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Send your comments about TV -- reality or un -- to ELinerTV@aol.com. And check out my other blog: PhantomProf.blogspot.com.

Thursday, April 29, 2004

The Red Menace is gone at last. John Stevens, the Van Johnson of his generation, was sent home from "American Idol" after many excruciating weeks of public humiliation and off-key crooning. Poor kid. Deer. Headlights. Every time. But the tweeners loved him. Fox, if they've been paying attention, should sign him to a role on "The O.C." as the sensitive kid next door. Remember the curly-haired boy on "My So-Called Life"? The one who was hopelessly in love with Angela (Claire Danes) but too shy to say it? That's the John Stevens role on any teen-targeted drama.

The annoying nasality of Paula Abdul makes me want to claw wallpaper. She has nerve criticizing anyone else's "pitchy" voice when hers sounds like she's storing marshmallows in her throat and has a nose full of goo. Before it's all over, Simon will beat her about the head and shoulders. You watch.

"The Bachelor"? Pffffft. The guy's a putz. And the Trish types of the world? They always get what they want. Good looking men loooooove the bitch-goddess.

"Made" with the faux-Olsen sisters? Completely MADE my point that the youngsters these days want stardom without effort, reward without dues-paying. They were shocked that they would have to audition! Learn lines! Get criticism! Get over it, girls. go back to your parents' mansion in St. Louis and play with your hair and lose your virginity to the quarterback. (Fast-forward five years from now when the "Gerber girls" -- that was their name -- are nominated for the first time... as best new-cummers at the Adult Video Awards.)

Best TV of the past month -- the all-day Harold Lloyd marathon on TCM. Brilliant. H'wood should make a Lloyd bio-pic toot sweet. Perfect casting -- Hank Azaria.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

A lull before May sweeps sends me to "The Restaurant" for my reality-TV sustenance. The tone of this NBC show is as fake as Rocco's attitude toward his fans. (He calls even the chubbiest housewife "a cute girl" and panders shamelessly to the dowdy New York chicks who long to stuff his manicotti). The scripted lines and overdubbed dialogue (the phone calls between that odious owner, Jeffrey Chodorow and his flying-monkey-like minions) on this show stink worse than garlic breath. Was producer Mark Barnett so desperado for drama in this one that he had to resort to obvious fakery? Sure, it's a watchable show, compelling at times. But you just know that the little cretinous "intern," Drew, is a plant. A potted plant, if you ask me. And all those dishy waitrons come from central casting, not from other restaurants. Wanna know why it takes an hour and a half to get a plate of cold ravioli at Rocco's? All the waitresses are in the back, fixing their lip gloss, getting ready for their close-ups. This restaurant looks more horrible customer-wise and foodwise than the old Model Cafe in Times Square. ("Our special today -- bulimia and Botox!")

And speaking of models, I caught Janice Dickinson on "Regis & Kelly" this morning. Her eyebrows now arch like the symbol for St. Louis and her facelift is so high and tight, when she smiles, her toes curl. But I LOVE HER! She'll say and do anything on TV and there are far too few of those free spirits lighting up the tube.

Later, I'll get into Boston Rob et al on the waning days of "Survivor: All-Stars." Loved the audience booing Omarosa on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." She fled the studio before her couch time because she suspected they were going to hook her up to a polygraph. Oh, if only.

And as the bikini-clad model on "Fear Factor" last night crawled into a sewer pipe to face an alligator, all I kept thinking was, so what? It's not like she has to have SEX with the thing.

Contestants 2 and 3 on "The Swan" were done over to LOOK JUST ALIKE. It's the Stepford Women, I tell you. Fox is creating Fembots on that show.

OK, I have to go teach my last classes of this semester. Goodbye, young ones. Go forth and prosper. And if you ever turn up on "The Bachelor," you can't say you haven't been warned.

Saturday, April 17, 2004

Man, long time, no blog. And so many shows to catch up on. Starting with "The Apprentice." In a year, nobody will remember the name of the winner, Bill Rancik. But I guar-rawn-tee we'll still be hearing about Omarosa. The wicked witch of Trump Tower has supplanted Richard Hatch as the lyingest, cheatingest player on a TV reality show. Don't you love it when truly despicable people delude themselves into thinking the world loves them? When you look at Omarosa, she's all preening and beaming in self-love, unaware that her image to the rest of us is less than shiny-happy.

"Survivor" rocks on. Rupert's still hanging in there. Give it two more weeks before he's ousted. No way can Boston Rob win, but he's fun to watch, ain't he?

Can't stand the new "Bachelor." And is it really that hard for a handsome pro football player to get dates? He has to go on a TV show to meet women?

"High School Reunion" on The WB is a howl, but hard to find on the skedj. There are some skanky ho-types on it (all from Round Rock, Texas) who are forever stripping to the altogether and romping into the surf. There's no point to this show at all, other than showing 20-somethings crying, drinking, arguing and cavorting in an attempt to look even stupider to each other than they did 10 years before in high school.

I miss "America's Next Top Model." Yoanna, what are you doing right this minute? Shandi, my darling, have you reunited with the hideous hick back home and taken that triumphant strut throught the aisles of Walgreen's? Sigh.

"Real World" had its "very special episode" last week about the redhaired chick's problem with "cutting." Faced with emotional upheavals, Frankie takes a butcher knife into the bathroom and slices into herself like a butcher carving coldcuts. (Audio provided by MTV, yuk.) On the episode, she saw a therapist (a wrinkled old bat whose advice seemed derived from a 1950s Dear Abby column) and had a good cry. Maybe she'd feel better about herself if she didn't have pink hair, a squillion piercings in her face and eyeliner thicker than Liz Taylor's Cleopatra drag. And Frankie, dear, your taste in men rivals Liza's.

Next blog, "The Swan." I just can't go there yet.