One young lady, once we had a chance to speak with a few of them, said she didn’t even have the energy to carry her picket sign, and that she was just so drained from the emotional carnage Jason The “Douchebag” Bachelor had wrought on Melissa, and thereby the viewers, she needed spunkybean to show her “the way.” And she looked at me, as a tear rolled down her face, and said simply, “I don’t know what to think. What do you think?”
NEW! Reality Round-Up: Survivor, The Amazing Race, Hell’s Kitchen (Mar 6)
And so we knew what we had to do …write more stuff about more stuff. We hope you enjoy this initial installment of Reality Round-Up. Each Friday, and sometimes Tuesdays, and sometimes whenever we feel like it, the gang at spunkybean will put fingers to keyboard, and give ya a little update and a few jokes about the other super awesome reality shows on your television.
Hell’s Kitchen
The men open the episode bickering about the elimination. I love the way they handle eliminations, where the losing team has to pick the two worst people, and Gordon Ramsay fires one of them. Or both. Or somebody else altogether. It leads to such strife after the ceremony is over. Seth and Giovanni are arguing about who sucks more, rather than just being happy they didn’t get fired. Meanwhile, Robert amuses everybody with his impression of Gordon. He’s got some of the mannerisms, but he doesn’t even bother to do the accent. Weak, dude.
In the kitchen, Gordon berates the chefs for their lack of teamwork. So he’s going to make them all work together as they open Hell’s Kitchen for breakfast. Seth is way too pleased about making eggs using one of Gordon’s recipes. I know they try to make it seem like a stalker, but he really seems to like Gordon only a little more than I do. I mean, I’ve got the Wii game and everything! Anyway, they’re serving breakfast to a bunch of junior high students, football players and cheerleaders. I can not believe they let kids near Gordon. They are going to learn some new words tonight…
The men serve the football players, the women serve the cheerleaders, and the first team to finish wins the challenge. Colleen gets caught up in all the cheering and focuses more on leading a cheer than in actually cooking. I think she’s at least a little bit simple. Gordon yells at the men for making up sloppy plates and at the women for being unable to make pancakes correctly. Seth can’t keep up with the demand for scrambled eggs, which helps the women catch up and pull ahead to the win for the first time this season. Hilariously, Colleen misspells “victory” in her new cheer. Hee.
Small Child: Are you the best cook in the world?Gordon Ramsay: Yes.
As punishment, the men have to clean the dining room and both kitchens, as well as prepping both kitchens for the evening service. The women get to go to a fancy spa where they’ll have lady stuff done. The men respond to this news by turning on one another, which doesn’t help anything. There are many scenes of cleaning and being pampered, none of which are really worth recapping. The men do a subpar job on the prep work, not finishing the tomato butter sauce for either kitchen.
At dinner, Gordon’s so appalled at Seth’s scallops that he forces Seth to eat them. He then makes the women eat their dry risotto. I like this new habit of his – by the end of the season, he’ll be forcing food into somebody’s mouth.
An hour into dinner service, no food has gone out of either kitchen. That’s really just pathetic. On the women’s side, Andrea starts taking charge and they manage to get some food served. On the men’s side, J serves a small salad with the lettuce butt in it. I mean, it’s just sticking out – it’s not like he could have missed it. (By the way, not only does he have a one letter name, he refers to himself in the third person. Sigh.) They finally get their appetizers served and get to work on the entrees. Ben makes vague threats to “unleash the beast” before Gordon busts him on his inadequate lambchops, and you guessed it, forces Ben to eat them.
Colleen and LA run into trouble on the meat station, mostly because Colleen can’t remember how to cut meat correctly. Danny totally screws up the mashed potatoes, apparently by not actually making any. Colleen makes him look like a Rhodes scholar though, when she gets ‘three’ and ‘four’ mixed up. OK, Colleen is Ralph Wiggum’s older sister. There’s no way around it. Seth wipes a pan with the same rag he uses to wipe his sweaty face, which makes Gordon deeply angry. Maitre d’ Jean Phillipe starts bringing back undercooked food, and Gordon shuts down the service. Nobody wins, and both teams have to nominate two people for elimination. Hell’s Kitchen – Where Everybody Can Lose!
