The Yin Blog

Oh my, I don't think I can resist tuning into this

This is not a joke, apparently.  Have you ever wondered what "COPS" would be like if Steven Seagal was the officer?  Now you don't have to.

I don't think I'll be able to resist checking this out to see how much of a trainwreck it could be.

You can't script stuff like this! (Celebrity Apprentice)

Oh, my, reality TV might not be all that "real," but you can't script stuff like last night's episode of "The Celebrity Apprentice," where Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa both totally melted down after Melissa was fired.

My confession about "The Celebrity Apprentice"

Let me confess that I like "The Celebrity Apprentice."  I like it a lot!  Nothing will ever match the first season, of course (Omarosa!; the Nick and Amy "romance"!; the Bill and Kwame finale), when it was sparkly and new, and every task was original.  But after a while, the novelty wore off and the tasks started to blur together.  I wasn't alone in thinking this, as the ratings dropped off.

But then, NBC -- probably in desperation -- brought it back with a twist: cast teams of celebrities.  This was brilliant!  Seeing celebrities doing the silly tasks has its own kind of perverse reward.  And of course, the celebrities can be cast in part (or even totally) because of their personalities, and more importantly, potential for causing strife.  Bad for their teammates, but enthralling for viewers.  What, why else do you think Omarosa was cast on the first celebrity edition?

The only nagging thing about this celebrity version is that it introduces a kind of moral hazard.  Before, the grand prize was a job with Donald Trump for $250,000 a year.  Therefore, if it came down to firing an enthralling troublemaker versus a boring good worker, Trump would fire the former.  But none of the celebrities is playing for a job with Trump, so he has nothing to lose by keeping the entertaining celebrity.  Indeed, it's his gain, since better ratings mean that his show is more likely to be renewed.

Oh well, I still like it.

Did "American Idol" become boring overnight?

Last night, I fired up my TiVo and started watching the "American Idol" performance show.  It was country music night, which was not a good thing for me.  I'll admit, when it comes to country music, Shania Twain, some of Martina McBride, and current Taylor Swift are about as adventurous as I get.  But geez, after one and a half performances, I abandoned "AI" and decided to watch "Castle" instead.

Yeah, there's nothing special about "Castle" -- it's another police procedural/mismatched "buddy" series -- but the interaction between Nathan Fillion as annoying crime writer Richard Castle and Stana Katic as exasperated police detective Kate Beckett is pretty entertaining.  It looks like it's dropping a lot of its lead-in from "Dancing with the Stars," though, so it may not be long for this world.

What "American Idol" should do next season

Here's my suggestion: copy "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" by having an "all stars" season with past winners and other memorable contestants.  There have been six seasons of "American Idol" now, so you could have all six previous winners and runners-up make up a season of 12.

I think this would be really neat!  Conventional wisdom seems to suggest that Kelly Clarkson (season 1) and Carrie Underwood (season 4) were the strongest winners, and that Taylor Hicks (season 5) was the weakest one.  But what would America think?  Would Clay Aiken (season 2 runner-up) outlast Rueben Studdard (season 2 winner) this time?  Would Katharine McPhee (season 5 runner-up) outlast Hicks this time?

Fox, think about it!

"American Idol" 6 finale (perfomance night)

I predict that Jordin will win. . . .

Well, that's not going out on a limb, since that's what the judges think too.  But if Jordin didn't get kicked off when she butchered Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," she's going to win when she outsang Blake, especially on the songs that were the winners of the amateur songwriting contest.

But . . . Kelly Clarkson probably remains the only AI contestant to have put out an album that my wife and I have bought, and that was "Breakaway," which was what she produced when she got more control over her career.

"Survivor: Fiji": ethics and lying in games

I'm going to spoil the end of the just concluded "Survivor" Fiji" season, so if you care and haven't watched it yet, stop reading and come back later. . . .

Okay, so in the penultimate episode, Yau-Man, the older and wily Asian guy won the reward challenge that was worth a $60,000 truck.  Dreamz, who was the only Survivor left who didn't actually have a car (in fact, didn't even have a driver's license) was going on before the challenge about how much he wanted a car.  So Yau-Man offered Dreamz a deal: he'd give Dreamz the truck if, in exchange, Dreamz would give Yau-Man individual immunity at the final 4 if Dreamz won.  Yau-Man understood that he couldn't enforce the agreement within the game, but Dreamz swore to God that he would.

You can see what's coming next.  Dreamz indeed won immunity at the final 4, and reneged.  He talked about how he didn't know that this year it would be the final 3, not the final 2, who face the jury, and that changed things; he talked about how it's hard to give up a $1 million; and so on.  Later, he claimed that he never intended to honor the deal and that he had been playing Yau-Man all along.

Was this clever gameplay, was it dishonest, or was it both?

From the standpoint of the game, I guess you'd say it was clever, although all it did was move Dreamz from 4th place to a tie for 2d (a difference of about $15,000 to $30,000 in prize money).  Once he reneged on the deal that had been made openly in front of host Jeff Probst and the other Survivors, Dreamz had no chance of getting any jury votes, no matter how he tried to spin it.  And as it turned out, we had the first ever complete sweep of votes by Earl.  (The third finalist, Cassandra, had done virtually nothing all game and was therefore disdained by the jurors.)

