Dollhouse - "Stage Fright" by Matthew J. Brady
Well, according to Eliza Dushku, the sixth episode of this show is the one to watch, since that's when Joss Whedon finally gets to "realize his vision" and actually do something interesting, or whatever. But if I have to sit through another episode like this week's, I might not make it to that mind-blowing bit of enlightenment. Good god was this one hard to get through, offering so little in the way of an interesting plot, memorable characters, or any sort of action or intrigue. This time around, Echo infiltrated the ranks of backup singers for a Beyonce-like pop star, hoping to stop a murderous stalker before anything bad happened. This gave Dushku a chance to attempt a hilarious Boston accent that appeared and disappeared at random, along with a stupid instinct to preserve the singer's life even when she was being a total bitch. Watch out for the big twist: it turns out she's got a suicide impulse, and actually WANTS to be killed. Oh, snap, I didn't see that coming. I didn't care either.
Ugh, what idiocy. No, the only interesting moment of the show was when we saw that Helo's (I have no idea what his character's name is; he'll always be Helo to me) informant about Dollhouse is actually...one of Dollhouse's programmable people! Wait, what? That makes no sense; is he just living out the role of a pimp (or whatever he is) for some nebulous conspiracy-related reason, repeatedly being reprogrammed to return to his life and string Helo along? We may get some answers here, but it's possible that this constitutes the show jumping the shark as early as the third episode. If this is going to be the norm, I'll be surprised if anybody can make it as far as that magical sixth episode. We'll see if it's possible next week; this show is on thin ice.
American Idol
Now that American Idol has picked the entirety of their Top 12 Top 13, it seems like it’s time to make some predictions on when people are going to go home. Here we go:
13. Megan Corkrey
Picked as a Wild Card because she’s “current”—current in this case meaning “doing an impersonation of Duffy/Amy Winehouse/Adele without actually being able to sing”—Megan Corkrey probably has the smallest fan base of any of the Top 13 (except maybe Kris Allen, but people seem to be voting more for guys than girls.)
12. Kris Allen
Snuck through to the top 13 on a week where just about everyone under-performed.
11. Michael Sarver
The roughneck thing may be moderately compelling, but the people who voted for Michael Sarver in round 1 because he’s a workin’ man now have a blind guy to patronize.
10. Jorge Nuñez
One of the best parts of American Idol is seeing the unpolished, not-ready-for-TV singers compete with the more manufactured types on a level playing field. With his lazy eye and unwieldy curls, Jorge will need a lot of work in the congeniality department—by week four, nobody’s going to want to try anymore.
9. Jasmine Murray
When she sang a Christina Aguilara song in her Wild Card slot, The Factual Opinion team literally tried to figure out what Disney movie it was from. The adult-contemporizing of current music—even though the judges keep bluntly pushing her toward Rihanna-style pop—may not be such a bad strategy.
8. Matt Giraud
The dueling piano player will chill mid-pack with the blues thing for a while, get pummeled by the judges, have a couple of horrible weeks and get unceremoniously dropped. They call these people cannon fodder.
7. Allison Iraheta
Belters don’t tend to last, but hopefully Allison Iraheta will give us at least a couple of more clips for The Soup.
6. Scott MacIntyre
Scott MacIntyre didn’t make it through to the finals based on his singing voice, but he’ll prove a better competitor than most may expect. He’ll go out around the time Brooke White did last year.
5. Adam Lambert
In the battle between what American Idol is pimping and what is monumentally irritating, American Idol usually wins.
4. Anoop Desai
As long as Anoop keeps treating himself like the novelty we all want him to be, he’ll stick around. Once things start to get “serious,” there won’t be a place for him anymore.
3. Lil Rounds
Lil Rounds is operating on a completely different playing field than any of her competitors. Those people usually go out in third.
2. Danny Gokey
Sociopaths are frustratingly charming.
1. Alexis Grace
The winner tends to be someone who logically should go out in 8th or 9th, hangs in miraculously past midway and scoops up the bland/inoffensive vote at the last minute. (See Jordan Sparks, Taylor Hicks, Carrie Underwood.) Alexis Grace seems like the surest bet to fly under the radar until it’s too late.
