Winnipeg Free Press

“I’ve lost my reign as the dumbest Survivor EVER!”

The structure and semantics may have been a bit shaky, but ol’ Gravedigger James was absolutely spot-on with the sentiment in his tribal-council jury-bench declaration last night after the ladies of the Black Widow Society lured poor, slack-jawed waffle-cone filler Erik into their web and then snuffed him with almost-uncomfortable glee.

 It was, at once, the saddest and the funniest moment in Survivor history. Dude, dude, dude, dude, DUDE – the one thing you NEVER do, unless you’ve got a brace of hidden immunity idols in your back pockets, is hand the hard-won immunity necklace to someone else.

But Erik did. To Nat, no less. Sheeeesh. And now, Ozzie and Jason can feel not quite so stupid about the way the comfortably cackling conspiratorettes  sent them packing at recent TCs.

I still think Cirie’s going to win, but I’ve switched my vote-off lineup card to show nasty Nat going next.

Your thoughts?

Also, I’ve been wracking my brain, and I really can’t think of a more shockingly boneheaded play in all the previous seasons of Survivor. Can you???

The Idol field is down to three; the roster of Dancing duos has been reduced to four; and the Survivor site has just five unhappy campers — four full-of-themselves females and just one very twitchy guy — left.

Time, then, for some fearless and foolhardy end-of-season predictions, don’t'cha think?

First — and, I think, easiest to handicap — is American Idol, which I am pre-emptively stating is reduced to three even before tonight’s elimination show, because dreadful dreadlocked lyric-dropper Jason Castro is as good as gone. That leaves the dueling Davids, Archuleta and Cook, and late bloomer Syesha Mercado as the series’ seventh-season finalists.  As good as she has been in the run-up to the final song-selection showdown, the betting here is — as it has been for some time — that we’re going to see a Dave-off, Idol-style, in the final episode. My heart’s behind Cook, but my head tells me America’s going to vote for Archuleta.

On the Dancing floor, CouchBoy’s predicted elimination order goes like this: Marissa Jaret Winokur gets hoofed next, because her fan base isn’t big enough; Jason Taylor gets sacked in the final-three shakedown; and then one-armed bandit Cristian de la Fuente comes up short in the sympathy-vote department, leaving former figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi as the deserving winner of the mirror-ball bauble.

Over at Survivor: Micronesia — Fans vs. Favorites, picking a winner isn’t much easier than staying in the game after you’ve found the hidden immunity idol. It’s pretty obvious that gullible guy Erik is gone as soon as he fails to win an immunity idol — which should happen as soon as the challenge involves brains rather than brawn — but the more interesting scenario involves just exactly how the Black Widow Bunch decides which of its members will be, er, dis-membered first. My guess is that Amanda will get her torch snuffed first, with the ever-more-cartoonishly-evil Natalie getting her comeuppance shortly after that. Which leaves a final-jury-vote pairing of Parvati and Cirie;  the CB perspective is that Cirie, while quite unpopular will get props from her former island peeps for having been the game’s master manipulator.

So there you have it — David Archuleta, Kristi Yamaguchi, Cirie Fields.

Any questions? Disagreements, perhaps?

Here’s a quick item I thought was worth posting, just for the sake of amusing, seasonal, Hallmark-holiday squabbling. The folks at TiVo have released the results of a survey that asked PVR-empowered couchspuds to name their favourite teevee moms. Top spot went to The Cosby Show’s  Claire Huxtable (as portrayed by Phylicia Rashad). Personally, I think the results have a generational skew, given the relative rarity of “golden age” viewers who’d a) respond to such a poll, and b) know what the heck a TiVo is. I like the list, but would definitely have preferred to see  June Cleaver (Leave It To Beaver) – the classic, stereotypical, time-warped TV mommy, played by Barbara Billingsley – much closer to the top. Like, No. 1, maybe.

Take a look at the list, and tell me what YOU think — whose couch-connected apron strings are you still clinging to?

TiVo’s Top TV Moms
1.      Clair Huxtable: The Cosby Show – 48%

2.      Caroline Ingalls: Little House on the Prairie – 45%

3.      Marion Cunningham: Happy Days – 45%

4.      Marge Simpson: The Simpsons – 43%

5.      Wilma Flintstones: The Flintstone – 43%

6.      Mrs. Brady: Brady Bunch – 31%

7.      Mrs. Partridge: The Partridge Family – 29%

8.      June Cleaver: Leave it to Beaver – 26%

9.      Vivian Banks: Fresh Prince of Bel Air – 25%

10.  Rosanne: Rosanne – 23%
11.  Carmella Soprano: The Sopranos – 18%
12.  Marie Barone: Everybody Loves Raymond – 18%

13.  Janet King: Road to Avonlea – 18%

14.  Peggy Bundy: Married with Children – 17%

15.  Bree Van de Kamp: Desperate Housewives – 14%

16.  Emma Leroy: Corner Gas – 14%

17.  Mrs. Costanza: Seinfeld – 13%

18.  Norma Arnold: The Wonder Years – 12%

19.  Christine “Spike” Nelson: Degrassi: The Next Generation – 10%

20.  Sarah Hamoudi: Little Mosque on the Prairie – 7%

Here’s a piece of fab news for fans of the best of this season’s wave of sci-fi-flavoured new dramas: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has been renewed for 2008-09.

