With Rachel gone, Brendon launched a suicide mission to avenge his beloved's eviction from the Big Brother house. This meant winning a knotty challenge, shouting "This is for you, Rach" into his mic every 30 seconds, earning the nickname "canklesaurus rex" from Britney and making idiotic decisions that his lost lover would have approved of. With that in mind, let's hit last night's Repulsion Index.
John Slattery, ladies and gentlemen! The silver-topped Mad Men regular made his series directing debut Sunday with flying colors -- both figuratively and literally, as the episode was also among the best-shot in three-plus seasons to date. And they didn't even have to slum in California or introduce outrageous new subplots to do it. Somebody! Unjump the shark!
Also in this morning's TV Bites: Jenny Lumet and William Monahan dive into HBO's pool of talent... ABC renews Wipeout... and more ahead.
It's Friday, which means that programming pickings are slim. Fortunately, Movieline has found a few new options that might make your humid night on the couch a little more bearable. Superheros and supervillains away you after the jump.
You read that right. Look, I'm running behind on today's Project Runway bitchslappy recap, so I'm going to barrel through last night's 90-minute party store romp with a greatest hits version of the recap where we just talk about important things like "animal woolly balls" and regular "balls" and what a sorceress of stank Gretchen has become. Onward!
It may seem like a weekend of chick-flick mediocrities in the theaters -- Eat Pray Love, Cairo Time -- but on cable you could get a feminist overhaul that doesn't necessarily include sexless romance with hunky Mediterraneans...
Creepin'! Sounds like the name of a lesser Wynton Marsalis album, but it's actually the title of last night's Jersey Shore episode. The guidos and guidettes offered varying shades of freshness (let alone fresh-to-deathness, the rarefied quality that it is), but did they make the grade? All marks -- from A+ to F -- are posted after the jump.
Ricky Gervais has produced proof of his guest spot on Curb Your Enthusiasm's eighth, NYC-based season in the form of a photo that the British comedian can't really tell you too much about. But maybe you, dear reader, can surmise what the subject of Larry and Ricky's awkward dinner party confrontation is.
Just two days after TBS unveiled a whimsical new promo for Conan O'Brien's new show, the cable network has claymated its Tonight Show acquisition. As this spot makes clear, though, the network still has not finalized a title for the O'Brien late-night experiment. While TBS figures out that part of the puzzle, why don't you, Coco Nation, decide whether you prefer your leader's likeness in clay or Pythonesque cartoon?
No, you were not hallucinating last night. A Big Brother contestant, Brendon, did use his eviction nominee platform to compare himself and his lover to witches persecuted in Salem back in the 1600s. And everyone, including Julie Chen, was watching dumbfounded. Let's see where that speech placed him on last night's Repulsion Index.
What. An. Incredible. Finale. Mind you, it was also a half-hour too long, but So You Think You Can Dance proved itself the summer's most entertaining and highest quality reality series with its big, Shakespearean conclusion. Let's discuss whether the winner earned his/her title and whether surprise guest Ellen DeGeneres added any anti-Idol shade to the proceedings.
After canceling Party Down and then brutally making both seasons of the comedy series unavailable, Starz is rightfully returning episodes to the show's fans. Beginning August 24, the show's last episodes will be available for purchase via iTunes, Amazon and Xbox. Furthermore, Party Down's second season will go on sale Sept. 28, and fans will be able to stream episodes on Netflix again "sometime near the end of the year." Now if only Lizzy Caplan could get the cast behind the Party Down film she offered to do for free... [Vulture]
The Expendables' stars ruled the late night circuit yesterday, where Sylvester Stallone apologized to America for one of his worst films to date and Mickey Rourke admitted that he did not want such a big role in Sly's ensemble flick. Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert made love to a Middle Eastern snack and Javier Bardem talked man crushes with Jay Leno.
Also in this morning's TV Bites: A Jersey Shore idiot gets fictionalized on Bones... Alan Ball casts up his HBO pilot... Hawaii Five-0 finds room for a Hiro... and more ahead.
You may to have to wait a little longer for that Snooktionary -- the reference book that Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi has threatened to have someone ghostwrite for her -- because government officials have turned down the Jersey Shore star's application to trademark her name for "printed matter" purposes. The Patent and Trademark Office was concerned that buyers might confuse the orange guidette with a yellow fictional cat named Snooky who is featured in the popular children's book Adventures of Snooky. Polizzi has the option of either submitting evidence to support her case, or interpreting this as divine intervention to shy away from the literary world forever. [TSG]
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