Family TV Addicts

Last week I did a 4 part series giving some little known facts on just how long the American public has been enamored with “Reality” shows in some form or fashion.

1. Dating back to as early as the 1930′s with Candid Microphone
2. Sweetening our days & nights with cooking shows that even pre-date Julia Child
3. Showing off various talents across America
4. The dedication of 2 full time channels to 24/7 Reality

I enjoyed researching those facts and learning a few things myself. I got to take a walk down my own Memory Lane reminiscing about the old shows that I loved & I hope you did too.

Dancing with the stars began their 9th season with a three night “triple play”. Monday night the men showed their stuff, considering Donnie Osmond & Aaron Carter are both in the singing & dancing business, it came as no surprise that they were two of the best. Tuesday night it was the women’s turn to dazzle. Joanna Krupa (supermodel) and Kelly Osbourne showed the judges that they have what it takes to stay around for quite awhile. Wednesday night was the results show, while the highlight of the evening was the touching tribute to Patrick Swayze (I had to have a box of tissues close by), when it was all said & done we said goodbye to Macy Gray and Ashley Hamilton.

With talent shows & competitions showing such huge ratings it made me think about when I first fell in love with talent shows. My two favorite talent shows growing up were Star Search & Solid Gold. This leads me to the 3rd part in my series this week:

Did You Know?

America has had a long love affair with talent shows & competitions, dating all the way back to the 1930′s. In 1934 the first talent show hit the airways, Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour was the first of it’s kind and aired on the CBS Radio network for 18 years.

Did You Know? ~ Part 1 and Part 2

Come back tomorrow when I finalize the series “Did You Know” about Reality Television or just subscribe to the RSS feed.

It was a HOT night in Hell’s Kitchen on Fox.

Chef Gordon Ramsey had his hands full in this two hour back to back episode. During hour #1, the blue team and red team went against each other to prepare dishes using local ingredients from British Columbia, Canada. The winner of this season’s Hell’s Kitchen will receive the Head Chef position at Araxi Restaurant in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. Two of the girls on the Red Team cooked a dish of  “Lamb” and presented it to Chef Ramsey during the challenge, however the meat was ACTUALLY Venison. That mistake ultimately cost them the challenge and the girls had to go work on a farm for the day and clean pig stalls as punishment.

The next night during dinner service Van & Sabrina had a terrible time cooking the Halibut. Several times Chef Ramsey received stone cold fish in the window. In usual Hell’s Kitchen fashion he screamed & cursed until he couldn’t take it any longer and pulled the plug on the dinner service for the night. He told each team to choose a person for elimination. The red team put up Sabrina and the blue team put up Van, on the chopping block. In the end Chef Ramsey chose Sabrina to leave Hell’s Kitchen.

In the 2nd hour of the show we see the final 6 chefs come together as one team with the coveted black jackets. This next challenge found Chef Ramsey splitting the final 6 into pairs in order to taste one of his signature dishes and recreate the dish. They had to guess the ingredients to use based on taste. Suzanne & Dan won this challenge by guessing & including passion fruit in the puree. Suzanne has always claimed to have a great palatte and this challenge certainly proved as such.

At dinner service that night all “Hell” broke loose (pardon the pun), when food continued to come up to the pass ……RAW! Chef Ramsey couldn’t take it and completely LEFT his kitchen for the first time ever. After taking a walk outside, he returned only to kick out the three chefs that were screwing up. Van, Suzanne & Ariel. In the end the pressure cooker inside Van’s head was too much to handle. Suzanne & Van (his 4th time) were on the chopping block, Chef Ramsey decided it was Van’s time to go.

Part 2 of my series “Did you know?” for the week is of course about a cooking show.

Did you know?

Julia Child was NOT the first television chef? That title belongs to Chef Dione Lucas who had a show in 1942. She and Julia Child attended the same cooking school in Paris, Le Cordon Bleu. Chef Lucas also co-wrote the premiere cookbook often used by chefs of today called “The Cordon Bleu Cookbook”.

Thursday night on CBS Survivor aired their premiere episode for this, the 19th season from the gorgeous location of Samoa. Although I have not watched a season of this show since the first season (Richard Hatch was the winner), I was immediately drawn in by the first challenge.

Twenty contestants who have never previously met and don’t know anything about each others background were split into two tribes. Galu Tribe & Foa Foa Tribe. They were asked to look around at each other and pick who should be the leader of their tribe solely based on physical appearance. Both tribes did pretty well with their decisions considering they picked Russell Swan, an attorney from Pennsylvania and Mick Trimming, a doctor from Los Angeles.

