Blog Posts by Carrie Bell

There's no better time for a cook-off than summer, and the heat is on when Fox's culinary competition "MasterChef" returns May 22. Yahoo! TV sat down with the trio of top tasters — chef Gordon Ramsay, chef Graham Elliot, and Joe Bastianich, a restaurateur and winemaker and son of Italian cuisine queen Lidia — who mentor, host, and judge the show to see what's being served in Season 4.

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We've heard the challenges really raise the bar this season. Can you tease a few?

Joe Bastianich: We've got a huge "Glee" crossover. Surfers.

Gordon Ramsay: Firefighters.

Graham Elliot: I loved the woods one. Dropped in the woods is going to be the coolest ever. It is like an episode of "Lost." They are almost eating themselves by the time we're done with them, like the soccer team in the Andes.

Ramsay: They have to choose whether they maintain the dish for us to judge or take a little off for their own dinner because we don't give them food for 24 hours.

Bastianich: It's "MasterChef" meets

A few months before "The Office" would permanently close up shop after nine seasons, Jenna Fischer, who has played the loveable Pam since day one, was already getting nostalgic. She also laughingly remembered her shortsighted thinking when she first landed the NBC sitcom back in 2004.

"I was a huge fan of the British version, and I remember when we got hired to do the pilot, Ricky Gervais came in, had lunch and talked to us for an afternoon. We got to ask him any questions we wanted," she recalled at a final press day held on the Scranton-subbing Southern California set earlier this year. "I remember going home and thinking, 'Oh, my gosh, if nothing else happens except that I got to have lunch with Ricky Gervais, this is amazing. And now look, it's [almost] 10 years later and we made a whole show."

[Related: The 22 Best and Worst TV Series Finales Ever]

And after making 200 half-hours of Emmy-winning TV, the sitcom's stars, just like its fans, have favorite episodes and scenes. Here's

Ladies and gentlemen, start your ovens -- this May, CBS is holding "The American Baking Competition," in which 10 amateur bakers will be asked to shake, rattle, and roll out the dough for bragging rights, a publishing contract with Simon & Schuster's Gallery Books, and $250,000.

Check out this exclusive first look at an extended trailer for the calorie-crazy contest, hosted by comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who freely admits that he took the gig for the free food and is constantly in search of bigger utensils to taste-test the yummy treats. But beware: All this footage of sugar, spice, and everything nice (i.e., chocolate bacon peanut butter pie!) is guaranteed to ruin your diet.

[Related: Gordon Ramsay Lands Yet Another Fox Series]

If the contestants can't take the heat in three unique baking challenges every week, the judges, Marcela Valladolid (Food Network's "Mexican Made Easy") and Paul Hollywood, who critiques the cakes and cookies on the original British version and is known as the

After traveling for 25 days over five continents, through 10 countries and more than 30,000 miles, the hockey brothers Bates and Anthony were the first team to reach the finish line on "The Amazing Race" and were therefore crowned the million-dollar winners.

As they reunited with the original ten teams at George Washington's home Mount Vernon, Anthony seemed thrilled he'd be able to buy new fake teeth and credited team work and his perfect partner for the win. Bates philosophized, "It's not so much the destination [as it's] the journey. To experience the world, that's priceless. I don't remember the last time I felt like this. It hasn't come from hockey in a long time."

Their win wasn't shocking by any stretch of the imagination, but they did have to come from behind and stay ahead of two other strong teams: the roller moms and the newlyweds, who had placed first three legs in a row. Here's a look at how the brothers Battaglia wound up champions.

Sink or swim?

At the start of Round 11, the

With major character deaths, seeming defeat of the big bad, an incredibly short reunion of lovers, and a cliffhanger ending even the hero might not survive, creator and executive producer Kevin Williamson understands why the season finale of "The Following" might have critics and fans alike concerned about blown wads and sophomore slumps already. But, he assured, it is safe for all the worrywarts to exhale.

"Second seasons are my favorite. Second seasons are where we get our sea legs just like we did with 'Dawson's Creek' and 'The Vampire Diaries,'" Williamson told Yahoo! TV exclusively before a screening and Q&A event Monday night in North Hollywood, Calif. "Because this is basically a cable niche show on a big network, you can't slow down the story even if I want nothing more than to write a 'Breaking Bad'-type scene where characters talk for four pages. But you can make a fast-paced thriller last as long as you bring in new characters, make it addictive and fun without being too

As Braveheart's dad famously once said -- well, at least in the movie version of history -- "I know you can fight. But it's our wits that make us men." As the final five teams descended on William Wallace's homeland of Scotland, though, they quickly discovered they'd need both brawn and brains if they wanted to remain standing at the end of the 10th leg.

Teams bid auf Wiedersehen to Germany in the wee hours of the morning. Newlyweds Max and Katie, who finished first the last round, were the only team smart enough to figure the airport might be closed and hit the hotel's business center to do flight recon. Flights between countries are often the contest's great equalizer, but not this time. As pairs waited to buy tickets, including the Roller Moms, who slyly left the back of the line and asked the first-class desk to help, the aligned YouTubers and roller moms scored the last seats on the 1 PM and assumed this meant everyone else was on the flight that landed three hours later. They

Usually when people call a TV show slow, they don't mean it as a compliment. But for three actors, that languid quality is partially what drew them to "Rectify," the Sundance Channel's first wholly owned scripted series, in the first place.

"Even compared to a show like 'Mad Men,' which is a slow show, this show just really breathes, and that's just not something you get to do anymore in film or television," enthused Clayne Crawford at a press lunch promoting the six-part season. It painstakingly details the first week of Daniel Holden's reintroduction to society after new DNA evidence found by an Innocence Project-like lawyer springs him from his nearly 20-year stay on death row for the rape and murder of his high school girlfriend. "Cable now is a lot like film was in the '70s -- about the material, about telling a story, able to take chances."

[Related: Missed Sunday's 'Mad Men'? Catch Up With This Recap]

Aden Young (Daniel) feels the protracted pace of "Rectify," which was created

Chock-full of missing bags, botched detours, lousy maps, and unforgivable gaps in basic knowledge of recent world history, the ninth leg of "The Amazing Race" reminded viewers that it's still anyone's game as the last five teams darted around Deutschland.

First, it was all aboard the same early-morning train from Switzerland to Dresden, Germany. Teams took the opportunity to nap while someone else apparently took the opportunity to "borrow" Bates's bag. Luckily, Bates still had his passport, the one must-have in order to continue the race. A little less lucky was his race girlfriend, Jen, offering to lend him some thong underwear. Bates joked, "They could come in handy on lonely nights." Apparently, scripted shows aren't the only ones that attract shippers:

Stonewalled

Because apparently we haven't dealt with communism enough this season, once the