jonathan bernstein

TV Club Has A Cold!

2010-12-13T15:06:00.000-08:00

...at least this half does. The healthier half is at http://cherrycheva.tumblr.com/

Glee
CC: "I want Channing Tatum to stop being in stuff." Rarely do I go
quoteable on this show, but this? From the mouth of Harry Shum? So
meta it's beautiful, and beautiful even if it weren't meta. And I'm a
person who has zero problem with Channing Tatum being in stuff.
JB: Every episode of Glee is already a Christmas episode.

The Sing-Off
CC: Well the high school kids failed and got rightfully booted, then
the Whiffs were actually really good and got wrongfully booted. Boo.
Not okay. Especially when the sellouts and the vocal jazz nonsense
people are still around. But I guess none of it matters since
Committed is totally winning this whole thing, which we already knew,
but which was aggressively reconfirmed because once again with the
blatant pimping (nobody else keeps getting cuts to the judges going
ballistic while they're singing). And they're singing I Want It That
Way next? PUH. LEEZE. Just tell me where I can buy the album
already and let's all move on.
JB:The Whiffenpoofs already have the world on a plate. Don't waste a second of sympathy on these privileged elitists. So says the disgruntled alumnus of Glasgow College of Technology. If we've learned one thing from TV talent shows, it's this: the journey is everything. Yes, Committed probably has it all sewn up, but don't count out the oldsters. Staying power. Inspirational. Also, the judges totally empathize with the crushed rock star dreams of the Southern singer with the high keening voice. Redemption. Second chance. Just saying.

Top Chef All-Stars
CC: Jen wuz robbed.

Vampire Diaries
CC: Okay, the scenes with Caroline watching over Tyler as he wolfed
out were, like, totally NOT warm and fuzzy but somehow they were also
warm and fuzzy, because my god! The caring! The friendship! The
genuine worry about how he was doing and the horror of seeing him go
through the pain! It was like gender-flipped childbirth. With more
chains. Or maybe less chains or the same amount of chains, I don't
know, it's a crazy world out there and maybe that's how some moms
roll.
JB: Shout-out to Vampire Diaries B-Team! Candice Accola and--I IMDB'd him!-- Michael Trevino have got themselves a storyline. Wolfnephew, in particular, sold the shit out of his big we-don't-have-an-FX-budget--so-this-is-all-on-you transformation moment. As of right now, I'm way less invested in the moonstone shenanigans as I am in knowing how Tyler/Caroline plays out. They're best friends but they're mortal enemies. And rarely-seen nice guy Matt has yet to find out the truth about his girlfriend and his best bud.(Question: is Aunt Jenna now surpassing Joyce Summers in protracted obliviousness?)

Nikita
CC: I did this thing of I started watching it, and then halfway
through I had to pause and go do something and then I forgot that I
hadn't watched the whole thing and erased it. Whoops. Took them long
enough to explain that frickin' computer chatting program, by the way.
We've only been wondering what the FUCK is up with that thing since
the beginning of the season. Did anyone else find it totally
distracting that at one point Nikita and Alex were both wearing
basically the same magenta-ish lip color and had the same verrry
narrow dark blond highlights? Just me? Okay. The lip color is
seriously distracting though. I've noticed it previously on Alex.
I'm not making this up. It is in no way a neutral. I don't know what
the makeup department is thinking. Nobody's putting that color on
just to walk around in their sweatpants in their ubersecret deadly
assassin training facility. Nobody!
JB: Did not register the lip color. Except that I found myself thinking a few times, ` Are they gonna kiss?' (They're in a high pressure situation. It's not unheard of). Maggie Q's big "She's loose!" scene with the chains was potentially iconic and cut away from way too prematurely. Her rampage through Division was absurd and badass and I could have watched it for an hour. Robin Givens is still acting? Did not know that.

SNL
CC: Tiny harmonica solo!
JB: I have watched approximately eight thousand hours of X Factor and Idol and I don't think I've ever seen people as oblivious to how horribly they're singing as Paul McCartney and his band. I have watched Bill Hader play approximately eight thousand characters and Stefon is the only one he can't get through without cracking up. And wouldn't this have been a good week to bring The Miley Cyrus Show back?

Friday Night Lights
JB: Everyone's suffering because of this humiliating storyline about Julie Taylor sleeping with her married TA. Julie's suffering because Mrs TA whacked her in the face in front of the school causing her to run home and refuse to go back. The Taylors are suffering because their glowing self-image as perfect nurturers just took a dent. How can they be the immaculate parents they think they are if they raised such a nitwit? The team's suffering because Coach is so bent out of shape he misses delivering his send-out speech(Billy Riggins--unsung hero of this season! steps in and KILLS! )The show suffers because they get the coach to the game with seconds to spare, giving him just enough time to tell his guys "How you play tonight is who you are for the rest of your lives" AND THEN WE DON'T SEE THE GAME! The next scene is the victory celebration! The suffering is about to continue with Vince's ex-con dad who beat up a drug dealer for hassling his boy. No problem with that. But once he'd kicked the shit out of the guy, Vince's dad took away his gun. Guns and Friday Night Lights are not a good fit.

X Factor
JB: The Final! The winner--not a surprise to anyone but Simon Cowell who was convinced his boy band were set to take the crown and threw quite a sulk when they lost-- was a girly-voiced housepainter called Matt Cardle who seems set to join the ranks of Kris Allen, Lee DeWyze and last year's already-forgotten winner as male singers beloved by women who have no intention of ever buying their records. Here's Matt's celebrity duet. Be glad you're not watching this in 3D otherwise you'd run the risk of a detached retina from his boner:

And here's the runner-up who has a shot at a career if she does more stuff like this and less of the snoozy ballads she did on every other show:

Movie Club

Black Swan
CC: This shit was awesome and makes me very much want to go slowly,
dramatically mad, or just lose a lot of weight so I can look amazing
in multiple layers of body-skimming sweats/tanks/shrugs made of very
cozy-looking, soft materials.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-12-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

Funky Worm. "Hustle To The Music"

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like TV Club!

2010-12-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

What happens in TV Club here, also happens in TV Club at http://cherrycheva.tumblr.com/

Glee
CC: UNLEASH HEATHER MORRIS! She is a caged beast, UNLEASH HER! Well they sort of did, thank god, during Valerie, but all the rest of the time, you can just see her practically jumping out of her skin wanting to do better choreography, it's like all that aggressive dance talent is just simmering below the surface, except it's not simmering, it's boiling over the whole time, because they NEED TO GIVE HER MORE TO DO but anyway, I didn't like that Train song and of course, now I like that Train song, thanks to the Dalton Academy guys who actually DO A CAPPELLA UNLIKE EVERYONE ELSE ON THIS SHOW. Argh. Is what I say. Yet again.
JB: Unleash Naya Rivera, too. Was that really her first solo in a season-and-a-half? She's got the most commercial voice out of any of them. Do not unleash Dianna Agron and Chord Overstreet. Jesus Christ, I thought the Black Eyed Peas took a shit on Time Of My Life. And why was that deemed sectionals-worthy and not Dog Days Are Over which, whatever your Florence stance, is a showstopper? I don't buy the blondes as a couple, either. In fact, I don't buy any of the couples as couples. Not Brittany and Artie. Not the Asians. Not Finn and Rachel. Kurt and Rachel, I buy them. We almost made it through an entire episode without a Glory of Kurt moment. Then they unveiled the Kurt as molting Dalton warbler metaphor at the end.

Vampire Diaries
CC: Will my fellow Jeremy/Bonnie 'shippers please join me in a rousing rendition of "WHAT THE FUCK?!" Come on, show. Let's do this. Let's make this happen so I can watch it happen. By the way, why can't Katherine just bite Jeremy's finger off with the ring on it and then kill him? She cut off Uncle John's finger with a knife and then stabbed him, can't she bite off Jeremy's ring finger? Anybody? Just me?
JB: Did the witch and the warlock have weather-sex? I think they did! Can I say something about the moonstone? It would be good if it glowed or floated or changed colors or did SOMETHING to merit the massive investment we're having to make in its mystic properties. Because right now? It's not very impressive. Also not impressive: Bonnie the witch's screechy version of Only Happy When It Rains.

The Sing-Off
CC: This is my new favorite show (shut up, it's winter TV doldrums right now) and I am about to say many things. It's much better than it was last year. I love when people get genuinely excited about their competition, and it totally happened twice tonight, when the blue Oregon guys were losing it over the young black guys during Maroon 5 (and who wouldn't...those guys are gonna win the whole thing unless the Glee fan contingent puts the high school group ahead of them, plus they almost killed Boyz II Men judge), and then when the teal people from LA, that guy in the middle, was totally doing the "wwhhhaaattt" hands-on-head thing during Apologize. Did anyone else think it was totally cheating for the teal LA people to totally Frankenstein together a group JUST for the purpose of this show, including people who had BEEN ON BEFORE? Did anyone else think there was literally a ZERO percent chance that the southern guys were gonna sing anything OTHER than Hey Soul Sister for the next episode? Was it me or did most of the Seattle people have, like, that confusing thing where they might be 14 or they might be 40 or maybe it was just that one person? And how terrible was Nick Lachey's outfit? AND HOW AWESOME IS BEN FOLDS? HE IS THE MOST OF AWESOME!!! Him ripping on the cymbals thing and then demonstrating it was possibly the best part of the whole show. Other than, of course, the young black guys (because there were also old black guys, who are fine and cute in their own way, but this show belongs to the young black guys). I had something to say about the groups who got booted but whatever, they're booted, I already forgot what it was.

Nikita
CC: If this show could make me care as much about the non-Nikita scenes as I do about the Nikita ones, we'd be in good shape. For instance, I found the revelation that Nikita works out at 3 in the morning at some pool in New Jersey WAY more interesting than Alex's entire subplot this week. I can't tell you what said subplot was because during those scenes I was too busy trying to calculate whether it's possible for me to watch every single episode of Battlestar Galactica during my winter break. It is.
JB:The pre-credits narration is getting longer and more complicated every week. We now have THREE shadowy organizations.. We've got Division. We've got the one they unveiled a couple of weeks ago. And now we've got Oversight. We also have the recurring plot about the seven black boxes which is both vitally important and not worth mentioning from week to week. But honestly? As long as I see Nikita getting in wet towel fights at Newark Community Center, I don't care.

The Walking Dead
CC: Oh my god, I can't believe they Lost in Translationed us! And we had to wait until the very end for any skull-crunching zombie action! Boo! BOO! *starts counting minutes till show comes back*
JB: Sometimes when I watch this show, I feel like an Amish teen on Rumspringa. I absolutely accepted that cast member Laurie Holden would sacrifice herself in the CDC blast and the black lady whose name we do not know and who had barely uttered a word make a break for freedom.

Friday Night Lights
JB: I do not play sports. I do not watch sports. I know nothing about sports. After this away-game episode, I wanted to be part of a team. Any team. There was a scene before the big game. The Coach is sitting out on his hotel balcony. A few feet away, four of the Lions are hanging out, joking, talking about the game, telling stories. They don't know he's there, listening. The scene doesn't go anywhere, doesn't add to the story. But it lasts for three, maybe four minutes and when it's over, you think, what other show would do that? Even if you don't like you like Friday Night Lights, if you don't like football, if you don't like PEOPLE, the camaraderie on display here was just undeniable. (After they won the game, the team celebrated by branding each other with hot pieces of bent wire. And even THAT was heartwarming!) This was an absolute, all time Top 5 episode, almost but not entirely marred by the Season Two-level embarrassment of the Julie Taylor: Adultress plot.

SNL
JB: I'm looking forward to Little Fockers about as much as I want to hear that new Diddy Dirty Money album.

Supernatural
JB: It started with a decapitation. It ended with a disintegration. In between, there were multiple stabbings, rape jokes, angels getting boners watching motel room porn, naked demon torture, invisible hellhounds and incest gags. Return to form!

CC: I...may have to start watching this show.

X Factor
JB: The semi finals. Of all the hundreds of thousands of Bruno Mars-affiliated songs this year, I have one favorite and while this young person attempted to slaughter it, she left some life in the corpse:
Just when it looked like Rihanna's wounds had all healed, she gets clobbered again:
And this happened:

TV Club Is On Thin Ice!

2010-11-30T09:35:00.000-08:00

There's nothing you can read here that you can't also read at http://cherrycheva.tumblr.com/

Glee

JB: Bullying is this show's vervain. You can't get away from it. And how does Glee define bullying? Failure to properly celebrate The GloryOf Kurt. Which is something Ryan Murphy is not guilty of. Kurt's dad's wedding vows? An apology to Kurt. Finn's wedding speech? Another apology to Kurt plus a dance. The Glee club's petty differences? Forgotten in the face of having Kurt's back. Even the nightmarish Carol Burnett storyline ended up with an anti-bullying speech reminding us that Kurt might not have been onscreen but his Glory was still being celebrated.

CC: My jaw literally dropped with how bad the sound production was in this (again, watched only the songs). A very wise fellow viewer mentioned that the thing they do to everyone's voices (I'm talking about that ridiculous wedding number) is the equivalent of the Barbara Walters camera. Difference? Walters needed it. THESE KIDS DON'T. They can sing! Let them fucking SING! Argh. (Bruno Mars is a genius, by the way...I thought "Just the Way You Are" was the most pandering song ever in the history of man, but that "Marry You" song is also his? Good lord. Give him all the money in the world, he's taken James Blunt's lady-trapping key-word-hitting game and hulked it out into some of the most catchy-ass tunes ever.) So, once again, my best Glee experience this week has been the ACTUAL a cappella number featured in the below youtube (I'm on record as being thoroughly sick of the reaction shots, but Puck's here is gold), and I don't even LIKE this song:

JB: Bruno Mars wrote Cee-Lo's Fuck You. So he's working both sides of the pandering equation.

CC: OMG WHAT?! WHAT! WHAT! He's a genius! He's a fucking genius! Cee Lo was totally at my work today, by the way.

The Walking Dead

JB: Some shows go through entire seasons without amassing as many highlights as this single episode managed. The blonde survivor waiting for her sister to revive then shooting her in the head. The beaten-up wife slamming a pickaxe into the skull of her dead zombie husband.Shane the cheating deputy being tempted to shoot Sheriff Rick. The bitten guy left at the roadside to die. The lone scientist. The white light as the doors of CDC open. I'm fully committed to The Walking Dead but most of the post-pilot episodes had a `Yeah, this character stuff kind of drags but but bear with us cuz there's zombies and gore on the way' vibe. Not this one. This had a `See, almost a whole hour went by without a single zombie and you didn't even notice' vibe.

CC: Remember in The Notebook when Ryan Gosling goes "I love you" and Rachel McAdams takes a long pause before saying it back? You know how in Rocky Horror they do that "antici........pation" thing? Blonde lady shooting her sister was the zombie equivalent of that. JUST SHOOT HER SHE'S A ZOMBIE OH MY GOD JUST SHOOT HER ALREADY WHAT IF SHE ENDS UP HAVING LIKE REALLY FAST REFLEXES FOR A ZOMBIE DON'T LEAN IN JUST SHOOT HER AAAAAA!!!! Tension created? In spades. Thanks, show,I love you and I hate you for it.

Skating With The Stars

JB: I vaguely remember Fox trying something like this a few years ago.Lasted one season. Ended with Kristy Swanson double-axeling off into the sunset with her married partner. But a British version has been going strong for a while now. That's because they know how to do it right. Hire fat people, old people, unsteady people and a judge who has no problem telling a female athlete dressed in brown she looks like shit circling the drain. I FF'd through most of Skating W/TheStars but I still saw enough to know they took a different approach.First, there's only six(6) skaters. I know it's a short season but that's not enough to decide who you like, who you hate, who you like to hate, who's comic relief and who you don't care about. Second,no-one's fat or old. Third, the judges. I've seen Boomkack on other shows. She's crazy. She's a screamer and a shoe-thrower. Here she's telling Sean Young what a privilege it is to meet her. And Johnny Weir! Johnny Weir tells people he LIKES they look like shit circling the drain. But not this version. This version applauds Vince Neil for his courage. Fourth, the host. I've heard Americans complaining they can't understand Vernon Kay's northern English accent. I'm from Scotland, a mere stone's throw from where he lives. I follow maybe every fourth syllable.

Weeds

JB:Mary-Louise Parker needs to quit acting because she's never going to get another part as good as the one she's got here. I always forget Weeds is still on. Then I find another season of it taking up DVR space. The last few years, I've gone to get rid of it, checked out a couple of episodes and stuck around for the whole thing. I never bother watching when it's actually showing because I still think Weeds is about a suburban mom who becomes a pot dealer. I keep forgetting they blew up that whole premise. Parker's character married a Mexican druglord last year. Then her psycho son killed his mistress with a croquet mallet. In the season I just watched, she's shooting people with crossbows, having angry sex with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and fucking up the lives of everyone she meets. And even when she's tied up in the trunk of a car next to the body of the journalist she got killed, she still does this doe-eyed, mussy-haired thing like she's not sure if she's in a dream sequence. I look forward to forgetting all about her and rediscovering her show this time next year.

X Factor

JB: Rock Week. You know what that means:

End of the road for that dude. But nothing can stop these kids:

Jabbawockeez at the Monte Carlo

CC: I saw this live show in Vegas. It was, of COURSE, fucking awesome. All the bits you love and remember from their ABDC performances, plus all sorts of new, equally as awesome or even more so, stuff. I sat slackjawed and leaning forward in pure happiness the whole time. So nice to see these guys reaping tons and tons of well-deserved rewards. Afterwards we were walking around the casino and I randomly saw Victor from Quest Crew. You know he was totally hangin' with the Wockeez that weekend. And in fact you DO know cuz I checked twitter and that's exactly what they said.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-29T15:41:00.000-08:00

1000say. "Lostman"

TV Club. Now On iTunes. (Not Really)

2010-11-22T16:39:00.000-08:00

Read the wholesome version here. Read the even more wholesome version at http://cherrycheva.tumblr.com/

Glee
JB: All across America, the same question was asked, "Why did we ever
think Gwyneth Paltrow was an asshole?" As much fun as she was here,
wait till her stupid-looking country movie opens for a reminder.
Finally, they came up with a way to de-douche Schue: put him in scenes
with his crazy clingy ex. He seems almost human and sympathetic.
Except that there's no reason for her to exist on the show anymore.
Worst moment: the bully who kissed Kurt telling him, "I'm going to
kill you if you tell anybody". That wasn't foreshadowing. That was
fiveshadowing.
CC: Okay, everyone I know is saying Gwyneth was really good on this,
and I suspect everyone is talking about the acting scenes, which of
course I did not watch, but obviously I watched the musical numbers
and I'm sorry, that woman cannot dance and therefore was a giant pain
in the eyeball to me. She was even worse than I thought she would be!
She looked like a lumbering horse up there! And I WANTED to like the
Umbrella mashup at the end. I've got very good memories of Harry Shum
dancing in the rain at the end of Step Up 2. But this? Yikes. Thank
god for the bright spots of Heather Morris whenever she showed up
onscreen; you could let your eyes go totally out of focus and still
know which one she was, she hits so much sharper and cleaner than
everybody else.

SNL
JB: Anne Hathaway is the Paltrow we like. I am hereby authorized by my
homeland to give the Royal Engagement sketch two thumbs of approval.
And Katie Holmes! There will be Scientology repercussions. Quick word
about this Jay Pharoah. He's something SNL hasn't had in a long time:
a cast member who could turn into a star. He's also something they
haven't has in even longer: a black cast member who could turn into a
star. It's a joke that he doesn't get to do his dead-on Obama because
someone who doesn't do an dead-on Obama and has to put on brown-face
was there first. But they need to find better way to showcase him
impressions than putting him on Weekend Update with an act he probably
did on open mic night at the comedy club. And he needs to stop wearing
t-shirts with his face on them.
CC: Agreed on the impressions showcase; the premise of that was sooo
shoehorned in. They shoulda just owned it, or stuck him in that last
sketch, which I had no hopes for when they kicked off with Wiig as
Cranberries, like, how busted is that, but then it provided me with my
biggest laugh of the entire night when Samberg showed up as Robert
Smith. I absolutely cracked up. It was just so ridiculous, by that
point in the show and after everything else that had already happened
(this week was waaay better than last week). Also great, Sudeikis's
little smile at the end of his Adam Lambert. Also totally
rewatchable? Bobby Moynihan as Guy Fieri. Shut up. I've seen Guy
Fieri on many a Food Network show and I don't know that I've ever
heard him mention raisins, ever, or even do ridiculous wordplay, but
goshdarnit, that damn segment worked for me.

Friday Night Lights
JB: Banner week for the supporting cast. Buddy Garrity Jr comes back
to Dillon, mocks his dad's abandoned showroom, calls the school a
mental hospital, openly admires Tami Taylor's rack, steals Buddy Sr's
truck and credit card. Plus he commits the cardinal sin on this show:
he thinks football's stupid. While Mrs Coach fails to make any
progress rehabilitating Epyck( that's right, Epyck. Not Epic), Mindy
Riggins out-Tami's her. That is correct, Billy Riggin's ex-stripper
wife totally came through for Becky, saving her from having to go back
under the same roof as her rotten dad and stepmom. The Riggins
decency: it's buried deep but it's always there.

Terriers
JB: Maybe ten people are watching this show. Eleven if you count me. I
don't even know if I would attempt to recommend it to anyone. I just
know why I like it. It's a little bit The Rockford Files, a little bit
The Last Boy Scout and a little bit Chinatown. It's a detective show
in the same way Friday Night Lights is a football show. I'll even take
that a bit further: you know how, pre-FNL, Kyle Chandler was always
cast as the blend handsome guy? Terriers takes Donal Logue who was
always cast as the doughy slob and says, Yeah, he's that but why can't
he be the smart guy and action guy and the heartbroken guy and the
funny guy and the self-sabotaging drunk guy and the screw-up who's
trying to redeem himself? No reason at all, is the response from me
and the other ten in the audience.

