Showing posts with label Bravo TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bravo TV. Show all posts

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Bravo's Sheer Genius Sheer Weirdness

Last night I was in the mood for doing nothing. So, I popped a bowl of popcorn, turned on the TV and found it already on the Bravo channel, due to having watched Flipping Out the night before. Sheer Genius was already a few minutes into the show. About hair cutters. This can not be at all entertaining I thought. I was wrong.

My local disinformation purveyor, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has made mention multiple times of 2 local guys being on this show. One, named Matthew, from Dallas, one named Daniel, according to the Star-Telegram, from Fort Worth, but according to Bravo, from Dallas.

Of course, it may be possible that Daniel is from Fort Worth. When I'm on a road trip, or back in the northwest, I say I'm from Dallas, because few people know where Fort Worth is. It's like when I lived in the northwest and I was on a road trip, when asked where I was from, I'd say Seattle, because no one would know of my actual hometown of Mount Vernon. When people here, in Texas, ask where I'm from, I usually say Seattle.

Sheer Genius is similar in format to another Bravo show, Top Chef. Instead of a Quick Fire, Sheer Genius does a Quick Cut. Whoever wins the Quick Cut gets an advantage in the Elimination Challenge.

The first episode of Sheer Genius last night was a re-run of last week's show. In that re-run, the guy the Star-Telegram thinks is from Fort Worth was over the top stereotypical not a guy who likes girls. He went all emotional when he realized their challenge was to do the hair of people on another Bravo show, The Real Housewives of Orange County. Apparently Daniel was a rabid fan of this housewife show. I've not seen it. Most of the haircutters had.

Later in the show, or was it the next hour, Daniel said he got so excited over the OC women, that he wet himself. If such a thing happened to me, which it wouldn't, I would not be telling a TV camera about it. He also let it be known that when a person on the OC show got married, that he had a wedding party, where the guests came dressed for a wedding and celebrated. Another Sheer Genius person, a girl, said if she'd did something that embarrassingly weird she wouldn't be telling people about it.

At the Elimination part of this episode, Daniel had an emotional crying breakdown upset and collapse to the floor at one point during the booting process. The proceedings had to come to a halt while ex-Charlie's Angel, Jacyln Smith inquired if Daniel was all right. By the way, Jacyln Smith has held up really well. She looked like she could easily still be an Angel.

The other Texas guy, Matthew, won the Quick Cut in the second episode. This upset the others, because they did not like him. Apparently Matthew is quite socially inept, grating and constantly bitching and saying things that are offputting or make no sense. I thought, welcome to Texas.

Matthew's advantage in winning was he got to pick the first dress in that episode's Elimination Challenge. And then pick who got to pick next. And on til all the dresses were gone. The dresses went on models on whom the hair cutters had to make their hair red carpet worthy. Whatever that means.

Matthew over and over and over again mentioned his wife. How much he loved her, and she him, how he missed her, how he didn't need to relate to these juvenile fellow hair cutters, because he has a wife back home. When he picked his dress he said something like I'm picking one for my wife, to which the Germanic Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes in a supermodel's body type guy, named Rene Fris, said "Your wife's not here." It seemed like everyone was sick of hearing about this Matthew guy's wife.

I thought all the wife talk was typical reality show editing, foreshadowing that Matthew would get the boot. But he has immunity, I thought, because he won that Quick Cut Challenge. That's how it works on Top Chef.

So, Daniel, the other Texas guy, was all worried that he'd wet himself again, because he was sure that since this was a red carpet thing, there'd be a celebrity there. There wasn't. At one point, Daniel excitedly said this was just way too much excitement for a Texas boy, seeing all these famous people.

We see the haircutters work on their red carpet girls, then the girls go down the red carpet in front of the judges, including someone I've never heard of from some soap opera I've never heard of. But Daniel from Texas had. He was so excited.

And then the judging occurred. I thought Matthew was safe from getting booted, but no, you are safe from the next week's boot if you win the previous week's elimination. So, Matthew was in the bottom three and got the boot due to not listening to his model tell him that her hair would not hold a curl, so his red carpet hair was a disaster.

Matthew did not mind getting the boot. Once more he told everyone how happy he was to be going home to his wonderful wife and friends in Texas. We cut to another hair cutter who said something like, "That damn wife of his must be one wild cat in bed."

I likely will not be watching this next week. I will watch Bravo again tonight, unless I forget, to watch Kathy Griffin's Life on the D-List. She's funny.

One of the judges on Sheer Genius is some, apparently, well known hair guy I've never heard of named Kim Vo. He is one odd looking guy. Constantly with a really goofy grin. Below is a video of this Kim Vo guy getting interviewed after he'd been in Britney Spear's house fixing her hair.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Flipping Out on Bravo

I've got a new favorite TV Show. Flipping Out on Bravo. I'd seen bits and pieces of this show last season and found it annoying. I've watched several episodes this season and find it amusing.

A good reality show is so much better than scripted TV. No one has the imagination to make up the lives some people lead. Or like the recent rescue in Columbia of all those hostages held for so long by the FARC rebels. That reality show played out like a tightly scripted, implausible Hollywood movie, with a very happy ending.

On Flipping Out you've got this guy, Jeff Lewis, with a bad case of OCD, which makes him obsess about the oddest of things. And he can say the most blunt, rude of remarks, caused, by his own admission, by his lacking of an empathy gene. He is in therapy, sees a therapist, a spiritualist and a psychic.

