Line of the Week:
“Come over here and take it from me, bitch!” – Rock Star: Supernova‘s Storm Large, challenging Dave Navarro to come on stage and take off her corset. Since she could probably kick his ass (and probably, those of most guys), Dave declines.
So yes, this is a wee bit late. I’ve been busy last week, and I was planning on combining things into a double (or so) sized column, but then Survivor had to come and create controversy:
‘Survivor: Cook Islands’ (CBS)
So the show hasn’t officially started yet, but we’ve already got controversy because the twenty (yes, 2-0) contestants will be divided by race. People are shocked and offended by the fact that they would DARE divide people into groups like this.
I hate to tell Councilman Liu and others that are panning this idea (because of the thought that it would encourage racial division and promote negative typecasts), but this is, frankly, more realistic than your standard Survivor, where tribes are seemingly divided at random and negative typecasts are created through editing. Take, for example, university. I went to the University of Toronto, which is very diverse in the ethnicities of the students. I happened to major in Mechanical Engineering, where the majority of subjects were “mandatory”, meaning that the same 100-or-so students would be attending those classes. I make note of this because, during those classes, people had a tendency to sit in the same place, and “hang out” with the same people. The Indian kids would hang out together, the kids from Hong Kong would hang out together, the Chinese-Canadian kids would hang out together, etc.
Basically, if my engineering class were to be put on an island and told to divide into tribes, we might see something similar to what Burnett and co have already done. Racial division might be discouraged, but hey, that’s what would happen.
Looking at my work experience, things also seem to fall into the same pattern. When I worked in Detroit, all the young Asian-Canadians hung out together. In Houston, at lunchtime, people congregated in groups by ethnicity or sexual orientation.
Now perhaps I just happened to stumble upon two positions that don’t represent what really happens in society. So let’s look at cities. Oh hey, we’ve still got Chinatowns and Little Italys, and yep they’ve still got Chinese and Italian restaurants and proprietors. There’s Hebrew school, and churches that have services in Korean and Spanish. Sure, they’ll let other cultures in (maybe), but it would seem to me that these places are designed for specific groups, and themselves encouraging racial division. Maybe people like Councilman Liu should decry their part in destroying society as we know it. Yeah, that’s right, go after the churches – see how far that gets you come reelection time.
And it’s not as if Chinese people are paragons of virtue either. Pretty much every phrase used to describe non-Chinese folk (and even Chinese-Americans/Canadians) is essentially derogatory slang that has become the common term. Don’t believe me? Google it. I can’t vouch as to whether situations are similar with other races and ethnicities, but if I were Councilman Liu, I would’ve thought a bit harder before coming down with a knee-jerk reaction on Survivor: Cook Islands.
IP Linkage:
Trent Pusey recaps the bloodiest fight ever on The Ultimate Fighter 4: The Comeback
Mathan might actually watch Survivor this year.
Travis has a new contest for Season Three of Arrested Development
Vinay Menon of the Toronto Star actually manages to hedge his bets about the new Survivor.
The Week… In Hindsight:
‘Canadian Idol’ (CTV)
Well, Steffi went, and I don’t think that many people are surprised about it. She was bound to go sooner or later with the way she’s been treading water. Eva was in the bottom two, which again makes me worried about how Canadians are voting.
‘Prison Break’ (FOX)
First things first – how many people were cheering when the Veronica subplot was decisively resolved? Still cheering? I’ll wait.
Back? Great. So the premiere starts off with a bang, with the guy from Invasion imported in as an FBI agent who is just about as smart as Scofield. And right now, we’ve got five of the cons (Michael, Linc, Sucre, C-Note and Abruzzi) still stuck together while we only get to see what T-Bag is up to. Given that the tradeoff for not seeing Tweener and Haywire was getting rid of Veronica (permanently), I’ll take it.
‘Rock Star: Supernova’ (CBS)
To no one’s surprise, Patrice is gone, and with her, all the pretenders. I’m still not convinced that Lucas is a CONtender though, but he’s an intruiging character, I’ll give him that.
As for Dilana, we’ll see how her “bitch” side affects the voting.
‘Treasure Hunters’ (NBC)
OK, so you thought that live portion of ‘The Apprentice’ finales were painful? Given that all of Laird’s appearances was through video messages, we had no idea that he’d be THIS horrible. When you make TRUMP look like an amazing live host, that’s an impressive feat.
And what the frick was with showing the “bonus hunt”? Such a waste of time. As it was, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to talk to the contestants, and the start/stop method of Q&A served to make things feel really hacked together.
Also, does a show that has been consistently placing fourth during the summer season REALLY deserve a live finale? Just asking.
But hey, three million dollars. Nice going, Geniuses.
‘Ultimate Fight Night’ (Spike)
The show that immediately preceded the TUF4 premiere was actually pretty decent.
Josh Koschek defeated “The Road Warrior” Jonathan Goulet via tapout due to strikes. The official scorecard is apparently “by TKO” but Cote was clearly tapping and then “Big” John McCarthy stepped in. Koschek continues to impress me, and nice shout out to the internet community (Koschek was jeered online during TUF1 for his “Lay and Pray” tactics during the fights). The kid keeps improving, and maybe he’s not ready for Hughes or St. Pierre yet, but when he is, he could be a real monster. As for Goulet… well, I suppose not everyone from the GSP/Loiseau camp can be winners.
Speaking of David “The Crow” Loiseau, I think he was cornering Dean Lister again in his match against Yuki Sasaki. Lister won pretty handily, earning a unanimous decision, although Sasaki made it interesting in the final round.
Chris “Fratboy” Leben earned his second victory over Guys Named Jorge, defeating Jorge Santiago by knockout in the second round.
Joe “Diesel” Riggs continued his W-L-W-L pattern in the UFC, beating Jason Von Flue by tapout – triangle choke. Von Flue had a nice moment where he gave Riggs the finger before tapping.
In the main event, Diego “Nightmare” Sanchez beat Karo “The Heat” Parysian by unanimous decision in what may have been the most exciting UFN card ever. Interesting to note that on two scorecards the fight was 29-28 Diego, while the other judge scored things 30-26 Diego. I call it interesting because I would say that Karo narrowly won that first round. I do think that Diego did enough to win though, so I can’t argue with the end result.
‘The Ultimate Fighter 4: The Comeback’ (Spike)
If you didn’t see it in the links, check out Trent Pusey’s recap here.
Anyways, Trent forgot to mention the stunning pimp suit that “Mr. International” Shonie Carter wore to the UFC Training Center on Day 1.
I liked how they picked teams this season as well: “Hey, stick your hand in here and pull out a jersey.”
Another great thing about having Shonie Carter on the show – numerous replays of his spinning backfist TKO of Matt Serra. One can only hope that Charles McCarthy gets the same treatment when he fights. Except, of course, he was the recipient of a swank knockout combo.
We didn’t see much of the trainers for some reason this week, but the obvious early difference between the teams is the presence of Matt Serra, who I believe spends much of his time as a trainer up in Long Island. He’s taken leadership of the team and proved to be the major difference in the Shonie Carter-Rich Clementi fight with his cornerman skills. The Blue Team would be wise to try and take him out at the first opportunity.
Speaking of the fight, we got a pretty good one this week. Shonie’s strength is escaping from submission attempts, and combined with Serra’s coaching, probably did enough for what I’m guessing was a close 20-18 victory.
Next week (actually, tonight) we get the Middleweights in action. And I’m still curious to see if Patrick Cote gets any favouritism from Georges St. Pierre.
That’s it for this week.
