Reality Round-Up

Though I've gone through years of my life without paying much attention to TV, our home does have a few favorite shows lately, including some reality TV. Our favorite reality show is the Amazing Race, which is probably the only reality show that I would have the faintest desire to actually be on. All that world travel to such interesting places, challenges of navigation, communication, brains, and brawn -- sign me up! This season we were glad to see Meredith and Gretchen make it to the top four. At their age, they are inspirational for that. Now we're cheering for Joyce and Uchenna, who are the nicest couple. And we want to see Rob and Amber go down - they're the most devious couple and we'd love to see what goes around come around to them. As for Ron and Kelly, well if they end up stumbling into an ill-advised wedding, Ron should take a cue from that girl in Georgia and stage his own kidnapping.

Then there's our second favorite reality show, American Idol. The show really does attract some great talent, and it's (mostly) a pleasure to watch them especially in the final weeks. (Well, okay, there's also a schadenfreude kind of pleasure to be had from watching some of the more pathetic performances in the early weeks.) Not sure what's up with the voting lately. It's amazing to me that Scott lasted this long and that Anthony is still there, while Anwar and Constantine are gone. I think when you get this far in the finals, it's more about who does a better job of telemarketing as much as singing. (Remember Jasmine Trias? I mean she was good, but not top three good, not better than Latoya London good. But she had the whole state of Hawaii working the phones for her. And on some level, both in the contest and in real life, that's what counts.) My money's on Bo, but I'm not giving any long odds.

Oh, and I'm glad that Fox has finally stopped that nasty disrespectful habit of cutting off the dismissed contestant's farewell song.