The Amazing Race, Tin Man, America's Most Smartest Model
Crazy morning! The trains weren’t running to downtown again, so the station was swamped with shuttlebuses, which made all the regular buses late.
The Amazing Race
One half airport drama - meh. One half great racing in Lithuania - yay!
I wonder why that ticket agent had it out so much for Nick. Was it just that he said something about her not understanding what he wanted? Because she quite deliberately screwed him over. Fortunately it didn’t affected them that much. Getting the unlucky draw of the hair salon, on the other hand, did. I was really worried they wouldn’t make it, and very relieved they did.
The rest of the airport drama was blah blah blah boring.
The Lithuanian gnomes, as opposed to the Travelocity gnomes, were adorable. So was the midsummer fair. I want to go to that very badly. And the Lithuanians seemed like really good people.
I can’t decided if Nate and Jennifer are amusing in their dysfunction or irritating. Or both. Probably both.
Teams/people I still like: Kynt and Vyxsin, Nick and Donald, Christine, Hendekea.
Teams/people I'm iffy on now: Azaria, Ronald, TK & Rachel.
Teams/people I love to hate: Just Nate and Jen now the blondes are gone.
Bye bye Blondies. You were about the worst set of blondes this show’s put before us, so I’m not particularly sad to see you go.
Tin Man
I have very definitely mixed feelings about this mini series. I don’t like it nearly as well as I hoped I would, and I’m not sure I’ll stick around for the rest of it.
There are a lot of really good actors wasting away in roles that do them no favors. Alan Cumming, as Glitch, stands out especially to me. He’s doing a great job with a role that seems very poorly written. Richard Dreyfuss and Callum Keith Rennie have slightly better parts that they’re doing their best with, but both the Mystic Man and Zero are inferior to what they deserve, in my opinion. Neal McDonough has the best written and most interesting part as Cain, the Tin Man. And he’s doing a great job with it. Unfortunately this story isn’t being told from his point of view, so we’re having to put up with almost endless drivel to get to the short parts involving him.
I cannot stand the actress playing “DG.” Or the character. I like her evil sister much better. Or rather, dislike her less.
The special effects are not living up to their preview hype.
The whole thing should have been a three hour made-for-tv movie rather than a mini series.
By making DG originate in the O.Z. (I almost gagged typing that, sorry), the writers essentially negated the point of their source material. I find that both bizarre and funny, but not in a good way.
Overall, I think this thing is very poorly written. Which basically makes it the same as every other production of anything I’ve ever seen on Sci-Fi (at least, that originated with that channel - they’ve shown things that originated elsewhere that were good). (ETA - I take that back, sort of. Sci-Fi has aired exactly one decent series, Farscape, which they cancelled way too soon because it was good, thus essentially proving my point. Yes, I am still bitter about that.) I know some of you won’t agree with me on this, but I think they have the worst programming on television (even worse than Lifetime!!!), and Tin Man has done nothing to change my mind about that.
If I watch any more of it, that will be a combination of my watching for some good acting in bad roles (especially Neal McDonough), the trainwreck the story is, and the few decent special effects they’ve shown.
America’s Most Smartest Model
Over on TWOP, a poster asked an interesting question - What if we, the viewers, are being punked by this show?
I think it’s a possibility. Actually, no, I think it’s probable that the producers are laughing at or with the audience at how fake and rigged this show is. And they’ve revealed to the audience to some degree how fake it is. When it started, I was under the impression that the contestants were all (or mostly) working models. But we’ve learned that isn’t true. Some of them are. Andre, at least, has a portfolio online and I think another couple of them did, as well. But enough of them aren’t that the name of the show is pretty misleading. So the question is, next week during the finale, are Ben and Mary Alice going to turn to the cameras and say, “Hahahahahahaha! We got you!”
And this week’s America’s Most Smartest Model really left me wondering ...
The alternative is that Mary Alice is such a complete skank that she doesn’t care that everyone knows she fixed the show because she wants to have sex with one of the contestants.
Now, I’m not gonna get all outraged over VJ’s cheating (or at least, bending the rules and taking advantage of his fellow competitors). I can kind of see where that’s exhibiting some streets smarts that would serve him well in a very cutthroat industry. The problem is more that Mary Alice has shown blatant favoritism towards him and possibly set others up for failure to ensure he could get ahead. What they did to Daniel was a good example (though he did them the favor of not handling the situation well at all). What they did to Brett last night was over the line. A paired challenge after they eliminated Brett’s usual partner. Yeah, complete set up to get him out of there, especially since he was, IMO the obvious winner at that point.
Another theory that’s been passed around is that the folks at VO5, not the producers and/or Mary Alice, actually rigged this for Angela to win. That’s another good possibility, I think. She does, after all, have darned good hair. And if Angela wins, I won’t be all that offended. VJ, on the other hand, well, I’d be completely infuriated by his winning. But maybe that’s what TPTB want.
It’s a bit weird to me that their promoting the second season of a show that’s so obviously rigged and leaving a bad taste in my mouth. If it has some sort of Joe Schmo type redeeming ending, something where they tell the audience Hahahahaha just kidding!!! though, I could probably find a way to forgive it and watch again.
