Greek: Happily Ever After?

Greek: "I Know What You Did Last Semester"


GREEK! I'm both excited to have the Cyprus Rhodes gang back and very nervous that this might be the beginning of the end. There's a lot of speculation going around that ABC Family may be trying to push Greek out in favor of the (vastly inferior) Secret Life of the American Teenager and Make It Or Break It and other new programming, and after what happened to Wildfire and Kyle XY (see may rants here, here and here), I'm inclined to believe that there may be cause for worry. ABC Family seems to have developed quite a knack for abandoning its well-liked, established shows for whatever is new. I could rant about how ABC Family should not hang its high-quality show (Greek) out to dry in favor of its more lowest-common-denominator fare, but that seems like it should be obvious. If it's not, we've got bigger problems.



Until we know more, if you love Greek, it can't hurt to visit http://www.savegreek.com/ and send some postcards and a red cup or two.



In any event, Greek returned with a delightful episode, as usual. Honestly, I can't think of too many other shows that can make me laugh as loud as Greek does on a regular basis.

The play-by-play:

• Betsy: "With all the stress of burning down the Gamma Si house, I couldn't eat all winter break, so I look fantastic!"
• Lol at Cappie's "Hello, Clarice."
• DALE!!!!!!
• Dale has interns now! Really nerdy interns.
• Dale: "Really? Cappie didn't mention that in his Christmas newsletter. It did have a fantastic date nut bar recipe."
• I'd pay money to get my hands on Cappie's Christmas newsletter.
• Hang on, I just realized that Greek is finally taking place at the same time as real life! Usually, it's winter there and summer here or fall there and spring here, etc. But now, it's winter here! It's winter there! This hasn't happened in a while. It's so exciting.
• Fisher and Ash broke up? Again?! Boo, I liked his cute face.
• Ash: "It's a fun way to start of the semester. You have a boyfriend. I'm single. We're arsonists."
• Aww, I miss Wade too.
• LOL at the KT's "secret knock" (which is "knock, knock").
• EVAN!! And he's wearing a tie! However, Evan cannot compete with the ensemble Calvin's sporting: checked shirt, all-over argyle sweater...very nice.
• NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! IF THIS HAS EVEN THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING THE LAST SERIES OF GREEK, DO NOT MAKE ME SPEND IT WATCHING EVAN AND REBECCA! PLEEEEEASE!
• Ha ha at Beaver looking menacing with the golf club!
• Well, I guess this is why my college never let us have candles in our dorm rooms (even unlit ones).
• Cappie: "If I'm late, she'll make me go as the least attractive dwarf, which I happen to think is Sneezy."
• Yeah, Calvin, it's time to cut Grant loose. This guy just isn't doing it for me.
• Ha ha at Casey freaking out when she walked into the firefighter costume and then the guy in the devil outfit.
• Yea, yea, yea, yea! The Dale/Calvin/Rusty trio is back in action!
• Rusty: "I never liked that Grant!"
• NOoooooooooooooooooooo--this is Evan/Rebecca! I said that is NOT what I want to see!
• It's a little late for Ash to get on the anti-Cappie bandwagon. Where was this input when Casey was trying to decide whether to get back together with Cappie or not?
• I'm sorry, what is with this commercial for Pull-Ups airing during Greek?
• Rusty: "We performed magic together. It would have been awkward."
• Rusty: "I can't see puffy paint making an impact on Dump Truck."
• Ha ha ha at Rusty bringing Dale in to shape up KT's pledges!
• OMG, Rusty just cut off that kid's toe!
• Cappie: "My, she's tall!"
• Cappie: "Apparently your brother cannot handle cutlery."
• The ZBZs sure watch a lot of television. They're my kind of girls!
• They could have burned the clipboard, but I guess they're understandably a bit leery of fire right now.
• Casey: "I remember stepping over a log at some point."
• Ha ha at Evan's wolf nose.
• Calvin: "That is the weakest Big Bad Wolf I've ever seen."
• Noooo, Grant, why did you have to come around? I just wanted rid of you.
• Evan: "They're your brothers! Get out there and support them!"
  Omega Chi brother: (pause) "Do you want to..."
  Evan: "With girls!"
  
• Fisher cheated on Ashleigh again! Fisher is such a little bitch.
  
• So is it time to finally make a go of a Rusty/Ashleigh pair? The idea still intrigues me.
  
• Casey: "We should burn down his house!"
  
• Casey: "And we got away with it until Ashleigh kept the clipboard but we couldn't keep it in the trunk because of Scrubs..."
  