The leaders then had to pick from their tribes who they thought would be the best at the following:

• Best Swimmer
• Strongest
• Most Agile
• Smartest

Mick, leader of Foa Foa, picked his “best swimmer” by going against usual stereotypes and chose the tall lanky African-American Jaison. He lucked out because, unknown to him, Jaison is actually an awesome swimmer and has a background playing water polo. This led Foa Foa to victory in the first challenge and their tribe was awarded the ability to start fire w/ flint.

Upon setting up camp we meet the other Russell, a short & stocky guy who initially got under my skin by his constant foul language.

He referred to all of the young girls on his tribe as his “dumb a** b**ches” alliance. Then he completely crossed the line into skeevy-ness when he LIED to everyone about being in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and spending two days on his roof only to be rescued but end up losing his German Shepard, that he had had for 9 years.

I’m sorry, it’s one thing to come into a show with a strategy but it is completely another to be this vile & vulgar of a person as to play on people’s sympathies by pretending to have been involved in such a disaster as Hurricane Katrina. He has definitely left a bad taste in my mouth & if he doesn’t leave this show by the next episode I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it.

Whenever I tell anyone that I actually watch this show the general concensus seems to be “(gasp) are you serious?” Well, yes I am serious and I’ll tell you why.

TLC seems to choose 3 different girls & their families to follow per episode. They do one on one interviews with the girls and their moms (& dads) seperately. They interview the pageant directors and if the girl has a “coach” they interview the coach also.  A recurring theme jumped out to me right away.

• The girl whose family can’t really afford it, but they do it anyway.
• The girl who actually LOVES it & would do anything to be on stage in front of others.
• The girl whose mother is pushing her and living out her childhood fantasy through her daughter.

Let me say for the record that my husband HATES this show and considers it “Child Abuse”. I think the show is interesting if you look at it like a sport.

• The fancy dresses & costumes (football/baseball uniforms?)
• the hairpieces, makeup, tanning & even fake teeth (mouth guard, helmet, shoulder pads, the “gear”?)
• Moms & even Dads sometimes in the audience (sidelines?) coaching their children & cheering for them.
• The prizes are often crowns, sashes & trophies (not unlike the trophies & trinkets given out after a t-ball tournament?)

I grew up as an only child and I remember dreaming of being on stage one day and winning the Miss America Pagaent. I believe I would have done pagaents early on if given the chance. Now I am the mother of 2 young daughters and I am raising them (as my mother did) to believe that they can do anything or be anything if they want it bad enough & work hard for it. Both of them are way to shy to want to do anything like that but if one of them came to me with a real desire to be in a pagaent, I would have to seriously consider it.

I mean is it REALLY all that different from dance recitals, competitive gymnastics or competitive cheerleading? There really is genuine qualities that can be learned from any type of competition right? Coordination, Confidence, Integrity & Accountability to name a few.

Everyone parents differently and I will admit that I get quite disgusted when I see the parent that is pushing their child too hard to participate in extracurriculars, whether it is Beauty Pagaents or Little League. I would love to have comments, let me know how you feel about it.

More To Love on Fox aired it’s season finale with a perfect & poignant proposal from Luke to Talia. They proved that they were not going to let their religion differences stand in the way of true love. The runner up, Malissa, was as transparent as a pane of glass when meeting Luke’s mother. Telling your possible future mother in law that you just entered the competition “on a whim and now I’m in the final two” was probably the nail in the coffin for her.

Big Brother 11 on CBS aired it’s season finale awarding Jordan with $500,000. Jordan seemed to seal the deal when she won the last competition and chose to evict Kevin. Some of the people in the jury house didn’t like Jordan but in the end Natalie’s lies and phony alliances caught up to her. Congratulations Jordan!

Jeff Lewis from Bravo’s hit show Flipping Out experienced a first in his career last night. He had to request money from a client.

In past episodes I have been absolutely flabbergasted at how Jeff speaks to his staff (by the way, how does he AFFORD to support 4 staff members if his business is suffering the way he says it is?), to his family & to his friends but I have to admit my heart softened for him a little last night. After recovering from his “food poisoning” that left him bedridden for 2 days, he finally received a call from his client that owed him money. She began to scold him for leaving her so many messages and for implying that she hadn’t paid her bills. She was raising her voice to him and spewing curse words.

