Next week is Thanksgiving week, and while I’ll update with breaking news for the first part of the week, I’ll be taking some time away from the TV, so there will be a double Amazing Race post on Nov. 30. Here’s what to watch if you need to get away from family or friends during the holiday week:
Sunday, Nov. 22The Next Iron Chef 2 [Food Network, 10 p.m.] ends its run with a kitchen stadium face-off, and either Jehangir Mehta or Jose Garces will become the next Iron Chef.
Monday, Nov. 23
The premiere of the family reunion/weepfest show Find My Family [ABC, 9:30 p.m.] follows Dancing with the Stars’ [ABC, 8 p.m.] final performance episode of the season, but it’s Jon and Kate Plus Eight [TLC, 9 p.m.] that has its final episode ever. It’s an hour, but who cares, it’s over! Hallelujah! Also tonight: <Intervention [A&E, 9 p.m.], Hoarders [A&E, 10 p.m.], and Pawn Stars [History, 10 p.m.] all return with new seasons.
Tuesday, Nov. 24 Dancing with the Stars gives a shitty mirrorball trophy to someone after wasting two hours during its finale [ABC, 9 p.m.]
Wednesday, Nov. 25 The Biggest Loser airs a two-hour “where are they now?” special [NBC, 8 p.m.] that tracks down more than 40 former contestants to see how they’ve done with their weight loss since being on the show. So You Think You Can Dance [Fox, 8 p.m.] votes off two more and gets its top 10.
Thursday, Nov. 26
All day long on Thanksgiving, Discovery will air a Mythbusters marathon [9 a.m.to 3 a.m.]. It’s so easy to get sucked in and watch them have fun testing myths and, well, things that only loosely qualify as myths but are still fun to watch. (Discovery will also air Deadliest Catch all day Friday and Dirty Jobs all day Saturday, which is even better). I love Survivor, but I don’t love its clip shows, one of which airs tonight [CBS, 8 p.m.] and looks back at “the first 27 days.”
At the end of last night’s Survivor Samoa episode, jury member Erik excitedly whispered, “Man, this is good shit.” He was thrilled that Galu was getting its comeuppance, but he could have also been talking about the whole episode. There was a lot of great stuff, like a tie vote, Natalie dangling by her legs during the reward challenge, and Russell finding a third hidden immunity idol (though this time with a video clue, at least, although he still found it despite being chased). It was the kind of episode that proved Survivor is still going strong 19 seasons later.
That was almost derailed by a nearly half-episode advertisement for Sprint and the Palm Pre, which was unnecessarily long and awkward just when Jeff Probst announced that the winning tribe would take a phone along with them to take photos on their reward and make memories. But it didn’t stop there. Probst didn’t’ do well with ad copy that clearly wasn’t written in his voice, and Survivor didn’t do well extending the product placement, which went so far as to have contestants talking about it (triple ugh) and name-drop features while getting the hidden immunity idol clues off the phone. I’m all for shows making money and even placing products or logos, but it has to be organic and not pull us out of the moment. A prize can be organic, but an extended commercial is not.
Anyway, at Tribal Council, Russell again had an immunity idol but didn’t play it, because he wasn’t Galu’s target: Natalie was. With Shambo switching sides, there was a tie vote between Laura and Natalie. With the threat of a random elimination from drawing rocks, John decided to change his vote during the re-vote and thus save himself, unwilling to gamble on the rock draw like Dave and the other members of Galu were. That sent Laura home, much to the delight of Shambo and, of course Russell.
Laura has long been a target—of Russell, Shambo, and even John—and I talked with her about that a few minutes ago. Laura said that Russell’s problem with her went back to their initial interaction, when she told him “don’t threaten me. He knew that he couldn’t control me, and he can’t have that.” Laura said that “at that point, I wasn’t nervous” because Galu had numbers.
Of course, Galu screwed itself by turning on its own, and Laura told me that while “I regret voting him out because I like Erik as a person,” she said she doesn’t regret the vote because “I was on [Erik and John’s] chopping list.” She said she was thinking, “I have five, six people running after me to get me. I just pick up a weapon and fire.” Of course, she said, “in hindsight, looking back, we should have kept Erik.”
