The current version of The Amazing Race continues to basically be a race between two teams, BJ & Tyler and Eric & Jeremy. I find this fascinating because they have two such radically different racing styles. I feel kinda bad for the other teams, but it is interesting all the same.

BJ & Tyler were the first to depart the Pit Stop at 2:29 AM. Their clue instructed them to drive 135 miles to Catania, Sicily and locate the Antiteatro Romano, the ruins of an acient ampitheater. I was amazed by the spread in the departure times. The second team, Eric & Jeremy, departed at 4:11 AM, then the times went 5:00 AM, 5:18 AM, 6:06 AM, 6:25 AM and 6:34 AM. With the long drive, and the ampitheater opening at 8:30, some teams in the back still didn’t make it there until after it opened. When BJ & Tyler got there, they created a fake sign in sheet for fun, the sad thing was, it took Eric & Jeremy a little while to figure out it was fake. Quite the brain-trust those two.

Once the ampitheater was open, the next clue told the teams to count the statue heads that ringed the pit. They would then run back in, find the groundskeeper, tell him the number and, if correct, he would give them their next clue. All the teams got it correct (it was 41) and had no trouble moving on. Honestly, the hardest part of this portion was the traffic getting there through the traffic, and Fran & Barry getting lost…again. I swear those two have NO sense of direction.

The next clue led to this legs Detour:

“In this Detour, Teams had to choose between Big Fish and Little Fish. In Big Fish, each Team member needed to pick up a 32 pound swordfish and walk through the mazelike streets of Catania one third of a mile to a market called Storico la Pescheria, where a local fish vendor named Jagino would hand them their next clue. In Little Fish, Teams would travel directly to the same market, Storico la Pescheria, where they would take over a stall and sell four kilos of a small Sicilian fish called Triglia.”

The only team to opt for fish selling was Fran & Barry, everyone else went for the fun of carrying leaky, smelly, bloody swordfish. Joseph & Monica had the hardest time finding the right fish seller, leading to mascara-ruining crying by Monica. Oh I would have loved to have seen those clothes getting washed. After that, teams were told to drive over 40 miles to Siracusa and find Ponte Umbertino. The last place race started to get going between Ray & Yolanda and Dave & Lori, as the effects of the morning traffic was still getting to them.

Once at Ponte Umbertino, the teams encountered this legs Roadblock:

“In this Roadblock, one Team member had to perform in a popular Italian sport, kayak polo. To do this, they would work solo in a kayak and join a professional team and participate in an ongoing match. After scoring one goal for their team, they would receive their next clue.”

This wasn’t nearly as tough as it sounded, and the most amusing thing to come was Michelle of Lake & Michelle did the challange. I swear you could see every vein in his head as he yelled at her from the sidelines. I wonder how his dental practice is doing since this show aired.

Eric & Jeremy came in first for their third time and won a trip. BJ & Tyler weren’t far behind in second place. I’m telling you all, this is just getting to the point of being funny. Sadly, Dave & Lori were eliminated.

Dear Diary -

I wonder what I did in a previous life to have to suffer through the latest version of The Apprentice. Sure I was Viking and I pillaged villages and stole their women, but does that really warrant the pain that is the fifth edition of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice? I don’t think so, I think this rates as cruel and unusual punishment.

What else could explain the pain of suffering through two totally incomptent teams trying to write a jingle for Arby’s new all-natural chicken line of foods? I mean, seriously, this is one of those tasks that just make no sense to me. At what point do you not go to a specialized company for such an important aspect of a promotion? You don’t just hire some idiots off the street to write your jingle!

Anyway, Bryce led Gold Rush and Sean led Synergy. Bryce had a 10:15 appointment with the executives for Abry’s, his team was 25 minutes late to the meeting. You know what? I would have declared them the losers right there. I have never been late to a meeting, I never will be and if you are late to a meeting with me, you’re sunk.

Anyway, Gold Rush lost, it was boring, Bryce was fired for poor leadership and backtalking Trump. He then had the nerve in the cab at the end to say how Trump needs to shut up and listen sometimes. Um…dude…Trump is the boss, you need to shut the hell up.

