New Season, Old Shows

Finally got around to watching some TV this week, and while I still need to watch House, Lost, Apprentice: Martha, and Everybody Hates Chris, here's what's been on the idiot box the last couple of days:

America's Next Top Model started another cycle, and on the plus side they've jettisoned Nole Marin as a judge and brought in J. Alexander, who should have been a regular a while ago. On the slightly negative side, Janice Dickinson is gone, so no more psychotic outbursts from her side of the table. In her stead is Twiggy, who isn't too bad - she's pretty honest in her comments, just less demonstrative. On the bizarre side, Jay Manuel is now about one shade away from Oompa-Loompa.

The show itself was fairly predictable - 36 women were pared down to 20 and then 13 within about 45 minutes. Within the two hour premiere we got two runway "shows" and an aerial shoot, which seems like a lot out of their bag of tricks in a short amount of time. As for the women themselves, it's a pretty generic group more identifiable by stereotype (Beauty Queen, Lesbian, Small Towner, Spoiled Brat, etc.) than name.

Anyway, it doesn't look like this cycle will be any better or worse than any other, a level of predictability which is getting boring - though probably not for UPN, who can use the stability.

Joey had an hour premiere, and it was... Joey. They've made some changes (his sister works for his agent now, and he's got a new actor-friend to hang with), but it's still pretty marginal.

The Apprentice has similar issues to both of these other shows - it's formulaic, and the changes made during the off-season don't change things too much. The big innovation this season is that the winning project manager can only get immunity if the team votes for him/her to have it. I'm not sure anyone will get immunity, given that your average contestant would rather have one more person in the boardroom should the next task not go so well. It also takes some of the reward away from the risk of being project manager, though it's not like you can win without taking the role a couple of times, at least.

Future thing to watch for: Carolyn gets to run the show one week. I suppose if Surface doesn't work out, Apprentice: Carolyn could fill in Mondays at 8.