Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel

This Guy's Star Wars Fixes Are Pure Genius

2012-02-24T16:13:00.003-05:00

A guy on Youtube posted a video yesterday that provides a great "what if" to Star Wars: Episode I. I think his fixes for the movie are dead-on. Hopefully he'll make another video about Episode II, which is even worse in my opinion:

Kenley Collins, Please Make Me Some Clothes

2012-02-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

I've been keeping up with Project Runway, even though I haven't been posting about it. Every week, I've been super impressed with Kenley's designs. Here are some of them:

You can see her stuff from her awesome Fashion Week collection here. And she sells stuff on her website that's out of my comfort zone price-wise but is definitely way cheaper than I thought clothes made by someone from Project Runway would be. The thing this season that totally blew me away this season was her gelato challenge dress:

I want to own this dress!!!!!!!!!!! It's literally the ultimate Katie dress - it's colorful, cute, and doesn't have excessive cleavage! Kenley, if by some miracle you're reading this, please please please sell a dress like this on your website. Or just send me this one! :)

Survivor One World: Super Embarassing to Women Everywhere

2012-02-23T22:21:00.000-05:00

I only sort of paid attention to Survivor this week, but it was enough to notice how completely awful the women's tribe is doing. Like, embarrassingly awful.

First, the only noteworthy event from the men's tribe: Colton showed his immunity idol to the "misfit" faction of his tribe, effectively gaining respect from his newfound alliance and potentially becoming a power player. Maybe. I'm interested to see how this pans out, but we'll probably have to wait since the guys aren't gonna lose an immunity challenge anytime soon...

If they do, he'll be waiting.

The women lost the reward challenge (which was, oddly, delivered to their camp) by a small margin, but the immunity challenge was a major mess. The teams had to travel across a narrow beam while weaving around their tribemates. It's a challenge of balance and teamwork, which the women clearly don't have. They take forever to figure out how to cross the beam without knocking each other over, and they kept breaking the rules of the challenge. So they lost... big time. And they argued about it a lot at Tribal Council.

Women have done well in the past at this challenge, just to put things in perspective.

In the end, the alliance of young women decided to oust an older woman that was clearly a better competitor than one of the girls in the alliance who screwed up the challenge. And that bothers me. It's pretty normal on Survivor for an alliance of annoying, pretentious "cool kids" to spring up and pick off everyone else, and it gets on my nerves every time. Combine that with all the petty drama, and you have one horrendous tribe. It's almost painful to watch.

With 9 women living together, that's some good odds of hardcore PMS. (I'm not being offensive, it's really a thing.)

So yeah, I'm not too thrilled with this season so far. Hopefully the tribes will mix up soon.

"I want Lord Tubbington to kick his ecstasy addiction."

2012-02-22T19:58:00.001-05:00

A bunch of big things happened on Glee this week, but I still don't have the patience to write a long, organized critique of it. So I'll rely on a tried-and-true list. CAUTION: THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD, MATEYS!

1) Karkofsky, aka the bully from last season who changed school and frequents a sketchy gay bar, attempted suicide after all the kids in his new school harassed him about being gay. This is a very serious topic for Glee to address. A few scenes, especially the one with Kurt and Karkofsky in the hospital, were really effective. But Will's kumbaya story about his own brush with depression was less than sensitive: he told the kids he nearly killed himself in high school after getting caught cheating on a test. OK, I get it, guilt is bad. But comparing being an idiot with having tons of internal struggles about self-identity is totally not cool.

2) Rachel and Finn decided to push their wedding date forward - after their Regionals win, to be exact. Wouldn't if have been an epic buzzkill if they lost? But they didn't lose, of course. So Rachel and Finn got all dressed in wedding duds, along with their whole wedding party (aka the glee club, because none of them have lives outside of it). Wait a minute, this last-minute wedding has a wedding party with fancy, coordinated outfits? How'd they plan that so fast? (More on that later.)

I see what they did there.

Also, the bride and groom's parents aren't too thrilled about their kids getting married in high school (I wonder why?), but they don't do anything to pull the plug on this hot mess. Aren't Rachel and Finn younger than 18? That means the parents had to sign some consent forms or something to let it happen. They could have just not signed them, and then their problems would have been solved.

Jeff Goldblum was smart enough to figure out that a park of living dinosaurs was a bad idea, so you'd think his stupidity radar would be going off like crazy here.

3) The big cliffhanger of the episode: Quinn decides at the last second to attend Rachel's wedding, but while she drives home to pick up her bridesmaid dress, she texts Rachel while driving and gets into a car accident. Gasp! (Don't worry, I won't talk about the big plot hole of Quinn even having a bridesmaid dress if she just decided two seconds ago to actually go to the wedding.) A good plot twist? Potentially. This will sound completely heartless, but hear me out: I think Quinn should die in the accident. Don't get me wrong, I have no strong feelings either way about Quinn, so it's not like I'd wish harm on her (then again, she's not a real person, so it doesn't really matter). But still, it would bring a heaping pile of negativity to this disgustingly optimistic show, and maybe that would help transition Glee out of the cheesy, horrendous mess we know and love (or, in my case, barely tolerate).

Watch out, Quinn! Green-screen peril!

But we'll have to wait till April 10 to see the next episode, when I predict Rachel and Finn will still get married ASAP even though their friend just got maimed (at minimum), since this show is stupid enough for something like that to happen.

"Luke, I am your wife and I am a mess."

2012-02-19T11:36:00.000-05:00

Maya Rudolph was the host this week on SNL, and it was one of the best episodes I've seen in a while. You should watch the whole thing! (The monologue isn't on Hulu for some reason, but they have the rest of it.)

"Ambiance? What does that mean?"

2012-02-17T17:10:00.000-05:00

Survivor: One World started on Wednesday, and it was definitely one of the weirdest season premieres in Survivor history.

When the contestants show up, Jeff divides them into tribes - men vs. women, much to everyone's chagrin. The men are TO'd that they can't flirt with the generic bikini girls, the women are TO'd that they have to spend the next few weeks with only women (a stressful situation, as all girls know), and the token gay guy named Colton is TO'd that he won't be in a tribe with women (who he apparently is very popular with). Jeff then tells the tribes to quickly take supplies off the truck they came in, and the men steal a bunch of the women's supplies. Then they get their maps and set off towards their camps. On the way, Alicia makes some weird alliance with some other girls, excluding a bunch of nice girls. Then they all get to camp... and the two tribes realize they're living in the same place.

Chaos ensues.

He's not taking it well.

Everyone finds a conveniently misplaced flock of wild chickens. After they all agree to share what they catch, a self-proclaimed "country girl" catches 2 chickens and decides not to give one to the guys. Then a bunch of annoying women try to manipulate the guys into building a fire for them. The guys weren't born yesterday, though, so they don't help out. The girls even try to steal fire from the guys in the middle of the night, but their ember dies out. One woman eventually makes a fair deal with the guys - fire in exchange for some help with the shelter - but Alicia isn't happy that they asked for help from the guys. Petty, stupid arguments. I have a feeling it's going to be a thing this season...

Meanwhile, Colton feels out of place in his tribe and asks the women to give him an idol/clue if they find one. And conveniently, a woman finds the guy tribe's idol. There's a piece of paper in there that says she has to give the idol to one of the guys before the next Tribal, so she gives it to Colton.

"Hey, y'all! You'll never guess what just happened!"

So here's where the weirdness really starts: the immunity challenge is interrupted when a nice woman named Kourtney lands awkwardly on her wrist on a net. The medics take her out of the challenge and bring her to a medical facility for x-rays. The men were winning at that point, so Jeff gives them a choice: win the challenge by default or start the challenge over. The men choose the automatic immunity, and the women are furious at them. The men tell the women that they would have done the same thing in the men's position, but the women deny it. Honestly, I don't blame the men for taking the immunity. They were winning by a decent margin anyway, so it was unlikely that the women would catch up.

Then the women go to Tribal Council, where Alicia fights with people for no reason and Jeff hardcore judges the tribe for being so dysfunctional. Then he tells them that Kourtney broke her wrist and won't be coming back, so there won't be a vote and no one else will go home. And that's the end of the episode.

I feel really bad for her. Plus, she was one of the only normal/nice women on her tribe.

So yeah, it was a weird one. I'm not digging the "same camp" thing since it's causing a lot of stupid drama between the two tribes. And a lot of that is aggravated by the men vs women split. I'm a girl, so I'm 100% allowed to say that being in a confined group of all women for an extended period of time is a recipe for disaster. I'm pretty sure the women's tribe will keep being a hot mess, and it'll only get worse over time. And I'm not sure if that's a good thing to watch. So far, their drama is really frustrating. I bet Survivor didn't want it to be like that, but it is.

I'm still on the fence about whether I like this season, but I guess the weird mustache guy named Tarzan may make up for all the stupid shenanigans.

Cracked.com: "The 6 Creepiest Things Ever Slipped Into Children's Cartoons"

2012-02-16T21:56:00.001-05:00

Here's another great TV-related article from Cracked.com. It's about cartoons with some very inappropriate moments, like the banned episodes of Pokemon and some Animaniacs jokes that aren't too kid-friendly.

It was either this picture or one with Team Rocket's James with fake boobs. I figured my parents would appreciate me not picking the second one.

Check out the article here!!

"Honesty. Respect. Dance. Those are the foundations of the Berry family."

2012-02-16T21:35:00.000-05:00

Once again, I have zero patience to write a Glee review. Even though we met lots of new people (like the other Glee Project winner and Rachel's dads), Blaine showed up sans eye patch, and that bully from season 2 professed his love for Kurt, there's really one takeaway from this week's episode:

Rachel and Finn came dangerously close to breaking up because Rachel didn't want Finn to poop in her house.

"I love you, Finn, but we agreed you wouldn't poop within five miles of my current location." - a completely fake quote that is actually not far from what happened

Way to be, Glee.

Cool A Cappella Covers of Theme Songs!

2012-02-13T09:46:00.000-05:00

This random guy sings awesome a capella covers of 90's kid show theme songs... by himself. Here are some of them:

"We're gonna have a threeway with the Declaration of Independence."

2012-02-12T19:48:00.000-05:00

Zooey Deschanel was the host of SNL this week, and she was pretty good!

This skit about old school fast-talkers was clever, especially since this is how I feel when I watch old movies:

Abby Elliot really has her Zooey impersonation down, but Michael Cera was definitely the best part:

Still wrong, but still funny:

Awkwardly chuckle-worthy:

But this was definitely the best part of the episode:

So yeah, there was some good stuff this week! Maya Rudolph will be the host this coming Saturday, which should be awesome!

"I had noodles with the President and a threesome with Michael Phelps."

2012-02-10T10:12:00.000-05:00

I'm not gonna get into the details of this week's episode since it was pretty lame (and all the songs were in Spanish), but I do want to talk about one thing: accuracy.

I get it, Glee is a work of fiction. But it takes place in a high school, which is a very real thing, and the majority of Glee's viewers are either in high school or have been there recently. They know when stupid logistical things about how high school works are wrong.

Case and point: Will Schuester's entire career. He's a Spanish teacher, but he can't speak Spanish. And he revealed to everyone that he's only a Spanish teacher because it was the only teaching position open when he was looking for jobs. That's not a thing! People don't just teach random stuff without being trained for it! After finally realizing how awful of a Spanish teacher he is, Will quits... and becomes a history teacher. Which he also isn't specifically trained for. Really? How is that any better? He'll be teaching these kids that the Civil War was fought over cheese and Abraham Lincoln was a bounty hunter.

No me gusta.

That's not the only glaringly obvious problem in the episode. A big plot point this week was the opening of a tenured teaching position at McKinley. Will wants the job, but since he sucks at life, he doesn't get it. So Sue tries to get it, too. Wait a minute, isn't Sue just a cheerleading coach? Coaches can't get tenure, can they?

But she doesn't get the gig, either. Emma does. Seriously, Glee? She's a counselor, not a teacher! I may be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure counselors don't get tenure, either. And besides, isn't tenure on a case-by-case basis?

Tenure flowers?

Whatever. Glee is getting ridiculous. With Sue asking high school students for sperm donations, I guess this whole tenure thing should be the least of my issues.

Come to CUTV!

2012-02-06T10:10:00.001-05:00

The first CUTV meeting of the semester is today at 4:15 in the studio, which is near the HOP. Stop by if you're interested!

200 Posts!!!!

2012-02-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

This is my 200th post! Craziness! Thanks to everyone who's been reading this blog. If you haven't already, you should subscribe and become a fan on Facebook!

If it's a milestone or just an indication of my lameness, I'm still gonna celebrate. WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Anna Torv Doing Something Not Related to Fringe

2012-02-06T09:56:00.000-05:00

I found this video this morning. Good stuff! It's the first time I've seen Anna Torv (aka Olivia) outside of Fringe.

See more at CollegeHumor

"I'm basically a flesh cube."

2012-02-05T10:57:00.000-05:00

Channing Tatum was the host of SNL last night, and there were lots of Superbowl jokes.

The cold open was really silly:

Channing Tatum talked about his past job in his monologue and demonstrated some of his, ahem, skills:

Sports jokes:

Secret Word! And aliens!!

This one was super awkward:

More sports stuff, but with gross women at Ruby Tuesdays:

Stripping seems to be a theme this week:

More sports jokes... and puns!

Overall, the episode was just OK. Zooey Deschanel will be the host next week, which should be interesting!

A New Disney Princess... on TV!

2012-02-02T22:57:00.000-05:00

This is sort of old news, but Disney recently announced a new TV show for little kids called "Sofia the First." Sofia will be the latest Disney Princess (though she won't be added to the official lineup), and her show is going to be a stereotypical show for really young kids about good manners and general life lessons and whatnot. Apparently, some popular Disney characters, including Sebastian, Mrs. Potts, and even some other princesses, will make cameo appearances.

Oh man, super cute!!

This seems like a really cute show! I would have been all over this show if it was on when it was little. I bet it'll be a big hit, but the show won't start till spring 2013. Hopefully we'll get some more details before then!

Amy Farrah Fowler Flashback

2012-02-02T22:35:00.000-05:00

Back in the early 90's, Mayim Bialik (aka Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory) was on the popular TV show Blossom. And back in the day, she was on the cover of some 90's magazine called "Sassy." Here she is now, recreating the pose from the cover:

Source: Buzzfeed

Come to the Activities Fair!

2012-02-01T10:56:00.002-05:00

Colgate's Activities Fair is tomorrow from 5-7 in the HOP. Come check out all the great activities on campus, including my favorites: The Maroon News (and blogging), CUTV, and WRCU. I'll be at the CUTV table from 5-6, so come visit!

Charred Goosebeak releases "S*** Colgate People Say"

2012-02-01T10:48:00.000-05:00

Colgate's improv group, Charred Goosebeak, made a video called "S*** Colgate People Say" (which, if you don't know, is playing off the popular "S*** ____ Say" video trend). Here it is (and parents, please don't watch it. You've been warned):

Also, they're taking suggestions for Episode 2, so let them know if you have any ideas!

"You're like a modern day Eggs Benedict."

2012-02-01T10:37:00.000-05:00

It was Michael Jackson week on Glee, and the only vaguely good part was Blaine's new eye patch. Therefore, all the pictures in this post will be of eye patches.

That's right, Blaine's wearing an eye patch now. Sebastian, aka the jerk Warbler, threw a slushie laced with rock salt at him in a singing / shoving fight in a parking garage. Really, Glee? How ridiculous is this gonna get?!?

If they're gonna get in a fight, they should take cues from this guy.

