With The Cut now in its 4th different timeslot on CBS, it’s becoming almost fun to see it appear in my TiVo cue. The latest move, to Friday nights, appears to be its last stop on its collision course with Reality Oblivion. I guess they could shift it to UPN Saturday nights or something… Time will tell. This week’s episode did benefit from the Tiffany Network’s bold move to air Veronica Mars as a lead-in. And judging from recent TVgasm posts regarding that show, perhaps more than the usual 6 of you actually watched The Cut. And if you did, you saw the hands-down best episode of the year…

The Cut has been a tragedy from the get-go; horrible host, blatantly derivative format, boring cast, confusing challenges, arbitrary judgments, etc. Normally, I’d have given up on the show long ago… But unlike the show’s Felix, I’m not a quitter. Felix, you see, was responsible for the title of this week’s episode: “I’m a grown-ass man and I quit.” I would have pegged him for a breast man, but I’m getting ahead of myself. So before we get to the cause of our intrepid Latino skateboarder’s declaration, let’s explore what brought him to the brink.

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Yes, I know I used the same title that the show’s producers came up with. What can I say? It’s a good one and it certainly has all the qualities I try to impart in my own titles. I do feel cheesy using it though… My second choice was “Janice Dickenson is Still a Bitch.” And an ugly one at that. This week’s episode opened with a harrowing look at Janice: Behind the Mask. Oh. My. God. She is a downright disturbing-looking human before the two hours of work her stylists put into her face every day. You know how sometimes you’ll be hiking in the woods and stumble upon a perfectly good-looking deer carcass and say to yourself, “Hmm, a well-preserved dead deer. I think I’ll take the head and mount the antlers above my fireplace. This will prove to Dad finally that I AM a man and I can hunt and kill and all that manly stuff, even if I have to lie a little.” And so you go over to the dead deer and lift up the head but much to your disgust and dismay, as you lift the antlers it pulls the buck’s face off with the rack, exposing the decaying maggot-infested interstitial facial fatty tissue? Well, Janice Dickenson is just like that. Except she a human and not a deer and she’s alive and not dead. I think.

Wait, you mean you’ve never happened upon a dead deer and attempted to validate your manhood by stealing its antlers in a lame attempt to appease your father? Oh. It’s back to the therapist for me, I suppose. Keep in mind that the show only exposed the evil beast behind the Janice mask for a mere split second – as I’m sure her contract said something like, “You may not air one second of footage of me before I am made up for the day.” So VH1 aired about .85 seconds worth with the opening credits onscreen to boot… Well played, VH1, well played.

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My Tour of Hilton Recap Duty is nearly over as the socialite wannabes have been whittled down to the final four: Uber-wimp Jaret, PMS spokeswoman Vanessa, frumpy Jackaay, and the cryptically named JW. Actually, JW is from Mississippi, so perhaps that’s the best his illiterate Mississippi parents could come up with. The four were enjoying their breakfast when Kathy Hilton appeared to discuss the day’s challenge. Watching this show, I’ve learned that Kathy Hilton is so cool that her mere presence causes these kids to golf clap. They do it every week at the end of the show, but this week they greeted her with it at an impromptu breakfast appearance.

As commonplace as it’s now become to dub in the reality host’s yammering, Who Wants to be a Hilton seems to have taken it to new heights. Entire paragraphs are dubbed in – so much so that it sounds like a 15 year old’s two-bit cable access show. In fact, as Kathy was explaining the challenge, I had to be do a double take to insure that she was actually present and not just appearing on a green screen or via a Princess Leia hologram projection thingamajig. It was that poorly produced.

Continue reading for more Star Wars references, after the jump…

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Janice makes her kids proud One of the challenges The Surreal Life recaps present is the fact that the show seems to deal with a rather delicate subject matter on a weekly basis. Even though the show is an absurd carnival of morons and misfits, they have dealt with retarded children, three-legged dogs, and now, [...]

