TV Newsy Bits - Wednesday, May 9, 2007

I'll be live-blogging the American Idol results show as it airs tonight on the East Coast. So, if you want to dish on the happenings or you're in another time zone and just can't wait... stop on by anytime after 9 PM EDT. The blog entry I'll be creating at that time will be updated continuously throughout the show up to and including who leaves tonight.

After that, you know I have to watch Lost although my recap/review on that show won't be posted until tomorrow evening.

Here are today's TV Newsy Bits:

• I guess I'm not the only live-blogger out there. Even though I'll be tied up with Survivor tomorrow evening, if you're a My Name Is Earl fan, there's a blog event for you! Tomorrow night is the show's finale and NBC is hosting a live-blogging event which you can peek in on today. If you have questions about the show or want to take part in the goings-on, the blog is here. You can also check out a video preview for the show.
• AOL Television's American Idol poll has Jordin leading, Melinda second place, then Blake, and LaKisha coming in last. I think they have that right.
• Billy Ray Cyrus got the boot from Dancing With the Stars. Should he have been on the show?
• I peeked in on the official CBS Big Brother 8 website. The deadline for applications was a few weeks ago, so they're hopefully working hard to get us some summer eye-candy guys... er, entertaining and intelligent houseguests. Of course, that's what I meant to say.
• What? Say it ain't so! Sanjaya Malakar in I Love New York 2? Eep. TMZ has the skinny on that. That will surely bring down the property values.

'American Idol 6' - The Final Four Sing to the Brothers Gibb

Don't get me wrong. I like the BeeGees. While I only have their pre-disco "Best of the BeeGees" ballad days vinyl in my music collection, their disco stuff was good. I was just a bit anti-disco at the time. The BeeGees knew what to do when and how to change their style to fit the current music scene. I admire them.

But I felt tonight's show was um... not good. The songs all seemed a bit off even though songs like "Stayin' Alive" can stand the test of time. They just couldn't stand the test of the American Idol final four contestants, I guess. I wasn't really moved by any of the performances tonight. However, if I had to name the winner of the night, I'd go for Jordin followed by Melinda.

Each contestant sang one song in rotation, then sang a second one in the same order. While I'm going to write about both songs for each contestant, keep in mind these weren't sang consecutively. The order was: Melinda Doolittle, Blake Lewis, LaKisha Jones, and Jordin Sparks. (Second verse, same as the first!)

Barry Gibb surely isn't the same guy I had a crush on decades ago. He talks like his jaws are wired shut, but can still hit that falsetto. He seemed to really work with the contestants, though. Not that all listened to his advice, of course.

The first song Melinda Doolittle chose was "Love You Inside and Out." Barry noted it was a group song with falsetto, but thought she worked it out well. That she did. Technically, her vocals flawless. But for me, even though Melinda ranks best in my personal opinion, I wasn't excited.

Randy thought it was solid, good. Paula said her vocals were spot on, always are spot on. Simon wasn't all that impressed. He said it was "not incredible" and more of a backing singer's performance. Oy!

Her second song was "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart." I got a kick out of how she didn't want to sing the line "Can a loser ever win?" Barry Gibb thought it probably best to leave that line out, too. Again, I thought she did perfect on a technical level. I enjoyed it more than the first song, but it definitely wasn't my favorite Melinda Doolittle performance.

Randy called her the "resident pro" again and said it was much better than the first song. Paula said it was a beautiful vocal, but she needed to "surprise us." Simon said the second half of the song would get her in the semi-finals.

For his first song, Blake Lewis chose "You Should Be Dancing." And, yes, he danced. Barry thought beat-boxing fit the song. But when he was on stage performing, I thought his beat-boxing detracted from it. Usually, with more contemporary songs, it adds. Not so much for this song. This may have been my least favorite Blake Lewis performance ever.

Randy said it was like going to a weird disco in a foreign country. Paula said it wasn't his best performance, but he's unique. Simon said it was terrible. I have to agree with Simon on this one.

His next song choice was a song with which I'm not familiar - "This Is Where I Came In." While, again, I didn't think the beat-boxing worked well with the song, I thought the performance and his actual singing of the song a world better than his first round.

Randy said it was better and there's no need to beat-box every song. Paula called him a "contemporary rebel." She also said it was on key and she enjoyed it. Simon called it a bizarre song choice and tuneless. I disagree with Simon. I heard a tune and thought the lyrics actually suited Blake well. I just don't think he delivered.

LaKisha Jones chose "Stayin' Alive" as her first song choice. Um, okay. Barry thought it would be a challenge for her, especially with the falsetto. I didn't think she did horribly, but it wasn't her proudest moment on the show. It's a fast song, and she just didn't keep up... or something.

