My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Top comment: Now do Its vs It’s.

ONLY YOU, MGK, CAN FIX ALL THE INTERNET — Ilan

Jon Stewart just eviscerated Jim Cramer.

Must-watch status, folks. It’ll be up on the Daily Show website tomorrow along with the Comedy Network site for Canadians. Other foreign types, I dunno. But I’m not kidding when I say that that was a must-watch.

Top comment: So, over the last couple of weeks I find that Jim Cramer’s show wasn’t just made up for Arrested Development. Is Bob Loblaw real too? — plus C

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

I have decided that I am going to write for the television. After all, if John Rogers can do it, anybody can do it! It is an especially great career for me because you don’t need no special training or knowledge except the power of imagination! And I have plenty of imagination. If you could only see the donuts that I conceptualize in my mind, you would get down on your knees and weep. Weep.

So I am working on my spec scripts. A spec script is a script you write for free, from the Latin speculum, which translated into real language means “cheap fuck.” You write a spec script so that Hollywood can see that you are talented, and then they give you money. There may be additional steps to this process, I don’t know, maybe they write you a cheque and you have to show multiple forms of identification. That’s why I’m getting my passport next week.

But I have a conundrum! Which is like a problem except it is also Latin but I don’t know what it translates into. (I would guess “problem.”) I am deciding which of my fine spec scripts I should send out to Hollywood for my first shot at becoming a rich, successful writer, and I have decided that I will let the masses (that would be you) help me decide. In order to show my appreciation, when I am a famous Hollywood creative type, I will write your name into a script where the character I name after you is brutally murdered. If you’re really helpful I’ll make sure that Nathan Fillion is the murderer! Because you’re all nerds and nerds love Nathan Fillion.

So what I have so far is this:

Battlestar Galactica: Intrigue abounds upon the Galactica when it is revealed that Caprica was not destroyed by the Cylons, as everybody thought, but by the fiendish Mexican drug lord Napanones! Men and women and Cylons and girl-Cylons break down in tears when they discover that all the genocide was merely a ruse to free up interstellar shipping lanes for Napanones’ space-cocaine empire. Adama (one of them) gets down on his knees and screams “DAAAAAAMMMMN YOUUUUUU NAPANONES! DAMMMMMMMNN YOUUUUUUU!” In the subplot, Starbuck becomes a space-cocaine addict, and only Gaius Baltar can save her… from herself!

Dollhouse: Echo is programmed to become the most amazing accountant of all time, because the company that hired the Dollhouse needs the Ultimate Accountant, who knows every form, every deduction off by heart. However, when a form 22-1-dash-Alpha-B goes missing, the company takes Accountant Echo hostage, and the only one who can save her is Sierra… who becomes the Ultimate Tax Lawyer! In the B-plot, the creepy guy who does computers does something with computers.

Desperate Housewives: Susan fucks a guy. Lynette fucks her husband. Gabrielle fucks her husband and another guy (not together). Bree refuses to fuck anybody because she is uptight and stuff. Then, the Sasquatch attacks! In the B-plot, Edie fucks the Sasquatch.

Smallville: Alfred Gough and Miles Millar come to Smallville and apologize profusely for thirty minutes, and then they are beaten and hanged while trumpets play triumphantly in the background. In the subplot, Clark turns to face the viewers and starts hypnotizing them, all the time saying “this never happened, you have been watching Firefly all this time, because it was never cancelled,” and also he does the hand-waving you need to really hypnotize a guy.

The Office: Michael attempts to eat an entire turkey in seven minutes when the asshole salesman who shows up every once in a while says “that’s how I get all my ladies, through binge eating,” and Michael wants to impress Holly. Dwight shakes his head at the camera, then attacks a stranger with a knife axe halberd Bohemian ear-spoon when he mistakes the stranger for Fidel Castro. In the B-plot, Jim is revealed to actually be Jim’s evil twin brother Slim! Where is Jim? Where is Jim?

