iMonrey

Eh, I'm pretty easy to please I guess because I think this show is pretty cute. I like Debra Messing and Josh Lucas and I'm OK with the light tone of the show. It's not the greatest show in the world but it's cute and entirely watchable. It wouldn't be - that's why they returned it to his pocket instead of keeping it as evidence. They were just checking to confirm he'd been on a date with the murder victim. One thing that really stuck out as unrealistic (I know, among a plethora of things, this is what bugged me) - Laura makes a reference to Sex and the City and neither of the two guys with her have any idea what she's talking about. Then, two seconds later, her partner makes a reference to 50 Shades of Grey. How unlikely is that? The former is a famous TV show that was on for years and had two movie spin-offs, fairly recently. The latter is a book this has not yet been made into a movie and which her partner would be even less likely to know about.

My guess, Dawson will go to station 66 or whatever that other station is, with the mean guys, get sexually harassed, file a lawsuit, blah blah blah, and in the end she'll get transferred to 51. Either she and Casey will have broken up by then or else they'll pretend to be just so she can work there.

It's possible the baby was brought into the concentration camp, with its mother, rather than having been born there. At which point, it would have been tattooed, like any other incoming inmate, because all the victims of the holocaust weren't made aware of the fact that they were going to the gas chambers upon entrance to the camps. Potentially, the camp could have been liberated very shortly after the baby arrived. I think I'm going to have a hard time with Henry's constant brilliance about every little thing, because it's way too similar to Sherlock on Elementary, which I've been watching since the beginning. I'm also going to have a hard time with him dying every single episode, because it's really silly he dies that often. But, at least they explained what happens to his body when he dies, which was absent from the pilot, egregiously so. The ratings for this show aren't great but it's the best a show has performed for the network in this time slot for the past couple of years, so it has a good chance of hanging on for a whole season if the ratings remain stable. Pretty much the same for the first two episodes.

It didn't bother me, because there have been contestants before who were only too happy to identify themselves as "one of the girls." I don't think it's all that offensive an assumption. I think the difference is that she embraced him because of it, instead of shunning him. That's the only thing that really speaks to any indication of homophobia. This is my first season since the Michael Skupin redux (how many seasons ago was that? 2? 3?) and I have to say, it kind of . . . didn't suck? More 'regular' people than usual, anyway. Although, I don't really see the point in bringing in teams of two and then splitting them up into separate tribes. Is is just supposed to be extra drama, like how Natalie will react next week when she learns Nadiya was voted out? Otherwise, who cares? Does that give Natalie's team incentive to vote her off next, or does it make them more likely to keep her, knowing she has no alliance partner upon merge? Don't know from John Rocker, so not offended by him either, yet. His girlfriend looks like a real piece of work though. I still couldn't even get through one episode without yelling SHUT UP JEFF PROBST. God, his running commentary through all the challenges drives me right up the wall. Since both Survivor and Amazing Race are CBS shows, why can't they swtich hosts for just one season? Phil Keoghan's tribal councils would be awesome.

Another terrible season finale, and I don't mean because of who won, I mean how badly organized it all is. I simply do not understand why they don't use the previous couple of episodes to finish the HoH comps and evict the final HG. The final jury member doesn't even get to participate in the group discussion. Granted, Victoria was practically a non-entity, but making the F3 is still an accomplishment and that third placer always gets the short shrift. The final HoH is such a crap-shoot, it's a joke. The jury members are sat down by producers and asked generic questions that could apply to anyone, like "What was the most surprising thing that happened in the house?" and "What was your biggest mistake in the game?" and then the F2 are given two generic choices, either of which could realistically be the way the jury member answered. It's only fitting they tied so it could come down to "pick a number." I mean, honestly! To make it that far, and have it all come down to that. Then, so little time invested in what should be one of the most important aspects of the game: the jury questioning the final two. This used to be a grueling, drawn-out process where each jury member got to grill both houseguests at their leisure. Now it's a set of generic questions ("Why should you win, instead of him?") written by the producers and directed at only one of the final two. And, did Jocasta and Zach even get to ask any questions? I don't remember either doing so. What's the point of bringing out the first five evictees if you're not even going to talk to them or let them say anything? How one earth do you waste that much time on the Team America montage when the clock is ticking and the winner hasn't even been announced yet? Cripes, whoever produces this shit-fest should be fired. Whoever Will Kirby's date was looked like a plastic surgery nightmare. So does Will, for that matter. Lay off the Botox, dude. You don't look younger, you just look . . . weirder. I doubt we'll see Zach and Frankie on AR. I wouldn't be surprised to see Nicole and Hayden, though. CBS has been shoving that fauxmance down our throats all season long. I have no idea why they find this couple of dim bulbs so fascinating. I honestly think Cody thought he was the one dragging Derrick to the end all along, up until the jury questioning started.

