Really Brief TV Rants

It's been ages I know, but I've been busy watching TV to bitch about what's going on on it. Here we go...

• Alyssa Milano as new Project Runway All Stars host? They go through hosts like Lady Gaga goes through crazy outfits.
• So sad that yet another white chick won Top Model. It would've been an interesting surprise had either of the guys won. But was so amused when her catwalk crew was so surprised that they won $1000 each, haha.
• I can't be the only one that's a little disappointed about the long time coming Red John reveal on The Mentalist. Even Jane said so too. 
• Anyone else liking The Blacklist? I can't be the only one watching it for James Spader...
• Jonathan Rhys Meyers is one heck of a sexy vampire... the American accent I could do without.
• Seriously didn't need to see videos of Brian the dog's death now. I get it - they killed him off.
• RIP, King and Maxwell. Rebecca Romijn is out of a job... again. Actually, so's her husband I think...

ANTM 2.0

ANTM, just when I thought I never have to watch you ever again, you finally bring in GUYS to compete with the ladies. Oh you so cruel. 

Not that I mind that erm, "twist" in the competition personally. I mean, they probably should've played that card a cycle or two ago. I'm kinda hoping the old ice cream man that Tyra found makes it further than it's edited to look. 

I thought the makeover was going to be dramafree dull until they brought in the waxer for the manscaping. Watching those guys wince from having their legs waxed was a funny sight to behold. 

I'm not sure having Tyra insert herself even more this cycle, being there doing makeup for them on the weekly shoots on top of the picking, judging, mentoring and... I forgot something. I know I'm missing something. I know it's her TV baby and all, but really... this is reality competition helicopter parenting, as far as I'm concerned.

As long they keep the ridonk out (I never want to see, hear or have to type "Pot Ledom" EVER AGAIN), I'm in for this cycle.

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Random thoughts - Project Runway Season 12

Season 12 of Project Runway starts this week - is anyone still watching?

• Puppies falling from the sky?! Is that guy dumb or what?
• Guy who won the week's unconventional material challenge reminds me of Kiefer Sutherland - if he was a bearded ginger :P
• There's something a little wrong with the Russian dude. Okay, him and the guy from Wisconsin. 
• Guy from Wisconsin needs to just get off the TV screen already.
• Sustainability? Really?
• I feel bad for the guy's poor model - no shoes, hair or makeup. Don't blame her for crying.
• Either the judges closed one eye/did not notice about the vagina flash on the runway, or anything they said about it got cut out. I say it's the latter.
• No complaints about the new rules they've implemented this season. 
• I like how Tim is more involved besides mentoring - he now gets a front row seat to the runway shows instead of being (I imagine) backstage. How can you hate on the Tim Gunn Save? Really?! 

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King & Maxwell

When they announced the show King & Maxwell last year, which is a TV adaptation of David Baldacci's King & Maxwell series of books, which are about two former Secret Service agents turned PIs, I wasn't against it or anything. What raised my eyebrow was Jon Tenney being Sean King. If you're a fan of The Closer and Major Crimes, you know that he plays FBI agent/Brenda's husband Fritz Howard. Him playing another character on a different show on the same network was going to take some getting used to.

I personally didn't know about the books and I don't think I want to go delve into the source material now. It's created by current NCIS: LA showrunner and former producer of NCIS, Shane Brennan.

Having already seen the pilot, my first impression so far that it's a cross between Warehouse 13 and Moonlighting. So while I see why people say it's like Bones and Castle, but that's not quite how I see it; they're not strictly about PIs - they're with cops and federal agents.

The pilot is not bad, but it's not mind blowingly great. What I did like was the proper-length animated opening sequence tells the individual story of how they got to be PIs, but not so much how they met since they weren't in the Service at the same time. But I'm hoping it'll get better with time. I also read that Rebecca Romijn's husband Jerry O' Connell would be making an appearance on the show later.

What is anyone else's thoughts on the show (if you've seen the pilot)?

Leno, Fallon and Meyers, NBC Late Night

Finally got round to caring about the NBC late night shuffle: apparently Leno's quitting The Tonight Show (for good this time?), with Fallon taking over, which might mean that the show would go to New York so Fallon and his crew don't have to move across the country and SNL's Seth Meyers is taking over Late Night. All that happening next February. I think I got it straight, yes?

