This week, it's Marty on Survivor and Celebrity Apprentice & Zeb on Lost.
Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains – “Banana Etiquette”Martin Brown
Up until this week, the central force on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains has been the Heroes’ tribes imploding cloud of suck. Dudes have spent the last five weeks (two weeks, island time) chasing challenge losses with awkward freak-outs and bad decisions. I suspect that there’s a lot going on with the Heroes’ tribe that we’re not privy to. Over the last three episodes, the Heroes voted out a major player in each of the tribe’s three alliances—first, Cirie, leaving Candace without a real ally; then, Tom, one of the best players in the game, who just happened to be, as he put it, “on the wrong side of the numbers.” This week’s elimination of James—the guy in the leg brace—would have been the right move last week. The edit made it clear “why” James went home—the injury made him dead weight around camp and in challenges, so they were wasting food on him—but didn’t parse the logic of keeping him over Tom last week only to get rid of him a couple days later.
With James’ elimination, the Heroes are left with five members. Traditionally, a tribe of five is a pretty tight force. However, the Heroes have voted off most of their strongest players—their two best strategists in Cirie and Tom, and three of their best physical competitors in Tom, Stephenie, and the injured James. Left with one genuine competitor (JT), one potential competitor that no one likes (Candace), a fat egotist with a broken toe (Rupert), a gawky beauty queen (Amanda), and a guy who seems to have given up (Colby), the question is going to be whether this ragtag band of, um, heroes will be able to band together to defeat the enormous Villains tribe. I’m guessing that they’ll fail.
Fortunately, both the Heroes and the Villains had to vote someone off in “Banana Etiquette,” and the dual tribal council allows Survivor to tell parallel stories of each tribe, and shift the central story of Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains toward a rivalry between two alpha-dogs on the Villains: Russell and Boston Rob. The episode opens with the two dudes talking smack to each other in the guise of trying to help each other out. The conversation ends with Rob telling Russell to watch his back, and Russell responding with, “Yeah. Well, same thing for you, man. Watch your back.”
There’s a lot that’s exciting about seeing these two guys lock horns. They’re pretty evenly matched. Each of them has dominated one full season, though neither of them won—arguably because of bitter juries that failed to recognize the game’s best player (though you could also argue that if they couldn’t get people to vote for them to win in the end, they weren’t playing as well as they could have been.) Each of them is playing at the top of his game, predicting the other’s moves way down the line and countering them early. Rob has the advantage of numbers, while Russell has the advantage of the hidden immunity idol.
Each week, in this space, I try to hold back at least a little bit of what happens in the episode, in the hopes that someone will actually chase that link up there and spend some time watching this venerable, under-rated show. This week’s episode stands a chance of going down as the best of a strong season, precisely because of that showdown between Rob and Russell, which culminates in a tribal council vote that had my adrenaline racing faster than I ever remember it racing because of a TV show. And the vote turns on a move that people are already calling the stupidest in Survivor history. It’s definitely worth checking out.
In terms of what happens from here, I suspect that the fallout from the “Banana Etiquette” votes will be palpable. The new, unified Heroes tribe may or may not have stones needed to rally. With the merge coming up, though, whoever’s left on the Heroes tribe will be useful to the Villains’ alliances. (I’m guessing that Amanda and JT will hook up with a couple of people on the opposite team.) The Villains vote will probably knock things around on that tribe, as well. Let’s just hope they keep enough compelling personalities around to keep this thing interesting.
The Celebrity Apprentice – “Give Me a Moment”
Martin Brown
Remember last week when I was all like, “Donald Trump is fully aware of the ironies that make The Celebrity Apprentice so great”? Well, I may have over-spoken. On the one hand, dude is talking about firing the asses off people, needling Rod Blagojevich about running his gums, and getting into woman-bedding contests with celebrity chef Curtis Stone. On the other hand, he seems to be positioning the show as a way to show how great Americans are under troubling circumstances—as if watching D-list celebrities cook hamburgers is some form of super-enlightened altruism. So, the verdict’s still out on that guy. It’s unclear whether he is completely oblivious to what a spellbinding jackass he’s coming off as, or whether he’s completely aware of it. Either way, dude is a genius.
