Hopefully, you have a few Lost or 24 episodes sitting in the DVR hopper, because tonight is a pretty terrible night for television. The most exciting thing we could come up with is a rerun of Iron Chef America that centered around ribeye steaks. There are many promises included in the American dream, one of the most significant being a steady stream of mind-numbing entertainment. America, you never cease to underwhelm us.
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Looks like someone's been emboldened by some face time in that Hulu ad! Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, whose acting experience is mainly limited to cartoon voices and some random episodes of Gilmore Girls and Enterprise, will be joining an ABC series in the fall, as an actor. No, really! Which one?
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There was a time, about two years ago to the day, when the only apologies being sheepishly delivered on Late Show with David Letterman were from twitchy ex-sitcom stars caught saying some incredibly racist and hateful things on blurry cellphone video. No, Michael Richards' career hadn't exactly been catching fire in the post Seinfeld years, but his Laugh Factory meltdown proved to be just the thing to push him to the next level of Disgraced TV Sidekick Infamy.
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It turns out the rumors that Katie Holmes will perform on Fox's So You Think You Can Dance are true -- though she won't be getting her stank face on and wearing a rainbow afro for some cutthroat competitive krumping. Us reports that Mrs. Tom Cruise will be performing an homage to Judy Garland's iconic performance of "Get Happy" in 1950's Summer Stock -- nylons, fedora, and all:
Holmes ... dons an all-black ensemble similar to Garland's: black velvet fedora, patent leather heels, nylon stockings, body-hugging skirt and micro-mini skirt.
Pushing Daisies went out with a whimper and so will its quirky partner in crime-fighting, The Unusuals, which ends its short run on ABC tonight. While certain cast members have bright futures ahead of them, it's sad to see another show than mined the depths of human strangeness go by the wayside. Sad, but not surprising.
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Though you probably love The Airborne Toxic Event and The Bravery and can't get enough of M. Ward, there is a lot of great country music out there. Yeah, it might not make you feel all angsty, but the contributions of its artists deserve celebration. Bruno probably won't be planting his junk on Tim McGraw's face at tonight's CMT Awards, but there will be cowboy hats. Lots and lots of cowboy hats.
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I took another hit from the reality show crack-pipe that is Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List last night. And there was Kathy, tending her wounds after being mistaken for Melissa Rivers outside the Staples center just moments after learning she'd been nominated for a Grammy for Best Comedy Album. It seemed as good a time as any to get out of the country, so the comedian jetted off to Richmond, B.C., where she was given the Royal Canadian Beaver Queen treatment by hotel staff.
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There were moments this week where, I imagine, preternaturally grumpy talk show host David Letterman fantasized about attaching 30,000 helium-filled balloons to The Ed Sullivan Theater and flying off to some far-off spot on the horizon, where lipstick-wearing talking-pitbulls don't exist. That, of course, was never going to happen, and so the host -- whose decency had never before been questioned in 27 years on the air -- was left with no recourse but to make a humbling apology on last night's broadcast. This would be his second apology, but was far more sincere and contrite in tone; one can only imagine the hand-wringing at the Letterman household in the days between the two addresses, as the he flipped between cable channels and stumbled upon voice and voice insisting he'd crossed a line.
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Do you ever watch a show, and you know it's not particularly good, but you just can't stop watching it for some reason? That's what True Blood is to me. First of all, it's the talkiest monster show ever. Everyone stop talking and kill something already! And most of the characters, have you noticed, aren't particularly bright? This is beyond the ones that aren't supposed to be bright -- like Born Again himbo Jason Stackhouse, and Jessica the vampire tween, and Arlene "9 out of 10 broken nails" Fowler, who never once suspected she might be engaged to a fake-Cajun-speaking serial killer for all of Season One.
Reality show creator-producer extraordinaire Mark Burnett is best known for social Darwinist reality franchises Survivor and The Apprentice, but he occasionally dabbles in less cutthroat programming, most recently the feel-good, feel-stupid Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? His new effort, Wedding Day, premiering tomorrow night on TNT, represents a new high (or low) for Burnett's less competitive endeavors. In trading immunity challenges and the boardroom for neutral color schemes and china patterns, Burnett has created a series so benign that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition feels edgy and tension-filled by comparison. MOVE! THAT! VEIL!
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It is debatable whether television is a product of our society or society is a product of television, but either way, The Bachelorette is a disturbing vision of modern love. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the conduct of Jillian and her suitors, but just remember this: If at first you don't succeed in finding love on a reality show, try, try again on a similar reality show. It's probably your only option left.
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Now that Real Time with Bill Maher has a longer season and less crosstalk (fewer guests), it's possible that Friday night viewers might start watching it more often, especially considering that his Palin jokes are much worse (and funnier) than anything on network TV. Just a reminder, if you get HBO, there's no reason to worry tonight about the digital conversion. However, you should be worried that you are home watching TV on a Friday night.
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Fat jokes, as a general rule*, are below the belt. They're cheap, they're not funny, and when they're directed at women, they can leave a particularly rancid taste in your mouth. I'm thinking of Donald Trump's tirades against "that fat, disgusting pig" Rosie O'Donnell, which admittedly wasn't a joke, but was a pretty vile characterization that tells you everything you need to know about how The Combforwarded One views women.
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While we continue to feel bad for the children of the Gosselin family, we're borderline apoplectic about the intense cross-branding between Jon & Kate and every other major basic cable show. Tonight, it's the Teutuls of American Chopper building Jon a hog and hopefully giving some advice about family unity. Compared to Jon & Kate, those dudes are The Cleavers.
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You know what's funny about Hollywood? The fact that no one knows anything about anything. Take for example the matter of Conan's ratings decline, reported with no lack of Chicken Little hysterics by various trade outlets, newspapers and scandal sheets as spelling definitive doomsday for the National Broadcasting Company's ginger-peaked investment.
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