About Last Night: Top Chef Masters, Shear Genius, Ugly Betty, The Challenge, Channel Surfing

Last night on TV, Shear Genius ended, Top Chef Masters and The Challenge began, Ugly Betty almost ended, and Chooch needs Farmville friends.

Your first challenge is to turn that homely cow with braces into a gourmet popsicle.

The Challenge: VirginiaApple

The Challenge is back, and it’s time for our second batch of Fresh Meat! Because let’s face it, the Alumni are just getting “older and uglier” says Paula Walnuts, who incidentally is my favorite “batshit crazy but still sane enough to occasionally be funny on purpose” former Real Worlder. Sing it, sister. Oh, and apparently one of the female Alumni couldn’t get into the country? WTF?! They’re in CANADA! Is it that difficult to get into Canada? I want to know who, but damn TJ doesn’t say.

The first night at the house (which is fucking awesome, by the way, even by luxurious Challenge house standards) features lots of drunkenness, especially from the new kids. And as always at the beginning of a Challenge, more drunken hookups than you can shake a bottle of penicillin at.

The first challenge involved grabbing balls of a different variety, as the boys and girls alternated wandering around a mudpit blindfolded while their teammates yelled directions from the sidelines. There were fewer balls than teams, resulting in fewer teams each round, and the idea was to get the ball out of the pit and across the finish line. Kenny and his partner (can’t remember new names yet) end up winning, and choose Darrell (NOOOO… I love Darrell) and his partner to go into Exile. The rest of the teams vote Jillian (I know, I forgot about her too) and her partner in to go against them, apparently just because Wes said so. Independent thought has no place here, it was all used up in the Real World DC house.

Check out the full recap for all of the sordid details and to see who got EXILED!

Shear Genius: J-Mo

Last night was the finale of Season Three of Shear Genius. It’s been nine loooong weeks and an awful lot of boogery bitchery, but we’re finally down to the last challenge and it involves doing hair for a fashion show full of “rock’n'roll” clothes designed by a guy named Henry Duarte who looks like a chubby hamster in a Little Lord Fauntleroy wig. All of the clothes he makes are black and depressed and designed for meth addicts who never eat anything but Skittles and carpet lint. The stylestants have to do hair on SIX models, which is 50% more models than they had to do last year (and it’s 100% more annoying to hear Garofalo constantly saying how certain she is that she’s going to win the whole thing).

However, in a totally foreseen, I mean completely SHOCKING “surprise twist” the producers bring back TrannyLips, Brialien, ApRebel, AmyRexia, Fatty-Ma, and Arz-Oh to assist the three finalists. Boo on that, I think they should have changed shit up and brought back the FIRST people booted, which would have been fun to see Joey Spicoli (who?) and Jack-A-’Mo (what?) and 80 (eww!) having the chance to screw people’s hair up all over again. BrigABoost’s big advantage is she gets to pick her assistants first, and then decide what order the Tiresome Twosome get to pick theirs. There are surprising choices all around, and by “surprising” I really mean “stupid”.

As for the FINAL challenge, I can’t give away much except to say that BrigADeranged does something completely unexpected and new with plastic (and no, she doesn’t suffocate herself), Garofalo retreats to familiar frizzy territory and MattBian copies hairstyles from American Idol contestants. The winner is announced, confetti falls from the ceiling and there are tears all around. Gaymen. The recap will be up very soon, I promise…

Because Bravo just LOVES to see me up until 4am on weeknights, we were ALSO treated to the return of the Ugly Older Sister of Top Chef, known as Top Chef Masters, and boy have they changed things up! For one thing, Kelly Choi looks like she’s not getting any sleep, either, her under-eye-bags were big enough to hold Tom Colicchio’s ego. James Oseland looks like he might have stepped outside for a few minutes… and then headed straight for the spray-tan booth, Gael Greene’s had some work done (with a steam shovel and some epoxy) and Jay Raymer kept his Jesus Christ Fuggerstar hair and did not get those corn niblets stuck to his face removed yet, which means the FugTaser is still in full effect.

This time around we are starting out with Six Master Chefs who are forced to work in pairs (while cutting things with sharp knives) and they start off with one of my all-time-FAVORITE QuickFire challenges… I won’t tell you which one it was, but fans of the show know it spawned the Poopy Cheeto Erection. Even more awesome is the fact that the QuickFire judges are all members of some emo band I’ve never heard of, and all of them are sufficiently snotty to the point where the Masters are wishing they’d peed in the vichysoisse.