The players, on the other hand, seem keyed into exactly how reality television works (or, as Cyndi Lauper so elegantly put it last week, “I think you’re supposed to drop dead, and then you wake up in the fish tank with the fishes, and then there’s a subtitle that says, ‘Now, she sleeps with the fishes.’”) Most of them are reality show veterans, and fully understand that the show rises and falls on its entertainment value, and its entertainment value mostly is going to boil down to D-list celebrities fighting over petty shit.
Immediately, Sharon Osbourne is talking as much smack as she possibly can about anyone who crosses her path. I don’t believe for a second that she believes any of it; it’s just that she has a heightened awareness of what’s expected of her on this show. In a sense, it’s actually the business-woman side of her that’s acting like a douchenozzle for the camera—she knows that’ll make her a key character, increase the ratings, and probably win some money for her charity. Most of the players have a similar sort of awareness, and it’s awesome to see D-list celebrities who absolutely know that they’re D-list celebrities, clamoring for attention in front of the cameras. Of course, it’s also kind of pathetic, which is exactly what makes it kind of awesome.
Bret Michaels, the Rock of Love, knows exactly how reality TV operates—ferchrissake, in the first episode, he got the guys’ team to name itself after his clothing line. But one of the best moments on this weeks’ episode came because of his (probably well-placed) paranoia that the editors would use footage of him taking a break as a way to paint him as a lazy-ass.
Still, the two most intriguing personalities on this season of The Celebrity Apprentice are in the complete opposite position: They have no idea how reality TV works. There’s Cyndi Lauper, who has absolutely no impulse control when it comes to her mouth. She spent the first episode dissing Trump’s wife, singing “True Colors” for diner customers, and pleading with Trump not to fire anyone because they all did such a good job. Rod Blagojevich seems to think that the editors are going to make him look great and, more importantly, innocent. He’s basically spending his time campaigning, and the editors are using it as a fantastic opportunity to re-enforce our stereotypes of crooked politicians. It is incredibly uncomfortable.
What remains to be seen, is whether The Celebrity Apprentice can configure all of these personalities into a compelling storyline—like if Blagojevich and Lauper fistfight each other, or Michaels and Osbourne, or both. If they can, it’ll be a hell of a season. If they can’t, we’ll end up with a smattering of disconnected, fascinating moments, spread out over two hour episodes every week. It’ll be like back-to-back episodes of I Love Money, intercut with YouTube memes every twenty minutes.
Lost – "Ab Aeterno"
Zeb L. West
Let me start by saying that this is a super fun episode! (You can take that as a signal that I’m about to trash it completely). Nestor Carbonell gets a chance to flex his acting muscles as we travel back in time to see the origin story of the enigmatic and ageless Richard Alpert.
The young Richard Alpert is such an earnest and guileless protagonist; it’s hard not to love him immediately. With his innocent superstitions about encountering the Devil, and his wide-eyed wonderment at each twist of fate, it’s reminiscent of Jack in the pilot episode, reacting with heroic abandon at each new bizarre event.
Sold into slavery for an accidental and altruistic crime, we see Alpert chained inside the hull of the Black Rock, which smashes into the four-toed statue to explain why it’s now just a foot! Tricked by the Smoke Monster with visions of his dead wife, our man the Spaniard is set up to murder Jacob, but after a right ass-kicking by the Man in White on the beach, he sees the error of his ways. Although this diversion into ancient history is completely satisfying for grounding the present-day events in a rich history, it’s a bit curious that it all had to happen through a flashBACK. Isn’t the whole conceit of this season that we use the flashSIDEWAYS for delivery of pertinent information? Why bother committing to this baffling convention, if it’s not going to be the main tool for delivering vital exposition? I’ll tell you why. BECAUSE THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NO VALUE THAT CAN POSSIBLY BE ADDED TO THE STORY WITH THE USE OF A DISCONNECTED PARALLEL UNIVERSE. Well, I feel better…
Despite the whole premise of this episode undermining the main storytelling device they’ve subjected us to for eight episodes, Alpert takes us on a fun journey through his moral dilemma. When Jacob finally levels with Alpert over a bottle of wine on the beach, the writers again choke on their own exposition. With a just-short-of-completely-banal speech, Jacob uses the wine bottle as a metaphorical stoolpigeon for his relationship with the Man in Black, casting the island as the cork, and the wine as pure evil, and the bottle as the world (?) and if the wine spills, it’ll stain the suede couch of human redemption… what the fuck are we talking about again?
