TV: Celebrity Poker Showdown

I was all upset when I finally got around to watching last week's episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown, featuring Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Fred Willard, Jesse Metcalf, Heather Graham (growl!), and Andrea Parker (nice sweater! Double growl!). The stupid TiVo had recorded it incorrectly; I only had an hour of the program, rather than the full two hours.

Well, turns out it wasn't TiVo's fault. (I'm sorry, TiVo! Let's never fight again!) The show actually was only half its usual length, due to the unbridled, unprecedented domination of Malcolm-Jamal. Metcalf eliminated Parker (on a tremendously stupid play on her part), and M-J took care of the rest in brutally efficient fashion. There literally was not enough card-playing on tape to fill out two whole hours. The blinds had only increased once by the end of the game, and I may be wrong here, but I believe they increase in thirty minute increments. If that's right, there was less than a full hour of poker before M-J's incredibly lucky cards and the other players' vast incompetence brought the show to a close.

That's an ass-kickin', plain and simple.

I look forward to seeing M-J in action at the Finals tomorrow night. I have to think he's a huge favorite to win it all, though we hardly saw him play long enough to judge his true skill. It will help him that the other finalists aren't exactly poker experts -- Colin Quinn, Bonnie Hunt, Brad Garrett, and, by strange coincidence, M-J's co-star on the horrible, horrible Listen Up, Jason Alexander (who will probably be M-J's only real competitor).