• This Cappie/Casey stuff is actually kinda nice. Ok, Evan, you're so going to start messing it up next week though, right?
  
• Rebecca: "My, what a half-assed costume you have."
  
• Noooooo....Ahh, saved from an Evan/Rebecca kiss by a Casey/Cappie sighting! Phew, that was close.
  
• Cappie listened to Nora Jones and had a good cry.
  
• Jeremy wore eyeliner?
  
• HEATH!! Health was so upset about everyone getting expelled that he bombed all of his finals! Yeaaaa!
  
• If Heath really bombed all of his finals, is med school really still going to be interested in him?
  
• Can we please cut "that Grant" loose and revisit Calvin/Heath? I don't accept "he liked sports and I didn't" as an acceptable reason for them not to be together.
  
• Rusty: "The pledges can't get enough of me!"
  
• Wow, congrats to Rusty on winning the grant. But poor Dale :-(
  

Promos for the season: Ha ha, I can't wait to see whatever inspires Dale to tell Ashleigh that he can't be her boy-toy! I can, however, wait to see Evan tell Rebecca he wants to be exclusive with her. Barf.

(photo: abcfamily.com)

Premiere Watch '09: The Beautiful Life

The Beautiful Life: TBL:

"Pilot"

I really rather liked the pilot of The Beautiful Life. I was expecting to enjoy it, but I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it because it was good or if I'd enjoy it because it was so bad and campy that it was entertaining. Turns out, it was pretty good.

Granted, the whole thing with Chris' disapproving Iowan farmer dad seemed a little tired and all of the modeling agents were skeazy and not particularly interesting, but there were some interesting developments. I was actually pretty shocked by the reveal that Sonja's time away from modeling was due to her having a secret baby. The rehab rumor just seemed likely. Also, I'm interested to find out who Raina's dad is. Mafia boss? Very rich white collar criminal?

And I liked this pilot because, heaven help me, I love that Mischa Barton. I admit that she's not the world's best actress and she's had some troubled times in real life, but I just like her. I'm sure my allegiance to her is in no small part due to her having played one of the main characters (Marissa Cooper) in one of my favorite shows of all time (The O.C.), but I do think there's more to it than that.

Also, I think the people in charge of The Beautiful Life should really stop trying to make "The Beautiful Life: TBL" happen. Either go with The Beautiful Life or TBL, we don't need both. It's redundant.

Highlights and my other thoughts:

• Timely scheduling of this pilot: it depicts NY Fashion Week '09 during NY Fashion Week. (Ignoring the fact that the fashion week actually going on in real life was for Spring '10, while the clothes they were wearing were from Zac Posen's Fall '09 collection (Exhibits A, B, and C). But that's ok, we don't have to think about it that hard.)
• Zac Posen! I read that his NY Fashion Week show started at 9 a.m. this year.
• Shouldn't Zac screen his looks a bit earlier than right before the model walks onto the runway? "Take this necklace and make it into a belt"? What?!
• I don't blame Mischa/Sonja for not making it to the Posen show if it was at 9 a.m.
• Do radio stations really give live updates from fashion shows?
• I'm sorry, but Corbin Bleu doesn't look like a model to me. He's too short, right? How tall are male models supposed to be?
• Aww, Chris is from Iowa. That's so cliche.
• More MGMT? I mean, I love "Time to Pretend" just as much as or more than the next girl, but is Zac Posen seriously using a year-old song to showcase his signature look?
• Do fashion show attendees really jump to their feet, applauding and cheering when some confetti falls from the ceiling? That seems like seriously un-chic behavior.
• Zac's clothes got some nice exposure from this.
• I just love Mischa's somewhat affected/stilted manner of speaking (sometimes it sounds like she's using an accent, sometimes not). It rather fits this role.
• Hope Chris wore presentable undies today.
• Ahh, good, I was hoping that wasn't Chris' pink cell phone.
• Maybe Isaac's been having trouble finding work because he's too short. (Or maybe designers just don't want their clothes associated with this. Personally, I've come to regard it as something of a modern masterpiece.)
• Ohhh, Isaac was a child model who "hasn't quite crossed over yet." That explains it.
• And he's a musician. Here's a thought: if he's not doing well at modeling and he wants to be a musician, why doesn't he just go try to be a musician?
• Cole (Nico Tortorella) is hot. Why does he look familiar? Wait! It's because he played Pizza Guy #1 on Make It Or Break It!!! So I guess this explains why that dude completely disappeared after only a few episodes and had to be replaced by Pizza Guy #2. Geez, I thought he was kind of cute on MIOBI, but he's super hot on TBL. Emily Kmetko's loss!
• Ick. Simon is sleazy.
• Sonja's wearing "the new Versace"! (Which, by the way, was from the Versace Spring '09 collection, so it's a year old and not so new after all.) How'd she get it? She has a "relationship with security" at the photographer's hotel. That's shady.
• Cole just ordered a 7 and 7. How Atwood-ian of him. (Sorry, my only experience with that drink comes from The O.C.)
• Marissa: "Coke is so '80s!" (I only find that quote interesting because I just finished reading Bright Lights, Big City in preparation for the upcoming Josh Schwartz film adaptation.)
• Raina is either a very sympathetic, caring person or oddly infatuated with Sonya.
• Is Raina really 16? Huh, no wonder her brother was supposed to take care of her.
• Sonja's baby-daddy has the initial R. (Unless Raina really is a creepy stalker and sent the flowers.)
• Uh oh, it's only the first episode and Mischa's already going berserk and throwing things. It took her until the Season 2 premiere to get to that point on The O.C. (the pool chair incident), and a lot of crap happened to her on The O.C....
• How old is Chris supposed to be?
• Is Raina's floor really going to be any more comfortable than the bench?