 Fox announced the sophomore-season pickup earlier today; the network released also announced that Brian Austin Greene will become a full-time cast member when this spring’s bomb-blast cliffhanger is resolved.

Despite having to carry the full weight of the Terminator movies’ mythology, T:SCC emerged as the best of a super-powered rookie crop that also included the likes of Journeyman (trip canceled), Chuck (rebooting for ‘08/’09), The Bionic Woman (unplugged), Moonlight (surviving, but sucking) and New Amsterdam (barely undead). Lena Headey succeeded, in spades, at reinventing the Sarah Connor character as her own creation, and Summer Glau  emerged as one of the season’s true breakout stars (though there will be, thanks to the season-ending explosion, some reassembly required).

CouchBoy, for one, is pretty darned excited about another season of T:SCC.

How ’bout you?

Back from a week away from TVLand whilst covering the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, and the biggest news during the yuk-filled working hiatus had to do with Brent Butt’s decision that the next season of CTV’s Corner Gas will be its last.

It’s the right call. After all he’s done, both for CTV and for the Canadian sitcom — which he single-handedly revived and reinvented — Butt has earned the right to go out on top. Corner Gas has been a huge hit since its pilot episode, and its unexpected and unprecedented success has afforded the series’ cast a level Canadian-TV stardom the likes of which (no disrespect intended to the Trailer Park guys) has never been seen before.

The reason Corner Gas became as huge as it is is pretty simple, but none too common in the realm of teevee: CTV allowed the funny guys to be in charge of the funny and didn’t meddle in the creative process. Butt and writer/producer Mark Farrell, both well known in these parts for the smart, clean, hilarious standup acts they used to bring to Rumor’s Comedy Club, developed a sitcom that celebrated Butt’s small-town Saskatchewan roots without surrendering to the obvious cornpone jokes or slackjawed-yokel stereotypes. Instead, the denizens of Dog River, despite their simple nature, were portrayed as sneaky smart with a level of uncomplicated sophistication that truly made their town just a little bit hipper than whereverthehell the rest of us happen to live.

And now, Butt has decided, Season 6 will be Corner Gas’s last 19-episode fill-up. Since he’s essentially done for Canadian TV what Seinfeld did for U.S. sitcoms, he certainly deserves the same consideration that Jerry received in deciding when to say goodbye.

Let him drive off into the sunset with his head held high, I say. You’ll be able to watch him go for three days, anyway.

What do you think? Is Butt making the right call, or should he stick around for as long as he can?

The speculation continues over whether the show that’s arguably the best major-network drama on TV — Friday Night Lights — will return for a third season.

And the most recent rumblings on the showbiz grapevine are favourable, as evidenced by this wire-service report that moved today:

No deal yet but producer optimistic about return of ‘Friday Night Lights’

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES — “Friday Night Lights” just may score another season.

Executive producer Jason Katims said he’s “incredibly optimistic” about a third season for the drama, which has been in limbo since the writers strike ended.

“There’s no deal yet for the show,” Katims said Wednesday at the William S. Paley Television Festival. “But we are being incredibly optimistic that’s going to happen and happen soon.”

Although a critical hit, ratings were low for the show, which depicts small-town Texas life where high school football is king.

When viewers last saw the Dillon Panthers, the team was gearing up for the playoffs. Because of the writers strike, which halted most TV production, seven of the 22 episodes NBC ordered for season two weren’t produced.

Fans have fought to keep the show on the air, launching www.SaveFridayNightLights.tv and asking viewers to send donations to fill NBC entertainment chief Ben Silverman’s mailbox with miniature plastic footballs.

“I think the answer is going to be pretty soon,” Katims said. “I have a feeling we’re two or three weeks away from knowing.”

A spokeswoman for NBC said Thursday the network had no comment.

Katims said a third season would likely pick up after the planned events of season two. However, the series would integrate unused story lines into the new season, which he said could begin filming as soon as July.

–

Despite NBC’s none-too-kind scheduling of FNL (sure, it’s kinda cutesy to place Friday Night Lights on Friday night, but shouldn’t someone have figured out that on those evenings, many in the show’s core viewership — meaning fans of high-school football — would be out watching actual football rather than home watching a show about football?), the series basically held its own ratings-wise this season while evolving dramatically into one of the smartest, most compelling and most fully developed shows of the past decade. The fact that Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton have not taken home Emmys for their efforts in creating TV’s most fascinating married couple is nothing short of a joke.

Don’t know about you, but ol’ CouchBoy is keeping all his fingers crossed for a speedy full-season FNL renewal.

Are you a fan? Why/why not?

When it comes to following my fave “unscripted” shows, I’m the first to admit I’m a total rube who’s willing to accept almost all the obviously contrived confrontations, created-in-the-editing-room villainy and had-to-be-suggested-by-the-producers plot twists that make for entertaining “reality” TV.

