Happy Friday, Potatoes! What's On TV This Weekend?

Hey, blogtatoes!  What are you watching?  What are we here at The Sectional missing that we should be watching?  Post TiVo suggestions in the COMMENTS section of this very post, and we'll get back to you with our "professional" opinions of the show.  Let's start a discussion.  Expand your TV universe!

In Hell

Now THAT's what I call a series premiere, HELL'S KITCHEN! DAMN! Fireworks! Drama! Cursing like that of a Foreign Legionnaire! Crying and even blood! Gordon Ramsey is just plain good TV. He's SUCH a mega-dick on HELL'S KITCHEN but he's often such a kitten on his KITCHEN NIGHTMARES show. He's a healer on KN and a bad-as spank-meister on HK. I'm beginning to wonder if the proliferation of cooking shows (TOP CHEF, etc.) is contributing to America's national fattening. I love HELL'S KITCHEN! Why FOX chose to put it on opposite NBC's ONLY decent shows: THE OFFICE and 30 ROCK is a mystery. I'm videotaping HELL'S KITCHEN old-skool-style on my video cassette recorder (which Comcast Cable Corp. is going to render useless when they force their "secret box" on me). That's when I'll be getting my 2-tuner Direct TV satellite TV. Because Comcast lied. And I am SO sick of companies who are mean to their customers. Comcast sucks. Anyway, watch HELL'S KITCHEN!

CBC: Steven & Chris and The Dragon's Den, eh?

Girl, you don't know what you're missing if you're not Canadian or lucky enough to have CBC on your cable TV like I do. Though, I'll probably lose it when I switch from lying assh@les Comcast to Direct TV any minute! Anyway, while I still have CBC, I'm enjoying a couple of shows that just aren't on American TV, unfortunately. STEVEN & CHRIS is a daytime talk show featuring 2 openly (unquestionably) gay hosts. They even pronounce the name of the show like Kelly (from "Shoes") would pronounce "betch": STEVEN & CRESSSS. Luckily, you can watch clips and whole episodes online on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) web site. The other show I love is DRAGON'S DEN. There's a British version too on BBC America which I haven't seen yet (but will when I get Direct TV!) Canadian entrepreneurs pitch their crazy half-baked ideas to a panel of Canada's most successful and wealthy businesspeople. Of course, some of the ideas are pretty good and the dragon's invest their own money in the project. The show also has all sorts of smart tie-ins like voting for your favorite crazy idea that didn't make it. America had a show kinda like this on ABC that Simon Cowell co-produced, but it was poorly scheduled and I only watched it once. DRAGON'S DEN on CBC has a really wonderful Canadian quality to it. They're not as bitchy as the Brits and they're not condesending like Americans. It's a perfect balance for a reality show. In fact, I would say that most Canadian "reality" TV comes much closer to fine documentary film making rather than purulent realityshow flotsam and jetsom.

Comcast Lied To Seattle

Comcast's web site says as of today, "If all your TVs are currently connected to Comcast, you don't have to worry about a thing. When February 17, 2009 rolls around, you can just sit back, relax and keep watching your favorite shows." and "You're already ready!" But, these ads and slogans were lies all along. KING5 TV and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported today that, "Comcast has decided to undertake a digital switcheroo of its own at about the same time, a move that will affect more than 1 million households in Washington state. The bottom line for nearly all Comcast customers is that they'll have to put a cable box on every television, even newer models with digital tuners. This is a shocker if you bought a new TV, expecting to just plug your cable into it and be all set. It's also contrary to the message that cable companies and the government have been sending about digital TV — that cable customers can continue with their current setups. Remember, there are two digital transitions happening. One is that all TV stations will start broadcasting over-the-air content digitally on Feb. 17. Separately, Comcast is now tweaking its network in a way that will require most of its customers to have a different sort of box. Technically, it's moving channels 30 through 80 from analog to digital. Unfortunately, Comcast is making its digital switch simultaneously with the broadcast change. 'It's going to be very confusing when they do this,' said Tony Perez, Seattle's director of cable communications. 'We've been very worried about this because they are telling people right now for the broadcast digital conversion ... if you have Comcast you don't have to worry about it. They have not told people that sometime next year they're going to digitize their programming'." As a Comcast customer, I feel ROYALLY lied to, and I'm exploring my options for canceling my Comcast service in early 2009. It's so sad that TV continues to just shit on me after all the love I've given it over the years.