As much as I hate to admit it, I find that I am now actively watching three reality shows. As if the cell phone wasn't making me feel like enough of a sell out.

But if I'm going to sell out, I might as well do so full-bore. Call it the Max Power path to destroying the soul.

American Idol is back, with three episodes this week following our intrepid band of judges and host Ryan Seacrest from town to town looking for young people who can sing. I've only seen parts of the two episodes shown so far, but that's enough for me to safely say that looking for young people who can sing is more difficult than it sounds. It's apparently going to get harder tonight when the show moves on to Houston. And, as is often required, as the talent drops the emotions spike. Houston is apparently chock-a-block full of tone deaf drama queens.

I don't get the sense that the producers are trying to build up any contestants too much yet. The Hollywood portion of things will start to set that up, I'm sure.

Over on America's Next Top Model, the consensus (well, a consensus of three) is that this year's group isn't quite as attractive as last year's group. They're hardly bowsers, but there are a lot more "striking" women.

There's also a lot more drama this year than last, as there's more one on one tension than last year's factionalism. Camille is shaping up to be this season's Robin, at least based on drama. There seems to have been an early assault on plus size women, as the only contestant classified as such went out in week one (though it was more for refusing to do a shoot and not being able to articulate why than anything else), and the contestant most noted for having large boobs went out last night. Given how much time they spent going on about Elyse's suspected eating disorder last season, you'd think they'd want the curvier women around longer.

And, of course, there's a new episode of The Apprentice on tonight. Sam will put his snake-oil salesmanship on the line as project manager (at least that's what I get from the promo), so I'm going to predict that the men will finally win a competition and the women will get to pare down their roster.

Unrelated to TV, kudos to former BU Ice Dog Carl Corazzini on his first two goals a NHLer, both coming in a 4-1 Bruins win over the Rangers.