Monday, 27 April 2009

Britain's Next Top Model: Season 5 Episode 2: The One Where The Girls Get Nekkid With Some Mangoes...

Down with Boot Camp! Huzzah for houses! It's off to London and the Top Model house which is plush. "Like a crib," says Chloe helpfully. Bless her...

There's much squealing and slapping of arses in a hot tub. Obviously. This is one of the beauties of BNTM - the girls are that bit more trashy than the Americans!

Today's first challenge was a fashion quiz, which wasn't that tricky if you've read a magazine in say, the last ten years. Turns out Ashley reckons that Vogue isn't sold anywhere in Scotland. Umhm...

So, half the girls won jewellery, and those that didn't said they didn't much like it anyway. Yeah, whatever.

Lovely Lisa Mail promised a churchly challenge with Wedding TV, a casting for a fresh new face held on the Millennium Bridge. Surrounded by people on their way to actual jobs and whatnot. Elizabeth Emmanuel, she of much hair and very little face, was to be the designer. A male model, of very little hair and much chiselled face was to play an integral part... Ooh! Kissing! And speaking!

Mecia is the one with the problem. Of course, she has a boyfriend and so can't possibly countenance the idea of kissing anyone else ever. So she does some kind of weird covering of the mouths so no kiss can be seen. Which ends up frustrating the director no end until he has enough and tells her to bugger off. Only in a slightly nicer way. Oh, now she starts crying and worrying she might have blown her chances...

Kacey wins and gets the most garish mirrored bag ever made. It is The Bag Of A Thousand Mirrors and is described as "the most beeyootiful bag in the world'.

Much much bigger squeals here from the Watch with... sofas. Miz J!!!! Miz J!!!!!!! SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Thank God for Miz J, who fabulously appeared out of the ether to deliver a much needed Louboutin to the posterior. His impressions of the girls' walks are one of our personal highlights of the show. 'No-necked monster' is henceforth a major phrase in any sane person's vocabulary.
Lisa-ann is our new Marjorie. She cries now because she sucks at walking. Last week, it was because being a check out girl was too stressful. The world is against her, people!

Daisy boasts she's done it before and thinks everyone is jealous of her. No, Daisy, it's just that no one likes you. Sel doesn't anyway.

Getting in the naked shoot early, the girls are sent to a studio to swim around with some mangoes. It looks like a fashion twist on bobbing for apples at Hallowe'en. Except it's with mangoes and they're all naked. Which, in some houses, is probably how it goes down.

Hayley was up first and seemed very comfortable with it.

Mecia who didn't want to do kissing was absolutely fine with being nekkid. Go figure.

Ashley who's had two kids was understandably nervous about things like stretch marks but seemed to do quite well.

Madeleine is from a nekkid family apparently. Lovely. She had lots of fun rolling around in the fruitmire.

Viola worries she won't be able to understand the direction but seems to do ok. Sel is very unsure about Viola and thinks she grins like a serial killer.

Oof. Daisy and Sophie are shaping up to be complete bitches. They seem to be a bit jealous of Chloe, who then went on to really please the client by being all the cute and round cheeked loveliness that so offends Daisy and Sophie.

Sophie though was an epic fail. Pride before a fall and all that, dear...

Judging!

Hayley was deemed ok but too tense in the jaw.

Lauren looked very fake as Huggy pointed out. She's stupidly pretty but looked a bit American infomercial.

Madeleine lost her arm - where was that?! Why did no one mention it!?!? Instead, everyone cooed over it. But her arm!!!

Mecia was pulled up on the hissy fit of the commercial which was fair enough but managed to pull off a good enough photo for everyone to forget about that.

Annaliese's picture was fabulously energetic and easily Sel's favourite.

Kacey looked cute in her pic.

Sophie's photo was predictably awful.

Huggy thought Chloe's photo was a bit lad's mag soft pornesque. It wasn't really, just a bit too cute.

Louis and Huggy disagreed over Viola's photo. Viola just carried on with the demented smiling.

Jade worried that she's too slim but everyone said she produced a great shot. It was alright...

Daisy was picked by the client as having the best photo. Sel thought it was a bit meh but Lel loved it.

Lisa-ann predicatably looked very uncomfortable.

And so we were left with Lisa-ann and Sophie in the bottom 2.... Lovely Lisa pulled Lisa-ann up on her crying while Sophie was told she was a bit rubbish.

Sophie doesn't annoy everyone by crying though and got through.

Makeover week next week!!! Dramz! Huzzahs! It will be ultimate viewing, because NO-ONE out here in the real world reacts that badly to a haircut.

