Meaner is better

I'm watching Hell's Kitchen UK right now - Fox's replacement for the Gordon Ramsay Hell's Kitchen, which ended last week with an entirely unconvincing win by Christina. The British show has a celebrity spin - instead of aspiring chefs, the contestants are celebrities - boxers, models, TV presenters and the like. The only names I recognize are Kelly LeBrock (anyone remember The Lady In Red?) and singer Paul Young (I'll never forgive him for his cover of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart.)

The chef in charge isn't Ramsay but his mentor, Marco Pierre White, a man whose reputation as an authoritarian and bully actually exceeds Ramsay's. White retired at the top of his game years ago, after realizing that his third Michelin star signalled how little fun he was getting from cooking, and retired to a montage of fishing and shooting - killing stuff, basically. He's a broody, unhappy looking man, redolent of curdled testosterone.

He's described by Piers Morgan of Celebrity Apprentice fame as "the only man, to my knowledge, who's ever made Gordon Ramsay cry."

"I didn't make Gordon Ramsay cry," White rumbles. "He made himself cry."

That's a line I've got to use, with almost limited variations.

"I didn't punch him in the face. He made me punch him in the face."

"I didn't crash that car. The car made me crash the car."

"I didn't make that owl extinct. The owl made me make it extinct."

Gold. Pure gold.

So you think I wish I was deaf?

Alright then - one more So You Think You Can Dance post. Can't help it - this and Hell's Kitchen are my shows of the summer, and if I can't devote as much space to either show as I'd like in my column, I might as well bore you to death with it here.

My beef of the night: I must really love this show, because most of the music is effing dreadful. I mean punch-to-the-temple, chopstick-in-the-ear dreadful. Tonight the lowlights on the elimination show were tunes by Ani DiFranco and Jason Mraz, chosen as the soundtrack to the routines the bottom six dancers danced to convince the judges not to eliminate them. The song choice alone would deserve a ticket home if I were Nigel Lythgoe. I'm just sort of a jerk that way.

Why does no one choose Dylan, or the Gang of Four, or Black Flag, or Tim Buckley if they feel an overwhelming need to seem sensitive or somesuch? Why is whiny, amelodic, rhythmic twaddle pop to the top of the queue when dancers choose tunes? It isn't a rhetorical question.

So you think I'm obsessed?

Perhaps because I'll be watching So You Think You Can Dance three times this week, I'm getting a bit too into the show right now. Right now I'm watching as the likely standout routine of tonight's show is turning into this weird debate, based on the fact that Mia Michaels has misunderstood some very basic bit of information about the paralyzed daughter of the choreographer. For not the first time, Nigel Lythgow has felt obliged to step in and correct her, to which she's retorted something about "freedom of speech" that sounds more than a bit petulant. It's all dragging on a bit too long for anyone's comfort, particularly the choreographer and his wife.

I'm reminded how much I dislike Mia Michaels at moments like this - her routines, her attitude, her "it's all about me" worldview. That's the great thing about the media, isn't it? There's nothing like having strong, negative feelings about strangers.

So you think I can remember?

My wife was nice enough to TiVo last week's results show for So You Think You Can Dance while I was in L.A., and we're watching it tonight. I know we're only in the first week of the finals, but I'm having a hard time remembering any of the names of the dancers this year. It doesn't help that there's a Chelsea and a Chelsie, a Courtney and a Kourtni, in addition to all these creatively spelled names - Kherington, Rayven, Katee. All those Ks and stray H's definitely aren't helping these names stick in my mind.

It also probably means that none of them are standing out for me from the first glance - there's no Benji Schwimmer in this group - though it looks like the girls are a stronger bunch than the guys. My wife is enjoying it, notwithstanding - I think this is her favorite show, ever. I definitely can't complain about watching it twice this week, and not just because of Cat Deeley.

Internets, I love you

I'm sitting here trying to get a column done on Swingtown, CBS' new summer sitcom with a quality cable kind of vibe. It's a post I've been meaning to write for a few days now, based on the critical response and the Parents TV Council's protests to the network, calling for it to be preempted. Of course I haven't actually tuned in to watch the thing when it debuted a week ago - I pride myself on watching as little TV as possible to actually do this job. Trust me, that would only make it harder.

Which brings me to the second most valuable tool I have to get this job done, after tvtattle.com - bittorent. I was able to find a massively-seeded copy of the first episode before I left for L.A., and I've literally just been alerted that episode 2, which aired this week, has just finished downloading. This would, no doubt, give someone at CBS a major case of the vapors, but it's made my job so much easier. YouTube used to fulfill this function, but you can only get so far on 5-10 minute segments, with spotty availability and YouTube's frequently dodgy connections, not to mention the big fat sunburned target they've become for the legal departments of the networks.

Still, as long as the studios refuse to build digital pressrooms, and cling obstinately to the ad-time revenue model, this is the best way to consume TV I can imagine right now. One day, somebody is going to get it.