And yeah, that's the most interesting thing that happened. Plot-wise, though, there were some major developments: Kurt and Rachel are finalists in their dream college's admission process, Sam and Mercedes hooked up, and Rachel accepted Finn's proposal from the last episode. Of those three things, the college thing was the biggest deal. Kurt got his sort-of-acceptance letter first, which led Rachel to think she wasn't getting one. Then she made everything about her and basically forbid Kurt from feeling happy for himself. Because that's just what she does.

She's the Dr. Evil to Kurt's Number 2.

The music was just OK this week. Maybe it's because Glee's already done lots of the more famous MJ songs, but a lot of the songs this week didn't do it for me. The only one I liked was this:

So yeah, a relatively uneventful episode compared to last week. Here's hoping Blaine loses the eye patch soon.

Then again, Blaine's eye patch lets me put up pictures of Odin.

On the other hand, eye patches can be sort of gross...

OK, never mind. If Blaine's eye patch makes it relevant for me to post pictures of Nick Fury, I'm 100% OK with this. Blaine, I hope your poor, rock-salted eye never heals.

AAAAAAAY-klahoma

2012-01-28T19:19:00.000-05:00

I read the musical Oklahoma! for my American Musical class earlier this week, but up until then, this little ditty was the only thing I knew about it:

The Game's Afoot Event Tonight!

2012-01-27T09:59:00.002-05:00

Colgate peeps, be sure to stop by the HOP tonight starting at 7:30 for a great The Game's Afoot event! There's gonna be Indian food AND pizza, a Super Smash Bros. tournament ad 8:15, and a Pokemon tournament at 9:30! So bring your Gamecube controller or a Gen. IV Pokemon game. The winners of the tournaments get a video game, and there's a raffle for a Wii!

Thor Science

2012-01-27T09:49:00.000-05:00

Stan Lee explains the "science" of Thor to a class:

A Great Place to Find Some Teen Mom Gossip

2012-01-23T21:26:00.003-05:00

I found this website over break called Teen Mom Talk that has lots of recent updates (and gossip) about the Teen Mom and 16 And Pregnant girls. It's a good place to check out if you watch those shows. Some of the girls have gotten their acts together since we've last seen them, but some haven't. And both categories are fun to read about.

But nothing is as fun as these.

Star Wars Uncut

2012-01-23T21:06:00.001-05:00

Back in 2009, some guy from Vimeo asked Star Wars fans to film their own versions of 15 second scenes from Episode IV. Now he's spliced them all together into a cool movie, Star Wars Uncut. The fan-made clips use everything from CGI and adorable children to action figures of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it's pretty awesome.

Such Star Wars love.

"I bet you had to overcome a lot with those crooked nipples."

2012-01-20T00:26:00.000-05:00

Glee is back from its midseason hiatus, and a lot happened in the last episode, "Yes/No." (Caution: major spoilers ahead.)

Coach Beiste eloped with that football recruiter (yay!), but it was mentioned for, like, a second, and will probably never be mentioned again. Shelby and Beth are no-shows. Becky asked Artie on a date, but he declined a second, only for her and Sue to watch Lifetime movies and eat ice cream together to commiserate. Sam is trying to woo Mercedes, who's with another guy, by joining the synchronized swimming team since girls must think synchronized swimming is hot or something. Yes, I'm glossing over all these minor plot details since the show did, too.

There's no way this won't work.

Lots of big stuff happened, though. But the nauseatingly cheesy rendition of "Summer Nights" in the first few minutes of the episode put such a bad taste in my mouth that I don't have any motivation for a full-on review. Therefore, a mediocre list:

No. Just no.

1) Finn's dad wasn't a war hero - he was dishonorably discharged after getting PTSD and died of a drug overdose in the US. Woah! Talk about a good plot twist!

2) Finn proposed to Rachel. Woah! Talk about a bad plot twist! OK, it is a pretty nice proposal scene, but it's sort of out of nowhere. And that's what Glee is all about: plot developments that come out of nowhere! Then again, Finn wasn't being very original, considering how proposals were kind of a theme this week...

3) Will proposed to Emma. After giving her a really hard time about her OCD. Seriously? This episode, and a few others like it, made Will look like a giant jerk. I'll admit, the proposal itself was cute, but it was kind of overshadowed by a previous scene when Will told Emma that she wouldn't be able to handle marriage (and kids) because of her OCD... a thought planted in Will's head by Emma's less-than-stellar parents.

Hooray for soul-crushing insults!

I haven't been a big Will fan lately, and this episode pretty much sealed the deal. I don't like him. His character has devolved from season one's "nice, down on his luck guy" to Tuesday's "insensitive jerk who can't find anyone to go ring shopping with him except for his eighteen-year-old student."

This article that I'm shamelessly using to be lazy is a pretty great account of how Will's character has changed for the worse. It sums up exactly what I think about him (and the show as a whole). And I didn't even have to write it! Imagine that!

But yeah, it wasn't the worst episode ever. There were some emotional moments and some good jokes, and the music was generally OK. I've seen much worse from Glee, but I've seen better.

Next week's episode is a Michael Jackson tribute, and it's supposedly the only tribute/theme week of the season. There were way too many last season, so thank goodness there will only be one this time around!

"I have no shame or self-awareness!"

2012-01-16T23:32:00.002-05:00

Daniel Radcliffe was the SNL host on Saturday, and he did a great job!His monologue was pretty funny:

This skit was my favorite of the night. It's clever and surprisingly truthful, which is maybe why it didn't get as many laughs from the audience as some other skits. (Is it ironic that a lame blog writer from a liberal arts school thinks this skit is funny? Probably.)

The Harry Potter sketch was silly and well done:

I really liked this clever skit, too:

And I know lots of people like the Target Lady sketches, but it's actually starting to get old to me:

Weekend Update was good, too, and this segment was awesome! It seems to me that Weekend Update segments have some of the best writing on the show:

And that's it. Overall, it was a pretty good episode! Daniel Radcliffe was a great host, and lots of the skits were written better than usual.

Channing Tatum will host the next new episode on February 4th.

Sock! Pow! Zok! Lego!

2012-01-16T23:03:00.000-05:00

Lots of people don't know where my blog's title came from, but I bet the guy who made this video does:

TV Time Capsule: Pokémon

2012-01-15T16:36:00.000-05:00

That's right, folks. I'm delving into sacred territory here. In this edition of TV Time Capsule, I'm taking out a show that made a huge impact on my generation: Pokémon.

To people in my generation, Pokémon has pretty much reached legendary status. (Get it? Legendary?) It's a phenomenon I've noticed with a lot of stuff from my generation's collective childhood: we still like the kids shows that were popular when we were kids. Weird? To people older than us, maybe. But think about it. Wasn't being a kid pretty awesome? Sure, it had its ups and downs, but overall, it was a pretty good time. So when we see the stuff that was cool when we were younger, it takes us back to that awesome time. Through all that stuff, like movies and TV shows, we can relive that fun, carefree time whenever we want! And the more epic the thing was back in the day, the more legit it is now. And back in the day, Pokémon was one of the most epic things out there.

AWWWWW!!!!!!

The Pokémon franchise we know and love actually started out as a bunch of classic Game Boy games, Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue, that were created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. He based the idea for the game off his childhood love of insect collecting, which is apparently a hobby that someone in the world does. The games' popularity spawned a trading card game and the incredibly popular TV show that debuted in America in 1998. Though the original season (the one I'll talk a lot more about) ended in 1999, new episodes still air on Cartoon Network.

The Pokémon world is a lot like ours, only instead of having plain old run-of-the-mill animals, they have superpowered creatures. If that wasn't cool enough, it's also socially acceptable for ten-year-olds to go on epic, nationwide road trips to collect them. And raise them. And form unbreakable bonds of friendship. And lead them into epic fights. Yep, that's all part of being a Pokémon Master.

So is racing, I guess.

The TV show is about a kid named Ash Ketchum who, on his tenth birthday, starts his Pokémon journey. He gets his first Pokémon, packs up his stuff, and leaves home indefinitely. His ultimate goal is to become a Pokemon Master... but the show never explicitly states how to do that. It's assumed, though, that it takes two steps. Part one: catch one of every variety of Pokémon (thus the "Gotta Catch 'Em All" slogan). In the original season, Ash catches less than 20 out of all 151 varieties... so Ash gets an F on that one.

Since Ash got less than 20%, I'd say he deserves an F-.

Part two: battle and defeat the eight toughest Pokémon trainers in the country. They're called Gym Leaders, and beating them gets you Gym Badges. Defeating all eight of them lets you enter a big tournament (in the show).

Mission: accomplished.

So yeah, it's sort of complicated at a glance. But the bottom line is that lots of people - even kids - spend their lives roaming around the wilderness like delinquent drifters. Add cute animals into the mix and you have a recipe for success, right? To a kid, this sounds like one giant vacation. But that's because as kids, we didn't think about logistical things like, um, food. And shelter. And money. As a Pokémon trainer, you swear off all stability in your life: you live in tents or in mysteriously free hostels, you eat camp food, and you have no money. But you have the power of Pokémon friendship to keep you company, and to a kid, that's all that counts!

Also, let me reiterate this: ten-year-old kids leave home and wander around the woods unsupervised. Where are their parents, you ask? They're back at home, and they're 100% OK with their kids living off the grid. Because in the Pokémon world, parents don't give a crap about what their kids do. When you're a kid yourself, this may seem pretty sweet, but it's actually kind of scary if you think about it. You'd think those parents would have the common sense to not let their kids trek through unknown forests alone in the first place, or you'd at least hope the parents would seem at least sort of conflicted about the whole thing. But Ash's mom is cool with it.

It's funny because it's true.

She should be more concerned, considering how Ash is constantly pursued by criminals. That's right, a criminal organization targets this kid to steal his beloved Pikachu, who is somehow more special than any other Pikachu they could have caught in Viridian Forest with significantly less effort. These criminals, Jessie and James, are part of Team Rocket, a bunch of serious Poké-thieves. This duo is the comically inept division of the otherwise serious crime syndicate, so Ash is able to take them down easily in every episode. But if Jessie and James didn't suck at being bad, Ash would be in serious trouble, and no one seems to care.

At least Ash has some traveling companions to keep him company when Team Rocket harasses him. In the beginning of the season, Ash meets Misty and Brock, two Gym Leaders who, for whatever reason, abandon their livelihoods and follow him around on his adventures. Misty is feisty and funny, and Brock spends every waking moment hitting on women.

A perfect role model for preteen boys everywhere.

But the people aren't what makes the show so great. It's the Pokémon! And man, are they awesome. They come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of cool abilities, from shooting lightning bolts to lassoing opponents with vines to spewing out beams of pure energy. Just imagine if our pets could do stuff like that! Yeah, it would be pretty dangerous, but you have to admit it would still be cool. Then take some of them and multiply their cuteness by a bazillion, and you get Pokémon like Pikachu, Squirtle, Eevee, and Jigglypuff. They're great fighters AND cuddlers!

The bottom line, though, is that Pokémon is about friendship. Ash and his buddies are friends with their Pokémon. Heck, Pikachu is Ash's best friend, and he can't even talk! Ash and Co. go on tons of crazy adventures, and they all become closer because of it. It's something we all could relate to, even though we (unfortunately) can't own animals that can spontaneously light things on fire.

The power of friendship!!! And cuteness!

I know I was just giving the show a lot of sass, but it's just because it's funny to see how naive we used to be about stuff. Back in the day, we didn't see the glaring faults in the Pokémon world. We just saw an innocent, awesome adventure. And even though a lot of people criticize the show for its violence, saying that it's just a bunch of strange cockfights, it's a lot more than that. It's badass, strangely adorable, superpowered cockfights... with friendship. And, quite frankly, that's pretty awesome.

Feeling nostalgic? You can find a few of the original episodes of Pokémon on their official website, and I'm sure you can find any episode you want elsewhere. From the first episode to the Squirtle Squad one to the tearjerker when Ash lets Butterfree go (spoiler alert), you can see all those memorable Pokémon moments online somewhere. And while you're at it, you can read up about all the episodes that were banned in the US, because nothing says "awesome" like "too crazy for American TV." Go for it!

The Squirtle Squad commands you.

Not convinced yet? This will change your mind:

Project Runway All Stars Begins!

2012-01-13T01:04:00.000-05:00

Project Runway All Stars, a new season of Project Runway with the some of the best contestants from the show's nine seasons, started two weeks ago. Yay, there's something to fill the long void between regular seasons!

Overall, a pretty good crew.

But All Stars is definitely not a normal season. For one thing, none of the normal judges are there. That means no Heidi, Orange Michael, or Nina. And no Tim Gunn!!! Noooooo!!! There's no Project Runway without Tim's "make it work" inspirational visits! Instead, this season has a bunch of judges who I'm sure are significant to more sophisticated people than me. And though many of them do have fun British accents, it's still not enough to replace the awesomeness of the regular posse.

WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!?!?

So far, the challenges have been pretty good. The first one was an Unconventional Materials challenge, and the contestants had to make fancy clothes out of stuff from a dollar store. And they made some pretty cool stuff! They had to make fancy gowns in the second episode, and for the most part, the all stars didn't disappoint. The eliminated contestants so far, Elisa and Sweet P, were clear choices for elimination in their episodes since their work wasn't close to their competitors' impressive creations. Generally, everyone left is really, really talented. I bet it'll be hard for the judges to eliminate people as the show goes on.

Still, the awesome talent doesn't salvage the show from its un-Tim-ness. It's not like the judges this season are awful or anything. They just can't fill in well for the judges we've spent years watching. That alone makes this season less interesting than normal ones. Hopefully that will change.

It seems like the next episode will be pretty interesting since the guest judge is MISS PIGGY! Not my fave Muppet, but still awesome!

LEGIT.

Project Runway All Stars airs on Lifetime, Thursdays at 9. Check it out!

Well, Jenelle...

2012-01-13T00:23:00.001-05:00

(Jenelle's mom is awesome. I do wish I could take credit for this awesomeness, but I didn't make this, and a friend of mine showed it to me. It's from somewhere on Tumblr.)

A Very Late, Brief, and Unenthusiastic Survivor Finale Recap

2012-01-13T00:12:00.000-05:00

In my post-finals laziness, I didn't post anything about the Survivor: South Pacific finale from around a month ago. Oops! Now that I'm super behind the curve (and since I wasn't overly pleased with the show's outcome), I'll keep it short.

Ozzy got back in the game after a ridiculous Redemption Island win streak, and after he one an individual immunity challenge, it wasn't looking too good for the remainder of Blue. Coach and Co. had to start turning on each other big time, and Mustache Man was the first casualty.

He didn't take it well.

So at this point, any anti-Ozzy viewers like me felt hopeless. He was only one immunity challenge win away from a seat in the finals. And since he's a beast at challenges, things weren't looking so good for everyone else...

But he lost. To Sophie.

He lost to a girl, which means we're allowed to point at him and laugh. I already have.

Needless to say, he was voted out next, much to the dismay of his mindless groupies in the jury (Jim and Keith and Whitney). This left Albert, Coach, and Sophie in the final three. They got grilled by the jury. Seriously grilled. Ozzy and his groupies were generally bitter towards everyone there and kept trying to make the final feel guilty for being smarter and more awesome than them. Even Coach's old alliance members were giving him a hard time for being strategic. Basically none of them but Cochran looked objectively at Coach's actions and gave him credit for playing the game really well. And Albert was a two-timer, so no one on the jury liked him. So they mostly voted for the one person who hurt their feelings the least, and that person was Sophie.

Look at that! CBS already captioned the picture for me! Isn't that nice?

I do think that Sophie played a good game, but I think Coach did a better job. On the other hand, she deserves serious props just for keeping Ozzy from winning that immunity challenge (and, by extension, the whole game). If Ozzy won, I would have been pretty TO'd.