As to her conflict with Shambo, which has led to criticism of Laura’s behavior, Laura said she can only “assume what it was” that Shambo didn’t like about her. “If I would have to guess why, she wanted to be the strong girl on the tribe, she wanted to be the go-to girl on the tribe,” Laura told me. But instead, Galu often chose Laura to do physical tasks in challenges or asked her for advice, and combined with Shambo’s immediate exclusion of herself, led to that conflict.
Laura said that “it’s frustrating to watch it and kind of get cast as the mean one,” and challenged anyone to “show one thing that I did that was mean to her. If CBS had footage of me being mean to her, they would show it,” Laura said. Instead, Laura said that it was Shambo who “would constantly come after me,” and our perception of Laura’s meanness “is only what Shambo said. Just because it was her perception” doesn’t make it true.
However, Laura told me, “I did call her Gilligan in my confessional, I totally own that,” and separated that from the things Shambo said about Laura to others in the game, rather than in confessionals. Still, Laura added, “I did apologize to her after the show, and I took somebody with me. I said, ‘If there was something that I did that hurt your feelings and made you feel no apart from the group, I sincerely apologize.’ I don’t know how it was received; I haven’t talked to her since.”
Laura—who told me pre-game that she wouldn’t do anything to “mar my character or mar Christ’s character”—said that her portrayal has been “really hard” and that it surprised her, because “my fear was going to be that I [came off as] cutthroat, competitive. I won’t let my kids win checkers or Hi Ho! Cherry-O. Mean-spirited, that’s the last thing that I am.”
Laura told me that they were aware that the tie-breaker would be a rock-draw up until the finals (presumably the final four, but unclear) and said that “we were all prepared” to draw stones. The vote-for-John plan was their attempt at changing that, and Laura said that her tribemates were “willing to put their game on the line for me.” John, of course, did not, which Laura said was “the perfect situation for him” and “excuse” to get rid of her, because “I knew he was coming after me,” she said. While she’s “disappointed,” “I totally can’t blame him for it,” Laura said, even though it “put the rest of my tribe in danger.”
What it did was make Galu irrelevant as a tribe, and make the Foa Foa alliance dominant, assuming it holds together. Or we could be finally into individual game territory, where splinter alliances matter more than original-tribe loyalty or disloyalty.
It’ll be two weeks until we find out what happens next: Thanksgiving’s episode is a clip show, and the break is great, but the clip shows pretty much never are.
Seven months after the three finalists presented collections at Fashion Week, Project Runway 6 ended, with the win going to Irina Shabayeva. Although Heidi told her the judges were “disappointed in [her] lack of color,” Michael Kors said Irina had “the best sense of showmanship.” After she won, Heidi told her that her collection was “sleek, modern, and cohesive, and it told a story. And you knew what kind of woman you were designing for.”
Carol Hannah Whitfield was eliminated first for her collection featuring “structured draping.” That was despite having “impeccable” tailoring, as Heidi said, never mind many fans who thought she should win. The judges told her they “admired your collection’s strength and energy, but it lacked a collective thread.”
Runner-up Althea Harper didn’t win, probably because, as Heidi said, the judges were “not entirely convinced” that she accomplished her goal of creating clothes of the future, even though she showed “modern staples of a new generation.” Also, Nina Garcia said that Althea’s “last three pieces were off” because “perhaps you tried to hit too many notes.”
The finale was, well, blah, kind of like the whole season. As to the heavily-promoted Tim Gunn meltdown, well, it wasn’t that big of a deal. He was just upset that the models and designers weren’t ready to walk on the runway, and looked stressed out, but it’s not like he kidney-punched a model or something. “Designers, I am about to lose it. We should be lining up right now but we can’t because maybe 10 percent of you are dressed. Get your models here, get them into your looks, please. This is crazy,” he said.
