Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
So, last week I just got lucky with The Amazing Race. This week, a team I liked, or, at the very least, didn't hate, got eliminated. The problem is that there are so many teams out there I despise this season that I'm far less comfortable losing a team I like than I otherwise would be in a perfect world.
It might not entirely be their fault, I may hate them due to their similarities to one of my least favorite teams from the past, but Shana and Jennifer (the blondes) have to go. One of them, in discussing how hard the show is, actually listed her not being able to get a facial as a big problem. Do you think she is remotely aware of how utterly obnoxious she sounds?
Maybe I'm being too harsh, maybe the blonde actually is just smart enough to realize that the only thing she has going for her in this world are her looks, she has neither brains, nor wit, nor a good personality. Maybe she recognizes that without her daily facial the one good thing she has (not that I think she is anything special in the looks department) becomes mediocre. Maybe, just maybe, rather than disliking her I should pity her. Maybe I will pity her, but I want to do it from afar, you know, with only her memory to plague me every week. Maybe come next week that dream will become a reality. Fingers crossed, people, fingers crossed.
Curb Your Enthusiasm last night also offered a dream versus reality dynamic. The end of the episode (and end of the season) featured several shots of Larry doing things with Loretta Black (his houseguest) and her family. In these scenes Larry and Loretta were romantically involved. What is not clear though is whether Larry was just dreaming about what his life would be like if he lived with Loretta, or if Larry and Loretta actually became romantically involved.
I'm actually feeling so good right now that I'm in no way going to complain about last night's Desperate Housewives. I quite liked the episode. Mike being on drugs is a little silly, but the Bree storyline was fantastic. I can understand her desire to have her child circumcised and Orson's not wanting it to happen. His reasons were a little silly, but it is something that people feel strongly about.
The best part of the storyline came when Bree went to a doctor's office to have the procedure performed and found out that Orson had faxed a notarized letter to every doctor in three states to prevent the circumcision from happening. That's just the sort of over the top wonderfulness the show needs. That, and the sort of over the top wonderfulness that has Bree attend a Bris in order to have a Mohel perform the procedure. Story arcs like these, ones that take a real set of feelings and emotions and magnify them to insanity, are what made Desperate Housewives great in its first season, and something that has been lacking every since. Attempts to do this sort of thing were made in seasons two and three, but never quite worked. Kudos to the show for getting back on track. Sadly they only did so in time for a writer's strike to derail everything.
