Friday, October 17, 2008

The Entertainment Wrap Up - October 16, 2008 - Survivor, Amazing Race, Smallville, How I Met Your Mother, Little People Big World, & More

Tonight, Smallville brought out a lot of the romance with one couple and led to some possibilities of another one. This was another episode where I wasn’t sure about it going in based on the previews but I ended up loving it. The episode opened with an engagement party of sorts for Chloe and Jimmy. Lois, who is the maid of honor in the wedding, gave a speech about how her and Chloe talked at ten years old about finding their soul mates but then didn’t exactly give Jimmy the praise of being that guy for Chloe. It should be pointed out that Lois had some alcohol in her so her thinking wasn’t the best. Clark took over and gave a great speech about her finding the love of her life and relationships falling apart lately had left her bitter. Chloe and Jimmy’s night would go bad and set up the rest of the episode. They were kidnapped and taken captive by a masked man ready to figure out if they were a match for each other. It was a very shocking kind of game meant to bring out any lies that you might be hiding from the other. The rules were simple. Tell the truth. If you don’t, every lie you tell gets the other person some electricity going through them. Jimmy lied when asked if he had ever cheated on Chloe which played back into last week’s episode. Chloe already knew of what happened so it wasn’t anything. Then, we got a good question asked when Chloe was asked if Jimmy was the only man that she was in love with. She answered yes and it was the truth. I thought that was a big moment in the Chloe/Clark relationship. They end up being let go since their love was true. The other half of the story has Clark and Lois searching for them. Lois gets the idea of pretending to be married as they figured out that this person is capturing recently engaged couples. That will lead them to the person that is doing this. Twists and turns end up with the two of them locked up into this love match game as well. Lois revealed to the guy that they weren’t really a couple but she was asked a question that opens up a lot of opportunities. Do you deep down love this man? Lois had a long pause and then said yes. No shock meaning that she was telling the truth. Talk about a moment there. Clark is asked the same question but breaks free before having to answer. Lois later used the excuse saying that she had slipped off the sensor when she answered it and Clark mentioned how amazed he was that she was such a good liar that she faked out the machine. I love how they are playing the feelings up between the two of them. Other thoughts on the show. Wow, did Lois ever look the most vulnerable that you’ve ever seen her after she revealed her love for Clark!! How funny was the huge grin on Oliver’s face when he saw Clark and Lois in the ring shop? I laughed at that for sure. So, Jimmy has been hiding his family’s past from Chloe cause he felt he wouldn’t fit in. Lois waking up from her hangover in the Kent house was funny stuff. Not sure what to make of the history between Tess and Oliver. Next week teases the bad that will be Doomsday.

I loved this week’s episode of How I Met Your Mother. It was really what the show has always been. The group going through life changes and adding in the Barney silliness of what he is up to. Moving out of the apartment and the group going on to the next portion of their lives was the subject of the show. I think that is when the show is at its best with dealing with stuff that everyone deals with. Robin got the job in Japan as a news anchor. Marshall and Lilly are off to their new house. Ted is about to get married and move to New Jersey with his soon to be wife. The episode had them reminiscing about memories in the apartment including very funny “interventions” where they confront each other on various things that are driving the others nuts such as Lilly doing a British accent. They all panic and decide to just stay where they are including Ted, Lilly, and Marshall staying with the apartment. Finally, they decide that they are going to move on with their lives. What was Barney up to? He was trying to prove that he could hook up with women in their 20’s while he was in his 80’s. He got made up to look like he was an old man and hitting on 20 year olds. It was great stuff. I also loved him with his experiment of getting a girl to fall for his Barney from the future trick. It was hilarious. Loved this episode!!

I laughed so hard at this week’s Big Bang Theory. Sheldon and his fake smile at his happiness for Raj’s success was hilarious and I loved how it kept showing up at random times during the episode. This also gave the opportunity to continue the story of how Raj can’t talk to women unless he has a lot of alcohol in him.

On to this week’s episode of Heroes. We got some more revelations on where this season is going. It looks like Father Petrelli is alive after all and he is building an army around him. Parkman’s dad is free again and back out in the world which can’t be good for anyone. Hiro, Ando, and Adam Monroe working together was funny stuff. Well, they didn’t work together for long as Adam outsmarted them. Their negotiations on Adam being freed though was very funny. Claire got a real reality check seeing her dad working with Sylar. She also tried helping out the level 5 guy but then HRG ended up just using the situation as a way get the guy to eliminate Sylar. I was waiting to see the reaction from Claire when she realized her dad’s new partner and it delivered. How many of the group were a part of this Petrelli experiment? We learned that Tracy and Nathan were a part of it. How creepy is that guy that Meredith is now stuck with??!! I was reading this week that Kristen Bell will be returning soon in upcoming episodes. To no surprise, I am very happy to read about that!!