Premiere Rating: 7.5/10

(photo: cwtv.com)

MIOBI: National Selection (Survival of the Fittest)

Make It Or Break It: "All That Glitters"

While I have continued to watch MIOBI on a weekly basis, I abandoned blogging about it because it was exhausting trying to point out every ridiculous thing that happens on this show. Especially when the ridiculousness is not limited to misrepresentations of gymnastics but also stretches to misrepresentations of the real world (like when Emily's mom went somewhere to pay her electricity bill or people ride a bus from Boulder to Boston and arrive in less than a day or when the girls scared off the creepy guys by doing flips or any number of other inane moments).

If you know anything at all about gymnastics (or the real world), it's best to just try to put it out of your mind as much as possible while watching MIOBI. If you can shut your brain off a bit, you can focus on things like how cute Carter is and how the second Pizza Boy is kind of creepy but also kind of funny and that the Kmetkos are still pretty likable despite being annoying and that Payson is pretty amusing in her own way. In honor of the finale of the first half-season, however, I'm going to keep my brain on and give blogging a go for this episode. Please bear in mind that I couldn't write down all of the inaccuracies and fallacies due the the sheer number of them.

Highlights and ridiculousness:

• I'm still not buying that Kaylie's dad took diamonds out of his World Series ring and put them in a necklace for Kaylie.
• Those are some rather un-fancy looking warmups the Rock girls are sporting.
• I don't think the press goes this crazy for gymnasts arriving at Nationals (maybe at the Olympics though). It's not the Oscars.
• Guy in the lobby with a camera: "Kaylie Cruz, let's see what's in your gym bag!" WHA? That's horrible! Keep the camera out of the poor girl's gym bag!
• Pizza Boy 2 calls Emily "Tumble-ina"
• Seriously, what happened to the other pizza shop guy? He's been gone for a very, very long time. It doesn't even make sense storyline-wise to bring him back at this point, since Emily's been through so much more with Pizza Boy 2 now.
• Nationals isn't on a podium?! Are you kidding me?
• Pizza Boy 2's going to take Emily's brother to Boston from Boulder on Radiohead's bus?! That's supposed to going to Atlanta?! Did anything in that sentence make any sense at all?
• Lauren: "And that would be our team captain."
• Carter came to Boston even though he got suspended? Hasn't he been enough of a distraction to Kaylie? Just cool it off for a while, dude. You're coming on a bit strong.
• If Kaylie doesn't want him anymore, I'm sure Carter could pick up a few other girlfriends here in Boston with all the gymnastics groupies running around.
• Wow, Payson looks gorgeous marching out into the arena in her competition makeup! I didn't even recognize her. I'm usually not a big fan of over-exuberant eye makeup on gymnasts (example: Nastia Liukin at 2009 Nationals a couple weeks ago), but it looks amazing on Payson.
• How does Lauren get all of her hair (it's seriously almost down to her waist) into that tiny little side bun thing?
• No, commentator, the judges aren't going to be looking for "more personality" from Lauren; they're going to be looking for some actual gymnastics skills. (On the bright side, it seems that having annoying commentators was the one part of the Nationals experience that MIOBI got correct!)
• Wow, Payson and Kelly are still trash-talking mid-meet! That's intense.
• Payson's uneven bars routine would be so much more impressive if she actually did a release move.
• Why are the Rock's gymnasts all competing on different events? How is Sasha supposed to coach gymnasts on four different events at once? This is asinine.
• Wow, Payson really solidified her lead with that Gainer full twist dismount. Yes, that was a beam dismount with just one twist. And, look, Kelly Parker did a beam dismount with just one twist too! How impressive. Yep, these two have "National champion" written all over them.
• There should be a lot more hugging at this competition. Do the people who make this show ever watch any gymnastics competitions at all?
• How does Kelly Parker know all of the Rock girls' dirty secrets? Does she have spies?
• The gymnasts have to go to a cocktail party after the competition? Whose horrendous idea is that?
• Payson: "We are tanking in there because we're all acting like a bunch of petty little bitches!"
• If Emily just keeps visualizing herself falling right before she starts each event, she's actually doing surprisingly well.
• Pizza boy: "You strike the bars like a cobra."
• You strike the bars like a cobra?! WHAT?! That's quite possibly literally the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my whole entire life. Including the time the girl in front of me in line in the dining hall at college confused okra with orca and told her friend that the dining hall was serving us whale.
• I guess Pizza Boy should be a sports psychologist. He spouts out some completely random, irrelevant, illogical nonsense and suddenly Emily's right as rain.
• Emily: "I can't believe you came this far."
  Me: "I can't believe Radiohead let you drive their bus to Boston when they were trying to go to Atlanta!"
  
