Hold Your Applause

Charles Nelson Reilly: Just Give Him The Plane Fare And He Was There

James Poniewozik has a nice appreciation of Charles Nelson Reilly, who died late last week. I'm just barely old enough to remember the last role truly prominent acting role Reilly had, as comic relief in the TV version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Prior to that he had a significant Broadway career, capped with a Tony in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, but when The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ended Reilly was only about 40. However, the era of his greatest fame was yet to take place, as he became one of the pioneers (along, I suppose, with Charo) of the role of Someone Who Is Famous For Being On Television.

Reilly was able to reinvent himself as something of a television utility man, a reliably funny presence on talk shows back when there was still a role on such shows for raconteurs with nothing in particular to promote; and a guest star who connoted camp. He became best known, of course, for his various game shows, especially the 1970s version of The Match Game, which even a sheltered kid could tell was titillating in a way that shletered kids couldn't quite get. Reilly wasn't the best celebrity player on the show or even the best drinker; those roles were reserved for Richard Dawson. But CBS needed a gay guy on its game shows to compete with Paul Lynde, and Bob Barker just wasn't up to the task. Seriously, as Poniewozik says, Reilly (and Lynde) helped introduce a gay sensibility to American living rooms in an ear when most had no idea what such a thing was.

Reilly was mostly playing a version of himself when he did any acting in the last 30 years of his life, but one exception was the character of the sci-fi novelist Jose Chung on The X-Files and Chris Carter's other Fox series of the era, Millennium (Reilly got an Emmy nominations for Millennium). Why Carter thought of Reilly is anyone's guess; perhaps it was the doing of the show's whacked-out genius Darin Morgan, who wrote that episode (and Reilly wasn't even the weirdest thing in it; Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek also had roles in the episode). But it proved that even given the strangeness of the setting--a serious part in an uncharacteristically silly hour on TV's creepiest show--Reilly really did have acting chops. Still, he never looked down on the work that paid the bills for decades, so for that, his fans say [blank] you.

Pink-slipped: Post Mortem On The Apprentice

NBC still hasn't officially said that The Apprentice is dead, though it certainly appears that the failure to announce a place for the show on the January 2008 schedule and Donald Trump's subsequent "you can't fire me, I quit" has put an end to it. This marks a milestone of sorts; with the exception of Who Wants To be a Millionaire?, which was more of a traditonal game show, The Apprentice is the first reality show to go through a full life cycle: out-of-the-box hit to slow decline to more rapid decline to eventual cancellation.

So what went wrong? For my own part, I started watching about halfway through the first season and became interested in it right away. The tasks seemed novel, the contestants were competent and (mostly) likable, and there were actual business lessons put across. The show also became a surprise ratings hit, riding on the strength of the final season of Friends and as good counterprogramming against CSI. While the decline in ratings set in immediately, I thought the show stayed pretty watchable through its fourth season. But I began to lose interest with Season 5. The candidates began to seem less interesting to me even as the on-paper qualifications continued to get more and more impressive (beginning with Randal, the winner of season 4, I started to wonder why it was some of these people were giving up what looked like a pretty good deal already to go on this silly program). And Donald Trump was becoming more and more the center of the show (more on that below).

If I had to point to a few things that went wrong, I would start with, first and foremost, the disastrous decision to run a second version of the show starring Martha Stewart in the fall of 2005, at a time when the parent show was already showing dangerously weakening ratings. A much better move would have been to have Stewart and Trump alternate seasons, though as executive producer of the show I'm sure The Donald never would have allowed this. The first season was relatively light on product placement, understandable since no one realized the show would succeed. But beginning with the second season and continuing to levels that got more obnoxious with each passing year, The Apprentice began to seem like an hour-long commercial with a small game show component tucked in somewhere in the middle. What's ironic is that the products featured weren't always shown to good effect--witness the task in Season 5 when the teams had to market the most disgusting food item imaginable, a 7-Eleven sandwich with 2 slices of cold pizza in place of bread.

Whereas the first season had two wild-card personalities, the intense Trump worshipper Sam and the sociopathic Omarosa, subsequent seasons seemed to give us more folks cast purely for the sake of drama (although Season 6 seemed a bit better in that regard). More reality show "stunts" made their way into The Apprentice, such as double-firings (even a quadruple firing in Season 4) and the idiotic "let's have half the teams camp out in the backyard" tried this past season. As Michelle so correctly stated before essentially walking off the show this past season, such an arrangement is hardly conducive to a serious job interview process, much less even doing effective work.