This is by far the worst season, I am rooting for no one! They all annoy me! And Lee….oh Lee. Look, I am all for observing your religious holidays, but if you knew you would miss two tasks in a contest like this, I don’t think you should have come. In work it is one thing as you have the job, but in this “interview process” you have basically bought yourself two weeks of immunity and you shoudn’t have even come on the show. Trump is correct, it’s fair as long as he is there, but I personally would not have been able to come on the show if I knew I would miss two tasks. I would not have felt it right to skip out two rounds. That’s just me though.

So diary, my conclusion…I think this show is dead.

Hey, Survivor Exile Island is finally back! What a concept!

We open at Casaya as they suffer through a horrible night of rain. Everyone huddles together for warmth, but Courtney is on the edge and gets soaked by the downpour. The next morning she wakes to complain how it is all Shane’s fault she is wet and cold. Um…Courtney? YOU HAD A ONE PERSON SHELTER KNOWN AS THE OUTHOUSE! Yep, I yelled it, I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s been used, I don’t care how disgusting you think it is, but if you were that miserable, go sit in it! I really think she just likes complaining about things.

Over at La Mina, the remaining men (Terry, Austin and Nick) receive tree mail telling them something that doesn’t blog is on their back beach. They go to investigate, hoping it’s food, only to discover it is their info to grab their items, a crate of sealed goods and head to Casaya in a boat for the ever-important merge. They lament they are going in to the merge outnumbered 6-to-4, but nothing they can do but try to swing a couple votes to their side.

While they were paddling over, Casaya was having a breakfast of rice. When they saw the boat approaching, they quickly vowed to stay together, ate as much rice as they quickly could and then welcomed their new tribe mates. Sally was brought back from Exile Island and the new tribe known as Gitanos (Spanish for “Gypsies”) is born. The former members of Casaya say everone seems friendly, but little do they know of the last minute pact.

The only high point during the expanding of camp was Nick hitting Bruce in the mouth with a machate. It cut his lip, but Bruce soldiered on. Um…excuse me, but weren’t we promised a “medical emergancy” accomponied by someone being evacuated be helicopter? If that was it…wow that sucked.

The tribe then heads off for the first indvidual immunity challange and to see the dreamy Jeff Probst. The challange is:

“Each tribe member will have to hang upside down with arms and legs wrapped around a pole. They must hang there for as long as they can. Whoever falls off of the pole will be eliminated. The last castaway hanging wins Immunity.”

The former Casay’s were hoping Terry wouldn’t win so that they could make him the first out, not knowing he had the Hidden Immunity. Well, guess what, he also won the Indvidual Immunity. Oops. Double immunity!

Back at camp, the former members of Casay hold a very public meeting about how to vote out, making the La Mina’s feel very unwelcome. They decided Nick woul go, and he did in a vote of 6-4.

Here’s my question…could Terry have saved him by ging him the Hidden Immunity after the vote?

The Amazing Race opened up with Eric & Jeremy departing the Munich, Germany Pit Stop at 2:15 AM. The clue indicated they were to fly 850 miles to Palermo, Italy. Once there, they were to take a taxi to Teatro Massimo opera house to find their next clue.

Eric & Jeremy got to the airport and discovered the earliest flight out was on Alitalia and would get them to Palermo at 10:15 AM. As they were not able to book the flight yet, they decided to play in the wheel chairs. Next to show up were BJ & Tyler who joined in the Wheel Chair Olympics. Lake & Michelle arrived and decided to hit the internet to see if they could look in to book a flight. After their wheel chair fun, BJ & Tyler decided to check out the computers also. While Lake & Michelle couldn’t read the website as it was in German, BJ & Tyler could and got on the Alialia flight. Lake & Michelle discovered a Lufthansa flight landing at 2 PM, and Eric & Jeremy were only able to do standy by for the Alatalia flight. However, on their layover in Rome, Eric & Jeremy had a ticketing problem and didn’t make it to Palermo with Eric & Jeremy.

As the other teams arrived, Fran & Barry, Dave & Lori and Joseph & Monica joined Lake & Michelle on the Lufthansa flight. Everyone but Lake & Michelle discovered the Rome plane switch, leaving Lake & Michelle to fly in later with Ray & Yolanda and Danielle & Dani. Now, when Fran & Barry found out about the flight, Lake & Michelle approached them just to say hello, Fran snapped at them to get away. Lake was highly offended and told Michlle “She’s a doctor’s wife. She shouldn’t be acting like that.”. Oh yes Lake, because you are the poster boy for dentists.

