The second episode of The Scholar had the kids competing to rev up school spirit for a USC volleyball game. Which, it being southern California, wouldn't seem like too hard of a draw, but from the footage shown volleyball is a tough sell wherever you are.
Part of the task was to get USC students to show up with a pennant of a given color, One team numbered their pennants and offered a lottery where the winner got a $100 bookstore card - not bad, but I think $200 would have been more enticing while allowing the team to buy the other stuff they needed. The other team, which won the task, did so by handing out the pennants to people as they entered the game. Which is less like generating spirit as hijacking already-developed spirit, but such details aren't important, apparently.
Both groups also did some sort of halftime cheer/spirit-building exercise. I thought the losing team did a better job, but the USC cheering coach didn't. Thankfully, she seemed more swayed by crowd reaction than the winning team's lame dance.
The second episode wasn't all that much different - or better - than the first. We did learn that the sole white admissions rep doesn't seem to care for the lone African-American male contestant, and that the admissions board is perhaps overly impressed by folks who know that the brain is part of the nervous system.
Seriously, if these folks are involved in admitting students to Ivy League institutions, then the whole legacy thing make a lot more sense.
There was much more spirit on Hell's Kitchen - perhaps too much - and pretty much all of it negative and expressed in yelling form. Gordon Ramsay's boot camp approach to teaching cooking finally got someone to actually quit - Jeff, who wasn't particularly well-liked by his team and who may or may not have been playing a kidney stone for sympathy (FWIW, having had one I can attest that it hurts, but I think that if he was in the sort of agony displayed on TV he should have gotten more serious medical attention, or at least something for the pain). Jeff is also the one who mouthed off to Ramsay, which made me kind of sad - I really wanted to see Andrew get eviscerated on national TV.
But his day may still be coming - Ramsay called him out as well and basically said that Andrew has no standing with him. Part of this isn't Andrew's fault, but his personality makes it easy to load up on him.
The third night of service again ended with a premature shutdown. Next week they promise something that's never happened before in Hell's Kitchen. I assume it's someone getting served dessert.
No comments:
Post a Comment