony Bourdain holds White the chef in high regard, certainly in higher regard than he does Gordon Ramsay on Hell's Kitchen (click on "more" to get Bourdain's opinion of both men). But of course what we're talking about here is White the TV personality, or more importantly the TV show that White is fronting on NBC, The Chopping Block.

Sadly my reaction to the two are vastly different. I like White as a TV persona (but more on that later) but the show is an entirely different beast. And since we're doing TV criticism here, that's got to be our focus here.

The problem with The Chopping Block as a TV show is that it bears a stunning but unsurprising resemblance to that old favourite, The Apprentice. It's unsurprising of course because the base of so many different shows has been The Apprentice. In this particular case the sixteen people – this time it's eight couples with a pre-existing relationship, whether it's friends, siblings, husbands and wives, and in one case a couple who used to be married (the husband says that the business part of their relationship was better than the marriage part) – are split into two teams of four couples each, the Red Team and the Black Team. Half of each couple will work front of the house and have will work in the kitchen. They are then given two restaurants – or rather two wrecks of restaurants – that they have to stock with equipment and make safe from the health inspectors. White has a couple of challenges for them before the opening of the restaurants. The first is to give each team two truckloads of supplies. They can keep what they unload. According to White this will show if the teams have any sense of strategy when it comes to menus and such and whether they can "shop smart." Apparently the answer is disgusting to White: none of these people has any sense of a strategic vision for their restaurants at all. Maybe the fact that they've only met a couple of days before might – just might – have something to do with the lack of coordination; they don't know each other's strengths yet.

The second challenge is something familiar to anyone who has ever watched an episode of Hell's Kitchen, the signature dish cook-off. The cooking half of each team is given a period of time to produce a signature dish. The Black Team has an amazing series of mishaps occurring, apparently, one right after the other; the Salamander broiler suddenly drops off the wall onto the cook top, one part of the glass door on the regular oven explodes, and the electricity suddenly goes off. This should probably be a warning for the Black Team, but they just don't know it yet. Once the dishes are completed they are sampled by Chef White to determine which chef on each team will be the head chef for their restaurant for this episode. Inevitably there are dishes on both teams that White finds to be horrible and several others that he finds to be quite good. Actually on the Black Team there are three very good dishes, though heaven forbid that White recognize one of the American classics – Jambalaya – as being worthy of being served in a restaurant that he had anything to do with; at home it may be great but not >arrogant sniff< in a restaurant. One of the chefs on Black Team cooks Salmon in a Beurre Blanc Sauce that White loves while another does a Chicken Florentine with way too much stuff on it. Of course he chose the Chicken – once he cleared the excess salad off of course – because it's a nice dish with simple flavours. Over on the Red Team side he finds one dish, Chicken with Risotto from one of the female chefs bland, and of course if the food is bland the cook is bland too. Instead he chose a Veal Chop prepared by a female chef, apparently because everyone likes a Veal Chop in a restaurant. This sort of judgement makes you want to shake your head.

The next day the teams have just seven hours to get their restaurants set up, from setting up the tables and chairs (and figuring out where they should be) to taking delivery of their drinks, and actual prep work. The teams are impressed with themselves for taking their ramshackle establishments from empty hulks to places that don't look half bad in just seven hours, but as Chef White points out in one of his one-on-one conversations with the camera, "Time Is money." The next thing – the big challenge of the night – is the opening and operation of the restaurants. Needless to say things don't move smoothly. Front of the house doesn't do a great job of communicating with the kitchen and vice versa. It's the usual set of problems seen on just about every episode off Kitchen Nightmares on both sides of the Atlantic; the wait staff doesn't record the tables on the tickets, they're slow in picking up the completed orders, then they get mad at the kitchen when the food is either cold or not ready when they want it. In his brief visit to the Red Kitchen White observes this and tells Lisa, the head chef, to take one of the orders out herself to shame the front of house people into being more efficient. Over in the Black Restaurant Angie, one of the chef's but not the head chef, tried the same trick, only to be told off by the waiter she was trying to get through to, for embarrassing him. This happened while the server was giving his life story to the patrons at the table he was working at. But as we'll see the kitchens in both restaurants aren't entirely perfect either

Judgement between the two teams for each week's service was in the hands of a restaurant critic. His first stop was the Black Restaurant and it was then that I realized that this guy was an absolute snob. His server was Xan (brother of head chef Than; heaven knows what their parents were thinking when they gave their sons names like that) who made the mistake of pronouncing the word "claret" as "clar-ray." Once Xan had gone with their order, the critic immediately told the rest of his party that "the word is pronounced "claret" not "clar-ray"). Personally I would have been more upset with the fact that my server was recommending a wine that he personally hadn't tried. The critic ordered the crab cake as his appetizer. This was the specialty of Khoa who had one of the two best dishes in the head chef competition. Next he had the chicken prepared by Than. The dish was cold and worse, when he cut into it, found that it was pink and oozing a little blood near the bone. Not good performance.

When the critic went to the Red Restaurant he found more to be disappointed with and more to make me think that he was a bloody snob. The restaurant was packed, with people standing at the bar. The camera was quick to point out that there was an empty four top in the restaurant, and it seemed clear that the critic expected to get it. Two things were apparent to observant viewers; the table wasn't set yet, and there were people waiting to be seated ahead of the critic and his party. Eventually they were seated and the critic's party ordered their meal. There was a minor problem, or at least it would probably be a minor problem to anyone who wasn't a restaurant critic. Filet Mignon was listed on the menu but it had proven so popular with the patrons who weren't restaurant critics that there was none left. As the critic's waitress said the only way he'd be able to have any sense of what the Filet was like would be to go out and smell the breath of someone who had eaten one. He had to settle for the Salmon with Beurre Blanc Sauce, which he loved. He was less happy with the desert, Black and White Chocolate Truffles. They were hard – which was a legitimate complaint – and showed that there was no pastry chef – which was not.

It was the critic's job to determine which team would win the evening's contest and which would be forced to send one partnership home. But before that he gave some criticism of the meals. When talking of the Red Team's meal he mentioned the Salmon with Beurre Blanc sauce. He mentioned that he had specifically ordered the sauce to be served separately from the Salmon. He found the fish alone to be rather bland but when he dipped it in the sauce it came alive. Here's a clue pal; the reason they call it Salmon with Beurre Blanc Sauce is that the Salmon is meant to be eaten with the Beurre Blanc Sauce. He didn't like the Truffles, which he mentioned again was an unimaginative choice and were impossible to eat because they were too hard. But it was the Black team that came in for the most criticism, and which lost in the end, entirely because of the underdone chicken. It was left to White to decide which partnership from the Black Team would be going home.

