12/22/04

12/22/04— Fear Factor Siblings, NBC
Las Vegas, NBC
Las Vegas, NBC
Roseanne, Nickelodeon

Fear Factor Siblings

Two brother-sister teams and a brother-brother and sister-sister team competed for another $50,000. Casting is essential for this show. The chicks have to be stacked, the guys have to be good looking and have large biceps and breasts, and the two same-sex sibling teams had to look like each other. Adding to it, it’s good to have a ditz, some bad guys, and some all-American types.

Forget O’Reilly. This is The Factor. You can spin all you want, but you’ve got to back up all the trash talk by sucking leeches. O’Reilly couldn’t take this kind of pressure.

Then again, the setup is totally unfair. Forget it if you aren’t good looking, if you don’t have breasts (both men and women), forget it if you aren’t buffed out. Looks might not be important for you, but the Factor has to get competitors in water at least once an episode. Got to feed the beast. The raw meat for viewers is raw meat. But enhancements never hurt.


Las Vegas

I think I didn’t give this show enough credit. Not only is there a casino owner with a heart of gold who’d rather fight crime, a cast of chicks who barely serve as plot advancement mannequins, but there’s The Love Boat angle. They have to have musical stars who are “booked” to play at the casino, but mostly do something on the casino floor.

In this episode, Brooks and Dunn are on a gambling tear. They’re at the roulette wheel, winning money, kibitzing with the cast, and amusing everyone. Could their banter be off the cuff? Is Brooks a natural blonde? Guess you’ll have to ask them.

Alec Baldwin made an appearance as a baddie. An old chum of the gruff, heart o’ gold James Caan, he’s there as an expert at casino security. Who would have thought that the slithery character Alec portrayed was scamming his old pal? Sure, everyone. But that’s the charm of television. So many of the most popular shows never surprise. And why should they?

Not content to waste a good thing, Baldwin makes another appearance in the next episode. To prove there are no hard feelings, that scamming is just business, he helps his pal Caan track down an art thief. Ah, back to fighting the bad guys. Of course, Caan owns the art. Ed McMahon does the turn as the token celebrity with no place to go. Bless him.


Roseanne

One of the questions I ask about television shows is how many plot lines can they sustain in an episode. Is it too much to ask for a “b” plot. Roseanne, still funny after jumping the shark,m wasn’t able to get past plot "a." Pity.