TV/New media
All in the family
- Courtesy of BET
BY SHELBY AMBROSE
BET’s recent premiere spotlights the new and possibly soon to be famous R&B group “Brutha.” The new “family-friendly” (if you consider drinking, swearing and fighting to be family-friendly) reality show, “Brothers to Brutha,” follows the Harrell brothers — Grady, Anthony, Papa, Jared and Jacob — and their lives as a dysfunctional family. In the first episode, the five brothers share an inseparable bond, but are torn apart by their different ways and big egos.
A comedian's Christmas
- Courtesy of Comedy Central
BY BY IMRAN SYED
A Christmas special from Stephen Colbert — America’s favorite faux-ultra-conservative “newsman” — was long overdue. Literally.
Colbert had planned to do a special last year, but his book release, semi-serious bid for the presidency (sponsored, of course, by Doritos) and the writers' strike kept it at bay.
A funny import debuts on HBO
BY TRINA MANNINO
In its ongoing quest to find a new comedy to rival the acclaim of “Entourage” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” HBO has premiered the Australian comedy “Summer Heights High.” Like “Curb,” the show is shot in a realistic style, but instead of shadowing a rich curmudgeon, “High” follows the lives of outlandish students and teachers at an Australian public school.
Cha$e is nothing more than reality TV's version of tag
BY JAMIE BLOCK
It claims to be a "real-life video game," where suit-wearing “hunters” reminiscent of the agents from “The Matrix” stalk contestants through a maze of city blocks. If a hunter manages to catch one, that player is eliminated. The contestant who survives the hunt and reaches the finish line first wins a grand prize of $25,000, a figure that seems higher than the show’s budget. While the premise is original, the game show unfortunately suffers from the same pitfalls that ruin the games it attempts to emulate.
A 'Whale' of a good time on Animal Planet
- Courtesy of Animal Planet
BY MARK SCHULTZ
Paul Watson is a modern-day pirate. A silver-haired curmudgeon with a walrus mustache and protruding belly, he navigates his ship, the Steve Irwin, through frigid arctic waters in search of the fishing freighter Nisshin Maru. But Watson isn’t after treasure or weapons. As the subject of Animal Planet’s seven-part documentary “Whale Wars,” Watson wants nothing but safety for his best friends: three three-ton whales.
50 Cent brings thug life to Trump formula
BY JAMIE BLOCK
Rapper, actor and entrepreneur 50 Cent can add Donald Trump impersonator to his list of endeavors with his new MTV reality series “50 Cent: the Money and the Power.” Fourteen hopefuls compete in a series of business and physical challenges that test their ability to think on their feet and work as a team. The winner will earn a $100,000 investment of 50 Cent’s own money, far less than the million-dollar prize offered on “The Apprentice.”
Michael Passman: The best of the worst on TV this season
BY MICHAEL PASSMAN
Sometimes it’s not easy to come up with ideas for this column (e.g. last month’s Modern TV Theme Hall of Fame) but I’ve got a lot I want to hit on and decided not to discriminate this week. The fall season is well underway, late-summer shows have recently come to an end and a lot of events need to be addressed. In totally bitching list form, I’m knocking out six of television's top storylines from the last few weeks in one column. Cop out? Maybe, but I promise not to mention Ohio or malfunctioning voting machines, which should be a nice diversion today.
The B-side
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The walls are covered with graffiti-esque murals of Mario and Megaman. The shelves contain every imaginable object of the gaming world, from the latest PlayStation 3 releases to the rulebooks to the latest edition of “Dungeons & Dragons.” Welcome to Ann Arbor's gaming Mecca.
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