BJ & Tyler had the lead all to themselves as they shot through Palermo. The next clue told them to drive themselves 42 miles to the town of Castellammare del Golfo. They were well on their way by the time the other seven teams finally arrived. Lake & Michelle slipped to last place, but due to Danielle’s lack of skill at driving a stick shift, they ended up being in last place quickly.

After all this, it was Detour time:

“In this Detour, Teams had to choose between Foundry and Laundry. In Foundry, Teams had to walk to a nearby metal works and pick up a 110-pound church bell. Then, using a vehicle known as an Ape, they must drive the bell to a church, Chiesa Maria, and hand deliver it up a set of steps. In Laundry, Teams needed to find an intersection littered with laundry lines and search among 2,400 pieces of laundry to find one of 16 items of clothing marked with a red and yellow tag.”

The only teams to do Foundry were Ray & Yolanda and James & Michelle, everyone else opted for Laundry. While it took some of them awhile, but they all made it through the Detour without much trouble. Fran & Barry once again went by the clue box without spotting it at first. They are amazing.

Once everyone got their clues, they were told to had to drive 13 miles to the city of Segesta and find the archeological zone. They then had to hike up a hill one mile to the Teatro di Segesta, a fifth century amphitheater. There was a Yield here and it was used by Lake & Michelle to Yield Dani & Danielle. Yeah, it didn’t make a ton of sense to anyone really. It probably had to do with Lake & Michelle going to the Pit Stop by accident, putting them even further behind.

At the ampitheater, the teams discovered the Roadblock:

In this Roadblock, one Team member had to correctly piece together a classical Greek statue. The Teams didn’t know that there were two extra pieces not needed to complete the statue.

No one seemed that befuddled by the extra pieces except for Lori who totally freaked out. She seemed to be freaking out most of the day though, demonstrating just how stressful the race really can be to people.

The clue told everyone to race back down the hill to the Tempio di Segesta, a fifth century B.C. temple which served as the Pit Stop for this leg. BJ & Tyler came in first and won digital imaging package from Duracell, that included a digital camera, photo printer, computer, and Duracell PowerPix batteries. Eric & Jeremy were visiably upset to come in second place, Phil seemed to think they should be a bit more grateful. Dani & Danielle were eliminated after more problems at the statue building.

Overall, an episode of frantically made wrong decesions. Is it any surprise that the most laid back team keeps coming in first?

As I have said several times now, parents, and you, are the ultimate judge of what should be on your television, not the FCC. Well, it seems 82% of registered voters agree with me.

TV Watch, a group dedicated to keeping the goverment out of the business of regulating TV, commissioned a poll of registered voters to see if people want the FCC controlling what they see. This news story breaks down the information. 12% of respondents want the goverment controlling what we see, but the majority wants to control their own TVs and the programming. With all of the filtering equipment out there now such as the V-Chip and set top control boxes, you have the tools now to control what is on the TV in your house more than ever. It is time the goverment stepped back and realize that we do not them holding our hands every step of the way. It is time parents take more responsability.

It’s just time.

So what does this tell everyone? Our TV is being controlled by a small group of busy bodies with nothing better to do with their time than muddle in your business. It is time for the majority to speak up. Go to the TV Watch site, sign up, ask to get alerts when shows are under attack, stand up to the these bullies!

Yep, it’s that time of…week…again…for *snore* huh? What? Oh yeah, The Apprentice synopsis.

The teams met up with Trump, Bill Rancic and Carolyn aboard a Norwegian Cruise Line ship to receive their next task. They were to come up with a 30 second commercial to promote the companies new “Fire In Every Room!” cruise…wait…that’s not right. “Intestinal Trouble Spree”? No…”Freestyle Cruising”! That’s it! The catch was the ship was departing in 3 hours and they had to be off the ship by then.

This has to be the single most insane task yet. “Unrealistic” is one word that springs to mind immediately. There is no way a company goes to an ad agency and says “Hey, we need a commercial. Come up with the concept, hire the film crew, hire the actors, stage it and shoot it…and oh yeah, we need this all done in three hours.” In the past this show’s tasks have at least had SOME connection to reality, but this one was so off-the-wall, it was jarring to the senses!

Dan stepped up as Gold Rush project manager and did a horrible job. I liked Lenny’s concept of the cruise ship picking up a castaway, but it wasn’t shot properly and was poorly edited.

