About Last Night: Wednesday

Mini caps of Live to Dance, V, Millionaire Matchmaker, and Biggest Loser

Live to Dance: PottyMouth

Last night Paula Abdul’s new show, Live to Dance, made its debut. Over the course of the two hours it was on it became increasingly clear to me that many people who live to dance would be killed if they had to dance to live. In fact, I think that’s a much better idea for a dance competition!

Paula is joined by “dance experts” Kimberly Wyatt and Travis Payne. I’m still trying to understand how being a member of the Pussycat Dolls qualifies someone as being a dance expert. Travis has better credentials having worked with Michael Jackson. Did I mention he worked with Michael Jackson? Michael Jackson.

My biggest issue with this show is the level of the dancing itself. After several years of watching really amazing dancing on shows like So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Best Dance Crew, I’d expect a better crop of hopefuls. The mediocrity here was astounding. And no, you don’t get a pass just because you’re a cute little kid.

Come back for the full recap and we’ll discuss the cavity Paula gave me in the first half hour, cheesy hosts, and what it takes to get on the short bus. Hope to see you there!

V: Saint Claire of Assisi

The sky is red!  Nooooooo!

Wait, sorry, this is the recap for the second season of V.  Welcome.

Anyway, yes, last season ended with the alien queen Anna unleashing a mysterious substance from her mothership that turned all of Earth’s atmosphere an opaque red. 

So: Noooooooo!  I  think.  We don’t know what it is yet. 

Season two begins four days after the end of season one.  The sky is still red.  The Visitors have ceased all communication.  Everyone on Earth is clueless as to what’s going on.  While everyone sits in suspense, a few of the show’s other plots move along.  Val is dead.  Ryan’s half-human, half-alien baby is being held prisoner aboard the Visitor mothership for research, and he gets banished back to Earth—Anna plans to use his baby as leverage to get him to destroy the Fifth Column.  Anna is also dealing with the consequences from her emotional outburst over losing her soldier-eggs, as her ship captains all question her temperament.  She gathers them together to reassure them, but also to murder one of them with her previously unseen, sharp-tipped lizard tail to make an example out of him.

Now, on to the Red Sky plotline…the Red Sky has begun to unleash, well, Red Rain onto Earth, and people freak out.  Tyler gets injured during the chaos, allowing Erica access to the mothership—which is nice, because she and her FBI coworkers have been trying to figure out a way to contact Anna for some answers.  Erica finally runs into Anna and presses her for information, and Anna tells her that Red Sky is yet another gift to the humans…it’s basically going to reverse all the ecological devastation we’ve caused on Earth. 

Which everyone watching this show knows, even if they’ve never seen a single episode before, is pure bullshit.  Lisa warns Erica that one human scientist, a college professor named Ellis Watts, is close to figuring out what Red Sky really is, and sure enough, the V’s want to liquidate him.  Erica returns to Earth, gathers the other resistance fighters, and sets out to rescue the good scientist.  They first find a grad assistant of his named Sidney Miller and in the nick of time rescue him from assassination by a Visitor Seeker.

Turns out Dr. Watts wasn’t actually the one the V’s wanted; Miller was.  A while ago, Miller was on an archaeological dig in New Mexico when he found what turned out to be a Visitor skeleton—remember, this was before the V’s made their presence known to Earth, so the appearance of a weird, humanoid reptilian skeleton out in the desert was pretty noteworthy to Dr. Miller. (But not so noteworthy that he alerted the world to it.  I guess he wanted the research grants all to himself).

His research told him that the skeleton contains high amounts of phosphorous.  When Red Sky appeared, analysis produced…high levels of phosphorous, in compounds similar to what’s inside Alpha.  This lets Erica put the Red Rain plan together…the V’s are saturating humanity with humans so they can breed with them.   This would fit with Anna’s obsession over Ryan’s human-V baby.  Bada bing, bada boom, mystery solved.  But this is potentially even more worrisome to Erica, because it dredges up an old memory.  Long ago, doctors found abnormally high levels of phosphorous in her blood but had no idea why.  Does that incident tie in with what’s happening now?  Does it mean Tyler has high levels of phosphorous in HIS blood?  Only time and more episodes will tell.

