To erase the scarring mental images left by yesterday's chimp victim episode, Oprah Winfrey welcomed reclusive Twilight author Stephenie Meyer to her couch. The author had promised her fan base a never-before-shared secret about next week's New Moon, and delivered just that, revealing that her mom was responsible for the explosive ending. Meyer showed the original draft to her toughest critic who said, "Stephenie, maybe you need a little more action at the end." [USA Today]
Someone is privy to Movieline's tricks, because entire embeddable Jeff Dunham Show clips are harder to come by. Fortunately Comedy Central did us a solid by posting 45 seconds of Jeff Dunham-approved racist, vaguely homophobic banter. In fact, I prefer this succinctness. After the jump, Achmed the Dead Skeleton Who Stands At A Noticeably Kickable Height does his delightful thing at a sex shop.
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If you missed the maiden voyage of TBS's venture into late night, fear not, because Moveline can sum up the boilerplate Lopez Tonight episode in 10 seconds: "Low Rider" opening song, a few jokes about Lopez's racist abuela or slutty tía, awkward pre-taped or live segment, schtick with a comedian Lopez knows personally, and then, a sometimes-moving musical number. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's take a look at this week's late night moments that were actually worth watching.
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During a better time (Season One), Project Runway aired its last episode of the season as a two-hour event. In every year since, producers ditched propriety and aired both hours as separate episodes, which means the first half of the finale is always uneventful and designed to prolong suspense until the following week. Well, here we are, getting all up in our uneventfulness and passing around Koosh projectiles waiting for something to happen, whether that something is a killer final runway or the revelation that Carol Hannah's "stomach virus" is a metaphor for her feelings, which Irina mangled months ago.
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Last night, The Shepard Fairey Equality Project had its official launch party at the Andaz West Hollywood in Los Angeles, and 24 special, celebrity-customized prints of Fairey's marriage equality poster were on display. Some celebrities went all out in redecorating the posters (Virginia Madsen loves to collage!) while some put in the bare minimum of effort (in all fairness to Anna Kendrick, she has had a busy year), but it was the Matt Groening-enhanced poster that really caught my eye. After outlining Homer Simpson on Fairey's print, the Simpsons creator scrawled a mysterious message at the very bottom.
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In yesterday's NY Magazine cover story, Megan Fox confessed that she is addicted to trashy reality fare like Jon & Kate Plus Eight, Ghost Hunters, and especially TLC's Say Yes to the Dress. The Transformers vixen explained that there is just something special about watching frenzied women search for the perfect wedding gown that glues her to the television for hours at end: "It's really confusing to me, so I study it. They all cry when they find the dress. I don't understand why they all cry."
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Janet's armor-plated nipple. Prince's monstrous, forked purplemember. Bruce's crotch-rocket collision. It falls now to Roger Daltrey and the rest of his precambrian musical outfit to devise creative new ways to sneak an act of playful, FCC-flouting rock-and-roll defiance past the censors and into eleventy billion American households at the Super Bowl halftime show come January. Sports Illustrated reports CBS and the NFL have asked The Who to provide the entertainment. It's a nice promotional tie-in, THR points out, for a network whose most reliable franchise pulls exclusively from the band's catalogue for its theme songs. Nothing says cross-platform synergy better than the unveiling of an 50-foot tall David Caruso float, relieved of its billboard-sized sunglasses by two helicopters as the opening screech of "Won't Get Fooled Again" echoes off the far reaches of Dolphin Stadium.
· Hot Clicks [SI.com]
· ABC is gambling on another '80s remake by ordering a pilot for an updated Charlie's Angels. Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) will write and executive produce, alongside the original Angels producer, Leonard Goldberg, and Drew Barrymore. Sony Pictures, who tried unsuccessfully to revive the franchise for TV in 2004, will house the project. If ABC pays proper homage to the original Aaron Spelling series, tweens can finally stop crediting Cameron Diaz for the pointed finger gun pose. [USA Today]
An Arrested Development star scores a pilot, Hayden Panettiere explores the medical field and more TV Bites after the jump.