Finally, there was a gradual tilt on the show away from the tasks and the interaction of the players to the boardroom segments and the interaction with Trump. I would watch the show this past season and realize with surprise that we were getting to the end of the task, barely halfway through the episode and without having seen much about how the task was even accomplished. Trump's decision to bring his children in as his "eyes and ears" was off-putting to many. True, Ivanka Trump actually did a decent job in her role, never mind that her own work experience was often less impressive than that of the people she was helping evaluate. But the way her predecessor Carolyn Kepcher was fired left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people.

Perhaps The Apprentice was never destined to have a long run. There are only so many different types of business tasks you can design before you start repeating yourself, and the individual who ended up getting fired every week was usually so obvious it was hard to sustain suspense. But I think the actions of Trump helped to speed up the process. Let this be a lesson learned to the next network that wants to make its reality show primarily about the host. 

This Is My Ouch: American Idol 6:40

Well, it looks like Jordin Sparks will indeed become the first true longshot winner of American Idol. If she was just about even with Blake Lewis as the night began, as most believed she was, there seems little doubt she pulled away down the stretch.

And yet, it's hard not to feel a bit dissatisfied. Jordin is highly likable and has shown a real knack for big ballads with emotional content. But such ballads are in short supply on the pop charts these days (there's a reason Celine Dion decamped to Vegas), and whether she can go toe-to-toe with the Rihannas and Fergies of the world (even though she's obviously a better pure singer than both) is an open question.  Jordin mostly won last night by not losing--it was a night without a standout performance--and Blake assisted in his own demise by his inexplicable decision to let Jordin take the coveted last performing spot.

The boy from Bothell kicked off the night with a reprise of "You Give Love a Bad Name," which, it is now clear, will go down in Idol history alongside performances like Constantine's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a classic whose charms nonetheless go totally over (under?) my head. In fairness to Blake, it sounded like he was in slightly better voice last night (though it will never be a true rock voice); and it appears he's continued to think about the original performance and how it could be tweaked, because there were a few notable differences between the version of 3 weeks ago and last night's. With some studio help to give it punch, I can actually see this becoming the first song to go from a regular Idol broadcast to the pop charts.

Jordin led off with Christina Aguilera's "Fighter," which at first looked like a real high-risk, high-reward song for her but ended up not really impacting things much. Jordin has struggled with most uptempo songs, and the lyrical pace here figured to be a big stumbling block for her, even though this song doesn't have the gigantic range of a lot of Aguilera's songs--it's an attitude number. Jordin had a noticeable problem staying on the beat, and she seemed nervous to me. But as far as the attitude went, I bought it pretty much, despite the lack of angst in Jordin's life that has been a focus of her detractors.

I thought Blake's biggest mistake came with his second song, Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved." It was the second straight week he went to the Adam Levine well, but picking the slowest and draggiest of their big hits was a puzzling choice, given that he had to know the finale would be another ballad. And it's an upper register song that veers into falsetto on the chorus. As we saw on Bee Gees Week, Blake may have a tenor but it's not one translatable to falsetto in any way. What also bugged here was Blake's body language. He affects a cool Dean Martin-like nonchalance that tends to make me doubt his emotional connection to the material, and has a tendency to leave his mouth open in an unattractive way. Simon had it right: you need to pick more carefully on the bigger stage, and this wasn't a good choice for him.

Jordin's reprise performance was "A Broken Wing," which she performed when Martina McBride dropped in and has apparently been part of her repertoire for years. The country audience didn't have much to root for on the show this year, so this was a canny pick for Jordin for that reason too. As she did the first time, her lower register on the verse is only fair, but she always delivers on the chorus money notes (though Simon thought it was "shrieky"). A good choice because it provided the sort of dramatic release this night demands, even if it's not really my kind of music.

And then it was time for "This Is My Now" (the title says it all, doesn't it?), the product of the Idol song contest that was supposed to put the collective power of the viewing audience to work choosing the best possible coronation song and ended up giving us...the same kind of crap we get every year at this time. Needless to say, Blake was at a disadvantage, but to his credit I thought he made a game run at it for the first minute or so. He sang the opening verse nicely in a lower voice than we're used to from him, doing a good job of not smirking through the silly lyrics. Unfortunately, he wasn't up to overpowering the chorus, which is what this song was designed to feature (there's never going to be one of these winner's songs that doesn't feature a real or implied choir of angels). His decision to start dancing halfway through it was unable to breathe life into the patient. The judges were kind enough to essentially tell the viewers not to hold it against Blake, but there are obviously a lot of people who like these kind of songs from the winner.

