March 9-March 15, 2005

Harold begins a weekly column dedicated to predicting the latest losers from his favorite reality shows.

After going out on a limb last week with my predictions for American Idol, Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Amazing Race, I decided to put them out there on a weekly basis. In the past, I’ve played the Survivor Pick’em games on Yahoo! and even tried the CBS Survivor Fantasy league. In fact, I even helped to put together a game for Survivor fans after Yahoo! axed its game. Now that I don’t involve myself in these contests, I figured maybe someone could benefit from my thoughts on these matters. More selfishly, I need an outlet.

American Idol

First up, we have this week’s Idol candidates. With 2 guys and 2 gals on their way out, will fans come out in droves to support the ones who turned in sub-par performances?

The Guys: Scott Savol and Travis Tucker. I’ve had these two high on my boot list for a couple weeks now. I think Constantine turned in a worse performance than Travis, but if he continues to round up the votes, no one can keep him out of the final 12.

Gals: Janay Castine and Mikalah Gordon. Janay gave a forgettable performance. As for Mikalah, I think she epitomizes “hype”, as she continues to turn in poor performances only to have the judges dole out praise, as if trying to keep her ego inflated much higher than advisable. Two words describe her performance: pitchy and boring. She just has not shown herself worthy of advancing at the expense of the others.

Survivor

If you play any type of Survivor fantasy game, you really should check out some of the spoiler sites out there, as the picks that I post here constitute pure speculation. That said, I think Ulong can’t keep losing, could it? Of course it could. We don’t know anything about Koror or its tribe dynamic yet, so none of them make obvious candidates for dismissal yet. Kim, on the other hand, has had a big target painted on her for the last two episodes and, without Jeff, does not have the wherewithal to make a move to prolong her stay on the island. Knowing my luck, she’ll prove me wrong by forming a women’s alliance to vote out Bobby Jon. If Koror manages to lose the immunity challenge, I would pick Jamu to go, only because of her age and the eye injury documented on the Survivor Insider footage on CBS.com.

The Apprentice

With Stephanie exempt this week, she doesn’t have to worry about Trump shaking up the teams. Regarding my original assessment of John, after last week’s episode, I’ve definitely had to downgrade him. Though smart enough to get things done and despite my opinion that the show’s editors put his comments slightly out of context, he’d still better watch his words from here on out.

Chris looked really bad last week with his tobacco chewing and, as the youngest candidate remaining, will have his work cut out for him to prove he belongs on the show. If he ends up on a decent team, though, he can slide by another week.

This leaves me to choose Craig this week. Trump will notice that he ends up in the boardroom quite often and, if he finally decides to step up to the plate this week, I think he will strike out.

The Amazing Race

So what did I say about usiing sex appeal? D’oh! Megan and Heidi coming in last illustrates a classic example of misdirection in editing in the episode preview. I could clearly see the signs in the last episode, but I refused to believe that they couldn’t somehow improve their position. Meredith and Gretchen, however, still seem to skate by on pure luck, so again I pick them to finish last. Meanwhile, Rob and Amber look like they’ll cruise not just to the top six, but the final three. Notice how much Deana and Ray and Uchenna and Joyce moved up in the standings (4 places each) just by allying with the Survivor All-Stars.

Last words

Thanks for reading this first installment of my Reality Show Predictions. If you enjoyed it or found it helpful, please let me know either through a private message or by commenting below.

Until next week…

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