Last night Donald Trump's reality show, "The Apprentice," returned for a seventh season with a twist, a cast filled with "celebrities" playing for charity. I used to love "The Apprentice" in its early seasons. While nothing lived up to the intense, dog-eat-dog drama of the first season, its follow-ups included a handful of memorable applicants and all sorts of cringe-inducing, schadenfreud-tastic moments (No. 1: S2's Ivana pulling down her skirt in the middle of New York City to sell a candy bar). But the show went downhill fast, and I called it quits after the infuriating conclusion to Season 4,

Last night NBC brought back that staple of 1990s Sunday morning syndication, "American Gladiators." Whenever I got to skip church (and it wasn't often; I was a choir boy) I'd watch as often as I could, hypnotized by the giddy stupidity of it all (apparently I was also a redneck). Spandex, muscles, and all of the body-slamming my young adolescent mind could take: it was heaven. So I was initially elated to hear about NBC's plans to bring the show back as a prime time project. But then the initial promos started running and I got worried. The costumes were

You do not know how hard it was to not march into my room at 11:01 last night and�post this. So angry!So the challenge was to create a prom dress for one of a gaggle of New Jersey Catholic school girls. Sounds like fun, right? (Minus the New Jersey school girl part.) For most of the episode it WAS fun, and the very nice designers were all supportive and cheerful and delightful. And then at the runway, things went horribly wrong.It's funny, because I was thinking when the episode started that the judges have pretty much gotten it right this

I had high hopes for "Make Me a Supermodel," the new Bravo modeling competition that debuted last night. Bravo typically does competitive reality shows right, with the notable exception of "Top Design," which was beyond awful. And I'm a sucker for a modeling show-I even liked VH-1's short-lived "The Agency." But after sitting through an hour-long debut that felt more like two hours, I'm not sure this one's going to take."Supermodel" will inevitably be compared to "America's Next Top Model," so let's just get that out of the way. The new show has two notable differences from its predecessor: 1)

THAT was rough. For a two-hour premiere we saw precious few people who have even a shot at making it to the voting rounds. Of them, Angela Martin (26) seems to be a pretty good bet. Angela has several things going for her. First, she's gorgeous, and has amazing hair. Second, she's charming as all get out. Third, she's got one of the saddest stories I've ever heard on this show, as her young daughter suffers from a debilitating CP-like illness. And fourth, she's got a decent voice. Not a great voice, as she demonstrated on "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" (terrible

Night 2 was a big improvement over the premiere, with Dallas offering up several potential contenders. There were still a couple instances of harassing the mentally ill, but all in all it was a fairly upbeat, feel-good evening. The good: Alaina Whitaker, a less-pretty Carrie Underwood clone, might even be a better singer than her famous counterpart, as she demonstrated on Faith Hill's "Stronger." Brandon Green is a weirdo who peels off his fingernails and then saves them in a plastic baggy, but he won me over by picking Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl" and I really dug his tone.

The past few years have been kind to spelling bees. They've become part of the cultural zeitgeist, as some wonderfully eccentric kids (remember that bird girl?) nabbed headlines during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which then led to the buzzed-about bee documentary "Spellbound," even as spelling featured prominently into Myla Goldberg's novel "Bee Season." Suddenly it's cool to be a geek, at least one with a good vocabulary. With that in mind, it was a no-brainer for a spelling bee to be transformed into a Broadway musical (ready-made plot and drama!), and in 2005 that happened with "The 25th Annual