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It’s finally here! It’s been a long wait for TV viewers, but The Mole is finally back. The MoleCelebrity Mole, with such stars as Stephen Baldwin, Corbin Bernsen and Kathy Griffin. Faithful viewers just wanted their favorite show to go back to the way it was, but instead, ABC got rid of the show altogether. Now, seven years since it’s premiere, The Mole is back, and by the way it looks, it’s finally back to its original form.

The Mole will kick off again this Monday, June 2, on ABC once again. While the celebrity version was hosted by Ahmad Rashad, and the original Mole by Anderson Cooper, this most recent version will be hosted by Jon Kelley, an entertainment and sports reporter. Faithful viewers aren’t too sure about him, but are willing to give him a try.

Twelve contestants will start the season out, and they will all work together and separately, to figure out the identity of The Mole among them. While everyone else is working on team efforts to further their opportunities, The Mole is quietly working to sabotage them. At the end of each episode, the contestants answer a series of questions about the identity of The Mole, and the ones who answers the most questions wrong is eliminated.

While I never watched the non-celebrity versions of The Mole, I was drawn in by the celebrities. Mole purists found such fault with the celebrity version, but having it be the only version I’d seen, I was quite enchanted with it. It was interesting to watch the contestants grow more and more paranoid each show about who among them was the secret Mole. The identity of The Mole isn’t known to us viewers either, so we get to play along as well.

Like most reality shows, the contestant pool seems to rely on the pretty people, yet interestingly enough, the contestants here tend to be older than they are on Survivor or Big Brother. The oldest contestant is 60, and the youngest 24. The majority of them seem to be in their 30s, an age that seems old by Big Brother standards.

Hopefully, by the end of the show Monday night, we’ll all feel like this four year wait will have been well worth the wit.

Photos Courtesy of abc.com

For more information on The Mole, see SirLinksalot: The Mole. was a popular, kitschy show seen originally in 2001 at the beginning of the reality TV genre. Trying to keep the show alive after two seasons, ABC switched the focus to

With So You Think You Can Dance starting so soon after American Idol ended, it caused me to think of how they differ. With the singing show just finishing up its seventh season, and the dance show just beginning it’s fourth, it’s clear one of them had a head start. It would have been too easy to create a carbon copy of the show, replacing singing with dancing, but they seem to have worked to carve a separate path, knowing that in the end, dancing and singing really aren’t all that comparable.

While they’ve played with the formula of this a few times since the show started, instead of just auditioning, then getting a yea or nay from the judges, the auditioners on So You Think You Can Dance are presented with a few different options. The judges can either send them directly to the next round in Las Vegas, they can send them directly home, or they can hold them over to watch how they handle choreography, as in the end, that’s what will matter the most. They could be a great dancer with their own stuff, but provided with someone else’s routine, they might not be able to follow easily, or most importantly, quickly. Read more

One week ago we watched David Cook be crowned the winner of American Idol season seven, well, some of us did. For those that were relying on their TiVo, they saw “American Idol 2008 is … David …” and it ran out. Luckily, I add seven extra minutes onto every American Idol episode recorded in sort of a been there/done that sort of thing, so I didn’t cut out until halfway through his coronation song.

So just what has happened in the past week? Has anything changed for the winner or non-winners? David Cook, of course, has been appearing all over the place as the newly crowned American Idol. He has appeared with the other Idols and alone. He seems to be the most gracious guy and seems very sincere when he says he just wants to put out a record he can be proud of, even five years in the future.

Cook told Ellen DeGeneres that while he originally only attended the auditions to support his little brother, and made it on and won while his brother didn’t even make it to Hollywood, they were playing Madden shortly after he made the final 24, and his brother won, very excited. David figured one won Madden, and the other American Idol. They’re even now, no? Read more

It’s always sad to lose a part of your childhood, and to me, those that I saw on TV and on film were legends, all of them. One of our staples in the last 60s was watching Laugh-In every week, so to learn that funny guy Dick Martin died this weekend, to me it’s losing a legend, one of my personal legends.

Dick Martin of course had a very successful comedy career before sharing hosting duties with Dan Rowan on Laugh-In, but to me, this was all he ever did. I started Kindergarten in the space of this show, so I knew of nothing of his career before Laugh-In and never really heard anything after other than a few things here and there.

But for a little girl like myself that would race home to watch Mike Douglas after school and see who his guest stars were that day, Laugh-In was a staple. I didn’t understand much of it, but the things I did understand, I enjoyed. I loved the dancing, and Lily Tomlin, and the play between Ruth Buzzi, Henry Gibson, and Arte Johnson.

But most of all, I loved Dan Rowan and Dick Martin’s signoff every week. I loved the whole slapstick comedy thing behind Rowan saying, “Say Goodnight, Dick.” and Martin answering, “Goodnight … Dick.” It was part of the humor I enjoyed that shaped the humor I use in my daily life and even in my writing.

Being that Rowan passed away more than twenty years ago, I couldn’t help but think that he was up there somewhere smiling, and as Martin slipped away of respiratory failure, I imagine Rowan simply said, “Say goodnight, Dick.”

“Goodnight, Dick.”

Photo courtesy of timvp.com

Anybody that watched The Bachelor the season before last will tell you that Deanna Pappas got the shaft by Brad Womack. In an unprecedented move, he didn’t pick anyone! He couldn’t even find a way to give someone a promise ring or even a call. Worse yet, he started to tell Deanna, so it seemed, that he was going to choose her, then tugged at his collar, paced around, then gave her her walking papers. She was led to believe he changed his mind on a reunion of sorts that aired the following week on ABC, but instead, he turned her down yet again.