The women talk about nominating Lacey, because she generally sucks and they hate her. However, she really didn’t do anything specific this time. I almost forgot she was on the show and I was much happier. On the men’s team, Ben is furious when his name comes up as a potential nominee. Their team really wants people to be happy about being nominated.
Finally, in the Kitchen, the men select Seth “for obvious reasons” and Ben. Gordon agrees that Ben did a crappy job. Hee. The woman nominate Girl Ralph “for her overall performance” and Lacey, because everybody hates her. Gordon asks everybody why they should stay, and everybody talks about their passion. Except Ben, who tells everybody how he motivates the team. Really? Motivate their murderous plots, maybe. Really, you can’t go wrong with firing any of those four, but Gordon picks Seth. In a final voiceover, he tells us in almost Bush-esque fashion “My abilities and skills was what lagged behind.” Gordon tells us “In the end, he was a crap cook.”
Just to add insult to injury, Gordon moves Lacey to the men’s team. The women are much happier about this than the men. Next week, Robert moons the camera and Lacey threatens to quit. Again.
(ej)
The Amazing Race
Well, we’re into our third leg of the race this week, and we’ve already lost two teams that sort of actively annoyed me–the bickering dating couple and the country bumpkins who may or may not have some sort of emotional issues to work through from the past. Now, we’re on to Romania and Transylvania! I have to say, I’m loving the way they’ve trimmed down the airport footage, which is almost always useless. This week, it was still somewhat brief, although there was a surprising amount of travel hijinks. First, lead team Victor and Tammy had a huge jump on the other teams, but lost it when their plane had some sort of mechanical problem and actually went back to Munich! At that point, they joined the middle of the pack and the meltdown began. The other team who lost out in the airplane lottery were Brad and Victoria, who missed a connection, and had to spend the night in Amsterdam, waiting until 9am to even head to Romania, while the other teams were already completing the roadblock.
And that roadblock? Put on an extremely flattering leotard and complete a series of gymnastics exercises in Nadia Comaneci’s former gym. This was the start of Tammy and Victor losing it. He was fretting off to the side while she tried in vain to do difficult moves like..cartwheels? Seriously, I get that some people can’t do the beam and those bars are a bitch, but how come that tiny little sprite of a girl can’t do a cartwheel or a freaking somersault?! That blew my mind. Maybe she had an inner ear problem from the plane. I don’t know.
After that, it was on to a train ride that took the teams to Transylvania, and a detour with a dual Vampire/Gypsy theme. Who knew there were still gypsies? I mean, we all know vampires are everywhere, (because of Twilight and the city of Santa Carla), but I’m not sure why gypsies have dismantled cars that they move with them, as this task would have us believe. Sudden front runners Kris and Amanda (who are insanely cute and obviously the “Babe” couple) rocked this one, even though they temporarily lost their Amazing Fanny Pack (I wonder if Dallas and Toni had flashbacks?!) That minor setback did cost them first place, which went to screenwriter Mike White and his dad, Mel, who I’m loving so far. Sisters Kisha and Jen and brothers Mark and Michael also did this task and got through the leg with little fanfare.
The other teams did the vampire-themed task, and had varying degrees of success. One team that had almost no success was Victor and Tammy, who I have to give points for not strangling her brother. In fact, she barely raised her voice at his stubborn, pig-headed edict that they keep going along an incorrect marked path for several miles, even though there was nothing to indicate it was right in any way. Eventually, he acquiesced, and they finally got to the actual task, though they stumbled and bumbled around with lost keys and such almost long enough (not really, I’m guessing) for poor Brad and Victoria to recover from their missed flight.