And Jordin, hardly a finished product at this point, tore into this dopey number as if it was specially written for her, which for all I know it was. She still sounded a bit nervous to me, and 30 seconds in I would say she wasn't even as good as Blake. But she gained confidence by the time she got to the chorus, and almost made it sound like a legitimately moving song--not bad for being--wait for it--only 17. She found meaning in there somewhere, and if you didn't buy her breaking down when she got to the last line, well, you're just a bad American.

Now, all she has to do is build a career. Good luck with that--I'll look forward to her CD, but I suspect Melinda's will be better.

Getting To Blake v. Jordin

I ended up picking Blake Lewis as the winner of American Idol once we got down to the Final 12 stage, so I guess I should be feeling proud of myself right now. But strangely, I feel less enthusiastic about him now than I did then, though I concede he's been, overall, the most impressive male in an admittedly weak field.

The key to Blake's success is that he's made himself memorable even when his performances have been iffy in a vocal sense. He follows in a long line of men on this show who have a bigger online fan base than any other contender, joining Clay Aiken from AI 2, Taylor Hicks from last season, and the Bo Bice/Constantine Maroulis tag team from season 4 (it's not a coincidence that year 3, the only year without a significant male contender, is usually considered the least buzzworthy of all seasons). He has a pleasant tenor, but it's not terribly expressive; his best performances have either been uptempo like last week's "When I Get You Alone" or atmospheric like his take on "Time of the Season." I'm not crazy about the beatboxing, perhaps because I'm old enough not to regard it as all that revolutionary. I thought his much-praised reworking of "You Give Love a bad Name" was a way for Blake to get around the fact that he doesn't have any sort of rock and roll edge to him. But I seem to be in the minority here, and I can't deny that this gimmick has been key to his success.

Jordin Sparks is regarded by most to be a slight favorite to win it all, and if she does win she'd be the first winner ever to have not entered the top 12 phase as an obvious favorite. Prior till now, the only real surprise to even get to the last night was another teen, Diana DeGarmo in Season 3. And Jordin has a lot in common with Diana--big voice, but inconsistent and not always believable emotionally. I like Jordin and am tentatively rooting for her to win, but I have some real questions about her long term prospects. She doesn't look much like a modern female pop star, and she hasn't come up with the kind of convincing uptempo performance that would tend to make one think she can handle the sort of disposable pop the brass likely has planned out for her. In that respect, she has a lot in common with Katharine McPhee, who excelled on dramatic ballads last season but sounded pretty ordinary doing a teenpop album.

What of the rest of Season 6? The Sanjaya train chugged to a halt exactly where it needed to; the producers obviously wanted him out of the way before "Idol Gives Back", and America complied. I don't think Sanjaya could have become this sort of phenomenon had there been more interest in the main contenders in the first place--this gets into what i wrote about yesterday. And it does appear that ratings have not yet returned to their pre-Sanjayamania levels. Chris Richardson, who gave us the classic justification "nasally is a form of singing", is presumably touring with a 'N Sync tribute boy band as I type. He is not missed. Phil Stacy really improved as the season went on, persevering despite his physical limitations that were detailed in glorious and borderline libelous fashion here. He has a limited repetoire of songs he sounds good on, but he sounds very good indeed doing them and might end up with the semblance of a career in country music. In that respect, Phil resembles Lakisha Jones, who was fine as long as she was working the diva songbook, but struggled with almost everything else. I'm probably more skeptical than most about her ability to have any sort of post-Idol career.

And then there's Melinda Doolittle. There may be performers I've enjoyed more on this show, but I'm pretty sure (I didn't watch Kelly Clarkson's season) that no one has ever gone through a whole year of AI without a subpar or even average performance. Her take on "My Funny Valentine" is probably still the moment of the season for me, though Jordin's two takes on "I (Who Have Nothing)" come close, especially since the first time she scored with it, it shocked everyone. So what went wrong? Part of the problem is that Melinda didn't seem to have the sort of "journey" that leads people to bond with the singers. She came across as a finished product already, and perhaps it was just more fun to root for people like Blake and Jordin who had identifiable ups and downs. As Melinda herself recognized, not only was she old for the show at 29, but her sensibility skewed old as well (the same could be said of Taylor of course, but maybe the rules are different for the guys). Even her much-praised uptempo efforts on songs like "Trouble Is a Woman" and "Have a Nice Day" brought comparisons to Tina Turner, who is nearing 70. As I feared she might, Melinda's classy restraint didn't bring her the sort of fan base you need this close to the end of the season, and her absence will make these last 2 shows seem anticlimactic...which doesn't mean I won't watch, of course.