Ah, who’m I kidding? I’ll probably watch season 2, anyway.
The Amazing Race
One half airport drama - meh. One half great racing in Lithuania - yay!
I wonder why that ticket agent had it out so much for Nick. Was it just that he said something about her not understanding what he wanted? Because she quite deliberately screwed him over. Fortunately it didn’t affected them that much. Getting the unlucky draw of the hair salon, on the other hand, did. I was really worried they wouldn’t make it, and very relieved they did.
The rest of the airport drama was blah blah blah boring.
The Lithuanian gnomes, as opposed to the Travelocity gnomes, were adorable. So was the midsummer fair. I want to go to that very badly. And the Lithuanians seemed like really good people.
I can’t decided if Nate and Jennifer are amusing in their dysfunction or irritating. Or both. Probably both.
Teams/people I still like: Kynt and Vyxsin, Nick and Donald, Christine, Hendekea.
Teams/people I'm iffy on now: Azaria, Ronald, TK & Rachel.
Teams/people I love to hate: Just Nate and Jen now the blondes are gone.
Bye bye Blondies. You were about the worst set of blondes this show’s put before us, so I’m not particularly sad to see you go.
Tin Man
I have very definitely mixed feelings about this mini series. I don’t like it nearly as well as I hoped I would, and I’m not sure I’ll stick around for the rest of it.
There are a lot of really good actors wasting away in roles that do them no favors. Alan Cumming, as Glitch, stands out especially to me. He’s doing a great job with a role that seems very poorly written. Richard Dreyfuss and Callum Keith Rennie have slightly better parts that they’re doing their best with, but both the Mystic Man and Zero are inferior to what they deserve, in my opinion. Neal McDonough has the best written and most interesting part as Cain, the Tin Man. And he’s doing a great job with it. Unfortunately this story isn’t being told from his point of view, so we’re having to put up with almost endless drivel to get to the short parts involving him.
I cannot stand the actress playing “DG.” Or the character. I like her evil sister much better. Or rather, dislike her less.
The special effects are not living up to their preview hype.
The whole thing should have been a three hour made-for-tv movie rather than a mini series.
By making DG originate in the O.Z. (I almost gagged typing that, sorry), the writers essentially negated the point of their source material. I find that both bizarre and funny, but not in a good way.
Overall, I think this thing is very poorly written. Which basically makes it the same as every other production of anything I’ve ever seen on Sci-Fi (at least, that originated with that channel - they’ve shown things that originated elsewhere that were good). (ETA - I take that back, sort of. Sci-Fi has aired exactly one decent series, Farscape, which they cancelled way too soon because it was good, thus essentially proving my point. Yes, I am still bitter about that.) I know some of you won’t agree with me on this, but I think they have the worst programming on television (even worse than Lifetime!!!), and Tin Man has done nothing to change my mind about that.
If I watch any more of it, that will be a combination of my watching for some good acting in bad roles (especially Neal McDonough), the trainwreck the story is, and the few decent special effects they’ve shown.
America’s Most Smartest Model
Over on TWOP, a poster asked an interesting question - What if we, the viewers, are being punked by this show?
I think it’s a possibility. Actually, no, I think it’s probable that the producers are laughing at or with the audience at how fake and rigged this show is. And they’ve revealed to the audience to some degree how fake it is. When it started, I was under the impression that the contestants were all (or mostly) working models. But we’ve learned that isn’t true. Some of them are. Andre, at least, has a portfolio online and I think another couple of them did, as well. But enough of them aren’t that the name of the show is pretty misleading. So the question is, next week during the finale, are Ben and Mary Alice going to turn to the cameras and say, “Hahahahahahaha! We got you!”
And this week’s America’s Most Smartest Model really left me wondering ...
The alternative is that Mary Alice is such a complete skank that she doesn’t care that everyone knows she fixed the show because she wants to have sex with one of the contestants.
Now, I’m not gonna get all outraged over VJ’s cheating (or at least, bending the rules and taking advantage of his fellow competitors). I can kind of see where that’s exhibiting some streets smarts that would serve him well in a very cutthroat industry. The problem is more that Mary Alice has shown blatant favoritism towards him and possibly set others up for failure to ensure he could get ahead. What they did to Daniel was a good example (though he did them the favor of not handling the situation well at all). What they did to Brett last night was over the line. A paired challenge after they eliminated Brett’s usual partner. Yeah, complete set up to get him out of there, especially since he was, IMO the obvious winner at that point.
Another theory that’s been passed around is that the folks at VO5, not the producers and/or Mary Alice, actually rigged this for Angela to win. That’s another good possibility, I think. She does, after all, have darned good hair. And if Angela wins, I won’t be all that offended. VJ, on the other hand, well, I’d be completely infuriated by his winning. But maybe that’s what TPTB want.
It’s a bit weird to me that their promoting the second season of a show that’s so obviously rigged and leaving a bad taste in my mouth. If it has some sort of Joe Schmo type redeeming ending, something where they tell the audience Hahahahaha just kidding!!! though, I could probably find a way to forgive it and watch again.
Ah, who’m I kidding? I’ll probably watch season 2, anyway.