Gossip Girl: I don’t know anything about this show actually, but wouldn’t it be awesome if they did an episode where they were all midgets? Like, you know how some shows have a “musical” episode where everybody sings and stuff, and they just pretend it’s normal? I think there should be an episode of Gossip Girl where everybody is portrayed by a midget (or dwarf, I am not specific), and then the next episode everybody is their normal self again and they never mention it. THIS IS MY IDEA, HOLLYWOOD! IF YOU WANT TO USE IT YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME A MILLION DOLLARS!

According to Jim: Jim Belushi travels back in time to meet John Belushi, who is digitally inserted into the show with computers. They talk about cheeseburgers and samurai and drugs. In the end, Jim learns a lesson about being more attentive to his wife and children, and John dies while doing speedballs because he lets Jim make the speedballs and Jim mixes them wrongly so they become killer speedballs! (I think that is how speedballs work. They are like the fugu fish of the drug world.)

Anyway, it is one of these. Or maybe another! I am undecided. Help me out, people! When I am a rich Hollywood person I will pay somebody to make my own website for me! flapjacks.com is just sitting there!

Back when I was first watching it, the initial season of So You Think You Can Dance Australia impressed me very greatly. The dancing and choreography (which Australians call “corry,” which is inexplicably wonderful for some reason) ranged from “solid” to “exceptional,” and my only worry for the franchise was that Australia had used up all of its top-tier dancers in the first season, where only about twelve of the twenty finalists were really good-to-great dancers and of those only three (Jack, Rhys, and Kate) were definite standouts.

But now that the second season is on, it turns out that my worry was utterly misplaced, because holy shit, this season is so much better than the first it is downright staggering. With the exception of Max (thankfully gone with the very first elimination), just about every one of this season’s dancers is at least at the level of Demi last season (“amateur with exceptional talent and work ethic”) and although it’s too soon yet to tell who the true standouts are, that’s mostly because this season’s dancing has been so utterly exceptional.

Usually on an early episode of SYTYCD there are two or three really great routines, three or four okay routines and one or two crapburgers. Thus far on the second season, there’s been a horrendous onslaught of really great routines and then everything else is at the very least okay. (The only genuinely bad routine was the top-20 contemporary by Max and Jesse, which was… yeah. Bad.)

Anyway, it’s still early in the season, but right now my favorites include Charlie, who is much like Joshua from the fourth American season in that he’s primarily a self-taught hip-hop dancer with some technical training and a ridiculous resevoir of talent; Lamb and Timomatic, who have the best team name (“Lamb-o-Matic”) and who although I don’t think they will go all the way (in fact I think both will have a fight to make top 10) have incredible, intense chemistry as partners; Danny, who despite the fact that every choreographer feels the need to include his trademark sideways spinning jump is really ridiculously skilled in the way that only a classically trained contemporary dancer can be; Pania, who is a Kiwi so I feel obligated to root for her as New Zealand is Australia’s equivalent of Canada (and also she is an awesome hip-hop dancer); and Gianne, who is just so awesome on so many levels it is stupid.

And of course there are all the joys that are specific to the Australian version of this show, like the fact that choreographers there tend to fuse styles with near-regularity, so a “lyrical” piece becomes lyrical hip-hop or a quickstep tosses in some breaking just because, or the pleasure of listening to the comments of Jason Coleman, who is quite simply the best reality show judge ever – he is all substance and no bullshit, kind of like what Simon Cowell wishes he was but never will be. (Fellow judge Matt Lee is only a step behind Coleman for excellence in judging.) Plus, there is Jason Gilkison ballroom choreography almost every week, and the sudden, surprising greatness to see that former contestant Marko Panzic – eliminated early in the first season – is probably the most exciting choreographer on the show this year.

The Aussies have done right again. Memo to the producers of the Canadian show: you set a high bar, and they vaulted right over it.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Hosea? Really?

I mean, as usual the judging at the final round was head-scratchingly nuts. Stefan’s dessert plate – which looked perfectly tasty – was in fact excellent food, but got widely panned by the judges on the basis that it “didn’t feel fully conceived,” which is food-speak for “I wanted pie or something like that.” Not because it didn’t taste good.

