A night of TV

A busy night of television last night. Which is perhaps a bit on the sad side, but we decided to have a weekend of sloth. Which meant catching some TV last night.

1. We only subjected ourselves to the last 15 minutes of Canadian Idol, just enough to see that my prediction was right about Sharpe not winning. Trust me, it's for the best. If he's good enough, he'll still make it and have a little more time to grow into it. I don't care how many successful 16 year olds there are in the music industry, more often then not they fail and the ones that get commercial success end up getting mentally and emotionally messed up.

So don't get too upset. First of all, it's a reality show. Secondly, he'll still probably make it one day.

2. My favourite reality show is The Amazing Race. And it looks like a good group of people. I was especially happy to see some diverse ethnic groups involved in the race (and handled better than the latest Survivor). So what happens? Two of the ethnic teams go down to defeat. The Muslim fathers, which was really too bad because it would have been fascinating to see how they would have handled the race and the way the other competitors would have dealt with them. Also, the Indian couple seemed quite nice, so it's too bad to see them gone so early.

I suspect Dups would empathize about trying to navigate around Beijing. Or the challenges of trying to scale up the side of the Great Wall.

Do I have any favourites so far? A bit early to tell. The triathelete couple look like they could be interesting. The recovering drug addict models are not as annoying as I might have thought. And God help me, the couple from Kentucky are making me laugh out loud right now, although in ways I'm not sure I'm proud of.

It's a good start and the Race has only failed to entertain once - the disastrous Family Edition. So I'm looking forward to a fun season.

3. It would be hard to find a new show more hyped that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And since Aaron Sorkin, the guy who created West Wing, is behind this one, I'm willing to give it a long try. Although it premieres on Monday night on NBC, CTV is showing it on Sunday night.

How does it look? Like a heck of a lot of fun. There's a lot of "walk and talk" that Sorkin is famous for. I think a typical 60 minute drama has about 60 pages of script. I think a Sorkin script is about 75 pages. So yeah, it takes a special kind of actor to get through it. Bradley Whitford, who was with Sorkin on The West Wing was going to have no problem. And he looks perfectly at ease. Maybe a bit too much. He's still a bit too much Josh from West Wing in this so far.

But Matthew Perry is the revelation. He is very much not Chandler Bing. He's something else. Something much darker and funnier. And it looks like he is having a blast, especially in the pilot where he's riffing off his and Sorkin's well known drug problems (the two could probably compare favourites). So far he's the star of the show. Perhaps not a big surprise to some of you, given he's probably the biggest star on the show. But I was surprised and enjoyed it a lot.

It's not the West Wing. Nothing ever will be. But it's the best show I've seen so far this season. Time will tell if that holds.