The Celebrity Apprentice – “Celebrities Sell Cupcakes”
It takes a very special kind of personality to compete on The Celebrity Apprentice. Presumably, you’d have to be generous enough to devote a month or so of your life toward a cause, but self-loathing enough to do it under the auspice of a reality TV show. Plus, you’d have to be at a very particular level of celebrity where The Celebrity Apprentice could neither help or hurt your career. This season, we get athletes (Herschell Walker, Dennis Rodman, poker legend Annie Duke, Scott Hamilton, and LPGA Golf Champion Natalie Gulbis), middle-brow musicians (Clint Black, Brian McKnight and T-Boz), television personalities not reliant on popularity (Melissa & Joan Rivers, the dude from Monster Garage, Chloe Kardashian, and a model from Deal or No Deal), washed-up comedians (Tom Green and Andrew “Dice” Clay), and the Playboy Playmate of the Year.
The group split up into two teams—men vs. women—and immediately picked project leaders and began decided on team names. The women chose Joan Rivers as their first leader, who said, “I’m the only one without a tampon in my pocketbook so they defer to me.” They chose Athena as their team name, after the goddess of war and wisdom. The men cycled through the possibilities of “Triumph,” “VIP Enterprises” (“It sounds like an escort service”), and “The Money-Getters” before deciding on “Kings of the Universe” as their team name—or Kotu, for short. This provided Tom Green with material for possibly the best quote of the night: “It’s kind of like a goofy name. It does grow on you after a while, though. Especially if you just say ‘Kotu.’ ‘We’re Kotu.’ It’s almost like a Lord of the Rings character. Like Gollum. I would have preferred Gollum.” Meanwhile, The Diceman was, like, PISSED that Trump had not provided any of them with bagels and coffee. Dennis Rodman seemed to have some sort of deep dislike of Herschel Walker, who the men had chosen as their leader. And Jesse “Monster Garage Guy” James hated the team name—his suggestion was, of course, “Team FUBAR.” Right away, it seems as if the men’s strategy will be to fuck around with crazy ideas and see what works, while the women play it simple and safe.
In the board room, the men were rightly ridiculed for their name, while the women were praised for their bland and inoffensive choice. Dice brought his “Where the fuck is craft services?” complaint to the Donald, and the Donald responded with absolute silence. Finally, the first challenge was announced. “Joan,” Trump said, “Over the years you’ve made many cupcakes. Is that right?” Are you kidding me? Can Trump really imagine Joan Rivers making cupcakes for little Melissa’s bake sale? Or does he just assume that because she’s a mother? The only cupcake Joan Rivers will make will happen when they start making Botox in batter form. This was all by way of an introduction to the challenge—in which the two teams would be making and selling cupcakes for charity, a twist on the very first challenge of the very first Apprentice when they sold hot dogs on the street.
The rest of the episode played out like run-of-the-mill reality TV, but with absurd celebrity (or celebrity-esque) types. There were a couple of lazy dudes—Andrew “Dice” Clay and Dennis Rodman—who made excuses for why they didn’t want to participate. There was one bossy woman, Annie Duke, who drove her team nuts. Joan Rivers compared Annie Duke to Mussolini. Her daughter compared choosing her team’s best cupcake to Sophie’s Choice. The competition was mostly comprised of the competitors trying to get contacts to show up to the cupcake sale with checks, but actually came down to whose cupcake tasted the best (that team received a $15,000 bonus), which the women handily won. Upon losing, the men blamed Rodman and Dice, as well as Herschel Walker’s muddy leadership. Trump fired Dice. At the end of the day, it was a solid, if unremarkable start to the second season. Last Celebrity Apprentice, just about every episode was mind-blowing in some way. If this season is half as good, it’s going to be great.
Survivor: Tocantins – Episodes 1-4
Based on The Sociopathic Theory of Survivor, here are the odds that Survivor: Tocantins players have of winning:
Coach: 100-1
Erin: 30-1 (Gets weepy about a recent break-up during interviews; not charming)
Taj: 25-1 (Wife of Eddie George; not playing for the money)
Brendan: 20-1
JT: 18-1
Stephen: 15-1
Sierra: 10-1 (Has not smiled in 12 days)
Debra: 8-1 (Is a principal—if anyone could play sociopath, it would be her)
Joe: 4-1 (Dropped out of endurance challenge early by pretending to have a sore shoulder)
Sydney: 2-1 (Model with absolutely zero seeming interest in playing)
Tyson: 2-1 (Charming as hell; no social boundaries)
Spencer: ??? (It’s episode 4, and I have no idea who this guy is)
The Amazing Race – “I’m Not Wearing That Girl’s Leotard!”