That leaves the Fan Favorite vote reveal during the reunion special. I voted for the first time ever this season - for Cochran. I thought he'd win the $100,000 prize, too, considering how popular he is. But no. This douche had to waltz in, spew nonsensical life lessons, and take the the prize instead:

You heard me, mister.

Honestly, I don't understand why people like Ozzy so much. He's too old for his beach bum persona, and he's way too arrogant for some guy who's known for spearfishing a bit on national TV.

So I hope that Cochran gets a call the next time Survivor casts an All Star season. He deserves it, especially since he's the most popular of the new contestants this season.

I clearly can't write a post about this season of Survivor without throwing in a Cochran picture.

At the end of the Reunion, Jeff teased some details about the next Survivor season, Survivor: One World. It looks like there's no returning contestants and no Redemption Island. Thank goodness! The big twist this season is that both tribes will live together, at least initially, and will have to choose how much they'll help each other out with survival stuff. Cool stuff! I remember this twist was used right before a merge once in Survivor's early days, and it was pretty nifty.

Weird name, but a cool logo.

Survivor: One World starts on February 15th. Get excited!

A Colgate Sorority on SNL...

2012-01-12T23:23:00.000-05:00

Back in the 90's, SNL did a recurring skit about a bunch of sorority girls... and they used a name of a real sorority in the skits! A Colgate sorority. (Well, it's a national group, but still.)

If this is what Colgate looked like in the 90's, I'm glad I wasn't around to see it.

I originally saw a piece of this on an SNL clip show a few years ago, and I looked online for it once I realized its Colgate relevance. But I couldn't find it! At the time, I was jokingly (sort of) convinced that the skit was banished from the internet in some sort of sorority conspiracy. But I guess not, now that Hulu posted a few of them. Enjoy, and don't get offended!

Get Pumped for Finals!

2011-12-11T13:06:00.000-05:00

I probably won't reach my five-post-a-week quota this week because it's finals week. (Not that the five-post-a-week police is actually watching.) So good luck to everyone who's studying for finals! Here's my favorite motivational studying song. Hopefully it'll get you pumped to study, too!

"Menorah the Explorer"

2011-12-11T13:01:00.000-05:00

Last night's SNL was pretty crappy, except for a few parts:

Alec Baldwin showed up on Weekend Update to poke fun at his own shenanigans earlier in the week:

And Stefon!!!

This sketch, one of the last of the night, was one of the best (in my opinion). So random and silly!

But other than that, not so much. Hopefully the next episode will be better!

"I breathe Survivor."

2011-12-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

I'm still pretty depressed about Survivor, so I apologize in advance if this review sucks.

I'm depressed because Cochran lost the Redemption Island duel. At least it was pretty close! But still, Cochran is one of my favorite Survivor contestants ever, and I was sad to see him go. I was hoping that his former tribemates would be at least somewhat respectful when he joined them at Ponderosa (the place eliminated contestants chill between Tribals), but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's too bad.

This week, the contestants' loved ones showed up, and Ozzy got to pick which three contestants got to hang out with them. One of his picks was Brandon, who's dad (Russell's brother) is there... and he's, like, Russell 2. He tries to strongarm Coach into guaranteeing Brandon's place in the final three, and he tells Brandon to stop playing an honest game. Yep, it runs in the family. But really, it's kinda stupid for Brandon's dad to play the game for him. It reflects poorly on Brandon.

But while Brandon, Coach, and Albert chill with their loved ones and Ozzy, Coach tells Ozzy that he wants to go to the final 2 with him and makes an unbreakable promise or something. Crap, noooo!!!! If Ozzy's in the finals, he's probably going to win because everyone from Red will vote for him. It's such a stupid promise on Coach's part. If Ozzy wins, I'll be really upset. He's the worst combo possible of hippie, bro, and bully.

So after that, it's the Immunity Challenge, and Brandon sabotages Edna. And she's TO'd. After the challenge, she tries to get Albert and Coach to join her in voting off Brandon because he doesn't follow their group's "mantra" of honor. Nevertheless, Edna's voted off and sent to Redemption.

So much for that.

Not a very eventful episode strategy-wise, and my enthusiasm's taken a nose dive now that Cochran's gone. Now the episodes are bound to be good since there's nowhere for people to hide. There's one episode next Wednesday, and the finale is next Sunday. Hopefully it'll be less depressing.

Doubtful, considering how my favorite contestant ever is gone. :(

"White Chocolate."

2011-12-07T18:57:00.000-05:00

It's Sectionals week on Glee and (spoiler alert) the New Directions beat the Troubletones and the only other school in their division with a glee club (what happened to the juvenile delinquent school from season 1?). I mean, how could they lose? They did two more songs than all the other groups! And all three weren't as good as each of the other groups' songs, in my opinion. Case and point: this and this.

I love me some mashups, after all.

The New Directions secured their win by resurrecting Sam Evans from his doomed existence as a stripper in Kentucky, only for him to sing this quality song upon his return:

The highlight of the episode was Mike Chang's reconciliation with his dad. Yay for following your dreams!

And Quinn's still crazy. Now she wants to make a new baby with Sam...

While wearing this.

That's it. Next week is the Christmas episode!

Quite Possibly the Most Awkward First Kiss Ever

2011-12-06T12:05:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, TLC premiered a special called Virgin Diaries, which was about a bunch of adults in their late 20s/early 30s who, well... you know. It focused on three stories, one of which was Shanna and Ryan's wedding. What makes these two lovebirds special is that they've never kissed each other. Heck, Ryan's never kissed anyone before. Kudos to them for sticking with what they believe in, but maybe they should have, I dunno, practiced kissing on some inanimate object or something before the big day. Here's why:

Yeah... from seeing the whole show, I know that they do the face-eating kiss pretty much constantly from that point onward, and then Shanna's, like, licking his face... no. Just no. Also, the creepy guy laughing in the video is Shanna's dad. He's strangely obsessed with his daughter's intimacy with her fiance. He even mentions later on that he wishes he could be there at their wedding night to see how awkward it's gonna be. HER DAD.

There's also these three roommates who are 30-year-old virgins. Well, not really:

That's not a thing. I mean, maybe if it was just one guy, it would be a bit more practical. But seven?!?!

And then there's this poor dude. Like the roommates, his biggest problem is that literally the first thing he tells people on blind dates is that he's a virgin. Or maybe his problem is that he has a bunch of cats, goes on dates with his mom, and "experiments with fudge":

Yeah, it's a hot mess. A wonderful hot mess. Unfortunately, Virgin Diaries is (as of now) a one-time special (though there was a casting call at the end of the episode). I can't find the full episode online, but I'm sure it's gonna be repeated a million times on TLC. Watch it and behold the awkwardness.

Also, is it vaguely insulting that one of the commercials on TLC's website that played before the clips is for pregnancy tests?

Cracked.com: "The 7 Most Soul-Crushing Series Finales in TV History"

2011-12-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

Cracked.com is a humor website that posts lots of great articles about pop culture and life in general. I'm a big fan, and I figured I should share some of their funny articles now and then.

This one, written by Greg Welsh about a year and a half ago, is about well-known TV shows that have really, really depressing endings. Like, so depressing that it's shocking someone let them get made. Seriously, how is the decline of a society of Muppet dinosaurs allowed to be on TV?

Spoiler alert: They all die.

So yeah, it's a good read. Check out their whole website while you're at it.

"Put that in your iPad and smoke it."

2011-12-06T10:59:00.000-05:00

Just an OK episode of SNL this week. It doesn't help that Hulu is sucking and not letting me watch the whole thing...

The Cold Open was OK. I'm just glad Pixar was on the list:

The monologue is pretty silly. Now I feel bad for all those character actors:

This skit about sports scandals was sort of funny:

And though the Surprise Lady skit is sort of overdone, this one was chuckle-worthy:

This new Drunk Uncle character on Weekend Update is pretty great. Hopefully we'll see more of him in other holiday episodes:

That's it. Overall, the episode was underwhelming. There were some mildly funny stuff, but nothing worth watching more than once.

Katy Perry is going to be the host this week. I can't wait to watch!

Cast Iron Cooks!

2011-12-01T11:52:00.000-05:00

I guess Jason Schwartzman, aka Gideon from the Scott Pilgrim movie, was on Sesame Street recently in an Iron Chef parody. I wish I could find the whole thing online... it looks really awesome:

Isn't Elmo so cute in his little chef hat?

"I'm gonna be given the poisoned Kool-Aid."

2011-12-01T11:44:00.000-05:00

I'm so depressed right now.

First, Ozzy won the duel. Bleh. Then, after Albert won immunity, he gave his reward (a massage) to Cochran and Coach.

There's some Coach Chi, too.

Cochran and Edna know they're on the bottom of the totem pole, but they both have assurances from Coach that they're safe for now. Cochran even asks his tribe to pay him back for saving their tribe at the merge by letting him survive one more Tribal. Not an unreasonable request, in my opinion, but Blue isn't convinced. Cochran and Edna use their supposed link with Coach to try to get rid of Rick, and Albert seems to be on board...

But Tribal happens, and everyone starts going bananas. Brandon cries about stuff, Sophie has no emotions, and Rick has a mustache. And when the vote happens... Cochran's the one sent to Redemption Island.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :(

I bet the worst part is having to spend the next day or so alone with Ozzy.

I had a feeling that Cochran wasn't going to win, mainly because he was unlucky with his assignment to his original tribe. If he was on Blue from the beginning instead, I bet things would have been really different. It kinda stinks, too, that Coach went from having Cochran be his warrior-in-training to voting him out. I mean, I see why it makes sense for everyone in Blue to stick together since it'll help them get jury votes from each other, but at this point it's generally stupid. They're all gonna have to screw each other over anyway, so why not do it when they have an extra vote lying around? Especially since Sophie (and Albert, to an extent) are major strategic threats.

Then again, he doesn't look too menacing.

But I'm not saying goodbye to Cochran yet. After all, there's still a chance that he'll win the duel against Ozzy. Wouldn't that be so awesome? I just hope Ozzy doesn't give Cochran a hard time at Redemption bullying-wise. Let it go, man.

So now I should be rooting for Mustache, but he voted out Cochran, so that's not happening. No amount of glorious mustache can make up for that.

Nope. Don't even try, Mustache.

And that's all I have to say. I'm too sad to come up with anything else.

Mind Blown.

2011-11-30T20:06:00.000-05:00

Holy crap. This is the most talented woman alive:

(Expect a relevant TV Time Capsule post sometime in the not-too-distant future...)

Teen Mom 2 Starts on Tuesday!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-11-30T19:58:00.001-05:00

Even though I don't review them here (partly because I was forbidden to write about MTV stuff on my blog when I interned for them), I'm a big fan of 16 and Pregnant and all its Teen Mom spinoffs. I'm super excited for Season 2 of Teen Mom 2, which will premiere on MTV on Tuesday, December 6. Judging by this preview, it looks like it's gonna be a hot mess (and I mean that in a good way):

MTV Shows

"This gal's got a hole in her heart that only a fella can fill."

2011-11-30T19:50:00.000-05:00

The last episode of Glee, "I Kissed A Girl," had its moments, but it was generally underwhelming.

Even though the episode was mainly about Santana and the class president election, the most interesting part was the Bieste/Sue/Other Guy love triangle. After Bieste tells Schue and Emma (while eating a turduken) about her growing relationship with the football scout dude (they apparently lift weights together), Sue finds his number in her Booty Call Book to avoid public rumors of being a lesbian. So Sue essentially steals Bieste's boyfriend. The guy tells Bieste that Bieste wasn't giving him clear signals about how she felt, which drove him away. Oh no! This made me so sad! Especially after Bieste's awesome, depressing rendition of "Jolene," which really fit into the storyline. (Plus, I have a soft spot for fellow mega-altos.)

Bieste could totally take Sue in a fight.

But yeah, the rest of the episode was insane. And I don't mean "mindblowing insane," I mean "should-be-institutionalized insane." Quinn, who's probably literally crazy at this point for trying to keep making babies with Puck and frame Shelby with CPS, probably had the least insane storyline this week, and that's saying something.

First, there's the whole Puck/Shelby thing. It started out kinda weird, but now it's just plain gross. They had some odd sexual tension, which is nasty considering that Shelby is the adoptive mother of Puck's baby. And this episode implied that they had sex, or some lesser derivative that's still gross under the circumstances. Eew!! She's his baby's adoptive mom, his ex-girlfriend's mom, and his teacher! That's, like, triple bad! Or bad cubed. I'm no expert in badness mathematics. But I do know that it's just plain weird. It's so weird that it feels forced, and it's bad that the writers are forcing things on us.

"If your faux-hawk was symmetrical again, maybe this wouldn't feel so wrong."

And then there's Santana. Here's what I have to say to you, Glee writers: I get it. Santana is a lesbian. You don't have to keep telling me that.

I feel like most of Glee now is about Santana being a lesbian. Finn introduced this episode's whole musical theme as a way to make Santana feel better about the whole thing. (BTW, props to him for a really nifty rendition of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"!!) Heck, I'd say at least half of Glee is about being gay. First it was about Kurt coming out to his dad, then him being accepted by everyone. Now that Kurt's gayness-related storylines are more or less resolved, Santana's taken his place. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any issues with the storylines themselves, just that literally nothing else happens on the show. I'd have the same issue if the characters spent all their time talking about homework or driving tests or debilitating cat allergies. It just gets old and soapbox-y after three seasons. Even if you throw in Santana's abuela, it's still the same old story.

"No me gusta, Santana."

Actually, I've realized after about two and a half years of watching this show that it can all be boiled down to this:
1) Being gay
2) Rachel's selfishness
3) Bullies
4) Sex (and Glee-cest)

Yep, that sums it up.

The Best Part of The New Muppet Movie

2011-11-26T00:10:00.000-05:00

It's hard to pick a favorite moment from The Muppets (which was so so so awesome), but I think this wins:

The celebrity cameos were great, too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T01:08:00.000-05:00

Hopefully your Thanksgiving meal will be as epic as Snoopy's. Just don't whine like Peppermint Patty with her dude-ish voice:

Finally Caught Up on Fringe

2011-11-24T01:00:00.000-05:00

Yep, I'm all caught up with Season 4 now. And it's soooooo good!!!!!! As always, Fringe always sets up more crazy questions as soon as we start getting some answers.

The most recent episode, "Wallflower," was about an invisible guy who was experimented on as a kid by a branch of Massive Dynamic. He killed people for two reasons: to suck out the normalness from their skin for his own use and to act on his jealousy towards young couples who, as visible people, had connections he couldn't have (since his victims were guys in committed relationships). Creepy? Yes. New irrational fear that some jealous invisible chick is gonna stab me in my sleep because I have a boyfriend? Yep.

Here, he looks a lot like Mystique.

This invisible/romantic theme tied in with this new Peter/Agent Lee/Olivia love triangle thing. Well, it's not a straight-up love triangle because Peter acknowleges that this Olivia isn't the one he's in love with. He's even giving Agent Lee some fashion tips before he goes on pseudo-dates with her. Weird.

"Thanks for the advice, bro."

But we were also introduced to a new Olivia storyline in this episode. She talks about having migraines a lot, and she has a big confrontation with Nina Sharpe about the sketchy experiments on invisible dude. In the last few seconds of the episode, we see a group of creepy guys knock Olivia out and inject her with some serum, implying that she'll be left with a headache. And it turns out Nina is behind it. Olivia wondered in the episode if the Cortexiphan treatments somehow stunted her emotions, but maybe it's Nina's shenanigans. Or maybe Nina is trying to keep Olivia's Cortexiphan abilities suppressed or something. In any case, Nina's obviously hiding something big.