Who will shed the most tears? The bets are on... Let us know what you think!

The Biggest Loser UK, Season 3 Episode 1

So we're back with The Biggest Loser UK, this time around hosted by Kate Garraway and in the couples format also used in the US. Today's first episode is all about meeting the contestants and taking them to their 'fat camp' home for the next few months. The winner will receive £10,000, (in the US the winner gets $250,000 - just saying).

This season's trainers are Angie Dowds - "train as hard as you can, as often as you can", "first training session, they'll think they've woken up in hell", a kick-ass ball of muscle who could give US trainer Jillian Michaels a run for her money; and newbie Richard Callender, who has his own personal fear of failure, uh oh. I'll go with Angie please, hell threats aside.

First they have to prove themselves with a general workout - squat until I say stop, that kind of thing. What seemed forever through editing was only about 20 minutes of quite low-impact exercise.

Throughout this we were introduced to the couples, and there were some pretty sad stories - really young people who've been told they won't live very long at all if they don't lose weight pretty damn quick. Those looking after sick relatives and scared they won't be there is the long term. Daughters following in the footsteps of their overweight mothers. Generally, the forecast isn't great for these people.

And so to the first weigh-in. How horrendous. The nation watching you in your smalls, dragging your larger-than-average posterior up to the scales, awaiting your almighty humiliation. Mark had no idea what he weighed anymore, as his scales stopped at 24 stone. Which the cynic in me said must just be plain inconvenient. Luckily there were no such technical shortcomings in the Biggest Loser house, their scales know no upper limit. It's like they go all the way up to 11 (tonnes).

The results were as follows:

Mark (25st 13lbs) and Kevin (23st 8lbs) - strangers
Rick (21st 5lbs) and Michelle (16st 3lbs)- husband and wife
Dave (23st 3lbs) and Jamie (28st 8lbs) - father and son and two of the unhealthiest people who could hope to meet
Maria (15st 11lbs) and Michaela (15st 9lbs) - best friends
Eunice (23st 8lbs) and Miriam (15st 2lbs) - sisters
Carol (15st 11lbs) and Katy (22st 3lbs) - mother and daughter, first to get into the house
Raz (15st 1lb) and Lisa (25st 10lbs) - mother and daughter
Jennifer (23st 5lbs) and Sadie (21st 5lbs) - mother and daughter

They have a week to prepare for their first competitive weigh-in, where the couple who have lost the smallest percentage of their joint weight. Luckily, this has all been filmed in advance, and we get to see it on Friday. Trainer Angie uses the word 'hell' a few more times to make sure we get the point. I get it, Angie, it will be HARD.

The Biggest Loser is on daily, thus keeping out blood-trash levels nice and stable. See you tomorrow.

Grey's Anatomy, Season 5

Now I do love a medical drama, there's nothing quite like a bunch of unfeasibly attractive people who also happen to be total overachievers walking the corridors and rocking some superfine scrubs.

Tonight, Meredith's painfully protracted relationship with McDreamy is getting one step closer to the happy ever after, Derek and his oh-so-perfect follicles are about to pop the question. Christina is having lots of slow-mo, elegant sequences with fairly new doc on the block Hunt, and Little Grey aka Lexi is swooning over McSteamy. She's only human.

So it's a serious Emotional Episode. Except someone neglected to tell a couple of the writers, who seem to be creating for Carry On Nurse, circa 1962. Mark Sloane is their better looking Sid James equivalent, with jokes abounding over his broken penis incident. "Use it wisely!" - chortle, chortle. A couple come into the hospital who have misplaced something unspecified in an unspecified area whilst trying to fire up their sex life. We never discover the object or it's location; but blimey, we suspect it's something and somewhere hilarious. *Sigh*.

Barbara Windsor and pals aside, the episode focuses on a pregnant woman who has accidentally run over her husband, and whose symptoms of a massive aneurysm have been blamed on her pregnancy. Now, I have no experience on this one, but I'd like to think that if I was acting like a complete crazy person and driving over all those near and dear to me, that my truest friends would maybe tell me to GET MYSELF CHECKED OUT, and not just blame it on the baby.

The other main storylines were Bailey tearing her heart over another very sick child, which may lead to a change in career for her, and Izzie getting every kind of crazy test under the sun because in last week's episode, her dead boyfriend intimated to her that she may be dying. You know, a very usual sort of occurence. So, whilst running said dead boyfriend's memorial free clinic, she uses the opportunity to get all her interns to run all tests on her. Including MRIs, which I'm guessing don't come cheap. That may be a moot point however, since Izzie used her $8million inheritance to pay for the clinic. Yep, all regular med students these.

