After a break that lasted the better part of a year, the Amazing Race is finally back with its 13th season. And even though this website is more or less dead, there is one section of it that I’ll still be keeping alive. The episode downloads can be found at the usual place, on my Amazing Race BitTorrent page.

The Amazing Race has started again, back with its 12th season. I probably won’t be doing any recaps this year, unless I decide to pick it up midseason, but you’ll be able to download the episodes, as usual, on my Amazing Race BitTorrent page.

But, in spite of everything it has going for it, Pirate Master ends up missing the mark by a wide margin. I really want to like the show, and I’m sticking with it every week, hoping it will get better, but my hope is waning. It’s just boring for long stretches, or remarkably lame in others, or just…there most of the time. Nothing remarkable, nothing to hate exactly, but not a lot to love. The TV equivalent of oatmeal.

So where does the problem lie? Maybe it’s because the challenges are a far cry from Survivor’s. I mean, every challenge we’ve seen so far basically boils down to running through the jungle in a straight line, then going underwater to look for something. Compared to the challenges on Survivor, which somehow manage to stay brilliant and original after fourteen goes, this “hunting for treasure” really blows. Especially if they don’t switch it up a little. Or maybe it’s because of the incredibly lame backstory of Henry Steel the pirate, and the goddamned Chest of Zanzibar that they have to magically open at the beginning of each show. Or maybe it’s the contestants themselves, because even though we’ve established that there are two or three good characters out there, none of them seem to be worth a damn at strategizing. On Big Brother, on Survivor, hell even on The Amazing Race we see people plotting and making alliances. These folks just sit around being bitter but not acting on it (Louie) or staring at each other with a blank stare (everyone else). Jay’s the only one that seems to be playing, but he’s not very good at it. It’s only being dropped in the middle of this group that makes him look like a genius.

A lot of it, I guess, has to be blamed on the editing. There was a lot of crappy editing on The Apprentice this year, too, so maybe it’s getting endemic over at Mark Burnett Productions. There is stuff on this show that could be exciting, but it’s not because of the way it’s edited. There are segments that could be epic and beautiful, but turn out lame because of the editing. We could be shown footage of people scheming, or strategizing, or even just deciding who to vote out, but that’s all left on the cutting room floor. The people didn’t mutiny again Joe Don, but we weren’t shown why. The people voted Christian Okoye out, but we weren’t shown why. Even this week, Sean took Jay’s bribe to vote one way, and then backstabbed him by voting another way. But because of the editing it was easy to miss. It wasn’t a big deal like it would have been on Survivor. So the show alternates between boring and confusing, but hardly ever reaches the level known as “entertaining”. And it’s tough to triage exactly why that’s happening, but already people are starting to tune out, and already the ratings are slipping, and I think this show is dead in the water already.

Easily the most entertaining part of this whole episode was the way Azmyth went mucho loco as soon as he put on the captain’s hat. Although, where Joe Don went ass-crazy with power and started bullying everyone under his command, Azmyth got a much more mild case of the wacky jackies and developed a super-fake English accent that kind of came and went throughout the whole episode. I mean, I’m trying to comprehend the thought process there, but it’s like once he put on that hat he thought he was the captain of the Ren Faire or something. The quote of the night actually has to go to Louie, for perfectly wording the exact thing I was thinking: “I think there’s some kind of dope in that cap, that goes straight into your brain as soon as you put it on your head.”

I also noticed that Azmyth dropped his accent after Cameron the host called him out on it. Come on. If you’re going to be ridiculous, at least be stubbornly ridiculous. He didn’t waver earlier in the episode when his own officers mocked him. “We don’t have to get accents too, do we?” asked Jay, in the second best line of the episode.

So we’ve got a whole summer of ennui on the high seas ahead of us. I’ll still be tuning in to every episode, hoping that it gets better, but sometimes you can tell that it’s too far gone. Damnit. I had such high hopes.