Roxanne was PM for Synergy and they went with the concept of showing off how the Freetyle-Intestinal-Trouble-With-A-Fire-In-Your-Room program allowed you to dine at any time you wanted. Roxanne lacked any real leadership skills, but they got the job done anyway, even with Andrea being a total pain-in-the-butt. (Because, as she will tell you, she’s made millions, what do you know?)

Here’s what the offical site said of the decesion:

“The executives felt that both ads were good, but that Synergy’s use of voice-over compared to Gold Rush’s use of text was much more effective. They also thought that Gold Rush’s ad was confusing while Synergy’s was clear. Therefore, the winner was Synergy.”

Synergy won some diamonds from some secret vault place, I don’t know, I was bored senseless at this point. Dan whined a lot in the boardroom, Trump got pissy Lenny wasn’t in the room, Carolyn got on the table and danced…who knows…Dan got fired. This show has crossed over in to the land of silly with just downright awful tasks this season.

ABC’s “Extreme” Exploitation – March 27, 2006

You know, I don’t remember what the world did before TheSmokingGun.com came along, but I, for one, don’t really want to remember.

It seems that ABC has decided it’s ok to start dictating what people are most deserving of the Extreme Makeover:Home Edition treatment. In a letter to their affiliates, ABC has listed their most desired problems for the new season. It reads like a shopping list of explotation to me.

Now, I am not saying these people aren’t deserving, all the ailments/problems listed in this letter are severe, and these people probably can use the help, but the letter just seems downright tacky to me. You can almost hear the hooping and hollering in your head when they get a phone call telling them that an affiliate has found them one of those “17 known cases in US” of congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis. Because, as the letter writer so enthusasitically points out “let me know if one is in your town!”. Yeah, I’ll let you know if one is my town right after I was the filth off of me that is this letter.

ABC has sunk to a new low, and I am sure they never wanted this letter seen by the public, but this shows that this show is nothing to them except for explotation of people. I am glad the people end up with a new house, but at what price? More pain?

The Channel I watch All My Children on in the afternoons, when I can, shows the syndicated version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the version hosted by Meredith Viera. I try to avoid seeing this show, but sometimes I do flip channels early. So today I flip over and a woman gets asked on the $4,000 question “What famous Washington D.C. monument is featured on the back of the $5 dollar bill?”. I smirk thinking how easy this is.

She used the “Ask the audience lifeline”…only 65% of them got it right. The AOL Instant Messenger respondets…well…only 56% of them got it right.

Where in the world does the daily version of this show find it’s contestants? Do they only accept people with the lowest possible IQs they can find? “That man appears to have trouble tying his own shoes…quick! Snatch him up for the show!”

And if you are reading this and need to pull out a $5 bill to see which monument is….first you need to be smacked….secondly, it’s the Lincoln Memorial.

Amazing Race opened with Eric & Jeremy being told by Phil that the leg was not over and being handed their next clue. They were instructed to fly over a 1,000 miles to Frankfurt, Germany and then take a train for a 100 miles to Stuttgart. Once there they needed to locate the Mercedes-Benz factory and find their next clue. Lake & Michelle were close behind and second place and the teams took off for the airport.

The other teams who did the nesting doll Detour from last week were the first teams in-and-out of the Pit Stop, the Trolley washers were way behind. The last team to get the stern-gaze of Phil, was Dave & Lori. They seemed to be the only ones relieved to hear the leg wasn’t over for some odd reason.

At the airport, Eric & Jeremy got on a Lufthansa flight that was leaving immediately. Lake & Michelle got an Aeroflot flight leaving two hours later due to the other flight now being closed. This led to Lake once again saying “Dang gummit!”, once again affirming my suspicion that his father is Jed Clampett. The teams all started to bunch up at the airport when all of a sudden the computers went down, possibly stranding the remianing seven teams.The teams stood at different windows to get the best position when the computers came back up. BJ & Tyler lucked out and were at the first window to open up and made it just in time to get on the Aeroflot flight. The other six teams got stranded until 7:00 AM the next morning.

Meanwhile, Eric & Jeremy made it to the Merceds-Benz factory and read their clue. They would be taking a test drive on an old test track known as The Wall of Death. Unfortanly the factory didn’t open until 8:30 AM the next morning, so they saw their lead disappearing. Little did they know the teams were standed for the most part. While the six teams finally made it in to the air, the three teams that had made it out of Moscow were at the test track. They chose a driver to take them on the track and experienced speeds up to 170 KMH (105 MPH) and angles of nearly 90 degrees. Once done their clue instructed them to drive 200 miles to the city of Bad Tolz were they would find their next clue.

