'Dancing With the Stars': Double your dancing, double your fun?

Tonight's episode of "Dancing with the Stars" brought viewers a dramatic new formatting change: the dancers dance two songs instead of one!  Did it indeed double the drama and excitement from just a regular episode?  Well, kind of...it was hard to pay attention throughout the two hours.  There were a few things that did become evident, however. 

• Laila Ali=The Hilary Clinton of the show?  Laila Ali has been a frontrunner throughout the competition: we can't get over her saucy attitude and her hard work and the fantastic chemistry she has with her partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy.  But Laila is the only female left on the show now...will that bring more votes from the women's bloc, who would probably vote for Joey Fatone otherwise but don't want to betray their gender? 

 

'Bones': Why stakeouts don't turn into make-outs

Female forensic scientists, the geek goddesses of crime procedurals, nail the bad guys, but rarely get their man: the square-jawed partner. Though it’s hardly an original conceit, the unconsummated romance between forensic anthropologist Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and FBI special agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) on “Bones” has worked its way under viewers’ skin.
Week after week, “Bones” serves up icky cadavers for Brennan and her crew of oddly endearing “squints” (so named by Booth, because they are always looking through microscopes). They examine corpses to determine the cause of death and the identity of victims but the more compelling mystery of the show is why brainy Brennan and brawny Booth haven’t turned their stakeouts into make-outs. Their crackling, screwball comedy-inflected chemistry promises a fully fleshed-out partnership, despite their oft-examined psychological scars.

'The Sopranos': You'd need a crystal ball to bet on this ending

Of all of Tony Soprano’s uncontrolled appetites, gambling has tended to take a back seat to food and sex. But last night’s episode of “The Sopranos” was about Tony the degenerate gambler.

Pro football, harness racing, roulette; in the episode, the impulse bets, and losses, accrue to something like 200 grand, or roughly his debt to old Jewish pal Hesh Rabkin (Jerry Adler), whose attempts to collect turn Tony cranky and Hesh to wondering whether the boss is just riding him or going to have him clipped to get rid of a nuisance debt.

“Bad” Tony was out in force in other ways — getting into an ugly, shades-of-Season-4 fight with wife Carmella over his cut of the sale of her spec house. Meanwhile, the widow of his best earner, the outed gay mobster Vito, comes to Tony asking for a hundred grand to relocate her family to Maine. Son Vito Jr., it seems, is going through a Goth phase, and cousin Phil Leotardo, the man who had Vito killed, isn’t apt to help out financially (What did the mobster say to the Goth kid? “You look like a Puerto Rican hoore.”)

'Grey's Anatomy': Hittin' the road with Kate

Kate Walsh, it would appear, is getting out in the nick of time. Next week, in a very special two-hour episode, her character, Dr. Addison Shepherd, will vamoose from Seattle for the sunny shores of L.A. May she never look back because “Grey’s Anatomy” is collapsing faster than a punctured lung.

Izzie and George. Izzie and her new hairstyle. Callie and George, Derek and Meredith, Derek and the chief’s job. Addison and Karev, Addison and McSteamy, Cristina and Burke and their wedding cake. Oh which will they pick? Oh what will happen then? Oh who really cares?

Last night’s episode presented the “Grey’s” team with their biggest challenge ever — acting in ways barely recognizable as human much less characteristic. All the interns were suddenly concerned, albeit it briefly and intermittently, with their wink-wink careers as they cutely “studied” for “the biggest test of their internship.” (Surely that has been staying friends with the drippy, relentlessly narcissistic Meredith, no?)

Does anyone but me remember how the series began, with a whole bunch of interns being told by Bailey to look around because more than half of them wouldn’t be there in a few months? Whatever happened to the idea of benching some of these beauties?

'America's Next Top Model': Augh, clip show!

Aw, c'mon Tyra, why do you have to treat me like that?

After the comedy gold of the models in Australia last week, Wednesday night we get a recap show, with only a few new interviews and behind-the-scenes bitchiness thrown in.

Jael and Renee bickered; Samantha and Renee bickered; Brittany and Renee bickered; Dionne and Renee bickered; Renee even managed to bicker with inanimate objects, including bathroom cleaner. The reward for revisiting the cattiness? Renee classically describing Jael as "the female Kramer" for her tendency to aggressively hula-hoop in people's faces. Next week, we get back to the real show. Hey, I guess it's the only padding you'll ever see on Top Model.

(Photo courtesy The CW)

'The Real World': Outward bind

Awwwww group hug! The Real World gang finally finished their Outward Bound work assignment Wednesday night without seriously injuring any of their campers or each other. Hooray! No Med-Evac copters! Of course, one girl -- a survivor of Hurricane Katrina -- hyperventilated and had to be taken down the mountain; Colie thought she had a recurrence of mono and had to be taken down the mountain, and Brooke pitched an Amazing Race-style hissy fit over her fear of heights when forced to rappel down the mountain...but that's pretty much a typical week for the Real Worlders when they encounter nature.

'Lost': Sun rising

A post-show chat with Times Staff Writer Patrick Day, "24" Show Tracker and a die-hard "Lost" fan who insists the show will "stand the test of time"...