This schedule means that Pirate Master will be booted out of the prime Thursday at 8 slot to make way for Big Brother’s eviction night. It will air July 5th at 9 for one time only, following the Big Brother premiere. But CSI’s ratings are just too high for Pirate Master to stay in that time slot, so the following week the merry crew of the Picton Castle will instead be finding a new berth Tuesdays at 10, right after the weekly Big Brother veto episode.

And if three nights a week isn’t enough to satisfy your Big Brother appetite, tune in to the “Showtime Too” network (which I never heard of either) every night at 9pm Pacific / midnight Eastern for three straight hours of live feeds, broadcast live from the house with no editing. Of course if you’re that much of a Big Brother addict, you’ll be subscribed to the live feeds anyway, but this way the feeds will be piped straight into your TV and you won’t have to pull out your hair screwing around with Real Player. Plus you’ll get them in full broadcast quality.

There are only supposed to be 12 houseguests this time, but I remember them telling us that before. Maybe this year the big twist will be that there really are only 12! And, behind the scenes, producer Arnold Shapiro has stepped away from the show, leaving partner Alison Groder in charge of the whole thing. No idea yet if this means anything creatively for the show, like for example the “twists” getting less lame. I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.

And, of course, the cast won’t be announced until all the people have actually moved inside the house, which they normally do 5-7 days before the first episode airs. So look at the CBS website at the end of the month to see the latest group of idiots we’re going to have to put up with.

The new pirate show has started, and it looks like it might be a fun summer. Read my review.

Episode links:
TV Guide review
TV Squad review
TWoP review
Zap2it review
Download the episode with BitTorrent

It seems like forever that we’ve been hearing about this new pirate show from the guru of reality TV, Mark Burnett. The news first came out last year, when it was just called the “CBS Pirate Project”. And then, a number of months ago, we got a real name for the show, the delightfully awesome name of “Pirate Master“. And we found out there would be buried treasure, and captains, and mutinies, and swabbing the deck. No walking the plank, but I guess you can’t have everything. Now all we had to do was sit back and wait for the premiere. Would it suck, or would it be awesome? Would it capture all the fun of Survivor, or would it die on the vine like Treasure Hunters?

Well, the first episode of Pirate Master was last night, and I’ve got to say that I don’t think we have anything to worry about. While it’s not the absolute best new reality show that’s ever been on, it’s a fun ride that should keep us entertained at least until Big Brother comes on. Pirate Master is part Survivor. 16 people made to live on a sailing ship and vote each other out. They eat gruel, they swab the deck, and they get seasick. At least they don’t have to worry about making fire. Pirate Master is also part Big Brother. The “captain” is basically a Head of Household, who gets his own room and nominates three people for eviction. Pirate Master is even part Treasure Hunters, with the first task being to row through the jungle, trying to find a buried treasure. Of course all the props and camera crews made it pretty obvious where the treasure was hidden, but I guess the mental leap they had to make was realizing they had to swim under a tree to find the chest.

It’s definitely a Mark Burnett show. His shows always have a certain flair to them that other shows lack: the lighting, the music, the camera angles. It’s all bumped up to absurdly overwrought levels in Pirate Master, with fog, sea shanties, and fake rain spraying everywhere during the “Pirate’s Court”. But the real hinge to any show like this is the casting. With a great cast, a show can take off to new heights. With a horrible cast, you’ve got something that’s either forgettable or laughably bad.

So how does Pirate Master’s cast stack up? Well, you’ve got John, who is labeled as a “Scientist/Exotic Dancer”, which is hilarious. He’s probably just being a scientist to pay his way through exotic dancing school. He’s also kind of an ass. The you have Joe Don (which may or may not need to be pronounced with a French accent), who was just a random nobody in the sea of faces until he became Captain, then the power immediately went to his head and he went batshit crazy. Completely. And then you have Louie, who is either the brother of Rupert from Survivor, or the result of some sort of failed attempt by CBS to clone Rupert from Survivor. And I’m not sure how to categorize Louie. I mean, I liked Rupert at first, but he quickly became a condescending prick. So maybe Louie’s going to follow the same path. At least he doesn’t talk in a baby voice.

