About Last Night: Happy Town, Top Chef, The Challenge

Last night, the Chefs got closer to the Champions Round, The Challenge-rs fought more stupidly than usual, and Happy Town began it’s bloody reign of terror.

Happy Town: Slife Goes On

It’s best when watching a pilot to keep an open mind.  Luckily for ABC’s Happy Town, I went in with my mind wide open.  Led by an all-star cast, (Sam Neill, Steven Weber, Frances Conroy, M.C. Gainey) this less-than-stellar Twin Peaks wannabe focuses on the eccentric townsfolk of a small hamlet, beset by mystery, magic, and murder.  The story is derivative, the tension is overwrought, and the writing is atrocious, but my snickers of disdain eventually gave way to a genuinely piqued curiosity.  By the end of it, I was transfixed, mesmerized by ABC’s ability to pull an intriguing and mysterious drama out of its mid-season bag of tricks.  Damnit!  How do I keep getting hooked on these shows?!

The premise of Happy Town treads dangerously close on familiar territory, borrowing heavily from such shows as Picket Fences, American Gothic, and Harper’s Island, to name a few.  Henley Boone moves to the quaint town of Haplin, Minnesota, aka Happy Town, just as a grisly murder breaks the town’s five-year stretch of being crime free.  Deputy Tommy Conroy and his father, the Sheriff, try to maintain order as the murder sends shockwaves through the town’s residents, conjuring up memories of a series of unsolved kidnappings by an elusive figure known only as “The Magic Man.”

The show aims for a moody atmosphere to rival The X-Files, but barely passes muster with The Vampire Diaries.  Everything is rendered ominous: The full moon!  Shadows!  A crow!  Rain!  Even Haplin’s bread-winner, quite literally a bread factory which sits atop the town, is meant to come across as sinister.  The show picks up steam, however, when Henley discovers a recurring symbol of a question mark with a halo over it, and is forbidden from exploring the third floor of the boarding house where she resides.  But it is Sam Neill who is the show’s secret weapon.  As mysterious memorabilia shop owner, Merritt Grieves, he ignites every scene with such fear and ferocity, it is impossible to know what exactly he is hiding.  He alone gives Happy Town its credibility, and it is on his shoulders that the show has any hope of scaring up an audience.

Top Chef Masters: J-Mo

On last night’s episode of Top Chef Masters, we’re back to seeing brand new chefs competing for the LAST TWO SPOTS in the Champion’s Round!  Tonight’s group is one of the most diverse yet, we have a frantic blonde, a born-again scrapbooker, a self-taught shrinking hormonalist, a lesbiana duck and a shoeless ninja.  The QuickFire Challenge tonight was all about creating a fruit plate, or Who Can Make Figs Look The Most Like You’re About To Eat Severed Testicles.  Yummy.  And ballsy!  In another shocking move, the challenge this time just HAPPENS to be one of those “High Stakes QuickFires” and the prize for winning it is pretty damned sweet.  And some body get piss off bout it.  You guess who.  I wait.
 
As for the Elimination Challenge, it was another Luby’s Cafeteria Food Battleâ„¢, with the Masters making lunch for the entire cast and crew of the TV series “Modern Family” which is quite groundbreaking because they have a gay character on the show.  AND HE’S FAT!!!  Thank you, ABC, for finally putting one of MY people on TV for a change and reminding people that we don’t all look like Kurt from Glee.  Even if most of us would kill to be able to do so.  Anyhow, Eric Stonestreet who plays Fat Gay Dad isn’t gay in real life, but he’s kinda bitchy like one, and it looks like he does a pretty good job of annoying his castmates.  Also, that chubby little Latin boy who plays… ummmm… the chubby little Latin boy on the show looks like his tummy died and went to heaven with all the food being thrown at them.  I get that same kind of joyous smile whenever a Dairy Queen commercial comes on TV.  Blizzards!  Brrrrrr!  Chillovin’ it!
 
In the end, there are some pretty rude backhanded compliments being casually tossed about, which I love… and then Bravo actually totally fucking blew their own results by showing a preview of next week’s show that COMPLETELY gave away who wins this episode about 20 minutes before the actual announcement was made, which I hate.  Dumbasses.
 
Also, just want to make my apologies for the inebriated oversexed recapping of last week’s episode, I guess I kinda went overboard on the beejays, so, my bad, I promise a sober recap this week.  Or at least I’ll be just toked up this time, not drunk.  Love,  J-Mo 

The Challenge: VirginiaApple

Well, this week’s episode started off with a fight that made EVEN LESS sense than your standard Challenge argument, but everyone yelled at Danny and Wes damn near got a concussion, so who gives a flying fuck about a silly little thing like logic?  Also, Wes rode Brandon like a baby koala.  Unfortunately, those dumbass bitches all hugged it out.
 
The Challenge involved swimming from a platform to a slippery wall that the challengers had to climb.  Surprisingly, all but one team completed it for a change, and they were all relatively close in time too.  Luckily for us, Katelynn and Brandon (well, Katelynn) failed in hilarious fashion.  She also wound up injured, causing the other teams to vote them into Exile against CJ and Sydney.
 
Our resident star-crossed lovers, Wes and Theresa, were on the outs after the revelation that she had dared to find Kenny attractive.  Ryan and Mandi attempted to play Cupid (figuratively, not literally, which is unfortunate because I would love to see Ryan wear a diaper and shoot Wes in the ass with an arrow), and apparently they were successful.  Also, Landon may secretly be forming a Rebel Army to take down the leaders of the almighty Allied Forces!