TV Show Round Up: Survivor One World Finale, Veep

Survivor: One World Finale

Survivor: One World ended up being a pretty terrible season.  It’s probably one of the bottom five in the show’s history.  The final episode didn’t really improve much and in fact, the lead up to the final Tribal Council pretty much summed up just how dreadful some of the contestants were.  Christina, the self-styled ‘underdog’, simply rolled over and decided that she would get voted out making no attempt to scramble and save herself.  A frustrated Jeff Probst took her to task at the final tribal council.  You could see that he couldn’t believe what a damp squib the season was finishing on.  I imagine he was thinking my goddamn ratings.  How the hell are we going to make this look exciting in the edit?!

In the end, Kim was a deserved winner of the million bucks.

It’s funny.  We’ve had plenty of seasons recently which were highly entertaining but fans felt that the wrong person won.  I don’t think anyone could dispute that Kim deserved to win here but I think everyone was desperate for her to have a competent foil to play against.  Unfortunately it just wasn’t to be.  Every seasons needs pawns and thats what Kat, Christina, Lief were presumably cast to be.  Unfortunately, it turned out that short of Troyzan, just about everyone else completely lacked any tactical nouse either.  Well, except for Colton and he left for medical reasons in Week 4.

In short, a disasterous season that will hopely have producer Mark Burnett looking at the current recruitment model (2-3 fans, 16-17 cast per season) to make sure we don’t have a repeat with Season 25.  Every season needs pawns.  But the best pawns are the colourful characters who are whacky and/or think they are running the game.  The worst kind – Lief, Christina etc. – are bland, have nothing interesting to say, make wasteful/nonsensical votes and lack any sort of competitive drive.  A genuine ambition to win the game surely must be a minimum entry barrier for the show.  For Tarzan to get so far into the game and freely admit to not caring about winning…thats when the show has some major problems.

Veep – Episode 103 – “Catherine“

I felt that Veep was a show with potential and for me, episode three was the one where it really came together and made me a genuine fan of the show.  I absolutely love the show’s portrayal of the weird isolated world that career politicians live in.  Tony Hale is really coming into his own as Gary and this is easily his best role since playing Buster in Arrested Development.  The scene in which he provided trivia for Selina as she met guests at her party had me rolling.  The show is also great for hidden/background gags.  I didn’t notice the moment in the picture above where Selina’s face matches her photo on the TIME magazine cover until someone on Something Awful commented on it.  The ensemble cast is really strong too.  Matt Walsh, Anna Chlumsky and Timothy Simons are all great at exchanging barbed insults.

A fun bit of trivia:  Selina’s daughter Catherine is played by Kiefer Sutherland’s daughter.

The only thing that bums me out about Veep is that I read absolutely zero buzz about the show on my social network feeds.  I feel like no one else is watching this show which makes me worried for its future.  Apparently the ratings are good however (three times higher than Girls) and hopefully its audience will build through word of mouth.

This is the funniest new show of the year, people.