Opinion Five-Spot, WE 12/19/10 - Burn Notice, Survivor, The Next Survivor, Million Dollar Money Drop, Perfect Couples

Here's my Five-Spot of TV opinions for the week ending December 19, 2010 (or more like December 20):

Burn Notice - The two episodes that made up the finale on Thursday were both good, as a lot of villains of Burn Notice past came back to haunt Michael. And I have to say that I'm quite intrigued by the way the episode ended, with Michael Westen seemingly on his way back into the spy game. You'd think this won't be a long-term thing (or at least not a full-time thing) because they'd drop the other characters, but for now I'm still interested to see where it goes. And Dylan Baker is a great supporting actor get for the show.

Survivor - Well, a fairly run-of-the-mill season of Survivor at least ended with one of the show's more appealing characters winning it. And it's another resounding loss for the guy (Sash) who counts on the jury to be cold and calculating and simply reward the guy who played the best strategic game. I feel like if I went on the show, I'd probably be a Russell/Sash type character, easily willing to jump alliances, so I'd have to be very careful not to become as unlikable as they are. It doesn't seem to often be a winning strategy.

Next Time on... Survivor - Survivor double dose, as I didn't watch a lot this week. I'll be in this spring as the show tries out a "Redemption Island" twist next season. It basically says that if you're voted out, you can stay in the game by winning challenges against others who have been voted out. My first thought: it meshes with the other big rumor surrounding season 22, as (trying to be vague to avoid an outright spoiler) "those people" would likely be voted out early and the powers that be wouldn't want that!

Million Dollar Money Drop - At the height of the Millionaire copycat craze, I remember lots of people lamenting that every single new game show would have the same Millionaire "money chain." But you see a show like this, and you see why. With the "money chain," you raise the floor of what you can win, and the top prize is always out there. On this show, you're always lowering the ceiling of your winnings, and if you lower it a lot, you may be answering a lot of questions with not a lot on the line. Which is bad TV.

Perfect Couples - I had some decent hopes for this show (probably moreso before TBS made them recast Kyle Howard of My Boys) but the sneak preview last night was a pretty big fail. I don't think I got a laugh or a smile, and it managed to be both totally bland and completely ridiculous all at once. Since my DVR has nothing to do between Big Bang Theory/Community and The Office, I might give it another whirl to see what the pilot looks like (last night was the ninth ep of the run), but I might not. Disappointing.

More Five-Spots in the Index.