Television Of The Weak: Three Season Finales, Twenty Percent Of Idol, One Special Guest

This week: East Bound & Down from Sean Witzke, of Supervillain and My Fucking Sound fame, 24, 20% of American Idol, Battlestar Galactica, the season finale of The Bad Girls Club, the fabled sixth episode of Dollhouse and Celebrity Rehab. Lost to arrive soon!

24 - "10:00PM - 11:00PM"

Remember back in season 1 of 24 when Dennis Haysbert finally reached his limit with his scheming wife and yelled "Damn it woman! If that child dies!" as he knocked over the flower vase and shelving unit? That was a pretty great scene. The emotional subplots of 24 never really got that good again, excepting the skeevy weirdness of Charles Logan. While this season had potential, back when Colm Feore was chewing on furniture, it's gone back down the old "lying bitch" trail with the President's scheming daughter, taking the place that old Sherry Palmer did. The thing is...nobody really missed Sherry Palmer. As much as we might have characters that we "love to hate", this ain't fucking Melrose Place, on 24 the joy of a character who inspires loathing is when you see them getting taken down a peg. (Which is why 24 had nowhere to go with Sherry Palmer after Dennis Haysbert screamed at her, and why they had to up the ante with hardcore violence enacted on her flesh--she'd already had the only thing that mattered to her torn from her, there wasn't anything else left to do. Either way, it didn't matter--no amount of stabbings and gunshots could hurt Sherry the way David Palmer's disgusted rejection had.) Additionally, it isn't like Cherry Jones is going to go buckwild and icepick her kid.

Fuck beating around the bush: this girl ain't no Ethan Kanin. You never trade a buck stallion for a busted up show pony.

Still, 24 is pretty much always making bad casting choices alongside the strong ones, and complaining about the nature of the bonehead emotional subplotting is sort of besides the point. Problematically, this wasn't a week with a Transformers take-down, although the crushing of a pick-up truck alongside multiple, rarely used, crane shots certainly put it in one of those random files where you put episodes that had a bigger budget than the original seasons. (Remember the first time they used an attack helicopter?  Remember how that fucked you up, not just because it was an attack helicopter, but because it was the first time 24 had the cash in the production budget to actually use a fucking helicopter?) Nowadays, 24 is one of Fox's few reliable non-Idol programs, overshadowed only by the Hugh Laurie powerhouse, and it's not that unusual to see them doing some Michael Bay shit. Too bad it was in the service of a Jack who loaned his mojo to the far more badass Tony, only for Tony to run out of ammo before he could hand it back. On top of that, Bauer is now an official Typhoid Mary. Fantastic. Here's hoping that the dreadlocked stoner from Dazed and Confused starts knocking back whiskey shots at the table of the Voight crazy--something has to happen there to tone down the ham-capades.

Dollhouse - "Man on the Street" by Matthew J. Brady

And the fabled Joss Whedon hour of mind-blowing something or other yields...not too much to write home about. It wasn't as bad as some of the show's worst moments, but it was still pretty far from great. Is the show done for? Eh, maybe not, but it's slipping closer and closer to "don't bother" on the list of answers to the question of whether I should watch it. I think the big problem is that there's no real protagonist to the show. Echo, the ostensible main character, is a hollow shell in which to pour the plot of the week, the higher-ups at Dollhouse are basically evil, and while Agent Helo (his character's name, Ballard, finally stuck in my memory, but I'll keep calling him Helo this week in honor of the end of his dearly departed former stomping grounds) is pure of heart, we can't really cheer for him to succeed in his quest, because that would basically end the show. Maybe Harry Lennix, Echo's handler, but he's kind of a minor character, and he works for the bad guys anyway. With nobody to cheer for, what are we supposed to get out of this show, outside of thrills when Echo does something cool? But then comes the guilt, because she's just a mindless puppet, boo hoo hoo.

