Police are investigating after a cast member on The Real World 24, which is now in production in New Orleans, had to get medical attention after using his toothbrush, which a fellow cast member peed on and then used to scrub a toilet because of a fight.
Ryan Leslie told police in a written statement that after an “arguement” [sic], cast member Preston Roberson-Charles “later came in my room and took my toothbrush off the counter and scrubbed the inside of the toilet and urinated on my tooth brush. I wasn’t aware of this and continued to use my toothbrush,” and was later “diagnosed with a viral infection.”
According to the police report [PDF], which was filed March 1 and published by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, cast member Ryan “Leslie stated that Roberson called him a “faggot” and that he ‘sucks dick.’ He stated that his throat started to hurt and got progressively worse and had to go to the hospital.”
Police were called to the house (which is owned by Baron Davis) and the paper reports that “[t]hough police conducted interviews and confiscated evidence, no one was arrested.”
Vevmo has details and photos of both Preston Roberson-Charles and Ryan Leslie, who’s identified as a straight hair stylist who’s friends with Paris Hilton’s My New BFF winner Brittany Flickinger.
Saturday, March 20
In a few weeks, the Fox Reality Channel will become National Geographic Wild, and tonight it concludes its final two original series: Seducing Cindy [9 p.m.] and Solitary 4.0 [10 p.m.].
Sunday, March 21
Discovery’s Life debuts [8 p.m.] on seven different networks. If you’re interested in staring at odd living creatures doing amazing things, there’s also the season three debut of Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane [Style, 9 p.m.], the fifth season premiere of Gene Simmons Family Jewels [A&E, 9 p.m.], the premiere of Kirstie Alley’s Big Life [A&E, 10 p.m.], and Style’s Jersey Shore knock-off Jerseylicious [Style 10 p.m.] On network TV, the first episode of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution [ABC, 10 p.m.] will be previewed before re-airing Friday along with its second episode. On the show, the “Naked Chef” will attempt to reform Americans’ shitty eating habits.
Tuesday, March 23
The final 11 American Idol 9 contestants tackle songs of teen idols [Fox, 8 p.m.], which few if any of them will become because this season sucks.
Wednesday, March 24 Survivor Heroes vs. Villains got preempted last week and this week gets bumped to Wednesday for its episode [CBS, 8 p.m.]. Meanwhile, Fly Girls, a docudrama that follows flight attendants on Virgin America, debuts tonight [The CW, 9 p.m.], and The Real World DC actually concludes tonight [MTV, 10 p.m.] (not last week, as listings suggested), and it’s followed by a “Shit They Should Have Shown” special [11 p.m.] and a reunion next week. In news about good television, Mythbusters returns with its eighth season [Discovery, 9 p.m.] as Adam and Jamie test whether you can kill someone by throwing soda out the window of your car, while Grant and Tory say goodbye to temporary team member Jessi as they test “the death defying hang” from movies.
A new promo airing for Wednesday’s episode of Survivor again reveals more than it should, and while it’s not quite as much of a spoiler as the Samoa preview that showed too much, it still gives away a lot more than the next time on Survivor preview did. (Stop reading if you don’t want to know.)
The preview shows that both tribes will go to Tribal Council, which a press release also revealed: “When the castaways discover that two people will be sent packing in a rare double elimination, everyone scrambles to save their own skin, and one castaway surprises everyone and risks it all at Tribal Council.” In other words, time to force some drama on the Villains tribe, because they have been sitting back and decimating the Heroes. I suppose in the desperation to get us to watch on a special night and after disappointing game play in the last episode, but why not tease this instead of just showing everything?
The preview has also generated conversation because at the end of the preview, Russell and Rob are talking, and Rob says, “If you don’t have that idol, you need to go get it.” Russell says, “I don’t have it,” and then Rob says, “Well, it’s been real.”
But Russell saying “I don’t have it” sounds a bit weird, and perhaps not quite like him; the background noise changes suddenly, too, as if a wave had just hit the shore. While Survivor does it less frequently than some shows and does it better, the show still does dub in audio, like when Jeff Probst gives the rules for a challenge that has been compressed for time. (For example, I doubt that last week, Schmergen Brawl was played to two points, but that’s all they had time to show.)
Of course, Russell loves to show everyone his idol, even when he shouldn’t, so that’s one red flag. And if we don’t see Russell tell Rob exactly that on Wednesday, that will be another clue, because why wouldn’t they show such a definitive statement and important moment?