Outside the game, though, it strikes me as quite different from other lies and deceptions that past Survivors have committed.  In confessionals (the shots where contestants speak directly to the camera without others present), Dreamz repeatedly talked about how he wanted to set a good example for his son.  If you're going to lie and cheat in the game, because it's a game, this is where you'd make a statement to the effect that this is different from real life.  (Indeed, in a previous season, Johnny Fairplay had his friend falsely state that Fairplay's grandmother had died, in an effort to get the sympathy of his fellow contestants; however, when the cameras were focused just on Fairplay and his friend, Fairplay openly acknowledged his deception.)

So, in an odd sort of way, I think Dreamz's more damning lie wasn't the one he made to Yau-Man, but rather, the one he made to the viewers.  Actually, it's two or three lies: (1) when he first said in the confessional that he wanted to be a good role model to his son and that he was going to honor the deal; and (2) when he later said in the reunion that he had always intended to backstab Yau-Man.  Contestants in Survivor shouldn't be surprised when they get backstabbed; that's what happens.  But the viewers can and do expect a degree of honesty in the confessional scenes, and Dreamz lied there to us.

Why do I care?  Well, I don't care that much, but I do think that it breaks the unspoken promise between the contestant and the viewer in terms of how we respond to the contestant.  Those Survivors who backstab effectively and yet speak honestly to the viewers earn a degree of respect for their gameplay.  Dreamz, on the other hand, wanted to be respected as "honorable"; hence all that talk in the confessional.  Yet, in the end, he was neither honorable nor an effective backstabber. Well, he was effective in the sense that he got to the final Tribal Council, but unlike other serial backstabbers, like season 1's Richard Hatch, he didn't get any votes from the jury.

Catching up TV shows. . . .

I've been swamped of late, hence the absence of regular blogging, but I'm still around!

I thought I'd just blog some thoughts about the various TV shows I'm still watching. . . .

American Idol: I hate to say it, but I really think this show has had its run.  It still gets tremendous ratings, so there's no way Fox will take it off the air, but none of the performers this season really excites me as a performer.  Some are quite talented singers, like Melinda Doolittle, but I don't find anything particularly compelling about her, unlike, say, previous years' singers such as Kelly Clarkson, Tamyra Gray, Fantasia, etc.  What's worse is that the past few "AI" knockoffs, like "Grease: You're the One That I Want" and "Rockstar: INXS" (and even the ridiculous "Rock Star: Supernova") have been far more watchable.  I will say that Bon Jovi was by far the best guest mentor they've had all season; he actually explained the songs to the contestants instead of staying away and aloof, as Gwen Stefani did. . . .

The Amazing Race: All Stars: The final three are in -- Dustin and Kandace; Eric and Danielle; and Charla and Mirna.  Too bad Danny and Oswald got eliminated; they were fun to watch.  At this point, I'm rooting for Dustin and Kandace, who race smart and efficiently and seem to have a good attitude.  I'm indifferent toward Eric and Danielle, and I absolutely loathe Mirna, and to a lesser extent, Charla.  I detest how Mirna puts on a fake accent when she's speaking English to people in other countries, and then is clueness enough to tell the camera that it's very important to get the accent right when you're talking to foreigners.

24: Speaking of shows that have had it, what the hell happened to "24" this season?!?  It was so good last season, and this season has been boring, repetitive (we're pulling out the 25th Amendment power play plotline again?), and nonsensical (the whole Chloe-Morris-Milo triangle).  But I did learn something from watching this season: if I ever am going to implant a tracking device in a suspect's body, I'm not going to do it in the forearm, where it's predictable that the guy is going to have someone hack his arm off; I'm going to implant it in the suspect's skull. . . .

Lost: I'm lost . . . .

Survivor: Still watching but not as well cast as the past few seasons.

Mythbusters: This is the BEST reality TV show out there!  Well, it's not really reality TV.  It's even educational, putting urban legends to the test.  And things get blown up in the end!  I can't wait for my little son to get old enough to watch this with him.

Drive: Heh heh, I'm glad I didn't invest any time in this, seeing as how it got canceled after 3 airings.

Paula Abdul and her backhanded "compliments"

Criticizing "American Idol" judge Paula Abdul's "critiques" of the contestants is really too easy, since the conventional wisdom is that she never has anything bad to say about anyone.  (In fact, Simon Cowell is the only one who makes sense.  Randy Jackson does criticize bad performances and praise good ones, but when everything is either the "bomb" or "pitchy," it's hard to know what exactly is good or bad.)

But I've been noticing more and more how, when there's a bad performance by a female singer, Abdul defaults to saying something like, "You look gorgeous up there."  To her credit, it comes across as sincere and flattering, unlike the old guy on "Grease! You're the One That I Want," who when he compliments the female singers there on their looks, comes across as lecherous.

Still, in a talent show where the talent on display is singing and performance, isn't it insulting to be told, only, that you look good?  I mean, it's not like this is "America's Top Model" . . . .

"American snoozefest"

What was up with the endlessly boring ballads last night on "American Idol"?  The only good one was by the singer from Seattle -- ironic, considering how the judges kept trashing the Seattle auditions as being completely worthless.

I think I'll give the women a chance on tonight's show to demonstrate that I should continue to watch "American Idol."

But, man, the guys' performances were so bad that I had to go back to TiVo and watch Slacker Danny's (aka Max) rendition of "Summer of '69" on "Grease! You're the One That I Want" . . . .