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With Crazy Psycho Jeff getting cut last episode, I wondered how the show would be this week. I mean, that guy freaked me out and pissed me off, but he was fun to discuss in my recaps. With him gone, who would fill the void left by his departed lunacy? What would add excitement and unpredictability to the show from now on? Surely there’d be something. Lo and behold, my heart rate immediately doubled at the outset: The bottom quarter of my screen was filled with “Flash Flood Warning, Severe Thunderstorm Warning” and an endless crawl describing the terribly exciting result of water falling from the sky in large quantities when a cold front mixes with a warm front. I was mesmerized.

But unfortunately, there was a show going on at the same time that I had to pay attention to as well. Like all reality shows, the footage began at the moment immediately following the latest eviction. Shauna (Native American name: Waddles with Fox Coat) spoke for everyone, including me, regarding Jeff, “Thank god we got rid of that Bozo.” Oddly, the conversation then took a turn and everyone lamented that Elizabeth was still around. Since day one, no one has liked Elizabeth, and I’ve never quite figured out why. Is it her Sally Jesse Rafael glasses? If only their reasoning was so logical.

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I feel a bit weird writing this recap knowing that 99% of TVgasm’s readers spent their Tuesday night watching one of the best Big Brother episodes ever. And that remaining 1%? If you were watching the Hilton show you scare me, quite frankly, because I’m not sure that you are mentally stable. At least I, as the resident rookie writer ’round these parts, have an excuse. Alas, while B-Side gets to describe the wondrous meltdowns of Eric, Maggie, and Ivette, I must report upon the ho-hum return of a completely forgettable cast of eliminated Hiltonites. Imagine the emotional rollercoaster of my Tuesday night – going from Big Brother to “I Want to be a Hilton.” But I’m a pro and I endured…for YOU, dear readers.

Enough of my whining. This week’s show simply had to be better than last week’s debacle. Right? Right??!!

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Having seen the previews and having read the show’s title (“I Just Stabbed Myself”), I had slightly higher hopes for The Cut last week. I knew it was going to be a really wild show with crazy rock and rollers, drunkenness, and with a bit of luck, Crazy Jeff stabbing himself to death. Ok, “to death” is a bit harsh – but it sure reads better than “stabbing himself to critical but stable condition.” Before we got to the fun stuff, though, we had to review the devastation James’ dismissal caused after last Style Forum. Everyone liked James. Hell, I even liked James! The Cutters couldn’t believe HALfiger-9000 had a 404 Error and sent the wrong person home. Everyone would be on their toes from this point forward, that’s for sure.

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Last week the Surreal Seven managed to prove that they were more retarded than the Sunshine Strikers – a group of mentally challenged kids they bowled against. This week, they’d be performing a striptease act. I love how this show is more or less an experiment to see what depths washed up “celebrities” will sink to in order to keep their 15 minute flame alight. Those of you who watch The Surreal Life know that each episode is actually only like 15 minutes long…with the long opening credits, recap of the previous episode, and that insidious post commercial thing they do when they replay the last minute or so of footage before the commercial. In other words, I’m setting you up for a less-than-MSRblog-standard-opus recap.

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Oh dear, what a mess. To be fair to the show, I was completely thrown off by NBC pre-empting the first 15 minutes of “I Want To Be a Hilton” to air President Bush’s Supreme Court Nominee announcement (on the East Coast). Now, you know that shit wouldn’t have flown back in NBC’s “Must See TV” heyday. I can see Clair Huxtable getting all bug-eyed while doing that side-to-side neck thing and breathing deeply in her Dacron turquoise pantsuit (with high collar, matching hoop earrings and eye shadow) before saying, “Ain’t no Preeeeeeesident gonna stop me from setting up another unfunny scene with my little Rudy doing something cute!” Yeah, I know “Must See TV” was Thursday nights, but whatever. Any chance to goof on Phylicia Ayres Rashad Allen, no matter how tenuous, is fine by me.

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My apologies for the lateness of these “Cut” recaps. And my sincerest apologies to you if you actually watch this show. Seriously, why? Do you have to write recaps for other blogs or something? Due to vacations and conflicts and such, we missed the July 7th episode on all the various office TiVo’s. I did watch it while drinking in Florida, however, and will do my best to catch y’all up. It’s a shame we missed that one because it was actually a pretty good episode. Ok, it sucked, but I found that if you only half-ass watch “The Cut” while downing a few Coronas on vacation, it’s not so bad.

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