Randy said the performance was weird, not working, and that she tried to change the song too much. Paula said she took the tempo down. Simon said, "No kiss tonight, baby." He said she was shouting and verging on "scary."

Her second song was more suited to her, I think. "Run to Me" is a ballad, not disco. Barry thought she'd have a challenge with changing the key of the song and that she would rise to the challenge. I thought she did well enough, but nothing earthshaking.

Randy thought it was better than her first song. Paula said she's still a champ. Simon said, "You and Blake are both vulnerable." I agree with Simon. I think we'll say goodbye to LaKisha this week.

Jordin Sparks blew Barry Gibb away as she was working on what would be her first song - "To Love Somebody." He said many have recorded the song, but her version is the best so far. Wow, powerful praise there, eh? I think she lived up to it while she sang. It was definitely the best performance of the night even though Melinda sang perfectly.

Randy deemed it "the best vocal of the night so far." Paula said she was beautiful and agreed with Randy. Simon said it was the best song choice and the best performance of the night. (Remember, she was the last one to sing the first round.)

The second song Jordin chose was "Woman in Love" popularized by Barbra Streisand. Barry Gibb was agog over Jordin. He thinks that she's "going there" and will one day be one of the great recording artists. I thought she did well, but I preferred her first song. Even so, this would be my second favorite performance of the night... both coming from Jordin. I have to admit that's not saying all that much as I think tonight's show was a bit of a dud.

Randy gave the performance two "check it outs" and said it wasn't her best, a bit pitchy. Paula seemed to agree, called her beautiful again and said she loves her anyway. Simon called the performance old-fashioned and "pageanty."

All in all, while I like the BeeGees singing their songs, American Idol shouldn't go there again. What did you think?

"It's only words
and words are all I have..." - "Words" by the BeeGees

'Heroes' - "The Hard Part" - A BulletPoint Report

Yes, graphics artist Zoetawny made me a Heroes tag for the blog. (She rocks, y'know.)

Blog reader Sydney asked me in comments if the show location in NYC and bomb bit bother me due to my proximity to the events of 9/11. Although I truly love this show, I must admit that the NYC bomb/nuclear explosion bit does bother me some. I lost some friends, neighbors, and a relative when the planes crashed in the World Trade Center, and it changed life around here. So, yes, it touches a nerve at times, but I enjoy this show anyway.

And tonight was no exception. Here's the skinny to keep things up to snuff (or something to that effect):

• Hiro and Ando teleported back to the present. "Don't worry, New York! We will save you!"
• At the Petrelli house, Claire is still supposed to go to Paris, but Peter tells her she can't leave.
• Peter told her she's needed to save the world.
• "I explode," said Peter. "Like Ted," Claire replied. Peter didn't know about Ted Sprague's ability.
• Ted Sprague, Matt Parkman (mind reading ex-cop, future creep), and Mr. Bennet decide to head to NYC. The Walker Tracking System which tracks the heroes is there.

• Sylar, after killing Isaac, painted Ted Sprague.
• It dawns on Sylar that if he absorbs Ted's powers, he will explode.
• "Is that what Isaac saw?" - Sylar has a conscience?
  
• Sylar called Suresh Mohinder telling him that taking the powers is natural selection, but he didn't want to kill the innocent. He didn't want to be responsible for the apocalypse.
• Nikki in the mirror again convinces Jessica to go with DL to rescue Micah from Linderman.
• Meanwhile, Micah is with Candice (the illusionist morphing woman) in New York.
• Micah doesn't like Linderman. "He smells funny."
• At the Kirby Plaza, Suresh met up with Bennet's ex-boss (Thompson?), refused to work for him.
• Thompson told Suresh he had the only one who could stop Sylar - Molly Walker.
• "She's on the list." Sylar attacked her family. She has a virus and her powers are currently blocked.
• Sylar, still at Isaac's, made a phone call, then was prettying himself up to go visit someone.
• Hiro and Ando arrived at Isaac's, saw Isaac dead on the floor Sylarized (as Hiro saw once before).
• They hid behind Sylar Ted painting when Sylar emerged from the bathroom.
• Sylar heard their heartbeats (super hearing from the woman in that garage).
• As Sylar whisked the portrait away, Ando and Hiro teleported out and escaped.
• Back in Las Vegas, Jessica and DL went through the wall into Linderman's place. He wasn't there.
• They found files on their lives (Nikki, Jessica, DL, and Micah).

