Auntie Anxiety

From one of the trade papers: Not good: Fox’s Utopia ratings dropped through the floor last night. It was only the second episode of Fox’s big reality gamble, yet ratings fell 55 percent to a mere 2.5 million viewers and a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49. What's the over-under on when this show will be cancelled? When this show goes off the air next week, I'll have to focus my snark on Love Prison (A&E has outdone itself), which makes The Bachelor look highbrow.

A year? Fox expects people to watch this for a year? Just two episodes and I'm barely hanging on. Dave is a homicidal maniac and Red is his little prison wife. Bella needs her psychotropic medication dosages dialed way up. Bris (unfortunate is right, Kikismom) is the most boring couple that ever coupled. Hope she brought her bug spray to the barn. <yawn>

Is anyone old enough to remember those toy baby bottles that would refill themselves when they were put upright? As we all know, alcohol is always the first order of business on reality shows. I admit to being a dinosaur who doesn't feel the need to tweet out my every thought or spend countless hours on Facebook with people I don't give a shit about, but I am always surprised when contestants, I mean, pioneers, don't care what their behaviors look like to the viewing public. Their future employers/spouses/children/neighbors might not think that alcohol-fueled date rape is adorable. Yeah, I don't get it.

I didn't think anything could be worse than that Paradise Island show (the one with couples? Can't remember what the point was but there was a lot of drunk drama?). Yes, I watched this. A&E has sunken to a new low. And it was fabulous! Billy puts the "B" in douche bag and Jeanne really needs to smarten up because this guy will never be marriage/monogamy material. Plus he is an incredible douche bag, if I didn't say it enough.

Maybe the chickens will go on strike and refuse to be put into the chicken tractor. Then the group will get together and vote to either keep the chickens or kill them off, at which point Bella tries to teach the chickens to fly away, to no avail.

Guess that seals the deal for me. Count me in until I can't stand the stoopidity anymore. And I simply don't have the patience to watch the live feeds, unless something interesting is about to happen.

We've all watched enough "reality" tv shows to know that this kind of thing is completely producer driven. Hard to believe that one hen simply keeled over and died while the rest of them looked happy and healthy. The dead chicken was even more noteworthy to me because a long-time resident of my former suburban town just recently got arrested for poisoning his neighbor's chickens because they kept him up all night. He was being driven mad! Mad, I say! Pakalolo, you've made an excellent point. I used to thrive on the hilarious snark about the show "Starting Over" from years ago. It became must see tv for that very reason. The ridicule was its only redeeming quality. Perhaps I'll rethink my decision to cut and run on "Utopia."

I agree that they had a casting call for the most irritating people on the planet. I have more important things to watch than this show. If I want to listen to morons trying to make a plan, I can always tune into Big Brother. That NY lawyer will be hitting his head against the wall in no time. The preacher? I'm of the Jewish persuasion and I just can't listen to that stuff. Not everyone in the world (or the US) is Christian, dude. Yeah, it's probably one and done for me.

Your husband is definitely a keeper, Portia. Maybe a little bit of the youngest Brady Bunch brother mixed in for good measure.

The producers really should have spent some money and hired a toupee wrangler because Eph's wig looked like it had a mind of its own.

I thought the real reason he was out of the running was because Ephra Stein owed the Palestinians as part of the deal to get Nessa back but Nessa was made to believe that Schlomo had a shady deal what with the money transfer. Or maybe I'm just thoroughly confused like so many other viewers.

My favorite part of this episode was when the Stephen Rea character met the Israeli guy at the park. While they were sitting there discussing who killed Meshal, in the background a dog lifted his leg and peed on a bush. Obviously totally random, but it seemed symbolic to me.

For a minute there, I really thought the writers allowed Crystal to bite the dust. I am sorely disappointed.

Dammit, LuLu123, now I'll be humming the Shire theme until I go to bed.

I was expecting the Getalong Gang to somehow get a gasoline pump ready to light the entire place on fire while making a run for the Wonder Bread truck, throwing a lit match on the puddle of gas they drove away.