Anyway, this week saw some silliness involving Helo tracking down a Dollhouse client, and accidentally coming face to face with Echo, the big target of his quest. But instead of actually trying to chase her down and rescue her (you know, like he's been wanting to do in every episode), he sticks around and has a long conversation with Patton Oswalt, who actually gives one of the best performances in the show's history. He's an internet billionaire who hires Echo (or maybe sometimes a different doll, for variety) to play the part of his dead wife every year on the anniversary of her death. And he makes a good case for doing so, even when Helo glares at him and says "and then you sleep with her, right?" Ooh, burn! And then the plot gets stupider, because the Dollhouse people decide to keep fucking with Helo, just for fun. They send Echo to go have a gratuitous fight scene with him, and then she gives him a speech about how somebody on the inside is trying to communicate with him and take them down from within, but this is almost certainly just part of her programming. And to make matters even more ridiculous, we find out that Helo's sexy neighbor, with whom he finally starts sleeping this week, is also an "active", apparently there to keep an eye on him or something. Really? How much of their resources are they wasting just to keep screwing with his head? Wouldn't it be easier just to kill him? I'm sure Whedon has some sort of secret reveal planned that will show why it is important to keep him around, but until that point, every appearance he makes will just exacerbate the feeling that his whole storyline is pretty stupid.

The subplot this week involves the discovery that somebody has been fucking Sierra, a.k.a the girl who regularly shows up Eliza Dushku in the acting department. After last week's parade of boner gags, Victor is the main suspect, but it turns out to be the creepy guy that's supposed to watch out for her. That's not very exciting, but sometimes you gotta fill time. To wit: the-man-on-the-street interviews that are interspersed throughout the show from a TV news report on the urban legend of the Dollhouse. It's not exactly anything illuminating; the people just give all the various opinions that you would expect: it's like prostitution! Or slavery! I wouldn't mind trying it! The technology is scary! Yes, the real-life implications of the science-fiction concept behind an actiony TV show might not be morally pure. And man, the robots on that Terminator show would also be scary in real life. That's deep.

So anyway, I probably will keep watching for another week or two, if only out of morbid curiosity. Just please, try to do something interesting, Mr. Whedon. Mediocrity will get you nowhere, sir.

East Bound & Down - "Chapter 6" by Sean Witzke

East Bound & Down is Danny Mcbride, Jody Hill, and Ben Best's examination into the darkest heart of what America is (also Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and David Gordon Green all worked behind the camera - but the finale is directed by Hill). McBride is playing Kenny Powers, an out of shape guy with a mullet who doesn't listen, treats everyone he meets like shit, and gets away with it. A famous pitcher who got bounced out of the league, who's moved in with his brother and got a job as a PE teacher. That's all you need to know. It's hateful and fucked up and one of the most fun things I've ever seen on television. And this is the final episode in which everyone hugs and smiles even more than the last half hour of this week's Galactica.

After last weeks episode, which went from the depths of suburban ennuii to the full-on joy of dislodging a human eye with a fastball, it finally clicked with me what this show was all about. Kenny Powers operates under different rules than you and I, and the scenes that would be a happy ending in most comedies - the hero finally putting himself into being a teacher, a family man, a hard worker, and a good person - were shown as defeat. Seeing Kenny Powers go back to fucking shit up is what makes him a figure of American legend. And the finale? It's Kenny taking his victory lap. The title card even comes up over a pair of exposed tits.

What I like about this show is that it isn't played as a comedy but a character study, and a pretty unflinching one at that--Kenny Powers isn't a likeable person in any way. As he goes through everyone in the cast and says goodbye, he plays everything as if he's deigning to acknowledge the people around him. Kenny is a superstar, and everything he does he gives off an air of importance, simply because of his involvement. You might see where this is going. When the rug is finally pulled out from Kenny -- after he does coke off the barrel of a shotgun, says goodbye to all the kids, and gets the girl -- we see just how much Mcbride, Hill, and Best are willing to commit to the show's tone, watching as Kenny's soul get crushed plain out on his face, the desperation and fear in his eyes as the final scene plays out. Fuck, I hope there's a second season. Whatever Kenny does next, there's no going back from this.  Look, you want me to sell you this show, okay, here's this: if you think someone burning their life down around them just because they can't bring themselves to give a shit is funny, you'll like it. If you want to spend 3 straight hours in the life of an irredeemable asshole, you should check it out.