When The Amazing Race is on point, it usually has much more to do with the challenges than with the contestants. This season has gone three-for-three in providing a hugely entertaining challenge an episode—but just barely. In the season opener, competitors hauled fifty-pound wheels of cheese down a 65 degree slope on “traditional antique cheese racks,” seemingly made of balsa wood, strapped onto their backs. A symphony of wood-breaking, cheese rolling, slipping, and sliding ensued. In episode two, they had to hit each other in the face with pies until they found one with a cherry center. The longer it went on, the worse it got for the racers, and the better it got for us. If the first pie throw was moderately funny, and the second was a little less funny, the fifteenth—when the novelty had worn off for the competitors, and getting hit in the face with a pie became less about pie and more about getting hit in the face—was hilarious. This week’s episode hoped for the same sort of everyday physical comedy when they made contestants dress up in leotards and replicate gymnastics moves performed by twelve-year-old-girls. They almost got it when Tammy, one-half of the brother and sister lawyer team, thought doing a cartwheel meant you had to rotate your ass while keeping your hands and feet on the ground, and fumbled through a forward roll while her brother screamed, “Roll! Roll on your head!”
For the next challenge, contestants had to choose between helping a family of gypsies load all of their belongings onto a cart while onlookers laughed and manically played the accordion, or finding a coffin and dragging it down a hill. The gypsy challenge didn’t provide much drama, other than one guy accusing those damn gypsies of stealing his wallet and passport—which he left sitting in a tire unattended—and another guy complaining about his sore groin. On the other hand, the producers never could have anticipated Tammy and Victors’ strategy for the vampire challenge. Ignoring the clearly marked signs pointing toward the coffins, Victor insisted they follow a different marked path up a hill and into the woods. Once it became obvious that they were headed the wrong direction, Victor refused to acknowledge he’d made a mistake, and, instead, kept pushing the team to climb higher and higher up the hill. When they finally turned around and found the challenge, Victor didn’t so much as apologize for being such a stubborn ass. Instead, he pouted, dragging the coffin down the hill by himself, yelling, “I don’t care if I die” and burst into tears when coming in second-to-last and the pit stop. Victor’s mental breakdown nearly matched the comedy the last two weeks’ challenges, but since no one got hit with anything, we’ll call it a wash.
Lost - "LaFleur" by Zeb L. West
Although it was probably meant to be cheeky, the comment on last week's Lost review by Sharif got me thinking...
"Kate clearly found out that Aaron and Sawyer are the same person and that she's fucked her "son."...It's a nice little Oedipal Drama due to the vicissitudes of time-travel. I have an office pool for this and I'm pretty sure I'm going to win a hefty little sum."
While it may be a bit unsavory to think of Kate both sleeping with Sawyer and then mothering him (didn't seem to bother Cate Blanchett in Benjamin Button) these kinds of unwitting time-travel overlaps are going to be the best part of upcoming episodes of Lost!
This week's episode reveals what happened to the main cast members left behind after the Oceanic Six were rescued. For simplicity, I will refer to those left behind (Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, Daniel and Miles) as the Dharma Bums. The episode opens with a third visit to the scene where Locke has just turned the icy crank and Sawyer struggles with the ever-changing well. (We’ve revisited this moment so often this season, that at first I thought I might be watching a re-run.) A brief flash sends the Dharma Bums deep into the past, and we finally get more information about the four-toed statue which has been left unexplained since the Season Two finale. Miles points out a colossal statue in the distance, which is probably the ancient owner of the mysterious four-toed foot before it was reduced to a single appendage. Of note is the fact that the statue appears to be holding two Ankhs, Egyptian symbols of eternal life.
Presumably because of the Oceanic Six’s return to the island, the Dharma Bums are finally freed from the tyranny of the constant, nose-bleed inducing time flashes that have been sending them on Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure all season. One sad side-effect is that Charlotte’s body has disappeared, which reduces Daniel Farady to a babbling wreck. The group stumbles upon a couple having a picnic who are being assaulted by the Others. After shooting the man and attempting to stuff the woman into a bag, trigger-happy Juliet and Sawyer shoot the Others. The woman (Amy) thanks them by walking them into the sonic fence so they can be captured and brought back to the Dharma camp.
