Survivor Cast Announced, Lost, Chuck Returns, One Tree Hill Season Four, & More - January 7, 2010

Hey everyone. Hope everyone is having a great 2010 so far. Let's get right into this week's Wrap Up.

Will the State of the Union address interrupt what we’ve all been waiting for? The Lost premiere. The talk is that the White House is looking at January 26 and February 2 as target dates for when the speech would take place. If the date of February 2 is picked, that will be the night that Lost is set for its final season premiere on ABC. Yeah, Lost fans are fired up over this one. Will that mean that all of us have to wait an extra week? Maybe. We’ll see what the decision is. Speaking of Lost, a new photo has been released that will definitely get fans speculating and talking. They are doing a play off of “The Last Supper”. Lots of possible clues placed in it and its interesting to see which character is placed where. If you want to see the photo, here is the link. Speculate away everyone.
http://www.fancast.com/blogs/tv-news/lost-supper-gives-fans-something-to-chew-on/

Season three of Chuck is finally here! Sunday night will be the two hour season premiere of the show on NBC. Chuck runs from 8-10pm central time on that night and then will fall into its normal 7pm on Mondays time slot after that. Can’t wait for this!! Again, big kudos to all the fans that fought so hard to get this show brought back. I can’t recommend this show enough as it is so good. Such a fun show. Really excited to see where they go with the story after the great twist on the season two finale. Come on, we also have to wonder what Jeffster is going to perform this year and when. If you missed the Chuck panel at Comic-Con, it was the greatest entrance for a panel that I’ve ever seen. After I saw it, I thought that everyone now has to follow that one!! LOL. Chuck and Sarah has become one of my favorite romances on TV and you just really cheer for them. I’ll be interested to see how Chuck does on Sunday night compared to Monday. Bring on season three!!

The new cast of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains has been announced. Some interesting picks for sure. Don’t forget that this is another all stars season to play off of the show’s twentieth season. For the villains, we have: Jerri Manthey (Australia), Sandra Diaz-Twine (Pearl Islands), Randy Bailey (Gabon), Tyson Apostol (Tocantins), Russell Hantz (Samoa), Danielle DiLorenzo (Panama), Parvati (Cook Islands and All Stars), Ben Wade (Tocantins), Rob Mariano (Marqeusas and All Stars), and Courtney Yates (China). For the heroes: Rupert Boneham (Pearl Islands and All Stars), Candice Woodcock (Cook Islands), Stephenie LaGrossa (Palau and Guatemala), Colby Donaldson (Australia and All Stars), Cirie Fields (Panama and Fans vs. Favorites), James Clement (China and Fans vs. Favorites), Amanda Kimmel (China and Fans vs. Favorites), Tom Westman (Palau), and James “JT” Thomas (Tocantins). A preview of the new season was shown during The People’s Choice Awards this week and it just showed them arriving in the game. As far as my thoughts, there are some very good names on this list. We’re got some previous winners and some very popular cast members that will make viewers very happy. We’ve got some good villains. With Russell, I’m thinking that he must not do very well in this season. I don’t know when it was taped but I’m assuming that it was before the recent live finale. His anger there makes me wonder if he must have not done well on this new season. I’ve got several of my favorites on this season including Rupert and Stephenie. Wow, I’m just pausing to look over the list of names again and I’m really looking forward to this. Lots of clashing and fun personalities.

Carrie Underwood is set to guest star on How I Met Your Mother in the near future. She will be taping her appearance on the show later in the month. What role will she play? Well, if you guessed love interest for Ted, you would be correct. She will play a pharmaceutical sales rep. The episode will air in March. I’m really looking forward to seeing her in this role. She really has a good comedic side and this will be a good chance for her to show it.

Speaking of How I Met Your Mother, the show celebrates its 100th episode this Monday night on CBS with special guest star, Stacy Keibler.

Under a week away from American Idol. The new season premieres on Tuesday night, January 12.

Charles Barkley is set to host Saturday Night Live this week on NBC. Yeah, I will have to check this out. Alicia Keys will also be the musical guest.

I’m new to this story but is Jay Leno getting ready to move back to late night? That seems to be the talk. Leno’s show has not done very well and The Tonight Show with Conan has not done as well either. Is NBC about to make changes? Well, The New York Times sure has a report on it tonight that suggests that changes are about to be made. Here is the link:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/update-nbc-plans-leno-at-1130-conan-at-12/?src=tptw

The People’s Choice Awards were held last night and here are some of the winners. Remember that these are fan voted. Great to see some of my favorites getting getting awards last night!!
In TV:
Drama: House
Comedy: The Big Bang Theory
Sci-Fi Fantasy Show: Supernatural
Competition Show: American Idol
TV Drama Actor: Hugh Laurie
TV Drama Actress: Katherine Heigl
TV Comedy Actor: Steve Carell
TV Comedy Actress: Alyson Hannigan
New TV Drama: The Vampire Diaries
New TV Comedy: Glee
In Music:
Male Artist: Keith Urban
Female Artist: Taylor Swift
Country Artist: Carrie Underwood
R&B Artist: Mariah Carey
Pop Artist: Lady Gaga
Rock Band: Paramore
In Movies:
Actor: Johnny Depp
Actress: Sandra Bullock
Action Star: Hugh Jackman
Comedic Star: Jim Carrey
Breakout Movie Actress: Miley Cyrus
Breakout Movie Actor: Taylor Lautner
On-Screen Team : The Twilight Saga
Movie: Twilight
Family Movie: Up
Actor of the Decade: Johnny Depp

I’ve mentioned this many times before but the live trivia phone call on Live With Regis and Kelly is comedy gold. I love it every morning. Regis gets so upset and his venting is just hilarious. Then, Kelly steps right in and fixes things. This morning things didn’t go so well though and the phone wouldn’t work at all.