It shouldn't have been a big problem. Xan hadn't been that great in the front of the house but Than had been personally responsible for the botched Chicken dish, and as anyone who has seen any Gordon Ramsay series will tell you, undercooked chicken can kill a customer, and Ramsay isn't kidding, it can. Still, things degenerated into a case of he said she said, or in this case they said they said. Xan went after Angie for coming out of the kitchen with the food, an action that Marco seemed to approve of. There was a lot of other discussion about the difficulties that the brothers had in working with Angie. Still it was rapidly becoming clear that the team that would be going home would be Xan and Than until...

Until Khoa spoke up. He didn't like the atmosphere on the show, hadn't been expecting the fighting and backbiting, and so had decided that he and his sister Denise wanted out of the competition. Amazingly White accepted their resignation, and told the others that they owed Khoa and Denise their respect. He also told Xan and Than point blank that if it weren't for Khoa taking that course they would have been out on their ears. Ramsay wouldn't have given Khoa and Denise the chance to quit, or if he did would have put Xan and Than out after them. He would have asked them who was responsible for the undercooked chicken and fired Xan and Than without any discussion.

Marco Pierre White has a pretty good TV presence. Anthony Bourdain refers to White as being much like Michael Corleone from the Godfather films. He says, "Marco can walk into a room full of strangers and bark out a command, and everyone would do it, no matter what he asked. He's got a real commanding presence. He's physically imposing; he looks like a Venetian prince. He's just somebody born to authority." That comes out quite clearly in those times when he's on screen. He does have a quiet, commanding presence that means that you pay attention to him. He rumbles in a quiet sort of way that makes it obvious that you don't want to be on the receiving end of his anger. The problem is that he doesn't spend any great length of time on camera. There's no real opportunity for him to bark out a command and see others race to do whatever is asked. That's the problem with the Apprentice format; the person who decides on the winner isn't present. That's what makes Hell's Kitchen work as a show. Ramsay is always on screen and the force of his personality is as much an attraction – maybe more of an attraction – as the competitors on the show, who are described by Bourdain as "a bunch of dimwits – the lame, the halt and the delusional.... None of these idiots would be qualified to work a Fryolator at a Chuck E. Cheese much less ever work in any Gordon Ramsay restaurant." I retain my own opinion on the quality of competitors on Hell's Kitchen but I don't think it's wrong to say that I would really like more of a chance to see White's personality in action than is seen on this show.

The Apprentice format – select a team leader, complete a project set by the nominal "boss" of the show who only makes a brief appearance while sending others to evaluate the team performance, select a losing team and get rid of one member from that losing team – is a well worn one. For a while it seemed like every other reality-competition show was using that format, and the only show that took it, twisted it around and made it suit the individual around whom it was built was Hell's Kitchen. Virtually all of those shows died because they weren't different enough from the original Apprentice to stand out. This series was no different from those imitators which is a pity because there are a lot of directions that a show like this could go in. The easiest might have been to use the model of the British series Last Restaurant Standing, where the individual partnerships compete individually, with their own individual visions of what their dream restaurant would be. There are other formats that would work and would showcase White and his commanding personality better. As it stands however, NBC has produced yet another imitation Apprentice and as a result is wasting the new show's only bankable commodity, Marco Pierre White. He and the viewers – for different reasons – deserve better than this.

Who Knew?

I mean seriously. Who'd have thought that you were more likely to get hurt on a show like Dancing With The Stars than on Survivor?

I think I've been pretty good in not writing about reality shows this year – this calendar year that is – and believe me it's been pretty hard. I mean there's a part of me that has been dying to express my opinion about "Coach" on Survivor (a real blowhard), how the group that Ramsay himself says is the best bunch of contestants ever to appear on Hell's Kitchen still can't cook the bleeping risotto, how the great challenges on The Amazing Race are exceeded only by the colourful locals – who frequently behave like they've been indulging in the local potables – who smile and laugh at the crazy Americans, or how one of my favourite poker players – Annie Duke – has so annoyed Joan Rivers (and therefore endeared herself to us all in the process) that Rivers compared her to Mussolini. But until now I've been holding off, holding my fire for the really bad reality shows that are going to be filling the summer schedule. (Okay, so I'm going to have to make an exception for Chopping Block. The host – Marco Pierre White – was Ramsay's first boss and made Gordon f'ing Ransay cry! And he has the pictures – in his autobiography – to prove it! How can you not write about that!!) Still I can't let the spate of injuries that have plagued the cast of Dancing With The Stars pass without some notice.

Let's face it. You'd expect people to get hurt on a "macho" show like Survivor. They're out there, isolated in the wilderness fending for themselves and then competing in those competitions where people are running and grabbing at each other, so obviously they must be getting hurt. What could happen on a "girly" show like Dancing With The Stars beyond the occasional blister on your heel thanks to an ill-fitting dancing pump?

Ah, but you would be wrong my friends. Looking at the list of serious dance related injuries – injuries that either involved broken bones, forced contestants (celebrities or pros) to leave the show before or during the competition or required them to have surgery after the show – on Dancing With The Stars and you come up with an interesting list:

• Cristián de la Fuente – ruptured tendon in left bicep; kept dancing but needed surgery after show ended. Season 6.
  
• Misty May-Treanor
  – ruptured Achilles Tendon during in rehearsal; forced to withdraw from show. Season 7.
  
• Susan Lucci – apparently sprained ankle during rehearsal; in fact she had broken two bones in her right foot. Season 7.
  
• Lance Bass – broken toe. Season 7.
  
• Jewel – initially diagnosed with tendonitis, later discovered she had broken her tibias in both legs during practice; unable to dance. Season 8.
  
• Nancy O'Dell – torn meniscus in one knee; surgery required. Season 8.
  
• Karina Smirnoff – professional dancer, suffered neck injury requiring surgery. Season 6.
  

This doesn't include a number of other injuries that weren't serious enough to need surgery, illnesses, or events that injured participants outside of the context of the competition:

• Li'l Romeo – injured his leg playing basketball; replaced by his father Master P. Season 2.
  
• Marie Osmond – fainted while the judges were critiquing her during a live performance show. Season 5.
  
• Jane Seymour – food poisoning resulted in her missing a results show. Season 5
  
• Kristi Yamaguchi – injured ankle; did not affect her participation on the show. Season 6.
  
• Kim Kardashian – cut her foot on a piece of broken mirror in her hotel room day before being named as a contestant; doctors okayed her to participate. Season 7.
  
• Jeffrey Ross – suffered a scratched cornea in his left eye during rehearsals; didn't last long enough to know if it would have taken him out. Season 7
  
• Brooke Burke – injured foot during camera blocking rehearsal. Season 7.
  