Sawyer awakens to discover that they are stuck in the year 1974, the heyday of the Dharma Initiative, which is being led by the pivotal and enigmatic Horus Goodspeed. Horus plans to ship the Dharma Bums out on the first sub back to Tahiti, but his plans are interrupted when Richard Alpert emerges from the jungle demanding retribution for the Others who were killed by Sawyer and Juliet. Sawyer secures a place for himself and his friends at the Dharma camp by diffusing the situation and restoring temporary peace between the Others and the Dharma Initiative. (I say temporary because we know “the Purge” is coming.)
The fact that Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, Daniel and Miles spend three years with the Dharma Initiative is a bit disconcerting, as it brings up a lot of questions about the rules of Lost’s time-travel set-up. Can they change things in the past that will affect their future? (Like when Ted Theodore Logan steals his Dad’s car keys and leaves them fore himself so he and Bill S. Preston Esquire can escape from jail?) For instance, what if Sawyer rigged the Polar Bear cages so that he and Kate could escape when they are captured by the Others in the first episode of Season Two? (Not that he would want to, since that’s where he and Kate got freaky!) Smaller examples of the past affecting the present like Daniel Fraday running into a young Charlotte at the Dharma camp are harmless enough, but wouldn’t their first thought be to change the outcome of their future? As Charlotte explains just before she dies, a crazed Farady warned her not to come back to the island, but since she didn’t listen, does that prove that the streams of time are tamper-resistant? Course correcting?
The remainder of the episode labors to explain that Sawyer is completely over Kate, but in typical Lost fashion, the former lovers come face-to-face by the end of the episode. Although in those three years Sawyer and Juliet have fallen deeply in love, no happiness can last long on this island, and Kate, Jack and Hurley all turn up at the end of the episode to cause more romantic strife.
At least for now there’s some semblance of order in the universe of Lost because the blondes are coupled up with the blondes, and the brunettes are coupled up with the brunettes.
Next week is a dead week for Lost, so tune in for my review of Castle starring Firefly’s Nathan Finnion!
What I’m Wondering Right Now:
* Why are Locke, Ben, Sun, and Sayid in the present while Hurley, Jack and Kate have gone back to the 70s?
* Juliet was able to successfully delivery a baby (Amy’s) on the island, so when and why does childbirth become life-threatening?
* Why does that damn statue have only four toes?
Battlestar Galactica - "Someone To Watch Over Me"
Boomer. Was that the title of this episode? Shoulda been. She fucks with Chief, beats up Athena, and basically does anything and says anything to get Hera off the ship and take her back to the Cylon ship. We realize that Ellen’s been set up. There was some sick violence. But nevertheless this episode left me going, “Come on!” Feels like they’re holding the series by both sides and shaking it up and down until all the loose ends fall out. Then they’re going to find some way to thread them all together. But it's starting to seem a little implausible, even by the standards of a network that shows stuff like Hydra. I do want them to blow my mind. But I’m still perplexed about Ellen. I mean, she’s the mother of all cylons, right? Where’s her power? Her strength? Her intelligence? Why isn’t she rebuilding a ship--any ship? How is it she’s just sitting by letting the doctor work on Ander’s brain, when we know that she helped design it? She could open him up and make it work again, right? Maybe, just maybe it’s all over my head. Maybe I should take notes. Maybe they shouldn't waste my time with hour long piano lessons about daddies who don't love mommies. They are laying down a huge chess-board like set-up, and are gonna checkmate me before I can say my name. Maybe? Let’s hope so.
The Bad Girls Club - "Make A Run For The Border"
The girls are in a limo on the way to the red carpet opening of a porno movie called Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge. In the car on the way over, Amber M demonstrates her personal fellatio style on a banana. She "likes to massage it with her tongue. And then bite it." At the pornographic movie theater, they meet up with one of the film's stars, Jesse Jane, who brings them in to get pictures taken by all the paparazzi who attend the red carpet openings for pornographic movie premieres. At no point do the Bad Girls address why they are going to this, so one has to assume that this is what the producers think of them: the type of people who would benefit from a promotional appearance at the premiere of a porn movie. Because the episodes of the season are shot long before the Bad Girls actually appear on television, it can only be assumed that the producers believe that the type of audience who pays attention to papparazi style shots of clothed porn actresses has some kind of crossover with the type of audience who watches drunk headcases on the Oxygen network.
Ashley's response to the red carpet treatment of flashbulbs and sound bite interviews is that she is "pretty sure she was made for the spotlight." They show a bit of footage of
the film, a sequence where a guy makes a bad joke to that Evan Stone guy currently notorious for accidentally showing up naked during Tucson Arizona's broadcast of the 2009 Super Bowl. It looks like a regular porno movie, although Tiffany claims that "It's actually a very good movie.
