Ugly Betty fans will endure beaucoup de changes to their beloved, braced heroine this season. Not only has the ABC show has been ostracized to Friday night because of its slumping ratings (FlashForward took Betty's Thursday night time slot), but our Betty of old is preparing her new position as associate features editor at Mode by looking the part. This means silky smooth hair, tweezed eyebrows, expertly applied make-up, and maybe those braces will finally come off. Whether audiences embrace the makeover or turn on Betty, Felicity-style, will determine the fate of the series.
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This morning, TLC slapped a lawsuit on Jon Gosselin, the media-circuit-frequenting and production-halting patriarch of Jon & Kate Plus 8, claiming he breached his contract multiple times in the past months. The lawsuit was filed two weeks after TLC announced that it would phase out Jon and retitle the series Kate Plus Eight. Curiously, hours after the network dumped Jon publicly, the Ed Hardy poster boy claimed that the network was exploiting his children and forced TLC to stop production. Executives at The Learning Channel, who have been documenting the Gosselin family over the past two years, remember events differently...(cue milky dissolve)
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Distract yourself from the fact that Christina Aguilera still looks like a Matryoshka version of JonBenet Ramsey and philosophize with me: How can a group of historically knowledgeable designers botch a challenge devoted to the fun of stagewear? Do they not understand Project Runway? I vow to answer these queries thoroughly, and almost seriously. Let's retrace this episode's descent into the glittery kiln of hell.
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30 Rock returned last night to a 27% drop in adult demos, losing a quarter of its lead-in from The Office (which itself was down from last week's OK-rated wedding episode). Did the audience diminish due to the loss of Fey's bête noire Sarah Palin, or were viewers just confused by that super long, confusing short film by Jack McBrayer that swallowed up a commercial break? Seriously, what was that thing? [THR]
As predicted, Balloon Boy began cashing in on his fifteen minutes of fame with an all-star interview line-up: CNN's Wolf Blitzer, NBC's Meredith Vieira, and ABC's Diane Sawyer. All segments were given from the comfort of Balloon Boy's Colorado home, surrounded by his family and punctuated by on-camera gastro-intestinal discomfort. So what's the deal: was Balloon Boy suffering from nerves, the overwhelming stress of being the pawn in his parents' publicity stunt, or is he just a weird little kid?
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Ripping a page from Jack Donaghy's playbook ("Never badmouth synergy"), NBC has declared Jon Bon Jovi its 'Artist in Residence' over the next two months. No, he won't be traipsing around 30 Rockefeller Center, serenading the HR department, but he will be exclusively promoting his upcoming album "The Circle" on NBC Universal programs. His Peacock-monogrammed schedule includes segments on Today, The Jay Leno Show, Saturday Night Live, Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio and even an interview on NBC Nightly News. So just who was behind this idea to "reinvent the wheel" and who should ABC, CBS, and Fox start claiming as their indentured musicians?
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It's been a big year for fictionalized mall cops, what with Paul Blart and Ronnie Barnhardt, the hopelessly anger-plagued cop in Observe and Report. Tonight, security guards have the opportunity to shed their schlumpy, Segway-riding stereotypes with TLC's premiere of Mall Cops: Mall of America. The Bloomington, Minnesota shopping center was flooded with requests to film a reality documentary after the mall cop films this year, but chose the production company who promised to most positively depict the mall and its cops (so don't expect any date rape jokes or Segway gags here).
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Shortly after Saturday Night Live announced that Taylor Swift would host its November 7 show, news outlets rushed "Taylor-Kanye Skit!" headlines in giddy anticipation of an actually funny topical sketch. The Associated Press was the first to track down MTV's most famous VMA interuptee so that she could cheekily poke fun at her arsenal of material for Studio 8H: "I've been thinking about skit ideas for a long time...There are definitely some hilarious things that have happened to me over the past couple of months that I think will be pretty substantial skits."
We get it, there will be a Kanye sketch, but the real money is on what kind of Kanye segment the show will choose. Three possibilities after the jump.
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On The View this morning, 24-year-old virgin Tina Fey was asked about the passage in Tracy Morgan's new book where he disses ex-Saturday Night Live castmates Cheri Oteri and Chris Kattan. "One thing I think is that if you say something about comedians, they will answer you," she said. "I feel like we will hear from them. Comedians are not like politicians, [who] kind of have to take it. Comedians are like, 'Oh really? Let me say something to you!'" Fantastic! Someone begin scouring copies of Backstage West and the Broward County Gazette for their rebuttals. [Jezebel]
Just ahead of the 30 Rock premiere, Tina Fey sat down on The Late Show with David Letterman to supply self-deprecation and a pollyanna recollection of her Bazaar cover shoot. "So many hair extensions, 'Pa!" etc. But Letterman's friendly chortle quieted forever after he realized that Fey didn't lose her virginity until age 24, an occurrence that Fey chalks up to "just good Christian values... or, being homely." The missed opportunity for a 1994 virginity-burgling power play soured Letterman's expression like so much clever extortion. Watch his mournful reaction after the jump.
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Vulture correspondent Maridel Reyes conducted an interview with Vincent Kartheiser at the launch party for the new limited-edition Mad Men suit (this is a thing!), and though the actor was fairly neutral on the subject of dismissed writer Kater Gordon, he didn't miss a chance to self-flagellate. On getting recognized: "No one's walking down the street expecting to see the fourth lead on a show they may or may not have seen." On the swine flu: "I'm more worried about mercury poisoning...I'm on the Jeremy Piven diet of being an asshole." On the left coast's Spanish-speaking population: "No one looks at me on the bus in L.A... Mad Men's not on Telemundo yet." [Vulture]
Glee creator Ryan Murphy has been working double time lately: responding snarkily to Macy's Thanksgiving Parade snubs and running that other show that he sold to Fox Entertainment Group six years ago. Fortunately, Murphy won't have to pull Chuck Lorre duty for long, because Nip/Tuck actually finished shooting its final season a few months ago and begins airing those new episodes tonight. Still, for anyone expecting a crazy threesome, some incestuous necrophilia, or the surprise return of Dawn Budge (Rosie O'Donnell) to kick the sixth season off the right way, know that the economic downturn has dampened everyone's spirits at McNamara/Troy.
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Jackie Warner, one of the choicest reality TV lesbians of the modern era, is set to follow her first show Work Out with another Bravo reality program, this one entitled Thintervention with Jackie Warner. Catchy! Fierce! Totally ignorant of common, anorexia-related "thin" wordplay!
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Last week on The Hills, someone in post took an extended shopping montage and actually deemed it an "episode," but MTV quickly made up for that dullness with last night's fantasy actualization doozy. Only three episodes into Kristin Cavallari's arc as lead lightweight, MTV producers rewarded viewers by directing someone to smack her in the face and then stand her up. To see which of these moments hit the Real/Fake Jackpot, and which sequence we will remember in times of spiritual despair, join us after the jump.
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As part of network television's pact to appease great-aunts and Satan, Fox will stage a new variety special, this one starring Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. The program, currently titled Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show, will run for 30 minutes without formal commercial breaks, instead opting to integrate "marketing messages throughout the program for Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system." Spooky! Variety programming has a highly dubious past, but it's rife with pointers for vaudevillian fledgling MacFarlane. Movieline investigates five cataclysmic variety specials and their lessons for MacFarlane after the jump.
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