Just in case we got caught up in real drama, the episode ends with Callie Torres getting a kiss from yet another attrractive lesbian surgeon, who crop up like weeds on this show now. All the hot lesbian doctors in the country must be flocking to Seattle Grace as a great dating spot. So Callie's months of torment (one episode) over her enforced celibacy look thankfully to be at an end. So realistic!

There are some pretty great aspects to Grey's - the name, what a pun!, reasonably attractive men, good use of music etc, but it definitely falls down on the medicine. And the lead character. Owch. Ellen Pompeo as Meredith is immensely "slappable" to quote Sel, and your enjoyment of the show can only be enhanced by ignoring her, her silly little nose and her neuroses. I think we all know that in the real world Derek and his hair would find these things neither charming nor attractive and would have strangled her with his stethoscope a long time ago.

As for the medicine, perhaps the writers should get round to pilfering back episodes of ER. Now THERE was a show.

Sunday, 26 April 2009

The City: The One Where Whitney Indulges In Inappropriate Whining To The Actual DVF

So here we are at the finale of Whitney's first series sojourn to NYC.

She's been backstabbed by Park Ave Princess Olivia, had romance troubles with Jay The Commitment Phobe and had to nod sympathetically to the traumas of LC substitutes Erin and Alli. Can't the poor girl catch a break?

Apparently not. Whitney and Olivia are being pit against each other to see who liaises with the London DVF team. Seeing as Whitney spends most her time moping about and not standing up to Olivia then unless there's some amazing editing in store, it's quite obvious who's going to get that job.

Elsewhere in NYC, Adam decided he needed to visit Erin at work to have a go for 'meddling' in his quite frankly unhealthy relationship with the alien-esque Alli. Erin argued that he shouldn't be chatting up girls in Miami, to which he countered that she should be able to make up her mind about which of her boytoys she wants to go out with. There was much annoyed hair flicking.

Back to Whitney who is moping after Jay dumped her to go on tour and have some, like, space or you know, whatever. But she's whining to Olivia about it. Bitch, please! Do not give her more ammunition to take you down with. And hasn't she already said she doesn't want to know about your life?

So who else could Whitney call to have a proper whinge to but good ol' LC. She questions why she moved there, reveals that she has seen through Olivia's scheming ways and that she misses Jay. LC pulls out some good advice, carefully written for her, and tells Whitney to forget Jay and concentrate on her job. Remeber she missed out on Paris for that loser Jason so she should know what she's talking about!

Oooh Olivia is such a bitch, swanning around schmoozing with the London people and taking all the credit for the ELLE cover. In her future I see gin soaked lunches and a loveless marriage. Though maybe I've watched too many soaps and made for TV movies...

Whitney really should stand up for herself and tell everyone she pulled the Elle cover. Eventually after many sidelong glances and sighs, she decides to have it out with Olivia backstage at the NY Fashion Week show and kinda makes her point but then kinda doesn't. She's so damn wishy washy sometimes.

At the after party, Whitney is doing people's heads (ok, just mine) and moping on her own. And then the grand dame herself, Diane Von Furstenberg, makes an entrance to provide some sage advice to Whitney. DVF is fabulous and tells Whitney to basically MTFU and get over Jay and to love herself first and foremost.

Oh. Unsurprisingly Olivia has sneaked the London job. And then takes great delight in telling Whitney. Who is on her way out of the party to see Jay who has just called to try and grovel his way back.

He's sowwy and wants her back and blah blah blah. He manages some crocodile tears but hurrah! Whitney's finally standing up for herself and enforces DVF's advice to look after herself first. Nice use of Every Heartbeat by Robyn there as Whitney strides back to the party, all new and stand up for herself-y. If only it were to smack Olivia in the mouth...

And so it's all over for Season 1. Thanks to the magic of the interwebs, we know that Whitney and Jay have got back together and that she's left DVF. How on earth will they script that in but more importantly, how fabulous that that means more of Kelly Cutrone!

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Don't Tell The Bride... More Like Are You Completely Insane?!

The fact that the mere premise of Don't Tell The Bride (BBC3) makes me shudder with fear probably indicates that I'm going to be a complete bridezilla when/if it comes to my own wedding. And as such, I've never watched it before, gripped by fear at all the things that could go wrong.

I steeled myself though to watch the horror unfold. How on earth could our plucky groom Lee get the dream day for his fiancée Sophie?

For four weeks, Lee and Sophie agreed to live apart and for Sophie to be kept in complete ignorance as to what's going on. Lee moves his best man, Pete, in and promptly cracks open the beers and starts on the guest list.

