The Amazing Race is of course the news I’m looking at here. The All-Stars season didn’t completely kill the show, but it didn’t do it any favors either. The Amazing Race has been renewed, so it will be coming back for a 12th season, but for the first time in years it’s not on the fall schedule. Instead it’s being held back for the dreaded “midseason”, which could mean that CBS is losing faith in our little Race. Or it could mean that they’re just holding it back until the inevitable happens and one of the new fall shows gets cancelled, then they’re be able to drop TAR right into the waiting slot. Whatever. At least it’s coming back, but not in September.

How I Met Your Mother is back. It was kind of a close call, since that was a bubble show right until the last minute. It’s the best laugh-track sitcom out there, though, so it’s good to see they’re keeping it around.

Jericho and The Class are cancelled. We stopped watching Jericho long ago, but my wife will be sad to hear about The Class.

And of course Survivor is back, this time at a lake in China.

Out of the new shows, only Moonlight stands out. A vampire private investigator? Hmmm, that sounds familiar for some reason. It might be worth a look. But Jimmy Smits as a sugar cane patriarch? Kids forming a new society in a New Mexico ghost town? The swinging 70s? I’m thinking I’ll take a pass.

I’m also thinking The Amazing Race will be back sooner than we think.

On Survivor first it was a very good week, with Lisi getting booted, but then it was a bad week with Michelle going next. I’m sending all my thought waves for Earl and Yau Man to be in the final two, but it’s getting harder to see it happen.

On The Apprentice I got to witness the impossible, Frank making the final four! Over Heidi! You know, Frank is my Sanjaya. Everything about him is repugnant, and he’s a five-year old trapped in an old guy body, but I so desperately want him to win and I don’t even know why. And to watch Arrow triumph over Kinetic? It’s so wrong but it feels so right. These are not the people I should be rooting for, but I find myself doing it week after week. I’m pulling for my boy Frank to win it all.

But on The Amazing Race, quite the opposite has been happening. The two shows while I was away saw the elimination of both the Guidos and Uchenna and Joyce, leaving us with a very grim final four indeed. Danny and Oswald are the only shining lights left, and I’ve wanted them to win from the beginning, so I’m still rooting for them to pull through. But I was hoping that as we got near the end there would be two or three other teams that I could also root for, kind of as a fallback in case the unthinkable happens. But right now I just want all six of the other contestants to be eaten by sharks. Seriously. They cast some dud teams for this All-Stars, and somehow most of them are still around at the end.

Oh, and there’s so much more on my TiVo that’s still crying out to be watched. House. Scrubs. How I Met Your Mother. Ugly Betty. There are only so many hours in the day, people.

But Rocky? None of that. Disgusting through and through, like to his core. Whether it was the way he bullied everyone on his tribe, bitched and yelled all over camp, systematically got rid of all the women just because they were women, or the hour-long gay bashing fest we got last week in his treatment of Anthony. Rocky had no good side. He was rotten, and now he and his little rat face are gone. Unfortunately he’s on the jury, so he’s not really gone from the game, and we’ve got to put up with weeks and weeks of eye-rolling from him during tribal council. Not something I’m looking forward to.

I was actually rooting for Lisi this week, is how bad I wanted Rocky gone. That’s how bad it was. “No, don’t vote for Lisi,” I actually said. Out loud.

In other, more cheery news, the only thing making this season of Survivor watchable is Yau Man. His little happy dance when he found the immunity idol was the best thing that’s been on Survivor in years. I want him and Earl to go all the way to the final two, but I know this show doesn’t work like that. I’ve seen the show too many times to expect anything good like that to happen. Alex and Edgardo are going to steamroll over those two, sooner or later, and the last few weeks of the season are going to suck like they always do. Such is the pain of watching Survivor.

Anyway, the other big news in last week’s episode was that the Race Wars are over and everyone got “integrated” into two tribes. Wow, they let their big gimmick last all the way until the third episode…they really are slipping. Last year when they underwhelmed us with the “big twist” of young men/old women, they stopped it five minutes into the second episode, just when it was in danger of getting interesting. This year they let the Race Wars get even closer to the point where it would have been compelling TV. Luckily for us, they orchestrated one of the most Rube-Goldbergesque merges ever, and quickly got us back to the same old boring two-tribe game we all know. Thank goodness, we wouldn’t want Survivor to start getting interesting, would we?

Only two hours until the new episode!

Episode Links:
Miss Alli’s recap
Trevor’s review at RFF
TV Guide review
Watch the episode on InnerTube
Download the episode with BitTorrent

Other links:
Trevor’s review at RFF
Miss Alli’s recap
TV Guide review
Zap2It review
Watch the episode on InnerTube
Download the episode with BitTorrent

And of course this season has the added dimension of The Gimmick, as so many seasons do. This year they’ve brought us Survivor: Race Wars, where the teams are separated by race. This gimmick led us first to cringing, then to head-shaking, and then to shrugging it off, because all it really proves is that they’ve run out of real ideas and are starting to do things because they’re “shocking” rather than having a reason. And they were probably hoping to get a boost in the ratings because of all the controversy, but that seems to have backfired on them.

Jeff Probst calls it a “social experiment”, which I don’t think is quite what he meant to say. If it was really a social experiment then they’d be asking some questions that I don’t really think they want to ask, like Who Fights More When They Get In A Group: Blacks or Whites? And Who Can Drink Contaminated Water Without Getting A Bowel Obstruction? Which, I think the Asians have already lost that one. Probably the most intriguing social experiment that came out of this whole thing was the one that regrettably happened off-camera. How did these contestants react when they were first told about The Gimmick? Did they get angry? Were they offended? Did they laugh it off? That’s the only real social experiment here, showing how people react when they’re singled out and separated because of their race. And it’s not shown on camera. When the show starts, the tribes have aready been assigned. So there’s an opportunity wasted. Plus, how long do you think this gimmick is going to last before they shuffle up the tribes? Two episodes? Three? Last season they were so proud of their “Old Women” vs “Young Men” dynamic, but then they wiped it all away just a few minutes into the second episode. So, I’m not counting on this “Race Wars” to last long.

Besides, the only racism I saw during this show was the editors’ insistence on showing so much of white girls Parvati and Candice, when Cecilia is clearly the hottest woman on the island. I mean, come on. Can’t the Latinas get any love?

Other thoughts:
* It’s pretty funny when the African-American team comes out and says, “Yes, black people do swim. Yes, black people do know how to get on a boat and paddle.” Then they immediately proceed to lose a challenge that involves what? Swimming and paddling. It’s ironic stuff like that that you can’t make up, and that the editors are so great at highlighting.
* I didn’t figure out the pronounciation of “Cao Boi” until I heard it out loud. Somehow I don’t think he was born with that name.
* Poor Brad. Which do you think hurt more, his “bad wind”, or Cao Boi’s cure? The migraine did go away, though. Probably because an artery in his skull ruptured, relieving the pressure.

* When I saw Jonathan the Chicken Man, he sure looked familiar. Like he reminded me of some actor. It turns out that he doesn’t remind me of a actor, he is an actor. Which I would have found out if I read his bio at CBS. TV Squad remembers him from Rude Awakening, but I know him as tabloid reporter Nick on The Naked Truth. Was that really on 11 years ago?

* Should be a fun season. Remind me I said that in December when I’m catatonic and can’t wait for the final episode.