But Russell’s mouth pretty much lines up with “I don’t have it,” and he shakes his head, so even as someone who readily calls bullshit on dubbed-over reality TV, I’m not entirely convinced this is deliberately deceptive, as commenters on the video and others are. It could just be the quality of the audio. Judge for yourself:
Sunday, the Discovery Channel will debut the first two hours of Life, an 11-part documentary series that was produced with the BBC, which aired it last fall. Oprah Winfrey narrates the US version, which on Sunday will be simulcast at 8 p.m. ET on all seven Discovery networks (Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, Science Channel, Investigation Discovery, Planet Green, and the Discovery Health Channel), including the HD versions of six of those channels.
Life focuses on “the adaptability and diversity of life on earth, revealing the most spectacular, bizarre and fascinating behaviors that living things have devised to thrive,” according to Discovery. The first episode is titled “Challenges of Life,” and other episodes focus on groupings of living things, like “Mammals” and “Plants.” It’s a follow-up to Planet Earth, the $2 million-per-episode, Emmy-winning series that, when it was first released, became the best-selling HD DVD yet.
That’s because the high-definition footage is stunning. There’s no other word for it. (If you didn’t see Planet Earth, definitely check out one of its many DVD versions.)
I talked to executive producer Mike Gunton for a Daily Beast story about the series, and he detailed the way they approached production of the 2,500 hours of tape for the series. That includes filming small creatures in the same way that they would large creatures. That resulted in spectacular scenes such as this chase.
In a part of the interview that didn’t fit in the story, he also told me that their HD equipment offers “a new aesthetic” and allows them to do things they otherwise couldn’t do, like film for longer periods of time. He also described it as “robust” and said, “a few of our cameras have done seven years hard labor in every habitat you can ever think of, from the arctic to the desert to the jungle to the bottom of the ocean, so they’re pretty good.” That strikes me as yet another argument that CBS and The Amazing Race suck for continuing to deprive us of HD. (I realize it’s a budget issue and one that complicates hiring local crews, but if this series and Whale Wars and Deadliest Catch can all shoot in HD, so can The Amazing Race.)
Anyway, it’s clear the equipment and the talent behind the camera paid off once again. Just watch this incredible scene for one example:
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, the dumbed-down US version of his great UK series Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, has been renewed for a third season by Fox. The second season is now airing Fridays at 9, and has a number of episodes to go, so the third season likely won’t debut until at least fall, if not next winter.
Meanwhile, in London, someone wrote anti-Ramsay graffiti on a wall near his house. The graffiti said “Gordon is shit” and “Ramsay is a douche,” and the use of the word “douche” has The Sun speculating that “the culprit could be AMERICAN.”
The paper reports that “Neighbours believe the vandal was trying to target the 43-year-old’s star’s nearby home but got the address wrong.”
While American Idol remains atop the heap of TV shows in terms of ratings, it seems like some people realize that this season is kinda a heap of something else, because ratings for the first results show were at a record low.
The Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes reports that “the episode suffered the smallest audience among 18-49 year-olds for a regularly scheduled in-season episode in ‘Idol’ history,” and then amusingly links that to Seacrest’s twitter spoiler: “Thursday morning, on that radio show he was so hellbent on promoting that he was willing to nuke the Fox reality series that made him famous, Seabiscuit did not apologize to either the network or his Twitter minions for ruining Wednesday night’s ‘Idol.’”
Compared to last year, the results show was “down only 6% with adults 18-49. It’s down only 5% with adults 18-34 and total viewers, and down 3% with teens,” according to TV By the Numbers. And The Hollywood Reporter points out that “[d]espite airing against nothing but repeats on the major broadcast networks, the results show was down 12% from last Wednesday’s performance episode — while up 4% from last Thursday’s results show.”
Paula Abdul won’t host or judge ABC’s new Star Search after all, so she’s still free to judge The X Factor.
Paula and ABC couldn’t come to terms because “Abdul was reluctant to take a lower salary” than what Fox offered and she rejected for American Idol ($5 million a year), “[a]nd ABC was, naturally, very reluctant to indulge in such high figures for launching a new, untested reality show into a marketplace crowded with successful talent competitions,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
After three separate guest performances and a lot of extended chatter—but no group number!—American Idol 9 lost its first finalist: Lacey Brown. That was as unsurprising as the bottom three, which also included Paige Miles and Tim Urban.
If there was any surprise, it was that Tim wasn’t in the bottom two, and when Ryan Seacrest sent him back to safety, he gave us that now-familiar look of surprise that appears on his face every time he finds out the world doesn’t think he sucks as much as he knows he does.
Meanwhile, the mostly pointless judges’ save returned to be pointless again, and of course the judges unanimously declined to save Lacey.
By the way, if you’re on the west coast and follow Ryan Seacrest on Twitter, he spoiled the results early. You’d think his followers would thank him for sparing them the misery of the results show, but no, they’re mad.
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