The Celebrity Apprentice – “Heated Exchange Almost Leads to Blows”

Last week’s one hour episode of The Celebrity Apprentice was undoubtedly the young season’s best, completing the downward spiral of the initially promising Tom Green. As the men’s Project Manager in a competition to sell the most wedding dresses, he chose the interesting strategy of going out with Dennis Rodman the night before the project and showing up visibly hung over—but not before dropping the following tirade of wisdom in the van on the way over: “We’re going to make a lot of money today. It’s very exciting. This is going to be the biggest disaster in the history of The Apprentice. And I mean a positive disaster. I’m so proud of my team. [Pointing out of van window] I’m so proud of this woman here. This woman is… [Knocking on window, yelling at woman] I am so proud of YOU! For bringing money for the team. That woman there is bringing money. I can tell by the look on her face, she’s showing up. [Guttural sound of pain.]” Of course, he got fired at the end of the show. Who will give us the quotes of the week now?

As one of the lesser-spoken side effects of the shitty economy seems to be the unnecessary lengthening of television episodes, this week saw the third two-hour episode of The Celebrity Apprentice in four weeks. Presumably, the extended running time was a result of the heavily promoted Dennis Rodman Meltdown. Sure, it was great to see Dennis Rodman wile out on Clint Black about calling a coin toss correctly—“Hey, Clint Black! This is your shit now. I’m gonna see how good he is now. I’m gonna see how fucking good he is now.” [Clint Black wins the coin toss] “Hey, Clint Black. That’s bullshit. You think you the shit, right bro? No, you think you the shit, right bro? No no no, you think you the shit, right bro? Fuck you, man! You think you’re a fucking [mumble mumble]. You think you know everything. I’m gonna go play some team shit. This is a team game. Fuck this. I don’t need this fucking show. [Throws down microphone]”—but it was even more gratifying/horrifying to see Project Manager Brian McKnight belittle Clint Black passive aggressively, by giving him no creative input on the task and making him order pizzas. But all-in-all, the show could have easily cut an hour off of its running time and still packed in the same amount of batshit antics. Next week is being advertised as a boardroom intervention for Dennis Rodman, so that should take about three hours.

American Idol - "Top Ten"

Your regular American Idol reviewer couldn't make it this week, so you're stuck with me. Unfortunately, I couldn't stick with the show, so here's as far as I got before the prospect of burning my forearm, Gary Busey style, became more attractive.

Simon Cowell opens the show by saying, about the upcoming performances of Motown songs: "I wouldn't say I'm looking forward to it." Really? You have to be at this show and you don't care? Why am I watching? That's just cold ass shit to say. Not about the contestants, fuck them, they're goddamn rats. That's just mean to to me. Why keep going after that kind of introduction?

Matt Giraud "Let's Get It On"

Matt sings like what he is--a piano player who escaped from a Holiday Inn, ended up on a television show. He sucks, his voice is boring, and he's singing a song that is supposed to make you believe that the individual singing it is trying to seduce somebody. He misses the first part of that completely, because at no point do you believe that Matt Giraud wants to have sex with anybody. He looks like he wants to go drink Pabst in the parking lot. The judges like him, but none seem willing to point out that the guy isn't much of a looker--he's not hideous or anything, but hasn't America pretty much proved itself disinterested in musicians of this variety if they aren't easily fuckable?

