TVNotes Week of Oct 17

Dancing with the Stars

I was a little relieved to see someone with lesser dancing skills get sent home this week. Although Carson Cressley really worked hard on his dancing skills, he just didn't have what he needed to move forward dancing wise. As the judges are always saying, with ballroom dance, its the whole package that has to be there in order to be good.


Survivor



Silly to send home good competitor Mikayla over good egg Edna, but I think the teams may be getting merge-itis and they're altering their game a bit to take out individual threats who they think may not be loyal after a merge. I've seen it happen too many times where they do this though too early and cause their team to go into a losing streak. Let's hope Mikayla can at least unseat bratty Christine from Redemption Island. I don't think Mikayla will be so brooding and whiny and all around bleh as a Redemptioner.

Person of Interest

Nice episode for Reese who gets to be both a very sympathetic character and a bad ass.

He is always those things, but he was so determined to ease the suffering of the judge who he felt for, and yet he had that old drive the guy in your trunk around in circles to make him dizzy and get him to talk trick up his sleeve. Then he tosses another guy in with him like no problem. He's got subtle torture tricks we can only guess at in his repetoire.

I like how he keeps trying to get in under Finch's skin. The interplay between those two is fun.

Ye Eggs Benedict



Terra Nova

Another weak episode, and they only have 13 episodes and no renewal flag yet. They should have made much stronger storylines, it's just lazy that they did not.

The theme is a little girl from the Sixers comes out of nowhere and wants to join them, she has run away she says. She acts all feral and grubby, but as soon as she is cleaned up a bit she steals something from Mira's old house and tries to get out with it. She makes eyes at Shannon and says wah wah Mira made her do it and Mira would hurt her lil brother Sam...

Of course Shannon cruises right over to the Sixer's area (though nobody knows, wink, where they are) gets beat up, hears a sob story from Mira about the future holding her own daughter hostage (made up is my thought since they were looking a week ago to find a way to get at the new security chief).

Shannon goes back home with Sam and a sort of bond with Mira over family matters...Kinda weak sauce.

TVNotes

I'm behind on my new season viewing notes, so here they are in brief:

Dancing with the Stars

I fell asleep zzzzz through the last few dances and missed the Nip Slip. I was more disappointed to see the worst dancers of the night who really stumbled and lost step and somebody even stopped and paused a couple of times to find their place and zero marks were taken off for any of them. Are the judges just being kind to them or something so they don't give up?

This week the worst dancer was Chaz, who was in such pain he could hardly dance. David Arquette was next worst, with a terribly frenetic dance, even worse than last week, with lots of missteps. Elisabetta Canalis really could not keep up with the quick foot work, and though the judges let her sail, she was low personage on the dance pole and was booted.


Survivor South Pacific

Mikayla tried to go head to head with Brandon to see what his problem was, and he was all offended as if she had come out of nowhere with these accusations, doh. He's gotta go.

Sad to see Papa Bear go, Cochrane is next, no question. Dawn did shockingly well in the Immunity Challenge. Good for her. Semhar was beaten in a balancing contest with Christine, after preparing for the challenge with a wierd and rambling poem sort of thing.


Person of Interest

James Caviezel's Reese character seems to be enjoying his role of savior/vigilante and he is super good at it. I think he is attempting to warm up to Finch's character a bit, but Finch is very self protective and will have none of it.

It was revealed that Finch has a partner of sorts who helps ? with the research and takes credit for everything, but he had no idea quite what Finch has been up to in the background. Finch also mentioned that there are 8 people who know about the project in the world. Now we know three of them.

Nicely plotted episode about a teenage girl who comes up as the Person of Interest for the week, though she has been legally dead for two years.

Terra Nova

The new series features time travel, dinosaurs and some mysteries. I think that the device of having the colony in an alternate time stream and thus avoiding paradox is a bit cheap. The show had lots of action. Characters are a bit steely jawed.

I really fought dislike of the family at the forefront all through the episode, though by the end I merely disliked the dad and the son, a couple of jerky hot heads. I'll watch another episode, but the characters will have to be more likeable going forward.

Survivor (Somewhere in the South Pacific with a bunch of boneheads)

The bloom is off the rose, and the larger personalities are moving to the fore and yikes.

Top of the line is Lil' Russ (aka Brandon, nephew of Big Russ Hantz). He spills his Hantz beans to Coach, who rather graciously accepts the presence of a blood relative to one of his greatest foes. Silly Coach. Then Brandon continues to go gaga over Mikayla and he tries to get her voted out so that he isn't tempted by her anymore. I honestly don't think she particularly noted his existence until he revealed this at tribal. Now that she's going to be looking at him and noticing his uncanny oogling, I think she'll tell him off and maybe he'll settle down when he realizes he is beyond puny in her eyes. Yech.

One of my early hopefuls Stacey was hardly featured at all, plus she was in a one woman alliance with the evil (and booted to Redemption Island) Christine.

Christine has to be one of the most arrogantly stupid players on Survivor in ages. What on earth made her play? Now poor Semhar will be plagued by her, if briefly. Hope Semhar whoops her. Somehow.

Cochran is a lovable but entirely goofy player and I think he'll get booted pretty quick.

I thought it was rather sick to put the Immunity Idol up in a treescape that only Ozzy the Monkey would get to with ease. Let's hope he has the wit to use it this time if he needs it.

Survivor: South Pacific

South Pacific? Pretty vague. In any case the season is off to a good start with lots of interesting characters.

If you thought Coach and Ozzy would be tossed off asap, you'd be wrong. They are both serving rather well as councillors to their tribes, helping everyone get their footing with the reality that is sleeping on cushy bamboo, with crawling bugs, no food, no water.

I am always fascinated by how quickly the thin veneer of civilisation peels away from contestants, and people are revealed for who they are, whether they mean to be or not.

My favorites this season are Papa Bear, the ex-cop; Cochran, the Harvard 100 pound weakling who knows the show inside and out; Mikayla, the girl who can Do Everything; Semhar, the exotically beautiful Spoken Word Artist who is a definite fish out of water and was voted out first; and Stacey the mom who has her eyes and ears out watching for misbehavior from everyone.

Villains of the piece are Brandon who I am calling Lil' Russ because he is Russell's nephew through and through despite his protests of being like Russell; Jim for being a jerk to everyone; Christine for thinking she is smarter than everyone and that she can find the immunity idol and run everything without spending a moment trying to play a social game.

The others are a bit blah at this time.