• There was a painting of Micah in a burning high-rise building there.
• Suresh met up with Molly Walker, a young child.
• He determined that she was like his deceased sister, Shanti.
• Her (blocked) ability is finding people wherever they may hide.
• Molly told Suresh of the Boogeyman who sees into your soul and steals your brain.
• Suresh eventually gave Molly a cure - his own blood.
  
• Back at the Petrelli's house, Claire told Nathan that Ted Sprague blew up her house.
• Nathan called Linderman. "Mr. Linderman, we have a problem."
• The election is tomorrow.
• Who was Sylar going to visit? Why, it's his mother! He brought her a snow globe for her collection.
  
• She fusses about him, tells him he could be anything, even the President.
• He was upset that she neglected a clock of his father's and set about fixing it.
• He hedged around and seemed to be trying to get her permission to no longer be "special."
• He just wants to be a normal watchmaker.
• "You could be so much more!," she told him.
• Back where Micah's being held, he tried to escape. But Candice's illusions had him returning to the same room each door he tried.
• Candice appeared to him as Candice instead of his mother and told him to behave.
• Oh, back to Sylar's mother's place in Queens -- Hiro and Ando followed him there and eavesdrop outside of the window.
• Sylar's mother continues to do what she wants, makes him a sandwich when he really wanted to talk about being normal again.
• Uh-oh. When she insisted how special he was, he told her "I can do a lot more you don't know about." He then made it snow.
• Everything whirled and he lost control. A snow globe hit her in the head, causing a cut.
• She locked herself in her bedroom.
  
• As he begged for forgiveness, Ando said it was the perfect time for Hiro to kill him with the sword.
• Hiro said he couldn't kill someone while he was asking for forgiveness.
• Sylar told his mother he was going to do something horrible, he was going to kill a lot of people.
• His mother told him he wasn't her son. He wasn't Gabriel. She told him to leave.
• Sylar and his mother started fighting and he (seemingly accidentally) stabbed her with a pair of scissors.
• At that moment, Hiro froze time and tried to kill Sylar with his sword.
• Sylar unfroze, grabbed the sword and broke it while his mother was still frozen in time.
• Hiro and Ando blinked away. Sylar's mother fell to the floor, dead.
• Back to Peter and Claire -- Peter gave Claire a gun, said she had to go to Kirby Plaza with him. If he started to explode, he wants her to shoot him in the back of the head where the glass shard had "killed" him before she took it out.
• Claire saw a picture of Ted that Peter drew. He told her he could draw the future. "You're a part of this, Claire."
• Mom Petrelli, called by Linderman, went to Nathan to convince him he had to follow through on the plans. It's his destiny to set the course of history after the catastrophe.
• Cut back to Sylar - he's using his dead mother's blood to draw Kirby Plaza on the apartment floor. Creepy!
• Claire and Peter went to Kirby Plaza only to see Mr. Bennet, Ted Sprague, and Matt Parkman approaching.
• Claire ran to her Dad.
• Peter started absorbing Ted's abilities and his hands went radioactive.

Wow. It sounds like Sylar has issues, eh?

TV Newsy Bits - Monday, May 7, 2007

Another season of The Amazing Race has ended, Survivor 14: Fiji is down to one show and then the big finale and reunion night (Sunday, May 13 starting at 8 PM). But we're getting closer to Big Brother 8! That should be starting the first week of July.

Dancing With the Stars and The Bachelor: An Officer and a Gentleman are still going strong, as is American Idol. And, but of course, tonight is How I Met Your Mother and Heroes night for me!

Here are the TV Newsy Bits for today:

• If you're in the New York City area and, especially if you were around in the 1970s, tonight's 11 PM WCBS2 news (Channel 2) has an interview with Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz thirty years after the killing spree. I know it's a macabre thought, but I won't be able to not watch it. That was such a horrendous and plain old odd case.
• BuddyTV has their interview with Eric and Danielle, winners of The Amazing Race 11: All Stars, online for your perusal.
• Celebrity Spider has mild promotional spoilers (nothing big) for this week's Survivor 14: Fiji episode.
• Heh. Celebrity Spider also reports that the host of Pimp My Ride has lost his license to drive. Hmmm... could he get a new show called Pimp My City Bus?
• After sources said a few days ago that Lost will end after two more seasons, new sources are now saying three seasons.
• TVGuide.com has an interview with Missy Peregrym, the actress who plays Candace (the "illusionist" Primatech Paper morphing woman) on Heroes.
• This article casts doubt on the return of Jericho or The Class next fall, but I haven't seen any official announcements.