• Maurice Greene – hyper-extended leg during rehearsal for group Paso Doble. Season 7.
  
• Kym Johnson - professional dancer, hyper-extended leg during rehearsals. Season 3.
  
• Mark Balas – professional dancer, dislocated shoulder during encore dance. Season 5.
  
• Derek Hough – professional dancer, injured neck while rehearsing a routine for the results show; forced to miss that night's results show. Season 6.
  
• Derek Hough – professional dancer, suffered food poisoning after drinking a protein shake. Season 6.
  
• Karina Smirnoff – professional dancer, suffered left ankle sprain in rehearsals morning of performance. Season 7.
  
• Derek Hough – professional dancer, blacked out after tripping and hitting his head. Taken to hospital but cleared to continue dancing. Season 7.
  
• Julianne Hough – professional dancer, initially thought to be suffering a bad stomach ache, she was subsequently diagnosed with Endometriosis and was required to have surgery to remove her appendix; missed two weeks of dancing. Season 7.
  

Compare that with serious injuries on Survivor (same definition as for Dancing With The Stars):

• Michael Skupin – fainted while attempting to start a fire and fell into the fire, suffering severe burns to his hands; evacuated from the show and had to have surgery. Season 2.
  
• Jonathon Penner – suffered a puncture wound to his knee, which became infected; evacuated. Season 16.
  
• James Clement – suffered an injury to his finger which the medical team monitored; when the risk of infection spreading to the joint of his finger was deemed too great he was evacuated. Season 16.
  

That's it. While seven people have either broken bones, been forced to withdraw or had to undergo surgery during their time on Dancing With The Stars as a direct result of events that took place on the show or in rehearsals for the show, only three people on Survivor have suffered injuries that were serious enough to get them taken off the show.

The big question is, "why is this happening?" The initial reaction was that the professional dancers were forcing their celebrity partners to practice too hard and for too many hours. According to the show's executive producer Conrad Green, speaking to People Magazine the truth may be quite the opposite: "This is now three fit women, if you include Misty May-Treanor from last season, who had to withdraw from the show. Perhaps people who are fitter throw themselves into it with more wild abandon. I really feel for them and we may need to take a look at [how hard people train] in the future." In other words it is the celebrities, and in particular the fittest of the celebrities, who are driving themselves to over-train for this competition.

There are other aspects at work however. Starting in the fourth season of the show, training time was reduced from six weeks to four. According to The Ballroom Dance Channel
blog the logical result of this is that with less time to learn the same number of steps and routines the celebrities – in particular the most competitive ones, who are often also the fittest – are going to drive themselves to do more, often at the risk of injury. The blog includes an interesting statement by amateur latin dancer and blogger Tonya Plank: "I mean, for the average serious beginner, you'd probably take two hours of intense private lessons per week, then about 10-15 hours of less intense, more social-dance-oriented group classes, and about three or four hours a week on your own. So, they are basically spending about a quarter of the time each day training that these DWTS competitors are." Plank also stated that to achieve the level that Dancing With The Stars wants from the celebrities – what's known as "Open Gold" level – usually takes two to four years for most people, and the celebrities on the show are required to achieve that sort of level in not one but two very different disciplines, which most dancers don't attempt.

Pro-am competitor Jerry Bowman explained his normal training routine involves 45 minute training sessions. There are two types of open –choreographed – competition. One of these involves groups and is what is normally seen on television. The other is a "showcase routine" which sounds very much like what is done on Dancing With The Stars: "This is danced with just you and the pro taking the whole floor and being judged on a graded scale with judges comments. This is a choreographed routine that usually has been put together for an exhibition show hosted by the local studio. It then gives an opportunity for the student and teacher to get feedback on the routine. Because these are done for an exhibition/recital type program and are usually more involved then about 20 sessions are used to prepare the routine." Bowman also mentioned that he personally usually spends as much time on his own practicing the routine, at least for the Open Routines (the group dances). He doesn't specifically mention the Showcase Routines, but assuming that he maintains the same routine for those that would mean roughly 30 hour in total spent training for a Showcase Routine, spread over a period of time. And he is an experienced dancer.

So what is the answer for Dancing With The Stars. While Conrad Green seems to suggest that limits should be imposed on the celebrities the editor at the Ballroom Dance Channel blog suggests that the answer might be to give participants more preparation time – at least in terms of the number of weeks that are available for them to work in – would certainly be helpful. In fact the two ideas could work together; an extended preparation period with limits on the total number of hours that could be spent preparing. On the othe hand this might work against the weaker competitors. I'm just guessing but I think that Steve Wozniak is in greater need of practice than Denise Richards or Ty Murray.

One thing is for sure, after the spate of injuries that Dancing With The Stars has had over the years the degree of fitness needed to do well on this show shouldn't be questioned. It's about more than fancy steps and hard-bodied women dressed a few strategically place feathers and sequins – though Lord know, the latter is why I watch!

The Fear Is NOT Real

Every so often there is a show that you feel you have to see just because of the people involved. You want it to be good of course, and you believe it could be good, but that's entirely because of the people involved – the people that are the reason you feel you have to see the show. 13 – Fear Is Real was one of those shows for me. The people in this case are Executive Producers Sam Raimi and Rob Tappert. You remember Raimi and Tappert right? If the only things they gave us were Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess that would be enough. But of course that aren't the only things they've given us. Raimi gave us the Evil Dead movies, the Grudge movies, and of course the Spiderman series (not to mention having Bruce Campbell as a friend since childhood). Rob Tappert has worked with Raimi since they were college roommates and has either co-written or co-directed most of the movies that Raimi has made (not to mention that he's married to Lucy Lawless). If there's one thing these two guys know it's horror movies. So yeah, I was looking forward to seeing what they'd do with a horror based reality show. So how'd they do?

Well I have to say that I was a bit disappointed, but before I get into reasons I should present a bit of a synopsis of the show. It began with a group of people being driven out into the wilderness in a converted school bus. Brief glimpses of the outside, mainly of graveyards, set the scene as New Orleans and the Louisiana bayous. As they drive along we meet some of the cast including Leah, a bartender who is afraid of just about everything but particularly the dark; Lauren, a model who claims that in the movies it's always the ditzy girl who gets killed first; Kelly, an events planner who talks about being a Christian and claims that she believes in the Devil and in his works; and Cody, a self proclaimed "ghost hunter" with multiple piercings and a huge Mohawk who claims not to be afraid of anything. As the bus penetrates deeper and deeper down a dirt road it becomes darker and darker. Suddenly the bus stops, its path blocked by some logs. The driver tells his passengers that this is where they get off. They keep walking down the road, apparently because they aren't allowed to stay with the bus. So they trek further down the road in the dark with all the weird foresty noises, which always sound scary at night, and finally find a deserted shack. And suddenly we're in every scary teen flick of the '80s and '90s, except that the shack is loaded with closed circuit cameras all feeding to "The Mastermind."

