The Entertainment Wrap Up - September 25, 2008 - Survivor Premiere, Big Bang Theory, Smallville, How I Met Your Mother, Ratings, & More

Survivor Gabon started tonight on CBS with a two hour premiere. I loved having a two hour premiere as it gave us as viewers a longer time to get to know this cast on opening night. The first episodes seem like such a rush normally with trying to gain an idea on the different cast members. I feel like I’ve already learned about a lot of the cast after tonight’s premiere and am feeling good about this season. The tribes were split by school style picking. The oldest man and woman were chosen to be the ones to start picking their tribe mates. Gillian started Fang while Bob picked for Kota. Odd picks on the order people were being chosen. The first challenge takes place immediately with the tribes having to do two things. First, the separate people from each tribe that got to the finish first would win an individual immunity idol. The tribe that got completely to the finish line first would win food. Kota won the challenge and it was something that we got used to seeing in this premiere. Individual idol winners were GC for Fang and Marcus for Kota. At Fang, Michelle and Ken strike up a friendship and he appears to have a little crush on her. Michelle is bitter in her interviews about the tribe that she ended up on. She struggles with dealing with the cold overnight. Over at Kota, Marcus and Charlie strike up a friendship. The immunity challenge is won by Kota by a wide margin. They had the puzzle solved before Fang even had their puzzle pieces back. The talk then turns on who to vote out. Michelle is targeted for her negativity although Randy wants to go after Gilliian for being the weakest of the tribe. Good tribal council where Michelle calls out her feelings on why they lost the challenge. The talk also turns to not having a leader. GC speaks up about how they need a leader but then it backfires on him leading to him being voted as the leader of the tribe. Michelle gets voted out on a very one sided vote. I was disappointed to see her go cause she would have stirred up a ton of stuff as she seemed like a very straight shooter. She would have been really good TV going forward. That gets us to the second hour of the premiere. Things start off better for Fang with their newly appointed leader but it all starts to fall apart later. Snoring at night gets GC up and about. Others start waking up as well and complaints come from Gillian about it. GC speaks his mind on it all saying that he really didn’t want to be leader but took it cause that is what everybody wanted. He then resigns as leader and Randy has a funny line saying that it was the smartest leadership move he had made yet. Randy is a good quotable person this season. Over at Kota, an alliance is made between Charlie, Marcus, Corinne, and Jacquie. Talk turns to maybe bringing in Bob as a fifth person. The immunity challenge is won again by Kota but it is much closer this time. The previous two challenges had been big time one sided. Kota also got to send someone to exile island. They sent Dan who found the new option of exile island. You can choose between a clue or comfort. He chose clue but was not able to find the hidden immunity idol. He sure did have his tribe paranoid upon his return though. They went to tribal council and he emptied his bag out to show that he didn’t have the idol so they would believe him. He didn’t want them to try and flush out the idol when he didn’t have it. No surprise as Gillian is voted out on a one sided vote. Various thoughts on other happenings. I see Randy as someone that could be a major player in this game. He had an interesting first episode with him banging his head in the middle of the night and needing three stitches to stop the bleeding. I liked his comment of taking part in “operation let everyone crash and burn” talking about sitting back while they all destroy each other. The wild life is already getting close to the tribes as an elephant was not far from one camp. I don’t really have anyone that I dislike in the game so far. Interesting personalities. Good premiere night for Survivor.

CBS has officially picked up Big Brother for an 11th season. It does appear that the show won't be back in the winter but will instead return next summer as usual. The Big Brother wrap party gag reel has made its way online so here it is if you want to see it:

The CW has officially picked up 90210 for a full season. Michael Ausiello over at Entertainment Weekly also broke some behind the scenes news that ties 90210 with Gilmore Girls. Here is the link to check it out:
http://ausiellofiles.ew.com/2008/09/gilmore-girls-v.html
This week’s episode had Annie taking over the lead in the school play after Adrianna’s drug problems had her pulled from the play by Brenda. There was also more drama involving Annie, Ty, and Ethan. Adrianna also decided to get even over losing her role in the play by getting between Annie and Ty. Dixon and Silver continued to grow closer.

Look out Clark Kent, Doomsday has arrived. Tonight’s Smallville had the debut of who will become Doomsday. Yeah, he looks innocent enough so far but bad is right around the corner. The end of the episode saw the tease of what is happening with him. I liked how they played that character up through the episode. They set up a lot with Davis tonight showing him as an EMT, meeting Chloe and later Clark, getting an introduction to the Isis Foundation, and also revealing how he knows about meteor problems. The stuff with Clark and Lois at The Daily Planet was fun tonight. How funny was Clark having to change clothes in the phone booth? The little writing touches like that in episodes are fun. So, Clark saves Tess from the explosion that was caused because she was chasing someone with meteor issues. It’s been a while since I’ve heard of someone being sent to Belle Reeve. Say hi to all the monsters of the week for me. Ha ha. Is Tess building some sort of army? It sure seemed that way. Anyway, fun episode tonight.

Smallville is now available on iTunes. If you miss an episode of this current season eight, head over there where episodes are available for $1.99 a piece or $39.99 for a season pass.