An added note: Some of the regular blog readers want to get a real-life meet-up arranged sometime over the summer. Most likely it would be in either New York City or perhaps Philadelphia. If you're a regular commenter here and want to get involved in the planning, send me an email (the contact info is in the sidebar). I'm putting together a mailing list to work on the details. Since this blog doesn't show email addresses, we're doing this off blog. If you want to get involved, yet don't want to use your regular email, send me an email telling me who you are in comments and I'll send you a free gmail invite.

'The Amazing Race 11: All Stars' - Season Finale

Well, the season is over and I have mixed feelings. I've never been too keen on "all star" seasons of reality shows and this season of The Amazing Race did nothing to change my opinion.

When the team announcements were originally released, I was a bit disappointed -- too many teams from the most recent season, one team which wasn't a team at all. After all, Danielle and Eric were originally on competing teams during their season. Oh, I know why they included them -- a TAR love story or whatnot. But there were enough other teams I enjoyed and, as always, I love the concept of the show.

I thought this season was a bit tamed-down in the challenges, too. There didn't seem to be as many risky challenges, although they certainly had more than the Family Edition (Season 8) year. Nonetheless, it was a great glimpse into countries I may never see and into other cultures. I can't call the season time wasted, not at all.

Tonight's finale was only an hour long which always seems too short for a big show event. And, tonight it also seemed they whipped through a couple of challenges, then it was time for the last Pit Stop. I found it to be a bit of a letdown in one of the more lackluster seasons of the show. Mind you, I enjoyed it overall. It's only lackluster when compared to the excitement and thrills of past seasons. Your mileage may vary.

Here's what happened on the finale leg:

The teams left from Guam with the Beauty Queens, Dustin and Kandice, starting at 11:53, Eric and Danielle leaving at 12:55, and Charla and Mirna last to leave at 1:29. It didn't really matter who left when, though, not in the long run.

They had to take a flight to Honolulu where they'd take a helicopter from Kamaka Air to Lanai to get their next clue. All three teams tried for the same flight, but Charla and Mirna found an earlier connecting flight putting them ahead of the other teams by about forty minutes.

The helicopters each could carry one team, first come first served. They left ten minutes apart. So, once again, lead time was narrowed down so no team was at a huge advantage. Once they received their clues, they drove to a harbor where they got the clue to the Detour.

Teams could go Under or Over. In Under, they would have to dive into an underwater cave fighting the currents to get a clue tied to a rock. In Over, they had to "surf" on a paddleboard out to a buoy to get the next clue. Smartly, Charla and Mirna chose Over. This is the short of challenge where Charla's lower center of gravity is a huge bonus. Oh, not such a great challenge for Mirna, though. Eric/Danielle and Dustin/Kandice chose Under, with the girls having a rough time with it and falling behind.

From there, teams had to hike a mile to Shipwreck Beach to find their next clue. Eric and Danielle arrived there first and Charla and Mirna were last even though they originally were in the lead. Running across rocks, unlike the paddleboarding, isn't easy for Charla. After they made it to the beach, each team had to take an inflatable kayak and row (against currents) out to a shipwreck. Nearby the shipwreck was a buoy which contained their next clue.

None of the teams are ever going to be Olympic-class rowers. But Eric and Danielle did the best, followed by Dustin and Kandice and then Charla and Mirna. All finally made it through, even though the Beauty Queens had a brief spat, then made up.

And, once again, all teams ended up on the same flight... this one to the final destination, San Francisco, California. Charla used her heelies in the airport once again -- too bad they don't work over rocks and on beaches!

Then it was a slow cab race to the final clue leading them to the Old Mint. Now, I found the challenge faced there interesting and different, even though it wasn't daring and exciting. One member of each team had to answer questions about the previous teams while in a vault. They would enter the answers and ended up with a code. Then the other team member would come in and try to figure the answers their partner gave. When the answers matched, the code given would open a safe which contained the location of the finish line. It seems that Uchenna and Joyce seem to have attracted the most friends. Danielle, after several attempts, lined up the same answers as Eric. But Charla and Kandice (or was it Dustin?) both took the time limit and ended up being given the clue as they couldn't make all the matches.

The finish line was at the Botanical Gardens, with Phil and all of the previous teams, as we have grown to expect. Eric and Danielle made it there first, with the Beauty Queens not all that far behind. Then came Charla and Mirna.

Oh, well. I'm ready for a real show next season with all new teams for us to cheer on or boo! What did you think of this season? I don't think anyone I've seen commenting ever named Eric and Danielle as a favored team from the start, but maybe someone out there wanted them to win it all along. I only recently began to admire their determination after the two Yields. Although I don't care for Eric's personality, they seemed to work more like an actual team from that point on once the pressure really hit.