I am really enjoying the first episodes of Chuck this season. They are playing up the Chuck and Sarah romance big time where we just keep getting teased on whether it will work out. Adding Bryce into the equation this week built even more on it. I said this a couple of weeks ago but I absolutely love Ellie. I love how supportive of a sister that she is for Chuck. The craziness at the Buy More has been very funny this season which this week had a battle with football players determined to bully their way into playing video games in the store.

Tensions are getting higher on The Amazing Race and I’m glad Kelly and Christy stuck around to make that get more interesting. The show opened with them confronting Starr about whether she threw one of their sports bras off of the ledge to which Starr denied saying how is that going to help me in the race? Nick did try and make peace with them at one point during a break in the action where he said that he didn’t think Starr would do something like that. However, the tension between the two teams gets higher upon the U-Turn. If you’re not familiar with the U-Turn, it makes a team have to do two different tasks instead of just one. Nick and Starr were determined to beat as many teams as they could to make sure that they didn’t get U-Turned. They decided not to use it cause it would bring more negativity toward them. However, Starr tried to talk Ty and Aja into using the U-Turn on Kelly and Christy. Ty and Aja saw the plan though cause you can only use one U-Turn on each race. Ty and Aja would have accomplished what Starr wanted done and yet they still have a U-Turn to use. Nobody used the U-Turn and Aja did eventually tell Christy about what Starr tried to get them to do. They were furious as they went to the pit stop likely in last place. They were in last place but something else occurred to keep them in the race. Mark and Bill read their clue wrong which told them to travel on foot at one point but they instead took a taxi. They didn’t realize the messup until it was way too late on that leg of the race so they knew a penalty was coming. They also struggled at the wrestling task. A thirty minute penalty was given to Mark and Bill as they had made it in next to last place. Kelly and Christy arrived while the penalty was being served and are still in the race. Mark and Bill were eliminated. Coming in first place was Ken and Tina. The wrestling task was a lot of fun on this episode where they had to perform a succession of moves in front of a live arena. I kept cracking up at Marisa cause she wasn’t selling any of the moves being hit on her. I just kept saying “sell it Marisa”. Ha ha. Speaking of Marisa, her and Brooke had a lot of fun with the band task. The altitude was a major problem for teams in this task and also made Mark struggle in the wrestling task more. That bike task was a tough one. Kelly and Christy had a really tough time with it due to some major wipeouts and I’m glad there were no injuries cause some of the falls looked really bad. When seeing Mark and Bill messing up on the clue and taking the taxi, a question arose to me about the U-Turn. What happens if they got to the U-Turn first and then used it on another team despite a penalty being on the way for them? They get an unfair advantage and then hurt another team’s chances. Just curious what would happen if that problem occurred but maybe we’ll find out one day.

Tonight’s Survivor had challenges, tension, searching, nervousness, and other emotions going on. Ace and Sugar were a target at Fang especially after Jacquie was voted off. The talk turned to whether Sugar had the hidden immunity idol. After a reward challenge that was won by Kota, Sugar was once again sent to exile island. I wasn’t sure about her telling the tribe upon her return that she went for comfort instead of the clues. People are going to automatically think that you have the idol if you’re not searching for it. After losing the immunity challenge, curiosity at Fang got even higher when Crystal decided to go through Sugar’s bag to see if she had the idol. The idol was seen and the talk turned to whether they should blindside her at tribal council. However, there was another issue in the tribe and that was GC. GC had started to wear down from the game saying that it was changing him for the worse. He and Crystal had issues with getting along and he eventually said to the tribe that he was ready to go home. Crystal voiced her opinion saying that she was tired of him quitting at everything and wanted to vote him out. The votes had GC being voted out of the game. Interesting to point out that GC got so frustrated at one point that he took the boat and paddled off before the immunity challenge. Several looked and yelled for him before he finally showed back up. When he was told that they were about to take off without him, he basically said that he didn’t care if they had left him. I’ve spoken about this before but I always get annoyed when people go through others’ stuff looking for immunity idols. It just seems like a really low tactic to me. Sugar didn’t seem to care when questioned at tribal council about whether she thought that people might look for it in her bag. When you’re Ace and Sugar, it has to make you feel better when the rest of the tribe is going after each other instead of yourselves. Ace and Matty sure are a lot braver than me to get that close to the elephant. I would have been watching from further back with the group. I can’t imagine what that sight must have been like to see that elephant in action.

Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Beverly Hills Chihuahua - $17.5 million. 2. Quarantine - $14.2 million. 3. Body Of Lies - $12.8 million. 4. Eagle Eye - $10.9 million. 5. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist - $6.4 million. 6. The Express - $4.56 million. 7. Nights In Rodanthe - $4.54 million. 8. Appaloosa - $3.32 million. 9. The Duchess - $3.30 million. 10. Fireproof - $3.1 million.

There was no new episode of 90210 this week and won’t be next week but I did see a favorite episode of the original on TV this week. Donna Martin graduates. Enough said.

I got hooked on this show last year and actually just found out that there were new episodes set to air. I’m talking about Storm Chasers. The show follows a team of storm chasers as they try to study tornadoes for science but also includes a filmmaker named Sean Casey trying to get the ultimate shot of a tornado for his IMAX production. I have always been kind of fascinated with watching storms. The storm chaser crew are fun to watch and seeing their strategy of trying to intercept these storms is interesting to follow. The show gets incredible shots of the storms and I can only imagine what it looks like in high definition. I will definitely be watching and highly recommend giving it a shot if you haven’t seen it. The first of eight new episodes premieres this Sunday night, October 19, on The Discovery Channel at 9pm central time. For more info on the show, head over to: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers/storm-chasers.html?campaign=dsc-stc08-1-you006

New episodes of Little People Big World began airing on Monday night on TLC. Matt Roloff made a trip over to Iraq to meet an Iraqi family that includes little people so he could see about helping them. It was a very powerful episode with him meeting the family and promising to do whatever he could to help the kids get the treatment that they need. The episode also included the dangers of the area with Matt having difficulty getting into Baghdad to meet the family. It actually took him four days to get into there. The teaser for the rest of the season showed that we’ll get a follow up on his work to help out the family. It looks like the rest of the new episodes will be a lot of fun based on the previews.

Well, The CW’s decision to dump WWE Smackdown on Friday nights sure isn’t working out for them so far. The network moved comedies to Friday nights and the ratings for the network have dipped significantly since then on that night. Wrestling definitely brings in a consistent audience and that audience is gone. I don’t understand the network making a decision like that to cut one of its highest rated shows.

I wouldn’t mind seeing that new movie, The Secret Life Of Bees. I’ve been seeing some of the talk show promotion for the movie and it looks interesting. I think Dakota Fanning is an amazing actress especially for her age. I think she’s very underrated. I thought it was funny seeing how many singers are in this movie. The one scene I saw had a scene full of power house singers including Alicia Keys, Queen Latifah, and Jennifer Hudson. I expect this movie to open up strong at the box office.

James Van Der Beek appears to be headed to One Tree Hill in a guest starring role. In a bit of déjà vu, his character will be a filmmaker.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago but there is a contest ongoing for the Dr. Horrible DVD. They asked fans to make their own Evil League of Evil video applications and the best ones will be used on the upcoming DVD. I plan on watching more of them and picking out my favorites to put in a future Wrap Up but here is one that jumped out at me immediately. Very cleverly done.


TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, October 21st. According To Jim (Season One), Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes Comedy Hour (Volume Six), Dynasty (Season Three – Volume Two), The Incredible Hulk (Season Five), Knight Rider (Full Series), The Outer Limits (Full Series), Route 66 (Season Two), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Season Two – Part Two).

TV Line Of The Week: From The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon talking to Penny about why he is using baby wipes to clean his hands.
Sheldon: "I had to sanitize my hands because the university replaced the paper towels in the restrooms with hot air blowers."
Penny: "I thought the blowers were more sanitary."
Sheldon: "Hot air blowers are incubators and spewers of bacteria and pestilence. Frankly, it would be more hygienic if they just had a plague infested gibbons sneeze my hands dry."

You Tube Video Of The Week: A couple of clips from my favorite comedy on TV, The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon teaches Penny about online video gaming. Great stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjBGqox4X0w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcAB0gKVVl8

Hope all of you have a great and safe weekend!! Take care and God bless!!

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