Archive for the “television” Category

(PLEASE NOTE: The proper Recap site is working now! This entry is duplicated on TBLR here. Go there instead! :) )

Tonight on The Biggest Loser… It’s the Grand Finale!

Sam, Kirsten and Alison battle it out for the grand prize, while all the eliminated contestants scuffle over the crumbs.

The voting in the poll here on the Recap says Sam will win, followed by Alison and with Kirsten bringing up the rear. Are you guys as smart as you all think you are? Huh? Are you?

Read on to find out! (Note: Temporarily here so people can read if they wish. When the proper Recap site is working again, you’ll be able to read it and comment there!)
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Apparently nobody at The Daily Telegraph bothered to verify Nine programmer Michael Healy’s claim that the advertising aired during Underbelly was the regulation 13 minutes per hour, despite the groundswell of complaints being made by the general public that there seemed to be a heck of a lot.

The first thing you need to bear in mind is that Underbelly, the flagship of Channel Nine’s new year programming, began seven minutes late, making way first for the now-expected overrun of reality TV show The Chopping Block, then the nightly Lotto draw.

Now if you accept that as part of the “first hour” of Underbelly, but ignore any ads prior to the show beginning, you are left with a total of five ad breaks.

The durations of these breaks were, 2 minutes 30 seconds, 2 minutes 40 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 minutes 30 seconds and 3 minutes 10 seconds.

Some quick math brings that to a total of… fourteen minutes and fifty seconds. Well outside the claimed 13 minutes of advertising that is regular (and, I believe, officially regulated) for an hour’s television. And technically it was not even an hour’s worth of television, but a mere 53 minutes, since 7 minutes was eaten up by the show starting late.

Moving up to an entire hour of Underbelly - where a break in the “episodes” is very apparent, would include a sixth ad break. 3 minutes 20 in duration.

This brings the total duration of the ads during the first full hour of Underbelly to a staggering eighteen minutes and ten seconds. Leaving a mere 41 minutes and 50 seconds of actual Underbelly.

Maybe the reported budget of $13 million has them nervous and they’re trying to recoup their investment before the rest of the public realises how utterly appalling a production the show has turned out to be.

[Update: It's back! Yeah baby yeahhhhh! Go there now!]

Just to let everyone know that I am aware The Biggest Loser Recap is currently broken.

Until the monkeys in charge at my webhost get their shit together, I can’t fix it.

If people are desperate for their recap fix, I could maybe post them here until the problem is sorted out… but I don’t know how many Recap fans are even aware this part of my site exists. :)
If there are any and you can cope with coming to a slightly different site for a couple days, holler and I’ll think about it.

After around 10 years as a journalist and 20 years pretending to be one, Ray Martin has left the Nine Network, with rumours some potential changes to his show are behind the exit.

The 63-year-old says his departure does not mean he is retiring from journalism.

Can you retire from something you haven’t been doing in years? I wouldn’t've thought so. Nevertheless, it’s a shame he’s obviously planning to move on and pollute another bastion of journalistic integrity with his own low standards.

Ray, just give it up. What little respect most people had for you dried up years ago when you claimed your return to ACA would herald a renewed integrity for the show which never eventuated. You’ve been in charge of one of the two most execrable “Current Affairs” style shows and only made things worse.

Retire with whatever is left of your dignity. The Australian public deserves better.

[Source: ABC News Online]

Seriously! Channel 10 is resurrecting the show due to the writer’s strike in the US. Channel 10 relies fairly heavily on American TV content, so it’s not surprising they’d be hurting this year.

There’s more details in this thread on the MOSH comedy forums, but the gist so far is that Paul McDermott will be returning as host and the two team captains will be announced in the next couple of days.

The scheduled start date is some time in February. Which, if you’re not keeping track, is not very far away at all.

Most awesome, most unexpected news so far this year!

In a recent interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, “Sleek Geek” Adam Spencer had this to say of the Mythbusters TV show:

Karl and I both demand a very high scientific content, which is difficult to do on television. Take Mythbusters. That just depresses me, especially when it has phrases in its ads like, ‘Beware, science happening!’ There’s no science happening in Mythbusters. I would say it’s constructively anti-scientific.