In the end, they made it to the Pit Stop, and Brad and Victoria were eliminated after completing the leg in the dark. Middle of the pack were Luke and Margie (aka Team Mos Deaf), their pals, the shockingly identical but unrelated cheerleaders, and the Blonde Flight Attendants, who had to have been thrilled not to be racing for last this time.
Survivor
If you watch The Simpsons, you might be familiar with the crazy-cat-lady character on that show, whose hair is disheveled, and every now and then, in a running gag, enters a scene for a few seconds and screams and yells some gibberish. Well, that cat lady is on Survivor this season. I watched the entire hour, and met quite a few people who might become interesting characters down the road, but last Thursday’s premier was dominated by Crazy-Cat-Lady (aka Sandy).
CBS did something completely unique in that, during the first ten minutes, the tribes were divided up and then were forced to vote-out their weakest tribe mate. Yes, before anything had even happened. Snap judgments. What a great concept. But after the votes were cast, it was revealed that Crazy-Cat-Lady (Sandy) and Skinny-Sick-White-Chick (aka Sierra) were not actually voted out, but were instead to be whisked off to the campsites via helicopter, while the rest were going to walk for four hours in 100+ degree temperatures while carrying supplies. R-E-S-E-N-T …find out what it means to me.
Once at their respective camps, Skinny-Chick and Crazy-Cat-Lady found a clue and could either look for a hidden immunity idol orrrrrr, start to set-up camp. Skinny-Chick decided she’d try and win back the favor of her tribe and start building her camp. Crazy-Cat-Lady decided to look for the idol. And while she did, she cried, and sobbed, and got angry, and screamed some jibberish. What’s more, the first clue said, “you’ll find your next clue beneath a stick buried in the sand on your beach.” Something very straight forward, right? And Crazy-Cat-Lady couldn’t find it. It was literally a four-foot pieced of wood stuck right into the sand, and she could not find it. So instead of using her alone time to do sneaky things, she had to try again once the tribe arrived, and then she went off on her own. She finally found it. And it was, literally, a stick stuck into the sand, in the middle of the beach. My four-year-old son could’ve found it.
So Crazy-Cat-Lady read the second clue which said something like, “the next clue is under the only palm tree on the beach,” and CBS’s cameras showed us the palm tree, but Crazy-Cat-Lady still couldn’t find it. Luckily for Crazy-Cat-Lady, her tribe, Jalepeno or something, had a more annoying member who they’d eventually vote out. The-Bartender-Chick (aka Carolina).
Meanwhile at the other camp, Skinny-Chick didn’t do the best of jobs setting up camp. Nobody appreciated her efforts. She should’ve looked for her hidden idol.
Also of note was some Life-Coach Dude (aka Benjamin) who’s strategy for winning Survivor seems to be elevating the weakest member of his tribe to a position of strength. Has Dude even watched this show? This isn’t a struggling small business that needs some consulting, this is a contest where one person wins $1,000,000.
The night’s immunity challenge involved some water and swimming in order to get some pieces of some sorta puzzle that formed a staircase and then you had to work with someone else, while pulling strings, and move a peg through a maze. And in the end, Crazy-Cat-Lady proved to be at least a little valuable because she almost helped her team win. Fortunately, that Bartender-Chick was brash and more annoying, and less useful, and pissed everyone off to the point they unanimously voted her off. What’s that phrase? “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t?” Well, in this case, better the crazy they know than the crazy they don’t know. Crazy-Cat-Lady is a controlled, predictable crazy. Bartender-Chick might’ve been trouble.
With that, we’re off and running on Season 18 of Survivor, in Tocantins, Brazil. Temperatures were 120-degrees during the first episode and that’s just crazy. What happened to challenges that involved eating bugs and worms? Fingers crossed – it’ll happen this season. I’ll be power-watching the next three episodes and will report back next week.