I think Blake is building momentum and has a good chance of stealing this thing. I'll even say that the person who wins tonight is going to win Idol 6, and that's rare since we usually have an obvious favorite by now (we might have to go back to Clay v. Ruben to find the last nailbiter on this level). I won't make a final prediction until I've seen the show...23 minutes away now.

American Idol: Idling?

American Idol is at an end for another year--the 4 months sure do seem to have flown by now that they're over. There's been a lot of grumbling about this season, and the decline in ratings have led many to wonder if the bloom is off the rose permanently (never mind that ratings for almost all veteran shows have fallen in 2007).

I think the off season had a few causes, some of which were the result of poor choices made by the producers. The one thing that I do not think the show can be blamed for is the number of singers who seemed very promising early on who simply didn't deliver in the Top 24 phase. Most of the weakness of the male field this season can be attributed to the failure of 3 performers who came out of the audition looking like the primary male contenders: Sundance Head, Chris Sligh, and Brandon Rogers. All were gone before April Fools' Day. Plus, a lot of time was spent with Antonella Barba, who was never a real contender. One of the problems as the season went on was that we pretty much knew ahead of time what would happen: Melinda Doolittle would outperform everyone else (except on those nights when Jordin got a hold of "I (Who Have Nothing)"), Sanjaya would be terrible, and everyone else would struggle to varying degrees.

Other problems were avoidable, though, and my sense is that some decisions were made in reaction to the last couple of years that ended up backfiring. First and foremost, there seemed to be a deliberate effort to avoid playing up the personal stories of contestants, or offering any sort of detail that might flesh out who these people were. The decision to expand the audition episodes and reduce "Hollywood Week" to one show was a mistake, because Hollywood is a place where viewers can get to know the kids. That sort of bonding didn't happen this season, perhaps because there was some resentment over the way the marginally talented Kellie Pickler Dolly Partoned her way into the final 6 last season (it's ironic that one of the most memorable things that happened in Hollywood was Sanjaya comforting sister Shyamali when she was rejected; that one brief scene definitely helped Sanjaya build an image).

Another aspect of this season that appears to have been deliberate was the rejection of certain contestants who either represented distinct genres or who had an instantly memorable image. There was no one in the Top 24 who could be termed a country first singer, likely not a coincidence since country fans have shown they can push someone like Bucky Covington pretty far. After the strong showings in consecutive years for Bo Bice and Chris Daughtry, there were no obvious "rockers" in this year's field (the judges' attempt to recast Gina Glocksen as a rocker were probably not helpful to her). After Taylor Hicks, the judges and producers appeared wary of anyone whose image was unusual enough by Idol standards to give them a "geek chic" appeal. So singers like the bluesy and butch Tami Gosnell, brash opera student Rachel Zevita, street kid Tommy Daniels, eccentric spurned girlfriend Ashlyn Carr, and Ruben lookalike Jimmy McNeal either didn't make it out of Hollywood or weren't passed through to the final 24. The one exception here was obviously Sanjaya Malakar, but I think his inability to actually sing came as a surprise to the judges. His audition was pretty good and I figured he would be at the worst someone like Anthony Fedorov. That was overoptimistic to say the least.

Idol might never again capture the magic of its fifth season, which had a variety of compelling personalities and major contenders representing different genres. But the producers of the show can certainly avoid making things harder on themselves by remembering that they are running a reality show first and foremost, and people need storylines to follow. "Will Melinda be phenomenal this week or merely very good?" ain't enough of a storyline.

I'll have a review/finals preview of sorts tomorrow.

I'm Usually Not This Smart This Quickly

Your humble blogger, yesterday: "My guess is that Donald Trump will make a public statement very soon that he's not interested in continuing the show--too busy, and all that, even though it's the #1 show on television. NBC will give him a face-saving way out."

The not quite as humble Donald Trump, today: he's not interested in continuing the show.

While I'm on this roll: Hard Spun in the Preakness tomorrow.

