Brandy Yant could see it coming. Beacon, her well-dressed — overly dressed, to the judges — miniature schnauzer just wasn’t listening to her commands. So she (Brandy) threw herself on her bed and cried.

And with good reason, too. In the elimination challenge on CBS’s ‘Greatest American Dog,’ where owners and dogs were supposed to dance with each other, Beacon showed very little interest in performing a classical ballet with Brandy, who lives in Rancho Santa Margarita.

The judges wrinkled their collective noses throughout — at the lack of control Brandy showed over her dog, and especially at her idea to put little ballet slippers on Beacon’s paws.

Is there anything sadder than ballet slippers on a dog? Yes, there is we learned when Brandy got the boot from the CBS reality show. It’s seeing a grown woman in a full ballet costume — tutu, too! — cry until her glittery facial lotion runs.

Still, once she’d composed herself, Brandy said she was happy with the experience on the show, and that Beacon, no matter what those judges said, was to her the greatest American dog.

In ballet slippers or out.

 Jessie Godderz, the 22-year-old body builder from Huntington Beach, got booted from the Big Brother house on Thursday after his housemates chose to keep Memphis — the guy, not the city — instead of part-time nude model Jessie.

It was a close vote 4-3 and the swing vote came from Dan, aka, ‘America’s Player,’ who had agreed to vote against whichever housemate viewers picked in an online ballot. They picked Jessie, and that was that.

Michelle won Head of Household for the coming week, and all manner of foul-mouthed, tear-soaked fighting ensued on the live feeds for the rest of the evening.

RECAPPING ‘PROJECT RUNWAY,’ Episode 4

Last week: The designers got to ride a bus, Stella got to use leatha, Kenley got to flex her talent and Emily got to go home.

ACT I – The Planning
We begin with 13 surviving designers rising for another day of challenges and bemoaning the departure of the beloved Emily. This beginning seems slightly familiar. Where have we seen it before? Oh, that’s right – the previous two weeks!

Perhaps some of the editors should have accompanied Emily out of town.

This unexciting start soon turns upside down when Korto declares that she’s going to try hard on the next challenge because she doesn’t want to go home. Then Kenley rocks us with the news that she was happy to win the last challenge. Ah, the brilliance.

Read the rest of this entry »

“So You Think You Can Dance” begins its two-part finale tonight with some good news already in hand.

The viewing staple of 14-year-old girls all over America will be back next summer for a fifth season of Nigel Lythgoe patting himself on the back, Fox announced this week.

That unsurprising tidbit out of the way, we get down to the real business at hand: Who wins, Joshua or Katee?

Oh, we know that Twitch and Courtney are formally in the competition, too, but the season’s voting patterns make it seem unlikely to the Watcher that either will take the crown. (Judging by her reaction when she was named to the final four over Chelsie, Courtney doesn’t think she’ll win, either.)

Of course, going by the Watcher’s track record this summer with “The Bachelorette” and “Design Star,” I may not be the best judge.

So you tell me.

The Watcher unveils his weekly “Project Runway” standings, which not surprisingly show Betty Page lookalike Kenley in first place.

Kenley has a win and a high-group finish in three weeks of competition. The contest has been very mixed so far. Just Jerell and Joe have been in the middle group only, while Stella, Leanne and Korto have managed both high-group and low-group finishes.

Tonight’s episode finds the designers putting together Olympic outfits. Olympian and ballroom-dance champion Apolo Anton Ohno is the guest judge.

You love your kids but they drive you crazy. Maybe they never listen or they beat on each other non-stop. Maybe they refuse to do their homework, eat their peas, or go to bed.

Well, here’s what you want to do: take them to Downtown Disney in Anaheim, audition them – and you — for ABC’s ’Supernanny,’ and if your lucky, Supernanny Jo Frost will crack the whip on them (and you) in front of a national TV audience.

A casting call for the fifth season of the show is set for noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, August 16, outside the LEGO Imagination Center.

Show producers say they want families with special interests, unusual backgrounds, difficult family circumstances, cultural diversity, teen moms, mean girls and bully boys.

You can find more information, or even apply online, at www.supernanny.com. Or call 877-NANNY TIME — more easily dialed as 1-877-626-6984) — for more information. 

