Big Brothere 8: Nomination Day

I understand that Jen is not going to be up for sainthood anytime soon, but she is not the villain in the house. Those of you out there voting to on Eric's tasks stop directing him to get Jen nominated for eviction. It's getting old.Dick and Danielle are the the ones that need to be voted out but that is not going to happen just yet...

The HOH competition came down to Jen, Danielle, and Kail. Jen and Kail were obviously struggling more then Danielle. If it were me I would have hung from those bars until my legs gave out. I understand that this is easier said then done, but Kail and Jen know that they are on the line. They need to fight as hard as they can. Jen fell off first. It was obvious that she fell off. She had nothing left in her legs. She did what she could. Dumb Kail, however, gave HOH to Danielle. Do the producers administer stupid people take stupid pills to each house guest before they enter the Big Brother house? Danielle told Kail that she would be safe. Kail is supposedly a big fan of Big Brother. She has supposedly watched every season. Watching Kail play this game that just cannot be true. People lie in this show. It is the nature of the game, but it seems that the lies and deception have been upped a notch in this season. Danielle and Dick's reign of terror has a stronghold on the house so why did Kail give up the opportunity to get one of them evicted? Kail's stupidity has allowed me to toss any sympathy I had mustered for her.

During the HOH competition, a banner flew over the house stating: "We love Nick. Amber and Eric are liars. LNC is the Nerd Herd." Everyone saw it. It took me a while to figure out why they singled out Amber as a liar, but it was pointed out to me that the first person to utter the name Nick as a nominee was Amber. She spent the week crying and kvetching about evicting Nick, but ultimately it all came from her. Stop your crying. Eric, however, is in a much trickier situation because he is a liar. A forced liar. This America's Player nonsense was bound to cause Eric problems at some point. Danielle and Dick have decided that they want to backdoor Eric because he has been setting them up all along. They think that he cast the vote to evict Kail two weeks prior to cast suspicion on Nick and then cast the vote to evict Kail this week to cast suspicion on Danielle. Why would he do this you may be asking yourself??? Well if you asked Dick and Danielle it is because he has had an alliance with Jen and Kail since the week one. How dumb are these two? Dumber then you could even imagine. They take their stupidity a step further by telling everything to Jessica and then instructing her not to tell Eric he is going to be back doored. Jessica, who I am beginning to think is an underestimated player, agrees to go along with their plan. What does she do at the first opportunity?. Tell Eric everything that has happened of course!

Dick, not one to enjoy his week of safety, continues to torment every single person he lives with. The power, even though it is Danielle's, once again goes to his head. At the nomination ceremony, Danielle, to no one's shock, nominates Jen and Kail for the third week in a row. Her reasons are BS. Kail is losing it. She can't take being the pawn for much longer. Jen, however, thinks it's funny. Jen and Kail are the first players in the history of the game to be nominated three times in a row.

If Danielle has any brains in her head she will realize that she doesn't have the votes to evict Eric and will put Zach up in the case that the veto is used. That scenario, however, is not very likely. If the veto comes into play Eric will be put up and Kail will go home. If the nominations stay the same Jen will be walking out the door. Let's cross our fingers and toes for Jen to once again be rescued by the veto. Tuesday at 9 is when we'll learn all we ever wanted to know about this week's veto!

Footballer's Wives: Series Finale

Netflix is what opened my eyes to the wonder that is Footballers' Wives. I jumped on this bandwagon right before it became super popular here in the States, but not much before. I watched the first two seasons on DVD, and then the final three on BBC America. For me, FW was at its best during the third and fourth seasons. The third season introduced us to Conrad and Amber and created the ever changing love triangle between Conrad, Amber, and Tonya. The characters of Shannon, Harley, Lucy, and Bruno entered the fray. They may not have been there since the beginning but Shannon, Lucy, and Bruno are the characters the fans will remember. Not Donna, Ian, Sal, or Chardonnay. They were blips on the radar.

