The Entertainment Wrap Up - October 2, 2008 - Amazing Race Premiere, Smallville, 90210, Chuck, Heroes, WB.com, & More

The teams have crossed the starting line on this season’s Amazing Race. I have loved this show since the very first episode premiered and have been hooked ever since. I wasn’t sure how to recap the first episode due to this being a brand new season with brand new teams that I’m still learning. Just thought I’d give some random thoughts and give the results of the episode. The teams started from the Los Angeles Coliseum and their first travel took them to Brazil. Finishing in first place was Nick and Starr on this leg of the race. I guess I’ll start with them since there was a lot of focus on them in the episode and they did finish first and all. I like them and so far have them as my favorite team. The next thing to go to off of them is Terence and Sarah. My question is did they get a bad edit or were they really that upset at Nick and Starr? Sarah was really mad that she got “ignored” when she tried to make small talk with them while trying to catch a taxi. My first point when watching that was wondering if Nick and Starr even heard them. If I had been in Nick and Starr’s spot, I might have even been wondering if they were talking to me or whether they were talking to each other. That was how casual it seemed. They spent the rest of the episode just ripping on them and it looks to continue next week based on the preview. Nick and Starr have also formed an alliance with “mom and dad” which are Ken and Tina. Nick and Starr definitely have a game plan in this race and we’ll see how it plays out. It is always funny to watch teams panic in an airport when information gets out. Some of the teams in line found out that they were at the wrong ticket counter which resulted in the first team running to the other one. The other teams always freak out too and start running. Goodness, I would do the same thing if I was them. What a perfect setup on the one task where teams had to climb the stairs and answer a secret question at the top of the stairs. The question? How many steps did you just climb? Like you’re going to know that and you know what that means. You have to start all over. That was a perfect setup though. Eliminated on this leg of the race was Anita and Arthur.

This week's Survivor saw the power finally change over to the other tribe. Fang finally made their comeback sweeping both the reward and immunity challenges. Along with winning the reward challenge, Kota was able to pick who they wanted to send to exile island. They chose Sugar and it was fun to watch her trying to find the hidden immunity idol which she did find. I'm not sure if telling Ace about it was the greatest thing but they seem to have a solid alliance so far. Fang's plan for the reward challenge was to rest all the stronger women for the immunity challenge. The challenge had one member of the tribe being dragged by two others from the other tribe to the line. The single person would start wrapped around the pole and have to be forcefully removed by the two to start being dragged. Paloma was put out there by Ace which I didn't think was very smart cause of how little that she is. Ace was a force in this challenge for sure but his tribe ended up with the loss. Immunity went the way of Kota's as well. The decision was made to vote out Paloma but she sure did call out Ace on her feelings of him during tribal council. Ace has definitely stirred some people up on his tribe so he has to be a major target in the game from here. I was bummed to see Paloma go as she seemed very likable.

Regis Philbin guest starred on this week's How I Met Your Mother and he was hilarious. The story of the episode was that Marshall was trying to find the perfect burger in New York City. When he moved to NYC, he had this incredible burger but later couldn't find the place again. So, the gang ends up helping him on his quest to find the perfect burger again. How did Regis tie into this? His autographed picture was in the place hanging on the wall so Regis had been there as well. Regis also was going crazy trying to find the place that cooked this burger too. Regis and Neil Patrick Harris played off of each other really well. Lots of funny comedy in this episode including Robin's starving frenzy. Bottom line, very fun episode.

Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Eagle Eye - $29.1 million. 2. Night In Rodanthe - $13.4 million. 3. Lakeview Terrace - $6.9 million. 4. Fireproof - $6.8 million. 5. Burn After Reading - $6.1 million. 6. Igor - $5.3 million. 7. My Best Friend’s Girl - $3.8 million. 8. Righteous Kill - $3.7 million. 9. Miracle at St. Anna - $3.4 million. 10. Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys - $3.1 million.

Congrats to Neil E. Boyd on winning this season’s America’s Got Talent. He won $1 million and also won a show in Las Vegas.

Fringe has been picked up by Fox for the full season.

The blurring line of good and evil on this season’s first episodes of Heroes continues to get blurred. This week’s episode saw more changes being made. Sylar and Noah working together was just bizarre. Flat out bizarre. How bad must things be out in the world if you have to work with Sylar to get things under control? I thought the Hiro/Ando stuff was entertaining this week with them still battling Daphne over getting the formula. However, there was a new player involved in that this week and that was the return of the Haitian. They are definitely laying groundwork on problems brewing between Hiro and Ando which will lead to their problems in the future. Speaking of the future, I am really looking forward to seeing what Peter is going to get to see from his future self. Are the writers missing the painting the future abilities that Isaac had and giving it to Parkman? I have no clue on where they are going with the Tracy/Zimmerman storyline. The stories involving Ali Larter’s characters usually leave me baffled.