And the rest of the pirate crew? God, it’s way too early to sort through them all. And half of them are anonymous faces, who don’t even get one line the whole show. The women made damn sure to show a lot of cleavage, though, but that’s the only way most of them get any camera time. And there’s some dude who, I swear to god, has shaved his sideburns into little swirls. That’s just about the worst thing I can think of. I don’t even know his name. Hold on a minute while I look it up….Holy fuck, it’s Azmyth. Azmyth? Are you joking? He has pet snails! Is this a real person? Too bad I don’t think he said one word on the show last night. There’s also a former football player who, according to this video game footage, was such a badass that nobody could even tackle him. So watch out, you don’t want to make Christian Okoye mad.

The whole conceit of the show is that this imaginary pirate hundreds of years ago buried his treasure in fourteen pieces across the island of Dominica. He then drew maps to the treasure and locked them inside a giant fake prop treasure chest. And now it’s up to our 16 modern-day pirates, and their cleavages, to follow the maps and find the treasure. The twist is that there’s not just one final winner who gets all the treasure, but that each week the crew who finds the treasure splits it up amongst themselves. So even if you go home the first week you can still go home with a little cash in your pocket.

And the first one going home this week is John, the exotic scientist, who started out trying to impersonate Jack Sparrow, zoomed ahead to demanding that he should be captain even though the vote was unanimous for Joe Don, and ended with some off-the-rails plan to hold the compasses hostage in exchange for his safety. I mean, that was his whole plan, which he revealed at the Pirate Court at the end: I stole the compasses, and if you vote me off I’m taking them with me. Everyone voted him off anyway, which was pretty funny. “Go screw with the compasses, you gasbag. We’re tired of you.”

Other notable parts:

Once the winning crew found the treasure, they had to count it. They started during the day, and suddenly it’s almost nighttime, like five hours later. And they’re still counting.

Cheryl is from Reno? Western Nevada represent!

Mark Burnett sure has a thing for skulls. We’ve got skulls skewered to trees, skulls that you crack open like an easter egg, skulls on sticks, and skulls climbing out of the water.

As soon as Joe Don put on the captain’s hat he went bonkers, all “I was in the military” and “Things are going to change a whole lot.” Dude, it’s Day 2. There’s not much to change. And he stayed crazy through the whole episode, taking things a little too seriously. And the whole speech he made at the end of the episode, about how he doesn’t need the compasses because you can put a stick in the ground and draw a line between it, that was pure comedy. Then when John called him out on it and asked him to point north right that second, and he couldn’t because it was cloudy? I almost fell out.

So I’m excited for a summer full of Pirate Master. It might go downhill quickly, or it might get more and more awesome as the weeks go by. Azmyth might even get some screen time. But I think wherever this show goes, I’m along for the ride.

American Idol and House are both coming back, of course. There was no doubt since they’re FOX’s two biggest shows. And also the only two I watch. The Loop is on the canceled list, which is funny because its second season still hasn’t premiered yet. I watched the first season last year, and thought it was an enjoyable enough show, but I was shocked last spring when they renewed it. But it was being held back “for midseason”, they said, and now here it is May and it still isn’t on the air. And now it’s gone. I guess they know how to treat a show they don’t like.

There was nothing on The CW that I watched last year. This spring brings several cancellations that are big news, but I never watched the shows so I can’t really get worked up about them. The only reason the cancellations of Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars register at all in my brain is because I listen to the TV Guide Podcast, and they love those shows over there. So it’s sort of sympathy by association for me to look at the news and go, “Huh.” Other than that, it’s the CW, so who cares?

As for the new shows? On either network? I saw an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, the British version, when I was in Canada, and it was funny but mostly because of all the cussing, which you can’t get away with in America, and because the restaurateur that Gordon Ramsey was helping looked and sounded just like the Travelocity gnome. So maybe I’ll give that show a watch, although it should be on the Food Network. And Reaper, on the CW, might be worth one episode, but it’s going to have to go a long way to prove itself.

And that’s about the level of excitement I have for those two networks. If you want to find out more, here are the links.

