A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

SO I THINK I CAN GO TO BED EARLY ON WEDNESDAYS: Not to step on Kim's SYTYCD post, but I was home in plenty of time to watch TV last night, and there was nothing else on but a TiVoed Real World/Road Rules Challenge (possibly my favorite original programming this summer, by the way, so I watched it and then caught up with SYTYCD), and Kimsmopolitan has been pimping this show hard, so I gave it a shot. Her ten rules look accurate to me, but I think she left off two:

11. The DeGrassi Exemption from Normal Rules of Television-Attractiveness Has Been Granted. On network television, the tradeoff is something like one percentile of hotness for five percentiles of talent. This is why Malin Ackerman and Bonnie Somerville and Cobie Smulders (yes, I said it, you want to make something of it?) and Ian Somerhalder aren't going to starve any time in the near future, even though maybe they really should be pharmaceutical sales reps or Office Depot managers. I would have guessed that a show featuring lots of sweaty folks in dancy-pants would play up this angle (particularly after Stacy Keibler's success in the other dance show), but no -- we get what I'll call "talent-face" (to be nice), creatively self-trimmed hair, and some seriously liberal application of what I thought was lipstick but what now understand is general-lip-region-broadly-definedstick. Even Cat Deeley, who I'm told is a famous British "television presenter," is the postergirl for Pretty For British Syndrome (for historical examples, see Dawn Tinsley, Baby Spice, Samantha Fox). Don't watch this show in HD.

12. The Degrassi Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Rule is In Effect. Does Cat Deeley add another stiff drink after the show for every time she has to ask a male contestant about an ex-girlfriend or comment on a pairing's chemistry? My favorite part of last night's program was when the sad, sad Mormon boy said something like "that's as close as I'm ever going to get to a female. [Long pause; slowly-dawning realization] Until marriage, that is!"