Does Someone Have to Go
Have you ever wanted to take control of your office and expose fellow coworkers that may be too lazy, too overpaid or just plain annoying? Fox is granting that power to three companies in the new reality series Does Someone Have To Go? (premiering Thursday at 9/8c)
"It's basically Survivor meets The Office," says Fox president of alternative entertainment Mike Darnell. "There's always someone in a company who the employees feel should be gone and they feel the boss is too stupid to see it. If the employees decided somebody's fired, then they're gone, but they take it really seriously and there's a lot of emotion."
In the show's first episode, bosses from the Illinois-based company Velocity Merchant Services (VMS) put their employees to task by having them survey a number of factors — including gross productivity and yearly salary — to decide who should be demoted, have their income slashed, or fired on the spot. In the end, the employees nominate three colleagues to face the chopping block, all in the name of company improvement.
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Anne Heche
It's going to be a long off-season, especially where network TV is concerned, if the offerings don't soon improve from the dregs on display on this inauspicious opening night. Think of it as an excuse to catch up on repeats — or to dive into your DVR and/or On Demand archive to see what's new to you.
The only advice I have after enduring the pilot episode of NBC's woeful comedy Save Me is: Save yourself. This shrill parable of redemption, being burned off in back-to-back episodes (Thursday, 8/7c), is like a spiritual Enlightened for the tone deaf. Anne Heche, at her most manic (and that's saying something), stars as Beth Harper, a heroine possessed with an unbearable lightness of being — or you could just stop at unbearable — when she is suddenly transformed from an "angry drunken bitch" (her words) into a cockeyed optimist seemingly filled with a holy spirit after nearly choking to death on a sandwich.
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Joe Mantegnai, Thomas Gibson, A.J. Cook
[SPOILER ALERT: The following story contains spoilers about the Season 8 finale of Criminal Minds. Read at your own risk.]
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Employees of Velocity Merchant Services
Think you've got a dysfunctional workplace? You're not the only one.
Fox is bringing work home from the office with its new reality show Does Someone Have to Go?, which premieres Thursday at 9/8c. In the series, the latest creation from veteran reality show producers Mike Darnell (Joe Millionaire) and Cris Abrego (The Surreal Life), company power is turned over from management to the employees. The employees must then select three underperforming co-workers who run the risk of getting fired if they can't change their tune.
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Zach Sobiech
There was no shortage of heartbreaking stories to come out of Moore, Okla., this week, in the wake of a deadly tornado that left dozens of people dead and hundreds more homeless and/or injured. But amid the rubble, there was at least one uplifting moment when a woman reunited with her missing dog — while in the middle of a live interview for the evening news. In another unrelated yet equally gut-wrenching event this week, 18-year-old YouTube star Zach Sobiech lost his battle with bone cancer. In more lighthearted news, American Idol bid farewell to its last remaining original judge, Randy Jackson, and the keen viewers at CinemaSins assembled every continuity error in Jurassic Park into a three-minute video. Check out those clips and more in our weekly roundup of the best online videos
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Wolf Blitzer
Not everyone answers to a higher power — or at least that's what CNN's Wolf Blitzer discovered in a live interview with one of the Oklahoma tornado victims.
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