As the follow up teams made it through the test track they headed out, but all except for Barry & Fran had trouble finding the Autobahn. Due to Fran’s navigating they propelled themselves from last to fourth place. Meanwhile, Wanda & Desiree were working wih Dani & Danielle on not only getting lost, but getting lost in grand style as they managed to travel in a complete circle and get lost in the same place twice. Pretty impressive I must say.

Once the teams arrived at the farm just outside of Bad Tolz, they opened their clues to discover a Roadblock:

“In this Roadblock, one Team member had to search the large field filled with 150 hats and feet of the Travelocity Roaming Gnome. Underneath 11 of the hats and feet would be a gnome itself that held its next clue.”

The most amusing thing in the early part of this was Lake & Michelle couldn’t find the field so they got a drunk local man to ride in the car with them until they could find it. Whatever it takes! As the teams finished, their next clue told them to drive to Bavaria Film Studios in Grunwald and they were to take their gnome with them safely to the Pit Stop.

Once at the studio, the teams found their Detour for this leg:

“In this Detour, Teams had to choose between Break It and Slap It. In Break It, Team members took turns breaking stunt bottles on each other’s heads until they found one with “prost,” the German word for cheers, written on back of the label. However, they could only smash one bottle per cuckoo from a traditional German cuckoo clock. In Slap It, Teams had to learn and correctly perform a sequence of steps from a complex German folk dance. The task would be physical, but Teams with the right rhythm could finish fast.”

To be quite honest, I saw Fran & Barry mess up their dance they were allowed to go on through, so not sure how hard the dance was. The bottle smashing was hillarious though as teams found different ways of breaking the bottles. Eric & Jeremy hit on the clue girl and got kisses on their cheeks from her. When BJ & Tyler got up to her, Tyler all of a sudden spoke in German to her and asked if she would like to go dancing with them. She seemed impressed. As the teams finished their clue instructed them to drive 10 miles to travel 10 miles into Munich and find the street Leopold Strasse where they would find the Siegestor, a 153-year-old monument to peace and the Pit Stop.

To be short, Eric & Jeremy arrived in first place and won a trip. Wanda & Desiree ended up in a battle for last place with Dani & Danielle, both of them running hours behind the other teams, and it really did get down to the last few seconds, but Wanda & Desiree were eliminated from the race. Funniest moment of the Pit Stop, of course, goes to BJ & Tyler who decided to run backwards on to the mat, causing Phil to turn to the German greeter with a puzzled look and say “They’re running backwards, Peter.” Upon jumping on the mat, they looked at the German man, who has a long beard, and exclaimed “SANTA!” I swear these guys are about the happiest team this race has ever seen.

South Park is over, and as the title promised, it was indeed “The Return of Chef!”. They used pieced together sound clips of Isaac Hayes from various episodes to provide his voice and made no effort to hide it, just adding to the comedic effect.

In short, the episode was brilliant. We learn that Chef left town to join the Super Adventure Club (SAC), which sounds innocent enough. Upon his return to town though, the boys can tell something is…different about Chef, and it’s not his stilted speech pattern, it’s his desire to make love to young boys. It seems the SAC travels around the world so they can have sex with the young boys of the world. After the boys discover this, they also learn SAC brainwashed Chef and they do everything they can to bring him back to “normal”. They succeed, but in the end Chef tries to go back to the SAC and ends up being killed by a fall…then a mountain lion…and a bear. There was a funeral and then SAC rebuilds Chef in to…Darth Chef, complete with glowing spatuala.

It was much funnier than my transcript, but that’s not the point here. The episode was all about the boys (who embody creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone) trying to save their friend (Isaac Hayes) from the “silly little club”. While this episode could have been an all out attack on Isaac, it wasn’t. It was actually a touching story of how they are sad this happened and they want him to know they love him and will miss him. Kyle summed it up best at the funeral for Chef:

“A lot of us don’t agree with the choices Chef has made in the last few days. Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can’t let the events of the last week take away the memories of how Chef made us smile. I’m going to remember Chef as the jolly old guy who allways broke in to song. I’m going to remember Chef as the guy who gave us advice to live by. So you see, we shouldn’t be mad at Chef for leaving us, we should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains.”