The Walking Dead
JB: Question: why don't the living people call the walking dead
zombies? Why would they call them walkers? They've all seen zombie
movies. They know what zombies are. Why make up a new term? Especially
one that sounds like it was created so as not offend them. You can
offend them. They're zombies.
CC: Seriously! That's all I want to yell, all the time, during this
show: "Aaaa! MORE ZOMBIES!" And I actually thought the societal
shenanigans were interesting this week, but again? When the zombies
showed up at the end and just fucking ate half the people? God, this
show rocks. There's gonna be a weird, hollow window in my life when
this ends and I've still got six weeks before Spartacus begins, but
maybe I'll, like, read or something.

X Factor
JB: John Lennon was shot. George Harrison was stabbed. Paul McCartney
married Heather Mills. But nothing The Beatles (Now on iTunes.)
endured in the past was as bad as the treatment they received at the
hands of the X Factor finalists. This was the BEST performance of the
night:
CC: Oh my god! This was great! So terrible! I love it! A boy band
so completely awash in formulaicness that you can't even complain, you
totally gotta give them credit! They've got one of everybody! Well,
no, they've got two Biebers, plus Seth Cohen from The OC's heyday and
a gay-brother-from-Gossip-Girl-ish guy and then the one sliiightly
manlier guy with the earring that the sliiightly older preteens can go
for, but my god! They've built the perfect little terrifying machine!
Aaaaa! Speaking of which, did you see NKOTBSB on the AMAs? Yikes.
And I don't even really mean that in a bad way since of course all the
tunes they did in their medley were super memorable and catchy to this
day yeah I said it.

JB: I did watch it. And I had a couple of thoughts: BSB songs are slightly less embarrassing to perform as adults. NKOTB could probably kick their asses if it comes down to a fight. Which it will.

And now...the first, and possibly last, installment of YA Book Club!

Dash & Lily's Book Of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
JB: We have TV Club. Rachel Cohn and David Levithan have their
she-writes-one-chapter-he-writes-the-next series of similarly-themed
bast-sellers. So obviously we come out ahead in that deal. I'm using
sarcasm to mask my seething professional jealousy. But there's no
point hating Cohn/Levithan's brand of indie/quirky boy/girl books.
They're genetically designed to win you over in the end. This one
didn't even have to wait to the end to get me. It's about a pair of
quirky(check), indie(check) Manhattan teens alone in Manhattan at
Christmas. Okay, stop right there. Quirky teens. Alone. Manhattan.
Christmas. I didn't even have to read the book. I've been three of
these things. My head is already filled with bittersweet imagery. But
Cohn/Levithan have more than just their emotive time and place.Just
like Nick and Norah's missing band and Naomi and Ely's no-kiss list,
Dash and Lily has/ have a gimmick. She embeds a Molsekine notebook in
an obscure shelf deep in the bowels of Manhattan's fabled Strand
bookstore. (The Strand! I'm welling up again.) The chances someone
will find it are minimal. The chances that the someone who finds it
will open it and be intrigued by the challenge to crack the literary
clue scrawled inside are even minimaler. But, of course, someone does.
And responds with a challenge of his own. And so on to the
post-Christmas happy ending. This duo churn out inventive and charming
books and they've hit on a formula that probably won't run out of gas
any time soon. And I'm sure David Leventhal was amusing himself when
he wrote the scene where the sixteen year-old heterosexual male
character celebrates having his parents' empty house to himself by
stripping off all his clothes and dancing around to his mother's Mamma
Mia CD.

Movie Club

Shutter Island
CC: I'm trying to figure out how the fuck I live in a world where
this movie made gazillions of dollars and Scott Pilgrim made much less
than gazillions of dollars.

Somewhere
CC: Okay, you know how Lost in Translation wasn't so much a movie as
a vibe? This was even less of a movie and more of a vibe. I didn't
know it was possible. I didn't even not like it, it's just that the
script for this thing must've been about four pages long. Nothing
happens. LITERALLY NOTHING HAPPENS DURING THE ENTIRE THING.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-19T13:19:00.001-08:00

Cherrelle. "Everything I Miss At Home"

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-18T13:02:00.001-08:00

Marit Larsen. "If A Song Could Get Me You"

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-17T09:48:00.000-08:00

Julie Roberts. "Break Down Here"

Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only The TV Club!

2010-11-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

See if anything gets lost in translation between here and http://cherrycheva.tumblr.com/

CC: FINALLY. THANK YOU. An ACTUAL A CAPPELLA ARRANGEMENT of a song!
Did I like Teenage Dream as sung by all those dudes doing dorky dance
moves because that's ACTUALLY WHAT A CAPPELLA IS? Yes. I liked it a
lot. I liked it a super lot! Watched several times! Have been
listening on the internet repeatedly! I liked Artie and Puck's song,
too. But the mashup sequel? No thank you. And no, I didn't watch
any of the rest of the show except for part of the
Puck/Santana/Artie/Heather Morris double date, because you know, just
in case Heather Morris said something funny (she didn't in the part
that I saw). Oh well. Oh, also I saw Harry Shum and Tina making out
on a table. Eh. Is it me or do they have zero chemistry as a couple?
I'd rather watch Tina and Artie. I'd rather watch Harry Shum and
Artie.
JB: Oh, you didn't watch the rest of the non-singing stuff?( and the
Puck & Artie white reggae bullshit didn't make you want to shoot
yourself in the face?) Well, allow me to fill in the blanks. The
message to the gay bullied youth of America is: don't worry, you will
get an imaginary boyfriend and your tormentors will all turn out to
secretly be gay. Also, it's wrong to even think mean thoughts about
the 40 year old virgin football coach who looks like a dude. That's
right, Glee's other message is that thinking is wrong. "That's the
opposite of what we do here," said Schue. About thinking. He also said
"And now you've been kissed" to the now-apparently-beloved Coach Dude
after planting a pity slobber on her which instantly soared to the top
of the long, long list of Schue's Douchiest Moments.
CC: THAT'S what the rest of the episode was about? Jesus. Well, I'd
be remiss if I didn't point out that I had a similar line about the
main character's first kiss in my book She's So Money, which was
written in 2006 and is also much better than whatever the fuck
happened here because it was a cute high school girl instead of a
monster and a hot high school guy instead of Mr. Schue who is also a
monster, and also it wasn't a pity thing, and was actually part of a
story that oh, I don't know, MAKES SENSE. Yeah, I said it. My book >
Glee. Ryan Murphy can laugh himself all the way to the bank, and he
is, and I clearly am not, but these are still facts.

Gossip Girl
CC: Blah blah blah takedowns blah blah hate sex blah blah MACAROONS!
What flavor is green? Pistachio maybe? I hope not mint. But either
way, I was very, VERY interested in the macaroons Blair kept eating,
so in lieu of commentary on the show (except for how much I loved that
casual tossed-off line re: Blair's exhibitionist tendencies), I'll
tell you where to get tasty macaroons in LA: La Provence. Try the
salted caramel. You're welcome.

SNL
CC: That was...eh. ScarJo's a great host, but the whole thing was
just lackluster (like for instance, not that Weekend Update had the
funniest jokes ever or anything, but the audience just did not seem to
be buying what anybody was selling, like, aggressively not buying it).
Bill Hader does the best dancing in that talk show thing. And the
Unstoppable thing was funny, although when does the Denzel goodwill
run out?
JB: Scarlett did her Brooklyny/ New Jersey accent nine times plus she
had kind of a Someone's Mom vibe about her (I think it was the hair).
The Denzel love does not run out for at least six more episodes ( but
the Kanye needs work). I got caught in a comedy torture bear trap with
Kenan's broken knee sketch. It wasn't funny but the anticipation of
his "LEAVE ME BE!" close-up killed me.

Friday Night Lights
JB: Vince Howard had a fantastic episode. The Coach had a pretty good
episode. Mrs Coach had an okay episode. Baby Coach had a great
episode(They keep catching lightning in a bottle with whichever group
of twins or triplets are playing that kid. Mrs Coach was trying to get
The Coach to do something he didn't want to do which we and he both
knew he was gonna do, she turned to the toddler and said said 'Tell
daddy to think about it'' and the kid SCREAMED "THINK ABOUT IT
DADDY!!!" Adorable!) Teenage Daughter Coach had a terrible episode. I
trust the writers on FNL a lot--except for the season we do not
mention-- but they have no idea what to do with Julie Taylor. The
character's story is over but they've still got the actress for the
remaining episodes so let's follow her to college and have her sleep
with her married TA.

Vampire Diaries
CC: I'll tell you what will surprise me the most on this show: if
they ever have a witch who isn't black. That's as good a rule as any,
I guess, but come on, like you didn't totally KNOW that new kid was
gonna be warlocky trouble, and yes, I'm biased cuz somehow I've
suddenly turned into a Bonnie/Jeremy 'shipper. The show leadeth me
down a path and I, with my no brain cells, happily follow.
JB: Elena. Katherine. Katerina. Bulgarian. English. Dobrev is like a
skinny Klumps. I'm an enjoyer of the sporadic When Vampire Harry Met
Vampire Sally thing with Stefan and Caroline. And the snark-romance
between Damon and Vampire Alexa Chung( that actress was Supernatural's
original Condescending Untrustworthy Bitch). Starbucks Vampire was
pathetic but that was probably the point. I fear the oversell of
Klause The Original Vampire. Unless it's Dobrev playing a guy. Which
she could.

Nikita
JB:Wait, did they just try and introduce an comic relief character and
act like he'd been around for the entire series? I think they did!
Right at the start, some cackling nerd appears on a screen in her car
and Nikita does this kind of weary/ affectionate, "Hello Henry" like
she's acknowledging the weekly appearance of a beloved eccentric.
That's right: after an episode largely devoted to filling in Shane
West's backstory-- his wife and daughter were killed by an
Uzbeckistani terrorist he thought was his friend! He loves Nikita! And
he hates her!--I'm still thinking about the 30 second appearance of
the comedy nerd.
CC: How completely useless was that B-story? I just do not care
about anything that happens inside that damn building when we've got
Nikita running around in more outfits and kicking more ass. Lyndsy
Fonseca registered more on my radar during her five minutes in Hot Tub
Time Machine (yeah, I just saw that) than she ever does on this show.
(Also in Hot Tub Time Machine? Don Draper's secretary/fiancee's naked
boobs. And a delightfully anachronistic Lizzy Caplan. This has been
commentary on TV Club-related casting choices in a movie, instead of
actually doing Movie Club.)

Supernatural
JB: I think I've managed to grasp the arcs of the last few seasons:
we've got to save dad, we've got to save Dean The Lunkhead Brother
from going to Hell, we've got to stop the war between the demons and
the angels. This year-- and there's a big chunk to go so this could
all change-- the story seems to be: We've got to get Sam The Sensitive
Brother his soul back so we have to work for the wise-cracking Cockney
dude who claims to be the King Of Hell. He wants us to locate and
capture the original version of every monster known to man so he can
discover the caption of Purgatory and turn it into a new branch of
Hell. I might have got that wrong. I hope I got that wrong.

The Walking Dead
CC: I totally called the guy cutting off his arm (like, not even this
week, last week). Although I bet everybody did, but the way they
revealed it was still totally sweet. The gore in this show continues
to be the best thing-- I could stare at, and get grossed out by, those
zombie effects all day long. I totally understand that what some
people find interesting about this show is all the in-fighting and
societal stuff that happens when apocalypse occurs but everybody's
still human with flaws and foibles blah blah blah fascinating window
into the fragile nature of group dynamics blah, but for me? The best
part? Gross-ass zombies.
JB: I find I'm a little bit distracted--not from the splatter, more
the microcosm-of-society stuff-- by the actress who plays Sheriff
Rick's inadvertently unfaithful wife. She looks a lot like Kara
DioGuardi. That moment when she saw Sheriff Rick for the first time
and she got that "I am so busted...great to see you!" look on her
face, I was like, Wow, great job, DioGuardi.

The X Factor
JB:Elton John's songs are unsingable. They're in keys that are
impossible to reach. They go from really low to really high, sometimes
in the same syllable. American Idol did an Elton John week a few
years ago. Blood vessels burst. Oxygen tanks were wheeled on to the
stage. Some singers swallowed their own tongues. It was a mess. As was
X-Factor's Elton show. This dude got the boot:

This dude didn't:
Neither did The Most Hated Woman In Britain:

CC: It's stuff like this that makes me rethink my decision to watch
this show when the American version starts.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-12T12:53:00.001-08:00

Nivea. "Laundromat".

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

Propaganda. "P Machinery"

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-10T13:13:00.000-08:00

Bernard Wright."Who Do You Love?"

A TV Club Of Epic Proportions

2010-11-08T10:45:00.000-08:00

Read it here right now or read it at http://cherrycheva.tumblr.com/ some time in the future. (Yeah, tumblr. The last person to leave MySpace has just turned off the lights)

Gossip Girl
CC: I can't believe it took me THIS long to realize that Serena's new professor guy is totally Joan's husband on Mad Men. I'm an idiot. And here I was all proud of myself for recognizing Stephanie from Mad Men in the new season of LXD (http://www.hulu.com/the-lxd). Ah well. The only true point of note this week is that BLAIR AND CHUCK TOTALLY GOT IT ON YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!

JB: Nice to see Robyn getting a little more US exposure. Nice to see Rachel Zoe slimed. And with that I deleted the rest of the season from the DVR.

Vampire Diaries
CC: OMG, JB! Another stabbing that did absolutely nothing! The DEFAULT at this point should be that if someone dies, they're probably not dead, but I keep on forgetting! Wannabe-Riggins Vamp is dead though. We hardly knew ye.

JB: So wait, Katherine isn't the original doppelganger? Which means Elena is the doppelganger of the doppelganger.(This show gets very word-fixated. Vervain. Moonstone. Doppelganger). An even earlier even eviler Katherine means more Dobrev ranginess aka I can't wait! I may have completely misread the Damon/Bonnie signals but I think I'm not wrong that he's going to get over his unrequited I-love-you to Elena with English Joan Jett vamp.

Nikita

JB: Admit it, you registered that the actors playing the dead girl's grieving parents weren't giving Emmy-winning performances but you jumped out of your chair when the dad suddenly tried to garrot Nikita. Admit, also, you wanted her to adopt, if not that particular dog( it was a little too licky) then definitely some sort of pet for her to talk to in the massive loft. And once again, I know I'm always wrong about this stuff but the introduction of rival organization Gogol means that Division suddenly looks like the lesser of two evils and Nikita ends up in an uneasy truce with the devil she knows.

Friday Night Lights

JB: I think I know less about football now than whenI started watching this. That whole dramatic `State' thing at the end shot straight over my head. But I do know that Vince Howard showing his cleaned-up mom the letters from all the colleges interested in him and cheering "We're never gonna have to worry about anything again" can only lead to catastrophe. I also know that Julie Taylor has a type and he is deadly boring. I know that Luke Cafferty is Saracen 2.0 and Epic (really? Epic? That's a name? That's trending? Is Awesome a name, too?) is not worth Tami Taylor's time.

The Walking Dead

JB: Minus points for not using the tank. Sheriff Rick was in the tank. The street was swarming with zombies. This is not a show that skimps on the gore. The tank should have been used for squashing zombies. Minus even more points for every bit of dialogue out of everybody's mouth and ESPECIALLY Merle Dixon the redneck racist and T-Dog the enraged black man. Add most of these points back for the scene where Sheriff Rick and his twitchy Asian sidekick coated themselves in gore from a zombie corpse so the walking dead wouldn't pick up their human scent. This is going to be one of those shows that's at it's best when no-one's talking.

The X Factor

JB: And now I bring you The Most Hated Woman in Britain. Every day the UK press dredge up new and even more objectionable morsels from the life of Katie Waissell. Every day it becomes more obvious how much her fellow contestants loathe her. The people who work on The X Factor don't even try to hide their disdain. The public put her in the bottom two every week. But the judges. Will not send her home. Here she is singing for her life:

Glee
CC: I realize it wasn't on this week. But I read on the interwebs that Gwyneth Paltrow is gonna be guest-starring and I instantly said "Fuck you Glee!" and vowed never to watch it again. Then later on the interwebs I found this link:
http://www.hitfix.com/articles/watch-kurts-new-guy-sings-teenage-dream-on-glee
and was just psyched enough that for once they actually did an A CAPPELLA ARRANGEMENT of the fucking song that I decided to watch again. I'm fastforwarding through Gwyneth though.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-07T15:04:00.000-08:00

Spider. "New Romance". Early 80s bubblegum New Wave= 2010 pop-country.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-05T16:41:00.000-07:00

The Four Pennies. "Black Girl".Polite, simpering, harmonious British beat group from the 60s suddenly EXPLODES ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-04T10:25:00.001-07:00

From the bowels of the 80s. Cabaret Voltaire. "Just Fascination"

TV Club Of The Dead!

2010-11-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

It's here! It's also there: http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Glee

CC: I think I've already registered how much I liked the Mercedes version of "Sweet Tranvestite." Allow me to now register how much I didn't like most of the rest of this (of course). Now, having to change a bunch of the lyrics, probably not their fault. It's an 8pm show. And Heather Morris, of course, killed her dancing. But. As usual. COME ON. If levels of anger re: this show equaled calorie expenditure, I would have Nina Dobrev's body by now.

JB: Someone smarter than me came up with the theory that there are three Glees. The ones Ryan Murphy writes and the ones the other two guys write where they try to clean up the mess he made. It's a waste of my fingers to point out the inconsistencies and the idiocies but...it's not like I'm doing much else with my fingers. WHY have Mike Chang volunteer to play Frank N Furter and then devolunteer? What purpose? Just to give him something to say? And Schue. The whole thing. Made. No. Sense. And Sue? What? And Finn! Over the course of three episodes, Finn has played 1) TheStupidest, Most Gullible Guy In The World, 2) A Smart And Sophisticated Interpretor Of High School Sexual Stereotypes and 3) A Guy Terrified Of His Own Body. This last one...we've seen him shirtless in the changing room countless times,he was in the hot tub with Quinn and banged Santana... he didn't have a problem with his body until Ryan Murphy needed an Issue Of The week.

SNL

CC: Jon Hamm is hilarious and I laughed basically every time he did that little piano plink in that sketch towards the end. Rihanna is sexy and charismatic and she's great at being annoyed in those Shy Ronnie things. Kristin Wiig is in too many sketches. I get it. I get why this happens. Probably the other girls had stuff that didn't go as well in dress, and obviously writers cast Wiig in shit cuz she delivers and then what you wrote gets in the show, but...Kristin Wiig is in too many sketches.
JB: Even though it was straight up NBC Universal unpaid advertising, I could have watched an entire 90 minutes of Back To The Future auditions. I concur with the above assessment of the Whig Glut. Happened to Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler,too. Except I never got the sinking feeling with them I do when she shows up. Which is because is her repertoire runs the gamut from awkward to delusional.

The Women Of SNL
JB: What happened to Jan Hooks? And Cheri Oteri's face?

Vampire Diaries

CC: Best. Fucking. Episode. EVER. EVER! YOU HEAR ME? EVER!!!!!!!!!!
JB: Here's my review: FUCK!. Wait, I got more. Cancel the rest of the series right now because they'll never make a better episode than that. Wait, I got more. Writers and producers working on shows unable to move their plots forward( Hello, The Event) or tell coherent stories ( Yes you, Glee) or remove their fingers from the reset button (uh-huh, Gossip Girl),learn the lessons of this episode. Everything happened. Nina Dobrev ruled the world. Vampire Caroline was awesome and remained in character while doing so. The breadth of the Bennett witch dynasty was revealed. A new werewolf was unleashed. Bonnie and JerEMO became a cute couple (despite some idiot surmising that a Bonnie/Damon romance was inevitable). Mrs Mayor gave a shout-out to everyone who rolls their eyes at the Mystic Falls event of the week when she said of the masquerade, "I don't know how it's supposed to help the homeless." And Elena was abducted thus opening up a whole new chapter. There were probably other things that happened that I can't remember right now. That's how it's supposed to work, TV. There's supposed to be too much good stuff to remember.

Friday Night Lights
JB: This first episode felt like a last episode so what's the last episode going to be like? Stoic Riggins in the prison yard. Billy Riggins begging The Coach for a chance to prove himself. Julie Taylor leaves home. Landry's last night. And The Coach's "I'm gonna miss this"? Speaking for all of us.

Nikita

CC: Can we talk about Nikita's ridonkulous cut-out loungewear? Seriously. That floor-length maxidress made out of what appeared to be very soft, comfy T-material, but with panels missing on either side of the stomach? What's that about? Rib ventilation? And then that shirt with the multiple slashes all along the arms? I'd watch this show for the hilarious wardrobe alone, but lucky me there's also cool stuff like that guy becoming a cleaner, which I called, oh, six whole seconds before it actually happened. I'm getting smarter!
JB:It's probably a bad sign where you're watching a show and you find yourself thinking about the show you wish they'd made. I wonder if the people who work on Nikita regret starting the story so far down the line. I kind of wish she was a long-time agent who just found out she worked for the bad guys and dedicated herself from that moment on to taking them down. Yes, I wish Nikita was exactly like season 2 of Alias. But only season 2 because it all fell to pieces after that.

