September 2008 Archives

Sundance Channel, founded by Robert Redford, Newman's co-star in "The Sting" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," is getting in on the honoring Newman racket. Wednesday at 6 p.m., it'll air its episode of "Iconoclasts" in which Redford and Newman talk shop. (It'll be repeated Thursday at 3:30 a.m. and 9:15 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m.)

At 7 p.m., "The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," an Emmy-winning 1970 behind-the-scenes documentary about Redford and Newman's first collaboration. They'll re-air that at 2 p.m. Saturday.

I was at a press junket for one of Paul Newman's less memorable movies, and during the round-table interview, a woman from a Japanese publication asked him, in halting English, "What do you see for the future?"

It was one of those cringe-inducing moments so common to movie junkets - the reporter who brings the proceedings to a grinding halt with a stupid question. Newman was a little taken aback. "What do you mean - for me or for the world?"

"Both," she replied. Eyes were furtively rolled around the table.

But not Newman's piercing baby blues. I don't remember what he said in response, but I do remember thinking, wow, he just took a crap question and made something fairly elegant out of it.

That seems to be the way he was in general, and Turner Classic Movies will pay tribute to Newman on Oct. 12 with a daylong marathon of his films. It's lacking a lot of his classics, but some essential movies are part of the package:

3 a.m.: "The Rack." Newman as a Korean War vet on trial for treason; script by Rod Serling.

5 a.m.: "Until They Sail." Newman stepped up to matinee-idol status playing a Marine captain who falls for a widow (Jean Simmons) in New Zealand during World War II.

7 a.m.: "Torn Curtain." This Hitchcock Cold War thriller features one of Hitch's most famous scenes, in which Newman's scientist, pretending to be a defector, goes through an exhaustingly protracted fight to the death with a Russian spy.

9:15 a.m.: "Exodus." Newman plays an Israeli resistance leader in the Palestinian War epic.

12:45 p.m.: "Sweet Bird of Youth." Newman also played the role in this Tennessee Williams drama of a guy who returns to his hometown with a fading movie queen on Broadway.

3 p.m.: "Hud." One of his best: He plays a rotten guy who screws everyone over, but you still can't dislike him.

5 p.m.: "Somebody Up There Likes Me." Newman plays boxer Rocky Graziano; he eventually backed off the Method approach he applied to this performance.

7 p.m.: "Cool Hand Luke." Another classic anti-hero role; he's a member of a prison chain gang with a failure to communicate.

9:15 p.m.: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." More Tennessee Williams; Newman plays Brick, the washed-up ex-football player whose latent homosexuality is kind of toned down here. Elizabeth Taylor plays his voracious wife.

11:15 p.m.: "Rachel, Rachel." Newman also directed this film and starred opposite his wife, Joanne Woodward, who played a spinster trying to come out of her shell.

1 a.m.: "The Outrage." An adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon," with Newman playing a Mexican bandit accused of rape.

Also, the Bio Channel will present a documentary surveying Newman's life Wednesday at 10 p.m.

How is it that some British comedies are so nuanced and intelligent and perfectly pitched (and, yes, hilarious) so as to make you feel like something of a boor by comparison and the rest are so crass and obvious that you're grateful America wrested free from England and just wish the Revolutionary War had been bloodier? (Or, how come we never see the ones in the middleground?)

"The IT Crowd" looks like it might well have been "When the Whistle Blows," that worst-case-scenario incarnation of "The Office" that Ricky Gervais featured in season-two of "Extras." It features buffoonish characters doing moronic things with virtually no grounding in reality and not nearly enough wit.

Chris O'Dowd and Richard Ayoade star as Roy and Moss, two lumpen losers toiling away in the tech services department of a perfectly horrid corporation run by Denholm (Christopher Morris), an overbearingly pompous twit who hires Jen (Katherine Parkinson) to run the company's IT department, even though she doesn't have a clue about what it is she's supposed to do. Mayhem, or what's supposed to pass for it, ensues.

Consider these gags from a future episode: Jen really wants this pair of shoes, only they're not available in her size, so she crams them on and mangles her feet. Denholm announces that in order to reduce office stress, anyone who is stressed out at the end of the day will be fired. He brings in a stress-management expert who, naturally, flies into a rage over Roy's idiotic behavior.

O'Dowd's a little laid back in his delivery, but everyone else tends toward obviousness or worse. Parkinson twists her face up into the same knotted curlicues of bewilderment that her toes become in that shoe episode - she's not even convincing at being in over her head, which is actually kind of a neat trick. Morris bellows every line like he's being paid by the decibel.

NBC developed an Americanized version of the show but scrapped it. So clearly, NBC is still occasionally capable of making a good decision.

- "The IT Crowd:" 10 tonight; IFC.

Pretty much a bloodbath in the ratings last night, as MediaWeek ratings guru Marc Berman calls no fewer than six shows "losers."

It was all about "Dancing with the Stars," which bulldozed the competition with 19.28m viewers and a hefty No. 1 in the 18-49 demo. (I'm going to quit explaining that from here on out.) But at 10 p.m., "Boston Legal" chased away half that audience - there's your first loser.

("Boy is there egg on our faces! Ha, ha - get it? Because we tanked in the ratings and we're dressed like birds? Ha, ha, ha - oh, never mind.")

CBS did OK, with "Big Bang Theory" (8.7m), "How I Met Your Mother" (8.8m), "2.5 Men" (13.76m) and "CSI: Miami" (14.07m). "Worst Week" won't have many more of them in the future, as it squandered nearly 4.5 million viewers from it's "2.5 Men" lead-in and had lower numbers in the 18-49 demo than "Big Bang" and "Met Your Mother," even though it had more viewers. There's your second loser.