There was some buzz that got going this week among Smallville fans wondering what the “Robin” pilot meant for the future of Smallville. Smallville executive producers Brian Peterson and Kelly Souders are working on “The Graysons” which is a prequel for the character of Robin from the Batman series. The show is being developed for The CW which got fans panicked about Smallville’s longevity. Peterson and Souders have released a statement to KryptonSite about the project and their future plans for Smallville which will relieve fans worries. Here is little bit of the statement: "While we are extremely excited to be working hand-in-hand with Wonderland, Warner Brothers, and the CW to create the origin story of Dick Grayson, it has never been intended as a replacement for Smallville, as is speculated in some media. The cast, crew, writers and producers are all working full-steam ahead on a story-line for Clark that allows for seasons of further trials and adventures for our favorite hero."
For the full statement, head over to: http://graysons.kryptonsite.com/

Speaking of Smallville, I wasn’t crazy about the episode tonight up until I saw how it was playing out at the end. Once it all started to make sense, I began to like it more. So, Oliver and Tess have a history together with being on the island at the same time while fighting their way out. Davis continuing to learn of these bizarre happenings happening around Clark and the gang can’t be a good thing for them especially knowing about Chloe’s power. Clark also found out tonight about Chloe’s super ability to get information and that it was the result of what Brainiac did to her. Quite a bit of focus on Lois and her men tonight. The man from the past and the man of her future. You can really see them starting to move on their way to Lois and Clark being together.

I got a chance to listen to the audio commentaries on season seven of Smallville last night. There were no commentaries on the season six DVD set so it was great to see them return for season seven. There is commentary done on episode ten (Persona) and episode eleven (Siren). I found it interesting that the original plan was to use the Interpol song in the first episode of season seven which would have replaced Kelly Clarkson’s “Sober”. They made the right decision on both as those two songs fit their scenes so great and are my favorite mainstream song scenes of season seven. I loved hearing that Tom Welling did one scene six times with James Marsters just because he was enjoying working with him so much. One really great thing about the Siren commentary is that they talk about deleted scenes in the commentary telling when something was cut due to time. However, head over to the deleted scenes section afterwards and every scene they discussed is there. I loved that. Funny comment from John Glover during the Persona commentary when he was asked to say something about working with Michael Rosenbaum. He laughed saying that Michael is a “madman” but in every kind of good way. The two of them developed such an amazing chemistry over the years.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars premieres tomorrow night, October 3rd, at 8pm central time on The Cartoon Network. The premiere episode will be one hour in length and I am looking forward to checking it out. For more info on the show, head over to: http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/clonewars/

I mentioned last week that I had already seen the season premiere of Chuck but didn’t want to discuss it since it had yet to air on TV. It has now aired so I’ll go into my thoughts. What would become of Chuck’s life was the big question on this episode. Would he continue having the spy life or get to have his own? The new intersect was set up which effected Chuck greatly. He would be able to go on with his own life. He got to take Sarah out on a real date. He was offered the assistant manager position at the Buy More but turned it down looking for bigger things. That resulted in a funny story of the rest competing for the position. However, it also meant that Chuck would be terminated under orders given to Cayse. However, Cayse was having a hard time dealing with carrying out that order but it wasn’t needed when a Trojan device destroyed the computer. That means that Chuck is back to being the only intersect and his life is now back out of his control. The episode was a nice balance of seeing what could be for him and what his reality is. I really like the chemistry between Chuck and his sister, Ellie. She just wants the best for him so bad and gets so excited whenever he is about to make a big positive change. Ok, being a Back To The Future fan, I loved hearing “The Power Of Love” used in the episode. Excellent first episode of season two.

Kelly is on her way with her son to visit Dylan on the new 90210. Can we please get Luke Perry on this show? Yeah, I know he isn’t interested in appearing but I couldn’t have been the only one entering his voice in on the other end of the phone during that phone call between Kelly and Dylan. We even got some old school love triangle stuff played on the show with Dylan, Kelly, and Brenda. All that was missing was a trip to Paris to be involved. Ha ha. As for the current group, I really enjoyed the story of Annie and Adrianna where they were paired together on a school assignment. Annie helped out Adrianna but then learned of Adrianna making up all the drama over Ty in last week’s episode. It doesn’t look like Adrianna’s drug problem is going away based on the end of the episode.

Some new content debuting this month on TheWB.com. Rich Girl/Poor Girl is about two teenagers who end up changing lives with one another. High Drama: Against All Oz is a look at the behind the scenes of a high school play of The Wizard Of Oz. Downers Grove is a series about four friends and following their adventures.

Speaking of TheWB.com, the full second season of Veronica Mars is now available on the site. Do yourself a favor and watch the show. http://thewb.com/shows/veronica-mars/

TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, October 7th. 30 Rock (Season Two), The Beverly Hillbillies (Season Two), How I Met Your Mother (Season Three), Martin (Season Five), Mission: Impossible (Season Five), Robot Chicken (Season Three), The Simpsons (Season Eleven), The Smurfs (Season One – Volume Two).

TV Lines Of The Week: From Smallville: “I have got a delicate enough ego as it is. I am not cut out to date a guy with a hero complex.” Lois to Clark discussing Oliver.

From Survivor: "If Ace wins the million dollars, I'll never watch Survivor again." Paloma during her exit interview which I thought was a hilarious line.

You Tube Video Of The Week: Food Court Musical. An improv group breaks into song right in front of an unexpecting public.


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