The Walking Dead

CC: Holy shit. This show is fucking FANTASTIC. My mind is blown! Yeah, the setup was 28 Days Later, and the opening was reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead (zombie blond child, always scary), but so what, all zombie stuff starts from that same basic place, and it was all awesome anyway, and just got progressively MORE awesome as it went on. The zombie effects are CRRRAZY good, and they are not skimping on the violence and gore AT ALL (that half-lady? that fucked up, crawling half-lady? that horse? eating that fucking horse? oh my god) and they've already planted the seeds of several very interesting storylines, so you KNOW all that drama PLUS flesh-eating monsters at every turn? I want a zillion episodes of this on my DVR and I want them there RIGHT NOW.
JB: I've seen enough horror films and enough zombie films not to be scared by...I WAS SCARED ALL THE WAY THROUGH THIS. When zombie mom staggered back to her house. When the main dude rode through empty Atlanta, turned a corner and saw the zombie mob. When he rolled under the tank and looked like he was gonna shoot himself. When the zombies ate the horse. THEY ATE A WHOLE HORSE! We've all been fooled by fantastic pilots that turned into terrible series but I have a feeling this one's going to work. AMC owes us for Rubicon.

Boardwalk Empire
JB: Once again, The Jimmy Darmody Show. Nucky's daddy issues versus Darmody getting the marksman with half a face to dispose of the guy who hacked up his whore= no contest.

Supernatural
Sensitive Brother: This week we...
JB:I probably ran that into the ground a few weeks ago. Best and worst of Supernatural on display here. Great creepy pre-credits sequence-- a jittery waitress driven to suicide when everyone around her starts telling her the truth about herself into the most brutal way possible--gets quickly pissed away when the two brothers deduct a stolen Trumpet of Truth is causing an outbreak of honesty-based deaths. They look at a TV screen and decide a local TV reporter is behind the slaughter. They go to her house and, yes, she turns out to be Veritas, The Goddess of Truth. But then the Goddess of Truth reveals that the sensitive brother has returned from hell without a soul. Now, I'm not saying the two guys on Supernatural are great actors but they're great at being the two guys on Supernatural. Jensen Ackles, who plays the lunkhead, has this looooong no-dialogue reaction to the not-totally-unexpected news that his sibling is probably a demon. And then he beats the shit out of him. Okay, we just saw zombies eat a horse. But this is the CW. This is a teen-aimed network show devoting five minutes of airtime to one guy punching another guy until his knuckles are bloody are the eyes he's hitting swell shut. I find I'm scaring easier these days.

X Factor
JB: The Halloween show. Which lead to this:
And this, which received Best Performance Of The Season accolades and sent the original song skyrocketing back into the charts:

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-11-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Special Dregs Of Europop Edition. The Humpe Sisters. Or Humpe & Humpe as they were known in their homeland. Or Swimming With Sharks as they were known outside their homeland. "Careless Love".

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-10-31T12:49:00.000-07:00

Billy Nicholls. "London Social Degree". From 1968 but so fresh it could have come out in 1995.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-10-30T14:02:00.001-07:00

Amwe. Girls And Boys. The Blur one.

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-10-29T12:19:00.001-07:00

And it's an Icelandic Kate Bush cover. Eivor. `Hounds of Love'

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-10-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

Mint Royale. `Don't Falter'. Never not happy to hear this.

TV Club: I Love It!

2010-10-25T15:52:00.000-07:00

There's a lot going on here. Who knows what's going on at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

SNL
JB: LIndsay Lohan's already got enough irrational reasons to hate Emma Stone.Now she has to spend Saturday night in rehab watching someone with similar hair, features and gravelly voice impersonating her. I had my own irrational reasons to hate the collegiate comedy writer guy on Weekend Update but his I Love It killed. Hader breaking during Stefon was beyond endearing. The fake Ke$ha Grape Jelly short is actually better than the real Ke$ha's new song. And all her old ones. And I know the song they played during the French teen sketch. It's this:
CC: Emma Stone, great, not that they gave her the range-iest stuff, but whatever. Most of the rest of the show, not so much. I think those two last things were my fave. And of course Stefon, which at this point I am confused as to whether Bill Hader is just like "fuck it" and just lets himself crack up as part of the thing, since we know it's gonna happen anyway. I also liked the dancing part of that French sketch because, you know, dancing. It vaguely reminded me of that classic Gilda Radner/Steve Martin "Dancing in the Dark" thing where they just sort of danced/flailed all over the studio. Yeah, that's right, I just referenced a classic. From the 70s. Go me.

Nikita
JB: As much TV as I watch, there's still times I feel like I've never seen any TV at all. I was like Whaaat when Devon Sawa fessed up to killing Nikita's goofy web designer. Didn't see it coming. I have, however, seen enough to know that the gun Lil' Nikki shot fake terrorist with was full of blanks.
CC: HA! They totally did a "That WAS the test"! Hell, they even did a "That TEST was the TEST"! They doubled it up! Ridiculous. Hilarious. I totally thought Devon Sawa was gonna kill himself with morphine, by the way, so call me stupid there (I swear, for as much as this show is ridonk, it manages to pretty much fool me with a plot twist every week). By the way, I don't believe for a second that Nikita fell in love with Web Design McGee. Come on. I mean, on the one hand, sure, maybe she WOULD go for that boring guy cuz her life's so badass and exciting, but on the other hand, really? REALLY? Whatever. Loved the fact that towards the end of the show when she had to go get Alex, she fully changed from ridiculously tight pants into ridiculously tighter pants. THAT was the outfit change. Thus is life when you're Nikita.

Vampire Diaries
JB: Elena and Stefan: Nooo!
Matt: Nooo!
Underused Aunt Jenna: Nooo!
Somewhat prematurely disposed of Uncle Werewolf: Nooo!
Vampire Caroline and Sheriff Mom's Loving and Mutually Respectful Relationship: Nooo!
Damon and Bonnie the witch as a potential couple because I have a feeling that might be the road they're going down: Nooo!
CC: Oh, man, vervain soup in the well! OUCH! Katherine's smarter than everyone. If I were Elena at this point I'd probably just kill myself. Everything just seems like too much trouble. Her being alive is literally just too much trouble for her and everyone she cares about. Plus, she has to do some goddamn town event every week. How old is THAT getting? I'm merely watching it and it's kinda getting old (and yet not, somehow...like...their ridiculous charity events every week somehow do not actually offend me, unlike the ridiculous singing assignments every week on Glee...gee, maybe it has something to do with the MUCH BETTER WRITING ON THIS SHOW).

Supernatural
Lunkhead Brother: We've done more than our share of vampire-based episodes over the last few years but we've never taken a big shit on Twilight and it's dimwit fans before so this one was far and away our greatest hit.
Sensitive Brother: What did the gross, sweaty, Sons Of Anarchy-type vamp say about the simpletons who love Stephenie Meyers?
Lunkhead Brother: He said they want a promise ring with fangs. Then I macheted his head off.
Sensitive Brother:Awesome. Also, you know how I went to hell at the end of the last season and then came straight back at the start of this one? It might not be me. Just saying.

The Good Wife
JB: My token boring show. Except it's got sort of good. I think it's because they stopped worshipping at the altar of noble, blameless Julianne Margulies and now it's all backstabbing and shady deals under the table. Look at the cast of this thing: Jason Street, Logan Huntzberger from Gilmore Girls, Richard Gilmore from Gilmore Girls, Alan Cumming, Griffin Dunne, Anika Noni Rose, another of Meryl Streep's daughters, Christine Baranski, Josh Charles. I would mention Archie Panjabi. She won Best Supporting Actress after all. But it's like she's on a different show. Her show's about an omnisexual investigator in thigh-high leather boots who deals with rival investigator Jason Street poking around her made-up background by taking a baseball bat to his rental car and then grabbing a fistful of his crotch and administering executive relief.
CC: Wait. Jason Street is on this show? That's where he went? YAY! Good for him! :D I'm so happy! But I'm not gonna watch it.

The X Factor
JB: This happened on TV. On a show looking for a new pop star. Watched by millions.
So did this:
And this. Which I kind of liked.
CC: Two seconds. Five seconds. Five seconds. Is how long I lasted on each of those, respectively.

Amazing Race
CC: That fob dad is so freakin' cute. That is all.

Boardwalk Empire
CC: YES! Thank you! Death! Mayhem! Multiple people getting shot unexpectedly (cuz I am stupid and did not see it coming) at point-blank range! Yes please! More please! More Al Capone and Jimmy Darmody coldbloodedly killing the fuck out of people and less of everything else plzkthx! Seriously, I'm not smart enough to follow anything on this show except for the murders and not even them half the time. Like, I guess FBI guy is either super religious, or a perv, or a super-religious perv? I honestly have no idea what all that hitting-self-with-belt business was about. I mean, I have some idea, but I don't know if it's right. Eh. Who cares.

JB: He was flagellating himself over having impure thoughts about 16 year-old Glasgow's own Kelly MacDonald. Whose body double was Not Saggy. But the main point is, this show suddenly DOES have a charismatic and believable guy as it's star. It's Michael Pitt. Never liked him in the few movies i ever saw him in, but it's suddenly all working for him and his five-knuckle dagger. The Darmody/ Capone storyline is SO much better than everything else. And it takes place in Chicago. Not Atlantic City. So the best bits of Boardwalk Empire have nothing to do with the Boardwalk Empire.

Movie Club
Splice
CC: JB, I finally saw Splice, which meant I could finally go back and read what you wrote about Splice, and can I just say that this movie was ALL SORTS OF FUCKED UP. I've got a pretty strong stomach for gore and fucked up shit and whatever, like any proper enjoyer of horror movies, but this wasn't really a horror movie (I did very much dig the part with the two caterpillar things suddenly stabbing each other to death), it was just...I mean, it was all sorts of stuff, and much slower and less horror-y than the trailer would lead you to believe, and also by the end, JUST GROSS. Ew. Sarah Polley got fucked. By herself. Like, *literally*. No thank you. From now on I will take my Sarah Polley in the same form I used to take it: running away from zombies with that guy from Medium whenever Dawn of the Dead shows up on cable.

Paranormal Activity 2
CC: There was activity. It was paranormal. Pretty much in the same way the first one was paranormal. So pretty good. But then the ending was bad. You hear me, Paranormal Activity people? You're lazy. LAZY!

The Loved Ones

JB: Let's make it a horror trifecta. This is an Australian film--but don't stop reading-- which, I guess will come out here on DVD at some point or maybe already has. Worth watching because: it's Pretty In Pink meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Except the quirky girl in the home-made pink dress has her crush abducted, carves a heart in his chest, drills a hole in his forehead and throws him the basement with the rest of her mutant lobotomized former prom dates. Here's the trailer:

Mixtape Club: Song Of The Day!

2010-10-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

And it's a cute one. Sucrette is, according to my extensive research, either the name of the group or the singer. The song is called Love Prologue.

The Happiest TV Club On Earth

2010-10-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

Download it here or purchase the limited-edition vinyl package at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Glee
CC: It's been documented in SO many places on the interwebs now how this show has totally taken a fucking nosedive (I bet a lot of people have already broken up with it, and I would too except for my fondness for certain cast members and of course, singing and dancing in general), so there's almost no point, but I will say that I only watched three things: Mercedes and Santana, who KILLED IT, then Kurt killing it all by his own self, then Tina and Mike Chang not killing it because I found that song totally irritating and they were fine and cute and whatever, but again, thanks for letting Harry Shum dance, but in that case I want to see MORE OF IT, by which I mean more dancing and also less of his clothes. So, work on that. In related news, I saw Rob Hoffman of Step Up 2 fame at a party and almost freaked out. He was clearly doing that thing where he was like, half-assedly dancing because, you know, everyone else at this place is a total plebe and let's not draw TOO much attention to myself even though if I actually busted out I would have everyone staring and cheering within half a second. I applaud him for that, but I also REALLY wanted to see him actually bust out and have everyone staring and cheering within half a second. Oh well. I was of course too shy to go up and say something to him because I suck as a human being, so I just stared at him a lot from afar, and occasionally from a-near, and then he left.
JB:I have no short-term memory so I have no short-term memory so there might have been earlier episodes of Glee I like as much as this one but, I don't know if I mentioned, I have no short-term memory. Here's what I liked: ladykisses, scissoring, Kurt being called on his creepy stalker bullshit, River Deep Mountain High (Fantastic. Santana solo now! Start the Facebook campaign!), "Is it a blanket?", Dianna Agron rocking a close-up better than anyone else in that not-totally ugly cast, the Asian duet. Here's what I didn't: the scarlet-lettering of Brittany for cynically deflowering Artie. It's not like she didn't tell him she'd slept with the whole team. I demand an episode nailing him for his whiny I-am-my-disability passive-aggressive behavior. And I don't look to Glee for any kind of logic or consistency but did that Rachel-and-Finn-have-to-lose-

the-duet-contest story make any kind of sense? Also, it wasn't until the trailer for next week, I even noticed Jane Lynch hadn't been in the entire episode.
CC: Okay so obviously even though I have many, many issues with this show, I was still sucked in by the fact that they posted all the Rocky Horror songs online, because I loooove Rocky Horror, so I listened to the Mercedes version of Sweet Transvestite and you know what? It fucking rocks. THAT is what they should be doing with all the songs all the time, fucking changing them up-- even just by switching the goddamn gender of the singer, we're talking MILES of improvement. Anyway so now I'm looking forward to the Halloween ep. It'll probably disappoint me. :(

Mad Men
CC: The best part of that whole thing was not "see ya later Dr. Faye" even though I've basically been calling for her head ever since she appeared, and it was not "oh my god, Betty, you are such a fucking bitch" from Henry Francis even though that was totally awesome-- it was that whole Joan/Peggy exchange after they found out Don's marrying Megan. Joan's line as soon as Peggy entered? Gold. And god bless Jessica Pare and her teeth.

JB: People are seriously pulling the Worst Episode Ever card? Like they couldn't believe Don impulsively proposing to Megan? Like that hasn't been his m.o since day one( remember him begging Rachel Menken to run off with him?) Like he knew Betty any better when he married her? Shut up, anyone who was disappointed,you're disqualified from watching Season 5.

Boardwalk Empire
CC: Hey, remember when this show was about gangsters and shit? And violent stuff happened and it was actually interesting to watch? Instead of feeling like four hours of social studies homework? Yeah.

JB: Chalky White's "I ain't building no bookcase" monologue from last week changed everything for those of us (aka America) who watch this because it's something we think we're supposed to do. This week changed everything back. Steve Buscemi's a great actor and a good director but I think buying Steve Buscemi as The Guy In Charge Of Everything is part of Boardwalk Empire's problem. The real-life Guy In Charge Of Everything was of Gandolfini-esque proportions. We know Gandolfini wasn't about to sign up for another HBO gangster series, so who else could have filled those big shoes? My immediate suggestion: Ray Winstone.
Cut to:
CC: Who the fuck is Ray Winstone? Is he a dancer? Does he have awesome abs? No? Fuck him.
Cut to:
JB:I'm replaying Boardwalk Empire in my head with Ray Winstone in it and every scene is immediately better.

30 Rock Live Episode
JB: We don't normally cover sitcoms because what is there to say besides It was funny or It wasn't funny, but this was a real triumph. I liked hearing actual laughter on a prime-time comedy. I liked the nervousness. I liked the whole we're-putting-on-a-show vibe. I know there was 30% less comedy than usual but I tend to miss about 30% so that was fine with me. If they did this every week, 30 Rock would be a much bigger hit. Even if they don't, someone should be thinking about getting a live weekly sitcom on the air. #thiswillneverhappen

Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills
JB: I did not watch this but Me At 16 did. Reason: one of the RH's of BH is named Lisa Vanderpump which is obviously hilarious but, to Me At 16, was also the name of the main reason to watch the video of the song from My Favorite Album Of All Time:
ABC - Poison Arrow
Uploaded by UniversalMusicGroup. - See the latest featured music videos.
Much Much Older Me stuck around long enough to see Camille Grammer wave goodbye to her husband Kelsey as he drove off to his big Broadway musical which turned out to be THE LAST TIME SHE WOULD EVER SEE HIM.

Supernatural
Sensitive Brother: What the fucking fuck? I'm not even in this episode. You see me for, like, thirty seconds. The whole thing's about our old craggy grizzled demon-hunter mentor. That dude's a supporting character. Supporting!
Lunkhead Brother: Yeah, I thought for my directorial debut...
Sensitive Brother: YOU DIRECTED IT, you son of a bitch? You're in it, though, right? No skimping on your brooding close-ups or angsty monologues.
Lunkhead Brother: I thought I'd take the opportunity to pay tribute to the classic Buffy episode The Zeppo and, by extension, Tom Stoppard's Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, wherein a supposedly peripheral character takes center-stage.
Sensitive Brother: Asshole.

X-Factor:
JB: Nigel Lythgoe's been doing a lot of pre-emptive defending of the new-look, not-at-all-doomed American Idol. J.Lo tells it like it is. Steven Tyler's got a heart as big as Texas. Randy Jackson's stepping up like never before. The upcoming season is all about artistic integrity. Raise the white flag, Lythgoe, Cowell's bringing the circus to town. Here come the clips!

and finally:

Movie Club

The Social Network
JB: We may have lost Cox and Arquette but we've gained Fincher and Sorkin from whom I want more movies right now( and also no TV from Sorkin ever again).
CC: I fucking loved almost everything about this movie and the things I did not love are just tiny nitpicks (WHY with the equation-writing on the window, I don't even care if they did that in real life, it's just such a busted movie thing at this point; I didn't even go to Harvard and I know fuck truck chicks don't look like that; it was jarring, although not unpleasant, to see the chick from Vampire Diaries, cuz it was like omg, that's not a groupie that's a VAMPIRE!; cats who look like Hitler already sounded wrong and then I looked it up and yeah, it apparently wasn't invented till two years after when the movie was set). But Andrew Garfield RULED, and of course I love JT, and the whole thing was literally a situation of, it started and I was already leaning nerdily forward in my seat, and then when the last scene ended I was like "what? it's over already? no! more please! more movie please!" Loved it.

Red
JB: They missed out the BO from the start of the title. Ha!( It's not terrible but I'm sick of seeing Bruce Willis wander through movies like someone just woke him up from his nap)

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
JB: Money Never Sleeps. Except when it's watching Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

What If TV Club Was One Of Us?

2010-10-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

It all goes down here. It comes back up again at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mad Men
JB: My predictions are so consistently wrong I'm not going to say Don's Jerry Maguire-like mission statement will inspire another Conrad Hilton figure to emerge from the shadows and save SCDP in the nick of time. I'm also not going to predict that Doc Blonde's "have your girl make the reservations' was a message that she knows about Shark Tooth Megan and, while she may be the most accommodating and understanding woman Don's ever been involved with, she's not THAT accommodating and understanding. Her reaction wasn't that different from Betty seeing Sally with Creepy Glen.

Glee
JB: Could have been all sorts of ass. Wasn't. Reason: Colfer. As heavy-handed as this show is, I'm impressed they kept him a non-believer. Also impressive: the lack of Schue.
CC: Thought I would hate I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Loved it. Thought I would hate One of Us. Enjoyed it and wanted it to go twice as long. Thought I could watch the entire episode instead of going back to my habit of fastforwarding through large chunks. Was wrong.

SNL
JB: Oh wow, Fred Armisen looks just like Artie! Oh no, it's Gilly! Oh wow, Jay Pharoah's Denzel is on point! Oh no, Jane Lynch is trapped in a sketch with no end. That's all I saw.

Nikita
JB: Devon Sawa's got an Anthony Michael Hall thing going on. Once scrawny, now roided-up to almost unrecognizable proportions. Hey, there's Bianca Lawson again. Hey, there's Stan Lee. Stop doing cameos, Stan. Liked: Shane West's face when he thought that
"Your girlfriend's on the phone' was directed at him. Didn't like: I hate that thing they do in shows like this when the hero and the bad guy come face to face and she does nothing for bullshit script reasons. She could have stopped Roid Guy shooting Division Bad Guy. She could have wounded and abducted Division Bad Guy and... yeah, okay, I'm babbling. Just don't set her up as superwoman and then make her not superwoman when it's convenient.

Vampire Diaries
JB: Vampire/ werewolf alliance! Also, more evidence for my Damon-is-emotionally-12-years-old accusation: his whining "But you're my friend' to Sheriff Mom.
CC: Oh. My. Fucking. God. Best ep since last season's finale. That was nuts. Vamp Caroline continues to be the best thing ever. And I can't believe Nina Dobrev gets to make out with every single guy on this show. And Damon's voice on "Hey" towards the end of the ep as Elena headed for the door almost killed me, just the way it sounded. And good lord, I know this ain't the first time they've done it, but Elena feeding Stefan her blood? Come on. COME ON! Hey censors! You know every time that happens on a vampire show it's basically like we're WATCHING PEOPLE HAVE SEX, RIGHT? Okay, just wanted to make that clear. P.S. Has there ever been a TV show with more use of the word "system" re: things in it? "In her system." "In your system." "As soon as it leaves her system." Etc. Etc. If you think too hard about it, about exactly what they mean whenever they're waiting for blood or vervein or whatever to leave someone's system, it makes the whole vamp thing less kinda sexy and more just kinda gross. BIOLOGY! *jazz hands*

Supernatural
Lunkhead Brother: We're back, baby! Plagues! Boils! Blood! Locusts eating their way out of the inside of a cop's skull! Plus, we got our season arc. It's angels! Angry angels. Which means...
Castiel the deadpan, humorless angel: I have returned. To take everything the idiot brothers say at face value and handle the the weighty and continually changing exposition. Which, this year, seems to be that God is no longer in the picture, there's a civil war among angels and an apocalypse is looming. Wait, isn't that EXACTLY what we did last season?
Sensitive Brother: You missed the most important part. After I got done banging a whore, she forgot to ask me for the money.

