Who will get KO’d tonight? Will it be a prettyboy from the West or a mama’s boy from the east? Or perhaps it will be someone up in the NBC executive suites who takes the scapegoat for Burnett’s failure. More than likely it’ll just be you conking out on the couch, unless they REALLY mean it when they say one “cracks.” Post-suicide, we have high expectations for “losing control,” so NBC better not let us down.
Kinda-cutie self-tattoed Peter Manfredo redeemed his career-humiliation last week by defeating homely mofo Miguel, proving he’s not the biggest boxing pansy in the US. Tonight I’d like to see an ugly take down Brent or Jesse, simply because it’d be hot. Who knows what to expect (bland dialogue? predictable action? bad Sly one-liners?) on the next all-new episode of the CONTENDER: Peter Manfredo’s victory is further celebrated, and he feels like he is on top of the world. (But for a so-called world champ, victory seems pretty new to him).
Jimmy from the East plans to be next this episode. He knows how to do the math and he’s therefore calculated that it will be him against Anthony. Boy is he in for a Survivor Twist.
After his boost of confidence, Peter Manfredo is to be watched out for. Ishe beleives Peter is close to greatness, with his newfound heart of gold.
Brent is awesome, in all the wrong ways. He loves his wife, but his true bond with Jesus is what really matters (could he be gay? I only hope). Lets see if the biblethumper’s relationship with God works both ways. He’s an adorable baby face, and I’d like to see it messed up.
Sugar Ray hasn’t had the gloves on since 1997, which he informs us during another boring sparring session.
The same generic montages reveal Brent training, some shadow boxing, jump rope and crunches. The boys pick their favourites (i.e. arch-rivalries). Brent apparently wants to fight Joey, who is interestly one of the better looking on the other team. However, Anthony is not going to pick Jimmy like everybody predicts. He has a twist up his sleeve if ever there was one.
West has lost the reward opportunity for the first time since the show began. The East, however, gets to attend a live screening of Jay Leno! Aren’t the tickets for Jay Leno FREE?
Jesse is bored being cooped up with Joey and not getting to taste reward. He wants to go out and do something (mow his lawn, spank the kids?).
Anthony reveals what NBC must be retarded to think is a shocking twist. He intends to pick Brent OVER his previously negotiated rival Jimmy. If this was actually a twist, than the show should’ve NOT edited the first half around Brent and Anthony.
Anyway, Anthony’s not here for the honor or the glory, he wants the million dollars (indicating Brent must seem like quite the wuss in his mind). But before you go on thinking that “whoa, the Contender actually has an interesting villain,” remember what he wants to do with the money. That’s right. Support the GODDAMNED “family”.
Anthony wears a # 1 dad hat, illustrating not just how old he is, but symbolically backing up all of the cheesy melodramatic testimony to come. Anythony’s parents divorced and his father left him when he was young, teaching the boy a lesson in bad parenting. “Everybody can be a father, but not everybody can be a dad” he says like this pearl of wisdom was actually original. His kids are his inspiration, blah, blah, blah.
More classy hip-hop scores the next challenge walk. The boys must lug up 90 medicine balls up the facade of a “towering” dam, which then must be loaded up in a Toyoto Tundra (gag).
Jimmy is also sure that Anthony will pick him. Anthony is so dead set on controlling his destiny, he will not let his team lose.
The balls are collected into nets. East gets up the first load, with West close behind. The teams are apparently unable to follow the simple rules. The west has their net trapped up on the steep edge of the dam. The trainer is screaming like he’s on the verge of a heart attack.
Very close and down to the wire, West has their load up first, East coast drops a medicine ball just when it matters most and loses the team’s ability to choose. WHOA! Didn’t see this one coming. Does this mean ANYTHONY will get the chance to choose his arch-rival in the big fight AND pull the carpet out from all of us, or at least them?
Back in the gym, Sly assembles the men and looks like he’s having difficulty reading his teleprompter. Anythony steps forawrd and SHOCK: Farmboy Brent is chosen! Joey is PISSED off HE will not get the chance to fight the hottest contestent in the Contender. I’d be pissed off to. What’s not so logical, on the other hand is that Jimmy is PISSEd off that he wasn’t chosen, that he doesn’t have to fight, and that he gets to stay around for a few more episodes of lame rewards. He apparently was peaked to fight and having the tables turned is mentally damaging. “We’d made an agreement” exclaims the distraught Jimmy, who storms out of the gym in a homicidal rage, when he learns that not everybody in this world is an honest idiot like him.
BRENT Cooper believes that God didn’t bring him here to lose (idiot alert). Joey is psychologically distraught so Jackie (in a rare appearance) tells him that maybe he’s getting a gift in that Brent may be a tougher fighter than they all thought (nope, looks are not deceiving)
DRAMA!
Jimmy learned of the true POWER of CHOICE. Anthony betrayed his friends and his enemies, but he just may stand a better chance of moving on by plowing through a neanderthal evangelist.
Anthony realizes that he may have created enemies in the house, but that is not what he came here for.