I would argue that since Miss America spends a year making personal appearances it's important to know she can think on her feet and isn't a total dummy when it comes to current events. There's also the fact that Miss America has tried desperately to distance itself from being a "beauty pageant" for years, to the extent that each contestant had to have some kind of social platform, and that the the swimsuit competition was de-emphasized increasingly until the program was eventually cancelled from network TV for several years, appearing on second rate cable networks like Country Music Television. They had to reinstate the swimsuit competition and de-emphasize social platforms just to get back on network TV. Ironically, it's in Miss America's contract that she can never appear publicly in a swimsuit! Scholarship shenanigans aside, what I wish they'd focused on more was the sponsorship money that propels this machine, because that's where the bigger "scandal" is, IMO. Each contestant has to line up sponsors to donate money to the organization, and the reason you tend to see the same states every year in the finals is because those states regularly bring more sponsorship money to the national organization. There's a reason you hardly ever see Miss Vermont, Miss New Hampshire, Miss Utah or Miss Rhode Island in the top 10. It's always Texas, California, Florida, New York, and a bunch of Southern States where beauty pageants are big business and where they're most likely to draw ratings.

I just feel bad for Sarah Lancaster. It must be hard going from being a lead on one of the greatest shows ever in the history of network TV to a guest star on a Lifetime series. Not that I'm bashing Lifetime or anything - hell, I'm watching it. It's just that as an actor, your career can really take a downward trajectory, status-wise.

I can't believe Tom and Erin practically begged the audience to vote for Tony's audition video and then the dumb Twitterverse voted for Mark Freaking Ballas. WTF, Twitterverse? Then they did the same thing with the encore dance. I feel so bad for Leah and Tony, knowing they lost in a live popularity contest. Oh me too. Or at least if they insist on putting Tweets across the screen, show some real ones, like "Wow that number really sucked. #SuckyDance." I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm starting to think Brooke Burke was better than Erin Andrews. I know, that's damning with faint praise, but even though Brooke was sort of lame and pointless, she had better poise and wasn't usually as flustered and tongue-tied as Erin always seems to be.

I, too, would have preferred they killed off Dawson instead of Shay. That said, my number 2 choice would have been Shay. I never really got past the whole baby obsession thing followed by the near suicide attempt. Shay just seemed too unstable to me. I also half suspect the writers knew if they killed Gabby, we'd be glad, and that wasn't what they were going for. Also, Casey has had enough relationship drama as it is. I just want to know what happened to Casey's traumatic brain injury that left him seeing double and getting violent. I wish they would quit dropping plot points on this show. I don't remember the storyline about Mills looking for his father's family. Whoever he was watching from his truck could not have been his grandfather.

I liked this one too. So is "Dice" a real app? I'm guessing no, but that there's probably something similar.

I didn't get that Lee Tergesen's character was the immortal who was calling Henry. I thought he turned out to be a red herring who was on a vengeance run against the transportation authority for the death of his wife. Henry thought he was the guy who called him at first, but in the end I thought he was mistaken. Otherwise, what happened to his body? Surely the police would have said something if he had disappeared too.

I expect a House committee on Science, Space and Technology to have more than a passing familiarity with those subjects though. Otherwise how did they get on that committee? Yes, that was rhetorical, I know it's all political cronyism. It makes me fear for our country. What I want to know from these people who think global warming is a hoax is, what exactly do they think is the purpose for said "hoax?" So scientists can eventually go "Gotcha!"? Do they think it's some kind of conspiracy dreamed up by tree-hugging, liberal environmentalists who want to thrust us back into the stone age? Do they actually believe there's nothing wrong with pumping as much pollution into the air and water as we want? Can they really be that ignorant or are they just that disingenuous?