• It is still creepy to no end that Naomi from Lost is the sports agent. I wonder if she's still working for Charles Widmore in some capacity.
  
• Ha ha! Who wants to bet that this "what's in your gym bag" segment isn't going to be around much longer? You just can't show a box of condoms on the jumbo-tron at a gymnastics meet. There are far too many little children around.
  
• It's weird/cool that the Rock girls all get to wear different leos in the same color scheme.
  
• Wow, Kaylie should just set up a give-back-the-necklaces booth right there at the edge of the stands. This is ridiculous.
  
• Kayle scores a 16.2 on vault for a Yurchenko half?! ARGH!!! That score is literally not even possible for that vault. There are girls who do vaults with 1.5 or even 2 more twists than that who don't get scores that high in the real world! It annoys me that MIOBI tries to appear legitimate by using the new, non-10.0-based scoring system but then award obscenely high scores for the skills they show the girls doing. If you didn't know anything about gymnastics and you watched an actual competition after watching this show, you wouldn't be able to understand why the gymnasts were doing skills that looked so much harder and still receiving scores that are so much lower.
  
• Candace (Summer) can just walk down out of the stands and onto the competition floor?! Where is the security in this place?
  
• How is Payson going to pass Kelly Parker when she's just going a Yurchenko back tuck on vault? Oy vey.
  
• Yeesh! Actually Payson's horrendous fall is probably what "hitting the bar like a cobra" would actually look like. I mean, a cobra has no hands! It wouldn't go well!
  
• Ouch! That was a nasty fall from Payson on UB! It reminds me of the time Kerri Strug took that really nasty fall off bars and injured her back (and they showed that clip in all her documentaries).
  
• I can't believe Sasha let Emily do her old floor routine. That was a bad call. How she didn't get laughed out of the arena is beyond me.
  
• Payson does have three years before the Olympics, people. I'm sure she can find a doctor doing some kind of crazy experimental back surgery by then.
  
• Lauren: "Come on, Kay! You've got her whipped!" (Lol, that is so not something an actual gymnast would say.)
  
• At least Kelly Parker can do a double pike on floor. Actually it looks like she did two of them, unless that was supposed to be a full-in and I missed the twist. That's probably wishful thinking though.
  
• Yea Kaylie!
  
• Oh yeah, I forgot that Kaylie's brother liked Emily too. For someone who is supposed to have no boyfriends, she's got like three.
  
• Wow, Emily makes one National team and suddenly the rules don't apply to her!?
  
• I usually detest the music on this show, but I have to admit that this Mika "We Are Golden" song is darn catchy.
  

Argh, this show in infuriating. And yet I still watch it... Luckily, MIOBI is going on hiatus for awhile so Greek and come back and I can stop hanging my head in shame for awhile.