DENISE: Overall, I thought Wednesday's Sun-centric episode was pretty strong. Any time they've given her stuff to do, it's usually good. This was no exception.

PATRICK: I'm very glad to hear you liked this one. Even though there were no major revelations about the Island or the Others, this had some nice human drama. Why do they under use Sun? She's just as interesting as Sayid and Hurley and not half as irritating as Kate.

DENISE: I'm ignoring what you said about Hurley. I've always thought they should be doing more with the resident marrieds. Pairing Sun with Juliet was especially potent, particularly now that we know that Juliet is there against her will to research the women of the crash. Juliet is probably their best written character right now.

So, given the eleventh hour revelation of Naomi, the fallen stranger from the sky, you think there could be credence in the they're-all-in-purgatory theory?

'American Idol': Tension has a new name - Idol Gives Back

Let it never be said the producers of "American Idol" don’t understand the keys to their own appeal.  For the Idol Gives Back show they were faced with an impossible task: blending two hours of compassion for the planet’s most wretched and downtrodden with their weekly results exercise in the slow-motion torture of their own contestants.  One can imagine the despair the producers felt as they rolled up their sleeves and tried to puzzle out how they would raise concern HIV-ridden African children living 13 to a dirt-walled room and then cut to the real tears as a contestant is sent home.

But in the end, "Idol" managed to have its cake and eat it too and, as usual, eat everyone else’s cake on top of that.  By both spooling out the tension and brazenly rewriting the rules in order to grant a week’s amnesty to all contestants, they delivered a huge feel-good happy ending to the event. 

The reason the challenge described above seems so impossible is that we mere linear thinking mortals live in a world of concrete boundaries, laws and social regulation.  If you are creating an Entertainment Universe in your own image,  none of those trivial Earth-bound concerns need weigh you down.  Which is to say, if you are an "Idol" producer and the rules of the game stand in the way of entertainment, you change the rules.  The only rule that truly need apply is that you must put on a good show, and failure to do that is a capital offense.   

'Gilmore Girls': Crawling out of the rabbit hole

After being stuck in the rabbit hole that was Lorelai marrying Christopher and Rory obsessing over Logan, crawling out is feeling pretty good.

Tuesday's episode of "Gilmore Girls" both officially kicked off the countdown to Luke and Lorelai's reunion and gave Rory something to worry about besides her love life.

The show began going through the motions of putting the pair back together, using the timing and teasing tactics that keep "Grey's Anatomy" audiences hooked. At least things aren't as McSchmaltzy when you make up in Stars Hollow.

Luke and Lorelai spent the majority of the episode trying, and mostly failing, to repair their friendship. Lorelai walked into Luke's diner for the first time in months to discover to her surprise that only small talk was on the menu. Awkward silence and weather conversation replaced their rapid-fire back and forth, and later, when she asked Luke to help her select a new car to replace her dead Jeep, radio static became preferable to the tension of the car ride.

Until, that is, Luke exploded with frustration at Lorelai's nonsensical criteria for choosing a car. "I just don't like the way it feels!" she whined. His outburst made her smile. They were bickering again. Cue her (and our) relief.

Did it feel a little overboard when an "exasperated" Luke tracked down a replacement for her Jeep, took it for a test drive, and negotiated down the price by day's end? Sure, but it's welcome excess. Like legions of "Gilmore" fans, he just wants to get the ball rolling again.

In the meantime, while her Yale friends planted their flags in post-collegiate territory, Rory resumed pondering her future. Her over-achieving roommate Paris got in the night's best line after finding out that Harvard Law had come calling after rejecting her from its undergraduate program four years ago: "Bite me, Harvard! Bite me!"

Rory, however, got only bad news: A succinct rejection letter of her own, passing on her application for a fellowship at The New York Times. (Did she really have a shot? Maybe not. Let's not forget that last season the writers sent Rory on a bizarre tailspin that had her dropping out of Yale and spending a good part of her down time running her grandmother's Daughters of the American Revolution society functions.)

Both mother and daughter are now in line for some heavy-duty growing up. Here's hoping that the preview for next week's episode, which revealed that Logan is about to propose to Rory, doesn't mean "Gilmore" falls back down the hole.

-- Denise Martin

(Photo courtesy The CW)

'Dancing With the Stars': Heather Mills, we salute you

"Dancing with the Stars” suffered its first upset of the season, which is a minor one, to be sure, but at least merits a recap that’s somewhat water-cooler-chat worthy.  Thus far, every single elimination has elicited a roaring “Yeah, that makes sense” from the audiences, except for tonight.

Heather “McCartney” Mills got booted off the show, prior to Billy Ray Cyrus and even more prior to John Ratzenberger.  She was a better, more youthful dancer than Cliff and had way more raw talent than Achy Breaky.

We have to confess, we were ready to ride Heather, joke-wise, until her time had come.  We did not have high expectations for her, as a person or as a dancer, and looked forward to making fun of her.  After all, we had not been fed a very good portrait of her in the media, and, in our world, it’s way more fun to pick on someone than to cherish them.