TV: Reality Roundup

The only reality show I care about, The Amazing Race, premieres with its 10th edition in less than 24 hours, but I still will take an occassional glance at the other game shows.

My random thoughts:

Treasure Hunters: NBC tried to capture the magic of The Amazing Race with this initially promising entry. It was touted as being created by one of the producers of The DaVinci Code. Interestingly, the series more closely resembled National Treasure by referencing American history for its mysteries. Okay, maybe it was a safer choice than using religious history (controversial) or world history (which may have been too challenging for the contestants - even the team calling itself The Geniuses). The result was a mostly uneventful weekly hour of fairly easy puzzles and blatant product placement, particularly for a brand of cell phones through which the host repeated himself too often. Only the Wild Hanlons stood out as characters to watch, but overall, there was nothing memorable. I guess it just proved that teams of three are not much more entertaining than teams of four. Two allows for the most relationship conflicts apparently. Having all the teams starting each "leg" at the same time did not turn out to be a big improvement over the sometimes annoying bunching that happens in the Amazing Race either.

Project Runway fascinates me sometimes. I think it's impressive how quickly the designers can come up with an idea for an outfit then construct it under some pretty difficult time constraints and conditions. Yes, I have little artistic ability myself, and I originally tuned in just to check out Heidi Klum. Unfortunately, she and the creativity of the contestants have not been enough to make up for a few too many moments of overdramatism. Since I do not have Bravo on my regular channel surfing rotation, I may accidentally miss the finale as well.

Big Brother: All Stars. I only watched this show for about 15 minutes, yawned, then switched channels. I don't even care who won.

Dancing with the Stars: I have to grudgingly admit that former Dallas Cowboys running back and NFL all-time rushing leader Emmitt Smith had a better debut than former 49'er Jerry Rice, who holds countless NFL receiving records. At least Emmitt's partner, Cheryl Burke, grew up in the Bay Area so I can live with that. It must be a law that at least one alumnus of Saved by the Bell make an unexpected appearance on television or in the movies just as I happily forget that this show existed. This time Mario Lopez appears to be the dancer to beat. If I do make any time to watch this (and I probably won't), I may root for Vivica A. Fox and Willa Ford. I don't think politics played a role in Tucker Carlson being the first to go. Fellow talk show host Jerry Springer will likely follow him off the show soon.

Celebrity Duets: Only watched a little bit of this show by accident. I guess some charity will get some money at the end of this. My only question: Didn't Lucy Lawless already sing in public before? [She also pre-dated Janet Jackson in the "wardrobe malfunction at a sporting event" department. Why I remember such trivia and constantly forget to take my badge to work, I will never know.] Maybe Lucy can win to make up for the fact that a dwarf planet is no longer named after a character she played.

Survivor: Cook Islands - There was some controversy over how the teams would be initially divided this season. Maybe it was unfair by excluding applicants of mixed heritage. I only watched the second half-hour of the first episode, and it did not seem like a big deal. For example, it was hard to get a sense of who's who with 20 people milling about the cameras. The teams themselves rarely crossed paths. CBS even avoided further trouble by carefully blurring one contestant's slightly exposed coin slot. While the cast may be racially diverse, an oddly large portion of them live in California (10 from the L.A. area, 1 from San Diego, 2 from the Bay Area, and 1 from Chico). As a practically native Californian, can I say Californians are all alike? Does that make me a geographist, and can I get credit for making up that new word? :-)

I'm sure there are other reality / game shows I've missed completely (e.g., The Contender), but there are only so many hours in the day, and I had a pretty busy summer and a full slate of fall shows to watch.