American Inventor

Greg Chavez Named Winner Of 'American Inventor'

On last night's finale of ABC's American Inventor, firefighter Greg Chavez was named the winner for his Guardian Angel invention.  His idea for the Guardian Angel Christmas Tree fire suppression system first came to him fifteen years ago after seeing on the news that a christmas tree fire had claimed the life of a young child.  Chavez said he could never get the image of the father carrying his child out of the burning home and vowed to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

Chavez had some stiff competition as one of three semi-finalists.  Ricky DeRennaux, a school teacher from Oklahoma, introduced his Custom Build Racers invention.  The invention allows teens design their own remote control vehicles.  Elaine Cato, a realtor from Tennessee, designed a 6-in-1 Convertible Brassiere for her invention.

American Inventor: Episode 207 Recap

Episode Overview: We're in the home stretch on American Inventor; the last leg of auditions in Tampa and Houston are coming to an end.  After last episode's slim pickings, will the judges be able to find enough promising inventions to round out each city's finals?  This episode is mecifully lighter on the totally wacky ideas, but even some of the reasonable ideas - delivered with heartfelt conviction - might not be good enough to make it.

American Inventor: Episode 206 Recap

Episode Overview: American Inventor heads to the South for a final round of auditions in Tampa, FL and Houston, TX. The judges might ostensibly be looking for the next great American invention, but the producers and the editors of the program seem pretty disinterested in the successes. Let's face it: they know on which side their bread is buttered, and that's a side called “Loons and Tragic Delusions.” So once again, they have served up another heaping helping of those, while seeming to leave the actual viable inventions as mere garnish.

The group of inventors featured on this episode is a nervous bunch. There's quite a bit of stammering and shaking going on, and it really drove home the difference between this and other audition-based reality shows. The hopefuls lined up for hours to appear before the judges don't aspire to being performers…they aspire to being, essentially, engineers. Needless to say, a commanding presence isn't something a lot of them have yet developed. American Inventor is like the American Idol for introverted right-brainers.

American Inventor - Season Two, Episode Four Recap

Originally aired on Wednesday, 06/27/2007

Episode Rating: ***(3 stars out of 5)

Episode Overview: American Inventor continues its search for Chicago and New York City inventors and names each city's winner.

Episode Highlights:

• The judges, Sarah Blakely, George Foreman, Pat Croce and Peter Jones, finally find some solid inventions in the Big Apple.
• George Foreman continues to find the positive in many of the inventions.
• All of the finalists are named, and the city winners are announced.

American Inventor - Season Two, Episode Three Recap

Originally aired on Wednesday, 06/20/2007

Episode Rating:  ***(3 stars out of 5)

Episode Overview:  American Inventor heads to New York and Chicago to look for the next two city finalists.

Episode Highlights:

• New York City certainly has its share of colorful characters, but not a lot of strong inventions.
• Chicago's auditions go better, with several contenders.
• The judges get a serious case of the giggles when evaluating some of the more absurd-looking inventions.

American Inventor: Season 2, Episode 2 Recap

American Inventor returns tonight and, weirdly, I'm looking forward to it.  I had never seen this show before this season, and the thing is, it's full of weird, weird people.  There is a certain kind of drama to people putting all their eggs in one basket when it comes to their invention.  It's bizarre to see relatively sane people who've spent thousands of dollars developing a product that is totally worthless.  It's great summer TV.  What follows are my live thoughts while watching the episode.

Cue the dramatic music: it's American Inventor!