As for the Elimination Challenge, the same teams are stuck with each other and they have to cook a bunch of food for people that are on their first dates EVAH (wait till you see some of these couples, they must have advertised for this event on Craigslist… or Adult Friend Finder) and for once Kelly Choi is starting to show some personality (as well as wearing GIANT MUTANT FLOWERS in her hair that threaten to eat her neck). Food on a first date is kind of a waste anyhow, because the girls (or bottoms if it’s a gay date) aren’t ABOUT to actually EAT anything in front of a prospective mate, while the guys (and tops) are busy snarfing everything down and thinking they’ll need the energy for sex later (not realizing they’ll be back on X-Tube by 10:30 and shooting a frustrated load into the wastebasket or paper-shredder). The whole thing is just deliciously awkward from start to finish. Welcome back Top Chef Masters. Recap will ALSO be up as soon as Shear Genius’s finale is finished.

Ugly Betty: DearCrabby

The penultimate episode of Ugly Betty begins to wrap up the series nicely. Amanda has left Mode to become a stylist and actually has a client ” said client shows us his Tweety Bird tattoo at the end of the episode ” oh my God, it’s her dad and that storyline! Hilda gets married so now she’s a legal ho, and me guesses someone in the mafia paid for the wedding because Papi ain’t bringing home that kind of cash. Justin struggles with his gayness and Marc luckily foils a plot for the Suarez’s “Coming Out” party…Justin does that on his own during an improbable dance with Austin at the wedding.

But more importantly, I was right. The British publisher shows up to offer Betty a role running his new magazine that is sort of The New Yorker Junior ” catch is, it’s in London. GO! GO! GO! DUH! However, Henry calls revealing Betty’s tragic drunk dial ” could it be true love? Well, he brings his kid so it’s more like insta-family instead of insta-love, and they both realize their time has come and gone. Betty realizes her family is fine without her and decides to take the London job!

But wait, there’s more! If you watch now, you’ll see Willie and Claire getting into the Dynasty-like fight they promised us last week, and Tyler continues to drink. To the point where during a search of Willie’s apartment, he finds a gun. A mean drunk, he heads back to Mode and decides to turn the gun on someone other than himself. It appears he’s shot Willie, but given her face it was probably just her dress. Also horrifying? Daniel’s sudden interest in Betty. Dude, she’s like your sister. Gross!

Channel Surfing: Chooch

After a torturous evening of drama queen phone calls, thunderstorms that knocked out the satellite feeds, major networks deciding to grace us with another round of repeats & the cat throwing up a chipmunk on the desk, I managed to watch some interesting TV.

I’m not a Lifetime fan, but I accidentally stopped on “The Savages”, a new network movie. It caught my eye when old Mr. Savage wrote “prick” on the wall of the bathroom after being chastised for not flushing the toilet. It was written in his own brown shit! I guess Mr. Savage had a sugarmamam for a girlfriend & when she keeled over in the nail salon, her kids gave the freeloader the boot. His two kids had to come & get him and now it was up to them to take care of him. The old guy, turns out, was senile & poop art was the norm for him. You can see why it intrigued me. I hope to torture my children is much the same way someday.

“South Park” turns out to be another show I could totally relate too. This episode was all about the pressure that is FACEBOOK! When Kyle is forced to start his own FB account by his peers, he soon gets trapped in it’s grip, having to “poke” grandma & fertilize Stan’s farm. The stress of having to accept “friends” & who to ignore brings him to the brink of hell & Tron like entities won’t allow him to delete his profile. Sometimes Trey & Matt get it spot on right!

Speaking of Facebook, as I was waiting for my satellite feed to return, I decided to check my account & cook some food in Cafe’ World. To my amazement, on my wall, in CAPITAL LETTERS… is the winner of “Shear Genius”, proclaimed in the status of some one who shall remain nameless (J-Mo!). I will NOT spoil it for you here, as others have for me (J-Mo!) & let you read all about it in J-Mo’s recap. By the way, he scored an interview with the winner… awesome right?!

“Ugly Betty” is on it’s final swing, with one more episode left next week. Hildi has her wedding & Betty & Henry re-unite. What did she ever see in him & why did I think they were the perfect match? I couldn’t take my eyes off the huge blue vein in his forehead. It was like a worm making it’s way from his scalp to his eye… and he was sooooo skinny. As for Betty, she really doesn’t look all that different without the braces. I still love the show & all it’s bright colors and I’ll miss it when it’s gone. The big question is… will Daniel & Betty hook up? All the previews point to yes, so that means no… right?

That’s it for me & my night of TV. What did you all end up watching? Oh, & by the way, would you like to be my neighbor on “Farmville”?