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Bachelor Canada, Featured

The Bachelor Canada: Battleground in Costa Rica

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Now that the first episode of The Bachelor Canada was out of the way, we could really get down to business. I mean, I felt bad seeing the girls who didn’t get a rose leave last week, but we never really got to know them that well anyway. At least, not as well as the 15 who accompanied Chris to Costa Rica.

I excitedly opened up my bottle of Two Oceans Wine—broadcast sponsor for this season—and settled in to absorb all of the drama as it unfolded.

And what drama there was! As soon as the drinks were poured former model Shanti was disparaging her fellow competitors as not being to the quality she’s used to. Poor baby. Shanti distanced herself from the other girls, literally, preferring to sit off by herself while the remaining 14 wondered exactly what her deal was. With two group dates and a single one-on-one date, the pressure would be on to impress Chris enough to keep him interested. Dee got the first impression rose last week and was hoping Costa Rica would be the perfect setting … to tell Chris about her daughter.

Dee would have to attempt that chat during one of the group outings because it was Lyndsey who scored the one-on-one. The pair united at the airport and hopped aboard a plane for a ride over an active volcano. Laughter was had, sarcastic jokes were traded and cuddling occurred … until Chris asked her age. The 10-year difference—he’s 33 and she’s 23—seemed to throw him for a loop. Chris stuck with the date and was rewarded with a treehouse dinner, but he couldn’t shake the age difference; Lyndsey countered that she’s done a lot of living in those years and is ready to be in a relationship. She’s also encountered hurt: a longtime beau she was ready to marry was on Tinder looking to score a quickie. The result? Chris gave her a rose and major smooches.

Meanwhile, the lucky 13 gathered together to learn who’d be on the first group date: Brittany W., Catie, Lisa, April, Meghan and Mikaela. Then, suddenly, Shanti was asking to have a group meeting. Her issue? None of the other girls, in her opinion, were up to Chris’ standards and if they could see how they were acting most of them would be going home. She added that the stress they were putting on her was making Shanti physically sick. It had become painfully obvious that Shanti shouldn’t be in the house or on The Bachelor Canada.

Thankfully, the group date began, with Chris welcoming who he selected for a photo shoot on the beach. The idea, of course, was to see the girls in a group setting and observe who was more willing to go with the flow and have fun. Meghan made the most of her 1800s swimming outfit, something Chris noted right away. Funniest photo shoot was Lisa, who insisted she don her mermaid lower half for the camera, something Chris wasn’t too excited about. Catie had the winning shots; there was a palpable connection between the two and her eyes betrayed her growing feelings. Then they kissed, sending everyone into a tizzy. Mikaela got back at Catie by kissing Chris as she approached for some alone time, shocking the latter. Meghan got her kisses in too before Chris handed Catie a rose.

As for the final group date, Brittany M., Dee, Jessie, Kait, Stacy, Lara, Ashley and Shanti were off to do battle, but not before Brittany made a devious move first. After discovering Shanti in the bathroom, she suggested Shanti tell Chris about the other girls in the house. The planned group date, however, was scuttled due to weather so Chris dropped by to party at the girls’ place, promising some key personal time with the group date members. That didn’t sit well with Shanti, who made the most of her time with Chris to tear into her competition. Anyone who has watched this franchise knows you don’t rat out others, especially during alone time with the bachelor or bachelorette. Chris finally clued in that perhaps Shanti was the problem and he was doing damage control until the rose ceremony when Shanti told Chris that Dee was a single mother … as Dee walked into the room. It was awful. It was unthinkable. It was embarrassing to watch. That cast a shadow on the rest of the night, despite Stacy and Kait’s nice chats with Chris.

In an unprecedented move—at least that I’ve witnessed in the Canadian franchise—Chris grew frustrated with Shanti’s constant harping about the other girls and asked her to leave. Good on him for doing that … and on Brittany for her power play. The cocktail party was skipped, meaning no more personal time to make an impression before the rose ceremony. Catie was ill and skipped the ceremony (Was she hung over? Did she eat a bad shrimp?) so she missed seeing who was eliminated.