A few other things happen in the season premier…Chad Decker, (the Scott Wolf character), switches sides and joins the Fifth Column.  Anna continues to worry about her previous emotional outburst and gets advice from a surprising source.  And I forgot this:  When Erica left the mothership to find Dr. Watts, Tyler stayed behind to heal, and Anna ordered Lisa to have sex with him while she watched.  I don’t know why.  It’s probably part of the V’s trying to figure out if they can reproduce with humans or not.  We’ll see.  

But you should come back Friday for the full recap, plus a surprise for you V fans out there.  Not a nefarious surprise like something the V’s would concoct.  A GOOD surprise.  Bonus material!

Biggest Loser: Bluzgirl

The 11th season of Biggest Loser started last night! They’ve decided to go back to couples and forget that whole “pay it forward” crap and added some new twists. We all know it is Jillian’s last season, so we know she’ll do some of her finest spitting and yelling this time around. There are two new mystery trainers and even after last night’s premiere are STILL a mystery. I think that is going to be one big letdown—I’m probably not going to know who the hell they are anyway, so what’s up with all the creepy silhouettes and manufactured drama? Oh, that’s right–it is Biggest Loser and there is always drama. There are 11 teams and the first challenge of the season reveals five of the teams will train in an unknown location with the unknown trainers and the other 6 teams will stay with Bob and Jillian. And to add to that–the teams venturing into the scary unknown also receive 4 weeks of immunity. Who would be stupid enough to turn that down? Oh, I know—the Aqua team for one. As it turns out, the five teams that choose immunity and the new trainers are never seen again…Well, at least not for more than 30 seconds last night. Which makes it a lot easier to meet the other teams.

We have the aforementioned Aqua team, which consists of Courtney and her Mother, Marci. Courtney lost 100lbs just to be on this show. She’s an early favorite. the Green team consists of Jay and his daughter, Jennifer. The Purple team is sisters Hannah (an opera singer) and Olivia (of the bad hair bangs). The Orange team is Ana and daughter, Irene. The Black team are identical twin brother cops, Dan and Don and last, but certainly not least is the Blue team. The Blue team is Jesse (father) and son, Arthur. Arthur is the most obese man ever on campus. His goal is not to be one of those people who have to be cut out of their house. My goal is to never sit next to him on an airplane. These are the only teams who will be competing against each other and the dreaded yellow line. First yellow line victims: the Orange team. And as most parents do on this show, they fall on the sword to let their kid stay, so good-bye Ana. More details to come…

Millionaire Matchmaker: SexyPanda

WOW. Wow, wow, WOW!!!

I have never laughed so hard at an episode of Millionaire Matchmaker before. Have you? I mean, this was incredible. This was an acrobatic feat of hot mess disasterness, and I loved every trashy second of it.

The boring millionaire of the night is John Bonjohnny or whatever (just jokes, people!), a 40-something guy who hasn’t settled yet and earns the “commitmentphobe” branding from Patti. But on the show he makes a good match, has a cute date, and I feel hopeful for John-John.

Our beautiful disaster is Robin, a millionairess who shoves the great guy who’s a good match out of the way in favor of a moderately attractive man who shares absolutely nothing in common. (Robin has dogs. Good Match loves dogs. Moderately Attractive Jerk jokes about throwing dogs.) She’s drunk, she’s dressed poorly, her makeup was applied with a trowel, and her date (Moderately Attractive Jerk) mocks her at every turn. I actually averted my eyes more than once, it was so embarrassing to watch. BUT, it was damn hysterical, too. I’m still giggling.

Come back, I’ll tenderly navigate the plot with fat jokes and stereotypes about attractive men!