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Amazing Race Canada, Featured

Amazing Racers put the “fun” in Fundy

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And just like that, we’re down to the final three teams on The Amazing Race Canada. After thousands of miles and millions of footsteps, Olympians Meaghan and Natalie, best buds Mickey and Pete and co-workers Ryan and Rob will face off in Sunday’s season finale in Ottawa where one team will claim the grand prize.

Unfortunately, not in the running for the cash, cars and other baubles are siblings Sukhi and Jinder, who arrived on the mat in last place on the windy coast of New Brunswick and were eliminated.

“We feel so blessed that we got to do 11 Legs,” Jinder told host Jon Montgomery. “Now that we’ve done this race, I don’t want our lives to be any less extraordinary.” I really have to acknowledge how the pair evolved throughout the season. In the beginning, they were plagued by nerves and missed easy clues and got lost often, but as the Legs continued they became stronger and more cohesive. Sadly, a case of one red traffic light may have been the reason they were cut.

After placing first in Prince Edward Island, Sukhi and Jinder were the first to depart from Charlottetown. Their haste to get out of town and across the Confederation Bridge led to driving through a red light … and into a 15-minute penalty. They could only watch as Meaghan and Natalie and Mickey and Pete drove past and into the lead. The Olympians and the best friends arrived at and completed the Dairy Queen serving challenge and got to the Detour card location within seconds of each other. Both teams–and, as it turned out, all four–chose the Flag It task, a horribly complex thing where maritime flags denoting different nautical messages had to be hoisted up a flag pole in a certain order.

The difficulty of the test–so many flags looked exactly the same–meant that all four teams ended up in the muck surrounding the Hopewell Rocks in the Bay of Fundy at the same time, struggling to figure out why they weren’t given the green light to advance to rock climbing and, eventually, the mat. Meaghan and Natalie were the first to realize what they had done wrong and sprinted off to another first-place finish. Mickey and Pete were next, followed by Ryan and Rob and Sukhi and Jinder. The co-workers’ few seconds head start meant the difference between them placing third and advancing to Sunday’s finale.

At this point it looks like Meaghan and Natalie may have this whole thing sewn up. But, as evidenced in The Amazing Race franchise, one small slip can mean the difference between champs and chumps.

The Amazing Race Canada season finale airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on CTV followed by an After the Race special.

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Featured

CBC’s new app decides Canada’s Smartest Person

I am not Canada’s Smartest Person. Heck, I’m not even the smartest in the room. That’s what I gleaned from CBC’s special sneak peek at the app to be used by viewers during the network’s upcoming fall game show.

On Tuesday, journalists were invited down to CBC’s headquarters to test their skills in three of the areas of intelligence that will be the showcase of the series. While the 32 finalists who made the cut to be part of the TV show battle it out on-screen and in front of host Jessi Cruickshank, viewers at home can participate via Android and iOS app, or the show’s website. Available for download on Monday, Sept. 22–a week before the series return–the app tests Canadians’ skills in the arenas of Math & Logic Intelligence, Visual & Spatial Intelligence, Body & Kinesthetic Intelligence, Linguistics Intelligence, Musical Intelligence and Interpersonal Intelligence.

Cruikshank, series creator Robert Cohen and Paul Mcgrath, executive producer of interactive for CBC, guided critics through three of the six tests; I walked out of there pretty humbled. The first, which tasked those in the room kitted out with iPads to make as many words consisting of at least three letters out of the source word “protein”, netted me a horrible 17 out of 100. I was under the room average of 28/100. Yes, I write for a living. I fared better in the next challenge testing logic, nabbing an 89/100 (against 58/100 as the room average) for being able to place a bunch of animated pipe in order to allow water to flow through them. And despite listening to people’s answers for a living, I fell short (39/100) when it came to differentiating which musical instruments were slowly being removed from a piece of music, though the room was even worse (35/100).

Cohen says that–once Canada’s Smartest Person airs and data through the website and apps starts to roll in–those participating will be able to see how they rank against friends and family. But it doesn’t stop there; data will be gathered so you can see how you fared against members of the opposite sex or those on the opposite side of the country. There will be daily challenges available outside of the broadcasts for those who just can’t get enough of testing themselves and others.

Or, in my case, establishing just how much I am not Canada’s Smartest Person.

Canada’s Smartest Person returns Sunday, Sept. 28, at 8 p.m. (8:30 p.m. in Newfoundland) on CBC. The app is available for download on Android and iOS devices on Monday, Sept. 22.

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Featured, Orphan Black, Podcast

TV Eh-B-Cs podcast – Ari Millen’s Clone con Brio

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This week’s conversation with Ari Millen (Orphan Black, Hunter’s Moon) is no “cloning” around. Discussions about growing up in Kingston and transitioning to Toronto, how dreams of a glorious Orphan Black death led to an unexpected “splice” of life, learning by watching on set, and JUST wrapping the film Hunter’s Moon. Plus a little obligatory talk about growing up goalie and grasping for a lost Italian word… chinotto!

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

Want to become a Patron of the Podcast? We’ve got a Patreon page where you can donate a small amount per podcast and get a sneak peek of each release.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Featured, Motive

Motive showrunner Dennis Heaton on getting past the “uhhhhh”

DHavatarDennis Heaton was part of the writing team on season one of Motive, and moved up to co-showrunner for season two. So taking over the reins for season three must have been a thrill, right?

“The first thought that goes through my head when they say we’re going to do another season is usually ‘shit … OK, I can do this … 13 people have to die … uhhhhh,” he told Anthony Marco in a recent TV Eh-B-Cs podcast interview. “That’s the first week. It’s me and six other writers going ‘uhhhhhh.’”

The series was pitched by creator Daniel Cerone as a whydunnit – the killer and victim are revealed at the beginning, and it’s the motive that’s the mystery. “Within that it’s a series of overlapping stories,” Heaton explains. “We have our investigator story, killer story, flashback story.”

“I mean this in the best possible way but these are hideous little Jenga puzzles that kill me every time we go to put one together.”

He calls that first week in the writers room – which for season three convened at the end of May – “bad idea week” as they find ways to be creative within the formula of the show without getting into a “Find/Replace” mentality.

“The trick is to not let the formula become a format, and to find ways – and this is the creative stamp I get to bring to a show (as showrunner) – to not just do the same thing week after week.”

“We’ve had killers you can identify with, we’ve had killers you can’t identify with. We’ve had victims who are tragically innocent, we’ve had victims who had it coming.”

He sees character development as the primary task. “You want the audience invested in the characters’ lives. If you can’t get them to do that, they’re going to invest somewhere else.”

“There’s always that conversation about likeability but I’m more interested in the character that’s compelling,” he says. “That can be either a truly heroic character, a flawed character, or the antihero — as long as that character is compelling you’re going to be along for the ride. Casting is such a huge part of that.”

After about four months in the writers room, they should start filming this month. Given season one premiered after the Super Bowl in February and season two in March of last year, he assumes season three will begin sometime between January to March of 2015.

Listen to the full interview here, where he and Anthony Marco talk about what being a showrunner is all about, the creative process behind the camera, planning a season’s worth of episodes, how the characters are the thing, animation writing, Tarzan, Sid and Marty Krofft, and the elusive Gold Monkey.

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