Yes, it is obvious this show is set in Southern California.

Flipping Out is so named because Jeff Lewis flips houses, has done about 50 flips and has a reputation for doing a brilliant job. Part of what is entertaining is seeing the transformations take place.

Jeff Lewis has several pets that he obsesses over. Three mutt dogs, one fat cat and, temporarily, 3 deer. The fat cat is a handful. Jeff Lewis had a psychic examine the cat so as to best determine how to make the move to a new house the least traumatic. One time the cat got acupuncture.

Jeff Lewis does not do any of life's mundane chores himself. He has a guy named Chris who is his house manager. Chris Elwood, the House Manager, has an assistant, also named Chris, as in Chris Keslar.

To my shock, I learned last night that Chris, the House Manager, is married to Lewis' Executive Assistant, Jenni Pulos. They are married, but don't share last names. I learned last night that the married couple rents a bungalow from Jeff Lewis. Jeff and Jenni dropped in to inspect the property. On the way there, Jeff had to slam the brakes, slightly. He reached out across Jenni's chest, which caused her to scream, "Get your hands off my boobs." He explained he was acting as a seatbelt backup. She then admitted her big boobs were hard to not touch, accidentally, in such a scenario, due to their size.

Regarding the mutt dogs, Jeff Lewis found a place that tested your dogs DNA to determine its breed mix. So, all his "people" worked with him to figure out the self-test. The results came back. One little mutt's supposed DNA indicated it was a Chihuahua/Poodle mix. Another one was a Cocker Spaniel/Doberman mix. This seemed ridiculous to Lewis, because the dogs bore no resemblance to those breeds. Lewis decided he'd been scammed. And at $200 per dog, he thought maybe he should get into the DNA Dog Test Scam.

The best drama of the night came about after Jeff's OCD Paranoia caused him to put a spy cam in his house. He was sure his House workers were taking advantage of him. As Jeff and Jenni drove along he had someone call his house. His people are instructed to answer in a precise manner, instead Jenni's husband answered and said "Bon Jour, Chez Lewis," or something like that.

Later, Jeff confronted Chris, who denied, vehemently his egregious breaking of the phone answering rules. Later Jeff saw that he had proof Chris had lied, when Jeff played back the day's spying.

In subsequent days, Jeff caught Chris on Jeff's computer for hours. Employees are banned from Jeff's computer, except for Jenni. Jeff caught Chris spending a lot of time text messaging. But the worst offense was Chris was caught going through Jeff's personal papers.

Next week's episode appears to deal with Jeff dealing with Chris' bad behavior. I'm sure much hilarity will ensue.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Texas Under Represented on Reality Shows

Only a few days left in the month and the likely cancellation of my subscription to Fort Worth's #1 newspaper. I don't know what I'll do without it, it's like a gift that keeps on giving.

Today, in the first paragraph of an article titled "Area stylists on 'Shear Genius' cut to the chase for us" the Star-Telegram's TV writer, Robert Philpot, had this to say about a Bravo Reality Show about hairdressers, called Shear Genius.

"Reality TV's love affair with North Texas gets truly snippy tonight as Dallas area hairstylists Daniel Lewis and Matthew Tully are among the contestants on season two of Shear Genius, Bravo's haircutting competition."

Now, I'm thinking the above is just yet one more example of how the Star-Telegram repeats nonsense without questioning its premise. Like how over and over again the Star-Telegram trumpeted that a sporting goods store, being built in Fort Worth, would be the biggest tourist attraction in Texas. Or when the Star-Telegram over and over and over again trumpeted a lame little food court called the Sante Fe Market as being the first public market in Texas and being modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market.

So, let's look at the Star-Telegram's bizarre premise that Reality TV has a love affair with Texas. First off there are almost 30 million Texans. There are about 300 million Americans. So, Texas makes up about 10% of America's population.

So, all things being proportional, Texans should make up about 10% of the people on Reality Shows.

Do Texans make up 10% of the people on Reality Shows? I don't think so. Anymore than Cabela's is the top tourist attraction in Texas or the now closed Sante Fe Rail Market ever in the slightest resembled either a public market or Pike Place Market.

I would say Texas is being under-represented. Maybe that's why the Star-Telegram makes such a big whoop-de-doo whenever anyone on any show has any remote connection to Fort Worth, North Texas or Texas.

On the main TV page Philpot repeats his obsession, again, in a blurb about Shear Genius, saying "North Texas is represented by Frisco's Daniel Lewis and Dallas' Matthew Tully." In case we missed it the first time we got this important information.

And then in another blurb, this one about Farmer Wants a Wife, we learn that "Texas Christian University grad Brooke Ward has made it to the final two...."

Like I mentioned yesterday, in response to an emailer who suggested this was indicative of a small town mentality. Yes, it is. You New Yorkers ever read this type verbiage in the Times? Seattleites? Ever see this type stuff in the P-I? Los Angelenos, ever see it in the LA Times? Chicagoites, ever in the Tribune? San Fransicsans, ever in the Chronicle? Portlanders, ever in the Oregonian? Anyone, anywhere?

Oh yeah, I can see the LA Times having a lead paragraph read "Reality TV's love affair with Southern California gets truly snippy tonight...."