The Fall Of Jericho, et al: The 2007-08 TV Season Takes Shape

The biggest surprise as the networks took turns this week announcing their fall schedules was that Jericho didn't make it to a second season; this coming after decent reviews and pretty good ratings for last fall's episodes of the post-nuke melodrama.

Around this time last year, ABC announced that Lost would deal with the problem of weak ratings for repeats by eliminating them entirely (at least in the show's regular time slot), and breaking the season into 2 parts: a 6-episode run last fall, and then a 16-episode grouping starting with the February sweeps. Two freshman series with a heavily serialized element, Heroes and Jericho, adopted the same strategy, with Heroes actually having two midseason hiatuses. But the long breaks have probably been more damaging than keeping reruns on would have been; Heroes is as good as ever but ratings have been way off since the show returned 4 weeks ago, and Jericho didn't recover at all. My suspicion is that a lot of people are watching Heroes via DVR or on the NBC website, as it's in a very difficult timeslot opposite Dancing with the Stars and 24. But it also appears that Americans are simply getting less willing to put up with repeats every year, and the networks haven't yet found a way to deal with this massive change in habits.

Dealing with the networks one by one:

NBC: The Peacock Gang is booting first-run episodes of Law & Order:Criminal Intent to USA, with repeats to pop up on NBC, presumably Saturdays at 10. Regular Law & Order is back, hopefully with a couple of new actors (I'll leave it at that). Scrubs, which always seems to get a last-minute reprieve, is coming back for a likely last season. Friday Night Lights, as mentioned here last week, is back but has been moved to...Friday nights. I can't say I'm optimistic. Crossing Jordan has been canceled, meaning I guess I'll never watch an episode despite my going-on-two-decades-long Jill Hennessy fixation. As for The Apprentice, it didn't get mentioned, not even as a midseason replacement. My guess is that Donald Trump will make a public statement very soon that he's not interested in continuing the show--too busy, and all that, even though it's the #1 show on television. NBC will give him a face-saving way out.

New series includes one called Life, which will hopefully get a name change; and a revival of The Bionic Woman, of all things. How is it that 30 whole years after the whole bionic wave on TV, we still don't have actual bionic women and dudes in real life? American R&D has been asleep at the switch. While Heroes is cutting out the long hiatuses (hiati?), there's going to be a quasi-spinoff at some point called Heroes: Origins, which will present new characters in a sort of audition for the main show.

ABC: The most sitcom-weak of the networks is unloading the veterans The George Lopez Show and According to Jim; as well as The Knights of Prosperity, which I liked, apparently alone. 11 new series are on tap, headed by the Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice, with Kate Walsh's Addison character. I haven't talked to too many people who think this is a very good idea, and those who saw the grey's episode introducing the spinoff seem even less enthused. Producer Darren Star's Cashmere Mafia would seem to fit in well with the rest of ABC's lineup, and like most such soapy shows, will likely get more media attention than it deserves. A couple of comedies look potentially interesting: a show based on the Geico cavemen; and Miss/Guided, starring the reliably funny Judy Greer (coming at midseason).

CBS: The top-rated network isn't tinkering too much with success, although they aren't introducing any new shows whose titles are all initials. Two new series that might be interesting are Cane, which sounds a lot like Dynasty set in the Florida rum industry; and Viva Laughlin, a mystery set amongst Nevada casinos.

Personally, I was most interested in finding out that The Amazing Race isn't on the fall schedule, but is slated for "midseason." That usually means sometime in January or February, but it's possible we'll see the race before that, as it will be shot in the summer and should be fully edited in time to be rushed on the air if needed to fill a hole in the schedule. That's what happened with TAR 6 three years ago. There's also talk that the race might be run in the gap between seasons of Survivor, which would make some sense. However, I can't regard TAR being off the fall schedule as being a particular positive when it comes to the future of the show.

Fox: More than any other network, it seems Fox is highly dependent on a few shows. They really hope to launch one new series a year, but this season they chose to leave House where it was rather than using the post-American Idol slot to nurture something new. Only 'Til Death is coming back from the shows that debuted on Fox last fall. Give them credit, though: they seem to have an intriguing set of newbie shows onthe agenda, several of which are likely to debut in August so as to not have their momentum shot down by the baseball playoffs in October. Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton will team up (quite a Republican cast, that) in the sitcom Back to You. An old favorite of mine, Julianna Margulies, will play a defense attorney in Canterbury's Law. The Sarah Conner Chronicles is an extension of The Terminator; K-Ville is a look at contemporary New Orleans that will fill the Mondays at 9 slot pre-24; and Parker Posey is coming to TV in The Return of Jezebel James. I suppose I should also mention the American Idol spinoff about bands, which I think is a bad idea that has the potential to hurt AI in the process. I'm sure I'll watch, though. No Paula can only help.