(Gail Simmons’s return to active judging has just reminded me how much I do not understand that she is the editor of a magazine devoted to food.)

Sorry, but I like Stefan. He is full of shit, but he is entertainingly full of shit. He doesn’t hold grudges (unlike Hosea). Most importantly it was clear from pretty much the first episode that he was the best chef in the competition, both capable of doing his own thing and usually able to acquit himself well outside of his comfort zone. There was a reason he kept winning challenges! It was because he was the best at them!

In comparison, Hosea’s track record was medium-to-spotty and he had a firm preference for sticking to the seafood courses he was used to cooking in his work life. There hasn’t been a cheftestant who played it as safe as Hosea since Ilan in season two. Of course, Ilan at least never fucked up his endless array of Spanish courses and more Spanish courses; Hosea, in comparison, majorly screwed up seafood dishes – which are his specialty, remember – at least twice that I can remember.

Least satisfying Top Chef winner since Ilan – who didn’t deserve to beat Marcel, I have said it before and will say it again.

(As for Carla – taking advice from Casey, the most outmatched runner-up in the history of the show? No. Do not do that, Carla! Season three was a walk for Hung and Casey was part of the reason why! Look at every area Carla got fucked and you see that it was Casey’s idea – a more complex souffle instead of cheese tart, doing the sirloin sous vide rather than just grilling it, etc.)

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Also, to answer a question a bunch of people have asked in email: because the Deep Space Nine and Voyager covers are, respectively, boring and boring plus ugly.

COMMENT OF THE THREAD: Is it normal for people in England to watch porn without masturbating? — RobotKeaton

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

ONE
ME: So they’re stuntmen who double for children.
FLAPJACKS: They’re being totally dismissive when they say it’s a niche market.
ME: Really. How else can they apply it?
FLAPJACKS: They could stunt double for Michael J. Fox.
ME: Right.
FLAPJACKS: Because he’s short.
ME: I got it.
FLAPJACKS: Although they’d have to wiggle around a lot, I guess.

TWO
ME: What the fuck is this?
FLAPJACKS: They got rid of the original Amazing Race music and replaced it with a harder-rock version!
ME: This is total bullshit! The original theme music was timeless.
FLAPJACKS: They also have new fonts.
ME: The original fonts were time-tested and true!
FLAPJACKS: Wasn’t that a slogan for trucks?
ME: Don’t distract me from the issues at hand! They are trying to “coolify” the Amazing Race! And you can’t do that, because it is already just about completely perfect!
FLAPJACKS: They could put in a walrus with laser tusks.
ME: Hence the “just about.”

THREE
FLAPJACKS: The deaf guy doesn’t read lips?
ME: Apparently not.
FLAPJACKS: What a waste of a perfectly good deaf person.
ME: I think you need to rephrase that.
FLAPJACKS: Come on, reading lips is like being a super-spy, except everyday people get to do it. It is cool. And Lazy McDeaferson here doesn’t read lips, and instead has his mom translate for him? That is like saying “James Bond? No thanks, I think I’d rather be Larry in accounting.”
ME: It’s probably tricky. Can you read lips?
FLAPJACKS: Do I look deaf?
ME: Deaf has a look?
FLAPJACKS: Like Marlee Matlin!
ME: You certainly don’t look like Marlee Matlin.
FLAPJACKS: That’s probably for the best.
ME: Yes.

FOUR
FLAPJACKS: Preston and Jennifer are fighting only ten minutes into the new season! I think that’s a record.
ME: Which ones are they again? Are they the ones who said they fight all the time?
FLAPJACKS: Why is there always a couple who fights all the time on this show?
ME: Because there are a lot of out-of-work actors in Hollywood with dysfunctional relationships.

