Tag Archives: Featured

Featured, Rookie Blue

Review: Rookie Blue finales with a bang

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OK, I admit it, I let a lot of time lapse between episodes of Rookie Blue that I sat down and watched. So when I tuned in to Wednesday’s season finale, a lot had changed. Swarek and Andy for instance, have grown from a schoolyard crush into something mature and real and the show itself has hit its stride. (The shot of the CN Tower with the Rookie Blue logo transposed over it made me smile.)

Swarek and Andy’s little back and forth over takeout coffee outside of Ted’s house was cute as all get-out. I’ve wanted them to be a couple since I saw them in the pilot episode, so to see them in the “honeymoon phase” was awesome. Of course, it couldn’t continue. This was, after all, the season finale of Rookie Blue, meaning something bad had to happen. And it did, thanks to car bomber Ted McDonald, played with aplomb by Shawn Doyle. (I’m still pissed off that Doyle’s last series, Endgame, was cancelled.) Doyle’s portrayal of Ted–a man who lost his young son in a diner bombing four years prior–was notable not just because he played a disturbed man with such conviction (“Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care!!”), but that he made me care about him because he’d lost his son on the boy’s birthday, the first unsupervised visit the pair had.

“Everlasting” wasn’t all about Ted, however. Gail and Nick discussed found some comedic moments while on a stakeout, and Chloe was still crushed over her breakup with Dov and tried desperately to win him back. (Who else caught Being Erica‘s Erin Karpluk as the cyclist that Nick doored?)

And while I was happy to see Shaw back out on the road with Andy, it was his insistence that he remain on the beat after dropping Ted off at the precinct that put her in mortal danger. Swarek’s interrogation of Ted revealed the disturbed man wasn’t done yet, and his query about whether his computers and hard drives were in the precinct made my heart sink. “There are bombs in the computers!” I immediately realized.  And so there were, at least one detonating while Andy was in the evidence locker retrieving them. The explosion occurred with over 10 minutes still left in the episode, enough time to spotlight the after effects of the blast: Andy was bent over, so she was spared with just a few scratches and blown-out eardrums. It was the perfect opportunity for Swarek to show just how he felt about Andy in his own special way (Quote of the night: “I got smoke in my eye!”).

As for McDonald, he cut his own wrists with a razor blade in the interrogation room, exiting Stage Right without offering any closure for Swarek. Problem was, it looked like Diaz had neglected to frisk McDonald well enough to discover it. Either that, or the police are as corrupt as the bomber inferred and someone murdered him.

Meanwhile, Gail and Holly dropped bombs on each other; the former wants to adopt while the latter is leaving for a job in San Francisco in two weeks, throwing their relationship into question. At the other end of the scale were Traci and Nick, respectively, seem destined for blossoming relationships for Season 6.

But the biggest explosion of the episode came in the closing seconds: while Swarek and Andy smooched in bed Dov was discovering that Marlo is pregnant … with Swarek’s baby?

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Amazing Race Canada, Featured

Review: Amazing Race Canada returns home

Before I get into the review for Monday’s latest episode of The Amazing Race, I need to make a quick apology to Insight, the show’s producers. When the Racers left Canada for China two weeks ago, I scoffed that they never should have gone international, stupidly assuming they wouldn’t return to their home and native land. So, sorry for whining (mostly to myself) prematurely because return to Canada the show did.

Monday saw the teams jet to the Yukon, something that involved a flight across the International Date Line turning today into yesterday (“the past, man!” I imagined amiable stoners Mickey and Pete enthusing to each other) and an overall focus on one goal: unseating Olympic hockey champs Natalie and Meaghan as first-place finishers on the mat at the end of the Leg. This week was the first one that I saw teams shed some of that Canadian niceness that seems to plague us wherever we go. Everyone was gunning for Natalie and Meaghan, especially after they surrendered the Express Pass to brothers Pierre and Michel. Rex may have sniffed the air and commented that it was the wrong move, but I understood the girls’ decision. They may view the Quebecers as a threat in the game–and they most certainly are–but the gals also see them as competitors who should be rewarded for playing hard, a mantra these athletes live every day.

Speaking of Rex, can I say how giddy I am that he and Bob are on The Amazing Race? The longtime couple deliver great TV, whether they were getting catty over the fact siblings Sukhi and Jinder had been saved by last week’s non-elimination Leg or sniping (endlessly) at each other over, well, everything. Their countless attempts to re-create that Yukon camping setting had me giggling, especially when Rex threatened to scream if they hadn’t gotten it right after several tries. Sukhi and Jinder rank No. 2 behind Rex and Bob simply because they don’t know anything about anything. Don’t know how to put a leash on a sled dog? Ask another team. Don’t know which way is upriver? Make sure you paddle the wrong way until the current drives you in the right direction.