Then, just before a commercial break, he turned and looked right at the camera, and made a face that perfectly summed up this entire season:
It’s no surprise that Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t have a great track record of awarding its prizes to its winners, but its winners have rarely discussed that. In an interview with the New York Post, season two winner Heather West—who worked as a sous chef during season six but was pretty much invisible the entire season—mentions not getting her own restaurant like the show said she’d receive.
“Honestly, they’re really not going to completely trust someone they saw on TV with a multi-million dollar restaurant,” Heather said.
However, she added that her experience there was positive. “I did work at all the restaurants in the resort, learned a huge amount, and a lot about promotion and marketing,” she said. Heather is now the head chef at Monterey Restaurant in Long Island.
NBC has announced a new series that will award what it calls “arguably the biggest prize in reality show history,” which is “a new restaurant chain in four cities across America.” United Plates of America is a competition judged “by a panel of real investors who fund the chain of restaurants with their own money,” according to an NBC press release.
Exactly how the show will work is somewhat ambiguous, but NBC says “the investors will put the chosen few through rigorous challenges to discover whose plan has the greatest potential for success.” It sounds like a combination of Shark Tank and Chopping Block.
While NBC hasn’t had much success with new reality show concepts recently, never mind cooking shows (The Chopping Block was pulled off the air), there is good news: The producers are Magical Elves, who produce Top Chef for NBC’s sibling network Bravo.
Nicole Fox is America’s next next next next next next next next next next next next next top model, winning the short model cycle of America’s Next Top Model.
She joined other winners in near-immediate obscurity and non-top model status after beating Laura Kirkpatrick in a final runway show involving wind, rain, and other elements, such as previously eliminated models and a few seconds of Eddie Murphy, whose daughter Bria was a model in the show. (Correction: Bria was not a contestant.)
By the way, Nicole is both the youngest winner ever, at 18, and the second Nicole to win the show, following season five’s Nicole Linkletter.
The Insider’s panel of pseudo-journalists and C-list celebrities may be establishing itself as the go-to jury for taking down reality stars who need to be challenged. As ironic as it is, a tabloid TV show—a genre that usually revels in publicist-fed fluff or sensational non-news—is doing the work journalists should do.
After taking down Jon Gosselin, The Insider’s panel went after Heidi and Spencer yesterday, and were challenged on Spencer’s attack on Al Roker and on their bullshit in general.
At time, I wish the panel had gone further in challenging Heidi and Spencer, and avoided taking the childish, ad hominem attack route, which Chris Jacobs does. But when he goes after Spencer, the couple relents. Heidi says, “We will work on being more positive,” and Spencer actually apologizes to Al Roker, and even writes a live apology tweet.
Of course, I don’t believe they’ll change their self-promoting ways, or that Heidi will ever get a clue about what Spencer is doing, but these eight minutes are pretty awesome, at least:
One year ago on Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, 173 people were killed and hundreds were wounded in Mumbai as a result of 10 simultaneous terrorist attacks. Two documentaries debuting on TV in the next week examine those events from the perspective of both the terrorists and the victims.
Tonight at 8 p.m. ET, HBO debuts Dan Reed’s film Terror in Mumbai, which the network calls “a 360-degree view of a terrorist act, recounting in harrowing detail the bloody events of that 60-hour period.” It’s an updated version of the documentary that debuted this summer on Channel 4 in the UK. Narrated by CNN and Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, it includes “exclusive audio tapes of the intercepted phone calls between the young gunmen and their controllers in Pakistan, and testimony from the sole surviving gunman,” according to HBO.
Here’s a (brief) preview:
Next Wednesday at 8 p.m. on PBS, Secrets of the Dead: Mumbai Massacre tells the story from the victims’ perspectives, including “first-hand survivor accounts, closed-circuit footage of the chaos from within the hotels and actual words spoken by both victims and terrorists,” according to PBS. Th documentary is narrated by Liev Schreiber, and executive producer Jared Lipworth says on PBS’ web site, “This film offers an unprecedented, inside view into the attacks. It not only reveals how the victims and terrorists acted during the massacre, it highlights how consumer technologies and social media gave the victims a chance to survive, while also putting them directly into the line-of-fire of the terrorists who were hunting them down.”
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