Here’s who will be back next week:

  • Catie
  • Lyndsey
  • Stacy
  • Mikaela
  • Kait
  • Dee
  • Brittany M.
  • Meghan
  • Lisa
  • Lara
  • Brittany W.
  • Jessie
  • April

What did you think of the episode? Are you happy Shanti was sent home or will you miss the drama? Let me know in the comments below!

The Bachelor Canada airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on W Network.

Images courtesy of Corus Entertainment.

 

 

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Featured, Podcast

TV Eh B Cs podcast 71 — Where the Puckrin Is Going to Be

Update: At the time this was recorded, Killjoys had not been renewed for a fourth season. Happily, it has been renewed for two more seasons.

Toronto-based writer/producer Julie Puckrin has worked up and down the west coast, in both the United States and Canada. Julie recently completed production on Space’s third season of Killjoys. Her credits include the acclaimed CBC series X Company, three seasons of CTV’s Motive, and Gracepoint, the Fox TV adaptation of the hit British series Broadchurch. She also interned on the Emmy-award winning Mad Men, under showrunner Matthew Weiner. A recipient of the Michener Fellowship, Julie has a Masters of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from the University of Texas at Austin.

Listen or download below, or subscribe via iTunes or any other podcast catcher with the TV, eh? podcast feed.

Want to support TV, eh?’s work? Become a Patreon!

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Food Network Canada’s The Baker Sisters discover fabulous desserts

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Dessert first. It’s been the motto of sisters Rachel Smith and Jean Parker their whole lives. And it’s the mantra of The Baker Sisters—debuting Friday at 10 and 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network Canada—starring Smith and Parker as they traverse North America, visiting bakeries and chowing down on all things sweet, gooey and icing-laden. As a public service announcement, it should be noted that you will hunt down anything sugary to consume after watching an episode of The Baker Sisters.

“We tell people that, if you don’t have some baked goods in the house, you will wind up drinking the maple syrup,” Smith says. She’s not kidding. Among the confections the pair samples in Friday’s first instalment are Peanut Butter Shorties in Vancouver’s Purebread bakery, massive wedges of buttery shortbread accented with peanut butter, chocolate and crushed peanuts.

The show’s producers, Alibi Entertainment Inc., were on the lookout for a dynamic pair with baking knowledge to host a new project. The Southern Ontario siblings grew up in their mother’s tart shop helping to stuff tins before opening their own company, Maple Key Tart Co., giving them a leg up on the competition when it came to casting.

“We went in for casting, and we just had fun,” Parker says. “I think that’s the magic recipe to the show. We’re sisters and we love each other.” Now, 13 episodes later, viewers get to see what the pair experienced. Each half-hour follows the pair to a trio of bakeries around the continent, meeting employees and getting their hands dirty creating magnificent morsels that go beyond the usual chocolate chip cookie or apple pie. Key ingredients like flour, butter and sugar stay the same but what these bakers do with them is outrageous.

Amid all the treats Smith and Parker sample are butter tarts. The Canadian staple has become a business for the sisters via Maple Key Tart Co., so they’re experts on the pastry. What were their thoughts on the competition?

“It was a totally different tart,” Parker recalls. “Our tart is a less sweet tart with a firmer filling. The one I tried was super-sweet because she used corn syrup and it was crazy runny. Her pastry was more of a butter shortbread. Our tarts truly are like night and day. Hers was delicious. That’s why there are trails dedicated to butter tarts because they can be so different.”

What goes into butter tarts is the topic of hot debate too. Do you go plain (my personal favourite), or are raisins or nuts included?

“I love a good raisin,” Smith says with a laugh. “But people do not like to be surprised with the raisin.”

“I think there is a time and a place for raisins,” Parker says diplomatically. “I’m classic. I like the plain and I think those are the ones you take to a party. People are so passionate about whether raisins or even nuts should be in them.”