Despite several people in the groups saying "don't open the door," they open the door. The one room shack, which is to say without a toilet (big surprise), is "tastefully" decorated in blood spatters, voodoo doll, a pentagrams and the words "Don't Trust" both in blood, and if I recall correctly a ram's skull. As the group starts to settle in they hear a thump on one of the walls. It's an axe with a note holding a note onto the wall. The note says "Answer the phone." And of course, despite people saying "don't answer the phone" they end up answering the phone. Or at least they do after they find it, since it was hidden under the floorboards of the shack. On the phone is The Mastermind and he has instructions for them. First, one of them has to agree to stay at the cabin and therefore not participate in the "game" that The Mastermind has for them. Surprisingly it is great big fearless ghost hunter Cody, his mohawk looking more than a little deflated by the Louisiana humidity, who decides to stay put. The remaining twelve people pair up into twos. One member of each pair then has to walk down the road to ... an uncertain fate. Next the other six are told to walk down the same road. What we know (and they don't) is that their partners have been blindfolded, gagged and tied to chairs in the woods. As the others walk down the road they come to what they, and initially we since we're in on at least this much of what The Mastermind plans, think is one of their number bound to a chair. It is in fact a dummy. There are more instructions from The Mastermind. They have to search through the woods to find and release only their own partner. Once they do that they have to get back to the dummy as fast as they can. The last pair to get back to the dummy have to face the Execution Ceremony. They also have to take video cameras with them to film their rescue, leading to some very "Blair Witch-y" footage of them stumbling through the woods. Eventually, it is the only all female pair, Kelly and Lauren who have to face the execution challenge. During the night Leah, the one who is basically afraid of everything leaves the cabin – presumably to use or at least find the outhouse – and somehow panics. She screams (of course) and the others (of course) go out to find and comfort her. Nothing really comes of it but everyone associated with this production has to be overjoyed that they cast this scaredy cat for the show since she gets frightened even when there's nothing to be frightened about.

The next morning everything seems nice and normal with all the scares of the night before gone. Then Nassir, a concierge who claims to be a rapper, discovers a tape recorder sitting on top of a cage inside of which is locked a wooden box. The tape tells him to gather up the group before going any further, which he dutifully does. The box locked in the cage is the "Death Box." A player who has the Death Box and reads the instructions inside can kill three of his fellow competitors, but if they are caught with the box they are automatically put up for execution. Steffinnie, a young woman of Laotian descent who says she believes in spirits because she's seen spirit activity in her own life, quickly works out the combination for the lock (which oddly isn't 666 – that's the first number she tries) takes the box out but doesn't open it and hides it in the underbrush. When the others discover that the Death Box is out of its cage there is considerable discussion of who could have it and how it was probably a premature action. There's a lot of paranoia floating about and Steffinnie cracks. She goes back, and with some difficulty finds the box and puts it back in the cage. Crisis, seemingly, averted.

Night falls again and the phone rings. Kelly and Lauren are told to each use a video camera to record their last words to the group (and to us of course) and then walk down the road where The Mastermind's minions – yes he actually calls them minions and has done from the first time he spoke to the victims/contestants – will take charge of them. The minions are dressed all in black and along the road they grab Kelly and Lauren and blindfold them. They also apparently blindfold the camera because for the next minute or so all we see is a sliver of light on a mostly black screen. Finally we all arrive at the site of the execution challenge. There are two slightly larger than people sized wooden boxes; Kelly and Lauren are to be buried alive! They get into their crude wooden coffins, which are of course wire for sound and have closed circuit TV cameras, and the minions begin securing the coffins with nails and wire, lower them into the waiting graves and then shovel on the dirt. While Kelly prays, Lauren fidgets because of the dirt dropping down onto her. Once the burying is finished The Mastermind tells the girls (remember the coffins are wired for sound) that the first one to escape from her coffin will survive and return to the group. The other one will die. Truth be known the result is relatively anticlimactic. It doesn't take too long for Kelly to figure out that she can kick out the end of her coffin with her feet and then she can – amazingly – get out through that end. She's out of the box before Kelly even finishes pushing on the tops and sides. Kelly goes back to the group with Laurens video and I swear someone says "don't watch the video." And on most shows that would be the end but not on this one; the next day dawns and the group goes out to check the cage. The Death Box is gone!!

I have from time to time said that if a reality show is going to be imitative it should have some original aspect to it that will differentiate from the run of the mill. Why is it that after a seemingly endless string of Apprentice imitators came and went only Hell's Kitchen survived and prospered. The answer is that the Gordon Ramsay show had differences – Ramsay's perpetual presence as a hands on leader being the biggest – that made it seem different, or at least different enough, from the original model that it started from that people either overlook or don't care about the similarities. 13 – Fear Is Real is taking from the Survivor model – not surprising since the third executive producers is Jay Bienstock who has been with Mark Burnett's show since Australia – but in a very real way, rather than improving on the model the show is so pale an imitation that it might be called corpse-like. On Survivor there always seems to be something going on, whether it's gathering food or getting water or even lying in their shelters talking smack about other players and plotting alliances. In the wake of the first challenge where the victims have to find their partners the most exciting thing to occur until the Death Box was found by Nassir was a stimulating game of throw the stick into the holes in the concrete blocks. And that made it sound more exciting than it was. Watching Cody's mohawk deflate would have been more fun, but by that afternoon it had almost converted itself into a flat-top.

There is a further major problem with this show and that concerns the subject matter. The classic horror movies of the '70s, '80s and '90s had a common thread of unpredictability. You never knew when something was going to happen and it built up the dramatic tension to considerable heights. And of course none of the people in those movies knew that they were in a horror movie; well except maybe for Neve Campbell and her friends in the Scream series. The net result is that they went to the secluded cabin in the woods with little more on their skeevy little minds but partying, drinking, and getting laid. In those movies then it comes as a shock to all around her that the girl who just had sex ended up as the victim of a hideous murder. The horror aspects of 13 Fear Is Real are stage managed, and worse they seem to be on a schedule. While they may not have known that the first "selection challenge" (or whatever you want to call it) would take place the night they arrived, they knew that the next night either Kelly or Lauren would be "killed" and so there wouldn't be another selection challenge and they could basically relax. That doesn't really inspire fear in well... just about anybody. You can't schedule terror. Plus they're all aware that they're on a reality show dealing with fear and terror, so in light of that awareness how much fear can be inspired within them. The victims might put on a show but it lacks the believability that you might have if, instead of knowing they're on a show called 13 – Fear Is Real, they believe they're on something called True Beauty (to use the name of the week's other new reality debut as an example) and the situation they find themselves in seems like a horrible U-turn from what things are supposed to be. But of course you couldn't do that without fear of lawsuits, now could you.