Gigantic
JB: Marti Noxon's new show. Kind of a Hollywood Gossip Girl with socialites swapped out for celebrity offspring. The low-wattage cast mangled the few funny lines and seemed smaller than life. Which is understandable, seeing as the lead character is played by MERYL STREEP'S DAUGHTER! And her nemesis is JOE MANTEGNA'S DAUGHTER!

Teach: Tony Danza
JB: Tony doesn't really want to be a teacher, he wants to be a teacher in a movie. He wants his O Captain My Captain Dead Poets moment. He wants his Mr Holland's Opus. This week, he tried teaching Of Mice And Men to his 9th graders. They didn't get it. A few of the learning challenged kids asked to go the school resource room where they get individual help. Tony wasn't buying it. Because he thinks he's in a movie, he kept banging on at them "You're smart. I know you can do this." His belief was, that if the students stared at the words long enough, they would magically transform from an incomprehensible block of text into a story that wold touch their hearts. When that didn't happen and he was reprimanded by his teaching counselor, he wept for ten minutes. He also made two other students cry by getting up in their faces and caring too much.

X Factor
JB: This week, Britain went bananas for Gamu. Gam-who? She was one of the girls who didn't make the cut last week. One of the non-trainwreck, non-drama queens. She was also an immigrant from Zimbabwe whose passport, it turned out, may not have been entirely in order. Or her mother was claiming state benefits she wasn't entitled to.It's all a bit hazy. Anyway, the UK press got hold of the fact that Gamu not only didn't get chosen for the nation's #1 show, she may be returned to Zimbabwe where firing squads are waiting at the airport for her to touch down. Where did the anger at this injustice direct itself? At X factor judge Cheryl Cole. I don't have the energy to recap The Cheryl Cole Story. Suffice to say, once she was reviled as a racist bully, then she made herself over into The People's Princess and suddenly, she was being seen as the heartless bitch who was sending a poor little girl to her certain death. For Cheryl Cole, it was a week of death threats and beefed-up security. All of which was forgotten when the insane live show actually began. I don't know if there was any kind of theme running through this episode. Let's take a look:
No, not sure. Shall we see more?
Can't tell. More?
One more?
Maybe I was wrong.

TV Club Is Outraged, OUTRAGED!

2010-10-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

The anger is mounting here. It boils over at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Glee
CC: I was SO looking forward to this episode and then SO angry as soon as it started. Angry that there was no story or anything even resembling a story. Angry that they attempted to formulate a plotline that made the Britney Spears stuff make sense, because it didn't make sense, so why even bother. Angry that they insist on overproducing the fuck out of everyone, even though most of the cast can sing their faces off (that last song should've been Lea Michele's voice, NO electronic interference, and one guitar, that's it, full stop). Angry that Artie is the only male cast member who can sing AND dance equally well and they stick the poor kid in a wheelchair. Angry that for some reason they think it's okay to put a wheelchair kid on the football team (there are no rules against it? there ARE rules against it, there are TONS of rules against it, you fucking morons) which is about the same thing as making it so that Artie gets hit by lightning and can suddenly walk again, so why don't they just do that, because then they don't have to waste his dance talent anymore. Angry that Mr. Schue got to be in the Toxic number, because the less I see of that guy on this show, the better (he was great on the Tony Awards or whatever it was, motherfucker is talented, but this character has never done him any, and continues to do him no, favors). Angry that they did NOTHING to make the Britney songs their own-- NOTHING! FUCKING NOTHING! They did the Baby One More Time video basically shot for shot. Are we supposed to be impressed? Are we supposed to give you credit for moving the key up and finding one of the scariest-abbed female backup dancers in the history of life (seriously, check that girl out...she was deeply frightening)? Yes, you put Mark Kanemura in there too. Yes, I love you for that. But it is MADDENING that this episode was a ratings bonanza when it was SO BAD. It was flat out bad. And I LOVE Heather Morris. And Heather Morris fucking KILLED IT, killed every moment, killed the dancing, killed her one-liners like usual, and the biggest laugh for me wasn't even a line, it was when she did that sort of not-particularly-energetic fist-pump move towards the end. Heather Morris fucking KILLED IT. And yet. This episode. SUCKED. And it's not gonna get any better. The show's not gonna get any better, because THIS is what gets them ratings. This. This fucking TRAVESTY. Fuck you, Glee. FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!!! See you next week. :\

JB: On a more positive note, I'd like to single out the performance of Me At 16. I liked it when Me At !6 began squealing `Wanky! Wanky!' I enjoyed Me At 16's tell-tale butt-sweat stain. And, of course, the spell cast by Me At 16's Jewish cloud.(Except mine was more like a satellite dish). Also dug John Stamos's almost-subliminal shout-out to the Howard Stern fans in the audience which, I'm guessing, numbered me and Howard Stern who was watching for the first time and shared the same opinion as everyone else who found this an inexplicable mess.

Mad Men
JB:Will we get through this season without another Roger Sterling heart attack? I fear we will not. Not a fan of Peggy's beatnik boyfriend but Stan the art guy is a hideous douche.

Vampire Diaries
CC: There are way too many baubles with powers (BWPs? Should I try and start this? Nah.) on this show. Like, everybody has a daywalking ring, and there's that moonstone Uncle Werewolf is obsessed with, and the whole thing of he was unharmed by the silver, like, who KNOWS whether that's actually a thing or whether he's got some sort of anti-silver necklace or some crap, and also, HELLO, Katherine pulled an iocane powder with the vervein and now it doesn't affect her anymore? Come on. COME ON! Next thing you know, staking a vampire won't kill 'em. Blah. Oh well, still a good ep (terrible sightlines on the Katherine/Elena face-to-face though...come on, people, it can't be that hard, Nina Dobrev is RIGHT THERE and you're telling me you don't know how tall she is for the little ball on a stick?).

JB: You know in Japan Jersey Shore is called Macaroni Rascals ? (I'm not kidding. Google it if you don't believe me). If I was a buyer for a foreign network and I'd just sampled a bunch of Vampire Diaries episodes, I might think about renaming it Useless Stabbing Show. Because there's a lot of stabbing, staking and syringing and the majority of it to little effect. Vintage Somerhalder: introducing himself to Uncle Werewolf thusly: "I'm a dick"

Nikita
CC: Girlcrush continues. Plot confusion continues as well (I did register that they had that cool twist this week, but all the stuff AROUND it, like what was that guy actually doing besides sweatshops or whatever, I have no idea and also do not care). More bad flashback wigs (seriously...what's with that? the odds are that Maggie Q from 6 years ago IN REAL LIFE looks exactly like she does today, so, why not just do that?).

JB: Terrible wigs. Baby bomb. That's all I remember.

SNL
CC: Kanye wins. Kanye wins. KANYE FUCKING WINS. He won anyway with his pre-performance still photo that then moved, and he wins because he's dating Selita Ebanks, but he super duper undeniably wins just on the sheer WTF-ness of those two performances, the second of which was the musical guest equivalent of What Up With That (which was my favorite incarnation of it since the very first one...Sudeikis pulled out some new shit, Cranston went for it, they got Morgan fucking Freeman, and did I mention the Sudeikis dance moves, okay yes I did). Loved Nasim Pedrad as the kid who just wanted to paint a pegasus. Kristin Wiig, always good. Fred Armisen and sparkling cider. Kenan, GOD BLESS HIM, my new favorite thing anyone has ever said in the history of the world is "Turn aroundst." So much other funny stuff too. Great show.

JB:Tough luck on Bryan Cranston agreeing to do an opening number about nobody knowing who he is and then getting obliterated by Kanye West AND Ernest Borgnine. And, seriously? You hire Jay Pharoah who is A) black and B) an impressionist and we're still stuck with Armisen's Obama? As for The Miley Cyrus Show, it ranks a little bit above The Prince Show but a little bit below The Barry Gibb Show, The Dakota Fanning Show and The Joe Pesci Show.

Teach: Tony Danza
JB; Don't stop reading. This is the least scripted unscripted washed-up celebrity fish-out-of-water reality show I've ever seen. The idea is, Tony Danza wanted to be a teacher before all that other stuff happened. Now all that other stuff has stopped happening so he's trying to make his dream come true by teaching English at a Philadelphia high school. A&E's record with this kind of thing (Gene Simmons, Steven Seagal, Kirstie Alley) is not stellar. But they make up for it with Danza. Every bit of his vanity, insecurity and desperation to please is on display here. He's so nervous in front of the kids he sweats straight through his shirt. He tries to tap dance to keep their interest. He doesn't know what omniscient means. He cries when the principal lectures him about taking the job seriously. He cries again when he's reprimanded for not signing in first thing in the morning ( I might have cried, too: the secretary was a raging bitch). He earns a Coach Taylor-like look of disdain from the school's own Coach Taylor when he attempts to bust out a Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose but ends up talking about himself for two minutes. And then the final chunk of the episode takes place at a Friday night football game where the team is drenched by unceasing sheets of rain and a waterlogged Danza is besieged by angry parents, none of whom care about his dwindling fame and all of whom want his guarantee he's not going to piss away their kids' education just for a few more weeks of TV work. I give Teach an A!

Supernatural
Lunkhead Brother: Shapeshifters? Seriously? Haven't we been down the shapeshifters road once or twenty five times?
Sensitive Brother: Yeah, but shapeshifting BABIES? Fresh twist. Plus we get to play good and evil versions of ourselves.
Lunkhead Brother: Haven't we been down THAT road once or forty times?
Sensitive Brother: Look, it gets rid of your girlfriend and her kid and gets us back to work, so maybe this series can actually begin and we can find out if there's going to be any sort of arc rather than just going back to monster-of-the-week stuff.

X Factor
JB: Bear with me because things are about to get a little bit clippy. Up to now, The X hasn't differed from American Idol at all. Now it begins to differ a little. This week the finalists in each category--the over 28s(ie: the joke category), the groups (Ie: the other joke category), the girls and the boys get shipped off to the judges' houses (ie: some go to one of Cowell's many unattended mansions, the others end up in hotels). The judges then whittle the groups down from 8 to 3 finalists they will mentor over the course of the next bunch of live shows. So, as usual: the groups: bullshit. The over 28's: all insane. The boys: a Chris Martin-type has a decent shot. Which brings us to the girls: the six black girls and two white girls. The six black girls who deliver flawless final auditions. And the two white girls who... see for yourself:

and

Now let's take a quick look at their competition:

and

First two: sailed through. Second two(plus two other black chicks who barely got six seconds screen time between them): booted. And I get it. It's a TV show. Personality, even awful, horrible personality like Bats For Lashes, is key. But just don't pretend it's a singing competition.

Having said that, let me now draw your attention to the third girl who made it through to the finals.

I would buy that (if I hadn't stopped paying for music sometime in 2001) but I'm still outraged...

CC: Fireflies! FIREFLIES! FIREFLIES! FIREFLIES! Who else was just transported back to the last time Fireflies was mentioned on this here blog, on account of the guy doing the robot on SYTYCD and it totally floored me and tears were shed? Just me? Yeah, just me. I want everyone on this show to get bonus points whenever anyone says "meself." I just find that a total delight.

And finally...

Movie Club

Easy A
JB: Best teen film since Clueless. I'm not wrong.

Let Me In
JB: Best faithful adaptation of a Swedish vampire movie to fail to win an American audience because people here only respond to hot vampire dudes.

Shit My TV Club Says

2010-09-28T09:01:00.003-07:00

If you can't stand the heat here, stay out of the kitchen at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mad Men
JB: Last week left me for dead. This week miraculously revived me before beating me senseless with a wooden cane. So much misery: Don's panic attack, Roger reduced to begging for his life, Joan left to take care of things on her own, Lane's old-school British parenting. I do not predict a happy ending for anyone. Especially not Don. Pete owns him. And it probably wasn't a great idea to tell the blonde, mob-related doctor about his double life when he's about to cheat on her with Megan the beanpole secretary. On the other hand, I was fully expecting another crushing disappointment for Sally Draper and was pleasantly surprised when her Beatles tickets came through.
CC: Can we talk about Alison Brie's pregnancy nightie? I could not stop laughing. What WAS that? That thing was ridiculous (and also perfect).

Jersey Shore
JB: The endless weeks of Ronnie being a treacherous scumbag culminated in a catfight between Sammi and Jwoww. The last few weeks have all been about The Situation trying to bust Angelina for basically pulling the same shit he does. And that's headed for a Snooki/ Angelina smackdown. Can we just fill a cage with mud and move it into the house?

SNL
JB: You know what I like? Lots of cameos. You know what I don't like? The unadorned sound of Katy Perry's voice. You know what I think? By the time this season's over, Jay Pharoah will be starring in his own Beverly Hills Cop reboot.
CC: Highlight: Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg in that acting thing. And Kenan singing Fast Car. Shut up. I don't care what anyone says. Those were the highlights.

Glee
JB: Quinn v Santana? Best acting ever seen in this entire series. Ever. They went for that shit. I liked the meta-opening where Mr. Schue was all, "the kids don't like it when I rap?" But guess what, we-- that's right, I'm aligning myself with the kids, why not?-- don't like it when ANYONE RAPS. Finn: no flow. Artie: can't hang. Fair enough, bring in a ringer to spook Rachel Berry but this show desperately needs someone who can get through sixteen bars without stumbling.

Nikita
JB: I can't really recommend Nikita to anyone but I also can't deny that I'm into it. And by it, I mean her. I'm not hailing Maggie Q as a comic genius or anything but she thrives in scenarios that require more than kicking and crazy hotness. Like this episode where she was paired together with a jittery civilian. Maybe she'll find an abandoned baby at the door of her huge loft. Actually, I don't have the patience to wait for them to do that. I might have to start writing Nikita fanfiction right now...
CC: I can TOTALLY recommend Nikita to everyone! Most people won't, and shouldn't, listen to me, but the power of my girlcrush on Maggie Q is strong (I'll fight you for her, JB), so if you, like me, are apparently susceptible to half-asian chicks with limbs the size of twigs kicking the crap out of multiple people on a weekly basis while somehow having perfectly imperfect hair, get on this. I seriously don't know the plots of any of the episodes so far. Doesn't matter. Still watching.

The Event
JB: You know how Rubicon was impossible to follow and you know how the new version of V was deadly dull. That's basically what The Event is. It's a little bit paranoid conspiracy thriller and a little bit alien invasion. Obviously, they couldn't sell it as Rubicon-meets- New V because who'd want to see that? So they're pushing it as Lost-meets-24. Which it isn't. But am I on board? Until they make me me feel stupid for getting invested--which I absolutely know will happen--yes I am.

Vampire Diaries
JB:The wolf was disappointing. Candice Accola, once again, was not. I don't know Ian Somerhalder's whole acting history but I can't imagine he doesn't jump out of bed in the morning and race to the set because this part he's got is fantastic. That bit at the end when he admits he snapped Elena's emo brother's neck and then threw a massive sulk because she didn't want to be friends with him? That was a Don Draper you-think-he's cool- but-he's-a-psycho-with-the emotional-maturity of-a-12-year-old moment.
CC: Let's take a trip down memory lane to a little show called The OC, season 1, the pilot of which had the insanely annoying Summer Roberts as played by Rachel Bilson. I hated Summer at first. HAAATED her. And then suddenly, a few episodes in, everything flipped and the character became utterly charming while still somehow being the same, and I totally began to heart her. Candice Accola? Is my 2010 Summer. Can't say the same for the werewolf effects. When did it become the thing to just have werewolves be wolves when they wolf out? Whatever happened to the good old days of having them turn into freaky, genuinely fucked-up half-man half-wolf monster-looking hybrid beasts that actually LOOKED SCARY? I blame Twilight.

X Factor
JB: This young lady is polarizing the nation. Half the country doesn't like her. The other half CAN"T STAND HER. For me, she's a clear case of someone who will bomb out halfway through the live shows--which haven't even started yet, this shit goes on till Christmas!-- and winds up with a better career than the eventual winner.

Supernatural
JB: A few months back I wrote about all four seasons of Supernatural but I never got around to talking about the fifth one. So, briefly:
Season Five
Sensitive Brother: Oh no, I was bamboozled into opening the last gate of Hell and unleashing Lucifer who wants to use my body as a vessel to destroy the world.
Lunkhead Brother: Dick. Luckily, Saint Michael wants to use me as a vessel to stop you which totally plays in to all our sibling issues as well as building up to an apocalypse that will leave nothing but charred smoking earth.
Sensitive Brother: Wow, it's gonna be an epic season. I guess they've really upped our budget to help us tell this massive story.
Lunkhead Brother: Nope. In fact, after Episode One, we not only don't mention the apocalypse again for something like eight weeks, we do four comedy episodes in a row, one of which is set at a Supernatural fan convention and is awesome.
Sensitive Brother: But we finally get back to it and we even tread in some pretty blasphemous territory, going as far as suggesting that God's gone AWOL and we're humanity's only hope.
Lunkhead Brother: And you know how I went to Hell a few seasons back to save you?
Sensitive Brother: Well, I do it at the end of this season. Jump in a big hole and vanish, leaving you to find the peace and happiness you've always wanted with the sketchily- defined chick you met in Season Three who you found you had a kid with. You're welcome.
And now...
Season Six.
Sensitive Brother: So you know how I jumped down a hole and saved the world?
Lunkhead Brother: Right. Just like me. But I was down there for thirty years.
Sensitive Brother: I came right back. I mean, within seconds. I've been back a year.
Lunkhead Brother: Wait, what?
Sensitive Brother: You were all settled in suburbia with the sketchily-defined chick and the kid who I don't think uttered a word the entire episode. I didn't want to deprive you of that. So I hooked up with our dead grandpa and a whole bunch of demon-hunting cousins we've never seen or mentioned before. Because something bad is coming.
Lunkhead Brother: What, worse than the apocalypse?
Sensitive Brother: Yeah, we kind of screwed ourselves there a little bit. Didn't seem likely we'd get a sixth season and then we did. But we'll come up with something.

Parenthood Season 1
JB: That's right. I dismissed this after one episode and then I crawled back. You know who's great in this? Monica Potter. Monica Potter who used to be what Michelle Monaghan is now. Stuck with boring parts in high-profile movies where she never gets a chance to shine. You know who's also great? Erika Christensen. Never made much of an impression in movies, Swimfan, it goes without saying, aside, always got her mixed up with Julia Stiles ( and her character here is called Julia which doesn't help). You know who's REALLY great in this? Mae Whitman.She has this arc where she sleeps with her cousin's boyfriend and gets labelled the school whore and she runs away...it's so much better than I'm making it sound.And the girl who plays the cousin who's name I'm not sure of. Also great. And then Lauren Graham... something screwy happened towards the end of Gilmore Girls where the woman who created it and wrote pretty much every one of it's many many words got booted off the show and this guy who wrote a one-man show about whacking off to Heidi Klum was installed in her place. So, on the one hand, it's a thrill to see Lauren Graham back playing her Greatest Hit. On the other hand, that's EXACTLY who she's playing. There's a bunch of dudes in it as well and that aspect is a little more problematic because they all cry and they cry easily. But I'm glad I gave this a second chance. Congratulations, me.

Unfair!

2010-09-27T13:00:00.001-07:00

Oh yeah, and one other thing happened to make my day at the West Hollywood Book Fair really special. That guy. It might be Jonathan Bernstein the crisis manager. Or Jonathan Bernstein the acclaimed writer of plays. But it is not Jonathan Bernstein the me. So while every other author at my signing session and, in fact, at every signing session, sat alongside accurate and flattering photos of themselves, I alone spent my time cowering under the gaze of the smiling stranger who bears my name. Obviously it was confusing for my vast fanbase. And that's why no-one wanted a signature. Right. That must be the reason.

Scorched Earth

2010-09-27T10:11:00.001-07:00

I don't tend to thrive around either brutal, pulverizing heat or other people.My stint at last Sunday's West Hollywood Book Fair where the temperature reached a pitiless 100 degrees could not be categorized as a personal triumph. There wasn't a moment I didn't feel like I was going to need CPR and the only child who showed any interest in purchasing my book finally cast it aside with a withering, "There's too many words".

There were a couple of highlights. I persuaded my colleague Alexa Young to get Molly Ringwald to autograph my history of 80s teen movies which she did with no great enthusiasm(the enduring redhead, not Alexa who was all about it). And then there was the live book trailer event. This could have been a disaster. All credit to Chelsea Anderson and Sarah Bebb(pictured above in color and black and white) for taking the sketchy little script I wrote to sum up Burning Ambition, memorizing it and bringing it hilariously alive. If my next book is out by the time the 2011 book fair rolls around, I'm booking you in advance. Unless it's hot, in which case I'm staying home.

The TV Club of Ga'Hoole

2010-09-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

You think it's bad here? It gets worse at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mad Men
JB: It's a given that any Sally Draper storyline is going to leave me shattered in a million pieces but THIS one with the sleepover and the rum and the tantrum and faceplant and the stoic resignation that things are only going to get worse? It killed me. I am now dead. And speaking of dead, the Blankenship saga ended the way it began: leaving me momentarily unsure what show I was watching. And my brilliant prediction of a Joan/ Lane hookup? Let's never speak of it again. Oh, and if I'm not wrong, Jessica Pare, who plays beanpole receptionist Megan is another graduate of Jack & Bobby.
CC: I have done a total 180 on Kiernan Shipka. A year ago I constantly wanted to punch her in the face. I wanted to punch a *child* in the face. Now, my facepunching desires have all been transferred to Dr. Faye and Lesbian, both of whom have weird things going on with their mouths when they talk, whereas Kiernan Shipka fucking ROCKED THAT SHIT. That flipout in the office was so fucking real it was scary. I was instantly transported back to my own childhood meltdowns and you know those aren't a fun place to go. Yeesh. *throws Emmy at kid*

JB: A year ago? A year ago was the Grandpa Gene story. Retract the punch. RETRACT IT!