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In what will hopefully become a cautionary tale for future daredevils looking to conquer Japanese game show-inspired challenges, a Wipeout contestant passed away last week during production on ABC's hit show. Tom Sparks, 33, a recent graduate of USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, complained of knee pain and shortness of breath while completing one of Wipeout's obstacle courses. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors learned he had suffered a stroke and could not be saved. Sparks had just returned home from his European honeymoon and was competing on the show with his wife of two months. [The Wrap]
Black Wednesday taught us two important lessons: Just because you starred in Frasier does not mean you can sneak past the network reaper with a laugh-track sitcom that does not deserve laughter, real or canned, and never take your favorite sci-fi Fox program for granted. Following that second tenet, let's savor Fringe while the network holds its place in the Thursday night line-up. J.J. Abrams might be optimistic, the network might be vocally supportive and (from what we saw Sunday) star Joshua Jackson seems in good spirits, but that does not mean that Fox's dark horse will clear its second season.
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The upcoming Mark Burnett game show My Little Genius seems set to prove, like the Scripps National Spelling Bee, that hyperventilating prodigies are always telegenic. However, there's a big difference between the new Fox series and that ceremony, and it's the deplorable handle itself, "My Little Genius," which conjures memories of that urine-letting wunderkind from Magnolia. Before My Little Genius arrives and makes its contestants, your kids, and you feel inadequate, Movieline revisits five shows that tested kids' brainpower without stemming them further from their gawking peers.
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It is a sad presidential term for television comedy when the nation's leader does not have any defining tics, replicable Arkansas drawl or endearing mispronunciations that can be mined weekly for easy prime time laughs. With Saturday Night Live hard up for President Obama impressions (Sorry, Fred Armisen), and South Park nursing their GLAAD bruises from last week's slur-heavy episode, America is ready for an easy target, which Fox News has hand-delivered in the form of polarizing and theatrical talking head, Glenn Beck. In his easy to impersonate delivery, and half of the nation's eagerness for a good Beck bashing, He Who Shall Not Be Named has become the Henry Kissinger of 2009.
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One of the biggest sitcom writers in Hollywood passed away on Tuesday: David Lloyd, who contributed to some of the biggest comedies to ever air on television, and wrote many of their best episodes to boot. Lloyd's credits included Cheers, The Bob Newhart Show, Rhoda, Taxi, Wings, and Frasier, though his most famous (and probably most lasting) contribution to TV is almost certainly the "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where Mary and her friends can't keep themselves from cracking up during the funeral of Chuckles the clown.
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Andre Agassi, the onetime Wimbledon champ and $100-million Nike contract scion, hawked his new "explosive" (meth) memoir on The Late Show with David Letterman. As is de rigeur with selling a tell-all, the semi-somber tennis legend made big claims about himself: He never liked tennis and preferred golf and baseball; he didn't want to be a part of his marriage; his furry-porn fox haircut from an early '90s tennis match was a wig. Now, Agassi may have backed up some of these claims, but more importantly, he validated judgments made by another big-name memoirist of the past few months -- Kathy Griffin.
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Last week's South Park was a stupid episode about how the boys wanted to call Harley riders "faggots," and how much they (read: Matt and Trey) love that word and how "let's face it, people will never stop using the word fag because it's just too fun to say!" By the end of the episode, the word has been spoken and written hundreds of times, the boys never apologize, the gay community is cool with it, and the town of South Park officially reclaims the word "faggot" for the people and deem it OK for use. The only problem with that is that the word "faggot" is the gay equivalent of the n-word, and it's not OK to use, ever, even when there's no gay people around to hear it. It's the word that almost invariably accompanies fatal gay bashings and other hate-fueled criminal acts, and condoning it condones homophobia, no matter how cleverly you've done your etymological research and learned it once meant a bundle of sticks. South Park are a*sholes for basically telling their audience it's cool to go around using it. So f*ck you for that, South Park.
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