Look at her Vader-esque robot hand and tell me she isn't trustworthy.

And poor Peter is still aimlessly looking for a way back to his own reality. But I don't see how it'll work out! He seems to be stuck in this reality, where Olivia has the hots for Agent Lee and Walter doesn't want anything to do with him. Bummer.

I just wants some answers! It looks like we're gonna have to wait till January 13, after the midseason break, to figure out what's going on. But if the new episodes are going to be as well-written and mindblowing as these, it'll be worth the wait.

Muppets on SNL!! And Jason Segel, Too.

2011-11-24T00:20:00.000-05:00

The most recent SNL was pretty good! Especially since the Muppets showed up in Jason Segel's monologue (Kermit is so sassy!):

Kermit made another appearance on Weekend Update, too!

But there was some funny, non-Muppet stuff, like this showcase of the cast's celebrity impressions:

This random sketch was really silly. too:

And the Kissing Family made another appearance:

This Digital Short was sort of funny:

And this other random skit made me laugh, too, maybe because I know people from Massachusetts:

Generally, this episode was good, and Jason Segel did a really great job. We're gonna have to wait till mid-December for a new episode.

The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra!!!!!

2011-11-22T09:44:00.000-05:00

I've written about the awesome show Avatar: The Last Airbender before, but here's some news. (Well, it's sort of old news, but whatever.) Nickelodeon is coming out with a sequel show, The Last Airbender: The Legend of Korra. It's about a new avatar, and it's set 100 years after the original series.

Here's the official trailer:

The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra is set to debut sometime in mid-2012.

One Week Till the Muppet Movie!!!!!

2011-11-17T22:46:00.000-05:00

AW YEAH, MUPPETS!!!!!

Avengers Timeline

2011-11-17T22:37:00.000-05:00

Not relevant, but this is a pretty cool compilation of all the events from the Avengers' individual movies:

My favorite is "Edward Norton turns into Mark Ruffalo."

"I'm drinking the Coach Kool-Aid."

2011-11-17T22:29:00.000-05:00

Another predictable Survivor, but at least the outcome is good.

Ozzy wins the duel against Jim and Keith. Meh, whatever. Then there was an immunity challenge, which Sophie won. Jeff announces at the challenge that there's gonna be some sort of twist at Tribal. That's a pretty accurate summary of the first third of the episode.

And they say duels are all about strength.

At this point, Albert starts to strategize. He realizes that Coach has Rick and Edna in his pocket, and the only time for him to make a power play is now, when he has two free votes (the remaining Red members, Dawn and Whitney). He talks to them, along with Sophie and Cochran, about working together to get rid of Edna, who Albert thinks doesn't deserve to still be in the game. Dawn and Whitney are on board because they don't have any other choice, and Sophie seems to be seriously considering the arrangement, too. Cochran thinks about it, but he doesn't make a decision. He realizes that the big twist at Tribal could be a problem for him if he is, as Albert claims, the first person to go once all of Red gets voted out. If the twist is a second immunity challenge and vote, and a Red person gets immunity, Cochran could be sent home easily.

Then Albert realizes that Coach is getting suspicious of his scheming, so he's not sure whether he and his cohorts should go along with the plan.

Meh, should we flip? Let's stand here and pose dramatically till we figure it out.

Tribal! After some minor drama, it's time for the vote. Edna only gets two votes, meaning that Albert, Sophie, and Cochran didn't flop from their original alliance. They all voted for Dawn, who was sent packing. Then Jeff announces the big twist: and as Cochran predicted, there's another immunity challenge and vote, without a chance for everyone to talk before the vote. Whitney knows she has to win to stay in the game. And she stands a good chance because the challenge is a survival trivia test. She and Sophie beat out everyone else, but in the end, Sophie wins the challenge and Whitney is voted out. That means all that's left is Blue and Cochran. Yay!

Fail.

Now that everyone in the other alliance is out of the game (not counting Redemption Island), things are gonna get really interesting. At first, I thought Cochran wouldn't have a very good chance at this point, but now I'm more optimistic. I mean, Coach was definitely upset that Albert was scheming against his alliance, so he could be next to go. And Brandon's ruffled some feathers before, too. Plus, it's easy to assume that Cochran won't get many jury votes, so Coach may take him to the end to give himself a better shot. They are pretty buddy-buddy now, after all.

I'm still rooting for Mustache, too!! But it turns out we'll have to wait two weeks to see what happens because next week's episode is just a recap. Bleh.

"The three Fs: "Fierce. Femme. And phenomenal."

2011-11-15T22:35:00.000-05:00

A lot of Glee this week dealt with Sue's smear campaign against Burt Hummel, which leads one of her other opponents to use similar tactics against her. And what do they use to attack Sue? Her lesbian cheer captain Santana. Yeah, the other candidate used pictures of Santana on his ad after overhearing from his daughter or something that Santana is a lesbian. And tarnishing the reputation of an innocent, uninvolved teenager in a political TV ad is 100% something that happens in real life all the time.

Anyway, that situation led to this angst-fueled performance of some Adele songs. And then Santana slapped Finn. Good times.

The song is a big deal because it's the 300th Glee song or something. I guess a lot of press people got to go to the set that day and watch the shoot of the music video, which made this mash-up really popular before the show aired.

The next episode is in two weeks. Yeah.

Spider-Man on SNL!!

2011-11-13T12:23:00.000-05:00

Last night's SNL was pretty good! Emma Stone did a great job, and the skits themselves were generally good, too.

The monologue was by far my favorite part of the episode. I mean, Spider-Man! What more could you want?

Secret Word!

This started out like another rehash of an overdone skit, but it gets awesome towards the end when the actors get close to breaking character:

I'm a big fan of the Devil's trips to Weekend Update:

And though Garth and Kat is getting a bit overdone, their famous backup singer made the skit great:

Is it bad that this was one of my favorite skits in a while? Probably:

This funny sketch isn't on Hulu, even though it's pretty good:

And that's it. Overall, it's a pretty good episode! Jason Segel is going to host next week, and I'm super pumped! Maybe some Muppets will make an appearance, too!!!!

Fringe Season 4? Epic.

2011-11-12T12:01:00.000-05:00

I know I've been a major bum about reviewing Fringe this season. I've been watching, but I don't catch it live so I have to watch it on FOX's website, which posts episodes 8 days after they air. So yeah, I'm behind. And busy.

Now that my bad excuses are done, I guess I'll get right down to it. This season of Fringe is really awesome. Remember how Peter disappeared at the end of Season 3? I figure it was a result of the writers thinking the show would be cancelled, and they were looking for a way to end things in a super epic way. But when the show was renewed for a fourth season, they realized they kind of screwed themselves over by essentially killing a main character. Therefore, Peter isn't gone for good.

Phew, that was a close one! I wouldn't have handled a Peter-less Fringe very well.

So here's what's different in the Fringe world. Despite what the Observers said at the end of Season 3, Peter wasn't erased completely from existence. He did exist, but he died when he was "supposed" to: as a child, both due to disease (in this universe) and falling through the ice at Reiden Lake (the other, aka our, Peter). Walter went to the loony bin like he did originally in Season 1, and Olivia got him released to help with cases. But he lives in his lab, and he has such a fear of the outside world that in the beginning of the season, he didn't ever leave (Astrid would wear a microphone and camera to crime scenes so Walter could watch and comment). No one remembers Peter, not even anyone from the other universe. The two universes are still joined together through that room where the machine was, the place where Peter disappeared at the end of the last season. The Fringe Divisions from both universes begrudgingly work together on some cases. Lincoln from our side is now a member of our Fringe Division. The shapeshifters of seasons past have been updated so that they can completely copy a person's DNA and be "perfect infiltrators" rather than just change their appearances. Oh, and Olivia is randomly Nina Sharpe's sort-of adoptive daughter.

The major story arc of the beginning of the season was about Walter seeing images of Peter in reflections and such, which led him and some FBI people to think he was going crazy again. It wasn't until Olivia told him that she was seeing the same person in her dreams that he knew he was sane. But man, it stunk to see Walter so sad! He was so convinced he was losing his mind that he was close to giving himself a lobotomy!

No one likes to see Walter sad.

But now, with the help of a former Cortexiphan test subject, Peter is no longer some weird energy surge that follows people around. He appeared in Reiden Lake with all his memories of the old seasons. But no one knows who he is! That's pretty much where I am now, since I'm still a week behind. I just watched the fifth episode of the season, "Novation," where Peter tries to prove that he really is Walter's son and that he knows everyone on the Fringe Division. It's kind of a mess, though, since Walter thinks Peter is just there to haunt him for his past mistakes.

I'm not gonna lie, ghost/energy Peter is pretty legit.

The acting and writing on Fringe is just as great as ever. And so is the weird science stuff! From weird psychic plants to see-through people to astral projection to a dude from our side meeting his murderous alter-ego, this season is chock full of awesomeness. And as always, it all relates to the overarching theme of each episode. My personal favorite was the psychic plants I mentioned. They formed a link to a little boy, and if the plants got hurt, so did the boy. Walter associated the boy with Peter, who died as a child. So Walter had to convince the boy to break the bond with the plants, the only friends he had, and basically convince him to have the will to live. Deep stuff.

Walter said he'd be the boy's friend, but he hasn't shown up at all since this episode... Awkward.

So yeah, this season of Fringe is epic. Watch it!!!

Carmen Sandiego: Major Flashback

2011-11-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

I found this on Youtube. So much nostalgia!!! Maybe when I have more time, I'll make a TV Time Capsule about Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?, but this will have to do for now:

Singing and dancing is the only way to get a time machine to work.

"I could feel his dragon spirit entering my pores."

2011-11-10T11:30:00.000-05:00

There were TWO Tribal Councils in last night's episode of Survivor!

Right after Cochran's big flip to Blue, his former tribemates really let him have it. And it wasn't very cool of them. I mean, it seemed like they were insulting him personally more than for his gameplay. Aren't they adamant that they aren't bullies? Because their actions here, and in other parts of this episode, are as bully-ish as it gets.

Don't give me that look, Ozzy.

But anyway, an Immunity Challenge happens pretty much right afterwards. Red, especially Ozzy, knows they need to win individual immunities to progress in the game. And sure enough, Jim wins immunity. Ozzy knows he's screwed, and a heart-to-heart with Coach basically confirms he's gonna go home. Jim, the biggest bully of them all, decides to make a move against Cochran. He tells Ozzy that he plans on giving Ozzy the immunity necklace at Tribal to throw off Blue, then state his case that Cochran, as the only person in the game who's flipped on his tribe, deserves to go home.

So Tribal happens, and Jim does his speech. Predictably, it's full of bitterness and, well, bullying. He basically says that Cochran is the only dishonorable player in the game, which makes him the best candidate for elimination. But where was Jim's honor - and all of Red's, for that matter - when they picked on Cochran pre-merge? The real kicker here is that Jim, the new spokesperson of honor, goes back on his word at the last second and keeps his immunity necklace. What a punk! If you can't tell, I really, really dislike Jim. And though usually I give people on TV the benefit of the doubt (you never know what the editors of the show left out, or what sort of spin they're putting on things), I get the feeling that Jim's being portrayed pretty accurately.

I just called you a punk. I don't see why you're so happy.

Anyway, Ozzy gets voted out and joins Keith at Redemption Island, and he catches a bunch of fish for them. Ozzy's convinced he'll use Redemption Island as a way to recharge so he can re-enter the game with strength. But that's assuming he'll win enough duels to do that - he is up against Keith, after all. And even if he does make it back, he'll be on the outside of a unified tribe and just get picked off again.

"Not again, dude!"

Another Immunity Challenge happens the next day, and the contestants are offered desserts and whatnot for sitting out of the challenge. Blue and Cochran do it, while the rest of Red competes. Whitney wins, and Jim whines about losing. I usually don't think it's a smart choice to sit out of challenges on purpose, and this is no exception. They could have kept someone from Red from winning. And besides, donuts and muffins? Their under-fed bellies definitely can't handle a sugar rush. If it was meat or something, I could understand sitting out a bit more. But iced coffee isn't really worth it.

Case and point. (Note the empty pitchers of iced coffee there. Clearly the reason Brandon's not feeling so good.)

Jim knows he's a target, so he approaches Albert and Sophie about flipping and voting for Edna. They're automatically against this. But this gets Albert thinking strategically. He realizes that Dawn is trying to weasel her way into Blue's alliance, and Albert rightly sees this as a threat.

At the second Tribal, Whitney cries about being "vilified" by Blue (and at least from the way the show's edited, she's been sort of a bully, too. Not on Jim's level, but still). And, predictably, Blue + Cochran stays unified and sends Jim to Redemption Island. Yay!

Not so tough now, are you?

So Redemption Island is now home to my three least favorite contestants. I assume they're all gonna duel each other next week, and I don't really care who wins. Just as long as the winner of this duel loses another eventually and goes home, it's all the same to me.

Though Red is still giving Cochran a hard time, he's definitely taking it well. In fact, he really seems to be actually enjoying his time in the game now. Even with all my least favorite contestants getting their just desserts this week, my favorite moment of the episode was Cochran's stint in Coach's jacket and Mustache's cowboy hat. I dunno, it was silly. And it indicated that Cochran's fitting in and having a good time with Blue.

Aw yeah! Rock that cowboy hat!

Though I'm very happy with the outcomes of both Tribal Councils, the episode was a bit predictable. And it's probably going to stay that way until Whitney and Dawn are voted out. When it's just Blue and Cochran, things will really start to get interesting.

"A People's Choice would have gotten you to third base."

2011-11-09T18:22:00.000-05:00

So yeah, there wasn't as much sex on Glee as advertised, which made my co-viewers pretty upset (because we knew the show would have handled it in as much of a hot mess way as possible). Seriously, there was more sex in the "Like A Virgin" dream sequence back in season 1!

But there was still sex, namely with Rachel/Finn and Kurt/Blaine. And in a way, I kind of wish it didn't happen, at least for Rachel and Finn. Their relationship is kind of a hot mess... and if you forget about your girlfriend's vegan diet and mistakenly feed her meat, you probably shouldn't be having sex. Especially when the main factor behind the sex is being a better actor in your school musical.

Having sex with our boyfriends will make our performances more believable! What else are we supposed to do, act? This is by far the best idea we've ever had!

The thing that bothered me about the sex was that it basically stemmed from arguments about it. Rachel/Finn and Blaine/Kurt just started talking about doing the deed in this week's episode, had some sort of conflict (for Rachel/Finn, it was the musical thing, and for Kurt/Blaine, it was when Blaine drunkenly tried to get in Kurt's pants in a car after going to a gay bar), and then resolved that conflict by having sex. And that doesn't seem like the best way to go about it.

In the end, though, the show handled the sex thing fairly well sensitivity-wise, but the Parents Television Council didn't think so. I can see their point here, but we don't actually see anything in the episode beyond some clothed cuddling.

Aww.

But other than the sex shenanigans, there were some good things about the episode. Though I was initially upset when I heard the episode was going to have only West Side Story music, it was surprisingly not boring. "America" in particular was really good. Probably the only download-worthy song of the season so far, in my opinion.

Also, Beiste's new squeeze? So great!!! They're super cute, and it's about time Bieste had someone interested in her. The scene when he asked her out was sooo nice!

One of the most... um... interesting moments of the episode was Kurt and Blaine's trip to a local gay bar. I dunno, I always imagined gay bars to be more... fabulous? Not some dark, wood-paneled room with an occasional bad drag queen. But it was nice to see Karkofsky again. Apparently, he transferred schools and now frequents said gay bar. And wears a sketchy baseball cap. But yeah, the bar itself was really creepy. I'd show you a picture if I could, but I can't find any. Needless to say, "glee gay bar scene" isn't the most user-friendly thing to put in Google Images. (Not surprisingly, a lot of pictures of shirtless Chord Overstreet popped up. Also not surprisingly, a lot of pictures of shirtless Matthew Morrison popped up, too.)