(photo: abcfamily.com)

Make It Or Break It: Falling Off the Beam

Make It Or Break It:
"Pilot"

I love gymnastics. I also tend to love ABC Family original shows (The Secret Life of the American Teenager being the glaring exception to that). So, therefore, I should love Make It Or Break It, an ABC Family original show about gymnastics, right? Mmm, not so much. Turns out, I kind of hated it. For both its complete lack of knowledge about gymnastics and its complete lack of the elements (humor, witty dialogue, interesting characters, etc.) that make/made shows like Greek, Kyle XY and (to a lessor extent) Wildfire so enjoyable.

Full disclosure: I've been a fan of Chelsea Hobbs since Beach Girls. I think I mainly like her because she looks like Rachel Melvin from Days Of Our Lives.

There was so much ridiculousness in this episode that I have to do a play-by-play account to document some of it:

• Whoa, the dude on still rings has some seriously floppy hair.
• There's going to be a Sports Illustrated cover on gymnasts before Nationals even happens? Yeah right. Did we learn that lesson after the Kristy Phillips situation?
• Why are they talking about "team order" at Nationals? Since when is gymnastics Nationals a team competition? (Answer: it's not.)
• Why is orange leo (Lauren) so worked up after seeing someone do a couple of back handsprings through to a single tuck on floor? She shouldn't be threatened by that.
• Ok, that 2.5 twist/punch front was a little more impressive.
• Emily watched "the Northern Open"? On TV?! Gymnastics can barely get decent coverage of Nationals on TV most years. Let's be honest here: if she saw this "Northern Open" anywhere, it almost certainly was by tapping into a Dutch television station's feed on the Internet in the middle of the night. (Yes, I'm speaking from experience.)
• Payson just did a brilliant Gainer layout off beam. (Please detect my sarcasm.) Lauren's back tuck dismount was also fantastic (eye roll).
• Oh great, Lauren's already barfing up her breakfast. We're less than 10 minutes in, and someone's already got an eating disorder.
• They're seriously concerned about losing to a girl who is afraid of the vault?
• Does everyone's entire family have to show up and watch every practice? Gymnastics lessons are expensive--don't these people have to go to their jobs?!
• Candace Cameron Bure! Playing someone religious. How surprising. Seriously, though, why's Candace with Lauren's sketchy dad?
• Payson is way over the top. She can't talk to her family because she's needs to "focus" during the car ride home?
• Uh, if "getting caught with a boy" gets you immediately kicked off the team, shouldn't Kaylie and Floppy Hair (Carter) park and make out a little further away from the gym?
• Emily: "How was the new school?"
  Brother: "Different dog, same poop."
• Emily's mom needs to be a little more organized.
• Kaylie: "If he finds out, he was kill you. No seriously, like blood-and-cops-and-teddy-bears and-candles-on-the-sidewalk kill you."
• Ooh, the boy in the pizza shop is cute! A little on the creepy side, however.
• Uh oh, the manager of the pizza shop is a meth-head.
• It also seems kind of unlikely that a gymnastics competition would start that early in the morning. (With the exception of NBC messing up the scheduling of some of the Beijing competitions so that they could be aired live in the U.S.)
• Ok, folks, gymnasts qualify for Nationals as individuals. Each gym does not get to send a team of a certain number of people.
• There's a PA announcer at an inter-gym comp?
• Kaylie was 8th in US at Nationals on uneven bars last year with a whole lot of nothing in her routine and a double tuck dismount?
• At least MIOBI got the flame leotards right. (The Inferno leos went into rotation in 2003, but the flame trend is apparently still alive and kicking.)
• Wow, Lauren did a double front dismount. That's actually a legitimate move.
• Emily also pulls out a (back) double tuck dismount (without pointing her feet).
• Just for the record: The UB scores were Payson 16.075; Kaylie 16.070; Lauren 15.325; Emily 15.100. (Lauren got screwed--she's the only one who did a legit dismount.) For reference, in last year's Olympic All-Around competition, Nastia got 16.65 and Shawn was pulling around 15.275. And they were, you know, actually doing skills.
• After floor: Payson: 31.450; Kaylie: 31.125; Lauren 30.125; Emily 30.050
• The floor tumbling was pretty weak too. You can usually see more impressive tumbling on the results show of So You Think You Can Dance.
• Oh, and NO legitimate competition would ever have people compete bars then floor then beam then vault. Olympic order is vault, bars, beam, floor.
• The Rock gym gets to send 18 people to Nationals?!?! 18!! That's like half the entire field of athletes! What kind of nonsense is this?
• Lauren: flip flop-flip flop-layout stepout (fall) on beam. A skill series rarely seen since 1996. And this is the unbelievable beam routine we've heard so much about?
• If Payton is soooooooooo focused, why is she so intently watching her competitors? Seems like that would be distracting.
• Emily nails her flip-flop, flip-flop, layout stepout like it's 1992. And caps the routine off with a full twisting back tuck dismount!? UGH. (Shawn Johnson did a full twisting double tuck dismount last year, BTW.)
• Payson 46.900; Kaylie 46.375; Emily 46.100; Lauren 43.875
• Why is Lauren "out" if Emily beats her?
• Payson's vault is the hardest in the comp and "has never been landed in competition before." Well, we sure couldn't see much of it, but it looked like a Yurchenko layout (no twists). Hate to break it to you, MIOBI, but girls are landing that vault with an extra 2.5 twists in it.
• I have NO IDEA what vault Emily was just trying to do. She was doing a front flip between her roundoff and touching the vault? What the hell is that? I don't care where the spring board is located, that wasn't going to go well.
• Waaaaaaait. Now they're doing their second vaults?! As in, they got warmed up (actually they didn't, but let's pretend), everyone vaulted, and then they are going to start from the beginning and all vault again after standing around cooling down for however long this process has taken? There better be room for more than one girl in that ambulance, because this is freaking dangerous.
• Kaylie does a Yurchenko pike (or tuck).
• Why does the mom from Fresno have a Southern accent?
• Noooooooooo! Don't let the girl who just fell on her neck go vault! These people are asking for it.
• Ohhhh, Emily was apparently trying to do a Tsukahara entry. She "nails" her Tsuk back tuck this time.
• Final results: Payson 62.250; Kaylie 60.925; Emily 60.800; Lauren 58.050
• I thought the two vault scores were supposedly averaged? There's no way that Emily's score for her second vault averaged with her 0.00 on the first one would allow her to have a higher all-around score than Lauren.
• Because I'm taking this way too seriously, I've compiled everyone's scores on all four events. For reference, I've added Nastia and Shawn's scores in the Beijing all-around. Going by MIOBI standards, I think Shawn has a serious beef with the bars judges. And Nastia needs to complain that she got a lower score on vault than Payson, despite doing the same vault with 1.5 extra twists.