This interview was done in relation to his upcoming ABC TV show “Sleek Geeks”, based upon his and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki’s stage show of the same name. So you would expect that after busting the chops of Mythbusters, his own show would adhere very strictly to the concepts of the scientific method, wouldn’t you?

Unfortunately it seems the answer to that question is, “Well, not so much…”

During a segment about human’s sense of taste, Dr Karl was explaining the science behind chillis, and why they feel like they’re burning your mouth when you eat them. This was all very interesting and probably even more so if you hadn’t already seen the explanation given by the much more attractive Kari Byron of the Mythbusters.

Where things fell apart on the Sleek Geeks was when it came time to demonstrate the hotness scale of the chillis… And how best to cure the burning sensation.

Things started out well, with fairly mild chillis being handed out to three unfortunate audience members, who were asked to eat the chilli whole. This first stage was easy enough, with none of the three having to chicken out. The second chilli saw one audience member give up, with the third causing another to flake out. The final audience member was then asked to try the first of three drinks on the table - water - to try and relieve the burning.

So far so good. The poor sap tries the water with only minimal relief being the result.

He is then immediately told to try the next drink!

He isn’t given another chilli to refresh the heat in his mouth after the minor dilution of the water or the time between eating the chilli and trying the next drink. That would have been the absolute minimum requirement to maintain some sort of scientific basis to the test. As soon as he was told to try the next drink - cola - any relief that was granted by the cola could have been purely from that drink, or from a mixture of the cola and water.

… and then he is asked to drink again, this time a glass of milk. And at this point the relief he feels could be from the milk alone, it could be from the milk plus the cola, the milk plus the water or all three working together. There is nothing of value to be derived from the experiment, as it was shown on the Sleek Geeks TV show.

Contrast this with the Mythbusters approach, which firstly had two testers at every stage, had different strength chillis appropriate to each of the testers so both had an extremely strong chilli for them personally, plenty of time elapsed between each individual test, to allow the testers mouths to recover from the burning sensation, if any, after trying the various “cures”, of which there were many, including the ever popular milk but also things like toothpaste and even wasabi.

This slightly shoddy approach to the scientific method might have been acceptable if Spencer hadn’t been kicking over other people’s sandcastles. Instead it stands as a crass testament to an ego badly in need of busting.

Let the quality of the show speak for itself, Mr Spencer. You’re not competing against Mythbusters and it would be a mistake to try. Leave the trash talk in your nearest recycling bin next time.

For the past week on Australian Idol Mark Holden has been tutoring each of the remaining contestants in an effort to get the best performance possible out of each of them.

During the short clip before her performance, Mark said that Tarisai is furious that people have been branding her a fake. He thinks she’s chosen well because she can put some actual anger and rage into her performance.

Prior to a practice session, Mark goads her by telling her he doesn’t want to see any fake crap. Tarisai says she does not fake and all the judges should know this and whoever says she’s fake must be nuts.

All while very carefully thumping her hand on the arm of the chair. She’s angry, by gum! You can almost tell by the way she’s half-heartedly declaring she’s not fake!

“I am definitely not fake!”

After her boring-ass performance, Kyle gets to give his two bob first and he says that he sees the “real” her, but he knows what they’re talking about when people say she’s fake. He thinks it’s because she’s holding herself back a bit, as most people do when they’re new to television. He thinks she needs to get used to people not liking her. Not to worry about the people who don’t like her, just be herself and it’ll be easier, because it’s very hard to put out a false, fake image.

She replies that she gets “so annoyed” by people saying she’s fake… and then says something about just because she sings a soft song. And Kyle rightly points out that it’s got nothing to do with the song, it’s the way she conducts herself when she’s interviewed, very polite, etc.

Kyle’s vote is for real, based on that performance, after pressured into saying one or the other by Mark.

And Mark? Well, he’s going for fake. He says it was brilliantly sung but he didn’t see the rage he saw in the studio. Tarisai tries to interrupt by saying “I’m so sorry but I’m absolutely offended, I don’t mean to be rude to you at all…” Mark interjects to tell her to go ahead and Dicko chips in and tells her to join the club, she’ll enjoy it!