CW: Veronica Mars didn't make it to a fourth season, killing off one of TV's most tenacious cults. They're going to have another season of that Pussycat Dolls show, and I'm not sure what that means for that girl who won the first season. I wonder if reality TVs weirdest judging panel will be back. Of the new series, it's inevitable that most of the attention will go to Gossip Girl, set among the world of rich Manhattan teens. Its producer is Josh Schwartz of The O.C., so expect another show with miniscule ratings and innumerable magazine covers.

That (Second) Championship Season

All the word-of-mouth paid off. Friday Night Lights has been picked up for a second season, and a full season's worth of 22 episodes at that.

Despite the nearly unanimous critical praise, the show hasn't truly caught on in any of its timeslots. But fans mobilized as far back as last fall to get it a better time--it's mostly avoided American Idol--and the cast has stayed active in a promotional role as well. I talked up the pilot to everyone who would listen, and a few weeks back my sister, not someone who has any special affinity for the world of high school football, thanked me for getting her into FNL. Hey, one at a time.

So they'll have to get Coach Taylor back in Dillon somehow, but the show has overcome bigger challenges just to be able to face this new one. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for repeats this summer, and for the Season 1 DVD. Some Emmy nominations wouldn't hurt either.

Lost: ABC Does The Smart Thing

The best thing that ever happened to the show Lost, other than being put on the ABC schedule in the first place, was the announcement this week that the show's producers and ABC have set a definite end date for the series: May of 2010, 3 seasons away.

I've talked about this before, but this is not at all the American way of doing television. It's expected that as long as a show is getting acceptable ratings and all the participants are willing, it's going to stay on the air. The problem, obviously, is that most series ae beginning to repeat themselves after a few seasons. This leads to situations such as MASH running three times as long as the war it was about, or the 13 year-old ER now having nearly shed all of its second generation of stars.

ER and Law & Order have proven relatively immune to aging because of the constant cast changes and because they are workplace dramas with an almost inexhaustible supply of potential plots (which is not to say neither show has ever repeated itself). ER is essentially a soap opera in all but name, and a good soap can run forever. But no series genre is hurt more by the demands of TV to keep the ball rollin' than the serialized mystery series. You cannot keep viewers on a string indefinitely--even with a series like The X-Files, which had great self-contained episodes and where the central mythology episodes were always a minority, people eventually lost interest because they  sensed they were being strung along. Twin Peaks had the opposite problem: we found out who killed Laura Palmer relatively early on, but they kept the show going anyway to diminishing returns. But the very reason shows like The X-Files resisted answering questions was that once you start doing that, you're inexorably moving towards the end of the series, and neither the producers nor Fox wanted it to end (the stars were another matter).

The decline in the ratings for Lost were dramatic enough that the producers could tell themselves that unless they began to take steps to tie up some threads, give some answers, and provide an obvious light at the end of the tunnel, the decision to end the series would be made for them--and so would end the chance to conclude the mystery on their own terms. Now that they know there are only 3 seasons left, plotting is made so much easier. Instead of saying, "Well, we know Character X to die exactly 30 episodes from the end of the series, but since we don't know when that will be we can't very well prepare for that yet," now they do know that answer.

With this set date for the show's end, fans can look for answers to begin outnumbering new mysteries before long, and possibly a bump in the ratings. Lost really has improved its quality during this second half of season 3, and I think there's reason to believe this will continue. The other half of the announcement regarding the 2010 end date was that Lost won't even try to run episodes in the fall as it did this year, meaning the final 3 seasons will be 16 episodes in length (this is the programming strategy that 24 pioneered a few years back). In other words, Lost has already run about 60% of the episodes it will ever run. There's not much more time for the introduction of new hatches or submarines or folks like Nikki and Paolo who were so bad that the other characters were making in-jokes about their irrelevance.

Now, on to our new project: convincing Fox that the 24 format is played out.

