At age 88, Betty White is finally ready for her Saturday Night Live debut. But can she hold her own against formidable vixens from SNL's past? Quoth her long-missed husband Allen Ludden, "The password is duh." Still, the Happy Homemaker has to pull out the top-shelf sass if she's going to survive against some of these broads.
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Stacey Dash, who played the immortally snobbish Dionne in Clueless alongside Alicia Silverstone, has long needed a comeback more substantial than a bootylicious King magazine cover. Now the 44-year-old actress is threatening to make a new break with VH1's first scripted series Single Ladies, co-starring LisaRaye McCoy and Lauren London. If this is "Sex and the City, but with black people" as McCoy herself seemed to suggest in an interview with Vibe, don't sign me up -- I need neither Samantha Jones copycougars nor endless lunching scenes in my life. But Single Ladies's main writer (read: an Oscar-nominated actress) proves there may be something more to Dash's comeback than a basic-cable riff on Carrie Bradshaw.
Last week on Real Housewives of New York City, viewers learned that Jersey psychics in cheetah-print sweat sets cannot be trusted. And while last night's episode, "Leap Before You Look," did not feature any scam mediums, it did feature a medium-sized, orange-tinted gay fellow who scammed LuAnn into a date. Meanwhile, Bethenny cried because her dad was dying, Jill cried because she did not know that Bethenny's dad was dying, and Kelly made small talk with a dog. So pour yourself a generous glass of pinot and join me after the jump to review the truest and fakest moments.
If the pitch-perfect Goodfellas homage that Community nailed two weeks ago wasn't enough of a reason to get you on board what has become the funniest comedy on television (take that, Modern Family!), then perhaps last night's all-action edition will. Using a paintball contest as a loose backdrop to reference every action cliche from the last 25 years is one thing; using it to nail the played out "will they/won't they" romance between Joel McHale's Jeff and Gillian Jacobs's Brita (answer: They will), while also finding time to backhand Glee across the auto-tuned face is quite another. After the jump, video evidence of the awesomeness.
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Need another reason to believe Elaine Stritch is a comedy goddess? Her guest appearance on last night's episode as Jack's mother was her sixth in the last four seasons, and it still felt as fresh and funny as the first. That's probably because Stritch was given a new foil this time around: Jack McBrayer's Kenneth the Page, whom she repeatedly (and intentionally) called Karl. But lest you think Stritch was the only over-80 scene stealer on 30 Rock's Mother's Day episode -- fittingly titled "Mother's Day" -- Buzz Aldrin showed up too. After the jump, watch the American hero crack jokes about his past alcoholism and literally yell at the moon ("I walked on your face!").
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Last night, Fringe followed up its shaky music-themed episode with more fallout from Peter's revelation that he's from the other side. And we finally find out why the hybrid soldiers brought back Thomas Newton, why he was looking for a path to the other side, and who he answers to. Read on for those answers and for an analysis of the most pivotal scientific -- and character-based -- threads in "Northwest Passage."
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Sometimes, you are in the middle of your monologue and you just fall into a corny Jay Leno joke. Not a joke about the Tonight Show host but the same type of one-liner that the host makes every night. That happened to Craig Ferguson on last night's Late Late Show and the CBS host had no choice but to launch into an impromptu Leno impression. Well, it was more of an interpretation, but you can click through for that, as well as the other highlights you missed last night while proofreading your next essay about your college sexual experiences.
Believe it or not, there was one artist on Wednesday night's American Idol who was more disappointed with her performance than Little Aaron Kelly. Lady Gaga was dissatisfied to realize that her six-and-a-half minute mash-up of "Alejandro" and "Bad Romance" had been butchered and she took to Twitter to air her grievances: "FOX POORLY + AMATEURLY edited+cut my performance/musical arrangement on idol." The full version can be viewed here. [@ladygaga]
· If you were not a fan of Katee Sackhoff's labored story arc on 24, then you will be pleased to know that she has turned down an invitation to Bon Temps. True Blood offered the Battlestar alum the role of Debbie but Sackhoff chose to film ABC's cop drama pilot Boston's Finest instead. She explained the reasoning behind her gamble to EW: "It's a phenomenal show and [exec producer] Alan Ball is a f*cking genius. But I wanted more security than one season of something, so I rolled the dice with [Boston's Finest].
[EW]
Charlie Sheen asks CBS for a boatload of money, Comedy Central invests in stoner programming again, and more TV Bites after the jump.
The CW is doubling down on vampires this summer by investing in a complementary series for the network's hit program Vampire Diaries. The new acquisition is Moonlight, which aired on (and was canceled by) CBS two years ago. Repeats of the series will debut on June 3 and air on Thursdays this summer. No word yet on whether the original cast will return -- Moonlight star Alex O'Loughlin is currently attached to the Hawaii Five-O remake on CBS. [Deadline]
You could see Avatar again. But the on-demand channels, online and on cable, should overshadow that option, especially if you can jack your computer into your TV and rent any one of a gazillion other things off Amazon for three clams. Case in point: newly available from Criterion on Amazon, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962), not to be confused with the new Twilight sequel or the recent Irish ghost film, but rather a New Wave-era landmark constructed like a handcarved coffin around the soullessness of the new postwar Europe.
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You think you know someone when you spend every night during Mad Men season with them. And then she publishes an essay about her adventurous freshman year of art school, when she experimented with girl-on-girl sex, intercourse with afros and whips, drugged up boot-knocking and that one time she took her homosexual friend's virginity inside of a dark closet while listening to Madonna's 'Erotica.' The culprit here is Alison Brie, Mad Men actress, Community star, and self-confessed former slut.
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Like a pregnancy test or gas station sushi, Mother's Day can go one of two ways: pleasantly surprising or life-changingly traumatic. With that holiday quickly approaching, Movieline has compiled five matriarchs on television today that will make your mother's judgmental sniping almost palpable. So order an edible arrangement for the woman who birthed you and thank JC you didn't have to grow up with one of these ladies.
The Real World: Boston: I remember it well. Elka's controlling father. Montana distributing sips of alcohol to excited children. Genesis bawling after a kid claims to hate gay people, and Kameelah stepping in to educate. And most of all, I remember Sean Duffy, perhaps the only conservative cast member on The Real World who didn't seem like a Michael Moore-rendered caricature (though he admitted that Kameelah and castmate Syrus were the only two black people he really knew).
· Slashfilm has the final poster for The Last Airbender. Head over there to see a bigger version.
· Your daily K-Stew update: She'll star in On the Road, and her red carpet sadface is "a physical reaction to the energy that's thrown at you." This has been your daily K-Stew update.
· Kristen Wiig has optioned the bizarre novel Clown Girl with the intent to write and star.
· Jimmy Horowitz has been named president of Universal Pictures.
· Has Sue Sylvester done a few too many shot-for-shot music video remakes on Glee? Yes, by two.
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