Chris something something "How Sweet It Is"

Like this guy--he's no better or worse than Matt Giraud, but he's, well, cute in that depressing way religious virgins seem to like, and religious virgins are the only people who buy the albums these male singers put out. He's cute because you can't imagine him being born with an actual penis, a safety kind of cute.  He dresses like a spastic military officer--there's numbers and shit on his epaulet shirt, patches with swords--but he doesn't have a crackhead patch-patch beard or dangling moles hanging off his face, Giraud style. Hopefully that will help him though, because his performance is so dry and sad--and he started doing that weird distended jaw thing that everybody hoped he was growing out of--it's terrible. Actually, this guy is sort of worth watching just to see the thing where his jaw drops and jutts over to the side when he gets loud. It's an interesting distraction.

Scott "He's Blind, America" MacIntyre "You Can't Hurry Love"

Hey, the guy is wearing pants that are pink or salmon or something.  He's singing Diana Ross. Smokey Robinson thinks that playing the piano like Sly, from Sly and the Family Stone, is "very contemporary", which is odd. What does Smokey Robinson think the word contemporary means? It doesn't mean that.

I can't watch anymore of this. It's boring, I don't like these people, I don't like listening to them sing, I don't care about this shit or why it's popular, or why people like it, or whatever. If it was something I was getting paid to do, I'd quit and go hungry. This has nothing to do with music the way I understand music. All that I get out of this is a mean thing to think or say every twenty minutes, and that's not enough. It would be an exaggeration to say that I hope all these people die or get hurt or fail. But if this show got cancelled and there was a fire in the theater, that would be fine. Like, I'm a relatively normal human being. I don't think that you should rape a woman who doesn't want to have sex with you. I don't think you should shoot someone in the face if you can't afford something. I've only used intravenous drugs a few times, and I thought it wasn't a good idea when I did. Yet here I am watching this show, hoping that Simon Cowell makes fun of a blind idiot for wearing pink pants, or thinking that it would be funny if a nice guy like Smokey Robinson had a coronary on a live television show. I don't want to think about this kind of stuff.

Fuck you, American Idol. I blame you completely.

Update: they sent home "the roughneck", who Marty liked to refer to as a "nice guy". I thought he was a belligerent twat, a stupid man who sang stupidly. I hope his plane crashes on the way home.

Battlestar Galactica - "Daybreak Part 2"

This was it. The big series finale. I’m not going to say it was mind blowing. But it certainly wasn’t disappointing.

Ever since the re-appearance of Ellen and the revelation that she was the 5th Cylon of the Final Five, I was waiting for some sort of just-beyond-the-reach-of-my-imagination finale. Because, the newly revealed fact that Ellen as the creator of all the “Skin Jobs,” and Cavil was the petulant black sheep responsible for the entire 3,000 year war, was just that. I found that whole reveal brilliant, and rife with possibility. My hopes were to find out that Kara Thrace, a.k.a Starbuck, was actually the first and only Cylon offspring, the child of Ellen and Tigh, somehow, for some reason put up for adoption under the “amnesia” that the cylons were suffering from. That would have explained all her wacky connections with everything, and her ability to, well, spontaneously resurrect. Unfortunately, this was never the case. I almost feel like it was going to be, but then they had to write in all that stuff about Tigh and the Six having a baby and losing it, and Ellen’s jealousy etc. I found everything about that episode – the episode after Ellen was revealed - bizarre. Almost like the writing team handed off that week’s episode to someone’s college student daughter majoring in creative writing “for fun”, knowing they’d have to pick up and just go with whatever she’d written.

What I wish had occurred that episode was that Ellen escaped to Battlestar, connected with the other Final 4, they all remembered themselves and who they were. Starbuck learned who she was (remember, this is my fantasy version), which would have brought her both great upset and great relief. And immediately after reuniting, they’d have begun creating the resurrection ship. Yeah, I realize that no longer having resurrection makes them more human and not as much of a threat – but resurrection was cool. Tigh and the Six would have their Cylon baby, and Ellen would be so above petty, dark, human emotions, and still they would have somehow worked it out. (I can dream, can’t I?) And learning just what Starbuck was, as well as the reality of what Cavil had done and that he was responsible for the war, might have been the last thing to cement Adama’s conviction to join forces. Sooner, rather than later.