The fifth season was lacking something. Lucy and Bruno were now apart, but Bruno had lost his edge. They wanted him to become the male center of the show and that was never what his character was meant to be. Lucy and Bruno may have loved each other, but they were hardly a romantic couple. Amber's quest to prove that Bruno was the one who killed Conrad was classic Footballer's Wives. The fallout would have been enough if they had simply left it at Roger being blind and having Amber regain her sanity. Why cart Amber off right as Tanya is returning? That is the rivalry we want to see. Not Tanya vs Eva De Wolfe, played with much fanfare but little substance by Joan Collins. I hate to break it to the producers but it fell flat. It was an interesting story that didn't live up to its potential. What if instead Amber had been quick to recover and hook up with Paulo as Tanya is setting her sights on him. They didn't need the bizarre tale that they were telling with Paulo and Eva De Wolfe. It was shocking, but not necessary. The return of Tanya fell just as flat as the introduction of Eva De Wolfe.With both Conrad and Amber gone, the connection that Tanya had to the remaining characters was tenuous at best. Where was the Tanya of old who would have eaten Lucy and Shannon for breakfast? Now she was having drinks with them and acting as if they were old friends. Don't even get me started on the lovey-dovey relationship between Jackie and Tanya. These are two women who hated each other.


I had to get those complaints out before I get to the good stuff. The series finale was obviously meant to be more of a season finale. Nothing was wrapped up. If it had been renewed, however, the sixth season would have been fantastic. With Roger dead, Jackie decided to leave for Australia to live with Kyle but not before she and Tanya discover an audio recording of Garry Ryan murdering Roger and admitting to trying to rape Jackie. Tanya selflessly volunteers to confront Garry for Jackie, but really just sees this as her payday. With her dead husband's assets frozen, Tanya sold all of her stock in Earls Park to Garry Ryan, who gave her a bogus tip on some stocks after her rejection of his sexual advances. Tanya now had the ammunition to get what she wanted from him, but as the episode concludes we see Garry offering Tanya some cocaine as a sign of good will. Cocaine that he has poisoned. Does she take it? That we are never going to know.

Bruno continues to try to rebuild his relationship with Lucy for the sake of Angelica and their unborn child. What Bruno doesn't know is that he might not be the father of the unborn baby. Who is the other maybe daddy to be? Tremaine. What? Lucy asks her doctor if there is anyway he can find out if the baby will be black or white. Of course not. Is she an idiot? When did Lucy and Tremaine sleep together? There was once a glance exchanged between the two of them after Trey learned that Liberty was having an affair with her female personal assistant and Bruno was trying to force his way back into Lucy's life. That is it and it isn't enough. Why was there no indication of an affair? Or a one night stand? The sad truth is that we will never know what happened between Tremaine and Lucy nor will we know who the father of the baby.

Liberty goes off to Japan to film a new campaign only to discover that she is portraying a cannibal who eats white people. She goes ahead with it(could she be any stupider?) anyway and comes back to England to widespread backlash. She couldn't see that one coming? Tremiane is naturally livid because racism is exactly what he is fighting against. He leaves her to clean up the mess, but the damage has been done. At Callum's birthday party she is attacked in the bathroom with a broken beer bottle by an enraged fan. Her face is cut up. How will Liberty react to living her life with a scarred face? We'll never know. Sensing a theme here?

Callum continues to punish Shannon for her role in outing his mom for her fake bout with cancer. Shannon is doing everything she can to work on the relationship, but the boy is becoming downright abusive. Instead of standing up for herself she throws him a lavish birthday party at which he sleeps with another girl. Liberty finds a devastated Shannon in the bathroom(this is pre-beer bottle attack), and basically shoves cocaine up Shannon's nose. A reluctant Shannon is reluctant hesitant never having done it before, but being the old pro that she is, Liberty manages to convince her that it will take the edge off. I smell an addiction storyline in the works. Shannon heads out to the dance floor high as a kite and starts dancing with another guy to get a reaction out of Callum. He tries to punch the guy but winds up punching Shannon instead. If this character was going to stick around had there been a series six, I would have liked to have seen him and Shannon develop an even more dysfunctional relationship as she fell further into drug addiction

How do you end a show like this? Series Five took a while to take off, and its a shame that it hit its high notes at the end with no hope for renewal.