I suppose they get away with it, but it’s these types of on-the-nose explanations which really drain all the fun and mystery out of Lost for me. I suppose the folks who demand an explanation for everything might be experiencing some kind of satisfaction as their theories are either confirmed or denied, but from a storytelling standpoint these scenes feel pretty obligatory. I guess it would take a lot more juevos to put your foot down and say ‘no, this show is about mystery, and for it to stay fun, we need to continue to cultivate the mystery,’ but maybe that’s what caused people to tune out midway through season four. And that ship probably sailed long ago anyway…
Does a show like Twin Peaks, that refused to simplify down into an explainable puzzle have more re-watch value than something that has a finite answer at the end? If you heard from a friend that (WARING: LATE 90s SPOILER!) Bruce Willis was dead the whole time in The 6th Sense, wouldn’t that be the most boring movie in the world to sit through? This is the trajectory which I think Lost is on, and I can’t help but predict that the final episode will be so chock-full of protracted exposition, that it will be the most tedious massive-ratings must-see-tv event of all time! You’ll know I was right if the viewing party you attend clears out 10 minutes after the end of the episode. Like watching a sporting event where your team doesn’t win.
What’s your prediction? There’s still a contest going on over here (at least, as far as I’m concerned)!
-Martin Brown, Zeb L. West, 2010
All the hectoring got to me, and I've watched those first two celebrity apprentice episodes--i gotta say, i'm surprised you didn't bring up what I thought was a definite top ten most awful reality show moment of all time, i.e. when one of the female celebrities asked a 13 year old boy with an incurable, terminal illness what he wanted to be "when he grew up", despite the simple, previously explained fact that he would never, of course, be capable of doing so.
His brutal retort, "I've never thought about it", made the woman watching the episode with me cry, and I'm only mildly embarrassed to say that I was close to joining her.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2010.03.28 at 20:10
OK, mind my rant - keep in mind I've never seen so much as five minutes of one episode of Lost, but I know from my nerd media. And honestly, nothing would piss me off more in the entire world than devoting so much time to a show that didn't solve all its mysteries by the last episode. That would be, to me, the ultimate sign of contempt for an audience: you stuck with us all this time, invested your time and patience, and we're not even gonna bother telling you what the fuck was going on, because we're above such petty concerns as providing narrative closure for the loyal audience who've kept us in the bacon for close to a decade. I guarantee you, if Conan Doyle had ended The Speckled Band' on a note of ambiguous unresolution, people would still be talking about how much of a dick he was, over a hundred years later.
No: if you begin a mystery, you see it through to its conclusion. And if that means the last season is filled with graceless infodump exposition? Well, then the people putting the show together obviously let things get out of their hands - but don't blame them for actually getting around to doing what they have to do for the show to have anything resembling a satisfactory conclusion. Because otherwise? Years from now the Lost season sets are gonna be in the 2/$15 bin at Target and anyone who picks them up is going to consider taking the plunge before remembering their friend from work told them once that the show sort of petered out in the end and wasn't worth the trouble.
There's probably 95% of the audience for the show who actually want some sort of conclusion, 1% who would love it to end on some sort of mysteriously ambiguous note, and 4% who are along for the ride anyway because the attendant never switches the TV from ABC. Because this is an ABC sci-fi show, not L'Avventura.
Posted by: Tim O'Neil | 2010.03.28 at 23:32
I don't follow any theories or anything about the show, but from a writing point of view I thought the fact that everyone's story in the sideways world hints at their future, whereas the fact Richard's story concerns only his past (and his wish for death) suggests he dies.
So thematically, if true, it was a comparatively strong choice.
Also, I'm glad they answered the question "do ghosts change their clothes?"
Posted by: Damon Blake | 2010.03.31 at 06:30