Fessin' Up

Yay! It's "Confession Time"! I'll go first.

I hope you don't mind, but these are all related to TV. One of my favourite subjects.


1) I read TV Week, and we buy it every Monday. It's my little guilty pleasure, and at $3.30 per week, it could be a lot worse. When I get it home, I go through the guide section and circle all the shows I want to watch and/or tape. The magazine then sits on the coffee table, open to the relevant day, for the entire week. I organise the rest of my life around whatever's circled in that mag. And there ain't nobody talkin' me out of this process!

2) Wifey and I watch each episode of The Biggest Loser (the Australian version). For the entire time, we have been avid supporters of The Red Team. For a moment on Monday, we thought they were going to disgrace themselves with some nasty practical joke, but it was nothing to worry about. It was just The Blue Team being precious and hypocritical again. Although he's the 'big ego' in the house, we've always kinda liked Wal, and now that he's on The Red Team anyway, it makes it really easy to favour one whole group over the other. Artie, Tracy and (to a lesser extend) Fiona completely destroyed their chances of winning this game when they stupidly voted off Harry. They thought they were playing strategically, but in truth, they shot themselves in the foot. In fact, they wrecked the game. I reckon that's why this pairs thing had to be introduced. Otherwise the three of them would just get voted off and there'd be practically no game anymore. Artie and Tracy make the perfect pair; they're both bitchy and bitter old hags who are much less intelligent than they think they are. Not to mention the mean streak in Tracy. Wifey thinks of her as this woman. Ruth's a bit of a mess and a no-hoper, I quite like Shane and think his shyness and gentleness and politeness are being misinterpreted as weird behaviour with an evil glare (I see it a lot in people around me, and myself, so I reckon he's being similarly misinterpreted by some of the other contestants), Adro's cool, Kristie's great, and with Fiona - some days I can't stand her (the box-of-chocolates temptation was a fine example of her stupidity, and Harry was right with what he said about that being a stupid thing for her to do), and other days I find myself hoping she'll do well (like with the raft challenge, although maybe that's because she's now partnered with Shane). Anyway, I hope the final four come down to Wal, Kristie, Shane and Adro. They're my faves. I reckon Wal will win, and that's probably fair enough. Love him or hate him, he's played a clever game, has been entertaining, and has lost a LOT of weight.

Edit: Since drafting the above paragraph, I've now watched Friday's weigh-in episode. Fiona again annoyed me with her inappropriate grins on the scales. I don't think she realises it, but smiling when she's done something to advantage herself at other contestants' expense is a bloody stupid thing to do. It's actually rude - and it's like she's taunting them. She should be thinking more clearly than that. Why would anybody like her and want to keep her in the game (if given the chance to vote her off)? She's basically gloating at them when she does things like drinking a lot of water, and then telling everyone about it! She'd be wiser to keep that information to herself, because doing it and then telling everyone straight away only makes enemies amongst the other contestants. At least Shane had the good grace to act like it wasn't entirely down to him loading up with water before the weigh-in. Silly girl. That ankle won't work in her favour, either. And I sooooo hope Artie and Tracy are voted off the show on Monday, but it could easily be Ruth & Adro. It depends how the others want to play it - get rid of the more threatening team (A&T), or get rid of the so-far-ineffective team that still has the most weight to potentially lose (R&A)? Tough choice, but I think I'll finally be saying good-bye to the blue bitches. At least I hope so.

3) Despite my earlier attempts to swim against the tide / upstream / whatever, of apparent global dissatisfaction with Bert's Family Feud, Wifey and I have basically stopped watching it. Which is a bit of a shame. Despite the bizarre nature of giving Bert something so small to host (although it's not his only gig at Channel 9), and his obvious discomfort and unsuitability with the game show format, we'd hoped it'd do better. Hopefully they can come up with something better for him to do at 9, once they finally let the (inevitable) axe drop on the show. (Note: We stopped watching it before the Commonwealth Games started.)

4) I have to say, those two actors who appeared on Friday's episode of Neighbours, playing future teenage versions of Oscar (Lyn's noisy kid) and Charlie (Steph's as-yet-unborn son) were probably the best bit-part actors ever to feature on the show. I was very impressed ... and I also thought the lookalike qualities of teenage Oscar (in particular) were brilliant. I am full of praise for the look of the actors, and also of the way they performed their roles. Teenage Charlie also had to act with Carla Bonner grabbing him, walking through his line of vision, and talking over him ... and he did it perfectly. He dropped the volume of his voice appropriately when she spoke over him (so we could hear her), and made it sound effortlessly easy (which it's not). I commend the two actors, and also those in charge of selecting them. I was surprisingly impressed.

