Ox Notes: August 28, 2007

One last day of Dancing with the Stars 5 spoilers, this time courtesy of TMZ. Their cast list includes Indy car driver Helio Castroneves.

The casts of two other reality shows have been released: America's Next Top Model and Beauty and the Geek 4.

Kevin Smith is going to direct an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Here are two lists of important stuff to know ahead of the fall TV season. Reality Blurred has a list of premiere dates for every reality show, including obscure offerings like FOX Reality's The Search for the Next Elvira.

And Zap2It has an extensive gallery of actors with a supporting role in a new fall series, along with mentions of where you've seen them before. The alphabetical list is a real whopper, with more than 100 entries -- from Paul Adelstein to Natalie Zea.

I'm off to watch the final episode of Pirate Master, a show I desperately wanted to love and that could've succeeded with a couple of changes: more variety in the challenges, and a mutiny option that only required a majority of the crew's consent, not the entire crew minus the captain.

The boring challenges -- row to shore, run uphill, read a clue, dig up treasure -- are really what ruined the show, since they were bound to the narrative of the ship's fictional captain. Rather than hunt for Captain Steele's buried treasure every week, the crew could've been tested on their pirate skills: sword fighting, cannon firing, speed climbing the rigging, plank walking.

Instead, viewers got a show that was very unswashbuckling.