But even as an admitted sucker for a good reality-show spin, I found myself flummoxed by the level of contrivance in this week’s installment of Survivor: Micronesia. Specifically, the unreal nature of the “reality” foisted on viewers during this week’s reward challenge, which smacked of stage-managed tribal strategy and an outcome that, if not rigged, was so weighted by a “dramatic” choice that the final outcome could only have gone one way.

The challenge, which pitted the reconfigured tribes in a tied-together-in-tandems game of grab-the-flag tag played in a muddy, wood-barrier-filled obstacle course, was one of the most brutally punishing in the show’s history. The list of injuries suffered by the players — Penner’s punctured knee (which looks to take a badly infected turn in next week’s installment), Parvati’s fat lip, Ami’s tweaked knee — proves that you can’t fake the physical stuff. But the way the challenge ended, with the unlikely pairing of firefighting mesomorph Joel dragging wispy pageant coach Chet through the course like a Raggedy Not-Andy doll while trying unsuccessfully to catch Eliza and Parvati, simply didn’t pass the smell test. Seriously, Joel and Chet, with the game on the line, when you’ve got you’ve got a pair of whippets like Ozzy and Erik rested and ready to run? Even in the dizzy land of reality-TV dramatics, this one defies logic — unless, of course, the final pairings were “suggested” by the show’s producers in order to a) create a cartoon-violence-filled finale to rival the wildest of the Wile E./Roadrunner chases, and b) set up an intriguing tribal council showdown.

I dunno. The whole thing just felt like a pro-wrestling storyline to me. Fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.

And remember, I’m the guy who LOVES suspending disbelief and buying into this “reality” TV chicanery.

What about you? Did you believe this latest bit of Micronesian story management? Or do you agree that Burnett & Co. have stretched their version of the truth a bit too far?

After airing just ONE episode, NBC has given the axe to its experimental made-for-the-’Net-transitioned-to-the-tube comedy quarterlife. Not completely surprising, since the series premiere attracted a record-shatteringly-small audience (3.1 million, which is the tiniest tune-in for an NBC show in the 9 p.m. Tuesday slot in, like, 17 years). But still a bit of a shock because of the show’s pedigree — it was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the guys responsible for thirtysomething and My So-Called Life.

Actually, I didn’t think quarterlife was half bad. In fact, I kinda liked it. And the thinking here in CouchBoyLand is that NBC has given longer, lingering prime-time looks to shows that were 50 times worse than this one (ah, Inside Schwartz, we hardly knew ye).

Did you sample quarterlife? Do you think the quick kill-off was justified?

The big TV-related buzz this week, of course, has been about how little buzz the 80th Annual Academy Awards generated.  Lowest ratings EVER, the trade-publication headlines trumpeted. The numbers don’t lie, and the Oscars’ dismal performance sparked endless speculation and analysis of what went wrong, and why.

Did the just-settled writers’ strike cripple the show’s comedy (having eight days instead of three months to craft the witty repartee definitely had an impact)?  Did people tune out because the field of movies nominated for the big gold prizes were too violent, dark, bloody and profane to appeal to a mass audience? Is Jon Stewart too hip, both for the Kodak Theatre and Joe Viewer’s living room? Does America turn its back on Oscar when someone named Bush sends its economy into the crapper?

Theories abound.

But here’s the quizzical little secret about this year’s “disastrous” Oscars: Canada still really kinda dug them.  According to figures released by Nielsen and CTV this week, Canuckleheaded viewership of the 80th Academy Awards peaked at 4.6 million, which is a gigantimarrific audience number in this country (the Super Bowl, by comparison, drew 4.25 million, and THAT was some kind of a record for the NFL’s biggest game).

I’m not sure what this means, geopolitically or socio-economically, but it’s intriguing. Americans just weren’t in an “And the Oscar goes to …” frame of mind, but we Canadians still like — REALLY like — Oscar.

Did YOU watch? Were you enthralled, or bored to tears? And why do you think this still-snowbound patch of nationality likes the Oscars even more than his own kinfolk?

As any regular reader of this blog knows, ol’ CouchBoy has gone hot and cold on the Lost phenomenon,  with fanatical-follower feelings ranging from fully and deliriously obsessed all the way to frustrated to the point of in-protest tune-out.

The islanders lost me at last season’s midpoint, but by the time the year-ending flash-forward finale aired, I was totally and giddily back in the fold.

And now, with the long-awaited fourth-season premiere finally here, I’m ready to declare … I’M IN!!!

I thought Thursday’s future-Hurley-focused episode was a great way to bring Lost back, filled with satisfying moments of resolution, deftly ratcheted-up suspense and enough casually dropped clues (”I’m one of the Oceanic six!”) to give everyviewer’s head a dizzying welcome-back spin.

Lost has definitely found me again … at least until it confounds me, inevitably, again.

How ’bout you? Did the return live up to the hype? Was it worth the long wait? Are you hooked, again?

I wonder.