The acting is pretty good and the plots are pretty good. I kind of
forget it was a porn until the sex scenes would come up." Ashley's
response to the film, which came about not in an confessional, but in an interview with some people who dressed and behaved like reporters--despite it being inconceivable that any real journalist would be covering the premiere of a porn film--is a bit more succinct than Tiffany's: "My
panties are wet." After the film, the Bad Girls head to the afterparty. Despite the afterparty being clearly full of porn stars, Amber B wanders around drunk and loud, talking about how gross porn stars are, how she's grossed out by Jesse Jane (who invited them and seems to really enjoy her fuck-for-money life) and overall being pretty irritating. Of course, when Evan Stone walks up to the girls, Amber B paws at his crotch, yanks
his shirt open and paws at his chest, and then does something that isn't shown, but is apparently so over the line that Evan Stone--a man who has appeared in something like 800 hardcore adult films--walks off with a look of embarrassment on his face. The evening ends.
The next morning, the girls decide to play another prank on the Ambers. It consists of Ashley, Sarah and Ailea throwing a can of Coke on the floor and screaming about a rat. (Amber M apparently hates rats.) Through various screeches about rats, they convince Amber M of the lie and she calls an exterminator. The girls are very proud of themselves, and Tiffany points out how funny it will be when Amber M asks them to chip in to pay the exterminator, because they will refuse. Unfortunately, Amber B never pays attention to the screaming, so the prank fails to snare her as well.
Kevin has sent a large bouquet of white roses to Ailea. Ailea feels guilty about all the dudes she's messed around with, so the producers run a compilation of all other guys she made out with. It's not that long until you remember that the compilation consists of guys she made out immediately upon meeting them while in something she has continually referred to as if it was a committed relationship. (Not included in the montage: any scene where Ailea makes out with Kevin. Because she never has.)
A limosine pulls into the driveway of the house, and Jesse Jane hops out to thank the girls for attending her premiere by giving them tickets to go to Cancun for seven days and six nights. While the other girls all immediately start screaming and thanking Jesse, Tiffany stands up and grabs her ticket out of Jesse's hand. Without saying anything. She just yanks it out of Jesse's hand.
Sarah, on the upcoming trip: "Omigod. This is really dangerous. I've just been really proud of myself for not having sex with people because they're really hot. And now we're going to Cancun."
Whitney (or "Boston), on the upcoming trip: nothing, really. She doesn't seem excited. (It should be noted that Boston is a vocal, unrepentent racist, and it's not inconceivable that her dislike for non-whites should extend to a dislike for Mexico, which has Mexican people in it.)
Ailea on the upcoming trip: She announces her two favorite things, "hot guys" and "alcohol." She repeats this in a variety of ways, including the word "sex", and eventually the producers break down and put a flow chart up on the screen, John Madden style, to further detail her philosophy on the purpose of vacations.
And then we return to Sarah, who calls her current guy-pal Noah so that she can leave a blank message on his cell phone. In the confessional, Sarah explains her conundrum: "I have a little angel on my shoulder that says 'sarah, be good.' and over here, i've got a little devil saying 'go fuck all the hot guys'. For Cancun? [drops angel toy on floor] I'm taking the little devil with me." If you haven't ever taken an Introduction to Philosophy class, this means that Sarah plans to "fuck all the hot guys."
We return to Ailea, who has now zeroed in on her plans for the trip: she will also fuck all the guys. She does not add the adjective "hot" to this statement.
While driving around with Tiffany, Boston claims that there are no old people in Mexico, that the only people there are 20-year olds and she finalizes this Mexican education by warning Tiffany that the Mexican police will "keep you in jail for six months just to laugh." After a couple more minutes, she remembers something else about Mexico: when you get off the plane in Mexico--anywhere in Mexico--they have a Corona stand immediately available.
After a commercial break, the producers run a montage to let the viewer know that the girls have arrived in Mexico. It consists of this, and nothing has been left out:
1) A shot of a couple of beer
stands.
2) A shot of a giant frog outside Senor Frog's.
3) A shot of the sign that says Senor Frog's.
4) A shot of a small picture of a frog on the window of Senor Frog's.
5) A shot of the bar inside Senor Frog's.
6) The girls walking up to Senor Frog's.
