This Week in Television - Feb. 15-19, 2010

Short week to due to Olympics hiatuses.

Lost
This week's episode had some of those awesome moments that make the show so great: Flocke throwing away the white stone as an "inside joke"; Hurley saving the day in Locke's flash-sideways like a swanky businessman; Ben complaining about the coffee filter in the teacher's lounge. It's those little things that make us love the characters so much. I thought Flocke was actually going to kill Sawyer via the broken ladder trick, because of a certain shot of him switching over to the second ladder with a grin mere seconds before Sawyer's snapped. I'm still not convinced that he didn't do a little work on it with his machete, even if it was just to save Sawyer and gain his trust. Interesting that a little blond boy scares the hell out of him though.

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains
What really annoyed me about this episode was the whole scene with Boston Rob passing out. First of all, they threw in a cheesy POV shot with the camera falling down, which shouldn't have been included because Survivor is supposed to be a documentary series (in theory anyway), and you don't use POV shots in documentaries. My second pet peeve was the reality TV staple that makes me hate reality TV, which is to show someone crying and play sappy music to blatantly coax tears of sympathy out of viewers. The close-up on Rob's tear-streaked face combined with his cheesy speech and thick Boston accent over "emotional" music actually made me laugh because it came off as more of a parody of an Oscar clip than anything else. What also made me laugh was Randy's "Roll it over Rupert's toe!" line at the challenge. He seems much less grumpy this time around (though no less malicious I'm sure), probably because he's enjoying being surrounded by other douchebags.

Kenny vs. Spenny
Who can survive on an island the longest? This episode was kind of lame because neither of them were really doing anything and then they threw in another cop-out victory. This is an old strategy of Kenny's, as there have been other episodes where it seems as if he is fooling around and not competing, only to spring a surprise victory on Spenny due to some loophole he had planned all along. It's not really believable that Spenny is naive enough not to have realized this by now, but then there have been plenty of moments throughout the course of the series that seemed fake and most likely were. As I said in an earlier post, I watch the show for the fun competitions but Kenny's stolen victories get tiresome.

Hero of the Week: Hurley from Lost, for being a really cool guy by helping Locke out of a jam and recognizing that Randy is indeed a douche (I do think he had a legitimate reason to fire Locke, he just has a dick personality).

Douchebag of the Week: James from Survivor. He may have been right about everyone having to listen to one person in order to succeed in the challenge, but he was rude and abrasive in his attacks against Stephanie, and "she forced everyone out of her tribe until she was the only one left" is not really a valid argument because it isn't true.