I thought the pilot was intriguing, but clumsy and kind of hokey. That's often the problem with pilots, though, because they have a lot of premise to set up. So, I'll give it a chance because there are worse ways to spend 40 minutes than looking at Ioan Gruffud. And since this seems like as good a place as any to ask this, how exactly do you pronounce Ioan Gruffud? Agreed. That was really the hokiest part of the show. Sitting down next to some random woman on the subway and being able to tell she's a musician, what instrument she plays, where she's going, that she has a concert that night . . . that was just silly. Same with the way he sized up Detective Martinez just by the ring she was wearing on a chain. We don't need another Sherlock Holmes rip-off, so they need to stop that. If they do that, and show us what happens to Henry's body when he dies, it would be a better show.

Julianne's hair looked like a 6-year old styled it for her, like she was babysitting some little girls and they wanted to play with her hair. This week was a study in contrast and really showed the difference between what the "stars" could do with one week of rehearsal versus three. Answer? Not much. At least that seems to have been the attitude of their pros because, with few exceptions, there was a marked lack of content in these dances while the pros did their best to dance around the stars and distract from their lack of overall moves. There was also some wonky scoring going on which seems like a concerted effort to counter some unexpected vote totals last week - I think with Leah, especially, they weren't expecting her to get so few votes so they really over-scored her this week. She and Antonio probably got lost in the shuffle having gone first last week. Some definite propping going on here, as well as the typical nit-picking of the front-runners just to make a pretense that one or two of these stars are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of ability. Michael really needs to go, he's never going to get any better. But I suspect his personality will keep him around a couple more weeks.

That's the thing though - you can't really throw the final HoH, because it's a complete crap-shoot. It consists of Julie asking the F2 to guess how a certain jury member finished a particular statement, and the statement is so generic and innocuous, it could be either choice Julie offers. Example: Nicole said: "My proudest moment in the BB House was:" a.) "Winning my first HoH" or b.) "My eviction speech." Then after they lock in their answers they show the video of Nicole finishing the statement. Neither is so far-out you'd think "Wow, she'd have never said that one," no matter how well you know her. It's not even something specific to that player, it's some generic question the producers feed the jury members. Which is why I ranted about this over in the episode thread. I don't get why they do this. The F2 have worked their asses off to get to this point, only to have it come down to a total crap-shoot. They might as well just ask them to pick a number between 1 and 10.

All the while, Killiian is holding a poker on Dash, ready to penetrate him. (Yes I had to go there - I'm 12 too.) Is Ingrid stupid in every lifetime? I don't get why she'd just be all "I want to stay with Grandpa" as her mother and aunt are furiously running away. I also don't understand why Tarkoff is still alive because I thought the second sting of the scorpion was supposed to kill him and in the last episode he was in fact dead, seemingly. We never got a follow-up scene where they came back into the house and found his body missing or anything and yet Freddie knew he was still alive. I wonder if they cut something. The time travel thing should be fun though.

Here's the thing: It may seem brillaint that both Cody and Victoria are sure they are Derrick's true Final 2, but there's a good chance Derrick himself is going to have to evict one of them and piss them off because they're going to walk out of there realizing he was just playing them all along. I'm sure Derrick would prefer to throw the HoH and make one of them pick him, so he doesn't get the "blood on his hands," but it might not work out that way for him. For one thing, he and Cody are bound to win the first two HoH comps because those things are always brutal and Victoria sucks at every competition, even easy ones. For another, that final HoH comp is a total crap shoot, and even if Derrick tries to throw it he might win anyway. It's always some dumb generic questions about "guess how the jury member finished this sentence" and it's so innocuous it could have been answered either way. You just can't throw those things. I don't understand why they do that either. When you've made it all the way to the final HoH comp you should be rewarded for your skill or knowledge about the former houseguests. It shouldn't all boil down to basically "pick a number from 1 to 10." At least we got to see the dog.