All the stuff with Hera could have still happened. In fact, the whole finale could have still happened. Just some loose ends would have made more sense (Never an explanation for Starbuck? I mean, a sci-fi one. Really?)

That all being said, it was in fact an action packed first hour. It really did seem like a suicide mission – and that was really sad. My favorite moments, in no particular order: when Baltar and The Six were “reunited” with the Six and the Baltar of each of their respective minds – together; the storytelling “prequel moments” of Starbuck & Lee, and of and the events and actions that led Laura Roslin up to eventually becoming the Head of Education; Boomer bringing Hera back, and Sharon not hesitating and shooting her; when Baltar made his decision to stay and fight rather than go with his “people” (and the shit he said to them!); Cavil shooting himself in the mouth – I mean all at once I thought “he’s been in existence for 3,000 years and holding on for dear life – he must really have felt he had no out to do that!”; and of course finding Earth - or a planet as earth-y as Earth - and Kara’s mathematical/musical computations coincidentally being the rendez vous.

The final wrapping up of everything on the new Earth was really sweet….and at times felt like it went on a little long. But that’s okay with me – I’m the Queen of long goodbyes. The whole Adama and Roslin thing kind of made me laugh. The first time we witness them saying goodbye I was like: “Oh they’re saying a final Goodbye to Lee and flying off! Wow, is he going to kill himself or something – just fly off into the sun as well?” But then, we cut to them flying, so I was like, “Oh, okay. Okay. Phew.” Then we watch them fly, and we watch Laura die. And then I was thinking, “Oh, how sad. How sweet. I’m glad they showed us that. “ And I figured that was surely the finale for them. But no, then we see Adama by her graveside, talking to her, etc. And I thought, “All right already!” No, no. I wasn’t really mad. It just kind of made me laugh at how they drew that out. But that’s how the whole last hour felt. Really drawn out. Letting the viewer take in this new Earth and how it must feel for them to finally settle in. And letting us also settle into the fact that Battlestar Galactica is truly over. The Battlestar itself is gone. The quest for Earth ended. Peace with the Cylons. And it settles in long enough, too, for us to feel like there’s a whole new beginning for them. And even longer; so long that we flash forward 150,000 years, to find the current state of humanity (and cylon-dom?) going in very much the same direction that human beings have always gone in. Such a cultivated society with advanced technology that they are developing robots. And I guess that leaves open the possibility for another Battlestar Galactica tale to emerge.

But for now: Farewell, Battlestar Galactica. You’ve been great TV.

The Bad Girls Club - "All's Well That Ends BAD"

Previously on The Bad Girls Club:  Oh shit, Amber B dumped some guy named Scott back in the day! Jeez, that was a while and a half ago. Sarah is messing around with Noah, but she hasn't had sex with him. But she did nail some stranger in Cancun. The producers sent Whitney home. After that, Ailea got sent home.

The episode opens with Boston packing up her shit at the house. Then Ailea shows up at the house to pack her shit and bail out. Then the rest of the girls get back to the house and find some notes that Boston left for them, which are sweet and personal.  Ailea leaves a note asking the girls to give Fazil his ugly pewter necklace back. Sarah is sad because Whitney and Ailea are gone. The other girls complain more that the house is quiet. Apparently one gets used to constant screeches of "Boston this, Boston that, I ain't no farking hoo-er" the same way one gets used to the stench of rotten garbage. Luckily for the girls, the phone rings--It's Boston, who has called to talk about how the Fab Five--a made-up term of endearment the girls used for the entirety of the last five or so episodes, which was roughly about two weeks of their life--will never die. Then she talks about how awesome it is to be back in Boston.

Tiffany believes that Boston will "grow" from being kicked out of the house. Tiffany plans to make the best out of the time she has left in the house. What this means isn't altogether clear.