This is one of the things that kills me about this show. People look at it and just see crass toilet humor, and I’m not denying it’s there, but if you pay actual attention to it, you will find that Trey and Matt are very passionate men about any range of subjects. If tonight’s episode is to be believed, they are hurt by what’s happened with Isaac and feel no ill-will towards him, just towards the “Church” of Scientology. I, for one, stand firmly behind Trey and Matt and applaud them for their…classy…handelling of the situation. (Yes, there was a bowel joke towards the end, so not sure you can label it classy)

Now comes the question, will Darth Chef be a recurring villian? And also, will the seeming “war” with Scientology continue?

Is it just me, or is this group of candidates on The Apprentice the most annoying group yet? I would love to see them just once concentrate more on the task than on trying to stab each other in the back and set up other people to take the fall.

We start off this week with yet more crying! What is up with this group?!? Backstabbing, crying, general bitchiness…ARGH! Charmaine learns that Theresa got fired for her poor choice of not bringing her back in to the Board Room so…cue the crying!

The next morning, the teams emt up with Trump, Ivanka and George at the Trump Grille in the lobby of Trump Tower which resides in the city of Trump York in the state of Trump York….you get the idea. The teams were to design a banner for the new Post Grape Nuts Trail Mix Crunch, which has to be the MOST unwieldy name for a cereal ever. They would then be judged by executives from Post.

Tammy stepped as Project Manager for Synergy due to her background in marketing. She wanted to decide who would be presenting to the executives, Brent raised his hand and…yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. He also suggested they focus their ad on weight loss, an idea the team did not warm to. Instead they wanted to go with a theme of one generation passing the Grape Nuts on to the next…yeah…not so bright.

Over at Gold Rush, Charmaine stepped up as PM in an an effort to prove her worth to Trump. No ideas really caught on until Bryce suggested the idea of an attractive woman chugging a box of cereal. I will admit I scoffed at first, but the final product was much better than I expected.

Oddly, both teams got the idea to search the city streets for models, as opposed to hiring them. Synergy was going to hire real models, but decided that they instead wanted normal people for their ad. I would like to have seen some discussion of how the teams arrived at these decesions, but alas that information was never shared. Synergy wanted a daughter and father set up, they would have been wise to go with an older guy than they did, but what do I know.

And again, with Synergy, Brent tried helping with the design of the box packaging, but was shot down at every turn, mostly be Andrea. Once the package was done and the image emailed over to Sean and Allie, who were working on the photography, the team again clashed as Sean hated the packaging.

The next morning, as Synergy (noticing a theme as to who this episode was focused on?), was ready to leave for their presentation, the team had to wait on Brent due to his getting up late. Andrea scolded him and that resulted in an even bigger delay as they argued. Once at the presentation, the Synergy banner was too crowded, Sean stammered through his presentation and…yeah, they lost. Big shocker. Gold Rush won a prize of cooking a meal with world reknowned chef, Jean-Georges. Lenny made an ass out of himself by finishing off some of his plating…Lenny is not long for this world I think.

In the board room, Synergy praised Tammy’s leadership skills, except for Brent, of course. Long story short, Brent got fired without anyone even being sent out of the room. He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but at the same time, I have to say his entire team is a disater.

Just when you think you know everything in the South Park Vs. Isaac Hayes story, it just keeps getting weirder! According to this story by Roger Friedman on the Fox News website, Isaac Hayes is in no shape to quit the show due to a stroke he suffered on January 17th.

The article states that Isaac has a “sly sense of humor” and still enjoyed his association with South Park, so then the question begs…who issued the now infamous press release? If it wasn’t Isaac, who was it? Or, I think the more likely scenario, this is just idle speculation on the writer’s part.

And Comedy Central issued a statemant about this Wednesday’s episode:

The launch of South Park’s tenth season is marked by the triumphant homecoming of school chef, Jerome McElroy. “The Return of Chef” premieres Wednesday, March 22 at 10:00 p.m., only Comedy Central.The town is jolted out of a case of the doldrums when Chef suddenly reappears. While Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman are thrilled to have their old friend back, they notice that something about chef seems different. When Chef’s strange behavior starts getting him in trouble, the boys pull out all the stops to save him.

Set those VCRs/DVRs/Tivo’s boys and girls, this one should be a keeper!

By the way, if anyone would like to see the well-known Scientology episode, Trapped In The Closet, you can view it here.