Daniel's TV Blog

VH1 has hit ratings gold with it's celebreality shows. Starting with the Sureal Life which is took over of WB way back when, there has been a steady stream of new Sunday night celebrity-tastic new content. That show has had seven seasons (if you count the All Star Fame Games season) and half a dozen spin-off shows including Charm School a third generation spin-off.

The current Celebreality shows include:

Rock of Love with Bret Michaels. I think they created this show just so they would have crazy women for another season (semester) of Charm School.
Scott Baio is...45 and Single. This is different than most reality shows. The camera work looks more professional. Scott's naration at the starting is great. I think it is different each week.
Hogan Knows Best, season 4. Terry (The Hulk) is such a nice guy and his son is getting hotter and hotter. Brooke is quite talented but I wish she would be more Britney and less Rihanna.
Mission: Man Band. This is the newest show which debuts on Sunday. Former boy band menbers Chris Kirkpatrick (N*SYNC), Jeff Timmons (98 Degrees), Rich Cronin (LFO) and Bryan Abrams (Color Me Badd) move in together for a month and create new music and see if they can make it as a band. I think they should have picked a New Kid on the Block as well. Set you TiVos!

Everyone knows of my love for VH1's weekly pop culture news show, Best Week Ever. But VH1 also has many other documentary type shows such as The Fabulous Life. Just like the great of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous this show, this show takes the viewer around the world at the most over-the-top lifestyles. It might be about specific individuals like Britney, Donald, or Diddy. Or it might be about areas like last weeks Hamptons show. Or it might be about a group of people like this weeks Wall Street Ballers. What is a baller anyway? Some other great documentaries I can remember enjoying are My Coolest Years, where D-List stars talk about their high school years; The Drug Years, a rather sober look at the evolution of drug use and the war on drugs; and one of my favorites, Celebrity Eye Candy, a show that glorify the photos and videos taken by the stalkarazzi.

I don't include the "I Love the..." shows since those aren't so much about current events. They are in a category of their own. New episodes of The Fabulous Life are on Thursday night but run all throughout the weekend. They have a spin-off show also called The Fabulous Life Presents: My Big Fat Fab Wedding. This is kind of like My Super Sweet Sixteen, but for weddings.

So I love VH1. It is pretty much my default television channel. When I have the TV on and I'm getting ready to go to work, or cleaning up, or whatever, I always flip to VH1 and enjoy what they have on. Unless it's the 25 most raptastic rap songs, then I flip to the Discovery Channel or Comedy Central. When I go to bed at night, I set the channel to VH1 (162 on my DISH tuner) because my main morning alarm is my TV. It automatically turns on at 6:00 to the morning videos. Yes, VH1 still shows actually music videos, albeit in the middle of the night and in the morning. It's good to wake up to the new Avril song or the latest from The Fray. On Saturday morning (and repeated Tuesday morning) is the Top 20 video show starring Aamer Haleem. Unlike some people who know what the current songs are through a secret CD sent to them by distant music industry contacts, this is how I keep up with current music. My favorite of the new songs is First Time by Lifehouse. Here it is on YouTube:



Other songs of note include: Hey There Delilah by Plain White T's, the current #1 and destined One Hit Wonder; Big Girls Don't Cry by Fergie guest starring the exploding guy from Heroes; 1234 by Feist with a kick ass dance scene; and Same Girl, a duet between R. Kelly and User.




The User/R. Kelly video has the surprise ending where it is not actually the same girl, but twins. Twins who both work and the same company, went to the same college, have a child the same age, and drive the same type of car with the same vanity license plate. Did they really think we wouldn't see the flaw in that logic? Luckily this had dropped off the top 20 list last week.

I have a good friend, who I won't name, but Matt goes to the gym almost everyday and works out with a trainer. This is now the biggest passion in his life. Matt (who shall remain nameless) gets really anxious and irritated and cranky if he doesn't get to work out when he is ready to. When we were discussing this at lunch one day I said, "Oh, you have gym blue balls." He totally agreed.

I know how he feels because occasionally I get TV blue balls. When I have a show on TiVo that I'm excited to watch and then I turn it on and for some reason or another its not there, I go into a mood that can only be described as anxious and irritated and cranky. This last happened with the finale of 24 this season. My TiVo recorded only minutes but it looked like it recorded something so for weeks I watched the other episodes, watch the long list of episodes dwindle down to just one and then wham! You don't get to see how this season ends. I was in a very bad mood all that day.