How far will Sheldon go to struggle with keeping a secret? Moving out is apparently the answer. The second season of The Big Bang Theory premiered on Monday night. Penny asked Sheldon about Leonard's dating history on whether he had dated normal girls like her. Basically, asking if he had dated non-brainiac kind of girls. This brought out Penny's paranoia about her and community college level education. Sheldon got the news of this and the talk of having to keep it a secret. Sheldon pointed out that he is terrible at the ability of keeping secrets. The rest of the episode saw the extremes that he would have to go to keep the secret which included moving out of the apartment. Lots of great comedy with him moving into each of the others' places. He drove them nuts and he ended up back where he started, with Sheldon. It was a play off of sorts of an episode from last season where the friends couldn't tolerate him for long. Yeah, the secret got spilled to Leonard and the approach of Leonard to Penny to remedy it didn't go over so well. Very funny first episode of the season.

Monday definitely had a lot of power on the networks with premieres. I was ready to see how the ratings would pan out. The winner of the night was Dancing With The Stars on ABC. The show averaged around 21.1 million viewers for the two hours. Compared to that, Heroes on NBC drew 6 million for its countdown episode and rose to nearly 10 million for the two hour premiere. On CBS, The Big Bang Theory opened its season with 9.4 million followed by How I Met Your Mother's 9.1 million. Two and a Half Men had 14.9 million viewers followed by the series premiere of Worst Week which had 11 million viewers. CSI: Miami opened its season with 16.9 million on CBS while Boston Legal on ABC had 9.4 million. Over on Fox, The Sarah Connor Chronicles had 5.8 million while Prison Break had 5.9 million. Over on The CW, Gossip Girl had 3.4 million followed by One Tree Hill's 3.1 million. I know I was very busy recording shows on Monday night and I'm sure many others were as well. The numbers look like each show kept their loyal audiences. Monday has become my busiest TV viewing night of the week now.

Chuck premieres on Monday night on NBC but if you don’t want to wait for the season premiere like I didn’t, you can watch the episode on Hulu before it airs. I was all about checking this out in advance. I don’t want to give away too much for those of you that haven’t seen it. I really liked the first episode. The focus of the episode revolves around Chuck’s new life and his old life with the potential of what both could be. Michael Clarke Duncan guest stars on the episode and is very good in his role. The Buy More also has the decision over who to promote to assistant manager which brings some good comedy.

How I Met Your Mother’s season premiere was on Monday night. The engagement of Ted and Stella is official but Marshall is concerned on how short of a time it has been since they’ve known each other. Ted and Marshall decided to test out the relationship making sure that she is right for Ted by having her watch Ted’s favorite movie, Star Wars, since she had never seen it. Funny stuff with them really keeping an eye on her to see if she was liking it. The result? She told Ted that she loved it but then told Marshall the truth that she couldn’t stand it. She added that she would never tell Ted that though. The other story of the episode was Robin and Barney. Barney battled his feelings that he has developed for her and confided it to Lilly. A very different Barney has emerged as far as personality but he still hasn’t broken old women habits. I’m curious to see where they go with Barney and Robin.

There are some shows that you just watch once and that is it. However, there are also shows that you can watch over and over. I've found that Lost is one of those shows that I'm enjoying watching again. I found myself flipping through the channels the other night and found Lost on two channels at the same time. On G4 was the "walkabout" episode from season one while on one of our local stations, the second part of the pilot episode was airing. There is only about two or three episodes in between those that were airing. I ended up flipping back and forth between them when one would go to commercial. I'm also re-watching season one online with friends which is really fun as well. One of them has seen season one while the other is a new fan. It is amazing how you can pick up on little things now that you know what is going to happen in the future. I'm amazed at how far out in advance some of the story was laid out. I can easily count Lost as a show that is fun to view over and over.

Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Lakeview Terrace - $15 million. 2. Burn After Reading - $11 million. 3. My Best Friend's Girl - $8.2 million. 4. Igor - $7.8 million. 5. Righteous Kill - $7.4 million. 6. Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys - $7.2 million. 7. The Women - $5.4 million. 8. Ghost Town - $5 million. 9. The Dark Knight - $2.9 million. 10. The House Bunny - $2.6 million.

The Office premiered its fifth season tonight. You can check out the “Serenity by Jan” candle making website now. Here is the link: http://www.serenitybyjancandles.com
To see video of the show including recaps, previews, or behind the scenes stuff, head over to: http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/video

MTV has announced that TRL will be ending in November. I remember when that show was such a huge part of the music industry. They drew huge crowds outside and really helped bring music to a whole different level back in the earlier part of this decade. The show hasn't been near the same for many years now with the ratings reflecting it and I haven't actually watched the show in probably six years.

Speaking of MTV, it is nice to see that they are apparently approaching their goal of covering the entire TV screen with their promotional advertising. Watching The Hills this season has made me just want to wait for the DVD so I can avoid all of this promo stuff. Their VMA promos were monstrous on the screen and just made me annoyed instead of making me want to actually care about the VMA's.

I got a message to remind all of you Blog Cabin viewers about the sweepstakes to win a waterfront vacation home in Tennessee. The deadline to enter is September 29th. Here is the link to check it out: http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/pac_ctnt_988_leader/text/0,,DIY_26336_66068,00.html

TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, September 30th. Adam-12 (Season Two), My Name Is Earl (Season Three), My Three Sons (Season One - Volume One), Numb3rs (Season Four).

TV Line Of The Week: (Let’s see if I can bring this back now that there are new shows to watch) From The Big Bang Theory - Sheldon being dropped off on Howard’s doorstep by Raj. Howard yelling at Raj as he runs off “Shouldn’t you put him in a brown paper bag and set him on fire?”

You Tube Video Of The Week: Ninja Cat. How funny is this video?


Wishing you a great weekend!! Take care and God bless!!