Tons of television updates!

Normally meetings for work have me missing the 'fabulous' television that is Wednesday night, but I was fortunate enough to be home at a reasonable hour last night and caught a smattering of reality programming.
First off, if you ever thought American Idol was entertaining throughout it's 25 years of being on television, please feel free to comment, but I watched some of the singing show last night and thought it was worse than ever before. And if you never thought the show was worth a glance before, well, now is certainly not the time.

This season is not funny. Anyone who sucked at singing didn't suck badly enough to be amusing. Too many personal segments, especially about people who didn't even make it--why did we learn all about the female fighter pilot if she was just an average singer was gonna get rejected in bland manner? Or the guy whose wife went into labor but then the entire new family got the boot out the door. And Simon was a watered down version of his former seasons' self. Snooooozefest.


I was watching AI mostly because it was the lead-in to the 9 o'clock hour premiere of The Moment of Truth, Fox's new reality game show that pushes contestants to truthfully answer personal questions for $500,000.

The critics may rip this show, but it makes for an rousing hour of smutty, midweek television. If you like people embarrassing themselves and ruining their lives in front of their family, friends and the rest of the nation, you should probably tune in. (Now that I think about, that's probably why they put this show on post-Idol; same sort of results, eh?).

The premise is slightly difficult to follow at first. I think it's that contestants have several tough questions posed to them while hooked up to a polygraph test (yes, I know, how reliable are those?) to create a final report of which answers are truths and which are lies. Producers select 21 of those questions to again be asked of the contestant --this time on stage-- and they can choose to answer the same as before or change their answer if they believe they lied the first time around. The questions get more personal and harder to answer as the contestant moves up the pyramid, but if they answer everything truthfully, they walk away with a nice chunk of change.

Last night's first contestant seemed to have little trouble revealing that he believes he is the best looking one of his friends, has checked out other football players' goodies in the shower, has given his wife a reason not to trust him and that he believes she will not be his lifelong partner.

But that could all be worth it if you go home with half a mill, right?

Wrong. When asked if the guy touched his personal training clients more than needed, to his wife's relief, he answered no. Unfortunately, the lie detector test decided that was a big, fat lie and the guy lost all the money he had accumulated to that point (which was something like, $25,000). And his marriage is probably ruined.

The show should really be called "The [long pause] Moment [long pause] of [long pause] Truth" because sometimes there is a little too much dramatic pausing, but it's really just an entertaining Jerry Springer-like game show hosted by Mark Walberg (former host of Temptation Island, the greatest show ever created.)


And that brings us to the best premiere of the night: The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Gauntlet III.

All I've gotta say is this series has been the best show on MTV in the last 10 years, and this season should be no different. Already plenty of hook-ups and CT rage, and the challenges seem like they'll be no holds barred. I was pretty happy with the result of last night's first Gauntlet. I won't spoil it, but the person who goes home is the biggest tool on the Rookie team.

This season has a few new twists, as well. It's Rookies v. Vets, which are people who have participated in more than one challenge to date, and you've got a total of 32 people, adding even more to the drama. In addition to the episode's winning team selecting who from the losing team will enter the gauntlet, they can also select someone from the other team to be safe. This prevents the person going into the Gauntlet from knocking off the weakest person on the team, and making the team less effective in the long run by saving its weakest link.

A very welcome change is that there is no "team bank account" this season, so you must win the entire challenge to go home with anything. This leaves the guys on the Vets team already plotting to throw the female missions so that their team will be all men (and arguably stronger) going into the finale.