Grid Effect

God damn, we are actually ecstatic to watch Survivor tonight. Usually when Thursday rolls around, we haven’t given the show a second thought until around 7:55PM EST. Maybe it’s because we’re uber-confident Corrine is going to have a real ugly streak here in the upcoming episode (NO ONE PUTS CORINNE IN A CORNER!) as a result of being played for the fool. Even though she didn’t have any real repercussions for following along, other than an unfortunate wink to The Jury when Randy played Bob’s fake idol.

Anyhow, since we didn’t say anything about the clip show, we’re going to take this opportunity to do it: There was a clip show last Thursday, and if you used it as an excuse to distance yourself from family members you were tired of spending an entire day with, more power to you. If you watched it and had other options/priorities, then I apologize. It isn’t really a clip show, nor did they offer much in the way of deleted scenes, but more of a recap. A rather biased one that painted the original Kota alliance as some sort of victim of circumstance. Which is odd, given that the people who throw together the clip show are the same people that set the circumstances.

Anyhow, we didn’t learn much about anyone that we didn’t already know. Other than Corinne is as wretched as this article would have us believe, or the producers just really, really hate her guts. Outside of the fact that she threatened to murder or expressed taking pleasure in murdering some of her fellow castaways on multiple occasions (through last night and the bulk of the series), she comes off as simply unpleasant and borderline evil in every interview she has in private. She is apparently under the impression she is superior to each and every person she is sharing the camera with. Instead of attempting to use her believed superiority to educate her team on the ways of pate and whatnot, she resents them for not understanding what it is. Which is about the oddest resentment we’ve ever seen on a show that specializes in it.

That was pretty much it, other than we saw some audition tapes and they made pretty much all of them look exactly how the editing has. Corinne’s was a little deceptive, in that she seemed to pine to convince us she was actually human, but when your audition tape is nothing beyond sharing your academic achievements and prancing around in a bikini, it doesn’t say much for your character. Matty was actually recruited for the series (which is peculiar), but they forced him to throw together an audition tape for the benefit of making it look like casting doesn’t discriminate. Ken, Bob and Sugar all came off pretty well.

Beyond that, if you just want an abbreviated version of everything we’ve already written or want to see 70% of their deleted scenes, you can either read all of my recaps or visit the CBS site.

For the time being, here are some links:

ER will air its series finale on March 12th, and despite our endless criticism of the series, there is a good chance we tune in just for the spectacle. After covering every possible emergency medical problem over the span of what seems like fifty years, they are finally retiring one of the dramatic staples of the broadcast networks. Who’s next? I’m looking at you, Law and Order.

There is always much hulabaloo over what the network that hosts the Superbowl will air afterwards, and usually it’s a despicable choice. But for the first time since FOX introduced us to Family Guy (back when it was great and no one watched it), NBC is offering up something tasty this year: A one hour episode of The Office. Between this, Springsteen doing halftime and a $30 20/1 bet that we took on the Giants to repeat back in March, February 1st might turn out to be the best night we’ve had since we were in college.

Hopefully for the masses they stick to the funny.

Pretty disheartening news for the state of NBC: Celebrity Apprentice is extending its episodes from one to two hours, every week. Man, that is a terrible indicator of how dismal that network’s ratings are. When you’ve already canceled virtually all your new series for this season, the majority of your other series are only airable because your expectations are so low and you are extending dated reality series from one to two hours an episode, you are in dire straits. Aren’t there some kind of repercussions behind all this?

And fianlly, despite its rampant critical success, The Shield finale only attracted 1.6 million viewers. We’ve always said that Nielsen’s is an inefficient way to measure television ratings, but if they could have gotten up to a 4.0, it would have made the comparison the analogy of this being a law enforcement equivalent of The Sopranos complete. Instead, it’s just another under-appreciated series about some mean, middle-aged white fuck.

Back later tonight with recaps for The Office and Survivor, as we are going out of town yet again and will be driving during normal posting hours.