Meanwhile, mother and son duo Nicole and Cormac haven’t asked for help from anyone. The pair, who were eliminated on Monday, have showed fierce support for each other from the moment Jon Montgomery yelled “Go!” at the beginning of the season and haven’t wavered. If there was a time Cormac could have turned on his mom it was last night, when it took her over 20 tries to complete the biathlon challenge. Instead, he urged her on with compliments and enthusiasm especially when she broke down in tears. Kudos to Nicole for living up to the “never give up” attitude her own mother instilled in her.

Because she took so long nailing those rifle targets, Nicole and Cormac could only hope there was another non-elimination Leg in the cards. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to be and the last-place finishers were eliminated from the competition.

The Amazing Race Canada airs Mondays at 9 p. m. ET on CTV.

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Featured

Majumder Manor’s rocky road to success

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Shaun Majumder is, literally, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Among the hardest rock in the world, actually. The actor, writer and standup comedian had a dream for his hometown, the village of Burlington on Newfoundland’s west coast: draw tourism to the area in an effort to improve the local economy.

The plight of Majumder, wife Shelby Fenner and best friend/architect/producer Peter Blackie was well-documented in the first season of Majumder Manor, as the hometown boy made good attempted to get the locals excited about their ambitious plan to construct a five-star eco-friendly lodge that would draw people from around the world.

Back for Season 2–airing Mondays on W Network–the trio have changed things up, but their challenge is no less daunting. Majumder purchased another chunk of land right on the waterfront (the first property was right next to a busy road), affording gorgeous views of the small bay and the good chance of seeing an iceberg or two float by. The official title to Season 2 is The Rocky Road to Majumder Manor, and it’s well-suited. Majumder and Fenner were married in Los Angeles in their kitchen, but decided to re-do their vows in Burlington surrounded by friends and family on their new tract of land. The big problem? Nowhere for anyone to stay. With the celebration looming, deadlines to break ground on the new plan–several square pod living areas–were bumped up, putting pressure on everyone to get rolling.

Fenner spent much of Season 1 wondering what the heck she had gotten herself into, but is more confident in this iteration of the project.

“It started off as Shaun saying, ‘I want to make an off-the-grid house and do a show about it,'” she explains. “And then it turned into this much bigger project. My anxiety level went as far as it could go, but I’ve come out the other side realizing that things do work out. I have more trust and know exactly what we’re involved in.”

As with any building project, challenges stack up. A Come Home reunion for former Burlington townsfolk meant Shaun had to quickly construct tents on wooden bases for visitors to stay in. Those proved to be tough to make on ground wobbly as a St. John’s bar patron hopped up on Screech. Majumder’s purchase of an old store led to the discovery of a boat partially crashed through the wooden floor and half a day was spent pulling it out. Fenner wanted to cut costs on booze by making her own beer. And weather was a constant concern; Newfoundland’s placement in the Atlantic means sun can turn to rain–or snow–within minutes, something the team ran into during construction.

“We wanted to be done the foundation on the first pod last summer,” the 22 Minutes star says. “We couldn’t because the winter hit early. Now the pressure is on to get the pod built for the wedding.”

But perhaps the biggest test on Majumder’s wallet, and patience, is the very ground he so passionately wants to share with the rest of the world. Burlington sits on a section of rock that is among the hardest in the world, meaning sinking reinforcing bar into it to hold the pods in place is a long, arduous task in a such a rugged setting.

“All of Newfoundland and Labrador are rock,” Blackie says. “Burlington is on rock known as Burlington granite and it just happens to be the hardest rock on the island. And the site we’re on isn’t just rocks, it IS rock.”  That meant drilling, sinking rebar, epoxying those in place and then pouring concrete around them. Oh, and did they mention there’s no road to truck the concrete in? Instead, the heavy material is slogged in on foot in buckets.

“We have a team of locals, plus me and Pete, sweating our balls off walking through a muddy, snowy hard trail to bring buckets of it to the site,” Majumder describes. “We were lugging pails of heavy concrete through these woods.”

Majumder Manor airs Mondays at 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. ET on W Network.

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Featured, Industry News

Welcome to the new TV, eh?

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What’s new? Well, we’re back after a six-ish month hiatus that was meant to be a permanent cancellation, for one thing.

And we’re a “we” for another.

I’ll still do what I used to do – post the evening’s listings for new episodes, link to articles about Canadian TV from elsewhere on the web, and write the occasional interview or rant … I mean, op-ed.

But you’ll notice a big difference in the amount of original, professional content on the site. I’ve taken on a partner, Greg David, formerly of TV Guide Canada, and we recruited a team of contributors who will help us do reviews, interviews, features, and podcasts. Check out their bios.

