Truth be told, we haven't been adjusting to our post-Lost existence with much grace; a good portion of the past week has been spent sitting in a church, clutching our homemade Hurley doll (stitched together from parts of a curly-haired Cabbage Patch Kid, a plush Shrek, and Teddy Ruxpin guts playing a tape of every "Dude!" ever duded, if you must know), and asking every "Jack" in the congregation if he's finally ready to step out into the light.
Some measure of solace, however, has come in the recent announcement of the Lost: Complete Collection DVD box set arriving in late August. While the official press release disclosed some of the $230 ($280 Blu-ray, for some reason) worth of extras, we weren't satisfied with the list of bonus featurettes, the island replica, and paraphernalia like a mini-Ankh and senet game. And so, we went digging further to unlock more of its secrets in a quest to justify that heavy price tag, confident that our beloved Damolcuse are saving some surprises for the deep-pocketed faithful. Here are our discoveries of 23 more goodies (we told you we're having a hard time letting go) that await at the end of your summer of mourning:
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There simply aren't many ways to re-imagine "zombies" for a new audience. But take a look at AMC's just-released stills from the upcoming Frank Darabont drama Walking Dead. The ghostly harridan up top looks like a certain John Landis/Rick Baker collaboration featuring that kid from The Wiz. Terrorizing y'allz neighborhood, indeed, Vincent Price! Around the edges, she picks up a little of Carol Kane as Granny in Addams Family Values, which is nice. A pair of more horrifying Walking Dead characters follows.
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For the second consecutive week, Spencer and Heidi were absent from The Hills. To replace the abhorrent couple, who were rumored to have split late last week, producers introduced a few leather handbags, a smiling brunette named McKaela, and Kristin's trainer. It was a fair substitution. Per usual, here are the realest and fakest moments of last night's episode "Ghost From the Past."
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Top Chef Masters ventures to the heart of live comedy this week, serving up succulence to a panel of picky (and quippy) critics. Hopefully, the unending laughs will shield us from missing Padma Lakshmi so damn much, because if there's one thing Padma's good at, it's staring vibrant personalities in the face and not emoting so much as a grim snarl. I hurt for her stoicism already.
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So have you kids kept watching the 90210 reboot? It got kind of fun and cotton candyish this year and the writers made some interesting decisions, like giving more screentime to AnnaLynne McCord, eliminating the original stars altogether (a decision Shannen Doherty is fine with) and saddling putative lead Shenae Grimes with a season-long downer of a plot. E! broke the news that this year's finale was supposed to resolve Grimes's storyline with a major twist, but only Movieline can reveal what the twist actually was before it got cut from the episode.
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Last night, Schue & the Family Stone taught viewers about funk by moaning about Regionals-related depression, singing about how hard it is to be a pregnant teen, and saying the word "funk" over 50 times. Oh yes, the episode was funky -- and not in a good way. Like most of Glee's installments over the past two months, last night's "Funk" introduced a funk jam of story arcs that won't be continued next week, some heavy-handed after-school lessons, and another one of Schue's embarrassingly white dance moves (let's call it the funky butt rock). So grab your groove thang and let's relive last night's stank rhythms.
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The cast members of Logo's upcoming "Gay Housewives" series (first called Kept, now called The A List) comprise a lame procession of models and other, model-shaped people. Former Lance Bass paramour Reichen Lehmkuhl was no more intriguing in 2005 than he is now, and regrettably, the onetime Amazing Race winner is the biggest name slated for the new series. Boring! In 2010, it's bizarre that a legitimate LGBT-based non-competition reality series has yet to emerge. We've thought of three shows we'd love to see in primetime, the kinds of shows that could educate and scintillate.
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According to Daytime Confidential, James Franco will be using his return to General Hospital to promote another member of his acting clan. Word is that his mother Betsy will be joining him onscreen for the soap stint; you may remember the materfamilias from Franco's work for Funny or Die, where she explained in a very touching story how she had to kill Franco's cat for pooping too much. Good luck, Betsy! [Daytime Confidential]
If reading about people failing upwards makes you particularly angry, then maybe skip this post altogether. Word has it that NBC Universal president and CEO Jeff Zucker has accepted an exit package of between $30 and $40 million to leave the network he helped ruin sometime after Comcast officially acquires majority stake in NBC Universal in 2011. That's right: You won't have Jeff Zucker to kick around anymore. Eventually.
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Just because Leno, Letterman and the rest of the network late night hosts are taking a dark week does not mean that last night's afterhours programming was dull. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert returned from their own hiatuses to compare the disastrous BP oil spill to reality television, Chelsea Handler came onto her guest and Jonah Hill talked about the time he drunkenly startled an Affleck in the bathroom. Click through for those segments as well as the other highlights you missed last night while decompressing from the America's Got Talent premiere.
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America's Got Talent, which kicked off its fifth season last night, is usually associated with the Cirque du Freak school of showmanship, the kind of magic, mayhem and fire-hocking you might see in traveling carnival or an embarrassing Pink video. Maybe the addition of Howie Mandel to the judges' panel has added a new layer of, ahem, cleanliness to ATG, because an actual talent launched off our screens like a feisty farmhand leaping off a hay loft. Thirty-year-old Michael Grimm is a guitar-clasping folkie with a Hurricane Katrina back-story and a tip can full of earnestness. But even better, he's a superior singer to Lee DeWyze and he resembles a post-Knight's Tale Heath Ledger. Read: Chilling perfection.
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· Remember Wright vs. Wrong, that ABC comedy project starring Debra Messing that went unmentioned during upfronts week? Well, it hasn't been killed off just yet: The network has ordered a reshoot of the half-hour pilot for midseason consideration. Messing is executive producing the project in which she stars as a conservative pundit who tries to maintain her public persona despite facing her own vulnerabilities. ABC has also ordered a reshoot of the half-hour comedy How to Be a Better American, which originally starred the Daily Show's Jason Jones. Sources expect the project to undergo a major recasting. [Deadline]
NBC finally explores the self-help genre, Jason Priestley joins Scoundrels, and more TV Bites after the jump.
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Congratulations to Glee star Jane Lynch, who married her girlfriend Lara Embry in Massachusetts over the Memorial Day weekend. Upside: a big ol' TV star just got gay-married! Downside: they had to do it in Massachusetts, because gay marriage is still illegal in California, where the two live. [Star]
Another day, another reason to track HBO's comedy pilot Tilda. This time, Jason Patric has signed on to co-star in the project, which already stars Diane Keaton as the title character -- a powerful Hollywood blogger -- as well as Ellen Page, Wes Bentley, David Harbour and Leland Orser in supporting roles. Patric will assume the role of Tilda's sworn enemy, Andrew Brown, the mastermind behind a media empire. So, Jeff Zucker? [Deadline]
It's time for the Condescending Makeover clip of the day! The trailer for the CW's summer series Plain Jane, where model Louise Roe glams up "plain" women so they can ask out a secret crush, is cruel, callous, and... watchable. Guess what happens when Plain Jane can't approach a man in the park? Electric shocks are administered, of course!
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