Monday, June 02, 2008

All TV: '30 Days,' 'The Mole' reviews

Today's column looks at the new season of "30 Days" on FX, and the long-delayed return of original-recipe, non-celebrity "The Mole."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I lost all respect for Spurlock when he decided he didn't need to do the full 30 Days in jail for that episode. Either it's 30 days or it's not, and it defeats the purpose of the show if you wimp out of the task you assign for yourself for an episode.

Unknown said...

Their minds have long since been made up, and they seem to have gone on the show in the belief that their viewpoint is so obviously the right one that anyone they meet, or who watches at home, will automatically be converted to the cause.

LOL, this would also describe anyone who has ever been on "Wife Swap" or "Trading Spouses."

Anonymous said...

I know this is COMPLETELY off topic, but I was reading about the new Cupid over the weekend and, while I like Bobby Cannavale, I came up with a perfect actor to play Trevor: Rick Hoffman. What do you think, Alan?

Alan Sepinwall said...

Moot point. Cannavale's been cast, and the remake's going to sink or swim with him.

medusa said...

I don't know, I really loved "The Mole" during its first, celebrity-free seasons. (Yes, a saracastic-and-bored Anderson Cooper helped.) At least it's a game show where you have to think in order to stay in the game - "coalitions" and playing a social game only can get you so far.

I watched the pilot this season and have high hopes - there are some typical TV reality pretty people, but also some others who appear somewhat normal and interesting. C'mon, any show where the host proposes he call the annoying contestant "Whiner" and she asks that it be amended to "Dr. Whiner" since she's a OB/GYN, is going to be fun to watch.

One of my favorite shows, if they are going to continue to recycle the recent past, was the one where there was a mystery and the contestants had to follow clues from week to week, with two players competing in a final "challenge" where one would not return, but became another "victim" of the killer-on-the-loose. I can't remember the name of the show, but it was the summer of 2001, and my memory of it is probably all wrapped up in the fact that the winner (or finalist?) was a firefighter who died on Sept. 11 in the trade center, just weeks after the show aired.

Anonymous said...

medusa,

You're thinking of Murder in Small Town X, and the winner was indeed a New York-area firefighter who died on 9/11.