I had no idea about this until last week but a new DVD has been released of the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You. It is a ten year anniversary DVD with some new extras. This is one of my favorite movies of all time so I will get this. Just a matter of when. It definitely has some extras on it that are intriguing over my original DVD that I got back about ten years ago. There is a documentary looking back on the movie while also having audio commentary with cast and crew including writers Kristen Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz and cast members Larisa Oleynik, Andrew Keegan, David Krumholtz, and Susan May Pratt. The DVD is also available in Blu-ray. Also, you may remember that the movie was recently turned into a TV series on ABC Family. The box set of it is released next week. I got curious about it and I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the TV series. I found it to be all right. You never know how things will go when movies are turned into TV shows.

I’ve been working my way through One Tree Hill. I got so far behind on this show. Seasons in fact. I watched season four last week and absolutely loved it. The show picked up with the second half of senior year. There were a lot of good storylines to follow and I thought it was nicely paced. There were some things that I had been spoiled on so I did know that Dan was in jail. I got messed with on that though. I assumed that he turned himself in about Keith but then I got teased with him taking the fall for Nathan when the point shaving scandal went crazy and came to a climax. Of course, the original thought ended up being true. One thing that I loved about watching this season was just seeing the graphic at the beginning of an episode and no theme song. Why? That means big episode and big happenings. The episode with the state championship game was incredible and then the happenings involving Haley and Lucas at the end. I just knew something big was going to happen. When Haley got hit and then Lucas started looking odd, my thought was uh oh, there he goes. Two characters down with a lot of drama to come. This season was almost the feeling of how many life threatening characters can we put the characters in. Could you imagine being these characters? Geez. I did call the whole Peyton and her brother storyline. I had a feeling that that guy wasn’t her brother but didn’t expect where they went with it. I knew we were going to get that storyline revisited but wasn’t expecting it at prom. I will just say that this is a fun show to try and guess things on what is going to happen. I kept saying that is not going to be Lucas behind that door ready to take her to prom. My guess was that her dad would be back. WRONG!!! LOL. What an intense episode that was and they did some amazing work on how to shoot it. I was happy to see that the friends did get their prom after all after visiting Honey Grove, Texas. Ok, if you have the DVD, you really need to watch the extra where they show the behind the scenes of this episode. Fans were sending in videos to try and get One Tree Hill to come and shoot an episode in their town. Honey Grove won and it was such a nice small town that looked great in the episode. You’ll see the cast and crew hanging out with the contest winners and the locals. This is one thing that I love about this show is just how much that they care about the fans and include them. One example of that is some of the cast and crew going to a One Tree Hill viewing party after being invited by some of the students. This was a great feature and I gained even more respect for just how much this show cares about its fans. I’ve really grown to like Skillz. Such a fun character and has a lot of great lines. One example was Haley snapping on Rachel at that party. That in itself was just awesome to see Haley just go nuts and have all she can take. Skillz tells Nathan about it and Nathan questions her on slapping Rachel. Skills adds, yeah, that was after she threw water in her face. LOL. Great timing. I liked the twist of Mouth and his romance attempts through the season. I felt bad for him though cause he just kept getting dumped left and right. The pregnancy of Haley was a fun story and seeing how much Haley and Nathan grew together as a couple this season was fun to follow. I have to say that I’m a Haley guy as far as the girls go. I’ve always liked that character. I liked the story of watching Lucas learn more and more information about what actually happened to Keith. The season concluded big with graduation and also a birth with Nathan and Haley’s son being born. One of my favorite episodes of the season definitely is the class assignment episode where they were assigned to learn more about another person in the class in an hour. Lots of fun and the episode tied up great being set to the song “Teenage Wasteland”. That is one great thing about this show and a major strong point of it. The ties to music and the show. They add so much music to it that adds so much more power to a scene. Anyway, season five flash forwards four years into the future and I’m nearing halfway of being through it. Enjoying it too so far. As far as season four, I really enjoyed it. With watching it, I’ve realized just how much that I’ve missed this show. Fun stories and characters.

The new Transformers DVD set is released this Tuesday which will be Season Two – Volume Two. The new box sets being released are getting much more favorable reviews than the ones that Rhino released many years ago. So, if you’re an old school fan like myself, you’ll love seeing these box sets. I’m just waiting for the release of the post movie stuff cause I seem to enjoy those episodes more.

Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Avatar - $68.4 million. 2. Sherlock Holmes - $36.6 million. 3. Alvin and the Chipmunks - $35.1 million. 4. It’s Complicated - $18.8 million. 5. The Blind Side - $11.9 million. 6. Up In The Air - $10.7 million. 7. The Princess and The Frog - $9.8 million. 8. Did You Hear About The Morgans? - $4.9 million. 9. Invictus - $3.9 million. 10. Nine - $3.9 million.

TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, January 12. 10 Things I Hate About You (Volume One), Becker (Season Three), ER (Season Twelve), Fame (Season Two), House Of Payne (Volume Five), Jon & Kate Plus Ei8ht (Season Five), Robin Hood (Season Three), Route 66 (Season Three), The Simpsons (Season Twenty), Transformers (Season Two – Volume Two).

Video Of The Week: Jeff Probst gives his thoughts on the new Survivor cast.


TV Line Of The Week: From Live With Regis and Kelly.
“If you were one of my kids, I would be sending you to your room. “ Kelly to Regis after his mocking over the phone not working on this morning’s show. I laughed a lot at this segment.

Twitter Update Of The Week: Yeah, I laughed at this one when I read it from the Darth Vader Twitter account.
@darthvader “Alderaan was celebrating New Years when Tarkin blew them to bits. Gave a whole new meaning to "watching the ball drop."

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