Scott, Amber B's long-time boyfriend turned recent ex-boyfriend, has called and left a message for Amber B. He wants to get back together with her. Amber B is worried that she will go home and get bored and get back together with Scott, thus completing the circular sort of relationship she has with Scott. She pulls up a picture of Scott to show the other girls-he is a bodybuilder, and the picture is from a bodybuilding competition. All of the other girls find him disgusting. Amber B tells them that Scott is "very well-endowed."

Sarah is on the phone with her friend Kim, and she refers to her drunken hook-up with the Brazilian dude as "one of the hottest bang-outs ever." The girls go to some bar, and there's Noah, her sorta kinda boyfriend, the one she has been withholding sex from because she doesn't want to screw up a potential serious relationship by doing what she always does, which is "sleep with a guy if I think he's hot." Fazil refuses to give the producers any dirt on how he feels about the absence of Ailea, but he doesn't seem too upset that she is gone.

Noah, with very little prompting tells Sarah "we all know what happened in Mexico." He directly asks if she hooked up with anybody, but Sarah refuses to give him a straight answer.  That's enough for Noah, apparently--they don't show the full conversation, but the next thing that happens is him walking up to the other girls to grab Fazil.  "We're out", he snarls. While Amber B tries to console Sarah--who she still thinks is a whore--Tiffany and Noah start talking outside on the street.  (She followed him.)

Noah, at hist finest:  "Cry to me while she's sleeping, telling me she doesn't want to be a whore on reality tv and sleep with dudes, listen i'm with that, because i'm not dating her or fucking or nothing, but the fact of the matter is: don't play me like a fucking asshole.  She doesn't even feel bad about it."  He goes on, but here's what's best, what Sarah--who has showed up, and is standing off to the side with the exact same expression of a puppy who has just shit on the floor--Noah looks at her, recognizes her, and turns and walks away.

The night wears on a bit, and Fazil eventually comes up and asks Sarah to come and talk to Noah outside. The conversation part of it ends almost immediately, and it reverts to classic Bad Girls arguing--Noah pisses Sarah off by pointing out all of the things that Sarah had said to him when he slept over, how she "wanted to change" and "wanted this to work, like really work, for the first time"--and Sarah starts telling Noah he has no right to try to make her feel bad. Noah, exasperated and hurt, mostly because he seems to have finally realized what everybody in the world already knows--that you should never fall in love with a girl who grinds her vagina into your penis immediately after meeting you, especially when she's drunk and you've just signed a consent form to be on a reality television show that prides itself on showing off some of the most drunken skanks it can find, eventually gives up on trying to get Sarah to own up to any culpability for why he feels betrayed and they part ways.

On the car ride home, Sarah tells the Bad Girls that Noah told her that she was "a piece of shit" and that she "a whore". This is a complete lie. It's not even an exaggeration of something he said. It's just made-up bullshit. In her next confessional, Sarah says that Noah is dead to her. In her previous confessional, Sarah had talked about how important it was that she made things work with Noah.

Tiffany's brother is coming the next day. Amber M hops on the phone to flirt with him. Although Tiffany keeps calling the guy her brother, the producers keep listing him as Tiffany's "Brother", which either means that the producers are 1940's style racists, or that the guy isn't really Tiffany's brother.  (He isn't, but they don't reveal this for about 10 minutes, which means you just keep seeing the quote marks and wondering why the fuck they think that shit is funny.)

Because the girls aren't doing anything interesting and they need to kill time, they cut back to the Amber B/Scott thing, and Amber B repeats the whole thing about how she isn't sure what she's going to do when she goes back to Pittsburgh, and she is concerned she'll get back together with Scott out of boredom. Sarah and Amber M keep making strange references to whatever Scott did to her, but it's not clear what this is. Amber B complains that she lacks the "inner strength" to resist Scott.

