The Entertainment Wrap Up - February 21, 2008 - Show Returns, Idol Top 24, NBA, Survivor, and more

Has it really only been one week since Big Brother started??!! It feels like an eternity already with all the craziness happening in the house. First, let's start with the facts of what has occurred since the last Wrap Up. Jen and Parker were named the power couple and voted to evict Sharon and Jacob. The HOH competition is held which is won by Alex and Amanda. The secret of Jen and Ryan being a couple outside of the house is told. Jen tells Parker. Ryan tells Allison. Jen and Ryan ended up telling the house the secret as they were concerned that Allison was going to let the news out to help herself out in the game. With the house now knowing about the real life couple, it was decided to break them up. Jen and Parker were put up on the block against Ryan and Allison. The power of veto was played a few days later which was hosted by Big Brother 8's Jessica and Eric and it had Matt and Natalie winning. They did not use the veto. That left the nominations as is. Last night's show saw a three to one vote sending Jen and Parker home from the Big Brother house. Not surprised at all to see them voted out as that had been talked about on the feeds all week. Parker still looked furious sitting there being interviewed by Julie Chen. I am shocked that he didn't just go off but he kept his cool. That brought us to last night's HOH competition which saw James and Chelsia win HOH.

Thoughts on the Big Brother week. Hey, Sharon is back in the game. If you missed it, Neil had to leave the game for personal reasons and Josh was given a choice of either Jacob or Sharon to have as his partner. He chose Sharon and she is back in the game. It was funny watching that episode as the credits quietly removed Neil from it and then added Sharon back in and this was before the official announcement had been made. Jen was expecting everything to be cool with her and Sharon over the first eviction but Sharon wasn't over it. She was all about voting to get Jen out of the house. Lots of drama in the house involving Jen and Ryan and then also Alex and Amanda. I wasn't crazy about the editing on a lot of Tuesday's show. I just didn't feel a lot of it really gave a complete story of what had happened. It was bizarre with just how far behind the show was at times compared to the live feeds. Sunday's show was still showing stuff from before the feeds went live. We were basically watching the feeds for a full week before an episode aired that included stuff from after the feeds went live. The episodes did provide some nice insight into some of the happenings in the house as to how it all started. It kind of felt like watching a prequel.

What You Missed On The Live Feeds: No spoilers here as I'm just going to cover stuff in this paragraph in the time frame of up to last night's episode. First, I probably should start with the major argument in the back yard involving Amanda, Chelsia, Josh, and Alex. I thought it was pretty fairly edited as far as how it went down as I've seen it all unedited. Things that they left off of the show version of the argument was Allison basically cheerleading Josh when they got in the house BEFORE the personal comments were made. That was when she followed him into the house after he got out of the pool. What I didn't like that they left off was Chelsia coming into the kitchen immediately while Amanda and Allison were sitting on the kitchen floor and her apologizing to Amanda for the personal comment. Chelsia's story to Amanda was that she didn't mean it in a personal way but instead using the term for Amanda's game play. Josh did not apologize immediately but has apologized since and they had a long conversation about it. I really wish that the personal comments hadn't been brought up as it should not have been said. It's a game and that should be left out of it. Well, the first night of the live feeds was completely left off of the episodes where Parker got furious at Jen. It got to the point where Ryan wouldn't leave Jen's side cause he was tired of Jen being talked down to. They didn't cover the story between Natalie and Matt at all this week. Matt doesn't have any interest in her from what he has said on the feeds.

What has happened since last night's eviction show: SPOILER ALERT!! James and Chelsia got their HOH room last night and spent the night drinking while hanging out. The two did kiss last night as well. Lots of planning going on last night and today with the nominations. James and Chelsia have their targets of who they want to take out of the game and when but they went over all possibilities. James did tell Matt earlier about the lie that Sheila and Allison had stirred up. James and Chelsia aren't very sure at all about trusting Allison and Sheila after the lie was told and they aren't sure that it is a lie. Adam and Sheila had a blowup last night which got loud at times. Nominations were tonight and James and Chelsia put up Natalie and Matt against Alex and Amanda. Matt and Alex are not happy at all about it and trying to figure how to play this as I type this up.

My plea to CBS. Will you please get Big Brother away from American Idol??!! Fans of America's Next Top Model may be wanting the same thing as it didn't do its usual numbers either going up against Idol.

Don't forget that Saturday Night Live returns this Saturday night with Tina Fey as the host and Carrie Underwood as the musical guest. I've got to think that SNL has been waiting very impatiently during an election year to get back on the air. A lot of their best stuff over the years has featured skits revolving around politics.

ABC has announced return dates for several of their hit shows with new episodes. Desperate Housewives (April 13), Ugly Betty (April 24), Lost (April 24), Grey's Anatomy (April 24), Samantha Who? (April 7), Boston Legal (April 8), Brothers & Sisters (April 20).

The CW has decided to bring back Everybody Hates Chris this spring after all so there will be some new episodes upcoming.

How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory will be changing timeslots upon their returns in March. So, Big Bang Theory will now be leading off Monday nights on CBS.

