Here’s a catch-all post about things I’m watching, not watching or looking forward to watching on television. It’s long, so I’ve put it under the fold.
1. First and foremost, I have to rant a little bit about the “Dancing With The Stars” finale. It sucked. This was probably the best season of the show to date in terms of the overall quality of the performances from the celebrities, but the dancing on the Monday night show was just plain terrible. I managed to get over Sabrina Bryan’s premature elimination, I managed to get over the audience vote rigging that sent Marie Osmond to the finals instead of Jennie Garth, but I could not get over the bad performances from Mel & Maks and Marie & Jonathan in the “freestyle” round. I know a lot of DWTS fans are steamed that Mel & Maks didn’t win, but based on their performance on Monday night, Helio and Julianne deserved it, even though they weren’t as consistently good all season.
2. Time was that we were devoted watchers of “Trading Spaces” on Saturday nights, but then TLC ruined the whole damn thing by running it to death, spinning off too many variations, and, most of all, changing the format and dumping the sexalicious Paige Davis in favor of no host at all. Not long thereafter, the home-redecorating genre as a whole collapsed from overexposure (except for that horrible ABC show with former Trading Spacer Ty Pennington), but now apparently TLC is going to try to revive Trading Spaces. Hollywood Reporter reports that a different production company will be making the series, and that Paige is being brought back to host the show, along with some (but not all) of the designers. “Rebooting” is all the rage these days, so maybe they’ll pull it off, but I suspect this is a desperation move and won’t work. I would be more than happy to watch Paige on some new show, but bringing her back won’t make me watch “Trading Spaces”.
3. The Food Network has completed their journey to the Dark Side by dumping the man who made them famous, Emeril Lagasse. As with Mario Batali a couple of months ago, Emeril wasn’t “fired” by the Food Network, as some reports have said, but his signature show “Emeril Live” has been cancelled after 10 years. I am not especially a fan of Emeril or his cooking, but the complete abandonment of real chefs in favor of “food personalities” like Rachael Ray and those unbearable cake decorating competitions has completely driven me away from the Food Network. I used to be able to count on finding something worth watching on Food Network when the rest of the lineup was crap, but now the opposite is true.
4. Speaking of “rebooting”, Hollywood Reporter recently revealed that one of the original producers of “Green Acres” has acquired the remake rights to the series from the estate of series creator Jay Sommers and that he’s starting production on a new version of the series that picks up where the original left off. Casting is already underway for actors who resemble the original cast (most of whom have either passed away or are very elderly now). Other than the obvious use of Paris Hilton for the Eva Gabor role (which is probably too close to Hilton’s own “The Simple Life” series), I can’t think of anyone who could fill La Gabor’s mink-lined, marabou-trimmed slippers, though I could easily imagine someone like Kelsey Grammer as Oliver Wendell Douglas. I think the time for relaunching a few classic sitcoms is ripe, and “Green Acres” could be played with the same sense of humor that makes “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” to great effect.
5. And one last reboot mention. Have you seen the photos of “Heroes” star Zach Quinto on-set as Spock for the new “Star Trek” movie? Here it is just in case:
He’s effing PERFECT! I have all my fingers and toes crossed that this movie won’t suck, but only time will tell. The storyline that has been leaked on the Internet is not the earlier “Starfleet Academy” premise, but a story about a Romulan who uses the Guardian of Forever to go back in time to kill Kirk; “old” Spock finds out about the plot and goes back in time to warn his younger self. Promising, but also has High Suck Potential. This picture, though, makes me believe they’re on the right track.
That WAS a hugely SUCKTASTIC finale.
Thank the viewing gods for DVR.
If Marie Osmond said one more time how ancient she was to be in her early 40′s or talked about her WORLD renowned dolls I was going to throw my wine glass through my screen.
You know I liked Helio, but I still think Mel should have won.
Well, when you get right down to it, Sabrina should have won. And John O’Hurley should have won Season One. I really wish they’d get rid of the fan voting.