The Eyebrow Diaries
JB:If Kiernan Shipka hadn't annihilated all competition, I'd be hailing Candice Accola's vamp turn as outstanding performance of the week. She had a lot of shit on her plate: she had to be a victim, a predator, a badass, a bimbo and a loyal girlfriend. And she did it all. Not reneging on my praise for Dobrev's double role, but this was a...I'm not so good with sports terms...this was something good involving balls. Nice shot from Damon at Stefan's comic timing.
CC: I almost couldn't believe they had Stefan Twilight Elena up to the top of that ferris wheel, except that of COURSE they had him do that, and also, why is it that when vampires are drinking blood it so often sounds like sex? Yeah, yeah, there's all that lore, what was it, Anne Rice or someone, with the drinking of blood being basically like sex for a vampire, so vampires don't even care about sex (ha, yeah right), blah blah, all the mythology everywhere is different, but my point is, hoo boy was Caroline having some fun getting her meals on for the first time. One time back in the day I was watching Angel and my roommate heard the sounds and thought I was watching porn. I mean, it was a scene partially involving Angel slapping Darla around so I guess it was arguably in the vicinity, but still. Do we like Werewolf Uncle? I'm not sure I'm sold on Werewolf Uncle yet. Man, I hope the werewolf effects don't suck because if they do, that will suck.

Jersey Shore
JB: Cruel irony: Vinny wants to get wifed up and the object of his pathetic affections leaves him sweaty, desperate and begging on the phone.
Can we please, please, never see Uncle Nino again? Please?

Nikita
JB: We learned three things from this episode. 1) Maggie Q lightens up a lot when she's around heavy artillery and Shane West. 2)If you hire Melinda Clarke and you do not tap her snark abilities, you are wasting a great natural resource. And 3) Nikita built a sauna. In the middle of her gargantuan loft. Is this something she learned at Division? Is Melinda Clarke The Handywoman as well as The Inquisitor and The Stylist?
CC: Did I understand the plot of this episode? No. Did I think Lyndsy Fonseca's flashback wig was ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AND RIDICULOUS? Yes. Did I join you in being bewildered by the presence of a sauna in Nikita's loft? Sure. Was I completely entertained by all of it anyway? Duh. Note to self: buy more white tank tops.

ANTM
JB: Tyra hates bullying. She's dead against girls being made fun of for their body types or their unusual looks or their sexual orientation. That's why she sequesters them in an enclosed space, makes sure they're all jealous of each other and films the results. And i'm saying the lesbian is this year's plus-size winner.

X Factor
JB: This contestant is a total whore. No, she really is. That's what she does for a living. She charges 250 British pounds an hour(that's something like $6000) Not sure if she's worth it.

Gossip Girl
JB: Blake Lively isn't in The Town a whole lot but she dirties up nicely as an Oxy-gobbling townie slut. Her accent commutes from Boston to Abu Dhabi but she's pretty good. And that's all I have to say about Gossip Girl.

Hawaii 5-0
CC: I totally just watched this. I was totally entertained. I think Danno is my favorite. I'm pretty sure staring at Maggie Q and Grace Park all season is gonna give me an eating disorder (by which I mean, I will eat more, because fuck it, why bother trying). All that being said, I'm not sure this show is gonna have staying power with me, just cuz me and cop shows, as proven time and time again, are not so much ("Good for you, Justified! Good for you, Terriers! Now pardon me while I go watch something having to do with clothes.")

Boardwalk Empire
CC: I realize that the cynics and/or gangster history experts out there were totally not fooled, but please place me FIRMLY in the camp that thought the Al Capone reveal was like the MOST AWESOMEST THING EVER.

Dancing With the Stars
CC: "Why the fuck is Jennifer Grey crying? What's wrong with her? It's just a song. I mean, I know it's from a movie you were in, but get it together, woman, you're making a complete fool of yourself on national-- oh, right, Patrick Swayze is dead. Whoops." I didn't watch the vast majority of this but I watched enough to know that The Situation can't dance, which in no way contradicted any of the knowledge I had about him previously.

Lone Star

JB: One of the two lead actresses on this show is named Eloise Mumford. Soon as I saw her name I immediately thought of the indie-folky group Mumford & Sons and THAT VERY SECOND, a song by Mumford & Sons started playing on the very indie-folk-heavy soundtrack. The other lead actress is Adrianne Palicki and as soon as I saw her play a scene with the lead actor who is a freakishly exact genetic split between George Clooney and Kyle Chandler, I was reminded that Friday Night Lights comes back next month.

The Event

JB: You know how Flash Forward was like Lost's idiot cousin? The Event is like Flash Forward's slow-witted nephew. I hated this pilot because it set up a ton of questions that I know will never be satisfactorily answered but I already know I'll be watching next week.

TV Club's Dog Days Are Over

2010-09-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

Consume it here. Regret your empty materialism at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mad Men
JB Joan Holloway suddenly aging, vulnerable, powerless and irrelevant. Where will she turn for solace? Lane Pryce. Mark my words. (Except if it doesn't happen in which case don't,but his wife doesn't want to come back to America and Dr. Rapey's shipping out to Vietnam, so mark them a little bit)
CC: I...didn't like this episode. The Dear Diary voiceover? No thank you. But that's okay, we'll always have last week's. And we'll always have Joan and Peggy's outfits from this week, which were stellar. And Jack & Bobby guy whom I just recently enthusiastically complimented, we hardly knew ye! That's okay. You're pretty, like what's-his-face said. You'll be fine.

Vampire Diaries
JB: Game on, indeed. I feared Dobrev would lack the thesp chops to pull off the necessary vamp swag. Wrong! She played Elena, Katherine, Katherine acting like Elena and nailed them all. I also feared Somerhalder overflowing with the milk of human kindness. Wrong again! And now Caroline's got his blood to bring her back to life which immediately made me think, Ah Harmony the vampire, but no, because Matt keeps her grounded. So what's going to happen to that relationship? I'm kind of overly-indoctrinated having pounded down most of the last season over a two-week period but this entire episode felt like it was twenty-five minutes long.
CC: I like that the hair people make Katherine curly and Elena straight, like otherwise we wouldn't be smart enough to tell. Nah, knock yourselves out, hair peeps, this show rocks no matter what. Damon getting the smackdown from BOTH the ladies and subsequently going ballistic? Gold. (And he and Katherine are hot together.) (And he and Elena are hot together.) (And I'm pretty sure you know where I stand vis-a-vis Team Stefan/Team Damon.)

Jersey Shore
JB: Wait, WHAT did Snooki call the miserable looking guy tagging along with her designated smush-victim? Was it grenade-grendle-choad? And then Jwoww said something like "I'm going to take Horny Goat Weed and masturbate". The Situation also showed that he had some standards by retreating from the herpe. Vinny showed he had none by smashing the Staten Island Dump.
CC: Man grenade! Why is man grenade somehow so much worse than the lady grenades? I felt, like, really terrible for that guy, more so than most of the hippos and other assorted beasts the guys have been dragging home. Maybe I'm just used to the female zoo animals because there've been so many more of them, or maybe there is a horrible double standard at work here and I really need to take a long, close look at myself and my values and what I find important in this cruel, complicated world. Yeah...no. By the way, how great is the running gag about the Fossil watch? I laugh every time.

America's Next Top Model
JB: Not gonna lie, my mind is kind of boggled that Tyra took the criticisms that Top Model's never produced anything resembling a top model on board enough to actually do something about it. Not only has she upgraded from Seventeen to Italian Vogue( no more Ann Shoket. Thousands cheer!) but she totally toned down her traditional shrieking camp big Worship-Me entrance. I'm not singling them out as favorites or potential winners but the only faces I remember are The Orthodox Jew With The Double G's( who immediately tossed her orthodox Jewry under the bus), The Girl Who Used `Persona' and `'Ingenuous' In The Same Sentence(And who looks nothing like Uma Thurman), The Girl Who Doesn't Like Semen On Her hands and The Sistahs. Tyra may have pulled it back a bit but she will still take a big shit on a girl just because she can. Case in point: the chimp-faced No Logo chick who was all, I-hate-pop-culture-it's-all-superficial. When she dropped the pose and wept buckets at missing the top 12, Tyra comforted her with a mocking `Why are you crying? I thought you didn't care about this?" Cold, Banks.
CC: I sped through most of this but I will second you on the stealth boobs. Literally that was the only thing anybody bothered discussing at my work the next day.

Nikita
JB: And speaking of semen on my hand...I'm not mad at the prospect of Maggie Q on TV every week. But Nikita, to me, is a Bad Franchise. You know what I mean: Predator is a Bad Franchise, Alien is a Bad Franchise, Terminator is a Bad Franchise, Stargate is a Bad Franchise. There's no reason to keep going back except there might be a few more coins to squeeze out. I appreciate they skipped dragging us through the whole origins story once again(in fact, I spent most of the time thinking, this is the pilot Dollhouse should have had, and it's the one they ended up doing something like three episodes from the end). But the Beautiful Lady Assassin thing feels really dated. I've seen enough bad Maggie Q Hong Kong movies to know her fights don't need to be shot in close-up. Also, that scene where she faked out the bad guys by substituting a dummy in the graveyard? Made me dwell for a few minutes too many on the idea of her dragging a dummy with her as she walked moodily through the cemetery. Can't lie though. Didn't see the Lyndsy Fonseca( shouldn't that be Fynsyca?) twist coming.
CC: Me neither! I was totally entertained by this whole damn thing. A VERY satisfying body count (seriously...between this and Vampire Diaries, the surprise kills on the CW are coming fast and furious and it is awesome). Now, is Lyndsy Fonseca just a slightly less angular version of Missy Peregrym? Yeah. Yeah, she is. But I like her so far, this show is badass so far, and I will certainly be tuning in next week to see what outfits Nikita is wearing (yeah, yeah, the red bikini thing, everyone's flipping out over that...I was more struck by that aggressively structured coat she was wearing in the graveyard...can we talk about that? do we think the fashion angle on this show is ever gonna get up to Gossip Girl proportions? nah, it won't, but that would be awesome if it did).

Hellcats
JB: Aly Michalka has the look of a Ukranian prostitute. That's pretty much my only impression of this show. I know there was flipping and jumping and bendiness but the entire hour seemed like it was focussed on her face. I felt bad for Ashley Tisdale who looks like a thumbprint when she's next to her. Amazingly, that `My drunk mom vomited over me' speech is not the worst Childhood Trauma scene Michalka's had to play. There's an even worse one in the movie Bandslam which had the incredible bad luck to open a couple of weeks before Glee premiered and which, even by music movie standards, has one of the all-time great laugh-out-loud terrible climaxes. Oh, and not only was Hellcats all-Michalka-all-the-time, the commercial breaks featured ads for Easy A, where she plays the sidekick, and a horse movie starring her mushy-faced sister who sang a song that sounded like it was written by the horse.
CC: Tried. Couldn't.

Gossip Girl
JB: Katie Cassidy! Paris! Clemence Poesy! No Jenny Humphrey!
CC: Don't forget Lou Doillon! And Karlie Kloss! And outfits so ridonkulous that I literally shouted "WHAT?" at the screen when Serena's-- romper? black short shorts?-- getup appeared.

VMAs
JB: Congratulations, 8 year-old Taylor Swift on the nice little song you wrote with your crayons.
CC: Oh my fucking god. Did you notice her feet? Those things are fucking boats. Seriously. She's a tall girl, but those things are even out of proportion to the spindly, tree-like stems that make up the rest of her body. I was thankful for them, though, because when I was shouting "Holy shit look how big her feet are," that meant I couldn't hear her off-key (as usual, as always, as predicted, as ever) singing. Hey Kanye! A year later? YOU WON AGAIN. Oh, Usher wins too. That performance was riveting.

X Factor
JB: Cowell made a vow at the start of this season. No more sob stories. No more dead dogs, incurable diseases, deathbed wishes of family members. He's been as good as his word. And do you know what he's replaced them with? Totally Staged Contrived Bullshit. Here's an example from this week's show featuring the young Biggie Smalls.
And here's the shattering conclusion:

More thought went into the plotting and character arc of that audition than the whole of Hellcats
CC: Is that guy the best singer ever? No. Is he a better singer than Aly Michalka is a dancer? WAY. (See, I did make it through part of Hellcats. Just not the whole thing.)

Scream Queens
CC: Jessica keeps winning the show one baby step at a time. My DVR cut off before I saw who got booted but I don't even really care at this point, I'll figure it out later. No, this space is for my apology to Gabby, she of the complete inability to master the technical aspects of acting on camera, because I had a brush with something similar myself a few days ago when we filmed this DVD extra for my work and it's not like I even had to hit a mark or anything, we just had to wait for these other guys to walk by before we came out this doorway, and we did it right, more or less, but before it happened I was totally standing there kind of confused and asking, "Wait, do we go yet?" and I suddenly thought to myself, "Oh, FUCK! I ripped on Gabby for this exact same shit and here I am, totally confounded because someone just asked me to do literally nothing more than walk down a sidewalk while a camera is rolling!" Yikes. Apologies, Gabby, and props to actors everywhere, because I also don't know how you aren't all dead of heat exhaustion from all the damn lights in your face all the time. Oh, also? Can we talk about how hilarious it is that they have to wear dresses for judges table or whatever they call it on this show, and that the dresses are always UNIFORMLY BAD? Seriously. That is some serious Forever 21 shit up in there, every single week; they always look worse than they do when they're in their casual clothes, and it's just ridiculous. I've already been blinded multiple times by the awful, awful reflections zinging off of every outfit's shiny, shiny, cheap, cheap material. That being said, SCREAM QUEENS 4-EVA!

TV Club Wants The Door Left Open

2010-09-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

Read it here and repent your sins or pay the price at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mad Men
JB: That was beautiful. I watched it twice. Not just the best episode of the season, probably the best episode of anything aired anywhere this year. I fear Elisabeth Moss will be denied her Emmy (Laura Linney has CANCER, y'all. The Big C) but Hamm is undeniable. If there's better acting, better writing or more horribly real relationships anywhere else on Tv, they're on a channel I don't get and I get 6000 channels. Congratulations to Duck Philips for squeezing out the saddest fart ever.
CC: OMG this episode was so good. So fucking good. I can't even deal. I'm done. Oh wait, I'll touch on something that obviously gets lost in the whole rest of the awesomeness: very much enjoying that guy who was on Jack & Bobby.

Jersey Shore
JB: The Situation is worth every cent of that 5 million his publicist would like you to believe he's making. Did anyone else notice Jwoww break the fourth wall and grin straight at the camera?
CC: I kind of feel like I might be rooting for The Situation when he's on Dancing with the Stars (is he gonna fuck Karina Smirnoff? probably, right?). Like, I *want* to root for Jennifer Grey as the sentimental choice, and obviously once you see them dance, opinions can instantly change, but...yeah. The Situation. You have to kind of hand it to him, but not really, but yeah kind of really, with 1) how he totally got that girl the fuck out of the house while somehow making it sound like he was doing her a favor and 2) how he just owned that whole tranny thing. No defense. Just yeah, that happened, and was unfortunate, and moving on.

Rachel Zoe
JB: I have not yet seen Piranha 3D but last week I saw Donatella Versace in HD and now I get around with the aid of a white stick and a dog. Also in this episode, we got to meet a celebrity client who actually likes RZ. Kate Hudson. A surprisingly endearing goofy-funny, probably-slightly-high Kate Hudson who shut her eyes tight and busted out a few bars of Stevie Nicks. In fact, she acted almost exactly like Penny Lane in Almost Famous. Which is her only decent performance. Hmmm. The neglect-of-husband-Rodger narrative continued with him enlisting Hudson to persuade RZ to get pregnant. Rachel stage-whispered to Kate in this joking-but-not-really-joking-
at-all way, "I'm frigid." Again, hmmm.

X Factor
JB: This was the dud show Cowell didn't want us to endure last week. Here is the highlight. Stay till the end and you'll get to see this act's big hit.
CC: Oh, wow. WOW. Thank you, JB. A hearty thank you for continuing to keep up with this program and digging up these clips. I've been hearing a lot lately about a YA novel called The DUFF, which stands for designated ugly fat friend, because apparently there's always one in every group of girls, or something. Yeah...no. Not just one. Not just one of those here.

Vampire Diaries
JB: Wait, Mia Kirshner's in this?
Wait, Melinda Clarke's in this?
Wait, Jasmine Guy's in this playing a GRANDMOTHER?? (I am 145 years old)
Wait, vervain is an actual substance?
Wait, how did Katherine get in the house? Jenna didn't invite her in.
CC: Oh HO, but you should REWIND and watch again carefully to see what she said! And I know! Everyone's in this! How great is it? This shit premieres THIS WEEK! I am so excited for season 2 I can't even tell you (and how great was it that Nina Dobrev was on the Emmys last week...although...I must say...she's totally done that thing that all the actresses do where they lose a bunch of weight and come back for season 2 so much thinner (see also: Lea Michele) and she was obviously TOTALLY cute and TOTALLY thin before and did not need to do as such).

So You Think You Can Dance Canada
JB: Dipped an exploratory toe in. Probably won't be back. But if I did, it would be to check up on these two geeks:
CC: Aww, rats. I didn't really like that. And I wanted to! That guy is totally a poor man's Mark (shut up...I know a lot of people are a poor man's Mark...but I think that just demonstrates how delightfully expensive Mark is). I'm jealous that Canada still has those stairs though. Miss the stairs!

TV Club: All Of The Mocking. None Of The Jay

2010-08-31T09:01:00.000-07:00

Make a commitment to read it here. Or sneak around behind my back at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mad Men
JB: This whole season is one long grim exercise in `So you think Don Draper's cool? What about now? Still like him? How about now?' Just in case stealing Danny Strong's idea, floundering his way through a boozy attempt to save the Life pitch and waking up with a grenade wasn't enough, we also find out that Don wasn't even hired on his merits but because of holes in Roger Sterling's alcohol-soaked memory. And Jared Harris is quietly ruling as Lane Pryce.
CC: This was my fave ep of this season since the first one. I am a sucker for flashbacks...it totally reminds me of the flashbacks on Buffy (yeah Danny Strong!) when we got to see Angel and the other vamps in old timey-times and okay, sure, there was a lot of ridiculous hair and bad accents, but come ON, you got to see how it STARTED, you got to see how it HAPPENED, and we got to see that here tonight! Um. But. I get that it is easy to make Slattery look younger just by changing his hair color a bit, but this show has NEVER been able to make Jon Hamm look any younger than he looks right this very second. I don't know how old he is, but I'm thoroughly convinced that he has looked 39 his entire life, and this show's flashbacks with him never do anything to change that. He'll probably still look 39 when he's 85 so he's got that going for him. Oh, also, looooved the Joan/Roger flashback. Adorbs.

Jersey Shore
JB: Loved The Situation's Ocean's Eleven-calibre elaborate plan to put the hippopotamus to sleep. Loved the unhurried footage of Jwoww perking up the girls. Loved The Situation being the bigger man and de-excluding Angelina from anchovy night. Didn't even hate Ronnie and Sammi if only because of the Technical Emmy-worthy editing in of incriminating debaucheries when Ronnie was protesting his innocence. Didn't love Snooki and Jwoww lying about the letter. Especially Jwoww declaring "I've done my duty as a good girlfriend."
CC: I just love how ridiculous that letter actually is. There's only so many people in the house. There's only so many people in the house who would tell on Ronnie. And yet. The letter is somehow some big mystery. Except that it isn't. And Sammi's an idiot.

Rachel Zoe
JB: If I ever enrol in John Homa's acting academy, I might perform a monologue based on Roger's to-camera interludes from this episode. Despite venting about RZ's reluctance to have a child, her disinclination to spend any time alone with him on her anniversary,how she's become a completely different person-- they aired film from the RZ/ Roger honeymoon: she IS literally a different person--how weary he is of trailing in her wake while she gushes over Oscar de la Renta, he half-heartedly insists he loves her more than ever. And after I perform that monologue, Homa would say, "I got nothing to teach you. Get outta here!" Btw, nine (9) mentions of Taylor this week.

No Ordinary Family
JB:ABC is foolishly previewing their new superhero show online. Luckily, I've edited it before it airs. I took all out the times Julie Benz talks about how hard she works and how little time she gets to spend with her family. Boom: 15 minutes gone right there. I took out all the times Michael Chiklis talks about family: how memories make a family, how family has to stick together through good times and bad, how important is to for a family to play catch and eat breakfast together, basically any sentence featuring the word family. 20 minutes of fat trimmed. I took out whichever member of the untalented Panabaker clan was whining and moping. 6 minutes. And I removed the special needs son. What are we left with. Autumn Reeser. I like this show.