The Amazing Race: Stars To The End

Given the mostly inglorious history of reality show all-star seasons, my expectations for the current season on The Amazing Race were not high, even though the show's format makes the main drawback of the all-star genre, familiarity affecting the players' strategies, less of a risk. Even though TAR's bad recent luck in keeping their most interesting teams in the game for a while has continued this season (2 of the final 3 teams are among the more unappealing finalists in TAR history), it's been an enjoyable season for the most part. Now, ask me tomorrow at this time after the season has ended, and depending on who's won I may have a different answer.

The previous reputations that the different teams can in with have been a frequent topic of discussion, though this has faded as time has gone on and teams are now being judged based on how they've behaved on the current race. The only previous winners in the field were Uchenna and Joyce, but as happened on their TAR 7, they were overshadowed in the minds of the other racers by Rob and Amber. And the reality show lifers quickly proved that they weren't all just hype by winning the first 3 legs of this season, an unprecedented feat on the show. Clearly, South America agrees with them. But a combination of factors led to their stunning departure on the fourth leg: picking the wrong detour (though it wasn't as hard a task as all those teams made it look) and then waiting too long to switch to the other option; and then getting waylaid by a luck-based roadblock.

Rob and Amber winning every leg and then winning the race would have made it a unique season certainly--they never bothered me as much as they bother others. But their departure, and the fact that so many dominant teams from seasons past were left out of all-stars for various reasons, definitely opened up the competition. There aren't any of the Alpha male teams of buff young guys that have made up so many of the high-finishing teams in TAR history, but one half of one such team came back, and he's racing to the finish. Eric Sanchez of the TAR Eric/Jeremy beach bums team is teamed with Danielle, who he met and flirted with during that season. They're being billed as boyfriend and girlfriend, but man, it's really hard to see. Not only do they never seem affectionate, they don't even come across as people that have had anything to do each other prior to this race. As racers...meh. Eric is still pretty good, and Danielle is still a hood ornament. They haven't been near the front all that much, but they've overcome a non-elimination leg penalty and two yields, so there's some resiliency there.

Rob and Amber may have dominated the first part of the season, but the second part has been dominated by the beauty queens Dustin and Kandice. They may have been mostly unknown quantities to the other teams because their season was still airing when this current season was being filmed, but they've clearly proven themselves. I thought they did enough on TAR 10 to be considered the strongest 2-woman team ever on the show, and they've raced even better this season--less reliance on paying cabs to lead them places, and fewer silly errors to jeopardize them. As happened last season, they've become more resented the longer they've stayed in the race, though concrete reasons why this should be so are hard for me to come by. The producers of the show and the folks who do show promos for CBS are tending to paint them as vaguely sinister, or at the very least as phonies, but it's hard for me to see this as anything more than a sort of reverse snobbery. Dustin and Kandice are generally friendly, but don't allow personal feelings to interfere with their play, and that'sa quality that's increasingly in short supply in this game. I usually don't have rooting interests on reality shows, but I'd really like to see this pair win, both because they've been the best team season-long, and because they're by far the most appealing of the Final 3.

The third finalist team, certainly one of the more unlikely ever on the show, are the lunatic cousins Charla and Mirna. Charla was the focal point of the team in Season 5 due to her little person status, and because she did seem to be carrying the team most of the time while Mirna swooned a lot. But Mirna has really come into her own as a personality in all-stars. Her tendency to speak in a ridiculous accent to those she comes into contact with strikes me as incredibly patronizing, especially since she does this even when she's talking to someone who obviously speaks decent English. She also, at least once a show, makes a statement to the effect that she and Charla are the only team playing a moral game, only to be followed by an example of pettiness such as hogging the only 2 computers in a hotel lobby so another team can't access them for the purposes of getting airline information (which might be fair, but don't then pretend you're crystal clean). This pair is still getting the "fan's favorite" treatment, but that was only mildly true in Season 5, and I'm not sure anyone feels that way about them now.

What of the other eliminated teams? Longtime fans were thrilled at the prospect of seeing Kevin and drew from Season 1 again, but talk about "you can't go home again", or can't leave home again in this case. Drew was kvetching the whole time, suffering from alttitude sickness and what appeared to be a very bad back, and the guys looked old and slow next to the other teams. The first team out were former daters Jon Vito and Jill, whose new relationship might have been interesting to explore as the season went on. But they got the most lost on the way to the park in Ecuador, and that was that. The third team out was Team Kentucky from TAR 10, David and Mary, who had no business as all-stars (not that they were all that effective in their original season). Still under the impression that TAR is all about making alliances (and how predictable was it that they would first latch onto Charla and Mirna), they ended up last when Mary browbeat her husband into driving the wrong way for too way too long. Like Kevin and Drew, these alleged America's Sweethearts didn't seem nearly as fresh the second go-round.