13 – Fear Is Real is a major disappointment given the quality of the people involved in the show. The fear on the part of the audience has very little to do with what is going on on-screen. We have little or no involvement with the victims and thus their demise and their interactions don't interest us. There is no surprise or shock here and that undermines our sense of fear. And when you take the horror away from a TV series based around horror movie clichés, you aren't left with much at all. 13 – Fear Is Real gets good marks in terms of concept but the majority of the grade is based on execution (you should pardon the expression) and in that the show gets a big fat goose egg. It may not be the worst show of the year or even the month, but when it comes to everything else, it fails to live up to its potential, and it fails to scare us. In short it fails dismally as a show.

On The Third Day Of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me... three Reality TV Show stars.

Now contrary to what my friend Toby contends, I don't watch all that much reality TV. I watch what I call "The Big Three" from CBS – Big Brother, Survivor, and The Amazing Race and sample a few others in the summer. I really don't consider Dancing With The Stars to be a reality show, and I don't watch the Project Runway class of look-alike shows – Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, Top Chef, and the one about hairstylists. Mostly those shows aren't available to me. I've never watched the "dating" shows like The Bachelor, and most of the talent shows like American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance leave me totally out of it. That goes for their Canadian versions as well, although I feel a considerable irritation over the fact that CTV has pulled Canadian Idol from their 2009 line-up and blame the economic environment. It's one of the network's highest rated show and either they think that they've found all of the singing talent in Canada after three seasons or that it costs too much to rent the venues. (Maybe if they didn't spend $3 million on the rights to the old Hockey Night In Canada theme. No hockey games to go with it, just the theme music.) I even became disenchanted with the only "talent" type show that I watched – NBC's America's Got Talent – as a result of the bloated audition phase and the atrophied performance phase.

What all of that was about was to explain why my list of Reality TV Show Stars is restricted to just three. I mean it could have been four if I'd decided to include Gene Simmons from Celebrity Apprentice but let's face it, Gene Simmons is Gene Simmons; larger than life and maybe even (in his way) larger than Trump. What I'm interested in in this post is the non-celebrities who have, through the medium of the Reality TV Shows that I watch have inserted themselves into my memory for a little while. I have to say that the number who actually did that was severely restricted. While Jerry and to a lesser extent Renny on the summer Big Brother created an impression but in the case of Jerry it was an increasingly negative one and in the case of Renny it often focused on that voice. There were good people in Amazing Race 13 but none who stood out in the way that Kynt & Vyxsin did in the twelfth edition of The Race. So here's what I've got, two players from the most recently completed cycle of Survivor and one from an otherwise unremarkable show called Greatest American Dog. These are presented in alphabetical order if for no other reason than it removes any taint of favouritism from the mix.

Bill McFarlin & Star – Greatest American Dog: I'm a dog guy – have been since the cat I thought was mine ran away when I was four. Watching Greatest American Dog generally reaffirmed for me the claim by the late Barbara Woodhouse that there were no bad dogs just bad owners. The people on the show all loved their dogs, but some were incredibly – even stupidly – indulgent of them. Some couldn't control their dogs while others were over-controlling to the point where their dogs were becoming stressed and the owners didn't even know it. And then there were the egos – mostly the owners – that got in the way. Bill, from Flint Texas, seemed to have a special bond with his Brittany Spaniel Star. Unlike some of the contestants he didn't anthropomorphise the dog, and unlike others he wasn't overly controlling. Star was smart and responsive, while Bill was genuinely concerned with the dog's welfare. At one point Star was injured – apparently by a feral cat – and Bill was heartbroken over the possible injury to his dog, not about possibly leaving the contest. This was in contrast with some other contestants. The other thing about Bill is that he was very friendly and willing to help other contestants on the show in working with their dogs if they wanted the help. Again this was in stark contrast with some of the contestants. One in particular – a professional trainer – tended to be condescending to the other owners. It is something of a testament to Bill and Star that when they were eliminated from the show, I eliminated the show from my weekly viewing.

Bob Crowley – Survivor: Gabon: One of those cases where the "good guy" and someone who actually deserves it wins a reality-competition show. Bob Crowley, a high school physics teacher, from Maine wasn't the most likely person to win the show. In fact he was arguably the most unlikely. He was the oldest man on the show and in a very real way one of the least effective in the physical challenges. But as he said at one point (it was inserted into promos for the show featuring him) he was "wicked smaht." His initial contributions to the tribes that he was on were in terms of woodcraft and outdoorsmanship. His teams had plenty of food cooked well (he improvised a griddle by splitting open and flattening a large tin can) and comforts (at one point he apparently built a bench at one of the camps). This led at least one of his competition to dismiss him as "not really playing the game." It was a severe underestimation. Even as his alliance was falling apart he was laying the groundwork towards forging new temporary relationships. And he was not above being devious. Not once but twice he created fake immunity idols of such good quality that they were able to persuade others of their legitimacy. But perhaps his greatest triumph in the game was an unprecedented string of personal challenge victories – both immunity and reward – with which he was able to retain his position in the game even as he was becoming the obvious threat to beat. In the end he was able to persuade the jury members that he, unlike second place finisher Susie (a woman who made flying under the radar a new art form), had lived up to the show's motto "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast." (One interesting sidelight about Bob: one of his students, Julie Berry, was a competitor on Survivor: Vanuatu - she finished fifth.)