Aarti Party
JB: Just like it was foretold in ancient prophecy Jessica would win Scream Queens, so it was obvious Aarti Sequira(sp?) would walk away with The Next Food Network Star. Sure, she had confidence issues but she also had that lilting posh accent, that megawatt smile, that impressive boobage and that background in Indian cuisine which the network was lacking. Now, the Scots have a rapacious national appetite for Indian food( the chcken tikka massala was born in the kitchen of a Glasgow restaurant. FACT.) so I was looking forward to Aarti's vehicle. But, guess what, The Food Network is STILL lacking an Indian show. What they've got is kind of a half-assed how-to-make-the-same-cheap-

and-simple-stuff-all the-other-chefs-with-weekend-shows-make. But with cumin and ground ginger. And cutesy names like Huggy Buggy Bread Pudding and I Ain't Chicken Chicken and Mumbai Sloppy Joe. One thing was different, though. You know how Giada always has a ticking clock? She's always got to cook up a storm because her friends are coming over or there's some delightful event? This was Aarti's ticking clock:"My accountability group is coming over for dinner." Your what now? She said it again in the second segment. "My accountability group is coming and we've got some heavy stuff to talk over." I sat through Aarti's Huggy Buggy Bread Pudding recipe because I was intrigued. Segment Three: "My accountability group and I will be discussing our dreams". So then there was one more bit where she proudly displayed the entire meal she'd made. And then...the show ended! The accountability group never appeared! What was that about?
CC: I didn't watch this but I'm already fascinated by this accountability group. Is this, like, a lottery-type thing (and I'm talking Shirley Jackson's short story here) where they all say they're gonna do stuff, and this group holds them accountable for doing it, and then if you don't do it by the time the next group meeting happens, they take matters into their own hands and punish you? Because what if Aarti said she was gonna win Next Food Network Star, and then she DIDN'T? She'd be dead right now! Stoned! To death! By her accountability group!!! Aaaa!!!

X Factor
JB: What a tumultuous week. Cowell publicly apologized for the use of auto-tune in the first episode. The woman whose clip I put up last week was disqualified on the grounds that she was mentally ill. (They keep moving the goalposts!) Another woman who acted like she'd just been unfrozen from a block of ice and put on a stage where she had to grapple with unfamiliar concepts like microphones and audiences was unmasked as a cold-hearted scam artist who already had a record deal. Finally, Cowell scrapped the scheduled show, declaring it substandard( once again, he moves the goalposts) and substituting one featuring the heartwarming triumph of a fifty year-old supermarket worker who is going to be the Irish Susan Boyle. Sorry, NOT going to be the Irish Susan Boyle. Also from Ireland-- the home, lest we forget,of those talented twins who now have their own reality show which I will never watch. Sorry, WILL watch--one of the best talent show auditions ever. I'm not even kidding, stick with this:
CC: Oh! That was joyful. I am full of joy.

Scream Queens
CC: Yeah, yeah, Jessica didn't get leading lady, whatever, she's still winning this thing. Gabby needs to-- like, how the hell do you not know where your mark is when it's a BIG ROCK right in front of you? And even if you have to look at it, does it have to be EIGHT TIMES? It's a rock. It's not moving. It's not going anywhere. Walk toward it. Like, she can't hit a mark, she doesn't wait till she hears "Action!", she-- she literally-- I mean, dude. It's not gonna do you any good to be acting up a storm (which she was NOT doing, anyway-- I just watched the finished Vampire Outlaws trailer on vh1.com and boy did she suck in it) if at any second you might walk right off the set mid-scene because you don't know where it, or the camera, or the marks, or the props, or the other actors, are. It's crrrrazy how bad she is at that stuff. AND I CONTINUE TO LOVE THIS SHOW.

JB:"Okay Sierra, now try it a little sexier." AHAHAHAHAHA!!!. "Now, maybe a little meaner." AHAHAHAHAHA!!!! "Can you do it tougher?" AHAHAHAHAHA!!!

NJ Housewives Reunion
CC: I'm only halfway through this so far but MY GAWD. How great was Teresa going completely ballistic like that? Great. GREAT. GRREEAAATT!

Emmys

JB: I may have watched that opening number more than once. Plus, I now have a handy way to describe a movie, TV show, person, activity or experience I admire, respect, encourage but want no part of. Temple Grandin. Example-Q:"Are you going to see the movie of Eat Pray Love?" A:" It looks very Temple Grandin."

Movie Club

Scott Pilgrim
CC: Loved it.

JB: Seems like there's real love/hate divide w/ this one except with me who neither loved nor hated it. But I paid enough attention to have a favorite line of dialogue. Here it is. From a random Toronto hipster just before the first Schwarzman face-off: "The first album wasn't as good as the first album."

Piranha 3D
CC: LOVED IT.

Expendables

JB: Remember how last week I hilariously suggested they make an Expendables cast with middle-aged actresses? THEY ALREADY DID!

Mixtape Club:Some Rapper Needs To Get On This Track And Make It A Hit All Over Again While, At The Same Time, Completely Ruining It

2010-08-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

Bomb The Bass. `Don't Make Me Wait'. Stare at the spinning vinyl and think charitable thoughts towards the individuals who post the original video on You Tube but make it unembeddable.

Like Nanny McPhee, TV Club Returns!

2010-08-24T09:24:00.001-07:00

Read the whole truth here. Try to see through the web of lies at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mad Men
JB: I'm not a prude(ie: I'm a bit of a prude) but when little Sally Draper was rubbing one out to Ilya Kuryakin, I was thinking less about the negative influence of an ugly divorce and an icy, uncaring mother and more about the ten year-old actress who had to play the scene. I know kids today grow up a lot faster than I did back in the 1930's, but still...(I care too much. IS THAT A CRIME??) Fantastic Slattery acting when Roger Sterling who doesn't give a shit about anything suddenly gives a giant shit about doing business with the Japanese. The wacky Honda commercial fake-out caper that followed is a prime example of this show's genius at transitioning effortlessly from the horrible bleakness of it's characters personal lives to a bit of business that makes you cheer for what is really another hollow triumph for Don Draper.
CC: I *hate* that new secretary. I think that whole plotline is stupid. It was funny the first time she showed up and now I'm totally over it. We don't need this comic relief. We've got Pete Campbell flailing around in a twitchy and hilarious manner no matter what he's doing, we don't need all this forced nonsense about some dinosaur secretary that Joan would NEVER HAVE PUT ON THAT DESK IN THE FIRST PLACE because Joan is a fucking PROFESSIONAL and wants the office to RUN WELL. There's a middle ground where the woman is old and married and Don won't bang her but she can at least work a goddamn phone. That being said, I was informed today that Secretary Dinosaur is in fact the woman who played the Karate Kid's mom. Therefore, all is forgiven.

Rachel Zoe
JB: The ghost of Taylor the sullen, supposedly sample-stealing stylist is haunting this season like a...um...ghost. She may be a much-missed presence but her bad attitude lingers on. Look at the A-list clients RZ finally persuaded to appear on camera with her. Demi Moore acted like she was at a funeral and Gwen Stefani's face was a mask of disdain. But you know who really doesn't like RZ? Her husband, the Forty Year-old Justin Bieber. He did what no-one on a Bravo show has ever dared do: he expressed weariness at being surrounded by a fawning gay entourage. He gave voice to his fears that his wife is on a fast track to ending up a barren, fashion-addled idiot. The cracks in Rachel's sham marriage would have been the highlight of last week had Naomi Campbell not made an appearance. She referred to assistant Brad as Brian, she made Rachel quake in her boots, her accent had fifty passport stamps on it and there was not a moment when she didn't seem like she was about to go berserk. Why does she not have a reality show of her own? Hello? Bravo?

Scream Queens
JB: Should not have axed Carly. Carly ate raw meat. The real boogeyman in this show is John Homa. What a grizzled hack. I went on his website. The two most glowing testimonials? Taylor Momsen and Eric Balfour aka always the worst things on every show they're on.
CC: I will defend John Homa to the death. That guy is awesome. He got all of them (well, most of them) to cry last week! Come on! That shit is RIVETING to watch! Are you kidding me? I love him. He's the best part of the show. You know, aside from horrible insane bitches having to scream while maggots fall into their mouths as their dreams get crushed every two minutes because everything that happens in that house is one big actress mindfuck. I mean, only giving TWO makeovers? That's genius. That makes everyone else happy, because yay, that means I already look good, but also paranoid, because oh no, what if they make them look good, and that's not even the start of it for the girls who actually have to go through it. I LOVE THIS PROGRAM. Jessica's gonna win, and like last season, we knew that from the very first episode.

Jersey Shore
JB: "Ronnie turns into a different person when he's drunk". Yeah, he turns into a RAGING COKE FIEND. I didn't realize when they set up the Ronnie/Sammi split back in the stupid live reunion show that we'd be getting a season that was all Ronnie/Sammi all the time. With this cast? With these personalities? That's your main story? And the stuff about Sammi briefly quitting the show after another big bust-up with Ronnie? They were back filming in Jersey when that went down so we've got MONTHS of this shit to come.
CC: Did you read that article about The Situation possibly making 5 million dollars from all his endorsements and whatnot? Yeah. That's happening.

X Factor
JB: It's back! And, in it's wake, a controversy that Cowell is secretly auto-tuning favored contestants which has become the UK press's own Ground Zero mosque. From episode one, a performance that made it into the next round: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cXxooHiaug
CC: Um, okay. Wow. That...okay, this makes me feel vaguely like when I first heard of Two Girls One Cup or people who get off on videos of kittens being crushed to death with a stiletto heel. It's like, "What? Who would-- why would-- what? Who would invent that? Why would anyone invent that? Why would someone invent that and then other people enjoy that?" And yet, OF COURSE somebody would. It's a big world out there and everything out there that you have heard of or not heard of, someone else has heard of it and likes it. Anyway, so, congrats, Shirlena. Why not.

The Big C
JB: Someone should make an Expendables out of all these Showtime quirky-moms-with-problems half-hours. Laura Linney has cancer and she's never felt so alive! Mary-Louise Parker is a happy homemaker who deals pot on the side...or is it the other way round? Edie Falco is a pill-popping nurse. Toni Collette has multiple personality disorder. Together they're out for vengeance!
CC: Everyone I know refers to this show as "The C Word" either accidentally or on purpose. Seems about right.

Vampire Diaries
JB: Just begun to shovel my way through this. More to say in coming weeks. For now, I have this observation:
Stefan: Katherine had this amazing laugh. You wanted to make her laugh just to hear it.
Cut to:
Katherine (laughing): Sneee-heee-heee-snort...
CC: JB, you've got a lot to look forward to. See my previous (months ago) comment about how the storylines on this show end up being positively Spartacan in ludicrosity. Just you wait. Did you see the trailer for this upcoming season? Insane. [THERE WAS THIS OTHER SENTENCE HERE BUT I ERASED IT CUZ I REALIZED IT WAS A SPOILER FOR YOU.]

A Serious Man

2010-08-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

My triumphant return to the world of investigative reporting: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/12/tiffany-v-debbie-gibson

TV Club For Schmucks!

2010-08-02T19:00:00.000-07:00

You are a fool if you don't read this here. You are less of a fool if you don't read it at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva but still a fool, nevertheless.

SYTYCD
Wed.
CC: SUCH a dilemma this week. I kind of don't want anybody to go home, and yet two people are going home, and I *really* don't want it to be Robert, and I assumed it would be Jose and Billy, and then Billy had himself a WEEK (that thing with Ade...man, nothing bad ever happens when Mad World is played on a Nigel Lythgoe show...and his solo? KILLED IT!), so now I don't want Billy to go home either! I mean, how cute was it that Ade did a "Werk, Billy!" at the end of their routine? This damn show makes me so damn fickle. I change my mind every five seconds. By the way, did anyone else TOTALLY KNOW when that Kathryn/Robert army thing started that Kathryn was totally gonna be the one going to the army? Cuz AS IF they were gonna redo "No Air" that directly. Oh, and JB, I neglected to address this last week and then this week you didn't have to deal with it since she wasn't on: the Lauren Gottlieb love, yeah, that was a whole controversy season 3. If I remember correctly, people were kind of outraged cuz she wasn't getting the votes but the judges kept saving her, and people were wondering why cuz basically you either loved her or HATED her (and the answer is: even if you hated her, she is totally FANTASTIC live, like, better than she is on TV...she would blow your mind, JB, if you saw her on a stage), and then there was also this whole thing of she may have, like, literally kicked Lacey's ass (I sat next to some kids at the tour who were wearing "Team Lacey" shirts and I asked them if they knew exactly what had happened, but they were not very forthcoming with information...but yeah, apparently there may have been an actual physical fight). Which at the time seemed like "WTF?" and now, in hindsight, seems hilarious.
Thurs.
LOVED CAT'S DRESS. Loved the dress, loved the piles and piles of bracelets, loved the shoes, loved the tiny braids in the hair, loved all of it. My votes helped keep Robert safe!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!! How priceless was his reaction? Adorable. Also loved Mia's opening number (Allison killed, as usual). Loved Billy's solo. I got nuthin' but love for all the parts I actually watched. That doesn't include the two seconds of Christian TV before I made a "WTF" face and hit fastforward.

JB:Okay, Hottlieb/ Schwimmer fight? Time stands still. Time starts back up again.(BUT NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME!) Lythgoe's America-fears-your-androgyny kiss-off would have cut more ice had it not come on the heels of Stacey Tookey's Rich Man& Hobo routine which Billy performed non-androgynously and with a wool cap covering half his face. Cat's dress? Really? I'm usually too appreciative of The Totality Of Cat to get caught up in the component parts but I actually said out loud, `A child would wear that dress.' And I'm not talking about a free spirit with the heart of a child. I'm talking about someone who cries and wets the bed. One of us knows nothing about fashion. Clearly not me. I just Googled Lauren Gottlieb/ Lacey Schwimmer fight. Here's what went down: http://community.livejournal.com/_sytycd_/446778.html

Jersey Shore
CC: I thought I was totally over this, then I watched the trailer a few weeks ago and was like fuck, I'm back, and after having seen the first ep I've settled somewhere in the middle, if you can call someone who's totally gonna watch next week somewhere in the middle. I can't help it. The Situation's reaction to Angelina wanting to sleep in their room, once she turned her back, that face he made? Gold.

JB: You know how you go on vacation and you end up hanging out with people you might not normally talk to but they seem like fun and you exchange numbers and make tentative plans to meet up once you're back home and then you do and you're like `What was I thinking?' I was on board all the way through Season 1. That's documented fact. There's no denying it. But...maybe it was Miami, maybe it was too much Angelina, but I was bored most of the way through this. I'll probably be back, too. That shit with Ronnie getting obliviated at the club? That was a vision of hell.

Project Runway
CC: Yeah, the way to revive a lackluster show is to make it half an hour LONGER (not technically a problem for me since I watched the whole thing in ten minutes) and take away the best part (no Models of the Runway? Will we never know this year's Cerri? Awww.) But for the love of god, if there's ONE thing we've learned from watching this show over many seasons, it's that if a designer says the outfit they made is "sexy but not vulgar," it is DEFINITELY VULGAR.

JB: Selma Blair was like a corpse.

Mary J Blige on Home Shopping Network ( yes, really)
JB: I found myself watching the last half hour of this by accident but had I known it was on I would have happily sat through the full two hours. Because this was like the movie, Speed. You remember Speed: bus goes slower than 50mph, bomb goes off. In this case, HSN presenter stops talking for one second about Mary J Blige's new perfume My Life, MJB cuts her. You know when you've been talking for hours and you're aware you stopped making sense a while back back but you're so deadly afraid of an awkward pause or a lull you start repeating stuff you've already said but in a manic, giggly way? That's what this half-hour was like. The HSN woman was showering praise on MJB like she'd cured cancer, resurrected The Christ and brought peace to the Middle East. As for MJB, who doesn't waste words--I interviewed her back in my journalist days and, let me tell you, I was one flop-sweat soaked white boy at the end of that ordeal-- all she had was `Wow'. After a while, she'd said Wow so often, she broke into a fit of coughing which took her through the entire final fifteen minutes. Btw, first new person to follow either of our blogs wins a bottle of My Life. I may have ordered one...

Mad Men
JB: Creepy Glen's back! And he's transferred his affections from Betty to Sally which can only end well. Freddie Rumsen's back! Trudy Campbell's back! (Overpraising Alison Brie seems to have become a national trend and I'm part of it!) Sal's nemesis is back and I hope Roger Sterling gets to exact revenge for that Xmas party humiliation somewhere down the line. Hard to pick a bleakest moment between Peggy's post-coital look of horror and Don treating his secretary like a whore.
CC: I would like to punch Nurse Acrossthehall in the face.

Rubicon
CC: This show is driving me nuts. I have never seen this many different varieties of busted white people, yet at the same time, I can't tell anyone apart, probably because every single cast member is operating at the exact same extremely low level of energy. Is nobody alive on this show? Every scene feels like it takes forever, and yet when they end it and cut to the next scene, you're like "What the fuck? Did anything just happen?" I mean, Miranda Richardson picked up a book and I was literally yelling at her to pick it up faster, because why do you need to pick it up that slowly? Just pick it the goddamn up! And everything looks drab and boring. And Rubicon's hair is still way too Mr. Schue-ish, and Girl Rubicon's boobs were inexplicably up and out this week, even though isn't she supposed to be some square academic type? I don't know, I didn't quite finish watching. Argh, I say! Although actually what I say is an annoyed, theatrical, "RUBICON!" every time something happens that's actually nothing, which is every five seconds.

Don't Stop Believing

JB: I'm stunned Fox didn't throw together a zero-budget show choir version of Idol to fill their tragic summer schedule. I'm even more stunned i didn't know until now that exactly such a show is currently stinking up the UK. This is the BEST performance of the night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvm7ReTCu5o&feature=channe

CC: Oh no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

The Best Little TV Club In Texas!

2010-07-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

Read it here or read it http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva but read it somewhere.

SYTYCD
CC: ANOTHER MAN DOWN! Jesus christ. What's WITH this season? Anyway, Billy Bell aside, this week was of course not going to reach the insane crazy heights of last week. I will say I looove Adechike and reiterate that I LOOOOOVE Robert. And boy...I wonder what would've happened with that step routine if Billy hadn't busted a knee...because with Twitch in there, who the hell was looking at Kent? Also, I love Cat and generally think her self-styling is a delight, but this week she appears to have just wrapped herself in tissue paper and called it a day. And the results show? Don't even get me started. That was a total shocker...maybe I shoulda seen it coming, but I figured they would just boot Billy for our 3rd injury boot in a row and be done with it. The only other thing I have to say, and I sincerely mean this as a compliment to BOTH of these ladies (for reals!), is that Lauren G. looked right at home as a backup skank, whereas Allison did not (and Dom was FANTASTIC. have I mentioned that I'm totally into Dom this year? I'm totally into Dom this year). Anyway, fun math question, how many of that ballerina's spindly upper arms do you think could fit in one of DJ Smart's thighs? Because those are some thighs. And those are some spindles.

JB: What if it's a plot? What if the serial crippling of male dancers is a pre-meditated act by a contestant hellbent on flipping his way to the finish line? Suspect #1 would obviously be Kent. Behind that farmboy smile is the cold heart of a killer. Too obvious. Froderman? She didn't have to lift a finger and the other girls fell down like dominos around her. But all those boys were still standing in her way. Possible. But what if there's more than one guilty party? Remember when Mia Michaels called Adechike a doughnut hole? What if that was misdirection? What if they were in it together? I smell my next best-seller here. One more thing: I wasn't fully on board with this show during it's first three seasons so this is my first exposure to Lauren Hottlieb, BUTT...if there's a flaw to this All-Star format, it's this: whenever she's dancing with a rookie, I'm watching a solo.

Mad Men
CC: Did I throw my arms up and cheer at the first glimpse of Joan in that office? Yeah. Yeah, I did. I can't even talk about this show, it's so awesome. Next.

JB: Don and Betty Draper. Together they were toxic. Apart they're a tragedy. Up until Tobacco Road kicked in at the end, this was a merciless look at a man out of time. That Old Draper Magic failed with the one-legged reporter, didn't persuade the supernumerary up to his apartment, forced him to hire a hooker for Thanksgiving slap-me sex and, most grievously, caused him to throw a tantrum in front of the it's-not-a-bikini-its-a-two-piece-bathing-suit clients. And he's still fascinating. Whereas the ex Mrs. Draper...I just hope Mad Men stays on the air long enough for little Sally Draper to grow up into a uncontrollable badass who treats her mother like complete shit. Oh, and Roger Sterling? King of comedy.

Rubicon
CC: I can already tell I'm not gonna be smart enough to understand this show, and the fact that 80% of the cast mumbles 90% of the time is not helping. Also, Rubicon's hair makes him look like a busted Mr. Schue. #rubiglee

JB: Seconded. But the creator was voluntarily removed after ep 1 and replaced by a guy who was one of the main writers from Homicide which, if we were doing TV Club Classics-- and we probably should have during these threadbare summer months-- I would have been hailing as one of the best shows ever ever. So I might let the DVR hoover up a few weeks and check back in.

Huge
JB: ABC Family's approach to casting makes The CW look like Diane Arbus. It's bizarre enough that a show about a fat camp ends up between their regular output of Skinny Weeping Teens In Trouble but it's doubly, maybe even trebly, weird that it's a show about a fat camp that's shot and acted like an indie movie It's slow and dreamy and there's lots of unspoken looks and averted eyes. And even though all the promo stuff made Nikki Blonsky out to be the Randall P. McMurphy i-love-my-XXX'ness shit-stirrer of the camp, she ends up being semi-buried under the enormity of the rest of the cast. By enormity, I mean there's a lot of them. Not that they're enormous in any other capacity. Which, of course, they are. But if that's their choice, I'm fine with it.