• Wow, Lauren's a peach. Selling out Kaylie to get back in the top three was real classy. Of course, she learned her tactics from her father, who hired a PI to dig up dirt on Emily.
• Not surprisingly, the PI found found more juicy dirt on the head gymnastics coach than he did on the teenage girl.
• Scores of media are now camped out on Payson's front lawn. Uh huh.
• There are no other coaches in this gym? And now there's no electricity either? This place is a disaster.
• Seriously, the girl in the Playtex Sport commercial just did more bona fide gymnastics skills in this 30 second ad than all of the girls in MIOBI did in 60 minutes.

Um, I'm not impressed. If they are going to make this show this gymnastics-centric, they need to do a hell of a lot more research about how things work the world of gymnastics today. If they made the show more of a teen soap, just with some gymnastics in the background, they would have a better chance of pulling this off.

A good example of what I'm talking about is Wildfire. Yes, it was a show about horse racing. A lot of the drama and plot points came from events involved with horse racing. And, yes, Wildfire's depiction of the world of horseracing was probably no more accurate than MIOBI's depiction of gymnastics. But, when Wildfire was at its most entertaining, it was a show about Junior, Kris, Matt, Dani, their parents and the supporting characters (and sometimes the wind turbine) and horse racing just served as the background. After all, if I want to watch a horse race, I'll watch a horse race not a television show on ABC Family. And if I want to watch a gymnastics competition, I'll watch a gymnastics competition (even if I have to get up in the middle of the night and queue up the Dutch channel on the Internet). MIOBI needs to bring something else to the table.

(It occurred to me that this show would have worked soooo much better if they made it about a college gymnastics team. Then all this "team" mumbo jumbo would have made sense. As would having a "scholarship kid." And it would be cool to have some girls on the team be famous former Olympians and other girls be unknowns. But in that scenario, you wouldn't get to have the crazy stage parents, but that's no big loss in my opinion.)

Update:
After watching episode 2, "Where's Marty," I'm feeling a little better about MIOBI, because ep 2 focused more on the drama and less on the actual gymnastics. The show is still nothing to write home about, but I did enjoy Lauren's dad getting all excited about her two-foot half turn on beam. I mean, yeah, it would have been impressive if she were age 2 or 3 at the most. And the girls scaring away the creepy guys via roundoffs and back handsprings was just too ridiculous.

(photo: abcfamily.com)