There’s a lot of interesting TV debuting tonight and I thought I’d make sure to help get the word out… over on the Food Network, former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy food guru ,Ted Allen debuts a new show, Food Detectives. The series sounds like the Food Network’s attempt to duplicate Mythbusters (something the Discovery Channel and Fuse have attempted recently to varying degrees of success). The first episode deals with the “5 Second Rule” which Mythbusters already tackled so the show is going to sink or swim quickly with the Mythbusters crowd as the difference between “pale imitation” and “unique voice” will be hard to miss.

Meanwhile, the Sci-Fi Channel’s charming dramedy series Eureka returns for its third season tonight. While I thought the first season took a little while to find its voice (though thankfully it was a show that went from ‘watchable’ to ‘totally enjoyable’) the series really worked in the second season and I’m hoping we get more of that charm and whimsy this time around.

Finally, the History Channel debuts a series with an irresistible name, Jurassic Fight Club, the latest series to use CGI to create speculative footage of gone-by eras, this one looking at how dinosaur species faught each other for survival.

Monday night, Jon Stewart’s guest was former subprime mortgage company owner Richard Bitner, discussing Bitner’s book about his experience watching that industry devolve. While I don’t know Bitner’s story well enough to judge if he’s anywhere as innocent as he makes himself seem, it did bother me that the show used the same old misperception about our current mortgage crisis, starting from a presumption that the only problem is a matter of banks giving out loans to people who knew they couldn’t afford such a large loan in the first place.

I keep hearing the problem phrased as if there were a blame that should be shared between the people facing foreclosure and the banks who hold their bad loans. They both should have known better than to get into such a bad deal.

However, from what I saw in the Bay Area that wasn’t the case. For instance, in the Bay Area one problem was the “pick a payment” loan that was pitched to existing homeowners as a refinancing option. These loans were probably ones that the homeowners could afford, but they were designed to trick borrowers into increasing their debt.

As bad as the “pick a payment” loans were, however, those weren’t the only things I saw. One friend got into fights with his bank representative about how much he could afford to borrow, with the banker insisting that he could afford to shop for homes at a much higher price range than he really could. My partner and I got taken as well, as we learned we had taken a loan that typically should have gone to people who had far worse credit and offered a much smaller down payment. Our mortgage broker hid details about our loan from us and the worrisome details we did discover came at a point where we would either have to let our first home purchase fall through or take the loan. Agreeing to work with a person we were told would work to find us the best possible deal was a mistake.

Sure, you could say “Let the buyer beware” but when it comes to something like home ownership, is it okay for us to have to treat our banks the way we treat a sleazy salesperson? Should we have to learn how to become loan officers so that we know exactly what kind of mortage we should be getting before talking to any of the “experts” in the field?

I’m sure there were people who knew they were buying a big house they couldn’t afford, hoping they’d make it work before time ran out. However, I haven’t seen it happen. Meanwhile, I’ve seen plenty of cases where banks and mortgage brokers took advantage of customers’ trust. Frustratingly, that side seems to be getting a pass in the media.

So back in the day, I used to have this game called Muppets Inside, which was really a collection of mini-games featuring the classic Muppet Show characters, united with a storyline about a defective CD-ROM leaving the Muppets trapped in your computer and having to navigate their way out. It was full of computer puns (travels got easier once they found the data bus and Miss Piggy is found trying to make a withdrawl from the cache machine… and you can guess what the Muppets Inside logo resembled) and the best part was that most of the games rewarded you with a video clip of great Muppet Show comedy bits.

My favorite was playing a Name that Tune-style game with the muppetphone because when you won, you’d get a video clip of “The Leprechaun Bros” — made up of Beaker, The Swedish Chef and Animal — singing various well-known songs. Their best performance used to be “Hava Nagila” which… well, it’s exactly what you’d imagine when you promise a performance of “Hava Nagila” by Beaker, The Swedish Chef and Animal, but a new clip shows does it better by having the trio perform “Habanera” from Carmen:

And for good measure, here’s the classic Leprechaun Bros segment from The Muppet Show:

Tonight the fifth season of Project Runway debuts and, in case you hadn’t heard, this will be the final season to air on Bravo since Lifetime stole away the series starting with the sixth season. While they could definitely do worse, the new season is getting much less promotion than the franchise usually does. The latest bit, they’ve released details about the entire season.