The Client List
JB: Jennifer Love Hewitt is a total whore. In this movie! This Lifetime movie I found myself watching intermittently but mittently enough to file the following observations:
1) Number of occasions JLH's character and supporting characters refer to how great-looking JLH is: Really a lot.
2)Number of scenes in which JLH breaks down into racking sobs before the economic downturn forces her into prostitution: several.
3) Number of scenes in which JLH's character breaks down into racking sobs in the formative stages of prostitution: several.
4) Number of scenes in which JLH's character breaks down into racking sobs after the Texas police raid her place of business and lead her in handcuffs to a waiting police car in full view of rabid local news teams who broadcast the story live so that her husband sees her while he's pounding back beers with his buddies at the bar: every single scene.
5)What happens when we cut away from the scene revealing JLH's raging cocaine addiction? We cut to a scene in JLH's kitchen where her innocent little daughter pipes up ` Mommy, can I have a Coke?' and a wired-looking JLH snaps `WHAT did you say?'
6) How does JLH's husband confront his wife after he finds out how they've suddenly been able to pay the mortage? In the most pathetic way possible. He sobs his way through a monologue about how his old dog got sick and he didn't have the strength to put it down. So she sang The Beatles' `In My Life' to the dying dog and then carried it to the vet to put it out of it's misery. And then came back to comfort him. Through tears he tells her, "You're not that girl anymore."
7)How successful a whore was JLH at her peak? So successful that corporate heads would fly from Germany to her bordello. At the back of a massage center. In a small town Texas strip-mall.
8) What's the surprising fate of the whores who justify their profession with a cheerful chorus of `It's better than waitressin'? They become waitresses.

Movie Club
Legion
CC: This movie can be summed up thusly: awesome stuff, boring stuff, awesome stuff, boring stuff, cool coat, bulletproof wings, kid from Tokyo Drift.

Splice
JB: this movie can be summed up thusly: repulsive, splattery, freakish, wait...is the Splice creature sort of adorable? She is! Splice is adorable! Oh no, there's erotic mutant heat between Adrien Brody and Splice? Are they gonna do it? They're gonna do it! And Brody's girlfriend and Splice co-creator Sarah Polley( memo to Sarah Polley: act more) sees them do it. Which can only lead to a killing spree climaxing in mutant sex change rape.

Movie Club:Bad Movie Marathonathon!

2010-07-25T11:22:00.000-07:00

At ,http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva CC has an early sighting of Zoe Saladana in Center Stage. Here, it's D.E.B.S. Schoolgirl spies. Short skirts, big guns. Pervtastic! Except not. D.E.B.S is sort of a Trojan horse hiding the love story between head D.E.B and the smirking criminal mastermind played by Jordana Brewster who, on the strength of this, ought to have devoted the rest of her career to playing evil lesbian geniuses with giant lasers. But, sadly, didn't.

Movie Club:Bad Movie Marathonathon!

2010-07-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

Over at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva ,CC celebrates gay warlock classic The Covenant. That film's director, Renny Harlin's career is a one-man bad movie marathonathon. Cuthroat Island. Deep Blue Sea. Driven. Mindhunters. 12 Rounds starring John Cena. And The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. Which is today's choice. For some reason, even though Andrew Dice Clay was unknown outside the US, this movie got a British release. I saw it in a Glasgow theater that was completely empty except for myself and my friend Gus. Neither of us were entirely sure what we were watching. The following year, I relocated to New York to work at SPIN magazine as the country's least qualified and erudite film critic. During my first few months on the job, I got the chance to interview directors like Quentin Tarantino, Cameron Crowe and Jim Jarmusch. Before the q&a sessions ended, I always made sure to ask my subjects, "Did you ever see this Ford Fairlane movie?" Tarantino had seen it and hated it. I told him, "It gets better after the first 20 minutes." He stared at me. "I walked out after the first twenty minutes." Then he made a note to see it again. Cameron Crowe had not only seen it but could quote from it. I can't remember what Jim Jarmusch said but we totally bonded over the fact that I was living in a Brooklyn apartment he'd recently vacated. A few years later, I moved to LA to give the movie business a shot. I found myself in a meeting with Renny Harlin. Obviously, this was an amazing opportunity to tell him of my efforts to spread the word about his movie. But he was more interested in talking about his phone's shitty reception. Then he pitched a movie idea that I forgot while he was talking about it. Which was just as well. What would I have said to him? "I'm not a fan of your work. I'm especially not a fan of Dice Clay. But I am a big fan of Heathers screenwriter, Daniel Waters. I like how he gets brought in to save big unsalvagable messes like this and Hudson Hawk and he just makes them weirder and more ridiculous."

Ford Fairlane completely torpedoed Dice's chance of a big screen career, for which we should all be grateful. It's first twenty minutes are a complete abomination. And, of course, this trailer consists almost entirely of highlights from the first twenty minutes. But trust me, after that...actually, don't trust me, it's been years since I've seen it.

Movie Club:Bad Movie Marathonathon!

2010-07-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

Lots of movies that shouldn't be remade are being remade but nobody's rushing to remake the one movie that needs to be remade RIGHT THIS MINUTE. A movie that points the finger at aliens in human disguise for making the rest of us poor, stupid and celebrity obsessed. John Carpenter's They Live.

And here's the classic scene where Roddy Piper tries to persuade Keith David to put on the special glasses that identify the evil aliens. Clearly, integral to the plot and in no way included to accommodate Piper's wrestling notoriety.

Movie Club:Bad Movie Marathonathon!

2010-07-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, another of our highly-popular and fun spin-offs. Somewhere in the bowels of Movie Club, CC made the bold claim, and I quote, "I love seeing entertainingly bad movies". Which made me think, Hmmm, there was a time I loved seeing entertaining bad movies, too. Over the next few days, our respective blogs will feature trailers and clips from movies dismissed as atrocities but which we genuinely like, genuine atrocities that we--or at least, I--have seen more than movies I actually like, terrible movies that live on in our hearts due to misguided nostalgia, movies we can't believe we ever sat through....You get the idea.

1) ORPHAN! aka probably the most awesome bad movie of the last decade. Think long and hard before you argue otherwise.

The bad seed in this movie pulls a gun on a deaf toddler, murders a nun and attempts to shag her adoptive dad. The shocking reveal that she was actually a psychotic 30 year-old dwarf hooker was just icing on the cake.

The Good News: Tv Club's Back! The Bad News: So Is Movie Club.

2010-07-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

Back by popular demand--one person is still capable of demand-- both here and over at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

SYTYCD
CC: I've watched this episode like a zillion times. Seriously. Best ep so far this season; there were SO MANY rewatchable routines. I almost cry EVERY FUCKING TIME Robert walks Allison on his feet (and I think it's well into the double digits at this point), and Boogie Shoes? Fucking Boogie Shoes, are you kidding me? LOVED IT! And lemme just say, I am *so into* Dee Caspary. He's kicked ass two out of two times he's been on. He seems like he might be totally uncomfortable on camera, or at least, just, like, not very emotional, but my god, he's awesome (the fact that he was in Newsies as a kid just cements that). By the way, and I realize TV Club was on hiatus while we were saying RIP to Alex Wong's achilles, but...fuck, man, RIP to Alex Wong's achilles. I trust they sewed that thing up but good and lord knows he's in great shape and will recover like gangbusters, but that shit is fucking HEARTBREAKING. On a lighter note: 1) hilarious that Neil goes for a chest bump after they kicked ass in the baseball routine and Kent just hugs him and 2) we already knew it was about Mark's abs, but boy oh boy...it's also about his legs. Jesus, Lady Gaga. Take me on tour with you and bring me back fucking *rocked* too, will ya?
JB: Just for purely asshole, contrarian reasons, I would love to see, just one time, an Important Routine not wring tears and standing O's from the judges. But I don't want to see it just yet because I, too, came over all unnecessary during that one(especially when it sped up into the in-our-dreams-we-dance-forever segment. Waah) This whole season' s turning into an emotional rollercoaster. The broken bones and shattered dreams. The bulletproof b-boy. The world without women. The underdog from the farm ending up on top. The defeated look on Billy Bell's face as he takes his weekly trip to the bottom 3. Lythgoe talking shit about Travis Wall twice on the same night( and getting a deathglare back both times). Cat having the big shiny balls to call the judges on their it's-okay-when-Jose-does-it double standards and getting an apology from Mia Michaels. Shankman, all the material you need for Step Ups 4, 5 and 6 is right here.

CC: UPDATE: Oh my fucking god, I just found this youtube interview of Dee Caspary and now I am just fucking in love with him (look, I realize that I am madly in love with, like, every single person having anything whatsoever to do with SYTYCD but just go with it). He explains that yeah, he's not really an on-camera kind of guy, and then at the end they ask him what advice he wants to give to dancers and he goes into this thing of everyone should take all different classes cuz there's so much information out there, and he compares it to a LIBRARY cuz of how many different books are in a library and OH MY GOD, DEE CASPARY, COULD I BE MORE IN LOVE WITH YOU THAN I AM RIGHT NOW? NO. NO. This is my moment, that I am having with you, that you don't know about, and I am a huge fucking nerd, and I heart you, and I heart libraries, and that is all. (By the way I've been getting like no sleep lately so everyone can blow me if they think I sound incoherent.) Also by the way, he's perfectly normal on camera in this interview, so clearly those little snippets on SYTYCD when he's in the audience just sort of expressionlessly clapping are not telling the whole story. Which is clearly an awesome one.

The Choir:

JB: David Tennant's Dr Who popularity reached such epic proportions a few years back that the BBC cloned him. They named the clone Gareth Malone and passed him off as an insanely enthusiastic choir master hellbent on turning the UK's mumbliest, least vocal, most hostile teens into a full-throated, harmonious singing unit capable of taking part in the Choral Olympics in China. This, the first of an endless stream of documentary series Malone has churned out over the past three years is Glee and Dead Poets Society and Mr Holland's Opus and To Sir With Love and every movie where an out-of-place, idealistic young teacher ever wandered into enemy territory and told a problem kid, "I know you can do it. I believe in you." I've watched every one of Gareth Malone's shows( no great feat, none of them run longer than 4 episodes). Which means I've seen the moment when the self-conscious kids hear themselves singing in harmony for the first time and instantly change from cynics to true believers. I've seen it a lot. And it never fails to get me. Even when they're singing Can You Feel The Love Tonight.

Come Dine With Me

JB: The phenomenon comes to America. Brilliant format: four strangers throw dinner parties for each other on consecutive nights. The guests secretly score the hosts on edibility and entertainment. On the final night, a winner is declared. Sounds simple. But just think about that: three strangers are coming to your house. You have to cook three courses for them and keep them entertained. I thought about how I'd cope under those conditions and I just shat myself. This week's episode threw together a medium,a tiny expat of the Philippines, a hard-nosed businesswoman and a cheerful woman-hater whose suburban home is filled with trophy heads. It takes this guy maybe seven seconds to size up the medium as his next trophy. Over the course of the next three meals, he calls her a lesbian, a gullible idiot and a slut, yukking it up and mocking her for not being able to take a joke while he does it. That's what makes CDWM unbelievably uncomfortable but also awesome. Even when it doesn't go out of it's way to cast guests pre-determined to rub each other the wrong way, they still do. Someone chokes on the starter. Or tries too hard to show how homophobic they aren't. Or makes a clumsy pass. Or thinks they're funny. And that's not even getting into the celebrity editions where washed-up soap stars and news anchors have been known to drunkenly make out while the host frantically mops up the custard she dropped in the kitchen. BBC America is currently running UK-based episodes but the show begins throwing American parties later this year.I'll be watching( through the cracks in my fingers). Oh, and the hard-nosed businesswoman won. The medium came last.

Warehouse 13

JB: I ought to like this Syfy show. Jane Espenson gets a Created By credit. It's half X-Files, half Moonlighting and half the last two minutes of Raiders Of The Lost Ark( yeah, three halves). Bickering agents looking after a warehouse filled with arks and clocks and toyboxes and keys and glasses with unimaginable powers. Stopping them falling into the wrong hands.This week's guest stars were Sean Maher and Jewel Staite from Firefly. He played a piemaker who got hold of a pair of trunks that turned him into a superhero. A superhero that the male part of the play-fighting Feds totally geeks out over. And THAT, I believe, is why I'm not on board. The wisecracking agent dude looks like a beaten-up, boozed-out Robbie Williams. Do not buy him as the geek of the duo. Do not buy him as the goofball Mulder. Ought to like show. Show makes it hard for me.

Next Food Network Star
CC: This is the first episode I've watched all the way through (I sort of skimmed that food truck one from last week), and I find this program joyless. There is not one single contestant that I'd want to watch on their own show so far. Maybe the guy with the hat, except why is he always wearing that hat? That is all.

LXD
http://www.hulu.com/the-lxd
CC: I was fortunate enough to go to the premiere of this, where I spotted none other than: Legacy, Noelle, Ivan, this guy from season 6 whose name escapes me right now, Lil C, Harry Shum, Jon Chu himself of course, Ryan Hansen, Maksim from DWTS (that guy is not afraid of a tight shirt), and a bunch of other people. It was awesome (woulda been more awesome if I had the balls to go up and talk to anyone, but I never do and then always regret it). Also awesome was the fact that we got to watch ALL TEN EPISODES of season 1, unlike the rest of you, who are having to wait a week before each one comes out on hulu (at least I think that's the schedule). Anyway, suffice to say, this shit rocks. Madd Chadd (ep. 3) is mad hot, there's Step Up & SYTYCD alumni all over this thing, and it's just crazy awesome dancing paired with comic book nerd heaven storylines. Get there.

Movie Club
Eclipse
CC: Quick background: never read any of the books, although do know vaguely what happens (and am appalled that by the end, we find out that Jacob is gonna fuck Bella's kid...what the fuck is that?). On-demanded the first two movies instead of going to the theater, heard this one was better so thought okay, you know what, this could be entertaining bad, why not go see it for reals. I *love* going to see entertainingly bad movies. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of them. I was checking my watch. A lot. I was totally texting multiple people by the last 45 minutes, that's how bored I was. Like, I don't even know what to say, it was THAT BORING. That being said, it did have a few moments. Very few. Most of them involved Jackson Rathbone (TEAM JACKSON RATHBONE!). If I'm remembering correctly, in the last movie he went nuts and almost ate Bella and basically just walked around looking hilarious in a bad wig, but in this one he was AWESOME and got a big ol' long flashback scene and a training scene and he and Ashley Greene are super cute together. Oh, and vampires in this universe are apparently made of ceramic. Like, when you rip off their arms or heads, it looks like a really big version of if you ordered a figurine from the Franklin Mint and broke it. The last time I checked, Franklin Mint figurines were not cool or scary (for cool and scary, check out the director's previous vampire movie, 30 Days of Night), so all the people who said this movie was better than the first two, nice try, but no. But #teamjacksonrathbone!

I Am Love

JB: I am loved this movie the more melodramatic and ridiculous it got. There was an outdoor sex scene that literally(ie:not literally) climaxed with a trainload of woodland critters riding through a rubber tire. CULT OF SWINTON!

Cyrus

JB: Even if you've read and heard how brutal and inhuman Sex And The City 2 is, you don't know, you're not ready. It's not like I walked in expecting "The Year Of The Nazis, My Stolen Innocence And The Yellow Balloon". I'd seen some of the series and the first movie. I wouldn't call myself a fan but they were watchable. The horrifying thing about SATC2 is the more repulsive and degrading the characters act, the more the movie is desperate for us to love them. There isn't a minute in this film a sane person won't be thinking "Why would anyone ever put up with these fiends?" And THAT is what I found myself thinking during a lot of Cyrus. Obviously, it's better than Sex And The City, it's a whole species better. But John C Reilly's character is so damaged and pathetic when Marisa Tomei meets and is attracted to him. And he keeps being damaged and pathetic. And her son is damaged and pathetic on a mammoth scale. And she just accepts it all. Where is this woman in life? This woman does not exist. Clearly, I'm the demographic that's having it's wish-fulfillment fantasy catered to by Marisa Tomei( who has aged better than ANYBODY EVER!) but if I can't accept that any man could ever put up with SATC2's version of Sarah Jessica Parker, I don't believe there's someone willing to lavish affection on John C Reilly and Jonah Hill.

Grown-Ups

JB: I did not pay to see this but I did pay to see Funny People which was one of the better films of last year, even though it went a bit off the rails when Eric Bana showed up. Grown-Ups is like it was written by Adam Sandler's asshole egomaniac comic from that movie. I might be reading this wrong but it looks like Sandler cast his less-successful friends in a film he wrote where he plays a big successful Hollywood guy who lives in a mansion and is married to Salma Hayek. He reunites with his teenage friends at a funeral and pays for them to spend the weekend at a lake house. They try to hide how intimidated they are by his wealth and hot wife. He gives them little handouts and jobs. He runs up against flabby, gone-to-seed locals and rubs their faces in how cool and athletic he is. Chris Rock, not much of an actor, but certainly the funniest guy in this group, is given a part where he's the cringing househusband to Maya Rudolph. Watch this when it shows up on cable and tell me if you think I'm crazy or this movie is one long sustained act of bullying and humiliation. I'll wait.

The A-Team

JB: I remained wide awake during the entire film and enjoyed a lot of it. I nodded off briefly during Inception--I think it was around the time the snowmobiles appeared-- therefore I am going to say I liked The A-Team better than Inception. Who's with me?

Really?

2010-07-15T08:00:00.001-07:00

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Mixtape Club: Novelty Songs Intended To Amuse That Are Actually TERRIFYING!

2010-07-12T14:49:00.000-07:00

Charles Penrose. `The Laughing Policeman'.

Mixtape Club: Unpromising Cover Version Becomes Unexpectedly Awesome

2010-06-30T13:21:00.001-07:00

Billy Paul. `Your Song'.

Mixtape Club:Some Rapper Needs To Get On This Track And Make It A Hit All Over Again While, At The Same Time, Completely Ruining It

2010-06-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

Freeez. IOU.

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

CC gets enigmatic at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva whereas I'm offering 100% pure love. Well, it's probably closer to 42% at this point...

TV Club's Cruel Summer

2010-06-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Luxuriate in the comfort of my nice new template here or take a trip into the dark ages at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

NJ Housewives
CC: No. That was vile. I'm not gonna dignify it. I can't. Love Dina though. And her cats.

Bethenny Getting Married?
JB: Yep, still watching it. She's suddenly become my favorite yenta. I think I know how this happened. I just finished John Green's book Paper Towns( did I pick it up because of the LA Festival of Books incident? Yes.) I didn't love it the way some people do but his thing about how we become attracted to the attributes we attach to another person and overlook who they actually are: that's totally me and Bethenny. (Unless that's not what he was saying at all. I kind of skim-read it). I don't like her for what she is, I like her for what I think she is: funny, self-deprecating, un-delusional, not crazily materialistic. Everything, in other words, that the other Real Housewives, and every other woman on reality TV, aren't. But if I really think about it, I can't recall one funny thing she said. And I don't think she's uttered a single word that hasn't been about herself. So maybe I'm going to end up hating her. That's usually the way it goes with me.
CC: I didn't watch this but I've read all of John Green's books and here's as good a place to mention it as any, since you started it: John Green rules. In Will Grayson, Will Grayson, there's some line about how when somebody asks if they can ask you a random question, it's never random-- it's like the LEAST random question you're gonna get. He is a wise man. I'd quote the part directly but there's ten feet between me and the book right now.

Top Chef
JB: The first guy kicked off looked like a Na'avi.
CC: So it ended up being that guy? I was watching it and then I lost interest and stopped. But not before I noted that Padma and Gail could have a helluva boob-off right now. Yeesh. (Padma wins.)

Double Exposure
CC: This show is about two fashion photographers named Marcus Klinko and Indrani. They are as weird and Euro and annoying as you would imagine they might be from being named that and having the job of fashion photographer. But it's always interesting to see actual PROFESSIONAL versions of what goes on in Top Model, plus there is literally NOTHING else on TV right now, so when I randomly found this, I was like sure, why not. It's mildly entertaining, I guess. The most interesting thing was the fact that they showed the model on this one shoot before she went into hair and makeup-- she was just standing around looking normal, and you always forget that real models, unlike the ones on Top Model, are always, like, high school kids. She made a face when the designer told her she had a big forehead (he meant it as a compliment since this was a very dramatic high fashion shoot and whatever, but still, some high school girl hearing that is entitled to be like "uh, thanks"), and then it was just mean when the photographer was yelling at her because they suddenly decided that she should go stand out on this narrow ledge and she was scared of heights. But then after it was all over she was a good sport about having done it and dorked out like a kid. It was cute. I just googled the photographers and apparently they're bankrupt and the girl one might be dating Lindsay Lohan. All righty then.

Work Of Art
JB: Miles The OCD Guy Who Tried To Clown Sarah Jessica Parker unveiled his true colors this week. He's the guy who's not there to make fiends. He's the guy who's playing the game. Last week his game was being incapable of functioning in any kind of social situation. He was underestimated. He won. This week, he lacked the strength to stay awake. He lay comatose on a couch, he snored through China Chow's introductions( and, in that, he was not alone) and he dozed through most of the challenge which was to make art out of junk. While his adversaries were struggling to make big statements with abandoned typewriters and decrepit vacuum cleaners, he turned an old cabinet on it's side, threw a sheet over it, climbed on top and rolled himself up in a foetal ball. He was still in that position when the judges arrived. "He's made himself into the exhibit," they marveled. "So brave. So vulnerable." MIles was so refreshed after his forty winks that he decided to join the judges as they evaluated his colleagues. "That's unspeakably boring," he said about another guy's work. Meanwhile, the other guy and the rest of the artists are staring at the judges like, `Do something! Stop letting him get away with this shit." And they did something. They made him the winner again.

Man V Food
JB: Third season for the Travel Channel's eating challenge show which remains a real devil-on-one shoulder-angel-on-the-other situation for me. On the one shoulder: ha ha, the host has to eat an omelette the size of a small horse, it's a dozen-egger, it's piled high with potato skins, look at his face, it's all blotchy, look at the way the sweat pours into his eyes, see how he slows down halfway through like every forkful suddenly weighs a ton and he can hear his heart pound in his ears. On the other shoulder: this guy is wiping years of his life for our entertainment, look at him plunging elbow deep into a bucket of ribs, he's sworn to eat fifty in 30 minutes, he hits something like twenty diners over the course of a season, gnawing his way through pizzas the size of snow-plough tires and curry designed to cause bleeding from the anus, he is killing himself and what about the waste of food and what about the people who count themselves lucky if they get so much as a morsel to eat. Very confusing. That omelette looked great, though...