The Baker Sisters airs Fridays at 10 and 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on Food Network Canada.

Image courtesy of Corus.

 

 

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Featured, Frontier

Frontier’s Greg Bryk on Cobb Pond’s Season 2 journey and how Paul Gross saved his life

Fifteen years ago, Paul Gross saved Greg Bryk’s life. I was on the phone with Bryk to talk about Season 2 of Frontier—Discovery’s historical drama about the history of the Canadian fur trade returning Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT—when I mentioned Men with Brooms came out 15 years ago.

“He saved my life,” Bryk says of Gross, who wrote, starred and directed the feature film. “I was going to go to law school. I had babies and I couldn’t pay any bills and I was walking away from it all. And then he cast me in Men with Brooms and threw me a lifeline. He was incredibly generous with his time and was kind of the rogueish older brother that I never had.”

The role of Alexander “The Juggernaut” Yount was the first of many, many memorable characters Bryk has played over the year. Whether it’s alpha werewolf Jeremy Danvers on Bitten, the Jack of Knives on Wynonna Earp or Grady on Mary Kills People, Bryk has amassed an IMDB page packed with memorable characters. We spoke to Bryk about his acting choices and what’s to come for Cobbs Pond, business associate/lover to Montreal businessman Samuel Grant (Shawn Doyle), in Season 2 of Frontier.

They say that the clothes make the man. Is that true for Cobbs Pond?
Greg Bryk: He has the best wardrobe. The best. When [series creators] Rob Blackie and Peter Blackie approached me, they had another character they were interested in me for. I was under option for Bitten at the time and that part was recast. A few weeks later, Bitten was cancelled and I was no longer under option. Rob called me, and I remember being in a parking lot in the Distillery District [of Toronto]. ‘Greg, hear me out on this. We have a character. So far we haven’t written a line for him yet. We have no idea what he could become or will become. He’s a cross between this real-life assassin-gunfighter that exists—historically from Boston—and Oscar Wilde.’ I’m like, ‘Done. Let’s have an adventure.’

We literally created this character from scratch and when I first walked in and I saw the fox hat. When [costume designer] Michael [Ground] handed me the hat I had everything I needed to know about this character. There is such a playful malevolence about him and the idea of sexuality and femininity and being placed in that historical context but to be this completely complicated and contemporary man, in a lot of ways, was a fascinating adventure. We found moments throughout Season 1—some dark, horrific moments and moments of real longing and being lost—and that arc/descent accelerates during Season 2. Cobbs goes to some places that I was so thrilled to get to be able to take him and really explore what love means to this character, what loyalty means, what ambition means, what greed means, what savage revenge means … all the while spinning in the most beautiful clothes one could ever hope to dress themselves in.

“When the lights go up and the camera goes on, it’s like a cage opens and the lion hunts the zoo.”

It sounds like you personally had a hand in creating Cobbs.
They fleshed the character out in very broad strokes and allowed me to bring so much of myself to the character. I’m really lucky in that a lot of directors and showrunners that I have worked with trust me to personalize the work and bring elements of myself to the character. There are things this year that happen with Cobbs and parts of monologues that are straight camera roll and they just let me go into myself. There are a couple of scenes which are shocking and brutal and violent but also incredibly vulnerable. It’s me transferring an experience I had being in love with this girl when I was in Grade 5—that first love—and they let me drag Cobbs into my longings and my wants and my vulnerabilities. But, also, this strength emerges in Cobbs this year where he is a force to be reckoned with.

There are some moments that are absolutely crazy. There are places Cobbs goes that I think the audience—who enjoyed him in the first season as this glitter who was thrown into a very dark world—will be slack-jawed at some of the things that will happen. He’s quite, delightfully, mad.