I haven't been watching The Tonight Show all that much ever since Late Night took over on CNBC on weekends. But whenever I do get to watch episodes on TV, I only watch for some of the easier to digest segments like Thank You Notes and the monologue. I really don't care for the audience participation made up game shows which quite frankly, make little sense to me. I think regular viewing of The Late Late Show has spoilt me rotten for other shows.

Seth Meyers holds up the Weekend Update desk alright (but I find the guests they bring on annoying), but the Late Night desk? I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see.

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Thoughts on the Hannibal pilot

• Hugh Dancy is attending the Hugh Laurie school of five o' clock shadow and pretty convincing American accent. 
• It may be violent and gory but definitely not as gross as some of the corpses on Bones... you know what I'm talking about.
• Mads Mikkelsen gets to keep his European accent as Dr Lecter. How convenient. 
• I hope that's animal lung he's chopping up, but it's a little too huge...?
• I wonder if the sausage was animal or human... noticed that he didn't touch the sausage, haha.
• Filmed in Ontario? Oh man... I thought the weather was a little too sunny for Minnesota :P I keed, I keed!
• Season preview seemed interesting - Eddie Izzard! Gillian Anderson (with long hair)! Holy cow!

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Not offended by The Jeselnik Offensive

Saw the first few episodes of The Jeselnik Offensive, and well... there's a reason why it's The Jeselnik OFFENSIVE, because nothing seems to be off limits to the guy. AIDS, cancer, necrophilia... the list of "oh-oh!" topics are at least a mile long and he's touched on most of them. All because of that freedom of speech thing. It must be great to be American :P

The show's format is still okay, I guess, but to me, running a little similar to Brand X with Russell Brand and Kathy Griffin's show, both of those supposedly "live". But that's for another time.

I've seen and heard other things over the years that offended me more than anything that's ever been said on the show, so I still find it pretty entertaining. Jeselnik saying those things himself is one thing, but having other comedians come on the show (as part of the "panel"; kinda wish he stop saying the word "panel" so much :P) and say stuff the rest of us are thinking? Wow.

So if you're easily offended... don't watch this. Find something else to watch. The title of the show is self-explanatory.

Fashion Star is back!

Fashion Star is back on NBC with some tweaks, namely the host swap out (from Elle Macpherson to Louise Roe), Express replacing H&M as one of the retail buyers and also the format (designers handpicked by the mentors to be in their "teams", yada yada). Not to mention the way bigger and posher runway - they got money now...

I've only ever seen Louise Roe from her guest stints on Fashion Police, but I think she'll be fine.

I personally am not familiar with Express, but it's similar (enough?) to H&M, yes? Can't even access the site right now - either it's overloaded or it got hacked :P

I forgot how much fun watching this show is; mostly because the clothes that come down this runway is meant to be accessible to the hoi polloi and trying to be avant garde at the same time. It's too bad I watch alone or else I'd make a drinking game out of whether any of them get bought (at all), or by whom. 

I've come to realise that it's not hard to tell which items might appeal to which store (which might be what the designers intended, maybe...?) - Saks tend to go with the expensive-looking items, Express the accessible ones and Macy's... a toss up between the two poles.

Because I'm such a sucker, I'll keep tuning in.

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The Face on Oxygen

This is based on me having seen the first two proper episodes of The Face. Don't ask me how since I don't get the Oxygen network.

Heard about The Face awhile ago on Fashion Police, and it's finally started on the Oxygen channel.

I appreciate that they didn't have whole episodes dedicated to the audition process - instead it was a quick cut of who the coaches (Naomi Campbell, Coco Rocha and Karolina Kurkova) picked to be on their teams. I didn't know that anyone on the planet can apply, which is a refreshing change. Neither did I know that Nigel Barker would be hosting this show as his post-ANTM gig. Good on him - haven't seen a decent male host a reality competition show in a while... okay, besides Colby Donaldson on Top Shot.

The format is (fortunately) is not too similar to shows of its ilk: the individual Test Shot challenges are conducted by one of the three coaches in their respective "specialties" (Coco's posing lesson; Naomi's styling class). At least the team challenges are actual shoots for actual brands.

I don't know how objective the supermodel coaches are gonna be on this show because they seem to be taking it personally when they have to send one of their own to be eliminated by the winning coach of the week's team challenges. Naomi keeping the less experienced contestant over the more experienced one (who's one of Karolina's team members) just seem like she's getting her revenge after having one of hers cut by Karolina in the previous episode. 