Jessica "Sugar" Kiper – Survivor: Gabon: If ever proof were needed that reality shows have writers – at least to pick out and develop the storylines from the footage shot on location – it is Sugar. To viewers Sugar was the second most likable member of the cast (behind Bob) as shown by the fan poll at the end of the series. And yet she was the only one of the final three not to get a vote for the jury. Susie, who was probably the least visible of the cast members who made it to the merge – at least in terms of screen-time – received only one less vote than Bob. Clearly – and it was stated during the reunion show – there were things about Sugar and her behaviour that irritated people. I suppose that 39 days of Sugar is different than fifteen edited hours of her. What is abundantly clear is that however much she may have irritated them, Sugar also allowed herself to be underestimated by the other competitors (with the possible exception of Bob – I think he saw right through her). They seem to have based their impression of her on the body, the voice and the hair and ignored the fact that she had a brain. It was absolutely clear when we saw Corinne and Randy talking about Bob almost certainly finding the Hidden Immunity Idol at Exile Island despite the fact that Sugar had been there five times while Bob had only been there twice. Clearly Sugar was too stupid to find the Idol (she found it the first time she went). Setting that aside, Sugar was either responsible for or at the very least involved with some of the biggest moves in the game including the elimination of Ace – supposedly the "brain" behind Sugar – and the final elimination of Kenny by giving her Immunity Idol to Matty. In fact it was Sugar who gave Bob the million dollar win by voting for her long-time ally Matty ensuring the tie, and telling Bob of her intentions beforehand which allowed him to practice his fire making skills. Sugar's greatest enemy in the game was Corinne, and I suspect it may have been her statements at the jury session that influenced the portrayal of Sugar. First Corinne said that Sugar would have her vote if only she would agree to use the money to have her vocal cords severed. It went downhill from there. In a speech later in her questioning of the surviving players, Corinne showed off what I can only call her "Anne Coulter" side: "You are an unemployed, uneducated leech on society. And the only thing I would vote to give you is a handful of anti-depressants so that no one else has to be subjected to your constant crying anymore. And maybe if you get some, then it would seem a little more sincere when you are crying about your dead father." And there you have summed up the "heroine/villainess" (because Randy and later Kenny had admirably placed themselves as the male villain of the piece in counter point to Bob's hero) dynamic that the people who put the hours of tape for this season together in a viewable package used to shape our perceptions of this season.

Bob The Survivor

I have decided that Bob is my favourite cast member on the current season of Survivor. He's always been on the list because he's low key yet industrious, but what he did over the past couple of episodes has cemented my opinion of him as the smartest player to probably not win this game since Yau Man didn't win.

Some of you may be wondering how he accomplished this. Well, the sequence goes something like this.

1. Bob goes to Exile Island for the first time. Unlike Dan – the first player sent to Exile – but like Sugar, he finds the first clue to the hidden immunity idol and follows them through to the end. At the end of the trail he finds nothing. And so he spends his time in a little art project, making a fake Immunity Idol (and by far the most convincing of the fakes yet perpetrated). He then returns to the Nobag camp with his fake. Charlie is voted out.
   
2. Bob shows his fake immunity idol to Sugar. She immediately sees the potential of the fake Idol in getting rid of Randy. Bob resolves to give the fake idol to Randy if Randy asks for the Immunity Idol.
   
3. Bob is sent to Exile a second time, this time by Kenny. After finding that the clue is exactly the same one that led him to the dead end in his previous time at Exile, he goes on a bit of a personal safari.
   
4. Which of course Randy does, because Randy has been acting like an even bigger horse's ass than usual – something that is hard to believe since he was already a Clydesdale sized horse's ass – with the expectation that Bob has the Idol.
   
5. Randy stays obnoxious at Tribal Council to the point where Crystal makes her goodbye statement loudly enough so everyone can hear her.
   
6. In the vote Corinne and Randy vote for Susie. So does Bob.
   
7. Randy plays the fake Idol. Jeff reveals that Idol that Randy played was fake. Bye-bye self-declared "King of Gabon," don't let the palm leaves hit you on the ass on the way out – or better yet do.
   

Now there are a couple of things here that I don't think some people get. First of all there's this from Wikipedia: "Not knowing that Sugar had the Hidden Immunity Idol, Bob told her that he did not have the Hidden Immunity Idol and showed her the fake idol that he made." While I mostly agree that Bob doesn't know for sure that Sugar has the Idol, he has to be pretty sure that it's not there and since Sugar is the only person left in the game who has been to Exile – Dan having been eliminated – it follows that Sugar has the Idol, since in the past they've returned it to Exile with a new set of clues if the owner either plays it or is eliminated, and Bob has followed clues that have led him to a spike in a tree in the jungle; the perfect place for an Immunity Idol to hang. And as we'll see in the next paragraph letting Sugar know helps him to sell his plan.

Next, why does Bob vote for Susie? He has to know that she's not going home right? Of course he does, and it doesn't matter. In fact it is a brilliant strategic move because it tells Randy, Corrine, the jury members and anyone that Sugar hasn't told about having the Immunity Idol that he believed he had the real thing. Sugar's barely controlled glee at seeing Randy play the fake sells the idea that she knows it's a fake. It not only reveals that Sugar has the real Idol to anyone who doesn't already know – how else would she know that what Randy played was a fake practically before he played it – but it makes it obvious that it was Sugar, and not Bob who made the fake Idol. After all, why would Bob give what he knew to be a fake Idol to his ally Randy? Bob has to have believed that it was the real deal and he wouldn't if he made it himself.

For the life of me though, what I don't get is why Corinne and Randy – but particularly Corinne – believed it was impossible for Sugar to have the real Immunity Idol while they were absolutely certain that Bob found it. I mean anyone who looked at the situation with even a modicum – a bare scintilla – of logic would come to the conclusion that the odds of someone who had been sent to Exile Island five times in a row were at least twice as good as the odds of someone who had been there twice. In the end I suppose that it comes down pure hubris on the part of Randy and even more so Corinne. For reasons which surpass any understanding, they believe that Sugar is simply too stupid to have found the Immunity Idol despite five consecutive trips there. Corinne has even come out and called Sugar stupid because she can't see that Corinne hates her. Presumably they believe that without a brain (Ace) to guide her, Sugar would be useless in the game, too stupid to "outwit, outplay, or outlast" the supposedly smart people. And what is their basis for believing this? Because she looks the way she looks and talks the way she talks and claims to be a pin-up model so how smart can she be? In fact she's an actress whose IMDB credits include appearances in Gilmore Girls (she played Jess's girlfriend Shane if that means anything to you) and For Your Love. She was also vocalist in a band called "Sugar Spit." Not a "rocket scientist" to be sure but hardly too stupid to survive.

I don't expect Bob to survive for too much longer sadly. The problem is that with the exception of Corinne, none of the other cast members is as isolated and friendless as Bob. His ties with Crystal, Matty and Kenny are non-existent, and his link with Susie has to be even more tenuous than his relationship with Sugar. In fact his only semi-solid alliance is probably with Corinne, cemented by his decision to vote for Susie. I expect Corinne to go home next week followed, sadly, by Bob the Survivor.

A Non-Political Political Post

There are two debates on Canadian TV tonight. One is the U.S. Vice-Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. The other is the Canadian Leaders debate between Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe (but not Green Party leader Elizabeth May even though her party has as many candidates as the three national parties and more than Duceppe's Bloc Quebecois). I know which debate will be the better debate in terms of cut and thrust and intellectual discussion and I know which I'm going to watch. They aren't the same.