I really won't miss Michael Che, and I was a trifle annoyed they wasted the entire first segment on him. Having the other correspondents come out - Jessica, Sam, Jason, and that other one whose name I can never remember - just reinforced how little personality Che has in comparison. Then there's Hodgeman, Ansaria, Cenak - Che just never had a fraction of the charisma. Jon's interviews with Clinton always feel so empty and frustrating, because Clinton is there to promote some kind of agenda I so rarely care about.

Yeah - I mean Frankie was obnoxious but Caleb is one to say someone else was "tooting their own horn" the whole game, especially given the montage they showed this very episode of him bragging on everything from his impending modeling and recording contracts to his prowess at writing a best selling novel.

I didn't think it was that bad, but it suffered from two seriously corny contrivances - the stagey reveal of the murderer, and Laura's ex-husband being appointed the new chief. Both those things were really groan-worthy, so I can understand why the critics turned their noses up at it. But I thought Messing was good and most of the comedy bits were pretty good too. It got pretty decent ratings too. (Of course, there's nothing else on right now.)

Caleb: "Momma always said, I'm not the brightest crayon in the box." Julie: "At least you're in the box." Huh? Agreed. Maybe not "classless," but ignorant. Of course Caleb doesn't "get it," Cody - you've been lying to him this whole time. The more he shows his arrogance, the less attractive Cody seems, because much like in his real life he has basically sailed through this game doing next to nothing. And he's just as clueless as Cody was WRT Derrick. You know what's really interesting? We're not getting any kind of reactions in DR to this sham from anyone except Derrick and Victoria. Which is suspicious because it seems exactly like something the DR people would prompt the HGs to address: "What do you think about the feud between Victoria and Derrick??" Yet, we have heard nothing about this from Cody, Caleb or Frankie in the DR. I bet one of them went "Oh that? I don't buy it. Victoria is a lousy actress." But, that would spoil the narrative the show has going about Derrick being some genius puppet master. I've got news for you, it doesn't take a genius to snow most of the idiots in this house. Derrick is reasonably intelligent and the rest of them are morons. That's not so much brilliant game play as it is bad casting.

I'm not entirely sold on Michael Che as a correspondent. His segments are OK, but they're the sort of pieces that feel like anyone could do them. There's nothing unique to them that make them distinctively "Michael Che" segments, like Sam Bee's or Jason Jones'. He seems to lack charisma. Maybe it's a deliberate choice to be low-key, but I cannot see him ever taking over for Jon Stewart like John Oliver did. He's just kind of there an doesn't really do anything for me.

I wonder if maybe Sadie has been kept so insulated from the other contestants that they've had almost no interaction with her outside of the live shows. They showed a clip of her praying with her parents right before her number with Mark, which is something you don't usually see with the contestants - generally they're with their partners before the dance, not with their families. Maybe that's why he couldn't remember her name. She is 17 after all, and from what little I can gather, pretty sheltered. Agreed. As soon as they said the audience had to vote which one to watch I knew it would be Derek's. If you've got all of them, show all of them. We're not all Team Derek out here after all.

I still think the addition of Coach has sort of watered down the show. It took them so long to develop Winston into a main character that now it feels like a step backwards. Jess, Nick and Schmidt are the leads and Winston and Coach are sort of also-rans. They should have dropped one or the other, preferably Coach. Not a bad episode though.

Frankly annoyed the hell out of me and I freely admit it. Most of his antics just made me cringe. That said, I would have preferred him in the F2 over Derrick, Cody or Caleb, because there's something off-putting about the idea of the three, stereotypical "frat bro" kind of guys winding up in the final three, yet again. Especially this year, given the "battle of the block" nonsense that seemed like a deliberate attempt to insure three "alpha male" types would make it all the way to the end. I don't mind if Derrick wins, and in fact he should, but it's not terribly interesting, especially at this point with nobody left to challenge him. It's a foregone conclusion so it's just a lot of filler left between now and next Wednesday. Well, it matters to the person who wins it because it guarantees they'll be in the final three. More specifically, it virtually guarantees Derrick a spot in the final two. The last remaining shred of hope here would have been if Victoria had won this HoH (a stretch, I realize), forcing one of the three remaining alpha jocks out of the house. Caleb still might go before Victoria, but it's still an inevitable Derrick/Cody final 2. Yawn.