Luckily it's a limited engagement (8 episodes long), so it won't be so drawn out or all crazy like on ANTM.

Random thoughts:

• It's so weird to hear the phrase "Team Coco" when it's got nothing to do with Conan O' Brien :D Also, she's only 24 and has been modelling for 10 years? Oy vey :P
• Ulta Beauty? Really? I've probably come across the name in passing, but really?! They got to start someplace, I suppose...
• Margaux? Really? Huh...

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The Taste - Foodie version of The Voice?

A while ago, we all only know that Bourdain and Nigella were involved in some cooking competition show for ABC. It finally made its appearance, and it's called The Taste. Top Chef alum Brian Malarkey and Top Chef Masters veteran Ludo Lefebvre were announced later to round out the judging/mentor panel. 

Reading about the format, it reminded me of The Voice, but with food. I admit I don't watch The Voice, but I heard about how the auditions go.

Watching the audition stage, I found that it's interesting quite a number of professional chefs are getting passed over the home cooks for each mentor's kitchens. Not to mention the vegan/vegetarian cooks that try to slip the judges non-meat product unto the spoon, haha :D 

Am I the only one that thinks it a little weird that everyone else except (Brian) Malarkey go by first names? It's probably just me.

After watching the auditions, I don't quite understand how the judges "messed up" and didn't pick someone for their kitchen whose food they liked. What the...?! Maybe they had to vote so quickly, that's why they "screwed up" like that? I don't know...  Interesting that Bourdain picked the pretty ladies for his kitchen/team, but that's just a random observation. At least they have their 4 person teams and the competition begins!

Sucker that I am for food and cooking shows, I'll keep watching to see how the competition part plays out.

PS. Trust Bourdain to come up with these gems: "vomit in terror", "chute of terror".

Thoughts on...Asia's Next Top Model

This is after attempting to catch first airings (not sure who would bother uploading these on YouTube okay, you can find full episodes on the official YouTube channel...) of the nine episodes aired (as of this week)... I definitely missed a few, especially the makeover part, which I enjoy a little too much because it's fun to see some people's bad reactions to getting their hair cut short.

• There's a good mix of contestants - not too many people from the same places from the same countries, etc. Considering how many countries in this part of the world does not have its own Top Model show, that is.
• Can't help but snigger at some of these contestants' names, but I give Bei Si props for not picking her own English name (if her parents already hadn't) to go by in the competition.
• The blatant sponsor placement was a bit atrocious, but an evil necessity.
• Despite it being shot in Singapore, the Malaysian in me was gleeful that the Singaporean got booted first.
• There's a whole lot of fainting and panic attacks going on :P
• After watching America's Next Top Model judging go cray cray in recent cycles, it took some getting used to watching this panel really take things seriously.
• I think the producers' idea of "must also understand and speak English" is a lot looser than my own interpretation.
• To all the people who complained about how the half-white people are still in the competition - about half the eliminated contestants don't exactly fulfill the previous point.

Team Edition Project Runway

At a production meeting...

Producer 1: Season 11, and we're still on the air! Whoda thunk?

Producer 2: I know, right? So what's the gimmick for this one?

Producer 1: Viewers LOVE watching the contestants suffer - so instead of team challenges every few episodes, why not have them EVERY SINGLE EPISODE! The numbers would be through the roof!

Producer 2: Genius! That's settled... let's go for lunch!

[Disclaimer: That was just really fictionalized BS as to how they might have conjured up with the team challenge-only season of Project Runway. Please don't sue me - it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek.]

Just as PR fans are still reeling from the news of Kors' departure (but excited to see what Zac Posen will do - that's just me personally), the PR blog on Lifetime announced (which I found out via Tim Gunn on his official Facebook page) that Season 11 will be all team challenges. And I thought it was just a rumour :P

This move will definitely bring out the human drama, but will the numbers be any better? Also, would the designers be in The Fashion Show-esque "fashion houses" all season long, or would they be drawing buttons out of the velvet bag every elimination challenge?

Which begs the question - why don't they draw scissors out of a box like how they draw knives on Top Chef? LOL. I guess oversized buttons out of the velvet bag is cheaper and safer all around :P

Guess the only way to find out is to watch :P

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