The girls then hang out at Senor Frog's for the next 10 minutes of the show. They drink a lot of tequila, a little bit of water, wear novelty hats, drink more tequila, wear balloons shaped into penis hats, suck on each others penis shaped balloon hats, drink more tequila, and then they are interrupted by a man with giant teeth. He is their travel guide, and he excitedly tells the incredibly drunk girls that he has set up an itinerary that includes all of Cancun's "hot bars" as well as their enrollment in a bikini contest. Ashley, as loud and as drunk as the day she was born, tells him that she is a professional dancer. (This is a lie.)
They drink more tequila at Senor Frog's. Sarah ends up hanging from a bungee cord attached to the ceiling while the bartender sprays her with compressed air. According to her, "If this is what's in store for me for the rest of the trip, I am so pumped." Back at the table, Boston knocks a pitcher of something onto Amber B's purse, and she spends an exorbitent amount of time complaining about it, which aggravates everybody so much that the tour guide actually interrupts her complaining to say "Let's move on. Material-shmaterial. You're here to get drunk and wrecked." While this is accurate, albeit somewhat brutal, Amber B continues to simmer. Upon their arrival at the hotel, the Fab Five proceed to ridicule Amber B for her behavior, and when Amber M tries to point out that she's just drunk and upset about her bag, the Five unleash a torrent of criticism focusing on the Amber's respective inability to "let things go." The general absurdity that the Fab Five believe they are some sort of easygoing bunch of fun-time gals, uninterested in holding grudges or being difficult is, at this point in the season, less a surprise and more of an irritating constant. Simply put: the Fab Five's entire relationship is based, if the footage shown is even halfway accurate, on a shared hatred for the Ambers. Even a two-story penthouse hotel room, with a massive balcony and private, outdoor pool does little to calm the girls, only serving as a mild distraction before they return to their primary hobby: hating one another.
The next day, the schism continues: the two Ambers go wandering by themselves while the Fab Five hang out on the beach. The two Ambers spend most of their day playing with little banjos and engaging in the sort of ugly american type behavior that reminds the viewer that, no matter how awful the Ambers are being treated, they're only heroic and sympathy-inducing by comparison. The producers helpfully remind everyone who is in competition with the Ambers for shitty, fucked up girls with a sequence where Ailea finds a dead fish and wanders around playing with the dead fish as if it were a puppet, something that even the Fab Five find completely repellent. Then, they meet a couple of guys: Andres and Yvan. Within minutes of meeting Andres and Yvan, Ashley and Sarah take off their bikini tops and hop on their shoulders for some good old fashioned chicken fighting in the ocean. Andres and Yvan agree to meet up with the girls later and, at Ailea's request, to bring some other guys.
At a meal, the Ambers once again attempt to initiate some kind of reconciliation. Here's a bit of the response from the Fab Five:
Sarah: She tells Amber B that any relationship that they have is "disposable" and that she's tired of trying to have a friendship with Amber B.
Ailea: She threatens to beat up Amber M. Or kill her. Or eat her. It's never clear with Ailea where metaphorical threats end and real statements begin. Later on that evening, Ailea throws Amber M's swimsuit top into the ocean from the balcony of the hotel room.
Boston: She has no interest in speaking or talking to the Ambers ever again. Except to tell them stuff like that.
Ashley: She is a professional dancer. Okay, she doesn't say that again. She says nothing.
That evening, it's time for the aforementioned wet bathing suit competition, or water competition, or bikini competition. (It is never named the same thing twice.) Going into the competition will be Ashley, Sarah and Amber M. Sarah claims that she has never lost a competition of this nature--a bathing suit competition--in her entire life. Sarah and Ashley end up placing in the top three, along with an attractive local girl who has smaller breasts than Sarah and Ashley. (This is pointed out by both Bad Girls, who believe this ensure that the girl has no chance against either of them.) Of course, the girl turns out to be a better dancer, have a better overall body, and most of all, the support of the locals at the bar, who seem to be irritated with the presence of the Bad Girls. (The Bad Girls are constantly screaming obscenities, to the point where the hard-luck mc eventually tells them to "Shut the fuck up.") Ashely and Sarah, sensing that they may lose the competition to someone more talented than they are at dancing under a shower on a stage in a Mexican bar, decide to start making out and grinding on each other in hopes of attracting the crowd's attention. It fails, and the other girl, who turns out to be the reigning champion of bathing suit competitions, wins.
And that's when the trouble begins.