The Hard Times Of RJ Berger
JB: MTV's never come close to having a success with a live-action scripted show. They're aiming to make a fresh start next year with inferior US adaptations of Skins and The Inbetweeners and an attempt to make a Buffy out of Teen Wolf which isn't a terrible idea. But first there's this, a comedy about a dork with a colossal cock. I'm now going to describe the climax of the first episode. The dork approaches the jock who torments him and dates the hot cheerleader he secretly loves. The dork unzips and hauls out the monster. He gets a handful of cock-sweat and then he rubs it against the jock's face. The rest of the school breaks into cheers and applause. The end.

The Real L Word
JB: I learned a new word. Futch. Meaning femme acting butch. Thanks, lesbians.

SYTYCD Wednesday
CC: I love this show so much that it's really hard for me not to just ramble on and on and get way too detailed, so as an experiment this week I'm just gonna write about each contestant's dance as if I were tweeting it. Ready?
Billy broadway: Lauren raped Billy.
Cristina jazz: MARK!!!
Jose hip-hop: Okay, that was cool.
Adechike jazz: Loved it. Mostly cuz of Kathryn.
Tapper Girl jive: No. But Pasha! But she sucked. And referred to herself in third person. And sucked.
Alex contemporary: The song was too on the nose. The overacting was crazy. AND I LOVED IT. And OMG he cried! And Allison...my god. Allison.
Alexie hip-hop: Cute. A bit too Laker Girl-y.
Lauren pop jazz: Eh.
Kent cha-cha: OMG. Kent FTW. Kent FTmotherfuckinW. I giggled in delight throughout that whole thing. He even made Adam namecheck Gev! GEV!
Ashley contemporary: Tyce frankensteined that together from totally recognizable bits of like 12 other dances. Just say no to patchwork choreo!
Robert african jazz: I am very interested in Robert Roldan. I am VERY interested in Robert Roldan. Give him a couple years and he's Mark.
Cat's dress: Sure.
Cat's hair: Nope.

SYTYCD Thursday.
CC: Goddammit. I knew exactly what would happen upon seeing that bottom 3, and it's exactly what happened. Bleh. :( Alexie wuz robbed.

JB:If Lythgoe hadn't made a point of introducing new director Nikki Parsons, I wouldn't have taken the effort to IMDB her and discover that she has no experience directing dance shows. Apart from three seasons of the UK Dancing With The Stars. And all the Andrew Lloyd Webber pick-a-singing-and-dancing-star-for-my-next-West-End-revival shows. And the Eurovision Song Contest. Despite Nikki's best efforts, there was a lot to love over these two days. Alex/Allison obviously topped the list but where do you go after `best routine ever danced on any stage'? Was there anyone who watched that clip of Billy Bell and his dad looking proudly at the table they'd whittled and didn't immediately think of Kurt and Burt from Glee? Kent reminded both me and Lythgoe of actors. For him, it was the young Paul Newman. For me, it was Jack McBrayer. That Usher song fucking sucks. This season is going to be a girl-pocalypse. It's going to be a dollocaust. It will be a modern-day miracle if there's one girl standing by the time we reach the top 5. Kathryn CREMATED Adechike and he didn't even graze the bottom 3. The judges are tough-loving Froderman in the hope the tween girl audience throws her a sympathy text but I fear she will be mown down in a hail of get-out-of-the-way-so-we-can-watch-the-inevitable-showdown-between Billy and Alex. Also, I'm kind of kicking myself because I could easily have got tickets for that Twyla Tharp show but I chose not to. On the other hand, could I have sat through two hours of Sinatra songs? We'll never know.

CC: SPOILER ALERT: I just read that Billy Bell is krumping this week with Comfort. HAHHAAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. You know what? He just might Travis the thing and kick ass. But probably not. (spoilers are onhttp://www.sytycdism.com/ if you wanna check 'em out)

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

CC blows the dust off PM Dawn over at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva. Today's choice isn't exactly dance-pop and it certainly isn't bullshit. I know, the rules are out the window. It's anarchy! But it does come from the 90s when it was given the unpleasant label Acid Jazz. I'm placing it in the sub-category: Songs I Haven't Heard In Approximately One Hundred Years That Sound Unexpectedly Fantastic. (Plus I couldn't find a decent copy of Missing by Everything But The Girl...) Young Disciples. Apparently Nothin'.

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-17T18:38:00.000-07:00

One of my all-time favorites over at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva. From around the same time: `Got A Love for You' by Jomanda who, if I remember correctly, I saw lip-sync this in front of an unimpressed audience at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater.

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-16T13:55:00.001-07:00

Paula Abdul. `Promise Of A New Day'. She attributes her unorthodox behavior to pain medication. I maintain seeing herself squashed into this video turned her into a mental. Once you've watched it, scoot over to http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva. Three words. Ace of Base. Two more words. Oh no.

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

This is awkward. Over at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva CC picked a prime slice of 90s dance-pop bullshit by the Real McCoy. Which was what I was going to put up. But they had two hits. So here's the other one.

TV Club: World Cup Special!

2010-06-14T09:27:00.001-07:00

Blow your vuvuzela here. Go deaf at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

NJ Housewives
CC: Okay, I may like Kim G. now that she told Danielle off about her shady friends. And I gotta say, Danielle's a psychopath, yes, but she has a point when she was like Dina, why did you ask me to come out here just so you could tell me you want me out of your life? See, I assume that was the show making them do that, but yeah, when you want someone out of your life, you don't call them up and ask them to hang out just so you can tell them that. You just quietly go about your business and hopefully they quietly go about theirs, and ta da, everybody's done. But my biggest problem with the show continues to be the fact that looking at Danielle's monkey face literally makes my eyeballs hurt. That shit is *rough*.

Bethenny Getting Married?

JB: There might be a problem with my TV. Whenever I've tried to watch any version of the Real Housewives franchise, all I get is EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE. Orange County: EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE. New York: EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE. New Jersey: EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE. Atlanta: EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE. (I'm not in any danger of laboring the point with this EEEE EEEE EEEE EEEE thing, am I? Good) It renders me incapable. But I keep hearing how Bethenny Frankel's not like the others. She's different: she's quirky, fun and likable. Which, to me, is like `Hitler, you should probably give a wide berth. But Eichmann? A delight!'. So I made it through most, if not quite all, of BGM? and I think I get why people find her endearing. She's pushy and self-deprecating, she's got buggy eyes and looks permanently beat-up, she calls her vag `the abyss' and she delivered a whole speech about her insane workload while sitting in front of a laptop that had the Safari `you are not connected to the internet' sign. What I liked a lot: the lack of screechy drama. Bethenny's legit friends are all super-supportive and her husband-to-be seems like a good guy( although, just before I watched this episode, I read some cruel and hurtful allegations that suggested Bethenny's marriage was proceeding along the same lines as Star Jones' which...well, watch it and see if you think the vicious slur has any credibility)( it does).

Lie to Me
CC: I watched this because I read somewhere that Jason Dohring was on it playing a serial killer, and if there's anything I'm SURE Logan Echolls from Veronica Mars can do, it's play a serial killer. Anyway, I've never seen this show before, and the first thing that happens is Tim Roth sees Logan and goes "that guy's a serial killer." Then his lady partner is like "eh, I'm not so sure." Then he's like "yeah, well *I'm* sure." And Lady Partner goes "ehhh, maybe not." Um, X-Files much? There ARE aliens, Scully. There ARE monsters. And this guy IS a serial killer. Why bother arguing? Anyhoo, there was also a B-story involving Howard Hesseman and a spaceship, so hey, that's what Howard Hesseman's up to lately. Good for him! Landry's dad from FNL was on too, so, awesome there, and it got pretty good at the end when they pushed Logan's sensitivity buttons (Logan is ALWAYS the most compelling when he's obsessively in love) and he decided to hunt down Tim Roth and waterboard him. So, yeah, Logan Echolls from Veronica Mars can DEFINITELY play a serial killer. I probably won't watch this show again because me and procedurals are usually not so much, but I will certainly be youtubing some key moments of him and Kristen Bell. Here's one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsoGjORfIUc&feature=related
Here's another: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zinyjGBboNI&feature=related
And here are many: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdCgzoTzIYc
Okay you know what? Fuck. After watching all those, this is me jumping belatedly onto your rant about Kristen Bell last week, JB. This is ridiculous. She and Jason Dohring did nothing but act the fuck out of everything they were given during three seasons of VM, they acted circles around so many of the other people in the cast, that entire show sat on her tiny little five foot one shoulders and she fucking KICKED ASS at it, and you're right, now she's slumming it in romantic comedyville most of the time while Katherine Heigl is the one reaping the rewards of similar slummery. Blah! It's okay. I have faith. We'll see her in something awesome again. We'll see both her AND Dohring in something awesome again. I have faith. I actually don't, but I'm trying to be optimistic here.

Glee
CC: "Break a leg." "I love you." That was it. That was the moment. That was perfect. That is all. Except it's not all, because: 1) Why was Quinn's baby born as an 8-month old? I've seen them get newborn-looking babies to play newborns on other shows, it can obviously be done, so I don't know why they opted to get a child who was practically a 2nd grader to play something that ostensibly had JUST been born. 2) What's this bullshit "you get one more year" storyline? If next year ends up being a complete rehash of this year, where every episode the supposed jeopardy is "you better make sectionals or Glee Club is OVER!", then I will actually WELCOME it if there's suddenly a ridiculous murder storyline like in FNL season 2. 3) I hated how they synced up the birth to the Vocal Adrenaline choreo. That seemed like they were just trying to be clever for no good reason. "Hey, look what we did!" You know what, I don't wanna look, cuz the sight of Jesse "crowning" is gross. 4) I don't need to see Mr. Schue playing the ukelele. The only thing that saved that was (say it with me) Puck. Oh, backtracking though, I loved the shot at Finn's dancing. That was adorable.

JB: Disagree re Bohemian Rhapsody cut to delivery scene. I will take five minutes trying too hard to be clever over nine weeks of wildly successful imbecility which is what we, as a nation,just endured. Agree on the `you get one more year' shenanigans. Have we ever discussed how much of Ryan Murphy's old teen-misfit series Popular he's recycling here? if I remember rightly, it's first season ended with the resident evil bitch donating her bone marrow to save a student she'd previously tormented. Two seconds into season 2, she was back to torture, blackmail and intimidation. Like the self-sacrifice never happened. I, too,feel a little Finn/Rachel love. It's The Way We Were with an iTunes playlist! Worst moment: Finn telling Mr Schue he showed him how to be be a man. Schue sobbed like a sickly little girl TWICE in one hour. In fact, it might have been thrice(Journey medley).He was so convincing as a blubbering girl that when an actual girl began weeping, her tears seemed forced and hollow. That's because they were fake-cried by Jenna Ushkowitz whose status as season-long worst actress might have been usurped by Amber Riley's impressive display of complete disinterest in the delivery room.

Pretty Little Liars

JB: Glee and Gossip Girl cast members, step forward. Lea Michelle and Leighton Meester, step back. Blake Lively, hover somewhere in the middle. The rest of you, take a look at this exciting new ABC Family show. Pay particular attention to the adult cast, the ones playing confused parents or disapproving authority figures. Holly Marie Combs. Laura Leighton. Chad Lowe. Nia Peeples. The dude who played the Finn role on Ryan Murphy's old teen-misfit series Popular. The girl who was Kendra The Vampire Slayer. They're your future. And the four teen actresses--sorry, the three teen actresses and the 27 year-old--playing The Lesbo, The Klepto, The Sister's Boyfriend-Stealer and The Teacher-Shagger--they're going to be the stars of your show. Apart from making me feel like the Ancient Mariner, this YA adaptation might actually work. It's got a story and that story is basically I Know What You Bitches Did Last Summer. The Pretty Little Liars themselves seem like Shitty Little Actors. But they don't have to be Janet McTeer. They just have to scream, run and cry while their supposedly dead bff terrorizes them them with texts about their terrible secrets.

Work Of Art

JB: Let me offer up a salute to Magical Elves, the production company responsible for Top Chef, Project Runway and most of Bravo's high-end competitions. I thought they might have come a cropper with this search for the next great artist. I thought that because I'm a short-attention span lowbrow with zero appreciation of art and, like a Real Housewife, I clearly believe the world revolves around me. Luckily, this show was made with clods like myself in mind. The first challenge paired off the artists and told them to paint each other's portrait. So, immediately, there's paranoia and trepidation. The old-lady artist teamed with the willowy young model chick, tells her , "You look like a proud pussy". The model's all `Why would she say that?" Cut to the model's earlier work: a scantily-clad self portrait with a star stuck over her proud...you get the idea. A photographer gets paired off with a shempy dude who lives in his truck and claims to have started painting six hours earlier. The only words out of his mouth over the entire course of the episode are `I'm untrained' and `I know nothin' about art'. That's his proud defense when he shows off the portrait of his partner as a John Wayne Gacy clown. Then there's Miles the OCD Guy aka Miles The Guy Who Tried To Snark Sarah Jessica Parker. I kind of buried the lead here: Work Of Art is exec-produced by SJP( here's my SATC2 review: forget those killjoys who tell you this sparkling sequel is racist. It's not, it's entertainmentist). Maybe-bland maybe-not host China Chow gushes 'Before we get started, here's our very special guest". Parker comes out and does her gracious, beaming, humble Queen of America thing and WHILE SHE'S SPEAKING, this Miles guy tries to fuck with her `And who are you?' he asks. You don't rattle SJP. She charmingly addresses him by name. But he can't stop. He tries to hit her again. "And what do you do?" Except by now, he's shivering with douche chills. Knows he shit the bed. Cut to him almost sobbing `Stupid. So stupid.' He's the despised OCD underdog who tried and failed to be funny. And then he wins the challenge with a silkscreen of his partner with her eyes closed that inspires the judges to rhapsodize about how he captured the moment of death. Meanwhile, the girl who got sent home did a painting of a bunch of falling leaves and said it captured her teammate's free spirit. Okay, art, I'm on board.
CC: What does "come a cropper" mean? Is it something delightfully scottish?

JB: http://www.amazon.com/Knickers-Twist-Dictionary-British-Slang/dp/1841958344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276504811&sr=1-1

SYTYCD Wednesday
CC: Anthony Burrell WUZ ROBBED. Ryan Ramirez WUZ ROBBED. It was really, really hard to watch the people that didn't make it get rejected in their own HOUSES instead of on that stage like usual. That being said, I'm very happy for Alex Wong and Billy Bell and even that Robert Roldan guy I never heard of before, and of course I'm ELATED for cute little Kent Boyd (him freaking out in Vegas over getting to dance next to "Alex freakin' Wong and Anthony who could freakin' smash the crap outta me!" was just GOLD), but I'm sorry, his house is way too nice to count as podunk even if he's from podunkville (as a fellow midwesterner, frankly I didn't think it looked THAT bad, and although that cop thing was obviously a setup, I can certainly vouch for the hardassness of Ohio cops...don't speed in Ohio, people). Tyce continues to be unbearable. Tapper Girl is gonna be the Jessi Peralta of this year, isn't she? Come on. Don't tell me she passed her psych eval. She's gonna be rubbing oil all over her abs and stalking Pasha in about five minutes.

SYTYCD Thursday
CC: I realize there's gonna be a Kent backlash. I know it. It's gonna happen. But it hasn't happened for me yet-- that kid is fucking adorable. I mean, I was looking at Mark the whole time during the actual dance (and Wade certainly liked him some Mark and some Robert Roldan for that group number, no?), but in his interviews, he's just so damn cute! The same cannot be said for Tapper Girl. She did nothing for me during that Broadway, she continues to radiate bustedness, and I'm pretty sure calling herself an old soul during her 11-second interview was code for "I regularly blow that grizzled black guy who claims to be my tap dancing mentor and while he's distracted I steal his prescription painkillers." Also, as if I couldn't already hate Tyce enough, Cat Deeley tells us he worked with Tom Cruise and J.Lo this week, which can only mean he was responsible for that MTV Movie Awards debacle. Christ. But that Mia Michaels routine was great-- she was the only one of the choreographers who got the assignment right, in that she showcased the newbies to gorgeous effect and didn't, like, totally use the all-stars to steal the spotlight away from them, which happened to some extent in every other routine (and even after the routines...like, Dom, shut up, would you please? we get it. you and Cat have a thing. we know. show some goddamn respect for Jose. this is the show's fault for not sending the all-stars offstage right after each dance). But Cristina more or less held her own against Anya, which god knows is hard to do, and can we PLEASE talk about the smoldering awesomeness that is Robert Roldan? Good lord. Could not stop staring at him during the Wade routine, and he was great in Sonya's. Smolder smolder smolder. And then he opened his mouth and it was totally that hot-girl-you-wish-would-shut-up syndrome. Less cheery talky, more smolder dancy, Roldan. We'll get along much better that way. Also, I'm calling Ashley as this year's Kathryn. She got no airtime till now but is totally stealth good. Also I loved Cat's dress and shoes. Also here's my once-again-cheezy shout-out to a dancer who's grown since the last time we saw her: Allison! Wow. Wow. She was great at 18 but now? Wow. We should all have babies at a ridiculously young age and emerge on the other side with that much sass and presence.

JB: What a week for comedy. First, Tom Cruise revives his hilarious movie producer character. Then Lythgoe takes a cross country road trip. Hilarious. And he didn't look like a tool in his Beckham shirt. I'm still bad with the names but I'm guessing Froderman and The Farmboy( kind of presumptive of Cat to ask him about his ideal woman, hmm?) are this year's Mollee and The Other Guy. Might have been a bit unfortunate to make such a big deal of introducing the new director--seriously, can you remember the last time ANY show did that?-- and then the rest of the night was like, Why is the camera way back there, why can't I see the new people, I don't know who anyone is. But that could just be me and my difficulties.
CC: It's not just you.

Next Food Network Star

JB: Lee DeWyze is not going to sell records. Whoever won ANTM is not going to be a top model.Work Of Art will not produce the next great artist. But the winner of the Next Food Network Star actually gets to be what the title promises. I'm a fan of any show that makes its contestants justify why they should be on TV and Next Food Network Star is RIGOROUS. In addition to cooking skills, it demands you come with a fully-developed personality, that you have a workable and unique pitch for the show you might win and that your on-camera skills are top-notch. I've called the last three winners early on-- yay, me--but this year is more difficult. I know who I want to win: an LA-based Indian food blogger named Aarti. She's not unpleasant to look at, she's got a voice that, I think mellifluous is the correct term. She already knows she wants her show to be called Aarti's Paarti. There's an unfilled void for an Indian cooking show on the network. She won this week's outdoor cooking challenge. She's the whole package. If only being the Next Food Network Star didn't involve cameras. Because that's Aarti's one flaw. She freezes. Her mouth goes dry. Her brain shuts down. And I feel her pain ( one day I'll tell you about the pilot I did for Britain's Channel 4. There's a reason I can't go back to the UK). Also, she did something that won my eternal affection but , on American TV, is tantamount to declaring yourself an undying servant of the Lord Satan. When host Bobby Flay asked her if she was comfortable with the task of catering to 100 people, Aarti said no. When asked why, she mumbled, `Because I never think I can do any..." She stopped short of saying the word `anything', but you could see the shock in the judges' eyes. I hope Aarti's journey from crippling self-doubt to full-on confidence will be the arc that wins her this thing. Cuz if it's not her, it's gonna be the babbling Italian chick who's like a coked-up Rachel Weisz. Actually, that won't happen because Giada's got the mentor role this season and, as much as Giada doesn't particularly want anyone to do well, she is NOT HAVING another perky Italian trying to take her spot.
CC: Were you on camera in this pilot? Because in that case, "one day" needs to be RIGHT NOW.

Tonys
CC: Okay, Catherine Zeta-Jones Shatnering her way through Send In the Clowns was hilariously unintentionally hilarious. And watching Matthew Morrison do all his normal Mr. Schue schtick, but on a STAGE, was surprisingly bearable and even entertaining. Like, THIS is what this guy should be doing, all the time. He's great at it, so get him off my TV and put him back in the theater from whence he came. Lea Michele brought it-- duh-- and sang in Jay-Z's face-- huh?-- and then a lot of stuff happened with people I never heard of which was boring but then a lot of people I HAVE heard of won stuff, which made me sad for the people I never heard of because come on, it can't be fun to toil in the theater for years and years and years, only to have ScarJo show up in her Broadway debut and steal your award while also getting to be married to Ryan Reynolds who is hot and hilarious and has always been so and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-13T10:53:00.000-07:00

Corona. `Rhythm of The Night'. Verdict: TUNE!!!

Meanwhile, to hear the sound of my nightmares, venture over to http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

Captain Hollywood Project. `More And More'. Who was Captain Hollywood? What was the Project? If it was to fill the early 90s airwaves with mush-mouthed European rappers barely up to the the task of phonetically delivering their nonsense rhymes, then: success.

And if you thought you'd never have to hear Montell Jordan again, head over to http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva and either be bitterly disappointed or pleasantly surprised. Or bitterly surprised. Or pleasantly disappointed...

Mixtape Club: Special 90s Dance-Pop Bullshit Special!

2010-06-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

K7. `Come Baby Come'. If this isn't a perfect Glee rehearsal room number, I don't know what is. I can see it now. Finn, Puck, Artie, Mike Chang, the nameless black dude. Just don't let Mr Schue rap.

(Also, CC's got something hot going on at http://blogs.myspace.com/cherrycheva. Plus she's put another tune up.)