Accusations of mind games ensue in the shower. Joey tells the camera that once this is all taken outside, “he’ll murder” Anthony. After one naive retard actually committed suicide because of this show, we’d be ignorant to assume that is just clever editing.
Brent is aware that Jesus is his crutch (idiot alert), but who better to depend on than the opiate of the masses? God is his strength and God’s plan for him is victory. Although why God would care about a boxing match, beyond watching a prettyboy idiot (who thinks He cares about him) get beaten to a bloody pulp for barbaric entertainment, is beyond me.
Jesse thinks Brent is smart going out to have fun so that he’s not high-strung before the match.
Apparently getting drunk the night before a boxing match makes sense to these idiots. Anthony on the other hand stays in the ring, focused like a tiger ready to bust loose. He needs money for the kids and thinks it’ll be easy destroying a feeble biblethumper.
After a wild night out …
Brent sits shirtless with Ishe wearing only blue jeans, a cowboy hat and a big, fat cross around his neck. If only this conservative devotee was aware that all he really is, is a glistening homosexual sex object hungered for by starving fetishists like me. He may consider a change of wardrobe.
At the press conference:
Anthony: “I make my own match.” He knew that fighting Jimmy’s 6-foot-plus reach would be utter suicide and made the logical choice of bruising up God’s avatar. Brent says that God decided it must be so that he fights Anythony tonight, but luckily, with fate on his side, there should be no chance of loss. Lets see if Brent changes his tune if and when he gets humiliated in the ring. I suspect that if he is, God will have declared it so as well.
If the other men can’t understand why Anthony did what he did, “they’re not real men”. Or at least they’re just dumb ones.
Brent, meanwhile, prays to the lord (idiot alert). He’s pretty and smooth and in the best shape of all fifteen of the men. But apparently he’s a better victim than Jimmy. I think Anthony just wants to lay his hands on that physique. It’s understandable.
Brent knows God’s got something in store for him (shafeful degradation, perhaps) and he proves he’s a loyal servant with crosses tattoed on both of his finely chiseled biceps, which, I’m sure Brent thinks he received through Joan-of-Arc-style stigmata.
TEARFUL SURPRISE! Anythony’s kids show up out of nowhere for an extra added morale boost. The kids’ll guarantee this boy takes a serious ass-whooping. “God help him!” Their words, not mine. Though I’ll admit, they’re pretty clever.
This epsiode keeps getting gayer. Vin Diesel has come to see the hairy beast pick on the bible-thumping prettyboy farmboy. What an opportune match to show up for.
Brent comes out with quotes from the Old Testament, while his trophey blonde of a wife (AKA heterosexual image insurance) cheers the East-hunk onwards.
Anythony is 32 years old: this is his LAST chance for the gold and to feed his kids. With “# 1 Dad” Ball-cap and determined beeline stride into the ring, he is DESPERATE and plans to win!
Brent is a good dodger. But Anthony has reach. Brent is pounded into a corner and his gorgeous pecs take a beating. Looks like Anthony has round one.
Brent’s wife prays to God before round 2. Anthony’s daughter, however, is a violent cheerer sent directly to represent Satan. And looks like Evil will be winning out over Good tonight. Anthony is far more fierce and has little trouble destroying my favourite prettyboy.
Anthony slaughters Brent and his wife puts her hands over her face. 38 seconds into round 3, the referee stops the fight and declares the first technical KO of “the Contender”. Anthony lets the camera know, if you dare stand is his way he’s “taking you down”. I’m personally more afraid of his ugly wife.
Brent cries when he meets Sly in the loser-showdown room. Brent felt “weak”, like he “couldn’t do nothing”. He’s sorry he let everybody down and claims it just wasn’t the lord’s will for him to win. Could this be the end of Brent’s faith and the realization that he wasn’t bestowed with holy might and a desire for women? Unfortunately after he balls his beautiful, blackened eyes out in the showers and receives a depressing kiss from the wife, He puts the cross back on as well as his cowboy hat. This boy is still one hot idiot.
In the office boardroom, Sly and the bunch admit it was a tough thing to see Brent take the punches that he did. If Sugar Ray was in the ring with Brent, however, he’d knock him out too.
Six shows in and the Contender is finally getting as good as its theme song. Okay not quite. You may blame my raging homosexual bias for favoring an episode showcase on the shirtless cowboy bible-thumper, but give me SOME credit. It’s taken a while, but Burnett is finally milking these half-wit losers for every ounce of drama they can yield and the overwrought conflicts are hilarious. The fact that the show’s only sinister villain is just a normal dad willing to do whatever it takes—including lying to his so-called friends and betraying his arch-rivals by beating up their boy-next-door friends instead of the rivals themselves—is pretty amusing as a satiric eye-opener on the naiveté of honest people. More importantly, Brent was colored as quite possibly the dumbest and therefore the funniest bible-thumping stereotype reality TV has ever seen (and that’s INCLUDING Survivo’s Dirk). Yes, losing the hottest piece of clean-shaven, six-pack-cut piece of dumb-as-bricks meat is a blow to my guilty-pleasure viewing, but if NBC can keep up the overblown moral fistfights, the Contender just might get better than it deserves.
Rating: A-
