Hyphen TV: Mostly Water

Heejun doesn't break a sweat on stage. Not even a sweat of water.

Okay you guys, we've got a lot to get through this week, so it's time for some quick(ish) hits:

On The Voice, we met Mathai, an 18-year old from Dallas with immigrant parents who are both doctors and a brother going to med school. Guess where this is going. Her cute mom told Carson Daly that she wished for her daughter to finish school while dad just wants Mathai to be happy. Everyone ended up seeming pretty happy when Adam, Cee Lo, and Blake all turned around during Mathai's raspy-voiced performance of "Rumor Has It," and the teen chose to join Team Adam, possibly because Mr. Levine turned around literally just seconds into the song. Blake and Adam both stressed the fact that Mathai doesn't sound like anyone else on the show, which hopefully means she'll be going far...

Rumor Has It that Mathai is pretty great.

We didn't get too much time with our girls on RuPaul's Drag Race during last week's acting challenge, though we did learn that Jiggly doesn't know what "horticulture" means. You might want to brush up on your vocab before Ru has y'all reading one another, Jigg. She also had a bit of trouble delivering her lines, constantly looking down when she was told to make her lines pop. It turned out all right because her team (which Phi Phi was also on) was safe, though Phi did get in some catfight time when Sharon Needles admitted that she called out Phi Phi to the judges. Miss O'Hara did not care for that. The screaming went on a bit long for my taste, though what's an episode of Drag Race without some wig-pulling, even if it's just metaphorical?

I haven't had a chance to discuss Smash in this space, but this week Raza Jeffrey's Dev -- boyfriend to starlet-to-be Karen (played by Katherine McPhee) -- had a bit of A Moment with the director of the show-within-a-show Derek (Jack Davenport), a fellow Brit. Upon meeting the main squeeze of his potential star, Derek threw off a comment about Dev having parents "just off the boat, all that hope wrapped up in little old you." But guess what, Dev's third generation. Ooo, burn. I'll also mention Lianne, Karen's waitress coworker played by Jennifer Ikeda, who hasn't gotten much screen time but has been holding up the "supportive pal, overshadowed by the spotlight" part nicely. Hope we get to see more of Lianne down the road!

Lianne: I'll just stay right here at this cafe. You go on and chase your dream, girl.

Things got a little weird on Survivor. We began with Christine pulling Alicia aside to talk after their ugly confrontation at tribal council. Alicia acted like all was fine, but then she interviewed that she was NOT okay with what happened and would be continuing her anti-Christine campaign. As the women's team deteriorated further, it was clear that the 20/30-something women minus Christine were banded together, leaving Christine to team up with Monica, 41, and Nina, 51. Or did she? It turned out at tribal council (because of course they lost again) that Monica voted for Christina, and Christina voted for Nina, who was kicked out of the game. Christina, girl. You need to get something going, FAST. I don't even know how you can do that at this point, but do something!!

Christina: Maybe if I duck down in the water, no one will remember to vote me out.

Heejun made it into the top 24 of American Idol! We found out that he works with special needs kids in Flushing and believes that kissing Jennifer Lopez is "every -- EVERY -- Asian man's dream" (he didn't deliver on that dream, however). For his final solo, Heejun sang "New York State of Mind" and Jennifer praised his fluttery tone. Best line of the night was hands-down when Ryan Seacrest asked, "What are you sweatin'?" and Heejun replied, free of irony, "Mostly water." Ha! That silliness just might win that guy some votes! Also just a note that Heejun (or "Dante") was in the movie West 32nd, so he's not exactly new to Hollywood. Which is fine if he keeps dropping gems like "mostly water."

I also owe a big apology to Jessica Sanchez, who I'm pretty sure was only shown once, fleetingly, before the top 24 reveal. The 16-year-old Filipino American from Chula Vista, California revealed that her mother was unemployed to support Jessica's music career (though ... I don't know what that means, exactly), and she had a huuuuge family waiting for her when she found out that she had made it. You guys KNOW how much I love adorable families! Yessss. Vote for these guys this week, okay? Guys perform Tuesday, girls perform Wednesday.

Jessica kicks up her heels because she knows she rocks.

There's still more to go! The three remaining Top Chef contestants had a Quickfire challenge that paired them with master chefs all famous for their Asian cooking: Anita Lo, Floyd Cardoz (Top Chef Masters winner!), and Takashi Yagahashi. Sarah pointed out -- kind of obnoxiously, I thought -- that it was a good thing that Bev wasn't on the show anymore, since she would undoubtedly shine in this Asian flavors challenge. I do admit I agree, but she's gone! No need to trash talk the poor girl anymore! Paul was paired with Kashi for the relay race-style challenge, but he slipped up at the very end when he added too many chilies to the dish, making it far too spicy. He learned his lesson for the elimination challenge, actually using such a light touch on the spiciness that Padma wished for a little more heat. Although Tom threw a bit of a fit, oddly, over Paul's needless use of arugula, Paul sailed into this week's finale. Paul, if you don't beat that Bev-hater Sarah, I'm going to be very upset.

And from that I transition to Top Shot, which is creepier than I intended. Both teams had practice with the Browning automatic rifle, and if you ask me anything about what that is, I cannot tell you. Chris was declared the best by the expert they practiced with, especially impressive since the IT guy had never shot an automatic gun before. For the challenge, the teams had to crawl through a WWI-style trench, explosions and flying dirt and all. Since the red team had one more member than the blue team, blue got to sit a red member out. They chose Chee, which piiiiissed him off. You could really see how badly the guy wanted to army crawl through dirt and underneath barbed wire. Who wouldn't? The red team lost, but Chee was safe, obviously, as was Chris. With team numbers evened up again, red's going to have to fight to regain their momentum. Chris, deploy sniper program! Okay I don't know what I'm saying, and I also need to stop with the IT jokes.

And finally, Sue was incredibly excited for this week's Face Off challenge: creating aliens. She had an ambitious plan to cover her character's head with creepy spikes, but the time limit forced her to cut corners. Some moves were good, like the way she used fake nails for the head spikes instead of sculpting and imbedding individual spikes. On the other hand, that also meant that the head was all she worked on -- her model was draped in a robe, and some fake nails were applied to her hands with no accompanying makeup. The judges were understandably perturbed at Sue's total focus on the head, landing her in the bottom three. Luckily, even though it was a double elimination, Sue was safe. Where's the 100-year-old-man-maker? Bring that Sue back!