We’ve been able to make this happen because of the incredible, unbelievable, generous support from you, our readers.

We launched a little Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise $1,500 so Greg and I could get the site up and running until we could find stable funding, and it exploded. In less than a week we exceeded our goal by over 1000%. We’re now stretching to $20,000 while seeking ongoing advertising and sponsorship.

The dream is to have a financially sustainable site that supports professional journalism about Canadian television. With your help we’re already on our way.

If you can contribute, or spread the word, the Indiegogo campaign is live until August 24.

If you want to talk to us about advertising or sponsorship, please get in touch.

And if you want to come to a place where Canadian television is worthy of serious discussion, welcome to the new TV, eh? We’re thrilled to be back.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Dr. Pascal Lee or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the asteroid

Pascal & Pong on ATV
Dr. Pascal Lee and Ping Pong

Mission Asteroid airs Thursday, December 5 on CBC’s Doc Zone

Q: Why did dinosaurs become extinct?
A: Because they didn’t have a space program.

Dr. Pascal Lee shared that joke while promoting Mission Asteroid, the CBC documentary about how we’re all going to die a fiery death in a mass extinction event.

I may be misrepresenting slightly. In the words of director Jeff Thrasher: “Mission Asteroid follows asteroid hunters and scientists who know just how vulnerable we are to a strike and are working to prevent it from happening. This documentary introduces viewers to astronauts and researchers as they travel from the lab to the field, testing technologies and techniques that will help make manned missions to asteroids a reality.”

In any case, Lee tells me my plan to build a bunker won’t help in the event of a major asteroid strike so I will hope, as he does, that the documentary opens some eyes to why space exploration isn’t frivolous. Not only does it connect us to our place in the cosmos, it could literally save humanity. It’s a particularly timely message given NASA’s shrinking budget and questions about the future of government-funded space exploration.

The fireball over Chelyabinsk, Russia this year definitely opened some eyes and some YouTube channels, and that was a relatively small asteroid that burned up in the atmosphere. If one were to land in the middle of a city, it could be both small enough to avoid detection and large enough to cause massive destruction, “forget about the gigantic one that would cause the end of civilization,” Lee added. “The likelihood is small but the devastation is monumental.”

“Historically we have not witnessed an impact of devastating proportions while humans were around. But if you take the geological perspective, all of a sudden it’s common.”

Jeff with Pascal onsite
Pascal Lee with director Jeff Thrasher

In case I’m making Lee sound like a less-comforting Nostradamus, he was as humorous and charming as someone can be while predicting our possible demise, and is seen throughout the documentary with his canine sidekick Ping Pong.

If a dog’s loyalty doesn’t convince you of his trustworthiness, his credentials are more than sound: he’s a senior planetary scientist at the SETI Institute and the chairman of the Mars Institute. For almost two decades he has been serving as director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project, an international field research project at the Haughton impact crater site on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, where the documentary team captured some amazing footage.

Lee says Mission Asteroid is the first documentary he knows of that looks at what is being done to stop or mitigate the threat of asteroids, as well as plans to explore and even land on them, and it includes world-renowned experts, including the University of Calgary’s Alan Hildebrand.

One of Lee’s areas of expertise is the human exploration of Mars, which he proposes should begin with the exploration of Mars’ asteroid-like moons Phobos and Deimos, so his interest in asteroids is multifaceted. (He’s also multitalented – besides drawing and painting, he recently released the children’s book Mission: Mars, causing colleagues to joke he’s a “man on a mission,” though the similarity in titles is pure coincidence.)

His interest in exploring Mars comes from its connection to Earth — how it evolved in a way that’s similar to our home planet, the possibility of life, and the possibility of sending life there. He says we’re on the first credible path now, predicting humans will reach orbit by the 2030s before landing on the surface. Exploring asteroids is one milestone toward that goal … so maybe I should plan to buy a ticket to Mars Colony as my asteroid collision avoidance plan instead of that bunker. As Lee puts it, “You don’t want all your eggs in the same basket,” planetarily speaking.

“We’re too caught up in our day-to-day lives sometimes to realize we are all of us on this ball hurtling through space,” he says. “Imagine something coming at us from the other direction. The sun is travelling at mind-boggling speeds through the galaxy. Everything is in motion.”

“We can bury ourselves in our economic worries, in our social worries, but we are also passengers on this train wreck that’s about to happen. I hope this documentary makes people look out the window, and makes people who are directing the space program — who are steering the ship — to look ahead and see what’s coming.”

Dr. Pascal Lee: spreader of sunshine. Catch him in Mission Asteroid Thursday on CBC’s Doc Zone.

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