Amazing Race All Stars : Oh Danny Boy !!

 

It was bound to happen the minute a shady deal was struck with the beauty queens but all the same I was sad to see Danny and Oswald join the scrap heap of fading reality TV stars by being eliminated on Sunday night.  I didn’t care for the flamboyant fellows on their first season but as I became increasingly irritated with their “allstar” opponents I found myself rooting for the dynamic duo but alas their goose has finally been cooked.

With those two out of the way I am having a hard time trying to decide who to support for the last leg.  The beauty queens have some obvious qualities although I like the short one much more than the taller horsey looking one and on the previews for next weeks show it looks as though big blonde goes ape on small blonde which doesn’t bode well for their chances.  I guess I could just support shorty and hope that she figures out a way to ditch her partner and clone herself during the last leg and cross the finish line first.  Phil never seems particularly interested in what is going on anyway so I am sure he wouldn’t even notice, just as long as he sees two blonde pony tails on the mat.

I have a lot of respect for Charla considering not only the physical disadvantage that she has had to overcome but also the mental disadvantage that comes from being on a team with Mirna.  I couldn’t believe it last night when Mirna revealed that she deliberately tries to immitate foreigners accents during the race because she thinks it will make her easier to understand !  All this time I had put it down to either a subconcious mishap or brain damage but apparently it is part of her strategy.  Next time I am in Canada I will have to try that  aye.

The last team in contention are also the most insignificant.  I have watched every season of the show and yet I have absolutely no idea who the hell Eric and Danielle are.  I can only assume that I am the victim of some kind of “Truman show” stunt where history is being re-written and I am being tricked into thinking that I have seen these two grumpy whingebags before.  I don’t know where Danielle shops but she may want to try going to a regular clothes shop rather than a scuba diving store next time she picks out a suitable outfit for racing around the world in.  Everywhere she has been she has worn her skin tight rubber diving outfit.  No wonder she looks so bloody miserable the whole time as she must have all kinds of nasty sweat rashes under that suit.   Eric on the other hand does a great job of demeaning women by referring to anyone who outwits him as a “dirty whore.”  Nice going curley perhaps there is a reason your buddy from the last season didn’t want to team up with you again.  I thought it was pretty funny that Eric whinged so much that Danny went from feeling “guilty” for yielding him to having “NO REGRETS” by the end of Sundays show.  The fact that Eric upset my boys from Miami means that I can’t cheer him and sweaty face on in the final so it’s got to be Dustin and clone Dustin and if that fails then I hope Charla wins by herself after Mirna gets decked in Glasgow for mocking Scottish accents or something.  Here’s hoping !! 

10 Reality TV Villains You LOve To Hate

Clockwise left to right: (Julie, Flo and Zach,Richard Hatch, Don Heinz,Toni)

1.Richard Hatch:  Before Survivor there wasn’t much “reality TV” on the major networks so the stars of that show set the tone of what was to become a new and popular genre.  Richard Hatch a slightly rotund openly gay man with an affinity for public nudity was to become the first reality villain as he deliberately made himself unpopular so as to stay in the game because everyone thought they could beat him in the popularity contest that was to be the final vote.  Hatch though was smart enough to ally himself with some particularly odious figures and ultimately despite being branded as a “snake” he walked away with the million dollars.  In typical villainous fashion Hatch decided not to pay taxes on his earnings a mistake that caused him to be sent to the big house.  He recently described that experience as “horrendous” but surely it couldn’t have been worse than being couped up on that island with Sue, Rudy and Jeff Probst’s wit or can it ?

2.Julie:  The Real World was the first reality TV show of modern times and it has had it’s fair share of villains but the person who stands out to me is a young lady who seemed so sweet and innocent to begin with: Julie.  After years of appearing on spin offs Julie decided to dump her nice girl naive Mormon persona and actually try to murder fellow contestant Veronica by trying to unhook her safety harness during a climbing challenge.  Nice one psycho. 

3. Toni Ferrari.  Star (?) of “Love Cruise” and “Paradise Hotel,” two of Fox’s short lived and most dismal reality TV offerings, Toni mastered the “Psychotic stare” that is now her trademark. 