One thing that did show up was this picture of Kurt, Blaine, Karkofsky, and Ryan Murphy superimposed on Rebecca Black and friends. I don't know why Karofsky is Rebecca, but I'm OK with Kurt being the Friend on the Right.

This picture of Nirvana and a rando also came up in the same search, and I'm not OK with this.

But yeah, that's it. Next week's episode is full of mash-up songs, which I'm really excited about. I've never been disappointed with the music on Glee's mashup week.

It's Not A Monologue If There's Two People.

2011-11-06T10:14:00.001-05:00

Last night's SNL was ok. There were some really funny parts and some not-so-funny ones.

Charlie Day was the host this week. His costar from Always Sunny, Danny Devito, randomly showed up during his monologue, which didn't seem necessary to me:

This skit pokes fun at Kim Kardashian's very quick divorce:

The gross-out factor in this skit was great:

And this sketch really took me back to 9th grade, when I had to read about these Greek myth guys:

And that's pretty much it. Emma Stone is the host next week, which should be good!

Happy 5th of November!!!

2011-11-05T14:32:00.000-04:00

(I would have put other scenes, but they're major spoilers.)

"That's what you get for talking to someone like that in the first place."

2011-11-03T14:06:00.000-04:00

Oh snap!!!! This week's episode of Survivor was awesome!

So Ozzy just sacrificed himself so he can go to Redemption Island and beat Christine... which he does. Christine goes home. But what a gamble! It was basically pure luck that Ozzy won the challenge. But anyway, at the challenge, Ozzy told a clearly false story that Cochran used a hidden idol get Ozzy voted out, painting Cochran as a disloyal tribemate. (Blue wasn't buying it, though. I'll get back to that.) Then, Jeff announces that Ozzy's back in the game and the tribes are merging! They named themselves after a coconut or something and ate some food together.

They'll probably puke this all up in a few minutes anyway... it's not like they're used to normal food.

Then things start getting complicated. Ozzy and Red concocted this master plan that Cochran would pretend to be a double agent that gathers information for Red. But when Cochran tells Coach how badly Red treated him, Coach gives a rather inspiring, heartfelt speech. After asserting that Blue is unified and that he sees through Red's entire double agent plan, Coach tells Cochran that the people on Red are intimidated by Cochran's intelligence and are picking on his weaknesses to beat him down. Coach offers Cochran a chance to join Blue's alliance, and Cochran agrees. Cochran then tells Blue the whole story of Ozzy's weird martyrdom, and he more or less secures a place in Blue's friendly, welcoming alliance. Blue generally trusts him and promises to protect him from the repercussions of voting against his own tribe. And though it's a strategically neutral move in that it doesn't put him in a much better position in the game, Cochran did the right thing here. I'll get back to this.

Dawn from Red is pretty sure Cochran's doing this, though the rest of Red is oblivious. At first, Dawn accepts Cochran's choice and considers flipping with him. She even cries in an interview about how bad she felt about the way Cochran was treated on Red. But her tune changes after the Immunity Challenge...

...which I can't find a picture of...

...Where she and Ozzy each win individual immunity. Now things get complicated. Red's master plan is to force a tie at Tribal (since Red and Blue each have 6 people). Apparently in this season, tiebreaking works by picking rocks. Anyone who didn't get a vote has to pick a rock, and the person with the different-colored rock goes home. In other words, it's a game of chance and anyone could go home. Ozzy and Jim want to force a tie because two of their six members have immunity. If you add that to the two people who get votes (and wouldn't pick rocks), there's a a 3 in 8 chance that someone from Red would pick the losing rock. Jim thinks these are good odds, but it's practically a 50/50 chance someone from their tribe would go home, thereby screwing Red over permanently. Cochran realizes this, giving him another reason to flip. But now that Dawn has individual immunity, she's not in a position to lose anything by sticking with Red, so she gives Cochran a hard time about his decision to switch.

Tribal Council happens. Ozzy is a complete idiot, so he blabs to the other team that he has a hidden immunity idol. And then, once the first round of votes is cast, he plays it on Whitney! Whitney?!?! Who the heck is she? And why would he use his ace in the hole when he's not in any danger himself? He should have kept it a secret and saved it for protection if Red didn't have the numbers later on. But again, he's an idiot, so he didn't do this. And then this craziness happens:

The first vote is tied between Keith and Rick (aka Mustache Man nooooooo!!!!!!!). Then, during the revote, Cochran officially makes his move and switches his vote to Keith, sending Keith to Redemption Island. And Red is super TO'd at Cochran. Jim specifically bullies him right away, and Brandon stands up for Cochran. Good for him! In fact, Brandon talked about this in an interview that wasn't aired on the show... and it really makes Brandon look like a good kid. Yeah, he's had lots of mean moments, but this sort of makes up for it:

So Cochran is in Blue's alliance now, and as I said earlier, it was a good move for him. With Red, they would have eliminated him as soon as they got the chance. At least with Blue he has a chance of making it to the finals. Yeah, the jury seems like it'll be mostly Red people who hate Cochran's guts, so in that sense things are sort of bleak for him. But at least this way he'll make it farther and prevent a bunch of bullies from winning in the process.

Jerks.

And man, are they bullies. I think we only see a taste of it on the show, because the preview for next week shows Red being absolutely brutal to Cochran. They're bitter that Cochran stood up for himself and screwed them over, but as Brandon pointed out during Tribal, they sort of had it coming to them for treating Cochran like crap to begin with. Maybe if they were nicer, they wouldn't be in this position now.

I'm a big Cochran fan, so I'm happy that he's in an alliance that respects him now. I'm sure it'll really improve his experience in the game, and maybe he has a better chance now of winning.

The only thing standing in the way now is Rick's glorious mustache.

"I am literally horny with fear."

2011-11-01T22:11:00.000-04:00

Since I have no patience for a full Glee review anymore, here are just a few thoughts on tonight's episode:

1) Burt's running for Congress against Sue! My friend totally predicted it! The "Burt's Corner" news section was cool. I bet he'll win, which will nicely take him out of the show for next season when Kurt and Finn aren't there, either.

2) I get it, new kid Rory Flanagan (aka Damien McGinty, one of the Glee Project winners) is Irish. That doesn't mean he has to wear green all the time and pretend he's a leprechaun. Seriously, if some rando said some sort of vaguely insulting stereotype about me, I wouldn't want to be her friend, much less have sex with her and put chocolate in her cat's litter box. But at least he can sing, at least in "Bein' Green."

Give us all your potatoes or we'll punch you in the face. (If Britney said this, he wouldn't be offended.)

3) How can a glee club with four people be allowed to compete? I bet the New Directions and the new glee club will join back up at some point before sectionals.

4) Any miniscule fragment of respect I had for the show went down the toilet when Puck made out with Shelby, the adoptive mother of his baby and a teacher at his school. Not only is this totally messed up, I'm pretty sure it's illegal, too. Even if Puck's a senior, he's probably still 17 at this point in the season / school year. Seriously, Glee?!? How much more messed up can you get?!?!?

See this cute baby? Doesn't it make you want to hook up?

But apparently there'll be lots of sex next week, which could be sufficiently awkward enough to be fun.

Project Runway All Stars!

2011-10-30T12:45:00.000-04:00

Lifetime announced recently that they're making an All Star season of Project Runway with contestants from pretty much every season. Though it was originally set to premiere this Thursday, it got pushed back to sometime in 2012, according to their website.

They also announced the cast, which includes some of my favorites from years past, both design-wise (like Mondo Guerra and Rami Kashou) and personality-wise (like Austin Scarlett and Anthony Williams). So I'm excited to see some awesome people return to the show! But I'm not excited that we have to wait a few more months to see it.

Wooo, talented people!!!

Project Runway Finale!

2011-10-30T12:39:00.000-04:00

The finale of this season of Project Runway was Thursday, and we finally got to see the contestants' final collections.

Viktor's collection was my favorite. Though some of the see-through shirts weren't my thing, he had a lot of really cool pieces. I loved the prints he made, and his dresses were awesome! But the judges couldn't overlook the mediocre stuff, so he didn't win. And that stinks. He was my favorite of the people left, and I wanted him to win! Of all the final collections, his had stuff in it that I could see myself wearing if I had more ambition and a lot more money.

I want this dress!!!!

The judges didn't like Kimberly's collection, either. They pretty much automatically decided she was the worst of the four.

Hooker.

That leaves Joshua and Anya. Joshua's collection was filled with black and plastic and weird prints, and the judges really liked it. I dunno, it just seemed like bad 80s clothes to me.

Seriously, what is this???

And Anya's collection was just a bunch of the same flowy dresses she always makes. The fabrics were really cool, and the dresses themselves were nice, but there wasn't much variety.

This is pretty cool, but they all looked like this.

So who won? Josh and Anya were the top two, and the judges had a hard time choosing between them. In the end, though, Anya was the winner. She's definitely talented design-wise, but it's a little frustrating that the judges always drink one contestant's Kool-Aid and become obsessed with them, and that's who usually wins the show. It's kind of like the other contestants didn't really stand a chance against the judges' favoritism of Anya. Meh, it almost makes me not want to watch the show anymore.

I'm just glad Josh didn't win. Of course, he started complaining behind Anya's back as soon as he found out he lost. He's such a sore loser.

But yeah, Project Runway is over, and we'll have to wait a while to see it again. Or will we....

10,000 Views!!!!!

2011-10-28T12:35:00.000-04:00

Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel hit 10,000 views this morning!!! Wooooo!!!!! Thank you so much to all you readers (and to all the random Google Images hits) who have been supporting me all this time! You rock!

Woooo!!!!!!

"There's ways within ways in the game of Survivor to survive."

2011-10-27T10:56:00.000-04:00

This episode of Survivor marks one of the dumbest strategical moves ever made in the game. Seriously.

After Christine wins yet another duel, Ozzy is concerned that she'll come back in the game soon and rejoin Blue, so he thinks it may be a good idea to have someone from Red (like him) go to Redemption Island to knock her out of the game since he thinks a merge will happen after the next challenge. Cochran is glad Ozzy recommends this because it takes a target off Cochran's back. What they don't know, though, is that Christine has no intention of rejoining Blue if she gets back in the game.

Coach realizes that Blue really needs to bond together, so he decides to have the group look together for the hidden immunity idol. He has it, of course, and a few people know that, so he sort of pretends to find it while picking up tree mail. And then they all celebrate. So it looks like Coach's plan did, in fact, bring his tribe closer together. There didn't seem to be any animosity between any of them in the whole episode.

UNITY!

At the challenge, the tribes had to pair up their players and run blindfolded through an obstacle course and solve a puzzle. It's neck-and-neck for most of the challenge, but Cochran screws up attaching the blindfolded people to their guide rope, which makes Red lose. While Blue has a very touching kumbaya moment, Ozzy whines and complains like a little baby. (I don't see why he was so upset, though, considering that other than Immunity, all they lost was a chance to see what is probably the worst movie ever made. If I was in this season and won this challenge, there would be no way for the editors to spin anything I said about the movie into something remotely positive.)

It's definitely not worth the faceplants.

Once Red gets back to their camp, they all spend like an hour moping and complaining about how much Cochran blew the challenge. (They neglect to admit that the rope was tangled when it got to him and that Jim could have stepped in and helped him much earlier than he did.) So Ozzy takes his original plan, aka sacrificing himself to go to Redemption and eliminate Christine, and morphs it into an opportunity to get rid of Cochran. Ozzy and the rest of Red want to send Cochran to Redemption to redeem himself for his performance at the challenge and eliminate Christine himself. Cochran has his doubts that he'd be able to do this, considering his performance in challenges in general, but the tribe encourages him. And as Cochran pointed out in an interview, this was sort of creepy. It was like they were bonding over how much they wanted to get rid of Cochran right in front of his face.

So things are looking bad for Cochran... until the next morning, when Ozzy decides to be a martyr for no reason and go back to his original plan - sending himself to Redemption. So he waltzes into camp all high-and-mighty, wearing his immunity necklace, and tells everyone his amazing, self-glorifying plan. And pretty much everyone thinks this is a stupid idea. Why would they sacrifice their strongest player on the off chance he'll do well in the Redemption challenge? But Ozzy is adamant that he should go. Tribal Council happens, Ozzy gives his idol to Cochran to hold for him, and valiantly/stupidly gets voted out, with his tribe sending him off encouragingly.

Then he took a moment to pose for this picture and capture his moment of martyrdom.

I've seen a lot of stupid Survivor moves in my ten-plus years watching the show, but this is by far one of the dumbest, if not the dumbest. For one thing, this move is motivated only by Ozzy's unwavering need to be a hero and draw attention to himself. It's all about Ozzy in his tribe, and his huge ego was definitely the driving force here. It's like he thinks nothing bad can happen to him, when in fact many, many things can go wrong. First of all, the Redemption Island challenges are specifically designed to be equally fair to anyone who competes in them, regardless of strength. They're all, like, puzzles and stuff. So just because Ozzy is a physical threat doesn't mean he has any edge in the challenge. Just look at Stacy and Mikayla. They're both stronger than Christine, but she still beat them.

It's because she puts her game face on. (This is her game face, FYI.)

But let's say he beats Christine. What if Red is wrong and the merge doesn't happen right away? They'll probably lose the next challenge and send another person, probably Cochran, to Redemption, where Ozzy is already tuckered out from a challenge. The numbers thing won't help them now. And Cochran won't just let Ozzy win like other people on Red might. If Blue loses the challenge, who knows who he'll go up against? It doesn't really matter since, again, anyone has an equal chance of winning Redemption challenges.

But here's why the move is really stupid: It will accomplish absolutely nothing. Like I said earlier, Christine has no intention of rejoining Blue if she comes back in the game. It would be idiotic to rejoin an old tribe after being kicked out like that. So regardless of which person wins the duel, Red will still have the same numbers (assuming the merge is in the immediate future). It was completely pointless for Ozzy to go to kick out someone who would just join them anyway, so Red could have voted out whoever they wanted to. But they didn't. Ozzy had to put himself at risk for a cause that doesn't matter at all, just so he can say he did. And honestly, I hope he goes home.

You look like a girl.

All of this means that Cochran is still in the game... AND he has the hidden immunity idol!!!! Oh snap! He dodged a major bullet this week, but he was saved by Ozzy's stupidity. If Cochran keeps making it through like this, he could win!!

I can't wait to see what happens next week! Hopefully it'll be the end of Ozzy once and for all.

Elmo Is A Real Person!

2011-10-25T18:39:00.001-04:00

OMG It's Elmo!!!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Kevin Clash

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

He seems like a genuinely nice guy.

Tobias.

2011-10-24T21:30:00.000-04:00

He's a little buy-curious.

TV Time Capsule: Code Lyoko

2011-10-23T11:26:00.000-04:00

This week, I'm taking a really random (and really awesome) show out of the TV Time Capsule: Code Lyoko.

Code Lyoko is a cartoon that aired on Cartoon Network from 2004 to 2007. It's actually a French show, though, and aired there starting a year earlier. It's actually really popular in Europe - it won tons of awards and stuff, and there's even a stage show in Spain about it.

Apparently, it exists.

The show is about a bunch of kids in a boarding school in France who find a weird supercomputer in a warehouse. The computer's program, called XANA, has become sentient and, like most great bad guys, it wants to take over the world. It often attacks the real world by taking over machines and stuff like that. The kids find a way to digitize themselves and enter the "digital world" inside the computer, where they get a bunch of awesome ninja powers and fight off robot monsters and stuff.