Now, this may not sound huge, but I write a daily column about what’s on TV and when you’re looking for some detail that’ll inspire a few words about the next episode you notice when a show is really tight-lipped about what’s coming up. There have been weeks when an episode description is noting but “The remaining designers take on the next challenge on their way to winning $100,000.” and when the previews are nothing but a bunch of dramatic lines with no context. Not really needing publicity, Project Runway really holds back on what’s coming up (Top Chef does this as well but not, tellingly, Shear Genius.)

So, at the least, I’m enjoying the Bravo/Lifetime feud of deniablilty.

As an off-and-on Runway fan, however, I do worry that there’s a shark tank and some waterskis at the end of the runway. First off, some of the comments from Tim Gunn have me worried this will be a “big personalities” season like the third season’s cast. (You know a season is in trouble when the last likable personality is the whiny, out-of-her-league fleurchon-obsessed one.)

The sixth season is even more worrisome, what with rumors that The Real World and The Bad Girls Club production company Bunim-Murray may produce the show, with Magical Elves — the production company that made Runway work originally and got Top Chef into shape — looking to help Bravo come up with a new fashion reality show.

Sadly, there’s a part of me that still pays attention to news about CBS’ Big Brother, a reality show that’s slowly been evolving into the new Paradise Hotel (or was it Forever Eden where the rules changed regularly, depending on what the producers would generate drama). That’s not to say I’ve gotten increasingly cynical and more and more likely to drop the show quickly. Still, I do feel the need to peek when a new cast is announced:

I’m a bit interested in the gay rodeo cowboy (though Julie Chen’s comment make it clear he’ll be expected to live up to the usual Big Brother treatment of gay men — he’ll be expected to play a confidant to one of the straight women on the cast, sitting on the sidelines of the action until he’s no longer useful to her.

But the biggest stumbling block is the already-odious Dan, who declares he would have left the country if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency. I’m pretty sure he’ll will go far in the game if he doesn’t win. Ever since producer Alison Grodner took over, the show has pushed the misogynistic cretin with at least two winning (I’m not sure about last season’s winner) the whole thing, sometimes with obvious producer interference in the game.

Rich Juzwiak compiles your guide to the cliched phrase that signals an annoying reality TV contestant:

The death of someone like Jesse Helms isn’t the kind of thing that usually sends me to blog but hearing about how people are trying to dismiss his reputation for bigoty certainly does.

I remember back when, on one of the message boards I used to visit, someone posted some article trying to claim that the association between the Republican Party and racism is based on a misunderstanding of voter trends in the south or something like that. It didn’t make sense, really, and I replied that “Funny, my basis for associating racism with the Republican party is Jesse Helms, not voting patterns.”

Joe. My. God has some of Helms’ greatest hits. Does that really sound like “a different vision of civil rights” or just plain opposition to them?

::snicker::

Considering the number of conservatives who told me the only reason they ever watch The O’Reilly Factor is for the unintentional comedy I’m not entirely surprised to hear someone like Rush Limbaugh publicly insult Bill O’Reilly. However, I did find it funny that he compared O’Reilly to Ted Baxter, the buffoonish newsman from The Mary Tyler Moore Show — after all, Keith Olbermann has been making that comparison for years.

BTW, you can always spot a new Countdown viewer when they say that Olbermann’s impression of O’Reilly isn’t very good.

I may not be as big a fan of Anna Faris as AfterEllen’s Reese DoWitt, but I do always enjoy her performances. Still, her upcoming film The House Bunny — where she plays a former Playboy playmate who becomes a den mother to a sorority of nerdettes and turn them into barbie dolls just has me wincing:

The trailer’s one saving grace? The Seven Year Itch parody and the idea of Faris getting a make-under to woo a smart guy… why couldn’t that be the whole movie and ditch the cliched makeover story. I mean, when was the last time we had a movie where the leading lady started out in stiletto heels and ended up in glasses (and even more fabulous) — Party Girl?