Which consists of his football team. And drinking buddies. And random people he may have met on the street. Sophie meanwhile is worrying he won't know which of her friends to invite. You signed the papers signing away your rights love...

Being a man, Lee automatically assumes that the church will be available. And even that Sophie would want to get married in a church. Lucky for him, it's available. So that's one half of the venue issue sorted.

Next up is reception venues. Lee only has a budget of £15k but seems to think that luxury hotels are the way forward. Except of course they get booked up weeks in advance and so the one he wants isn't available on the Saturday he wanted... he makes decision though to switch the wedding to a Friday. Which in theory should make it a bit cheaper at least.

OMG! He buys the dress as well?!?! What madness is this?!?! It's at this point Sophie starts worrying a lot. Damn right you should worry!!!

The bridesmaids take pity and go to help choose their dresses. SO at least something will be right.

Lee is starting to get a bit bored with the whole wedding planning thing so his old landlady decides to get him organised via the medium of a huge white board.

Bianca the chief bridesmaid arranges Sophie to actually be fitted for the dress which is a bit of a saving grace.

Then Sophie's mum steps up with a guestlist of Sophie's family and friends which means bye bye to some of the football lot. Oh the shame. Then she steps in to help organise the flowers. Lee doesn't seem overly concerned with girly details like flowers. Even though his surname is Orchard...

Sophie wasn't impressed with the size of her hen party and now she's losing her best friend to a job overseas. Lee meanwhile is busy tasting the wedding menu. Sophie is back to stressing at her sister that Lee won't be coping with the stress. Yeah, eating free food looks really stressful...

Sophie's sisters start grilling Lee about the plans so far. He hasn't done the seating plan, transport, music, suits, rings... any of the actual details then. I'm starting to feel anxious on Sophie's behalf.

Thankfully they've organised the stag do for 2 days before the wedding where he drunkenly professes lots of love for Sophie which is sweet and fairly important!

Sophie finally gets to see the dress and... she likes it. I'm not sure why she thinks it wouldn't fit though seeing as she got measured for it...

On the day, it all seems to be going well. Except for Sophie running late, which quite frankly can be forgiven as she has no idea what's going to happen.

And you know what? It seems to have worked out quite lovely for them which is nice. There's tears of happiness, sunshine and squeals of delight. I'm guessing it would be more fun to watch if Lee had got it completely wrong and I have been told that this does happen with other couples.

I still wouldn't do it though...

Monday, 20 April 2009

Britain's Next Top Model: Season 5 Episode 1: 20 - 7 = 13 Girls Continuing In The Hope Of Becoming...

Britain's. Next. Top. Model!

Huzzahs!It's that time again folks, prepare yourselves as the next twenty new young model hopefuls all set to take the fashion world by storm.

Except it's Week One for Lisa Snowdon's BNTM, and everyone sort of looks like they've been found wandering around Romford Market. So in order to make us realise that BNTM doesn't really care about high fashion, Lovely Lisa takes us through what the past winners (and Abi Clancy) have been up to which has been very high street and lad mag with some forays into Actual Vogue Territory.

So who have we got? Quelle surprise! Nell the posh bisexual! And a working class bisexual from Norf London to hopefully have a fling/row/competition with, thus ticking televisual boxes all over the place.

Lisa-ann crying over the trauma of holding it all together working in a supermarket. Stop crying. You know how we felt about Marjorie...

Chloe the Scouse, cousin to catalogue-friendly (and only BNTM with her own calander fact fans!) Abi Clancey.

Viola who's not vorried about her voreign accent.

Natalie who explains her personality using the words 'fake tan', 'lots of make-up' and 'hair extensions', and looks like every other girl you see shopping the high street.

Emily who doesn't think she got any GCSE's and Madelaine who shouldn't really have said that she couldn't wait to get back to her showjumping just as soon as she'd 'finished' at BNTM.

Oh, and some other people that aren't quite interesting enough just yet.

And so, with a flourish of a fanfare, Lovely Lisa Snowdon makes a low-key entrance in private tank and Private Benjamin mode. Unlike Her High Priestess Of Fieeerrcce! Miz Tyra, who would have made the whole thing look like a genuine, if not very worrying, attempt at world domination, Lovely Lisa has the grace to look like she was about to burst into giggles. We like this - as much as we adore the crazy eyed insanity that is Tyra Banks, Lisa looks more like the kind of girl you could eat macaroons and drink cocktails with.

As Lovely Lisa announces that the girls are being shipped off to Boot Camp, there are excited shreiks. Top Model Bootcamp? Why is everyone so excited? Do they not know what bootcamps are?!