It happened again to me today and this time it is NetFlix's fault. For a while I have had Clerks: The Animated Series in my queue but recently I moved it up. Disk one of the two disk series arrived yesterday. I was excited to watch this when I got home today. I got all prepared to watch it and put in the disk and them wham! It was the wrong disk in the jacket. Now I don't know when I'm going to get to see it. I have to send it back tomorrow. They will get it on Saturday. Monday they will try to find the actual disk which may be out with someone else. If they find it they might send it as early as Tuesday so I wouldn't be able to see it till Wednesday. Pretty much my whole night is ruined now. I feel the need to drink heavily.

And speaking of VH1, this week continues with the best quiz show ever, The World Series of Pop Culture. The quarter finals round start tonight and conclude with the finale on Thursday or Friday or something. I watched a bunch of the first round episodes yesterday while hiding in my house. The world is scary sometimes. There is pathetically little eye candy on this show. Of the few hot guys, Lucien Eldred (pictured) from Almost Perfect Strangers 2.0 is my favorite. This team is made up of people who got the best scores on the online test and were put together in a team. Last year's APS came in second. This year I think the team names are a little more inventive than last year. My favorite team name is Team Motherboy. Next time they face off with Team Wocka Wocka, maybe tonight. I can't be bothered to do any research for you.

I watched the two new VH1 Celebreality shows, Scott Baio is 45... and Single and Rock of Love with Bret Michael and I have to say, woman are crazy. Especially on Rock of Love. This is a similar format to Flavor of Love, but with someone who is not completely gross. Bret Michael was the lead singer of Poison. The show started with 25 women and his body guard got to kick 5 out immediately. One decided to crash the show anyway and banged on the front door until they let her rejoin the show. All the other girls assume she had to blow the body guard to get back in. I would be surprised if that wasn't true. She ended up not getting eliminated either. But since there was now more people than beds, she has to sleep on the floor. She crazy. This other big boobed blond girl was also crazy. She kept butting into Bret's conversations with the other girls and kept calling him her man. As Tom Leykis says, "Women are attention whores." She certainly is and her possessive ways almost got her eliminated. I think she read The Secret one too many times.

Days of Our Lives is good again this summer. Like lots of soaps, Days has one of those ridiculous bad guys. You know, the one that torments the lives of the main characters for no real reason, but doesn't go too far by killing them. He kidnaps people, he fakes deaths, he switches babies, he switches DNA paternity results, he steals kidneys. For Days, that guy is Stefano DiMera and he has died ten times according to Wikipedia. Usually his resurrections are explained, but the last one has just been forgotten. But the reason Days is good this summer, is the new backstory they've created for why Stefano and his sons are such dicks to the Brady family. They've gone way back in time to a pre-war love story that took place back in Ireland. The story is unfolding in letters that the Brady's have found between the Brady patriarch's sister and Stefano's father. Coincidentally the deceased ancestors look just like Sami Brady-Lucas and EJ Wells (Dimera) so as they are having the love letters translated, the viewers get to watch what unfolded in the past. I watched Days back in the early 80's as a child and they have bringing up a lot of old stories and characters with this new arc, that's why I love it.

And just for fun, here's some great clips I uploaded to YouTube. The first is EJ getting threatened by his half sister's mother. She's just mad because he threw her daughter (his half sister) in the old abandoned tunnel connecting the DiMera mansion and an old restaurant. The second is Sami discovering who is the hooded figure who brought them the love letters. "It's you!"...end of episode.

Labels: Days of our Lives

Season 2 of Eureka starts tonight. I didn't watch it regularly last season but what I watched was good. It's the typical disaster-of-the-week show. Each week someone creates a dangerous new technology that threatens to destroy all of existence. The everyguy sheriff helps to save the day. The show has a good balance of sci-fi mixed with humor, romance, and corporate/government intrigue.

Labels: Eureka

Season 3 of the new Doctor Who starts tonight on the Sci Fi channel. It just finished airing on BBC-whatever. David Tennet is back as the tenth doctor but Rose Tyler and her family are gone having been trapped in another dimension. His new companion is a med student named Martha. What I want is the spin-off series Torchwood with openly bisexual hunky character Captain Jack played by openly gay hunky actor John Barrowman.

I'd also like to go on record refusing to call seasons of British shows "series". British television calls US show's seasons series so I don't see why I should change when they don't.

Every year I watch the premier of Big Brother and every year it sucks. This year was so bad I felt bad for the participants. The only reason I tried again this year was the new twist. This year they put bitter ex-boyfriends in the house together. And they didn't disappoint. One immediately exposed the others infidelity and the other played the gonorrhea card at first opportunity. Oh they are so bitter. Still, I won't be watching this season.