When I was 10, Street Cents, a teen consumer show on CBC, came to my hometown and filmed me for a segment on their show. I had a beef with Lego about how many girl characters they had ie. not very many.
Reality
There’s not much cook’n in the Cutthroat Kitchen
I love cooking competition shows. There is something irresistible about giving a group of talented chefs a stocked pantry, 20 minutes (or so) on the clock and (of course) some kind of fun twist. I love to watch their adrenalin kick their creativity into overdrive as they rush around the kitchen chopping veggies, cleaning fish and making sauces. Continue reading
Email Roundtable #35 – Survivor
We are currently 8 episodes into Season 27(!!!) of Survivor. This season, called Blood Vs. Water, includes returning players and their loved ones competing for the million bucks. The GAOTV gang thought we’d chat about the most recent episode, “Skin of My Teeth” and the season as a whole. Continue reading
Channel Surfing 2 – My Week in TV
What the heck is happening on Homeland?
I am a fickle and high maintenance beast when it comes to television shows, it seems. When something is exciting and new I am all over it but when it gets a little stale I almost immediately stop caring. I demand my entertainment to be ever entertaining and constantly shifting. I never want a show to become predictable comfort food. But, at the same time, I rarely want a show I have come to love to become something altogether different from what it was when that love-affair began. I want the shiny new boyfriend and the husband that cooks and cleans all at the same time. And so, I am in a really, really weird spot with Homeland. I’m not receiving anything exciting and new from the show and it also isn’t, fundamentally, the show that I used to love anymore. Continue reading
My Stories are Back!
Happy September everyone! Hope you all are enjoying the last warm glows of sunshine before the Canadian winter slips its cold fingers into your fleece onesie. September is a great month, no? It is the time for buckling down, falling into routines and squirreling away all those happy memories of summer. Also, it just happens to be the month where, one by one, old and new shows return to our TVs and PVRs. Now, while the promise of brand-spankin’ new TV has never did it for me, the return of my stories does warm the cockles of heart. So, in the spirit of the season, here are three short reviews of some of my favourite returning programs. Continue reading
Digging Up The Dog Pound: Paul Scheer Reenacts The Arsenio Hall Show
When I was a kid I remember staying up really, really late at night on the weekends, watching my little black and white TV in my bedroom. I’d watch anything that was on: movies, re-runs, late-night talk shows, things that I shouldn’t have been watching on a specific Canadian cable channel (you know the one) – everything with the sound turned down so low that I could just make it out but no one in the rest of the house could. It was a specific type of watching television – a guilty one – half delirious from a lack of sleep so that I was never quite sure if what I was watching was real or dreamt. I had exactly one vice in those days and TV was it. I’d sit there, or more accurately, lie there on my bedroom floor, propped up by pillows and covered with a blanket and just watch and watch and watch. I could afford to do it as a kid because, most likely, I didn’t have anything to do the next day until the TV watching started up again. Just having the TV on was soothing and addictive.
Too Much Reality: Why I Don’t Dig Fashion Star
I recently watched the first episode from Season 2 of Fashion Star as a homework assignment for this week’s round table. I thought it would be the perfect choice considering my love of Project Runway. Project Runway is one of my all time favorite reality shows and I will be comparing the two frequently in this post (that may be biased and unfair but I’m OK with that). Continue reading
Email Roundtable #19 – Reality TV Homework Challenge
Remember two weeks ago when I assigned us some homework? No? Well, I did. I asked us to find a reality show that was interesting/different so that we could attempt to discuss them. The assignment was entirely selfish but hopefully the shows below interest some of you too!
What is the name of the reality show you discovered?
Kerri: The Mind of a Chef
What is the show all about?
Kerri: It’s a bit of a cheat to pick a cooking show for this reality show challenge but hear me out: The Mind of a Chef is ostensibly a cooking show that aired on PBS in late 2012. Continue reading
Faux Reality – A Look at The Joe Schmo Show and Burning Love
The world of reality television is loaded with many shows that stretch the word “reality” to its very limits. But, what if you knew the show you were watching was staged?
The Joe Schmo Show is a “reality show” that is almost entirely staged and the audience is in on the ruse. A real person is cast as the “Joe” while all of the other contestants are actors. The show is meant to be ridiculous so as to always keep the “Joe” wondering if what they are seeing is real or fake. On this season of the show, the fake reality show that the producers have concocted is called The Full Bounty and is supposedly going to find the next great American bounty hunter. The premise is so insane and potentially grounds for so many lawsuits that you would have to be a bit nuts to buy it in the first place but no matter because television (more on that later). This season the show surrounds a guy named Chase who is clearly good-hearted but also isn’t above getting his hands dirty to do well on the show.
Hagglevision
By Raphael Saray
Much like million dollar game shows and faux documentaries before them the en vogue TV trend is that of shows based on haggling. Trying to get a bargain or barter a deal is a skill I lack. My negotiating technique amounts to saying “C’mon!?” while trying to look sympathetic. I will gladly pay retail to avoid a haggle. I do enjoy watching people do something that I struggle with be it Cirque de Soleil or shoelace tying.
The catalyst for the hagglevision movement would have to be Pawn Stars. The unlikely History Channel hit about the dealings (and I must add wheeling, but I really don’t know what one has to do with another…) and wheelings of a sprawling Las Vegas pawn-a-torium. The stars are the least likely people you’d see on the tube. It’s a family of chubby and snippy males along with a doe eyed and even chubbier family friend. Rick Harrison owns Gold and Silver Pawn with his dad, just called the old man, his son Corey and Corey’s slacker buddy, Chumlee. The appeal is that Rick, at least, is highly intelligent. Continue reading
The Golden Age of Television 