The first major story arc is about Aelita, an artificial intelligence the kids find in the computer. She's harmless - friendly, even - so the kids try to find a way to take her out of the computer and put her in the real world. The second is about the kids' friend William, who gets stuck in the computer and taken over by XANA. The kids try to save him, but they often have to fight him instead.

Lesson learned: if your new friends ask you to join their team and fight bad guys in a supercomputer, don't.

What makes this show pretty cool is its animation style. When the kids are in the real world, the show is hand-drawn, but when they're in the computer, it's computer-animated. Cool, right? There's also lots of action and robots and whatnot, too.

If you're looking for a fun, action-packed French knockoff of anime, look no further! You can find episodes of Code Lyoko on sketchy websites and on Youtube. AND I just found out that after a five-year haitus, a fifth season is in the works and will debut sometime in 2012. Whether or not it'll air in America remains to be seen, but I'm sure it will be. So watch it!

Wanna See the Other Designers' Collections?

2011-10-21T13:38:00.001-04:00

As you may or may not know, Project Runway often asks non-finalists to create collections for Fashion Week so the audience won't know which designers are in the finals. It's usually one or two people, but this season, five eliminated contestants made collections: Laura, Anthony Ryan, Bert, Oliver, and Bryce.

This website shows all nine designers' collections. You have to click on the designers' pictures to see the collections, so you won't see any spoilers of the finalists' collections (unless you want to).

My favorite of the non-finalists' collections is definitely Anthony Ryan's. His designs are so quirky and awesome! I predicted he'd be a frontrunner in the show, so it's sad he was eliminated so early. He could have potentially won the whole thing if he was in the finals.

On the Road with Tim Gunn!

2011-10-21T13:25:00.000-04:00

This week was the first part of Project Runway's finale! And you know what that means: Tim Gunn's trip to all the designers' homes! We got to see him mingle with friends and family... even babies! Aww! And then the remaining four designers came back to NYC and showed the judges part of their final collection.

My favorite designs were definitely Viktor's. I mean, that super awesome jacket was amazing! And he made his own really cool prints! I'd wear everything he showed at the runway this week. The judges didn't like his pairing of items, but they were generally happy with everything he did.

The pants are super cool!

Josh... Oh, Josh. When Tim came to visit, Josh showed him a really atrocious print fabric and Tim told him to scrap it, but he didn't. I thought most of the looks he didn't show to the judges looked pretty... cheesy, I guess. They didn't look like they were made with good fabric or anything. I didn't like what he showed to the judges, either. But the judges loved what he did, with the exception of a random draped jumper thing.

Dress in the front, skin-tight body suit in the back.

Kimberly's looks seemed just OK to me. There's some cool stuff, but there's some bad stuff, too. Like that awful pink skirt - it makes the model's butt look ginormous, and it doesn't fit right! Her looks were really overstyled, too.

Seriously? The seams in the front are mega crooked! Even I can tell it's a problem!

Anya had some major issues from the getgo. When Tim came to visit, she had hardly anything done at all! She put so much pressure on herself that she froze up. And the stuff she showed to the judges was kinda bad. The first dress was nice, but the rest was poorly made. Especially her gown! The judges really critiqued her for basically the first time ever.

The only good design...

So who went home? Um, no one. The judges were supposed to cut one person, and it was down between Anya and Kimberly, but they decided to let both of them compete in the finals. Bleh. I thought Anya really dropped the ball and she should have gone home, but I guess the judges were so wrapped up in how much they loved her old stuff to send her packing.

I'm rooting for Viktor, but we'll have to wait a week to see who wins!

"I'm a sparkling water kind of guy."

2011-10-20T11:04:00.000-04:00

We're slowly but surely chugging along to the merge in Survivor, and this episode helped set the stage for whatever's coming next.

So Ozzy is super TO'd at his tribe for blindsiding Elise, so he throws a hissyfit and declares himself a "free agent" on the tribe. He mopes and complains for a day, which puts a bit of a target on his back and takes the heat off Cochran, but Ozzy eventually apologizes for being a jerk. But during his pouty period, he did admit to everyone that he has the hidden immunity idol. Dumb move, Ozzy!

Your majestic windswept locks won't help you now.

After Christine wins yet another duel, Brandon finds the idol clue at his camp and suckers Coach and Albert into looking for it with him. Of course, Coach has the idol, but he and Albert decide to not tell Brandon he has it.

Red comes from behind and wins the immunity challenge, along with a trip to a waterfall, while Blue is left to decide who to vote off. It's clear that either Mikayla or Edna will be voted off since neither of them are in the tribe's core alliance. Coach wants to get rid of Mikayla for not listening to him during the challenge. He also thinks Edna is a lot more loyal to him, so he wants to keep her around. Brandon's on board since he hates Mikayla for whatever reason, but Albert and Sophie aren't too convinced. They want to keep Mikayla around because they think she'll do better at challenges than Edna. So as it stands now, the vote is tied. Who will cast the deciding vote? Mustache Man!!!!

Yes, you! Don't look so surprised!

That's right, both Coach and Albert go to Mustache to convince him to vote their way. Then, shockingly, Mustache speaks! In an interview, he mentions that being in the middle puts a huge target on his back - no matter who he votes for, he's gonna tick someone off. Yeah, it's a problem, but I think their core alliance is tight enough for them to not really get angry at him.

Look at them pointing off into the distance, reaching out for the prize. There's zero potential for hostility there.

At Tribal, Brandon has another predictable outburst about loyalty or something. And, because of Mustache's vote, Mikayla is sent to Redemption Island. I think the tribe made the right decision here. She hasn't been too good at challenges lately, and it's good to be surrounded by loyal tribemates. And by voting with Coach, Mustache made sure to keep on the leader's good side. Again, I doubt it would have made a big impact on Mustache if he didn't vote with Coach, but it can't hurt to protect himself from any potential drama. He's gotta win, after all! That is, if Cochran doesn't make it. He's my first choice. But if Cochran loses, then it's Mustache all the way!

Sorry, Mustache, but we nerds gotta stick together.

For whatever reason, Cochran appears a bit safer on Red than he did before. It looks like he may have bonded with the rest of his tribe over how much of a jerk Ozzy was being earlier in the episode. Good for Cochran! And in the preview, it looks like Ozzy says something about sacrificing himself for the tribe so he can go to Redemption and knock out everyone else who crosses his path. Go ahead, Ozzy, get yourself voted out. He bothers me for some reason, so I'll be glad when he's sent packing.

"The more plastic he puts in, the better my chances are."

2011-10-16T11:49:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted about Project Runway in a while... Here's a review-ish thing of the last two episodes. (But mainly the last one.)

Two weeks ago, the designers were paired together and faced off head-to-head against each other, designing an outfit inspired by the same bird. And since I'm not a big bird/animal person, this challenge wasn't my cup of tea. But anyway, the designers started working on their looks, and Tim announced that they had to do a second outfit. And obviously, that stressed people out. A few hours before the runway show, though, he announced that the designers had to show only one of the two looks they made, giving them a chance to edit themselves.

Everyone pretty much did a good job, but Bert's dress was a bit generic and didn't seem too inspired by his bird, so he was sent packing.

It's too bad. I was starting to like him.

Anya won the challenge that week, which was a big deal since the winner won 20,000 dollars. And since Josh is normally a sore loser, just imagine how much more TO'd he is after not winning money. He takes out his angst passive-aggressively at Anya after the challenge. And though I do think the judges are a bit too Anya-obsessed, I did like her look that week and thought she should have won.

Though it's bad that Anya's models have to be cut out of her outfits after the runway show.

That leads us to this week. The remaining five designers had to design three looks inspired by Governor's Island, which was sort of random. But they got help from eliminated designers, which is good considering how much work they had to do. That gave Josh a bunch more people to whine to about not winning the last challenge. He complains a lot about Anya behind her back, which isn't cool. Bryce astutely points out that the workroom is a lot more tense than it was when he was eliminated, and I bet Josh is a big factor in that.

Anyway, the runway show happens. The judges go crazy over Anya's mini-collection, but I thought it was just OK. The red pant thing was so nasty, in my opinion, that it should have cancelled out the potential goodness of the other two looks, but the judges loved it all and she was chosen to be in the finals.

The shoulder strap looks like a seatbelt.

Viktor's outfits were nice, too, and he made it through to the finals.

I love the jacket!

But then it's a pretty close call between the remaining three designers. Though Josh's looks were just OK, the judges like that he's a risk-taker full of ideas, so he's in the finals, too. Ugh, he's so mean though! I'm not a fan at all and I hope he loses. Seriously, I don't wanna watch any more of his stupid drama.

And what is this thing?!? It looks like a sheet and a tank top.

The only nice part of Kimberly's outfits was her silver dress. The rest was pretty odd. Since the judges can never pick just three people to make it to the finals, they let Kimberly through.

Even though this looks like a classy prostitute's outfit of choice.

That leaves Laura. I actually liked her mini-collection more than Kim's, so I was sad that the judges eliminated her. Especially since Laura was so passionate about going to Fashion Week! I felt super bad for her.

I actually really like this dress.

So the finals are coming up soon, and I'm looking forward to seeing the designers' final collections. But my favorite part of the finals is Tim's trek around the country to the designers' homes! It's so fun! That should be in the next episode, too. Wooo!!!!

(All design images are from mylifetime.com)

"You may watch the end of the game while you pretend to rake leaves."

2011-10-16T11:14:00.000-04:00

Anna Faris was the host this week on SNL. And you know how they usually put the funniest skits in the beginning and the lame stuff at the end? Well, I thought this week was the opposite. Most of the stuff at the end was pretty funny in an offbeat sort of way.

This game show skit was pretty silly since it definitely gets how ridiculous Lifetime movies are:

This borderline racist sketch about a campus TV show was awesome, too:

I don't know why I thought this skit was funny, but I did. Maybe it's because it's so stupid:

And the last skit of the night was chuckle-worthy:

But yeah, nothing this week was really funny, just OK. I think there isn't going to be a new episode till after Halloween, so hopefully that'll give the writers some time to come up with good stuff.

I Applied for Survivor!

2011-10-13T10:19:00.001-04:00

That's right, fans! I applied to be on the next season of Survivor! It's unlikely I'll get picked, considering how last-minute my application video was, but whatever. When there's lead in the air, there's hope.

This was my application video. Dumb, I know. But this is what half an hour of effort gets you:

If you're reading this, Survivor, pick me! I promise I won't suck!

"The little Cochran that could."

2011-10-13T10:12:00.001-04:00

This episode of Survivor was pretty good!

At the duel, Stacy and Christine blabbed that Coach is in charge at Blue, so now Red knows Blue's power structure. (And they spend like five minutes ranting about how Coach's real name is Benjamin, so that's what they're gonna call him.) Stacy loses the duel and goes home for good.

Over at Blue, Coach finds the hidden immunity idol. That means that both returning players, Coach and Ozzy, have immunity idols.

In his head, he was doing this.

At Red, Ozzy's sitting pretty as the tribe's leader, and Elise is his right-hand woman. Cochran's on the outside of Ozzy's alliance, as usual, but he's resolved to stick in the game as long as possible. He also points out Ozzy's decline into laziness and complacency, in comparison to previous seasons.

The challenge this week was definitely the episode's high point. (Is it bad of me to admit that?) The contestants had to basically gnaw pieces of meat off a roasted pig and spit them into a bucket. Whichever tribe has the heaviest bucket wins immunity, some cooking stuff, and the meat they retrieved during the challenge. And it was gross. Really, really gross. Like, picking meat from each other's teeth with their mouths gross. Despite everyone's best efforts, the challenge was really close, but Blue won by two ounces.

Cochran's right: oral herpes is a legit possibility here.

After Blue feasts on their spit meat, Ozzy tells Red to vote for Cochran. But Jim and Cochran have another idea. They see how close he and Elise are, so they want to get rid of her. Since Jim has clout with the other tribe members, he convinces Keith and Whitney to vote against Ozzy's main squeeze. At Tribal, Ozzy and Elise vote for Cochran, two of the remaining five vote for Dawn (presumably to counteract any hidden immunity shenanigans), and the other three vote for Elise. Blindsided, she takes her stuff and goes to Redemption Island.

Yay, they did something!

Woo! Cochran lives! Though the previews for next week make it look like he's gonna be in trouble, at least he's safe for now. And I'm glad someone in this game is making a power play. Ozzy's too comfortable in Red for no reason. And the previews show him being all whiny about getting blindsided, which doesn't bode well for him. As we get closer to the merge, things are getting more strategic and awesome. We'll have to wait till next week to find out what happens!

AVENGERS TRAILER!!!!!

2011-10-12T12:23:00.000-04:00

Behold the glory:

The Avengers is coming out on May 4th, 2012. And if this ridiculously great trailer is any indication, the movie is gonna be mindblowing!

(I bet you're wondering why this is relevant to my blog. Well, the movie is directed by Joss Whedon, a modern legend of sci-fi TV. There you go: relevance.)

Terra Nova Is Dumb

2011-10-10T12:05:00.000-04:00

I caught up on Terra Nova this weekend. The show, which premiered about three weeks ago, is about a bunch of people in the future who escape mankind's destruction by traveling 85 million years back in time. I won't go into how cheesy and formulaic the show is, or how humanity's future in the show looks a lot like other futures in other dystopias. Instead, I'll just talk about some really stupid plot holes:

1) Time Travel. I'll ignore how random it is that a time portal happened to appear in a city in the future. But once you get into time travel in any story, you open yourself up to a bunch of problems. Namely the Butterfly Effect, a well-known theory in nerddom that essentially posits that any time someone tampers with the past, even in the smallest way, it effects all events after it. Like, I could go back in time five minutes and convince myself to not write this blog post and study for an exam instead, which would make me five minutes better at Logic. But the farther back you travel in time, the more opportunities your change has to screw with everything. So, an 85 million year jump would have a major effect on present events.

The writers of Terra Nova think they've circumvented this whole thing by making the dinosaur past they inhabit part of an alternate timeline. In the show, it's mentioned briefly that during the initial studies of the time portal, scientists sent back a probe with a tracking device so they could find the probe in the present to see where it appeared (and how old it was). But they couldn't find it. Assuming the tracking device wasn't broken (which I'll get back to in a second), it means that the probe was sent into a different timeline. That means sending people through the portal wouldn't affect our present.

(It's unlikely the tracking device was broken. If it did, in fact, end up in our timeline but the scientist people couldn't find it, and we sent people through the portal into the past of our own timeline, it's likely the future (or the present of the show) would be entirely different. That means it's almost guaranteed that the main characters wouldn't exist, and they would probably cease to exist as soon as they went through the portal. The fact that the characters even exist in the past indicates they're in an alternate timeline.)

But just because they're in an alternate timeline doesn't mean they're not affecting some present - the alternate present. Maybe it's inhabited by humans, or maybe dinosaurs or a sentient race of bird people. In any case, the introduction of the Terra Nova people in the past will entirely alter their existence. Maybe they won't exist at all. So congrats, Terra Nova. You probably just killed millions and billions of alternate timeline people.

They don't seem too concerned.

2) Disease. Diseases happen. Over time, diseases change as the creatures that inhabit the planet develop ways to fend them off. That means the diseases in the present are entirely different than the diseases from 85 million years ago. And unless all the people on the show got vaccinated for ancient dino diseases (which the show doesn't mention), they're all gonna die of really old-school typhoid or something.

It'll look a lot like this.