Let's Give This A Try

I'm just going to admit this: I watch too much TV. Do you know what that means? I've got a lot to say and no place to do it so here we are. The bulk of what I write about is going to be television, BUT whenever I see a movie I will grace you all with my opinion on it. I must warn you that there are times when I am wildly behind on my television. My DVR just gets fuller and fuller and fuller and I know that I should catch up, but I just can't find the time. Don't even get me started on how behind I am on General Hospital....it may be quite some time before you hear from me on that front. If only I didn't have to sleep then I would be all good. Alas. Perhaps writing this blog will force me to stay on top of things. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Keep in mind that I'm in NYC so any times I list are all eastern standard. I say this because I know after reading about them here, your all going to go out in droves to watch my favorite shows.

Another quick note...I am not a hater. What does this mean? I may complain about shows, and I may vehemently disagree the direction that they are going in, but I am loyal. It is a very rare occurrence that I will stop watching a show once I have made my way through the first half of the first season. If you get me in those first 12 episodes then you have me for the entire run. Is this an absolute? Of course not, but it applies 99 % of the time.

Let's do a brief run down of some of my favorite shows at the moment(keep in mind this isn't everything that I'm watching this summer, but the shows that are the must watches when I sit down with my DVR):

BIG BROTHER(Sunday @ 8pm, Tuesday @ 9pm, and Thursday @8pm on CBS) :
Big Brother has dominated my summer since 2000. I have a problem. It's an addiction. It's on three days a week and I still want more. With the amount of strategy that is running through my mind you would think that I was living in the house. Oh how I have tried. I scower the Internet for spoilers because I sometimes cannot wait to find out what happens. Recently, my roommates and I decided that we would get rid of Showtime and save a little money. What happens after that? CBS decides to partner with Showtime and show three hours A NIGHT of the live feeds. I could have seen Dick dump tea on Jen. I could see Amber crying endless rivers of tears. I could have seen Zach streak through the backyard. Hmmm...I think I could have missed that one. I won't get into all of my thoughts and feelings on the show in this particular post, but I have a lot to say and you will be hearing a lot of it. You can anticipate many rants of the both positive and negative variety. Usually the positive comes from the negative. For example, I had no love for Jen. I was ready for her to go. Enter Dick. Both him and Daniele are treating her like she is a dog. They don't talk to her with any sort of human decency. They scream curses and insults at her all day. She is handling it with grace and wit. Suddenly I'm a fan of Jen! Yes she was a little too in love with the red unitard, but no one is perfect.
If you are reading this blog and you don't watch Big Brother than heed my words of advice: There aren't too many people who are super likable but they are all instantly watchable. Your heart will go out to Jenn and Kail even though you kind of want to hate them a little bit. Dustin is not all that he is cracked up to be even though he is cute as cute can be. Jameka uttered my favorite line of the entire eight season run,"God is so gangsta. That's why I love him" and Jessica is probably going to win the whole thing. Tune in on Sunday!

THE 4400: (Sundays @ 9pm on USA)
This show is in it's fourth season and one of USA's highest rated original programming, but I am the only person I know who watches it. It started out as a mini-series about 4400 missing people but has turned into so much more. As we wind our way through the 4th season, Jordan Collier, with Kyle and Isabelle by his side, is gathering both 4400 and individuals who took the Promicin shot to bring about Utopia on earth. Tom and Diana struggle with the government's growing opposition to the 4400 and there growing uncertainty on whether suppressing the 4400 is the way to go. As Tom struggles with the knowledge that it is prophesied that he will take the Promicin shot, Maia's visions cause more and more sympathy for Jordian Collier to stir within her causing conflict in Diana, who is playing the role of mother and NTAC agent. Through all of this, Shawn continues on his journey to political prominence as a means of bridging the ever widening gap between the 4400 and the rest of the world. How can you NOT be watching this show? I wouldn't suggest starting this show in the middle of the fourth season. That doesn't mean don't watch. That means go out and get the first three seasons on DVD!