That evening, the girls go on a sunset cruise on a boat that looks sort of like a cleaned up garbage scow. Sarah shows her breasts to some guys on a small boat, and Amber shows her ass. Sarah is amazed that "they started off as roommates and ended up as friends.  I don't know any other situation where we could have done that." While this may sound stupid, Sarah has probably ingested enough alcohol in this season alone to have forgotten her entire adolescent life, as well as any time period she might have spent in a dorm or Spacecamp. A complete blank slate is going to find any experience, no matter how mundane, to be new and worthy of pride.

Tiffany is crying about how she lost all her friends before she came to the Bad Girls Club, and now she has new friends, but they are all going their separate ways, and this upsets her. Amber M decides it is time for her to tell Tiffany that Amber views her as a role model. Sarah finally nips all this in the bud by saying "enough with this sappy bullshit let's get wasted." And the girls finish the cruise on the trash boat by taking slutty pictures of each other while drinking.

The next day, Greg is visiting with Amber B. He is pouring himself a bowl of Kix into a gigantic salad bowl. Ashley is watching him, and she seems both fascinated and disgusted, but this may just be because of Greg's hair cut, which is similar to the one you see on most cartoon dogs. Upstairs, Amber M is sleeping in Tiffany's bed. She is very drunk. Mike, Tiffany's brother shows up. They finallly explain that Mike is not really Tiffany's "brother." He wakes up Amber M by sitting on the bed with Tiffany while Sarah sits on the floor nearby. Amber M puts her head in Mike's lap, and says stuff about "bouncing up on it." Mike is doing something under the covers. He quietly says "You guys have no idea where my hand is under this cover." Amber M seems to be enjoying it. She laughs, she says stuff, but she is pretty drunk. Either way, the scene is sort of strange--it never explains why Mike sat on the bed in the first place, or why he put his hand under the cover, or when Amber M put her head in his lap--it actually never shows or explains when Amber M got drunk, and why no one else is drunk. After leaving the room, Mike says "Cookie got ass." (Cookie is a nickname Amber M uses.) 

Next day! More with Greg and Amber B by the pool as they prepare to say their goodbyes.  In the confessional, Amber B wins the quote of the week when she says "It's very hard to say goodbye to Greg. Sniff, sniff. Becuase i don't give a fuck about him. he's gross and he's weird.  He was just a friend." The producers use this as an opportunity to cut to the footage of Greg taking Amber B from behind, and they add the phrase "With Benefits" to make the point clear.

Now, all of a sudden, everything goes wrong. Amber M claims that the way Mike was touching her made her feel uncomfortable, and that her playful joking reaction was a defensive mechanism, because of her confusion. Amber B seems a little put off by the whole thing, and doesn't dissuade Amber M from the idea that telling Tiffany all of this, on the night of the girl's final dinner together, is the preferable course of action. So Amber M does this, she tells all this to Tiffany. Tiffany is confused, and as always, confusion gives way to anger. She finally snaps and tells Amber M that she needs to take five minutes. Meanwhile, some rental chefs have arrived at the house to prepare the girls a farewell dinner. At the table, the other girls pick up on the weird vibe going back and forth between Amber M and Tiffany, and Amber M decides to bring it all up over again, claiming that she is doing so in hopes of "being real", a phrase used in the house on a regular basis.

Tiffany, having reached her limit, snaps. She starts screaming at Amber M, throws some shit at her, and the yelling commences. Meanwhile, the producers keep cutting over to the rental chefs, who seem not to find the situation to be very funny or interesting. The screaming and yelling mostly boils down to Tiffany being angry at Amber M for bringing it up at all, angry at Amber M for saying stuff about her friend, and Amber M responding to the whole thing by saying that she has the right to be upset and that Tiffany is always talking about how the Girls are supposed to "be real." Before walking out, Tiffany drops this little summation of her feelings on the subject: "You can't even tell me where he touched you, because you laid with your little bitty head in his pee-pee and you wanted to bounce up on it and now you want to tell me how my brother disrespected you?  How dare you. You need Jesus. You need Jesus."

Amber B points out that Tiffany is acting like a child.