3) Technology. The Terra Nova colony is filled with fancy-pants future technology, like sonic guns and jeeps and cool medical equipment. (Despite this, their anti-dino fence is made of wood. Effective? Not so much.) But what happens when it all breaks? It's not like they have factories that can build more, and they can't go back to the present and get more. Sure, the people in the present can send stuff back into the past. But eventually, the people in the present will die. That's why people are going to Terra Nova, right? So then they won't be able to get shipments of shiny holographic things anymore. They'll be totally screwed. Also, most of their technology is battery, solar, or wind powered. If that stuff goes kaput, it's not like they can revert back to fossil fuels because there's no ancient dino juice in the ground to work with! If you don't see the problem here, consider how all the angsty teens in the first episode almost get murdered by dinos because their jeep's battery pack is empty. Not so tough now, are ya?

I'd like to see them try to kill dinos without these.

4) The asteroid. Dinosaurs went extinct for some reason, and the common theory is a giant asteroid that crashed into Earth that straight-up murdered them all. Whatever the reason, they died. And whatever the cause was, it's gonna happen again in this alternate past. While all the Terra Nova colonists are there. It may not happen anytime near the events on the show, but it'll happen sometime.

Imagine this, only with hordes of people running around in circles.

5) The ice age. Again, not an immediate threat. But it happens at some point, and I doubt our Terra Nova peeps will live through it.

I doubt it'll be this cute, either.

So yeah, Terra Nova is stupid. Spielberg should have stopped at Jurassic Park and left well enough alone.

Zoolander on SNL! For Real!

2011-10-09T12:30:00.000-04:00

SNL was just OK this week. The skits were only sort of funny, though Ben Stiller performed well in all of them.

The cold open poked fun at Mitt Romney:

Ben Stiller hallucinated Jewish food in his monologue, which is not up on Hulu or NBC's website for embedding for some reason.

The Digital Short is pretty silly, too. The infamous v-neck shirt causes some shenanigans in a store:

When Stefon showed up on Weekend Update, I was already super excited. But then Derek Zoolander joined him! The Zoolander part could have been a bit funnier, but it was still awesome to bring back this awesome character:

There was another rehash of this skit:

And another Underground Music Festival Commercial:

Actually, a lot of the episode was pre-recorded, considering all three incredibly creepy commercial spoofs and an unusual Bruce Springsteen CD collection commercial. But one of my favorite moments (which is also not on NBC's website) is the Best of Both Worlds talk show, in which a fake Hugh Jackman interviews celebrities who, like him, have uber-macho and feminine sides. What made the skit so great, though, was when Hugh Jackman actually showed up, playing Daniel Radcliffe, and pokes fun at himself. Man, he's cool.

But yeah, the episode was just OK. Which is too bad since Ben Stiller is a funny dude. Though there were some great moments this week, some skits fell flat because of bad writing.

Next week's host is Anna Faris!

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT RETURNS!!!!!!!!!!

2011-10-06T11:35:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know I'm behind the trend with writing about this, but whatever!! There's some big news about Arrested Development, which I extracted from the TV Time Capsule last semester.

So the cast of the cult classic TV show Arrested Development, along with the show's creator Mitch Hurwitz, announced that not only is the long-rumored Arrested Development movie happening, but they're also bringing the show back for 9-10 more episodes in early 2013!!!!!!!

I guess the movie's writers were having difficulties cramming everything the characters have been up to for the past five years in the script along with the actual story of the movie. That's why there's going to be new episodes. Each one will focus on one character's story from the end of season 3 till now. That way, the movie won't be bogged down with so much backstory.

It's unclear now how exactly the new episodes will be distributed. For now, it looks like it won't air on a normal network, as Showtime, Hulu, and Netflix are in some sort of bidding war over the show.

Even though we won't see any new material till January 2013 at the earliest, get excited!!!!!!!

And watch some Chicken Dances!

"Bones on bones can't lift too much if it's just all skeleton with the bone."

2011-10-06T11:03:00.000-04:00

Meh, this episode of Survivor was just OK. More of a setup for things to come than anything else.

First, Papa Bear lost his duel against Christine. Booo!!! I'm sad to see him go.

At Red, Jim notices that Ozzy is very close with some generic brunette bikini girl and wants to send her home to make Ozzy weaker. He suckers Cochran into the plan, but Dawn, who's also on the outs with Red, isn't so keen on the whole thing. She thinks she has a legit chance of getting in the main group, aka the popular kids. But she can't. Because she's old. I mean, she's nice and all, but the cool kids in Survivor don't align themselves with anyone older than 30. It just doesn't happen.

One of these things is not like the other.

On Blue, Brandon apologizes to Mikayla for being a jerk and resolves to be a better person in the game. Edna annoys everyone, too.

The immunity challenge involved three players from each team holding a bunch of weight on their shoulders. Brandon and Jim break some Survivor record in this challenge, which I'm sure they'll put on their resumes. (It's not outside the realm of possibility that Brandon will get it tattooed on him somewhere, considering his habit of getting random stuff inked on him.) And though Stacy does a ridiculously good job for Blue, Dawn wins the challenge for Red. They get immunity... and chickens!

There's nothing like breaking a record that will get you nothing in life.

Stacy and Edna know they're on the chopping block, so they scramble. Stacy tells Brandon not to trust certain people in his alliance, so he goes to Coach and freaks out. Coach tries to calm him down by telling him that Stacy is just saying whatever she needs to so she can cause confusion and stick around, but Brandon doesn't buy it. He just starts some stupid argument with Coach about how badly he's played the game the last two times. Ouch! If I were Coach, I wouldn't keep this kid around anymore.

But yeah, Tribal Council happens. Jeff stirs up contrived drama by asking the contestants how they annoy each other. And then, in a landslide vote, Stacy gets voted out. Before Jeff snuffs her torch, her fellow contestants try to give her hugs, but she walks right by them since she thinks they're fake. Ouch again!

I thought this vote was sort of a stupid decision. Yeah, Stacy isn't the friendliest lady out there, but at least she was good at challenges. (Look at how awesome she was this week!) And that's what they need right now! They could have gotten rid of Edna this time, tried to win some challenges to avoid Tribal for a few times, and then get rid of Stacy. Oh, well.

I lift things up and put them down.

I'm glad Cochran's setting himself up for a potential power move on Red. That means he has a chance of sticking around longer and maybe dismantling the main alliance a little bit. Yay!

Brandon is really really really getting on my nerves now. I'm tired of hearing him swear an oath to be nicer at the beginning of every episode, only to have him freak out in some stupid way before Tribal. It's getting old. And if the people in Blue were smart, they'd get rid of him soon.

But the highlight of the episode, by far, was the two words uttered by Mustache Man at Tribal!

That's right, Mustache Man. You gaze off majestically into the sunset. You've earned it.

Next week, the contestants have to gnaw on a pig for a challenge. Fun times!

"Do you want me to iron some bacon for you?"

2011-10-04T22:20:00.000-04:00

A few things happened on Glee this week:

1) Mike got an A- on a Chem test, which is apparently an "Asian F," so his overbearing dad tells him to quit the glee club and dancing. Despite this, Mike tries out for a part in West Side Story that includes singing (since he's apparently been practicing singing since his last fiasco) and he gets the part! When his mom finds out about his love of dancing, she supports him and he gives her some dance lessons. Nice!

And he's one of the only characters who haven't been completely ruined by the writers yet.

2) Mercedes' boyfriend (who is awesome, BTW) convinces her that she has a legit chance of getting the lead role in the musical, so she does a good audition performance. So good, in fact, that she and Rachel have to audition again. And even then, they tie, which is apparently a thing. They both get to star as Maria on different nights. But when Mercedes feels Rachel is getting all the spotlight (what's new?) she freaks out during dance practice, quits the glee club, and joins Shelby's new group.

New potential fave = Mercedes' boyfriend. Even though I don't know his name, I still think he's nice. Put him in more episodes!

3) Even though Emma told him not to, Will invited Emma's parents over for dinner. Apparently, they're ginger supremacists who make Emma's OCD worse - they even pick on her for it. Will stands up to them for Emma, but Emma pseudo-relapses back into super OCD. This could have been avoided if A) Emma told Will why she didn't want her parents around and B) Will actually listened to her. So yeah, they're both idiots.

But overall, this episode was better than the last few. Mike Chang's storyline, especially the scene when he imagined seeing his dad and Tina while he was dancing, was really great.

And the music was slightly better, too. Noteworthy songs were "Cool," Mike's audition song, and "Fix You." The rest were just OK.

Like "Run The World (Girls)." If someone was dressed like that at my high school, they'd be sent home.

Hopefully the next episode will be decent, too! But we'll have to wait till November 1st to find out.

Another 70's Challenge... Bleh.

2011-10-03T16:02:00.001-04:00

Sorry I didn't post right away about this... my interest is waning. Especially since the challenge this week was almost the same as last week, only for women. The designers had to make a look inspired by the 70's (which, in a twist, morphed into two looks).

Anya won the challenge, partly out of pity. She lost her Mood money on their first trip of the episode, which meant her first outfit was made of free muslin and whatever she could get with the eleven dollars she scrounged up from the other designers. Her designs were good, though I liked others better.

Fabric: $11.50. Winning: Priceless.

The bottom three this week was Anthony Ryan, Joshua, and Laura. Generally, I thought they all did a good job. But at the runway show, Joshua gave the judges a major tude... like he always does. They get really annoyed with him, and he gets really defensive. He didn't want to admit that the pants he made were super mega awful. Really, really unflattering.

Tight plaid + butt and crotch regions = poor life choice.

And since Laura was off the hook, the judges sent poor Anthony Ryan home!!! Nooo!!!! He's so talented and nice!! And honestly, his looks this week weren't as bad as Joshua's. Tim Gunn even cried when he told Anthony to clean up his space. I don't blame him. Anthony Ryan made a dress out of freakin' birdseed and he got sent home for nothing.

Not his finest, but not that bad!

So yeah, I'm bummed that someone super talented went home when someone slightly less talented and a lot meaner got to stay in the competition. I really, really hope Joshua will go home soon. He's bothering me like crazy.

Finally, Good SNL!

2011-10-02T13:37:00.000-04:00

Wooo! SNL was actually funny this week! Though the writing this week was better, the reason the episode was so good was the host, Melissa McCarthy. All her characters in the episode were hilarious! She's very talented, so it's awesome that she got to host!

Since the whole episode was good, I'm not going into play-by-play detail about it. Just watch the whole thing!

Also, this skit that didn't air last night was pretty funny, too:

Next week's host is Ben Stiller!!! Wooo!!!!

"I would give birth to ten of his children without using any drugs to help ease the pain."

2011-09-29T10:59:00.000-04:00

Survivor's getting more intense, and it's only the third episode!

So after crazy Semhar loses the Redemption Island duel against mean Christine (ha, rhyme), there's some major drama at Blue. Brandon (aka Russell's nephew) goes on some crazy guilt trip. resolves to be a better person, and clears the air with everyone by revealing to his entire tribe that he's Russell's nephew. Poor life choice!!! Everyone freaks out about this. Though he doesn't admit this to anyone other than the camera, Coach thinks that this move was a huge mistake that shows his immaturity. Then, after Mikayla approaches Brandon about why he was gunning for her, he brings her in front of the whole tribe and announces that no one likes her and that she has no alliance. (I'm sure the team doesn't really have anything against her, so this is only partly true.) She cries. And then Brandon feels bad and cries about how he's always struggling between good and evil. More like struggling between stupid and more stupid. Seriously, if this kid keeps up all his stupid, mean, emotional outbursts, no one on his tribe will trust him and he'll jeopardize his whole team's success.

And he'll make everyone cry.

Over at Red, Papa Bear muses that he, Dawn, and Cochran are low on the pecking order. The other five members have too tight of an alliance for them to break into. Ozzy and Keith are especially close, apparently... so close that Ozzy tells him that he has the idol. Why would he do this??? So dumb. Now his only trump card isn't a secret anymore. Though Keith claims he won't tell anyone, he goes straight to one of the bikini girls and blabs to her. Now they're more wary of Ozzy because they know he's using that idol to solidify his control over everyone else on Red.

Your glorious mane of windswept hair won't help you this time.

Blue wins the immunity challenge, part of which involves riding on a boogie board.

WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

That means Red's going to Tribal Council. Papa Bear and Cochran try to deflect attention onto each other to save themselves. And when Papa Bear accurately realizes that he's on the chopping block, he runs into the jungle to find the hidden immunity idol... which he obviously fails at because Ozzy has it. PB makes a fake one just to make people think he has one so they won't vote for him, but it doesn't work. It's pretty much a clean sweep at Tribal, and Papa Bear gets sent to Redemption Island. NOOOOO!!! Maybe he'll stick around for a while at Redemption.

You, your subtle sassiness, and your gut will all be missed.

So yeah, apart from the lackluster ending, the episode was pretty crazy. I officially don't like Brandon. Therefore, with the departure of Papa Bear, I'm rooting for Cochran. Anyone who calls stupid Redemption Island a place for "extended failure and depression" is a winner in my book. Then again, there's always Mustache Man on Blue, who still hasn't said anything this entire time. I still like him just for his mustache alone. With that majestic mustache on his side, he can go far in the game.

He lets his mustache do the talking.

But this season is heating up, and if it's intense-ish this early, who knows how great it's gonna be later? I don't know. What I do know is that the preview for next week made it look like Cochran is gonna be generally awesome and make moves on Red. Woo!

Kurt's a Unicorn

2011-09-27T21:50:00.000-04:00

So I watched Glee, and it was bad. Not surprising.

Rachel and Kurt audition for the school's production of West Side Story to get some acting cred under their belts to impress the college they're applying to. Kurt wants the lead role of Tony, but he's too gay to pull it off. This makes him distraught, as he often is about his gayness. The pink, unicorn-y posters Brittany makes him for his class president campaign don't help his fragile psyche, either. He eventually seems more OK with himself, but he's sad that Blaine is being considered for the lead role he wants.

It's because Blaine didn't do this.

Meanwhile, Shelby Corcran, aka Rachel's mom, aka the adoptive mom of Quinn and Puck's baby, is back. Sugar's dad paid the school's principal to make a rival glee club just for her, and Shelby is the coach. After Rachel and Shelby sing a Broadway song together, Shelby approaches Puck and Quinn about them being part of the baby's life. She tells Quinn that her current skankiness isn't appropriate around a baby, but Quinn refuses to change back to her normal, not-emo self. After seeing a picture of Puck and the baby, and after getting mega yelled at by Will, Quinn eventually comes to her senses.

But not before a whole bunch of "don't you feel sorry for me?" scenes.

After Sue's latest campaign scheme fails, she still isn't giving up, so Bieste suggests they need an anti-Sue to run against her... and my friend made a pretty legit prediction: what if Burt Hummel runs against her? How epic would that be? He is the complete opposite of Sue, after all. It would make a lot of sense, so it should happen, but considering how much of a failure the writers are, I doubt anything that makes sense will actually happen.

The latest political figure?

And the music this week was all Broadway stuff! Booo. I mean, I like the occasional Broadway song, but a whole episode full of it is too much for me to handle. And there were only three songs: "Somewhere," "I'm The Greatest Star," and "Something's Coming." What the heck? I want more music!

But yeah, major fail.

Unicorn...

Elmo on Jimmy Fallon!

2011-09-27T14:13:00.000-04:00

So cute!!!!!!

A Cool Look at Disneyland in the 50's.

2011-09-25T12:05:00.003-04:00

In case you don't know, I'm obsessed with Disney, from the movies to the theme parks. So when I found out about this short documentary in my internet procrastinating, I kind of freaked out in excitement.

I guess it was a thing in old home movies to make title cards. Really, I've seen ones from my family that do this, too.

