TV Party for Monday, July 18th

Well, at 8 it’s time for the second show of the second season of one of my guilty pleasures, “Celebrity Fit Club” on VH1! Nothing like watching a bunch of overweight celebs try to get thin to make me feel a little better about my body. This season we’ve got such big-name stars as Wendy the Snapple Lady – back for more – Sister Sister’s Jackee Harry, America's Next Top Model Season 3 finalist, Tocarra, Saturday Night Live's Victoria Jackson, Charles In Charge's Willie Aames, MTV's Viva La Bam's Phil Margera, Jani Lane, Ex-lead singer of hard rock band Warrant, and Gary Busey. We can only hope Gary turns in as good a freak show performance as Daniel Baldwin did in Season 1! In tonight’s episode, the teams will choose names and compete in a boxing workout. That should be fun to watch…

At 9, it’s time for a little Shark Week action on the Discovery Channel with “Sharkbite! Surviving Great Whites.” Being attacked by the most fearsome predator in the ocean is horrific, but shark attacks have uncovered many mysteries about great whites. Meet actual survivors and find out how their encounters have affected their lives.

Finally, at 10 it’s the second episode of “National Geographic’s Guns, Germs and Steel” on KCTS. 'Guns, Germs, and Steel,' is a three-part PBS series from National Geographic Television & Film that answers the question, 'Why do some cultures succeed, while others fail?' The series is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name by Jared Diamond and takes viewers on a compelling journey through five continents for a revealing look at the rise and fall of societies through the lenses of geography, technology, biology and economics - forces symbolized by the power of guns, germs and steel.

In tonight’s episode, 'The Clash of Civilizations' we travel to South America and the site of the Spanish conquistadors’ near extermination of the Inca culture in the early 1500s. Brought to life through vivid re-enactments, the episode dramatically depicts conquistador Francisco Pizarro’s epic battle with the Inca king Atahualpa. The Inca people quickly proved no match for the conquistadors’ formidable arsenal of technologically advanced weaponry and killer germs. The sheer domination of the conquistadors over the Inca served as yet another powerful example of the impact that geography, weapons and disease had in shaping the course of human history.

That’s your TV Party for Monday, July 18th. For Northwest Indy Radio, I’m Scott Chicken