ARMY WIVES(Sundays at 10pm on Lifetime):
Need I really say more then it stars the uber-talented Kim Delaney and Catherine Bell?? I shouldn't have to, but I realize that not everyone follows the world of television with the voracity that I do. Army Wives is a product of Lifetime Original Programming. I have tried to watch many of the shows that were produced for this channel. I would tune into Strong Medicine and Any Day Now from time to time, but they hadn't been able to create a show that I was willing to fully commit to. Until Army Wives. It has all the elements of soap opera that I love without being too melodramatic. The characters are grounded in reality and ever so relatable. Plus, it shows all sides of things. Just because it is a show that takes place on a military base doesn't mean it shows only one side of life in the military. There are a lot of layers to this show and it's characters and thankfully there are many viewers out there who agree. Lifetime has already ordered a second season. The first season is still running and I'm already sad about having to wait for Season 2. For me the standout performer in this show is Sally Pressman. She plays Roxy LeBlanc the newest army wife. Down on her luck with two kids from two fathers, she met Trevor LeBlanc and their whirlwind romance led to marriage and a whole new life for Roxy. Sally Pressman exudes what could have been a one note character with warmth and depth that make you want to root for her. She charmed me the moment she came on screen.

TOP CHEF(Wednesday @ 10PM on Bravo)
The simple truth is that I am a sucker for a reality show which contestants are eliminated in. I love the rooting value of it all. Normally, I prefer the shows in which the other contestants vote each other off, but in the case of Top Chef the judges are as interesting as the contestants. Tom and Padma are by far my favorite part of the show, particularly this season.

The only complaint that I would lobby at this show is that I don't love any of the contestants. They are certainly entertaining, but I'm not rooting for one of them to win over the other. I love to latch onto a favorite and watch with bated breath each week hoping that they make the cut, but that hasn't happened yet. I still feel the suspense of each elimination, but it's lacking that personal touch. I'm hungry after every episode though so they must be doing something right.

Degrassi: The Next Generation(Friday @8pm on the N)
I discovered this show by accident. My roommate was flipping through the channels four years ago and discovered the adventures of Emma, Manny, Sean, Paige, Marco, and all of their friends. My only complaint would be the half hour format. Why? This show is ripe for the one hour drama treatment. Sometimes the stories wrap up a little too quickly, sometimes characters disappear for too long while others are isolated in their own island stories, and sometimes there is a distinct lack of continuity to this show but you know what? I don't care. These characters are so wonderfully written that I am enthralled with their trials and tribulations. The tortured love affair of Paige and Alex is my favorite story of the moment, but anything that Manny does is insanely watchable to me. I'm a little bit over Sean and Emma, but that doesn't mean I don't want to know what happens to them. If I could change Degrassi at all I would make the episodes longer and the hiatuses shorter!

Jericho(Friday @ 9PM on CBS)
I'm going to admit something to all of you. I broke my own rule. When Jericho first premiered I loved it! Week to week I eagerly awaited the next episode. Then the show went on a very long winter hiatus. I wanted to catch up on the second half of the season, but before I knew it May had come and gone and I had twelve episodes of Jericho to catch up on. Then came word that it had been cancelled. It wasn't right away, but eventually I made the decision to delete those episodes. I could always catch it on DVD and if there wasn't going to be a second season what was the point in watching twelve more hours and getting more attached to the characters? Dumb move. Jericho got miraculously resurrected and I was left wishing I had finished watching those episodes. Then CBS announced they would be re-airing the second half of the first season on Friday nights! The exact episodes I needed! Thank Goodness! I am enjoying catching up on Jericho and much like in the fall I eagerly await every new episode particularly to find out what Mimi and Stanley are up to. I have a tendency to gravitate towards the romance that sometimes develops between secondary characters that are polar opposites of each other. Hello Xander and Cordelia! The love story is never the main thrust of the episode or the series so I'm always left wanting a little more. Here is hoping for lots more Mimi and Stanley in the future!

So there is a little taste for all of you to whet your appetite on. I'm going keep you up to date on all the new shows that I am adding to my ever expanding viewing schedule, and(fingers crossed on this one), give you a daily list of must see shows. For the moment, I'm only going to cover shows that I watch because this is a solo operation, but maybe if all my millions of viewers start clamoring for shows that I don't watch I can find some other TV addicts out there who watch everything that I don't.

Until next time!