This is difficult to encompass in totality, but the viewer will try: Amber M is drunk, and she is dancing by herself against a pole. She has her eyes closed, and if it wasn't for the pole, she would probably pass out. The rest of the girls are back in some section of the club--an outdoor gazebo or something where you can smoke--when Tiffany begins to have some kind of rage-filled emotional collapse. Cutting back and forth between the present and the portion of the bathing suit competition where the mc had told the Bad Girls to shut the fuck up, it is revealed that the mc had also mistakenly accused the Bad Girls of throwing ice on the stage. Tiffany is incensed by this, she has snot running out of her nose and she is tearing up. She is screaming at the other girls about this, about how no one is permitted to accuse her of something that she didn't do, but most of what she says doesn't really make any sense and is hard to discern from the noise of the club. All that happened is the mc said "Shut the fuck up, quit throwing ice." That's all. Tiffany is shown in the cuts to have already reacted to this, by storming the stage and grabbing the genitals of the mc (hard) through his pants and demanding an
apology. All of the girls seem confused by Tiffany's outburst, although eventually Boston is spurred on by the sheer volume, as well as alcohol, and she goes back into the main club, seeking out the mc. She jumps on stage, yells something about wanting "a fucking apology" and is then shown to be in a dressing room somewhere, drunkenly demanding to see the mc. The employee--who may or may not be a police officer--refuses to take her seriously, waving his hands in a "no way" fashion until Boston eventually returns to the gazebo. There, Ailea and Boston start yelling at Amber B, who has stayed silent this whole time, pointing out that "standing up for your girls" is something that Amber B would never do, and that no one would ever do for her. (Amber M is still drunk and dancing, and knows nothing of what is going on.)
Their tour guide arrives around this point and tells the girls that they have to leave the club or they will be arrested. As the girls make their way out front, and Amber M finds herself being yelled at by the girls for not helping out with a fight she is clearly unaware of, Ailea mentions again how much she would like to punch Amber M in the face. Amber B, while aware of the current situation, has retreated into a scared silence, and she fails to warn her friend of the tension. In the street outside the club, Amber M--drunk, clueless and upset--begins to scream back at the girls for being so mean to her. Boston grabs her hair and starts yanking it while slapping her, and Ailea begins to yank her hair in the other direction. Sarah quickly pounces on Ailea, pulling her away from Amber M. Ashley is unable to separate Boston and Amber. Amber M's voice is clear at this point in spite of all the screaming, and she asks for Amber B to help her. At this point, they are able to separate Amber M and Boston. Amber M, trying to catch her breath starts screaming at Tiffany--the clear leader of the group at this point--to keep "these bitches" away from her. In her flailing around, she either comes too close to pushing Tiffany or actually succeeds in doing so.
And then Tiffany and Boston drop her to the curb, and in a moment you have to pause the show to see, Boston knees Amber M in the face while she is trying to get up.
The footage cuts in and out here, as a siren wails. The reason the footage cuts in and out is two-fold--one, for dramatic purposes and two, because the cameramen and producers get involved and stop the fight. Over the cuts, some unseen man says "This is not a joke."
In the previews for the next week, the police are at the hotel room, Ailea believes Amber M is pressing charges (in Mexico!) and what can only be assumed to be a producer is making a speech about violence to Tiffany, who is crying. Neither of the Ambers are shown in this sequence, and it is implied through some jump cuts that Amber M is in the hospital.
-Tucker Stone, Nina Stone, Martin Brown, Zeb L. West & Matthew J. Brady, 2009
I was under the impression that the Dharma Bums' nosebleeds & headaches stopped because Locke reset & stabilized the wheel, not because the O6 returned.
I don't think that Locke, Sun, Ben & c. are in the past but still in 2007. When the Dharma Bums returned to the beach a few ep's back, they found the wreckage of the Airija Air flight, which had yet to happen. They made off with one of the canoes & were shot at in the water. Methinks it was the Airija Air survivors chasing after them w/out knowing who it was. Juliet returned fire & hit one of them before they time-jumped & were left boatless. Somebody from the AA group got popped, we just haven't seen it from their perspective yet to see who it was.
I could have sworn that the AA group all crash-landed w/out time-jumping as they all witnessed the O6 disappearing. Didn't they crash on the smaller island that Sawyer & Kate were held prisoner in the polar bear cages? The one where they were breaking rocks for "a runway"? I think that Dharma station they had the injured in was on the small island.