This documentary was made by a family in the 50's when they learned they won a free trip to the newly opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California. And like me, that family loves Disney, too! They were so excited to go to Disneyland that they recorded pretty much everything they did on their trip, including a tour of Hollywood.

Look at his old school Mickey ears!!!

If you like Disney, or if you're just interested in getting a short glimpse of life in the 50's, watch this video! And if you look closely at the 20 minute mark, you can see 11-year-old Steve Martin working at Disneyland, which is pretty cool! (You can't really see his face. He's wearing a big top hat and a vest and he's standing outside the entrance of the park.) I could go on and on about how different (and similar) Disneyland was in the 50s and how much I learned from watching it, but I won't bore you. So check it out!

UPDATE: This video, made almost 20 years later by the same man, depicts Walt Disney World in Florida in its earliest days, too. (I love the very beginning - so clever!) Notice how the characters didn't have handlers - little kids could just ambush them at will. And the Jungle Cruise is 100% the same thing now as it was then, apparently. Only the first 8 minutes are about Disney World. The rest is about other Florida attractions, like Busch Gardens.

SNL Is Back!

2011-09-25T11:23:00.000-04:00

The first episode of the new season of SNL aired last night. Alec Baldwin was the host, and he was funny as always, but generally the skits were only OK.

The cold open was a jab at Republican debates:

By hosting last night, Alec Baldwin became the person who's hosted SNL the most times, beating out Steve Martin. So when Alec did his monologue, guess who showed up to make sure he was winning fair and square?

This sketch about soap operas was sort of funny:

And this chuckle-worthy skit about bad parenting was decent, too:

But the funniest sketch was this one, about a game show that asks contestants to imagine two celebrities in non-G-rated situations and... just watch it, I don't want to spoil it for you:

Overall, I was sort of underwhelmed by the episode. I thought that the writers would have lots of time over the summer to come up with really funny ideas, but everything was just ok. The only sketch I actually laughed at was the game show one (yes, I need to get my mind out of the gutter). And no Digital Short this week, either! Hopefully there will be one next week. And hopefully it'll be funnier!

"He looks like Peter Brady at an autumn harvest."

2011-09-23T13:25:00.000-04:00

Here's a really quick review of what happened on this week's Project Runway:

The designers were split into two teams of four, and they had to design looks for some random, up-and-coming-band. A band made up of guys. Menswear challenge!!! Yeah, a lot of the designers don't take it well. Project Runway designers over the years always freak out at the idea of doing menswear. And predictably, most of the stuff the designers made was really, really awful.

The winner of the challenge was Viktor, whose pretty awesome jacket sealed the deal for him. I guess one of the band members wore it in a photo shoot or something.

Legit! It's something I could actually see someone wearing, unlike literally everything else in this episode.

The bottom three was Kimberly, Anya, and Oliver. Kimberly's shirt was awful:

Ugh, it's the kind of thing you'd see an old, obese lady wearing.

But Oliver's look was unfinished and not what the guy asked for. Though I don't think he was the worst this week, he's been falling in the bottom three for a while now, and that counts for something. It's not like the judges were going to get rid of crowd pleasers like Kim and Anya, so Oliver was sent packing.

It looks like the curtains in George Washington's house. Not that I have a close enough relationship with the guy to know anything about his taste in curtains, but I think it's a safe assumption Martha would like it.

Probably the coolest part of the show was the runway show - or, more accurately, the runway concert. The band performed a song in each team's looks. Cool, right? It's always fun when Project Runway does something different, which is hard to do considering how long the show's been on for.

But yeah, it looks like there's gonna be some drama next week since Anya loses her money at Mood! Oh snap! I'm sure it will all work out, but it'll be fun to watch!

Muppets Do Glee Better Than Glee

2011-09-22T18:55:00.000-04:00

Sesame Street recently parodied Glee, and it's much more entertaining than the real thing. Notice Muppet Kurt's blatant gayness and Muppet Rachel's quiet dialogue at the beginning, right after the "here's what you missed last week" part:

I love Sesame Street parodies! They're always so clever and adorable. Those Glee actors better freakin' appreciate the honor they've received - not everyone gets made into a Muppet.

"He has demons."

2011-09-22T11:52:00.000-04:00

Survivor's getting better! A drama-filled Tribal Council is always fun to watch, and it means more craziness later in the show!

After Semhar recites bad poetry at Redemption Island, Cochran tries to revamp his image on the Red team by doing more work around camp. It seems to work, at least for now. And Ozzy uses his super monkey powers to climb a random tree and find the hidden immunity idol without clues! He hides it in some other tree and doesn't tell anyone he has it.

You know you're jealous.

Meanwhile, Russell's nephew tells Coach that he's Russell's nephew. Coach is rightly concerned, considering how Russell betrayed Coach in an earlier season, but he gives the kid the benefit of the doubt. Coach notices that Christine and Stacy have a very tight alliance, which is dangerous in itself, but it's more concerning that Christine may have the hidden immunity idol. She doesn't, but she's been looking for it like crazy. She does eventually stumble upon a clue in a tree, but nothing else. Still, it's enough to freak people out.

At the immunity/reward challenge, the teams had to solve some puzzles. Blue had an early lead, but Red came back and won the challenge. That means Blue has to go to Tribal Council.

Yay for brief descriptions!

That's when the craziness started. So Brandon, aka Russell's nephew, has some sort of vendetta for this girl named Mikayla (I have no idea if that's spelled right, nor do I care) because she's attractive and makes him uncomfortable since he's faithful to his wife (aka he has the hots for her and wants to avoid any potential sketchiness.) But she's the strongest girl on the team, so it would be dumb to get rid of her this early in the game. Coach and the others recognize this, too, so they want to gun for Christine and Stacy, splitting the votes between them to counteract the potential of the immunity idol. Russell's nephew isn't too pleased that no one was listening to him, so he channels his inner Russell and goes up to Christine and Stacy and tries to convince them to vote his way.

When Tribal Council starts, Coach tells everyone that someone was gunning for Mikayla but he didn't go along with it. He says that Christine and Stacy were planning on voting for her, which sparked this big argument as everyone tries to figure out who told Coach that they were going to vote for her. Eventually, Russell's nephew owns up and says he told them to vote for Mikayla, which sparks another argument. Then it's time to vote. Two randos each get one vote, Stacy gets three, and Christina gets four. Christina goes to Redemption Island and obnoxiously wakes up Semhar.

Good luck surviving in the wilderness.... with the "spoken word performer."

So much for Russell's nephew not being like Russell! Instead of working with his alliance, he tried to do his own thing for no good reason! I'm still interested to see what happens with him in episodes to come, especially since the preview for next week left him looking super conflicted and crying and stuff. Fun times!

Cover up that incriminating evidence, buddy!

But generally, it's still too early for any serious strategy. This group of contestants seems pretty great so far, though, so it's likely that the later episodes are going to be epic! But for now, we have to get through these early episodes. And that means Redemption Island duels. Bleh. The first one should be next week, and I'm not looking forward to it. It's pretty boring and pointless. Hopefully this will be the last season with Redemption Island!

"So this is what being turned on feels like."

2011-09-20T22:28:00.000-04:00

I was hopeful that the new season of Glee would be good, considering that they got a whole new team of writers or whatever. Turns out I was pretty wrong.

Yeah, the new episode, "The Purple Piano Project," kinda sucked. A lot. It sucked so much that I'm not gonna put a whole lot of effort into this post because it isn't even worth my time.

Don't give me that look, Rachel.

At the beginning of the episode, we learn that Kurt, Rachel, Finn, and Mike Chang are seniors and will graduate at the end of the season. Finn apparently has no clue what he wants to do with his life, while Rachel and Kurt want to go to a performing arts school in NYC. Puck and Lauren aren't together anymore, but we aren't told why. Blaine transfers to McKinley for no logical reason, though at least it means we can see/hear more of the only dece person on the show. Mercedes, who was dating Sam for the last ten seconds of season 2, is now with some random football player since Sam moved (got fired). It's weird that we don't learn anything about mystery football player considering how big of a deal it is that Mercedes is actually dating someone. Come on, writers! You can't throw something like that at us and not talk about it at all!

WHO IS HE?!?!?!?!

And apparently Will and Emma are living together! What? They've only been going out for a few months! And what about the sex thing? The show's made a big deal that Emma's never had sex, so it's weird that they're living together without any clear indication whether or not they're doing it. I mean, I'd assume they are but they're isn't any real evidence one way or another. Weirdness. And later on in the episode, he says he wants to start a family! Seriously, you've only been going out with her for like three days. Take it easy. At least they pack each other's lunches in superhero lunchboxes.

Will's grand scheme for getting new people to join the glee club is to get some secondhand pianos, paint them purple, and randomly place them around the school so the kids can break out in "spontaneous" musical numbers to show how awesome they are. Obviously, this doesn't work. One song started a food fight, one enticed an untalented girl named Sugar to audition (only to be cut by Will), and one made the piano light on fire due to awfulness (or lighter fluid and a stray cigarette, planted by Santana as part of Sue's plan to take down the glee club).

Oh yeah, Sue is running for congress. She decides that successful candidates need to stand against something, so she campaigns against arts programs in high schools. Will argues with her about this in the principal's office (because surely the principal can change a congressional candidate's platform) and dumps glitter all over Sue (because surely assaulting her with glitter will change her mind). Nothing very important has happened with this yet, but we'll see.

"Allow me to ladle you a piping hot bowl of 'this is how it is'."

The only good part of the episode was Rachel and Kurt's existential crisis. After Emma recommends they go to a mixer for kids interesting in applying to a big time NYC performing arts college, Kurt and Rachel meet a bunch of talented kids, one of whom is Lindsay from The Glee Project. Lindsay and Co. sing a great song, which freaks Kurt and Rachel out. They cry a bit in their car, but then they're determined to try their hardest to get into the fancy school. This was a surprisingly touching moment that anyone who's had a tough goal could relate to. Nice job, writers and actors! Now do this for the other 40 minutes of the show!

Just get rid of emo Quinn. Please. Yes, it makes sense that someone who's given up a kid for adoption would be pretty upset. But no, it does not make sense that she would dye her hair pink, get a Ryan Seacrest tattoo, and hang out under the bleachers with a girl gang called "the skanks." End this madness now.

No. Just no.

And pick some better songs! "We Got The Beat" incited a food fight, so that's a good enough indication that it's nothing to write home about. "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" was boring and just plain random. What high school kid willingly sings a song like this while dancing around on stage. with broomsticks? Blaine's song, "It's Not Unusual," was just OK. Honestly, I was so busy laughing at his outfit and dancing that I didn't pay much attention to it. "You Can't Stop The Beat" was pretty stereotypical for the show, but not amazing.

At least they match.

The best song of the week, surprisingly enough, was a mashup of "Anything Goes" and "Anything You Can Do" performed by the randos at the mixer. No wonder Kurt and Rachel got freaked out by them.

But yeah, this episode was sooooo cheesy. So, so cheesy. And honestly, the little smidge of hope I had for Glee to get better is pretty much gone. I'll probably still watch it just because it's fun to laugh at how bad it is.

TV Time Capsule: Kyle XY

2011-09-18T11:45:00.001-04:00

Here's a quick recommendation from the TV Time Capsule for sci-fi people: Kyle XY.

Kyle XY is about a teenage guy (sort of) who wakes up naked in a forest with no memory and no bellybutton. Fun, right? He also has no understanding of the world at all, so he's pretty helpless at first. A therapist takes him into her family, which creates opportunities for some good ol' ABC Family drama. (And of course, there's a girl involved.) At first, he learns about the world in general, and he eventually starts discovering secrets about his past and his crazy abilities (like super fast learning, super senses, and being perfect at pretty much everything). The show basically revolves around the mystery of who he is and why he can do the things he can do. It's pretty fun to watch this kid navigate through life with no grasp on how the world works, but it's more fun to try to figure out why the heck he doesn't have a bellybutton.

Um... yeah.

The show aired on ABC Family from 2006 to 2009, meaning there's enough teen drama thrown in there to please the general ABC Family crowd. In fact, Kyle XY was the station's highest rated show for a while... until the hot mess that is The Secret Life of the American Teenager came along and ruined everything. Once Secret Life started, it stole the spotlight from Kyle XY, leading the bellybutton-less Kyle to an early cancellation. Lots of story arcs were cut off before they were finished. Fortunately, the show's creators revealed what would have happened if the show wasn't cancelled, which is good.

Is Kyle XY the best thing since sliced bread? No, but it's still fun. If you like sci-fi and cheesy teen drama, you should check out this show! All 43 episodes are on ABC Family's website. So go for it!

Alternative Reality: Invading the Airwaves

2011-09-16T13:59:00.001-04:00

My roommate and I have a radio show Wednesdays from 4-5. It's called Alternative Reality. Cool, right? You should listen to it!!! If you're at Colgate, you can tune into 90.1 FM or stop by the Coop. If you're not from Colgate, go to this website and click "listen in" at the top left corner when the show starts.

While you're at it, be a fan of Alternative Reality on Facebook!

Shameless self-promotion at its finest.

"She looks like the hostess of the Tiki Tiki Land."

2011-09-16T13:53:00.000-04:00

What an awesome challenge on Project Runway this week! The designers had to make outfits for women based on the details given to the designers by the women's husbands. That means that the men had to describe their wives' style to the designers. The husbands even got to go to Mood, the fabric store, with the designers and pick out fabrics. And though some husbands had a clear idea what they were talking about, a bunch were pretty clueless. One guy just kept talking about how much he loves his wife's boobs - it's apparently the trait he first fell in love with. (Heidi made some comment about how she can see why he likes his wife's boobs, reaffirming my belief that she's obsessed with boobs in general.)

Generally, there wasn't any drama in this client-based challenge. Oliver had some trouble working with his clients since he's not used to it, but it wasn't a big deal because he wasn't in the bottom 3.

As usual, Anya was in the top 3. (She had immunity, too!) She made a tunic-ish dress that she said was inspired by African and Japanese culture. It's a cool dress, but I didn't like the long sleeve. Neither did Nina (OMG we agreed on something!), but the other judges loved the whole look.

Sleeve = bad, bottom = good!

Viktor made a super cute blouse/skirt combo. I loved it, and so did the judges! Seriously, I want that shirt. He was in the top 3, but unfortunately, he didn't win. Booooo!!!!

He was robbed!! Robbed, I say!!

And who did win? Joshua. For a plain black dress. Yeah, it's really cute and it's just what his client wanted, but so was Viktor's outfit! Ugh, it bothers me that Josh won since he's such a jerk.

He may be a jerk, but he has good taste in shoes.

Bottom 3 time! Bert's client was Boob Man, so he made a sort of low cut dress for his wife. She liked it, but the judges thought it was too plain. He wasn't eliminated, which is good since I don't think he deserved it this week. The judges and I agree that the dress was made really well, and that counts for something.

Boobs.

Anthony Ryan made a red and black dress to replace a dress the client's husband lost. It's a nice story and a nice thought, and the dress itself is cute, in my opinion. The judges thought it was too dated, though, but he wasn't sent home.

Definitely not worthy of the bottom 3, but pretty much everything this week was good so something sort of good had to end up down there.

Bryce made a pink dress at the request of his client, but it was made poorly. Normally I'm a fan of pockets in dresses, but these were way too big! All of that, along with his less-than-stellar track record compared to Anthony Ryan, led Bryce to be eliminated. Good choice, in my opinion. He's been in the bottom 3 tons of times and he's never made anything too great.

Meh.

But yeah, next week's challenge is another team challenge! This time with dreaded menswear! And there's no more immunity! I guarantee it's gonna be a giant hot mess, so I can't wait to see it.

(All design images are from mylifetime.com)