Fox: TV Squad coverage, Zap2it coverage, new shows.

The CW: TV Squad coverage, Zap2it coverage, new shows.

When Maroon 5 was playing last night, I wished Blake could have stepped in as lead singer, because he would have been better at it. That kind of says everything. He’s already better than the established acts out there.

I wrote in the comments at TV Squad (comment #586! Woo!):

The thing is that we’re not trying to find the best technically proficient singer in the county. If that were so, we’d have twelve classically trained opera singers up on stage. American Idol is all about finding performers, not just singers, about finding pop stars. And vocal talent is only one small piece of being a performer, being a pop star. So what if Melinda had the best voice? I also fast-forwarded through most of her performances because there was nothing there to grab me, no excitement. No originality. They were boring ballads that only served the purpose of building up to a glory note at the end, and that’s what American Idol has been for six years now, and it’s time to change it.

If this was really a singing competition, there would be no band, no lights, no stage, just each person singing a cappella in a dark room. And nobody would tune in. Because as much as anyone wants to protest about the “purity” of the competition, it’s not just about singing. The freshness, excitement, and originality that Blake brings to the stage every week is exactly the kind of thing American Idol should be seeking out, should be rewarding, and I’m glad to see that it’s actually happening for once.

Blake smells new, like the 21st century. Melinda and Jordin smell old and stodgy, like the 20th century. And who you like depends on whether you’re the kind of person who prefers to look backwards or forwards.

It’s not that there’s anything against Melinda. She’s a great singer, and she really deserved third place. She could have even deserved second place, right behind Blake. But she’s not going to be selling a lot of albums, because that’s not the kind of albums people buy. Look at Taylor Hicks. He had a wildly popular run on the show, but then after that his career just died. And I think the same will happen to Melinda. Because out in the real world, there’s no place for her kind of music, for her kind of singing. Where Blake is contemporary and making the same kind of music that is selling right now, that is being played in the clubs and on the radio. And that’s why I see him being the big winner in the real world after the show, just like Chris Daughtry turned out to be the big winner from last year, because his kind of rock is really hot right now.

Idol success doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t get you anything. It just gives you a nudge in the right direction, and you have to run with it in the big scary world of music just like everyone else. Even Jordin, if she wins, I don’t see having a huge career unless she reinvents herself. Blake is like 2008 in a box, all ready to go, ready to hit big. He’s going to launch out of Idol like a Saturn V rocket, headed straight up. Melinda and Jordin are Cessnas by comparison, going nowhere, and going there slow.

Now the real challenge for American Idol is to top last year’s finale show. I don’t think they can do it. Meatloaf nearly having a heart attack on stage? The Clay Aiken wannabe (also known as “Clay Gaiken”) almost peeing his pants? Prince showing up just to collect a paycheck and getting back in the limo before the next commercial break? Hasslehoff crying? That whole two hours was TV genius, and it’s going to be impossible to beat it.

Even if Blake wins and manages to make the horrible coronation song listenable.

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.

Among the new shows, probably the most notable one is Cavemen, all about the life and adventures of the Geico cavemen. Yes, from the commercials. When I first heard about this, I thought it was a joke, a way to drum up publicity for Geico. Then I kept hearing about it, again and again, and now here it is on the fall schedule. I think this is one of those shows that turns into a punchline. It’ll only be on for five or six weeks, but people will be talking about it for years and what a bad idea it was. Or it could break out and be the surprise hit of the year, which might be even funnier.

Among the other ones, Pushing Dasies grabs my attention a little bit. It’s bout a guy who can bring dead people back to life with just one touch, and then kill them again with a second touch. Completely out there premise, but it’s done with a comedic touch so it just might work out. Watch the video preview and see what you think.

Aside from that? A sitcom about carpooling, which sounds lame but has Fred Goss from Sons and Daughters, so it’s worth at least one look. Also an all-girl ensemble, an all-guy ensemble, and Christina Applegate with amnesia.

Wake me up tomorrow, when CBS makes their announcements.