The competition is underway on American Idol with the singers now competing for votes to get to the top 12. This week saw the top 24 perform. Overall, I didn't think that this week was very strong as far as performances. Few stand out above the others. The guys struggled more than the girls. Tonight, two guys and two girls were voted off of the show. The guys voted off were Garrett Haley and Colton Berry. The girls voted off were Amy Davis and Joanne Borgella. Do they put the show on the screen inside the studio? If they do, Amy knew she was going home before Ryan even called her out cause they put the camera on her too early. It looks like Better Days by Graham Colton is the goodbye song this year unless they change it in the later rounds. I'm a big fan of that song. My early favorites of this season are Alaina Whitaker, Syesha Mercado, Kristy Lee Cook, Carly Smithson, Danny Noriega, and David Archuleta. I think the girls are the ones to beat once again this season. It just seems like there are more stand outs with the girls.

Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Jumper - $31.7 million. 2. Spiderwick - $24.5 million. 3. Step Up 2 - $21.5 million. 4. Fool's Gold - $15 million. 5. Definitely, Maybe - $11.4 million. 6. Roscoe Jenkins - $10.4 million. 7. Juno - $5.5 million. 8. The Bucket List - $4.6 million. 9. Hannah Montana - $3.9 million. 10. 27 Dresses - $3.8 million.

Tonight's Survivor focused around picking sides. Cirie was in the position of swing vote and the way she was trying to decide what to do, I thought she might end up like Christy from the Amazon. On the Amazon season, they got tired of waiting on Christy to decide who to go with on the votes and voted her out. I was wondering if that might happen with Cirie tonight but it didn't. There was an argument between her and Jonathan where he kept trying to get her to pick a side. Jonathan wanted to break up the couples and vote off Parvati. That was what that group with him involved wanted to do. The couples wanted to vote off Eliza. Cirie was absolutely voting out Yau-Man so as far as she was concerned, she wasn't changing her vote and others would have to vote with her. The votes saw Yau-Man get six votes to get voted out while Parvati got two votes and Cirie got one vote. The favorites did have some glory in this episode winning the reward challenge where the winner got to have three things out of a catalog of their choosing. They got a nice tarp while the fans team had a ROUGH night out in the storm. It really looked completely miserable!! That reward challenge was a very physical and rough one. I found it funny that while all this competition was going on that there was flirting going on as well. LOL. James is just a force!! Did you see him dragging three people at one point??!! Going to exile island on this episode was Kathy and Ami. Kathy wasn't revealing at all about what clues that her and Cirie found on the last trip there. Kathy said she wasn't about to go "island jumping" again. The preview for next week shows more trouble brewing between Jonathan and Cirie.

Smallville's Kristin Kreuk has been cast as Chun-Li in the new Street Fighter movie.

ABC has announced the new lineup for the new season of Dancing With The Stars. Here is the lineup: Adam Carolla (radio host/comedian), Cristian de la Fuente (actor), Shannon Elizabeth (actress), Steve Guttenberg (actor), Mario (musician), Marlee Matlin (actress), Penn Jillette (illusionist), Monica Seles (tennis superstar), Jason Taylor (NFL player), Marissa Jaret Winokur (actress), Kristi Yamaguchi (olympic skater), and Priscilla Presley.

NBC is looking at a different option in bringing back Friday Night Lights. The show which is in trouble of being canceled may have life after all. NBC is said to be talking to other networks about sharing the show. This would mean that the show would air on multiple networks. They have apparently talked to cable networks but have also talked to The CW.

The NBA dunk contest is in great shape. There was fear for several years that the dunk contest might go away based on overall creativity and problems with getting the stars to compete in it. However, the dunk contest has been very entertaining over the last few years. This year's dunk contest came down to Dwight Howard and Gerald Green. Green brought out the birthday cake dunk where he blew out the candle of a cupcake as it set up on top of the rim while throwing down the dunk. We had the Superman dunk by Howard which was fun, creative, and impressive. My most impressive dunk of Howard's though was the one where he stood behind the basket. He threw the ball off the backboard, caught it, and went underneath to dunk it on the other side. That was extremely hard. Oh, and I have to mention the dunk where he bounced it off the backboard with one hand and dunked with the other all in one motion. Just a lot of fun to watch it this year and the TNT crew did a great job of calling the action as always. I could just listen to them call basketball all day.

This isn't much of a shocker as the winner of the high definition DVD war was over long ago but Toshiba announced this week that they will be discontinuing their HD-DVD format. Blu-ray is the official winner of the high definition war. Blu-ray has been taking victory after victory over the last few months including them getting many studios to pick their format exclusively for their releases.

Monk will be returning for another season on USA Network.

TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, February 26th. Are You Afraid Of The Dark? (Season Five), B.L. Stryker (Season One), Family Affair (Season Five), The Fugitive (Season One - Volume Two), Ghost Hunters (Season Three - Part Two), Newhart (Season One), Punky Brewster (Season Four), The Smurfs (Season One - Volume One).

TV Line Of The Week: From the NBA 3 Point Shootout. Kevin Harlan and Charles Barkley trading jabs during the shootout. Before this, Kevin had been asking Reggie Miller and Kenny Smith about strategy of competing in the shootout which Charles had been picking on him about. Minutes later, this resulted which got the whole group laughing.
Kevin: "There is some strategy here to this."
Charles: "Yeah, make shots. Kevin, you're killing me with this strategy stuff."
Kevin: "I'm asking shooters. I'm not asking the worst playoff three point percentage shooter . I'm sorry Chuck."
Charles: "Hey the truth should never hurt your feelings."

You Tube Video Of The Week: Birthday cake dunk? Superman in the dunk contest?

Have a great weekend!! Take care and God bless!!