The latest Thursday-night ratings race netted out the same as last week, with CBS' Survivor: Cook Islands (15.74 million viewers), ABC's Grey's Anatomy (22.82 mil) and NBC's ER (14.37 mil) topping their respective hours, and Ugly Betty (13.81 mil), CSI (21.58 mil) and Shark (14.14 mil) again proving to be formidable second-placers.The most noteworthy week-to-week movement came from Smallville (4.93 million, up 330,000) and Supernatural (3.7 mil, up 400,000), while Six Degrees, hampered yet again by significant 10:30 tune-out (minus 2.1 million heads), slipped a half-mil from last week and is now down 34 percent from its Sept. 21 bow.
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You have to watch what you say on Survivor or it could cost you big. Just ask Stephannie, who watched her million-dollar dreams drift away on an imaginary plate of mashed potatoes. I feel bad for Stephannie because Nate, who, despite his declarations, is no friend to Stephannie, has been trying to get this woman off the island for the last two weeks. How do you take "I could go for some mashed potatoes and gravy" to mean, "Gee, I can't wait to get off this island"? I’m sorry that Stephannie was not motivated to fight to stay in the game. For that reason alone I'm OK with voting her out. Personally, I don’t understand contestants who go on this show and then give up. It makes me wonder if they even really wanted the million. Like Cao Boi, I'm not sure if the cash prize motivates him or if he only jumped at this opportunity to have a captive audience. The man can talk forever, yet he cannot read body language or recognize when he's gone to far. Not only did he, Flicka and O...
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Question: Smallville spoilers, please?
Answer: Here's a spoiler wrapped in a riddle: Smallville has four couples now — Lana and Lex; Lois and Oliver/Green Arrow; Chloe and Jimmy; Martha and Lionel. Which one will be expecting by Thanksgiving? Place your bets now!
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Question: Did you hear about Grey's shooting on location in Seattle last week?
Answer: Did I hear? Did I hear? I was inundated with e-mails from Seattle-based AA readers about the "top-secret" location shoot. One of them wrote to tell me that her aunt works at the charter-plane company in Seattle that Patrick Dempsey used when he was done filming. "He was several hours early [for his flight]," she wrote. "So my aunt had the hard task of entertaining Dr. McDreamy for about an hour. Here’s the scoop: His nickname is 'Paddy'; he loves French fries and was impressed my aunt had already ordered some for his plane; the tree going through the kid in the premiere was a true story; this week’s episode is 'dark' — his words; they are currently filming Episode 8, and when asked what's going on, he replied, 'You know I can’t say anything,' but then smiled and said, 'But it’s good!'; he can’t believe how popular the show ha
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Here's why I'm rooting for 1 vs. 100 (Friday, 8 pm/ET), NBC's latest game-show import, to catch on, even modestly.
I happen to be among the minority that's completely immune to the dubious charms of NBC's ubiquitous Deal or No Deal — or, as I tend to call it, "that stupid briefcase show." Even if it weren't so proud of its mindlessness, bragging that it takes no skill to play, I find the entire excruciating exercise as empty as many of those briefcases.
Now the same producers have taken Deal's format of wagering against ever-escalating stakes, and wedded it to a trivia-based rip-off of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The concept is simple yet effective: A single contestant faces a "mob" of 100 peopl
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You know, there really may be something to this whole karma thing. It’s almost too delicious to see J.P. and Ozzy knocked down a peg. Ozzy, mastermind of the Billy ouster, has done his best to keep himself in the game ever since the merge. He has been running around in the challenges like nobody's business, diving, swimming, doing whatever it takes to keep his group from going to tribal council. Back at camp he's hauling in fish left and right and making sure everyone knows it. Don't worry, Poseidon, they noticed. J.P., on the other hand, cluelessly set himself up for the fall. It's never a smart move in Survivor to let the tribe see you proudly doing nothing (wasn't that Billy's crime?). But to proudly do nothing and command the others from your perch? Uh-uh. Emperor J.P. surely wore no clothes. I'm so proud of the ladies (and Brad) for their sneak attack. With J.P. voted out, the women of Raro have wrested the power from their big, strong men, but Parvati may soon have her m...
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Survivor boss Mark Burnett knows about alliances. And so it's no surprise that in Gold Rush (aol.com/goldrush), the online reality game in which he's partnered with AOL, there's an element of teamwork — up to a point. "Not unlike how you play Survivor," explains Gold Rush exec producer Ted Smith, "you sometimes depend upon the collective to advance yourself."
The collective in this case is the Gold Buddies you pick, who you can instant-message for help as you compete in the pop-culture challenges. And if you're one of three finalists to get to the coveted vault, you can actually phone as many as five of those comrades to help you win one of the $100,000 awards, or even the million-dollar grand prize.
But who should you pick? "You want the guy who's sitt
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