If you care, here's what I thought: Amber M didn't seem to mind Mike at the time he was touching her. But it doesn't fucking matter--there's no way she was sober enough, or awake enough, for a stranger to put his hands on her. Mike was out of line, and he should have known better. Tiffany though? She sounds like every single person who has ever said that a rape victim or an abuse victim was "asking for it" by the clothest they were wearing. Neither of these girls are somebody anybody should be rooting for in the ethics or intelligence department. Amber M might be a whore, and she might be a drunk skank--hell, she's probably both--but that doesn't make her somebody that can be used by anybody who wants to as a sexual playtoy. Shit is just wrong.

Of course, within hours, the girls have not only apologized to each other, but have also thrown an obscene level of praise at each other--Tiffany and Amber M keep telling the confessional camera how important their relationship is, how much they've learned from each other--it goes on like this for an insane length of time. It's neither compelling nor believable. Then they tell each other that they love each other.

And that's pretty much it. The girls decided to trash the house by breaking all the chandeliers with a pool cue, they spraypainted the walls, they tore open screens, they did some damage, and then they got picked up by limos and went home. Nothing funny happened, nothing crazy. There's apparently a reunion show next week--I don't know if that will get recapped here, but as it's hosted by the completely unwatchable Perez Hilton, I somehow doubt it. It's been real, and it's been fun, and it's occasionally been real fun. Everything that needed to be said--which is nothing, if you and I understand the word "need" the same way--was said last week. The Bad Girls Club is a show about what happens when dumb binge drinking women are given a limo, a house, and a license to act out their worser impulses. I imagine this show would be the same if the cast were men, monkeys, or scuba instructors. There's worse ways to spend your time. I don't know what those are right now, but I have to believe that there are, or else all this time has been wasted.

-Matthew J. Brady, Sean Witzke, Martin Brown, Nina Stone & Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[seth hurley]

I bet that helicopter is going to drop it's WMD load right on Port Authority Carl's house right as he pulls into the driveway, gassing his pregnant wife, Gift of the Magi style.

[Benjamin Myers]

Binge drinking monkey's with limo's is a show that I would watch.

[Sean Witzke]

Matthew - don't you think it's kind of screwed up that Whedon is asking people to wait until the sixth episode? I wouldn't buy a comic because Joe Casey said it all jumped into crazy in the sixth issue.

Tucker - You've got to do the reunion show, man. Anything for one more Bad Girls Club piece, man. Just one more hit.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Yeah, that's probably true, but TV is free, you know? And while it was an all right episode, the world-changing amazingness of it kind of got blown out of proportion (especially by me, since I kept harping on it). It seems more like a "please keep watching this so Fox doesn't cancel us, at least not yet". If ratings slump (and maybe they already have; I really have no idea), somebody will probably start going on about how episode 15 is the one to wait for.

[DV]

That BSG finale was like the Unabomber Manifesto meets The Left Behind series.

[Tucker Stone]

I find the whole Dollhouse wait-for-six thing to be even more odd after having read your thing on it. Was it supposed to be special just because Patton was on it?

[Benjamin Myers]

Am I the biggest douche alive in thinking that we are way to pretentious? I will be the first to burn down reality TV,because I believe it to be the seedy underbelly of the human condition, but scripted network TV in which we praise one show and castrate another because we dislike the premise, is puerile and childish. I don't know any of the other critics, but Tucker, what is the yard stick by which you are judging these shows? Has TFO sunk to shock jockery for the sake of garnering readers, or have you lack the ability to willingly suspend your sense of disbelief?

[plok]

Now that is hilarious.

[Tucker Stone]

Goal with the television columns is same as all the rest of them. Make Nina laugh, her pussy gets wet, try and make a baby.

[Matthew J. Brady]

I think the specialness came from Helo coming face to face with Echo, and the conspiracies around him deepening, or something. But obviously, since I find his plot to be one of the dumber elements of the show, it wasn't exactly mind-blowing. I shouldn't have believed the hype. Not that I did anyway (or did I?).