I don't buy the Kate/Sawyer/Aaron thing. I think it will be revealed that Kate gave the kid to Claire's mom or maybe Sun's mom. Sun didn't seem nearly as torn up about leaving her kid to return as Kate did. They are going to return to those kids in a big way I bet.
I don't see the Dharma Bums trying to help their future selves by booby trapping the cages or something small like that. I can see them possibly trying to kill a young Ben Linus before he becomes the man they know. The timeline is set up so that the O6 will be entering the '77 Dharma camp around when Ben & his father came to the island.
It will be interesting to see jumps back and forth in time from the young Ben meeting the Dharma Bums & O6 to the adult Ben getting these newly formed memories of them when he was a whelp. Ben would then know where they were in time & be able to use that info to manipulate Locke & the AA group. It may also give Ben a ticking clock to try to either get back to '77 himself or force the DB/O6 to have to time-jump out of '77 before they harm him as a kid. My bet is he will somehow get them yanked out of '77 as I don't think the show is going to have any Marty McFly moments of having characters hiding from themselves around corners or behind lunch counters.
As for the four-toed statue & the Anhks, I agree that the DB's went back in time farther than any previous jump. Although I do think when they were attacked on the beach by the mystery group w/ the flaming arrows, it was that ancient time.
The statue had Anhk's as did Amy's dead husband. If the DI are not believers, maybe Richard's group of Others are. Maybe Amy's dead husband was one of them & was killed for joining the DI. It might explain why Richard wanted her husband's body & the bodies of the Others they buried. More than just eye for an eye proof, but for an ancient ritualized burial.
I have seen some pictures on sites that have four-toed animus statues that range from gods of the afterlife to fertility. Maybe when that statue got reduced to four toed rubble, babies started dying on the island?
I haven't seen last week's Battlestar yet & Tucker makes no mention of Candyman attacking the White House with a giant Wesley Willis drawing of it as a guide in this week's 24.
So I am just going to stare at that Bad Girls Club banana picture.
Posted by: seth hurley | 2009.03.06 at 22:56
Holy shit, the description of Bad Girls Club this week might be the one that finally gets me to seek out the show and actually watch it. It sounds totally fucking nuts. I'll probably be disappointed if I do though...
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.03.07 at 00:56
You can see the fight part on the Oxygen network's website, but I think it leaves out all the crazy ass editing and sound effects.
I wonder how much the show creates a sort of aggregate response--while I initially kind of filed them all into the category of drunken looneys, I find myself growing more and more attached to Amber M, since she so easily rises above those around her solely by not being a completely terrible person. Thing is, she really isn't a "good" person or anything, and it's almost impossible to identify with any of these people. None of them respond in a way that ever makes sense. Tiffany and Boston especially--whereas Ailea is just clearly dumb and mentally disturbed, Boston and Tiffany make these bizarre, almost Dadaist choices in the way they respond to external stimuli. But at first, I just thought "Ah, drunken skanks! Being drunk! Being skank!" Now it's like some kind of painful experience in zoology. More and more, I'm falling in love with the cruel sadism of the editors. Those cats must be fun to hang around.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.03.07 at 01:12
re Lost:
I was NOT being cheeky! Sawyer IS Aaron and he had relations with his mother. Notice the look she gave him when they met up again? "Hi son." That was clearly the look.
The great fear of time travel stories is the whole "I procreated to create myself" storyline, which is why I worried that when Penny named her son "Charles" she was giving birth to her own father, Charles Widmore III. But since it looks like Ben may have killed Penny and baby Charles, either that possible storyline has been aborted or Charles Widmore has been aborted. I am not sure which.
The 4-toed statue is the Egyptian God Anubis (as we saw during the jump back). My new theory is that that the island is the cradle of civilization. The Ancient Egyptians actually came from the island through the "exit" in Tunis and then colonized Egypt. Notice the "guyliner" around Richard Alpert's eyes. He is possibly a pharaoh or something. In any case, I also suspect he is old enough to have been using the Black Rock to get back to the island in the eighteenth century. So he's a pharaoh and a pirate.
Is the island the LOST Civilization of Atlantis?
And where is Rose? Are she and Bernard King and Queen of the Others? Is she sitting on a throne of skulls? Did they get a chance to nurse Frogurt back to health? Inquiring minds demand to know!
Posted by: Sharif | 2009.03.08 at 12:26
Man, Bad Girls Club sounds like the Greatest Show Ever! You've convinced me to start watching it!
Posted by: J.R. LeMar | 2009.03.15 at 13:46