I fully expected him to unleash a level 10 FLIP OUT, but much to my surprise he kept his cool. He simply stated to her that her form of “Sacrifice” was not purchasing the $4000 couch that day (which he called a princess problem) but that his subcontractors needed the money to put food on the table for their families.

BRAVO Jeff Lewis BRAVO!

America’s Got Talent aired it’s last performance show last night, the results show will air live on Wed. 9/16 on NBC. My first thoughts…OMG, what kind of tuxedo is Nick Cannon wearing?? He may need to call Celebrity Stylist Rachel Zoe for some tips.

The judges gave opinions before the show. Piers felt like there was no real clear favorite. Sharon’s advice to contestants was to focus on the MONEY (no pressure or anything). David Hasselhoff, what can I say… he just makes no sense to me. He didn’t seem to have a firm grasp on the question that Nick posed to him so he just seemed to ramble.

Out of 10 finalists, the talent acts were all over the board. From country music to opera, from tap dance to a break dancing “Elastic-man”.  Oh and who can forget Grandma Lee, a 75 yr old comedienne. My favorites were Lawrence Beamen who performed a song by Barry White and sounded exactly like him. Barbara Padilla performed a magnificent Opera ballad that almost brought me to tears. Recycled Percussion put on the most fabulous Las Vegas style performance. It had all the components to headline a super Las Vegas experience, they are my favorite to win.

I could not end this post without mentioning good ole Grandma Lee one more time. Her backstory they showed us included pictures of her as a baby and as a child. She explained that she liked growing up in a girls home and felt it was the catalyst to making people laugh. I enjoyed her performance but couldn’t really see her as a headline in a Las Vegas Show.

Did you see the show last night? What are your thoughts, who do you think will win? A Million Dollars and a Headliner show in Las Vegas, that’s a pretty HUGE prize…best of luck to all of the contestants.

My name is Traci Price and I’m a new Blogging Intern here on the Family TV Addicts blog.

I have been a full time wife & mother since 2002. Having had two very scary pregnancies resulting in two premature babies, there was no question that I couldn’t go back to my corporate career.

I have many interests including Reality TV, Soap Operas, Thrift & Consignment store shopping and most types of crafts. I love getting together with my girlfriends and discussing the latest in pop culture over a good glass of wine. I live on the beautiful Outer Banks of NC with my husband and 2 daughters. My husband & I own and operate a restaurant in Kill Devil Hills, NC and we have a vacation home in Costa Rica where we spend the winter months.

Blogging is my Newest Venture.

I have been listening to Kelly McCausey’s Work at Home Mom’s podcast for about 4 years and when she mentioned Profitable Mommy Blogging I started listening immediately. The blogging internship with Mom’s Talk Network is the first thing I have applied for since College, I am very excited to be involved with and learning from Kelly. My internship will consist of writing for Family TV Addicts with a special focus on Reality Television.

I look forward to reviewing the shows that I love and getting to know some that I haven’t previously watched. I will recap the shows and try to dig deeper with some real opinions & a few questions. I will welcome all comments and encourage readers to give suggestions on what they’d like to see from me.

After watching all six episodes of ABC’s Dating in the Dark I have to say that I’m disappointed in most of the people who participated.

The show is supposed to be about putting aside visual expectations and really get to know someone.  Time after time we see a couple make a real connection in the dark but outside of the dark room we hear them whining about ‘what if I don’t like how they look?’

Oh grow up!

I wish the show would bring on a life coach to work with these people.  Shouldn’t someone be challenging them to consider what really matters in a relationship?   They come on the show saying they really want to make a connection based on something besides looks – then proceed to focus 100% on looks in the end.  How shallow and pointless?

As a chubby gal I have been looking forward to the new Fox show, More to Love.  After this last season of The Bachelorette, I’m primed to enjoy seeing some ‘real people’ try out this reality television love thing.

My first impression of Joshua is pleasant.  He seems strong and confident and genuinely open to the gals.

My first impression of the ladies is mixed.  Some of them made VERY unfortunate wardrobe choices.  At least one of the gals needs a major hair intervention.  (Who starts a reality show with an inch of dark roots?!)

At least half of these gals looked like they would have been a lot more comfortable in flats… they looked like they were afraid of falling off their shoes!  (I know I would be.)

I love the gal that jumped in the pool – what a show of guts and personality.  It’s too bad that all of the other ladies proved to be stick in the muds because it was really obvious that Joshua was interested in seeing some fun erupt in the otherwise dull evening.  Her stand out move worked because he did keep her through to next week

My heart breaks for the five girls that went home… and can’t wait to see future episodes.