You’ve created memorable characters throughout your acting career. Where does that come from?
I’m a very cautious, almost timid, person in real life. I like routine. I stay in my house with my kids and my wife and my dogs. I literally walk the same path every day and I like that. In the real world, I like to control as much as I can. But in my work, it’s the chaos, man. I’m fearless. There is nothing I won’t reveal about myself or someone else and I don’t ever apologize for anything that I do. I am utterly without censure when the cameras roll and I think it saves my life. I became a father in theatre school and I had to learn to compartmentalize. Discovering myself as an artist was walking in step with being a husband and a father. There have always been these parallel tracks. I can happily live away from that live wire in the middle, but goddamn it I love to dance on it. When the lights go up and the camera goes on, it’s like a cage opens and the lion hunts the zoo.

Frontier airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT on Discovery.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

 

 

 

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Featured, Slasher

Slasher: Guilty Party tips the typical horror genre on its head

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It’s understandable if you’ve dismissed the Slasher horror anthology series as simply a gore-fest jam-packed with characters ripe for picking off. But you’d be totally wrong. Though the genre is bursting with projects like that, Slasher isn’t just about the scare and the gore; Aaron Martin has created intricate storylines and interesting, believable characters that you feel badly for as they’re being dispatched in horrible, awful ways.

Just in time for Halloween, the sophomore season Slasher: Guilty Party drops on Netflix in its entirety on Tuesday, with a some returning faces to augment newbies assembled for slaughter. Where Season 1 of Slasher followed murders committed in a small-town, Guilty Party boasts the classic horror movie setting: a summer camp. It’s there that a group of former summer camp counsellors who—while attempting to cover up a crime they committed years before—become the target of a murder spree. Is it revenge, or happenstance?

Martin has assembled an impressive all-Canadian cast for Season 2, including Degrassi‘s Melinda Shankar as Talvinder, Being Erica‘s Paula Brancati as Dawn, Alias Grace‘s Rebecca Liddiard as Andi, The Strain‘s Jim Watson as Noah, Heartland‘s Kaitlyn Leeb as Susan and Lost & Found’s Music Studios‘ Lovell Adams-Gray as Peter; the sextet portray the counsellors. The ensemble is rounded out with Season 1 performers Joanne Vannicola, Christopher Jacot and Jefferson Brown in new roles alongside Leslie Hope, Paulino Nunes, Ty Olsson, Sebastian Piggott and Madison Cheetatow.

Though there are plenty of scares, Guilty Party does have some sweet moments; one we watched during filming at a Scouts Canada camp just outside Orangeville, Ont., boasted Shankar’s Talvinder receiving a necklace from Brancati’s Dawn.

“It was a bonding scene between the two,” Shankar says. “Tal is being gifted a nice necklace, but of course whenever there is a nice, sweet moment there is always something to contrast that.”

For Brancati, who had worked with Martin on Being Erica, signing on to Slasher: Guilty Party was a no-brainer.

“Dawn is a character that I don’t always get to play,” Brancati says. “On the outside, she’s wealthy, privileged, with a crusty exterior and a bit bitchy at times. She comes from a divorced home and has a lot of vulnerabilities that she’s masking with her sarcastic humour. She definitely has no filter.” Brancati says none of the characters is an archetype; they’re layered and very flawed.

“Aaron is unafraid of being unfiltered,” Brancati says of her showrunner. “He’s got a really dark mind and isn’t afraid to push the envelope.” Brancati, who is new to acting in the genre, admits she’s had nightmares after reflecting on the scenes she and her co-stars have filmed after a day of production. The result? It’s not hard to play scared.

Brancati divulges a bit more of the plot of Guilty Party, explaining the counsellors return to the camp, which has since become a commune, creating conflict between the visitors and those who now call the place home. Weather also adds to the drama: a massive winter storm ensures everyone is kept in tight quarters and unable to escape.

“There is a lot of gore and a lot of horror, certainly, but the characters are really textured and the relationships are really interesting and complicated and messy,” Brancati says. “Character-driven stories are interesting TV to me.”

Slasher: Guilty Party‘s full season of eight episodes arrive Tuesday, Oct. 17, on Netflix.

Images courtesy of Shaftesbury.

 

 

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