Sean Bean had me at Boromir and completely owned me at Ned Stark. His acting and appearance [/shallow comment] can raise even a meh show up to something I look forward to watching every week. When I heard that Ali Larter is pregnant, I hoped that they wrote her character out of the show, getting killed or going on a break or some such thing. Yes, kids, hope springs eternal.

I figured that when Robles got taken away by the soldiers (in the beginning of the episode), he was made to tell them about Fausto. Remember Robles took a few days off and left Marco in charge? I took that to mean that he went underground for a bit after ratting on Fausto, waiting to come back after Fausto was arrested by the soldiers. Except we know that the arrest didn't happen. It's not going to work out well for Robles.

Totally agree with you. As if the Hollywood Progressive crowd never does anything nasty or selfish/self-serving. I'm sick and tired of being lectured about the environment and big bad business (read Conservative/Republicans) when the Hollywood bigwigs (read hypocrites) take their private jets and huge SUVs and limousines (carrying one or two people) to events and then get on stage and berate everyone who isn't as "ecologically aware" as they are. They scream about those nasty immoral Koch brothers but give opportunists like George Soros a pass because he throws billions of dollars to their causes. If I want political news and commentary, I'll read some articles or watch news shows. I don't need it in my hour drama series. Don't mean to start a battle here, but I'm tired of remaining silent while idiots like Selena Gomez weigh in on issues that they know nothing about. Looks Like Christine never got the memo that it's 2014 and that there are video cameras at just about every job site. My first thoughts were that she's on tape dragging Eric's body and she'll be found out very quickly. And if Terry was going to take off the cuff anyway, why didn't he just remove it and get rid of the body himself? Billy Magnusson is a terrific actor. I never heard of him before this but now his name keeps popping up (he's starring in a play opposite Anna Gunn; I saw some scenes and he killed it). That kid will go far.

Well, I never saw all of that coming. Yikes. And Christine is an idiot, but that's old news.

I guess this was a good cliffhanger, if I actually gave a crap about Barry. Which I don't. I tried to like this show, really I did. But it's just too stupid. Other than Jamal and Leila, I've seen better acting at the local regional high school winter musical. After Leila spoke to Barry and walked out, Barry just stood there, wooden, not moving a muscle which made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Isn't an actor supposed to, I don't know, act? I've been spoiled by good cable dramas and will probably not be back for season 2, if there is one.

Looked to me like the kids were basically written out of the show because they were too boring. Even Sammy's hookup with that guy was predictable and boring. Doubt it had anything to do with the network's desire to deal/not deal with sexual taboos. There was no mention or sighting of Jamal's son and his wife. I mean, where does that plot line actually go? Whoever gave the guy who plays Barry acting lessons ought to be shot. A cardboard cutout has a bigger range of emotions.

Which I would be happy to see; I've watched a lot of television shows in my day and that woman irritated me faster than just about any character I can think of. I'm sure there have been plenty, but I actually yelled at the screen, telling her to shut up already. Plus, I keep getting my virus-zombie-walker shows confused. Perhaps Abraham and Michonne both went to the same school of katanary while Commander Chandler went on another mission to find the primordial virus that wiped out the entire world.

That was one wild episode. Lots of plot progress and nothing beats Tawney leaving Teddy because the guy is such an asshole. I thought he was going to get killed by the guy with the rims. Soon he'll lose the house because of his ridiculous business plan and he'll be left with nothing. Guess he can always move into Daniel's old room, now that Daniel is being forced to leave town. Can someone remind me about George? I don't recall anything about him other than getting killed by Trey (if that's his name. I have a mental block)..

I vaguely remember something about Cesar being in charge of the landscaping and general caretaking of the condo development; he might have said that to Charlotte and Ray when they were brought there by Lyle Lovett.

I read the story. Does Hastings = Tate? Am I missing something? In response to the post about retcon on the male reporter, he did try to grab some drugs in that store room but Jerry (sorry, not sure what his name is) grabbed it away from him.