Apologies for the lateness of the column. This weekend was a bit nuts for me, as I hit the homestretch for my wedding – July 9, if anyone was wondering.
Non-TV related stuff
If you haven’t heard Paul Anka’s “Rock Swings” album, check it out here. Big Band may not be your type of music, but this is pretty enjoyable. This will probably get played at my wedding for my parents (who are into the whole ballroom dancing thing). Hey, I’ve seen them ballroom dance to Tupac – this will be 100 times less bizarre by comparison
Back to our regularly scheduled programming
Apparently, Lynn and Alex from The Amazing Race 7 (recapped on the Pulse by yours truly) were married in Ottawa last week. The event was sponsored by “Hot 89.9”, and broadcast live on radio and via the internet. You can read more about it here. In a nutshell, same sex marriages are in a quasi-legal state up here in Canada, while they are most definitely not legal down in California, where the couple – aspiring Hollywood types, natch – live, so the Ottawa station decided to foot the bill to get them married. The catch being that they had 4 weeks to prepare for it. Sounds familiar somehow.
In attendance were pre-tax millionaires (and TAR7 winners) Uchenna and Joyce, Debbie and Bianca (the really close friends), Gretchen (hey, where was Meredith?) and Susan and her really-needs-to-be-slapped son Patrick. Rob and Amber were invited, but didn’t attend. You can interpret that whichever way you want.
Anyways, best of luck to the couple with their marriage.
Quick Hits
And speaking of The Amazing Race, Sarah and Murtz do a post-mortem of Season 7. Murtz may mention a thing or two about Boston Rob. And by the way Sarah, Uchenna and Joyce did not pay the cab driver out of the goodness of their hearts. Teams are required to pay the agreed upon fee, and Uchenna and Joyce were told as much. They still won by about 30 minutes though.
American Dad was renewed for 13 more episodes, meaning that you’ll be getting a full hour of “hilarious” Seth McFarlane comedy until 2006.
Hit Me Baby 1 More Time (reviewed right on this site by yours truly) scored a 5.5 rating and was first among the 18-49 set for hour. Long story short, it got higher ratings than Joey.
Zap2it.com is reporting that R U the girl with T-Boz & Chilli will debut July 27 at 8pm on UPN. The show will look for a person to replace Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, who died in 2002. No word on whether Andre Rison will be a judge.
The second season of The 4400 started on Sunday on USA. And stuff happened that I didn’t see, because we don’t get USA network in Canada. I’m sure it’ll show up Space at some point. Anyways, Joel Gretsch, Jacqueline McKenzie and Billy “I was engaged to Jennifer Connolly once” Campbell have returned, but Peter Coyote (The Insider) and Mark “Keen Eddie” Valley (Boston Legal) haven’t.
Hey, weren’t you going to talk about Hell’s Kitchen?
Hell’s Kitchen was a show that I had no expectations of going into it. All I knew was that the chef, Gordon Ramsey, was a former football player with a penchant for swearing. Things started out promising, as we were treated to the chef wannabes frantically preparing their “signature dish”. And then Gordon came in, and ripped them all to shreds. The most fun there came with his dismissal of the “experienced” restaurant cooks, who did very well with the presentation, but got more flack than the mothers who prepared some simple dishes.
Then things went downhill, as the show proved to be little more than an Apprentice knockoff with a cooking theme. The chefs were divided up into teams, and were assigned a task they had to perform. And naturally, the contestants weren’t really learning how to cook – they were just told to go do it. Because obviously the objective is not to learn to cook like a chef, just to win a restaurant to cook in. And in the end, you get the usual politicking and strategy for getting rid of someone. Wow, incredibly original.
Overall, the best thing I can say about this show is that it makes me think two things – that Fox should not be allowed to make any more reality shows, and that the success of the original season of The Apprentice was a fluke, because no other clone – or even subsequent seasons of The Apprentice – have shown the same kind of fun and flair as the original.
That’s all for now. See you in seven five!!