SO they're bundled into army vans and carted off to an assault course where they are met by a grumpy army man. We could have sworn they were being given a dressing down by George W. Bush himself but maybe it was the cocktails...

After a quick slap to the face to restore focus, it's just some other angsty middle aged man looking for a fight. Except it was painfully obvious that the poor army man has no idea how to deal with these giggly girlies.

After watching several minutes of swinging through mud and crawling through nets etc, the point of the task is still somewhere in the mud. We think it was to show via the medium of interpretive SHOUTING how difficult this whole model business can be. Cue more trauma - their new accommodation is not as luxurious as expected! Gasp!

New judge Louis Mariette breezed in channelling a mix of Miz J, Benny Ninja and an overzealously sequnnied majorette. He introduced Q (????? - no us neither). Ooh Q. He was accompanied by some soft core porn jazz stylings and proceeded to fix a washing machine. No he didnt. He works for Ed Hardy and offered the chance to win a part in a US Ed Hardy campaign following a walk off challenge.

Argh! The walks! The walks! They're HIDEOUS! How do they get from A to B on foot? Miz J would be outraged. Have they not practiced? Have they not studied? Do they not understand that walking is a Major Part Of Being A Model?!? Jade, Annaliese and Mecia impressed the panel, Emma couldn't have looked less interested and the same went for Rebecca. Natasha had obviously skipped out on some important lessons as a toddler because she could barely string her steps together.

Q was impressed though. As were the judges. Huggy is back. Ragnarrsson not Bear unfortunately. How awesome would that be though? Huggy Bear as a judge on BNTM...

Anyway.

In a nice twist we get to see the promo shoot that Living use to promote the show. This is a nice touch. I like it. The New Model Army theme has led to some suitable glossiness. The splashing of cash on this is welcome. A criticism of BNTM in the past is that some of the photoshoots looked a little cheap, something you'd find in a low grade Sunday supplement. This though is as shiny as Lovely Lisa's hair. The only blight is that Natasha is muy annoying and diva-ish. Lovely Lisa did not like this at all....

*sigh* First accusations of eating disorders, this time levelled at Rebecca. Rebecca claims that she's just picky about her food and gets into a bit of a slanging match with Natasha about it. Rebecca wants to go home.

Thoughts so far are that Jade needs to lose her fakeass glasses. Emily doesn't understand simple instructions. None of them have properly studied their posing.

Elimination takes place via the medium of dogtags. You get one, you're in. Otherwise you must collect your belongings and go home. There seemed to be some shock that 5 girls were being eliminated but come on, it's only a 12 week show! We like our Top Model with a side helping of cruelty, and we enjoyed this immensely, particularly as the cry-a-thon was held to the stomping sounds of Kasabian's Empire. Top marks for editing!

Who left? Who cares. They were all distinctly average and hopefully some of the others will start to stand out in the coming weeks.

First photoshoot proper with Huggy centred around a wartime pin up theme for 10 of the girls. Given how prevalent pin up style has been lately, it's shocking how bad they all were.

Shot 1 - wartime pin-ups - Chloe kept it in the family with a predictably cutesy sexy shot, Rebecca gave it hardface, Hayley gave goodface, Maddy's looks divided the judges and Sophie got a good report but didn't look very modelesque to us.

Shot 2 - entertaining the troops - Lauren did sex kitten, Ashley gave dead kitten, Kasey was killer kitten and Nell and Lisa-ann did well.

Shot 3 - peacenik chicks - Mecia rocked Louis' world (Mr Mariette and Lel are going to disagree bigtime), Annaliese almost concealed the fact she was sat on a giant splinter, Jade was average, and Viola rocked our world, I think she could be a serious contender. Daisy looks average in person, and looked average in print.

Sel was surprised that none of the judges picked up on Kacey's porn mouth. Miz Tyra would've been straight on that.

Surprisingly, when it came down to it, Nell and Rebecca were eliminated. Rebecca wanted to go home anyway but Nell was by far the most 'fashion' of the bunch.

No matter. Next week - MIZ J. ALEXANDER!!!! There were actual squeeees at that little reveal...

Check back later for our take on the 13 girls and our early predictions for who's going to win.

Hey There You! Come Watch With Us!

Hi there! Welcome to Watch With Lel And Sel!

Now, we know you watch the trashiest, most cringe worthy telly programs. We certainly do! Most of the time it's hilarious, cringe worthy and just plain damn jaw dropping all in one show. We're here to watch it with you or take you through it if you missed it or just couldn't bring yourself to watch it but are still dying to know what happened!

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Here's to Happy Trashy Watching!

Much love,

Lel and Sel x