Mark keeps a fairly impassive face at this, rather than retorting to Dicko, which is the first sign that this might be staged… (Edit to note: By this I mean that it was a concerted effort by Mark and Dicko to provoke some real passion from Tarisai, not that it was a sneaky attempt to get everyone to vote for her.)

She continues trying to justify herself, but Mark cuts across her again and says it was brilliantly sung, good stagecraft, but still too much fake for him.

Baton is passed to Dicko. Who also thought it was fake and thought the performance was like an angry Bratz doll.

Then he points out one of the big problems - she never listens to them, she only hears what she wants to hear. Dicko says that they could be slagging her off and she’d say thank you like it was a beauty pageant.

Kyle interjects during this to say that Dicko and Mark haven’t liked her for weeks and it’s now just bubbling up. Dicko tries to make a deal with Tarisai that the slate will be wiped clean if she’ll just agree to start showing her real self. Tarisai claims to have shown that tonight and in previous weeks, which Dicko doesn’t believe.

Now, at this point, any regular person would be pissed to the point of either tears or profanity. But no! Not Tarisai! She still insists she “doesn’t mean to be rude to you guys” as she continues trying to justify her fake persona.

And at last it’s Marcia’s turn, “There’s really nothing I can say. That’s it.” And Tarisai even thanks her for that. And then Pretty strolls on stage and Tarisai is all smiles again.

So, what’s the score? Two fake, one real, one no comment and Tarisai doesn’t seem even slightly upset despite the very obvious and deliberate goading by Mark and Dicko.

Either she’s fake and she’s aware of what she is doing and is consciously projecting a false persona she thinks the public will vote for, or she’s simply too stupid to understand why people think she’s fake.

Either way, I hope she doesn’t survive tonight’s show. Kick her to the curb of obscurity please Australia!

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During last night’s episode of The Chaser’s War on Everything Andrew Hansen sang an, according to the Tele, “tasteless” ditty called “The Eulogy Song”, the general thrust of which is that even scumbags will get remembered as being good people after they’ve died.

Some of the people lambasted were clearly done in jest - Princess Di did little to earn anyone’s ire, other than her ex-husband, of course. Others, such as Stan Zemanek, were done with a bit more bite.

The song ended with the rest of the cast interrupting when Hansen was supposedly about to make a crack about the death of Belinda Emmett, but as Chris Taylor explained:

By stopping the song at the mention of Belinda Emmett’s name is, I suppose, The Chaser’s way of saying that’s where we draw the line.”We weren’t making a joke about Belinda Emmett. We were making a joke about the inappropriateness of making a joke about Belinda Emmett.

As usual, this is just another whine from people who ought to know better than to watch The Chaser in the first place as they are notorious for exactly this sort of behaviour.

However, the Telegraph bears mentioning in particular when it comes to this latest farce. They’re so badly offended, so terribly outraged… That they’re providing a link to The Chaser’s website to let people watch this terribly offensive video.

I know it’s best to let people judge for themselves, but I found it very peculiar the way they’ve carried on about how terribly offensive the song was, but are proudly trumpeting the fact that you can go to their website to watch the video for yourself!

[Link: Offensive Chaser defends song war on dead celebs - yes, that's really their clunky-ass headline. Ordinarily I would just link it from "The Daily Telegraph" but that's such a monstrosity it needs to be preserved for posterity.]

What in the hell was she thinking with this outfit?

She looks like she just finished working for Master out on the plantation!

Worst. Outfit. Ever.

Answer? Sing something that wasn’t popularised by a black artist.

Seriously, her only talent is the ability to regurgitate lyrics in the Whitney Houston/Tina Turner style. She has yet to step outside that zone and it is painfully obvious why - she’ll fall flat on her face.

She’d do alright as a Whitney/Tina cover artist, but as a proper performer? No, there’s plenty of singers (and singer/songwriters) out there that have a much better range, that are better looking and that aren’t cracked in the head like Tarisai.

Hopefully her dismal performance on tonight’s show will finally cause the Australian public to realise she’s a one trick pony, and it’s a trick we’ve seen done better by Ms Turner and Ms Houston for more than twenty years.

[Update: Comments have now been disabled on this post due to Janice not having a life!]