4. Don Heinz (Colonial House) This largely unnoticed PBS show documented a group of people trying to emulate the early pilgrims who came to the US.  Initially as parson Don was a popular figure with liberal and tolerant ideas for the community.  However when the elected leader left town Don took over and before long initiated a reign of terror that almost caused a wholescale mutiny.  This was the kind of attitude that is epitomised in Lincoln’s famous quote about power.  Thanks for illustrating history for us Don you nutter.

5. Will Kirby (Big Brother 2) A smoother, more charming and better looking version of Richard Hatch.  He only comes in at 5 because refining the art of cunning is not as praiseworthy as inventing it.

6. Flo Pesenti (Amazing Race 3)  For every guy who feels that women can be completely unreasonable Flo is here to prove them right.  Lunatic Flo yelled and screamed at her poor team mate Zach all the way to the finish line.  Hilariously she berated him all the way to the prize since she mistakenly believed they were in last place.  On discovering they had won she smiled as if that suddenly made everything OK.  By this time Zach was more delighted to get away from her than to win the money. 

7. Dilana (Rock star Supernova) From Texas but with a bizarre South African sounding accent this Diva livened up the show with frequent violent outbursts that horrified host Dave Navarro.  Despite Dave’s best efforts to undermine her state of mind Dilana proved popular with the audience and is probably the only contestant with a promising future in the biz.

8. Larissa Meeks (Average Joe Hawaii)  Aside from being the only woman stupid enough to fall for this set up after we had already seen Average Joe 1 on TV, Larissa disappointed a nation by letting superficiality come in the way of love.  Ultimately though her dalliance with Fabio was to be her undoing but just when you thought she couldn’t be any more irritating she said she had only participated in the show “for the art”.  Delusional as well as shallow.  Nice combination.

9. Johnny Fairplay (Survivor) Another in the Hatch mould but the “Grandma died” routine was evil at it’s most brilliant.  Twisted maniac but great villain.

10.  Omarosa. (The Apprentice)  She was widely despised on the show and even tried to turn her much anticipated exit into a race controversy.  Thereafter though Omarosa softened up a little on the “Surreal Life” by seeming normal comapred with Janice Dickenson and this is why she falls all the way to number 10 in the list of villains.

The Amazing Race All Stars

There was a spoiler online a while back which suggested the final four of the “All star Amazing Race” would include team Cha cha cha as well as Charla and Mirna.  Everybody who had ever seen the show knew this was a complete lie as there was no way in hell these teams would actually be in contention for the grand prize.   How could we all get it so wrong ?  I never had anything against the boys from Miami but I never imagined that stopping to buy fruit or taking lemonade breaks would be prove to be winning tactics.       I don’t have anything against Charla either but Mirna is something else.   For some odd reason she seems to find it necessary to imitate peoples accents in whichever country she happens to be in even though she is speaking English.  A few weeks ago we heard her doing an African accent and most recently she was trying to do a Chinese accent.  I don’t know if she realises that the key to being understood is in speaking either your own language or someone elses language properly and not in speaking your own language whilst doing a bad impersonation of Nelson Mandela or Fu Manchu.  Mirna must have inspired more reality TV fans to throw bricks at their televisions than anybody since Mike Boogie first wandered onto our screens several years ago and made our lives miserable for a few weeks one summer until thankfully he got the boot from “Big Brother 2″. 

The “All star” as a whole has been a heck of a lot better than the “Survivor” version on which half the cast either quit or made it obvious they wanted to be on the first plane out of there.  Everyone on this show seemed to want to participate except for one of the NYC baldies who did a pathetic impression of Charlie Chaplin as he “accidentally” stumbled and hurt himself more than once to waste time and ultimately decided to drive at the speed of a milk float until finally Phil the half alien/ half South African host put him and his buddy out of their misery.  I was pretty annoyed about that because on their first season the lads had been pretty entertaining.  Perhaps they were lost without Emily and Nancy who were much tougher and far funnier than most of this shows participants but were sadly overlooked by the casting director. 

The old gay guys didn’t live up to there evil ways either and in fact they evolved into a couple of sentimental old windbags who spent more time hugging than cooking up inventive skullduggery which was the only thing that made them “Allstars” to begin with.  Overall though Miss California is pretty cute but I think Miss NY odd looking and of the teams left I wish Miss C would team up with Oswald since they are the two most stylish and like-able folks left.