FIVE
FLAPJACKS: Hey! It’s Ernest!
ME: You mean Jim Varney?
FLAPJACKS: Yes.
ME: Jim Varney is dead.
FLAPJACKS: No he isn’t. Look, he’s right there, with his wife.
ME: That would be “Steve.”
FLAPJACKS: Assumed name.
ME: He died over eight years ago!
FLAPJACKS: No, he faked his death.
ME: Why would he fake his death?
FLAPJACKS: Legions of crazed Ernest fans.
ME: So let me get this straight. Jim Varney fakes his death to escape legions of supposed fans of the Ernest movies. He then gets married, builds a life for himself, then potentially ruins it all by competing on the Amazing Race, alerting said legions of supposed fans to his non-death.
FLAPJACKS: I never said it was a brilliant plan. I mean, come on. He was Ernest.

SIX
ME: The stuntmen look kind of like hobbits.
FLAPJACKS: You realize now that I won’t be able to think of them as anything other than hobbits.
ME: Tough noogies.

SEVEN
FLAPJACKS: Wait, the lawyer guy’s plan to fool the other teams into not taking the correct train is “well, we’re not sure if this is the right train, but we’re gonna take it anyway?” This is what an education at Harvard Law buys you?
ME: I bet they don’t consider that a cunning ruse at Yale.
FLAPJACKS: Would they consider it a cunning ruse at Osgoode Hall?
ME: I’m not sure. I’ll try it and get back to you.
FLAPJACKS: Don’t bother. I have decided, based on this one thirty-second segment of video, that all lawyers are much stupider than advertised and that a magical talking lion will represent me in all future legal dealings.
ME: Where would you get a magical talking lion?
FLAPJACKS: I have my sources.
ME: No you don’t.
FLAPJACKS: No I don’t, but for a second you believed.
ME: No I didn’t.
FLAPJACKS: And that is why the lawyer guy’s ruse was so stupid.

EIGHT
ME: And I see this week’s Traditional Insert-Country-Here Challenge Element is delivering cheese using what appear to be backpacks made out of wood.
FLAPJACKS: That’s how you know it’s traditional! Instead of using proper backpacks, they use old-timey wooden backpacks! Like Grandpapa used to use! Back in the days when Switzerland was called “Nazi Gold Depository,” before they invented the wheelbarrow.
ME: And instead of just driving a truck there, they have to go on foot!
FLAPJACKS: And instead of Velveeta, they are picking up cheese!
ME: That last one doesn’t work.
FLAPJACKS: Have you ever tried to carry two hundred pounds of Velveeta at once?
ME: Have you?
FLAPJACKS: In my other secret life as a daring criminal specializing in cheese food products.
ME: I am pretty sure you never did that.
FLAPJACKS: It’s a secret life.
ME: Anyway, these challenges are important, because they tell us something important about other cultures.
FLAPJACKS: No they don’t. Nobody does this stupid shit any more.
ME: No, they tell us that Swiss people like to drink beer and watch Americans do stupid shit nobody does any more.
FLAPJACKS: But everybody in the whole world likes to do that.
ME: And that’s why deep down, we’re all the same inside.

NINE
FLAPJACKS: To find the Pit Stop, they have to LISTEN for a group of yodelers? THE AMAZING RACE HATES DEAF PEOPLE!
ME: His mom will hear it.
FLAPJACKS: That’s not the point! They are anti-deafous!
ME: Not actually a word.
FLAPJACKS: Deafists!
ME: Also not a word.
FLAPJACKS: I am outraged about this!
ME: Look. He’s handicapped. There’s nothing wrong with it, but that means life is a bit harder for him as a matter of everyday course. If he really wants to prove that deaf people can do the Amazing Race just like everybody else, then that means the Race can’t go making accomodations for him just because of his disability.
FLAPJACKS: Just like it couldn’t make accomodations for Charla because she was a midget, or how they can’t make accomodations for the hobbits because they’re prone to being hunted by Ringwraiths.

TEN
ME: And that’s why Phil is the most awesome reality host of them all: because he bothered to learn the sign language to tell the deaf kid he came in first.
FLAPJACKS: If a team of Martians entered the Amazing Race, he would blink at them telepathically. That is how good Phil is.
ME: He can greet anybody in anything! There is nobody he cannot greet!
FLAPJACKS: Except people whose names end in “A.” I never knew “Amander” was a girl’s name until now.