Good luck, and be sure to tell us if you make it on the show. We do so enjoy watching people whose kids behave worse than our own, don’t you know?

Because ‘Mad Men’ is the best TV show on the air in our opinion, and because Don Draper is the most fascinating and complex character on the tube since Tony Soprano sat down to his last supper, it’s not surprising that the Internet peoples are in love with the show and the man.

And so we have some clever fellow to thank for creating ‘What Would Don Draper Do?’ where the Way Of The Draper is chronicled for his disciples. (Thanks also to Fimoculous.com, who started raving about ‘Mad Men’ last summer before anyone we know had discovered it, and who also tipped us to this site.)

Some of it is based on plot points in the series which airs new episodes at 10 p.m. Sundays, such as:

“19. Dear Don Draper, how do I handle a passive-aggressive co-worker?

Tell that punk to find a cardboard box, put all his things in it and get out of here. “

Others are entirely fiction (you know, made up by the Web dude, not the TV writers), but nicely channel Don’s philosophy:

“40. Dear Don Draper, My kids have had a lemonade stand all summer and they can’t seem to sell more than 3 cups a day. Any advice?

They’ll do much better after they get tired of sitting there and lose themselves in play and start to circle their bikes and drag their toys through the grass and mark the sidewalks with colored chalk. When that lemonade stand sits in the middle of lazy games of tag, carefree laughter and flashes of stained gingham and sun-bleached hair, no passing neighbor will be able to resist. That sweating pitcher will glow with innocence and optimism. With youth. Any man’d be glad to buy a glass and just stand there, wiping the taste of an endless summer afternoon from his lips. Hell, he’d buy four. “

The site’s already inspired a spinoff blog — ‘What Would Joan Holloway Do?’ — but so far Don’s is far better than that of the curvaceous office manager.

The Huntington Beach body builder went back up for eviction on Sunday’s episode of ‘Big Brother 10,’ and this time the spoilers suggest he may not survive.

Godderz, 22, has been on the block a few times already this season, but once escaped via the Power of Veto, and last week survived when voters sent home Angie instead.

This time, Jessie and Memphis are the two candidates for eviction, and while it looks like Head of Household April wants to save Jessie and boot Memphis, live feeds suggest Memphis may have enough of an alliance in the house to keep her around and send Jessie home.

Nigel Lythgoe, one of the two executive producers of “American Idol,” is stepping away from the show.

“I will step back from my day-to-day producing work on ‘American Idol’,” and instead concentrate on a new joint venture with Simon Fuller and 19 Entertainment, Lythgoe said in a statement. No word on the fate of co-executive producer Ken Warwick.

This could be a signal that some much-needed changes are headed “AI’s” way. Although show continues to be a ratings monster, it has slipped a bit in the numbers, and fan dissatisfaction seems to be growing.

Perhaps getting Lythgoe and his love of Queen and Broadway-style song-and-dance routines out of the way will be a start. (Here is the Watcher’s five-point plan for fixing “American Idol.”)

Many viewers know Lythgoe better as the lead egomaniac of “So You Think You Can Dance,” the most self-congratulatory show on television.

“Mad Men” made up for its slow start this season with a splendid second episode, full of intrigue and twists.

This week’s discussion points:

*  How strange to see Don in the role as the honorable guy. What a great irony that the Mohawk Airlines executive said Don had him fooled - when that was probably the only time we’ve seen Don being truly honest.

* Having Don turn down the waitress at the Japanese restaurant was a nice touch. You could almost see what was running through his mind.

* Where does the battle between Don and Duck go? Are we seeing the end of Don Draper as the top dog at Sterling Cooper? Or does American Airlines leave the firm dangling?

* The reappearance of Peggy’s son wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it was chilling. Did you catch the reference to her being institutionalized by the state?

* The crash of American Airlines Flight 1 was real, and it did happen on the day of John Glenn’s ticker-tape parade, March 1, 1962. At the time, it was the worst commercial air disaster in U.S. history.

* The song playing at the Japanese restaurant, “Ue O Muito Aruko,” had been a hit in Japan and would top the U.S. charts the following year under the name “Sukiyaki.” The singer, Kyu Sakumoto, died in an airliner crash in 1985.