5) Another guilty pleasure Wifey and I have enjoyed for the last little while (certainly not for its intellectual content, though) is Friday Night Games. True, it's basically just a bunch of B- and C-List "celebrities" doing some very stupid things and falling over a lot, while Ryan "Fitzy" Fitzgerald, Bree "Blonde Bimbo" Amer and Mike "Mike Goldman" Goldman make heaps of bad jokes and terrible puns, ... but I think you can see why it appeals to the likes of me! For Friday night fodder when you just want to slump on the couch and not put your brain through anything too strenuous, it's perfect. And you gotta admit, it's much more successful than that other Big Brother spin-off, The Up-Late Game Show. (PS - I don't know who submitted the photo of the Up-Late Game Show "studio" to the previous Wikipedia URL, but it's gold! I laughed out loud at that.)

6) I've been keeping quiet about it, but a few of you will be pleased to hear that I've been watching Futurama almost every week since Channel 10 started airing it (and I've been very much enjoying the show). However, I noticed that although they started airing the first season (or at least the pilot episode - to explain the show's premise, I have no doubt), they are now airing episodes from season three or something! What gives? Anyway, I hope my friend John B will be especially pleased with this news, and will hopefully see fit to loan me his copies of the entire series on DVD sometime?? I think I'm ready.

7) I have a half-drafted post that's been sitting there in the list for something like six months. It's crazy. It's the final part of my mini-series of posts o the topic of (what else?) TV, and I haven't forgotten about it. I got up to Part 6 of "My Addiction" (remember that?), and had a fair few more ideas to nut out in the final bit. But, as with most things, it got put back and put back and put back ... and now here it is, way too much time later, and it's still sitting in draft. Hopefully I'll find the time to finish the damn thing and post it at last. If and when I do, I'll be sure to link to the first six parts in the first section, so you can refresh your memories on what came before (if it interests you enough).

8) Is anyone else watching The 4400, which Channel 10's airing after The Late News and Sports Tonight on Tuesday nights? I quite enjoyed it last year and got quite annoyed (some of you may recall) when it was suddenly pulled off the screens in favour of piece-of-crap British 'science' show Brainiac, which was just a lame-as-hell excuse to put unattractive busty women in low-cut tops. The 4400 is a well-produced science fiction show and I was enjoying it very much (although I completely understand that sci-fi is not to everyone's tastes). Well, it started back a couple of months ago (picking up exactly where Channel 10 had left off half a year earlier - mid-season!) and thanks to my wonderful TV Week magazine, I was able to spot it in the guide (and with absolutely no advertising about it from Channel 10 whatsoever, there's no way I would have known about its return if I didn't have TV Week). I've watched (or read the online scripts to) every episode since, except for last week's. I missed it, and the website I was using to read the online scripts before (if I missed a show) has not been updated to include the transcripts of the last few episodes, even though they aired in America last August. Because tomorrow night's episode is the final episode of series two (they've just announced that series three has been given the go-ahead to start production), I was kinda hoping someone had either seen it (and could send me an email detailing what happened - my address is on the top right of my blog), or could find a detailed episode summary of it somewhere online, which seems to be escaping me. I think the former is more likely (not because I think many people watch the show - in fact, I'm sure very few people do - but because I've searched and searched online and could find no proper transcripts for the episode, which is called "The Fifth Page", by the way).

9) I've also found myself getting more and more into Smallville. I know it's a silly little show for teenagers, and although its production style reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's nowhere near as good), but I'm a fan of Superman, and I like what they're doing in regards to showing the way things started out for Clark Kent, Lex Luthor, Lana Lang, and their families and friends. They've filled it with many clever nods to actors of the 80s movie versions (Christopher Reeve and Terence Stamp being two of those who've guest starred - not to mention the Lana Lang of the movies, Annette O'Toole, who is now playing Clark's mother Martha Kent as a series regular), and we've met 'young' versions of Lois Lane and Perry White (and probably others in episodes I haven't seen - an eight-year-old kid called Jimmy Olsen, perhaps?). [Out of interest (to me, anyway), Perry White appeared in only one episode that I know of, and was played by comic actor Michael McKean, who is the real-life husband of actress Annette O'Toole.] While I wouldn't cancel an appointment to stay home and watch the show, I'm enjoying it for what it is and can see myself getting more interested in it as time goes on.

10) One of my favourite bands at the moment (and I expect a bit of a nasty backlash about this - whenever I'm honest about my tastes and preferences, that's usually what happens) is the Rogue Traders. I dunno why, I just like 'em (for their music, in case you try to dream up less-than-pristine reasons why I might like 'em!). Please note: This one counts as TV-related in that their new lead singer, Natalie Bassingthwaighte (and boy, what a crazy surname, eh?), plays uber-bitch Izzy Hoyland on Neighbours. I don't think Wifey shares my newfound interest in the band, but she doesn't seem to mind too much that I'm getting so 'into' their songs.


Okay, now it's your turn.*



*Or not. I'm not trying to usurp Ms Fits' "Confession Booth" post. You don't have to list your own confessions; just bag me out for mine, if you like.




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