Two teams that did come across as somewhat rehabilitated left fifth and sixth. Ian and Teri seemed a lot more mellow this time around--well, Ian did anyway, since Teri was always pretty mellow (though she does appear to have had a facelift since Season 3). Ian still had his Type A moments, but for the most part was likable and grateful for the second chance to run the race. Their departure came after the most extreme separation of teams we've seen on the race since Season 1. Mirna and Charla got such an early flight to Dar Es Salaam that only a highly suspicious "weather delay" kept them from finishing the leg on a separate day from any other team, an advantage that might not have lasted for the remainder of the race, but could have made the next few legs very anticlimactic. As it happened, the team that survived the mini-race to the finish with Ian and Teri, "Team Guido" Joe and Bill, began the next leg about 15 hours behind Mirna and Charla, and while they had their chances in the subsequent leg in Poland, it's safe to say that falling so far behind made their continuing survival a longshot. The irony is that it was Team Guido that spent the last few legs of Season 1 racing in a completely different time frame from the two lead teams, due to the sort of travel snafu that we had thought the Race had eliminated. Something about the Guidos, I guess...but this team, the oldest on the race, has mostly overcome its villainous reputation from the first season. They had run-ins with Eric, but they didn't try to physically bar moms from getting onto planes or anything like that.

Uchenna and Joyce meandered through the first half of the race in the same sort of low-drama way that they displayed in Season 7, though they were saved once by non-elimination before meeting their fates in Malaysia, victims of a too-tight connection in Frankfurt that put them a full day behind the others. Then, after a pair of non-elimination legs that sapped some momentum and gave us more moralizing on the subject of the Yield, Oswald and Danny were the last team out, this season as in their original Season 2 getting the axe one spot before the final leg. Team Cha Cha Cha hasn't changed much in 5 years: they're still among the more low-key competitors ever on the show, witty and polite to those they meet and to other racers, but possibly lacking a crucial element of flesh-eating zaniness when it comes down to the latter stages of the race. An example of their racing philosophy came in Zanzibar, when they stopped between tasks to buy some fruit. They weren't at any risk of being eliminated, but stopping when they did probably cost them first place in the leg. Nice guys who didn't finish first: and doesn't it often seem that way on TAR?

So who's going to win? There are a lot of times in the last TAR leg that two teams end up on the critical last flight back to the U.S., with one team left behind: that was the case in TAR 1, TAR 4, TAR 6, TAR 7, and TAR 10. It's rare that all 3 teams end at nearly the same time, with TAR 2 and TAR 3 being the exceptions. TAR 5 is unusual in that one team was alone on the earliest flight back to the U.S., and while Chip and Kim didn't win by much, that early flight was critical.

Given that the final 3 will only be racing for an hour, we can assume that the final flight back to the statres will originate from Guam, and given how lightly populated the island is, it stands to reason that all 3 teams will be on board. So this could be a close race at the end a la TAR 3. I think this is probably bad news for Charla and Mirna, whose only sustained period of running at the front of the pack this season came when they picked the right detour in Mozambique, and then got the break of getting the early flight to Dar Es Salaam. They're as bad doing tasks as any team ever in the Final 3 (it would be a close call between them as Lyn/Karlyn last season), and I doubt they will be able to stay in front of the other two teams.

Dustin and Kandice are excellent at doing tasks, but Eric and Danielle are no slouches either. If the "daters" end up winning, I would have to say that Danielle would have to be the most anonymous winner ever. Even though this is her second season racing, I can't say we've gotten to know much about her, let alone what she might be good at doing racewise. For me that tends to argue against that team winning....but since Dustin and Kandice are still getting a vaguely hostile portrayal, I also question if they can win. There's also the matter of the teasers for this week showing them angry at each other, which is a rare occurrence indeed. But they are the strongest team so it makes sense to predict that they will win...which would almost be too good to be true.

As has been mentioned a lot the last 2 seasons, TAR has never had an 2-woman team win, and after finally having one such team cross the finish line last season (Lyn and Karlyn), there's now a 2-in-3 chance of having female champions. And curiously, Mirna/Charla and Dustin/Kandice were the only 2-woman teams cast in All-Stars. If nothing else, the show has overcome the reign of Alpha males. We'll have to see how this impacts casting for TAR 12.