Ellen DeGeneres, a fan of the show the same as the rest of us, invited Deanna on her talk show and suggested she should be the next Bachelorette. ABC agreed. After watching another season of Bachelor in the meantime, and feeling unfulfilled yet again as Brit Matt Grant chose Shayne Lamas, seen days later as the cover girl of Girls Gone Wild magazine, and surprised that everyone, including her father, thought she was was only in this to further her acting career.

At this point, we’re ready for a good romance, and honestly, ABC trotting out Trista and Ryan Sutter to carry on that torch is getting a little old, and we know we can’t count on Byron and Mary after their recent problems. Reality show fans were even discussing lately that there have been more successful relationships to be borne out of CBS’ Survivor than on The Bachelor. Read more

A few months back I was lucky enough to interview Kimberly Caldwell of Idol Tonight on the TV Guide Channel and asked her about dating other American Idols. She told me while other people find it odd, to her it’s like dating her coworkers. She stated she could name ten Idols off the top of her head that she has dated, but pressed, wouldn’t reveal any names.

She’s been talking great things about David Cook all season, and while she was interviewing him on the finale night, he asked her out to dinner. What’s a girl to say, but a big old yes. I wouldn’t turn that guy down even if he was an average Joe Schmo, but in addition, he’s now THE American Idol.

Kimberley accepted David’s dinner invitation, and the press was hounding them while they had their dinner date. Now, she’d be able to name off eleven names of Idols she has dated. The question now is if this one will last or if it will go down eventually in the books as ones she prefers not to discuss.

They look so dang cute together, that it would be great if it lasted, but I’m guessing that with the whirlwind his life has just become, it’s not going to be a keeper.

Photos Courtesy of freewebs.com

I have to hand it to both John McCain and Ellen DeGeneres for handling a very delicate subject this week. While it would have been easy to ignore what DeGeneres described as the big elephant in the room, they tackled it head on, both expressing their views, yet respecting the other’s.

It was much different eleven years ago for DeGeneres. After much speculation and whispering, she formally came out on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and shortly after built an episode of her sitcom, Ellen, around the fact that the character, too, was coming out, backed by a therapy session with Winfrey playing the shrink. The sitcom ended a few years later, and DeGeneres has talked about it since, mentioning the lows she went through in her life professionally, as she wasn’t even informed when her show was cancelled, and spent a few years in obscurity.

After yet another failed attempt at a sitcom, DeGeneres decided to try her hand at hosting a talk show. She played it somewhat conservatively, ignoring the big elephant in the room at that time, not publicly discussing her private life and who she was sharing it with. Yet once she gained success again, in the way of Emmys and ratings, DeGeneres slowly began to open up about her personal life. At some points she would talk about her home life and say “we,” and would make joking references about not having men in her life. Later on, she began to say, “Portia and I,” referring to Portia de Rossi whom she has been with since 2004. This gave way to her announcement recently that with California now allowing same-sex marriages, she and de Rossi will mary over the summer.

DeGeneres had Senator John McCain on her talk show this week, and decided to confront the “big elephant in the room,” meaning his stance against same-sex marriage. The senator aired his thoughts, without offending anyone, saying he respectfully disagrees and thinks people should be allowed to enter into legal agreements with each other for insurance reasons and to aid in the decision-making process, but he would like to keep the unique status of marriage being just men and women.

Without arguing or with any anger at all, DeGeneres stated she thinks back to when blacks and women weren’t allowed to vote and how that all changed, saying to her it all means the same thing. To her this issue is like saying we are not all the same, and “You can sit there; you just can’t sit there.” It makes her feel isolated and not inclusive.

McCain told DeGeneres he heard her articulate herself very eloquently, yet they would still have to disagree. Yet, he also wanted to be sure she knew that he was wishing her every happiness. Never one to miss a quick joke, DeGeneres asked the senator if that meant he’d walk her down the aisle.

This discussion continued my respect for Ellen DeGeneres and gave me newfound respect for Senator John McCain. I don’t think it matters what your stance is on this issue either way to realize that it’s certainly an issue she cares very deeply about, yet she was able to enter into a discussion, calmly stating her point, and he was able to do the same. This is the difference between her and Rosie O’Donnell. O’Donnell expresses her views, but not nearly as eloquently, and when someone disagrees, she turns to anger and attacks. I’d have to think this is the difference in their success.

Photos Courtesy of latimes.com and mlive.com

There simply is nothing else to talk about today except the American Idol finale, and not just the final result, but the whole big entertaining two hours they gave us tonight.

People that read my articles regularly, be it here, another blog, Reality Shack , etc., know I’ve been really hard on American Idol this year. They also know it took a lot to get me to this point, as after seven seasons, I was always the show’s staunchest defender, no matter what. I’ve always been a TV addict, not to mention a reality TV junkie, but American Idol is numero uno with me. From January to May, there just isn’t much else. Yet, I saw things I didn’t want to see in the show this year, and it was hard to deny, even for me, that there was something else at play here.

But tonight, I’m forgiving them for anything that has happened this season, from the early dismissals of Carly Smithson and Michael Johns that seemed somehow orchestrated, to the horrible treatment Jason Castro seemed to get in his final weeks on the show. If even Simon Cowell can apologize to David Cook for being too harsh on him, then I can drop it all and just enjoy a very entertaining two hours. Read more