I'll be watching Biden and Palin. I know it probably comes as a shock but there are reasons. I know who I'm going to vote for in the Canadian election. It's mostly a case of holding my nose and voting for the candidate who isn't a Conservative (Harper's party) that is most likely to have a shot at beating the local Conservative candidate, although I am fairly sure that the Conservative in my constituency will win. My vote will be cancelled out by the vast sea of rural voters who move in lock-step for the Tory candidate. On the other hand I don't have a dog in the American political hunt – though as I've said, I like most Canadians would probably vote for the Democrats because they come closest to advocating policies that most Canadians hold dear (although in some ways they're a bit too far to the right). The thing is though that while the nature of the Canadian system means that Harper, Dion, Layton, and Duceppe are undoubtedly more skilled as debaters, the American Vice Presidential candidates are likely to offer greater entertainment value.

Part of this is simple. Harper et.al. are experienced at the art of debate. Every day in the House of Commons the Prime Minister faces questions from his political adversaries on any number of subjects. And then all of the leaders face a press "scrum" which in its own way is just as difficult because the press in Canada regards itself as an unelected opposition party woe be unto any Canadian politician who tries to replace the daily scrum with press conferences – it's been tried before with unhappy consequences...for the politician. An American politician wouldn't know what to do if faced with the combination of Question Period and the media scrum. If this process does nothing else it means that Canadian politicians are used to a more lively and open debating style during the televised leaders debates, in which they confront and question each other with little restraint on the part of the moderator. That's not something you're likely to see from the Vice Presidential debate.

What you are likely to see is some fascinating political theatre. There are some fascinating questions to be answered formed largely because of Palin's performance in her interviews with Katie Couric. Is she really as uninformed as she comes across in those interviews or, to use an example from the final season of The West Wing (which is increasingly relevant in this election season, as if the writers had a time machine and used it to create the script by referencing the future) was it all a ruse to create a depressed expectation from the public so that when she actually does face Biden she exceeds them.

As for Biden, how does he approach Palin? Does his knowledge and experience come across as a negative when debating the self described "Joe Six-Pack candidate?" (Palin to conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt: "It's time that normal Joe Six Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice-presidency.") Biden can't be arrogant or condescending to her for fear of being seen as bullying her. That's most assuredly a negative and a trap that male politicians reportedly face all too often when debating women candidates. And yet do "ordinary Americans" really see Palin as "Jo Six Pack" and better yet do they prefer that to someone with decades of experience in the fields that a Vice President, or more crucially a President, would face. Palin gives a good speech (written by others) but based on her performance in the Couric interviews and other extemporaneous public statements she seems to underperform, meaning that there might be circumstances where Biden, unleashing his considerable knowledge (and perhaps his own history of making embarrassing gaffes) could turn the audience against him.

And the audience is key. Earlier this week, when I was discussing the season and series debuts for this week I wrote about the Vice Presidential Debate, "All of the networks – well except The CW have that new reality show The Vice Presidential Debate. I hear it might be cancelled after the first episode though." I was being humourous – or at least trying to be – but at least one commenter (Andrew) thought perhaps that I was being ignorant. In truth though, the debates in the United States do mimic aspects of reality shows like American Idol, Dancing With The Stars or America's Got Talent. Victory in the debates is measured not by objective standards of who scored the most points either in accuracy or in flashes of rhetorical ability. Instead of ability is a question of who comes across as most popular as measured by tracking polls released within an hour or two of the event, and following the minute by minute variation in opinion from focus groups armed with little dials to tell us who is popular at a particular moment in time. In that, it's not unlike the way that TV shows are "fine tuned" by networks. In this way it is reduced to a reality show where popularity rather than ability is rewarded. There's a line in The West Wing episode "Mr. Willis of Ohio" in which Toby says that what he has gotten the representative from Ohio to agree to – sampling as a process to determine the population in the census could lead to dangers like polling rather than elections, to which Mr. Willis replies "It's okay by me. As long as it's not the same people who decide what's on television." We haven't reached that stage yet. Where we are however is that the techniques that are used to decide what's on television, not to mention who wins the big prize on reality TV shows, are being used to determine who wins political debates and in so far as those determinations by the media sway the political polls, the ones that tell us who is ahead and behind nation-wide and by state, then we are at least partially turning elections into reality – or perceptions or reality – shows. Whatever the case truly is, the Vice Presidential debate tonight promises to be good theatre.

The Amazing Race 13 - Casting

I had an Amazing Race style experience on Friday. Not a big Amazing Race experience, but it kind of gave me a feeling about the sort of frustration that Amazing Race participant sometimes run into. I got on a city bus for a cross town trip at 4:20 Friday afternoon. I didn't get to where I was going until 6:20 p.m. And this is normally a forty minute trip at most. It literally took over an hour to travel less than eight-tenths of a mile. There was an accident on the University Bridge that effectively blocked the west-bound side of the bridge, and the bus driver was blocked into the innermost lane by other traffic so that he couldn't take the detour that the other busses were able to use. Thank goodness for my iPod and podcasts because I would have been bored to tears otherwise. Now admittedly it wasn't 12 hours in the sardine section of a fully loaded flight to some place where they eat deep fried crickets but it was something, and it makes me wonder if I could in fact do "The Race" if such a short time on a bus gave me pain, and a headache and increased my irritability.

Most of you know of course just how huge a fan of The Amazing Race that I am. I used to recap the episodes on one of the Amazing Race newsgroups, and I confess that I'm very close to deciding to do weekly recaps here in the blog, for my amusement if nothing else. But first let's have a look at the new cast. I'm going strictly by the stuff from CBS and the interviews.

There are certain "types" that the casting directors who select people for the show. There's the older couple, the long-distance daters, the couple who are in a troubled relationship and hope that being on a reality show is going to save it (!), the parent-child team, the all-female team (or usually two), the "oddball" team who has some quirk either about their appearance or their manner, and the best buds team of two guys (usually there are two such teams). One thing they seem to be trying to get away from is the dreaded "Alpha Male" team; a team of twenty or early thirty-something males who are physically fit and reasonably intelligent. The problem with the Alpha Male teams is that they had a tendency to win to the exclusion of others. Arguably the last Alpha Male Team was season 10 winners James & Tyler, best friends and models who met in rehab. (Warning: These videos contain ads. They're also in a format that I'm not particularly in love with. Unfortunately not all of the interviews are available from YouTube.)

Aja & Ty: Long-distance daters who want to see if they can live together on a regular basis. The Race is a 24/7 experience of living together which is more than what married couples spend together so it's a bit of a crash course. She (Aja) an actress and make-up artist (probably more make-up artist than actress if such things run to form) from Los Angeles, while he (Ty) is a banker from Detroit. She claims that she's, "energetic, insightful and compassionate," while he's very competitive and hates the thought of losing. He claims that her weakness is that she's easily upset, while she worries about his poor sense of time. She might also want to worry about the fact that he's never travelled much outside of the United States.

Andrew & Dan: A "best buds" team, these two are fraternity brothers from Arizona, one of whom recently entered the "real world" while the other is still in college. They claim that for them six pack refers to beer not abs. Andrew is studying urban planning while Dan graduated in Tourism Management. Andrew hasn't travelled much while Dan has travelled extensively including to the Middle East. They hope to use their travel knowledge to suck some of the other teams into trusting them (particularly the pretty girls who try to use their feminine wiles on them) and maybe eventually being responsible for eliminating them. I think they got the part about feminine wiles right but I think they may be a bit dismissive of the skills of the other teams. Right off the bat I don't like them too much.

Anita & Arthur: These two fit two categories. They're quite obviously the oldest team this time around, and well they also fill the "oddball" category. They're honest to goodness back to the land tie dye hippy types! Not pseudo hippies who get that label because they wear their hair long like BJ & Tyler from season 10, or TK and Rachel from season 12, Anita and Arthur look like they hung out in Haight Ashbury and lived on a commune. Right now they make and sell honey and run an organic blueberry farm. They're definitely hard workers with a deep sense of family. He describes himself as a problem solver and hopes to gain a better understanding of himself and Anita. Anita regards herself as "optimistic, enthusiastic and compassionate" while saying that her husband has a tendency to overanalyze things. Older teams have frequently gone deep into The Race, and I have a suspicion that these guys have it in them to go far. Right now at least I like them.

Anthony & Stephanie: An established couple that hopes that their time on The Race will bring them closer to marriage. He's a mortgage broker while she's a financial saleswoman (great timing for those careers!). I'm not sure they're meant to be together – they broke up for a year and they admit that they constantly bicker, although they claim it's all in "good fun." He claims to be adventurous and entertaining, while she's outgoing, and funny. They both claim to be athletic which they believe gives them an edge over their competition. There's a certain arrogance in some of his statements.

Kelly & Christy: A pair of young divorcees without much travel experience outside the USA. A female "best buds team" they've been friends since college and at times have worked at the same company. They've supported themselves through their marriages and their divorces. Kelly claims that their team will be quick, resourceful and resilient, while Christy claims that "their sweet, Texas charm will prove to be a very resourceful asset throughout the Race." This sort of attitude is quite common among female teams. Sometimes it works, as with Dustin & Kandice from the All-Star edition of the Race, while at other times teams overestimate their charms, or the reactions to those charms. In this particular case I suspect their self-admitted weaknesses – Kelly's admission that she can be impatient while Christie can be temperamental – will more than balance out what they see as strengths. They'll go probably further than the other all female team but I wouldn't care to wager how much further.

Ken & Tina: A former NFL player and his estranged wife, a corporate CEO who is also on the board of the Children's Cancer Center in Tampa Florida. This is a case where he cheated and they separated to the point of living on different coasts, but they want to try to make it work again. He's obviously athletic and competitive and claims to have good problem solving skills, although judgement is probably not his best quality. On the other hand he thinks her worst quality is her need to control things. She is driven, athletic and claims to be the brains of the operation, while her husband is definitely the brawn. They have travelled extensively and it's mostly been adventure travel. Frankly, to me this looks like an explosion waiting to happen.

Marissa & Brooke: This year's blondes. A pair of self described Southern Belles who claim to be willing to flirt to get what they want. Oh good grief, another one of those teams. One of them (they look so similar that it's impossible to tell them apart) can't wait to try out the Spanish she learned in Spain. Marissa (a broadcast journalism student at USC – the University of South Carolina, not the one in California) claims that "Her extensive dance training has taught her to be focused and determined, skills that could help her to do well on the race" while she claims that Brooke being a graphic designer means that she'll be sure to pay attention to detail. She also claims to be able to read Hebrew and speak a little Swahili. That alone is enough to make me expect an early exit, maybe in the first episode.

Mark & Bill: About as close as this season comes to an Alpha Male team – if a pair of self-confessed comic book geeks in their early 40s can in fact be called Alpha Males. Mark Yturralde is the Chief Financial officer of Comicon, while his pal Bill Kahler is a financial services officer. They're both gamers – they describe The Amazing Race as the "ultimate game on the biggest board you can possibly imagine." Mark is an experienced world traveller with a "love affair with the remote," and among many other things has run with the bulls in Pamplona. Bill on the other hand has done a lot of "safe" travelling, and Mark is looking forward to him stretching his boundaries by doing stuff like bungee jumping. I liked these guys even before I heard their interview tape because like me they're comics and gaming geeks, but listening to Mark talk about things he's done makes me think this could be one of the teams to beat.

Nick & Starr: A brother and sister team of people who would have to be described as extroverts. Nick is a working actor in New York, appearing Off-Broadway in the revival of The Fantasticks, while his sister spent three seasons as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. They worry about getting on each other's nerves since they haven't spent much time together in recent years and they were bitter enemies in high school. Starr is the more spontaneous of the two, although Nick regards her spontaneity as being more akin to recklessness. They claim to have travelled a good deal – for their age group – although by Race standards it's fairly limited. They expect people to help them, but they seem to have a negative attitude to other teams that comes out in their interview, but believe that they give out an aura that will lead people to want to meet them, work with them, and be stabbed in the back by them. This attitude could backfire on them quickly.

Terence & Sarah: Another dating couple trying to determine if they belong together. Yawn. Supposedly this is a case of opposites attracting. She's a graduate of the Wharton School Of Business (Donald Trump's old school) who works on Wall Street. He sells real estate to pay the bills so that he can work at his passion for coaching runners. They're both competitive – he finished the last two New York Marathons in under three hours – as well as being smart, energetic adventurous and fearless. Sarah claims to be lower maintenance than Terence while he describes himself as "witty, sensitive and driven." According to them their biggest weaknesses are a tendency to get too intense and fight amongst themselves, and their dietary restrictions. I get the sense from someone who has seen the episode that this comes up pretty quickly. Not a favourite in my book.

Toni & Dallas: A single mom and her son who has now gone off to college. They're going on the Race as much to see the world and get some quality time together as to win the million dollars. Dallas claims that his mom's big fault is telling long winded stories, but he's persuasive and enjoys getting people to do what he wants them too. She on the other hand claims to be a leader but knows she'll have to dial it down a bit and rely on her son's strengths rather than trying to boss him around. Seem good humoured enough and likely to be a fan favourite for as long as they last. I just don't think they're going to last too long.

The Amazing Race returns for its thirteenth series on Sunday September 28^th after 60 Minutes. This week at least CBS doesn't have a late football game so the show should start at 8 p.m. Eastern.