NBC glumly provides us with losers three and four: Its relaunches of "Chuck" (6.2m) and "Life" (6.9m) were (insert grisly launching-pad metaphor here). (Previously, NBC had announced it was picking up "Chuck" for the entire season. Wonder if they'll remain good on that promise.) And "Heroes" has lost its super powers, managing only 9.3m viewers, a precipitous drop from last season, though Mr. Berman thoughtfully kept if off the loser list.

Fox rounds out our parade of failure, with "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (5.3m) and "Prison Break" (5.2m). Mr. Berman cuts The CW some slack, apparently because they kvetch when he labels their shows losers, but "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill" had more than 3m viewers apiece, which is good by their standards.

Stocks plunged 777 points today on news that a judge granted NBC-Universal an injunction against allowing Lifetime to grab its Bravo series "Project Runway" next year. What was supposed to be Lifetime's first season of the show is already in production.

Legal and financial stuff is always boring, but essentially, the Weinstein Company sold the show to Lifetime without allowing Bravo to bid on future seasons first, and that's just impolite. And you know how some court cases just sit stranded in the American Justice System for forever? Well, that's not going to happen here, because "Project Runway" is just too important for the American people not to get to watch it in a timely fashion, so they're going to speed this one through the courts.

Of course, given the fact that there's no economy anymore, here's what they'll be designing next season, whether it's on Bravo or Lifetime:

Not a bad Sunday ratings-wise; no executive is pulling his hair out today.

Football on NBC led the way with 16 million viewers. ABC took second with "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" averaging 9.5 million over two hours (the only mildly worrying aspect of the night - that's down more than 2 million from last season), "Desperate Housewives" (18.4m) and "Brothers & Sisters" (12.35m).

CBS had "60 Minutes" (12.1m), "The Amazing Race" (10.3m), "Cold Case" (11.2m) and "The Unit" (9.75m). Fox's "Simpsons" (9.3m), "King of the Hill" (7m), "Family Guy" (9.2m) and "American Dad" (6.86m) scored well in the 18-49 demo, so their lower numbers are forgiven by advertisers who don't even want to think about people over the age of 50 seeing their commercials and buying their products.

And an estimated 57 million people who care about the fate of the country watched the McCain/Obama debate Friday night.

Any other season, "Life" would not be on anyone's schedule - it had pretty low ratings last year, though it did actually improve, a smidgen, as the season wore on. As it is, I wouldn't get my hopes up too much for it, since after a couple of Monday airings, NBC's consigning it to the Siberia known as Friday night.

What kept the show hanging in there is Damian Lewis' wry, understated performances as Charlie Crews as a fruit-munching L.A. detective who returns to the job after being wrongly imprisoned. Lewis plays Charlie as a guy who enjoys being smarter than anyone else in the room, but without any hauteur. They've added a new reason to tune in - Donal Logue's amusing turn as Charlie's new boss, Captain Tidwell, who's a bit of a jerk and could use a filter of some sort between his brain and his mouth.

Tonight's episode begins as many cop shows do - with a scantily clad dead woman. She's found in a trunk; beneath her body, the number 1 has been stenciled into the base. Trunks 2 and 3 turn up quickly, with more corpses; the victims all suffocated inside the trunks (they didn't seem to try to kick their way out). A luggage shop owner tells Charlie he sold 10 trunks to a mysterious guy. How many trunks can they keep from being filled?

Next Monday's episode offers an inventive murder: A scientist at a lab engaging in animal testing is found frozen after inhaling from a tank of liquid nitrogen - seems someone switched out his oxygen tank. Charlie picks at him, and the guy shatters into pieces. Suspects include members of an animal-rights group.

The mysteries are serviceable (tonight's is predictable), but in both episodes, out of sort of nowhere characters kind of snap in that melodramatic way where they confess to the crime and then rail against society in general. "Life" is fair; sometimes, "Life" can be good. But as the crooks will tell you - loudly, histrionically - "Life" isn't great.

- "Life:" 10 p.m. tonight and Oct. 6; also, 10 p.m. Fridays, NBC (Channel 4).

Make no mistake: We're "Chuck" fans. Zachary Levi is hilarious (he has a squeak next week that turns a tense scene into one of high comedy) and, when he needs to be, other things, too, like poignant; Yvonne Strahovski is cute, empathetic and kick-@ss and Adam Baldwin is funny. (The cast at the Buy More, well, they pretty much just hit their one notes and can be kind of annoying.)

But there's a recurring plot device in "Chuck" that we noticed in our random viewing last season that has returned with a vengeance, and it's a) actually really stupid or b) an inside joke that we haven't completely been made privy to: The fact that crowds absolutely disappear when action turns to gunplay. It kind of happens tonight, but in two weeks, it happens twice, baldly and spectacularly mind-numbingly, where dozens, scores or even hundreds of extras inexplicably vanish when bullets start flying.

For those unversed in the "Chuck"-iverse, a little catch-up: Chuck (Levi), your average Echo Park slacker who toils (sort of) in a Burbank big-box store, accidentally had the entire government national-security database (known as The Intersect) downloaded into his noggin before the original computer system blew up, so the government routinely needs him in order to save the planet. Sarah (Strahovski) and Casey (Baldwin) are government agents assigned to protect him; he's sweet on Sarah and she's warming to him, while Casey tends to find his current task beneath his skill set, which is killing lots of people without remorse.

Tonight, The Intersect is about to be restored, if the government can locate the Cipher, the key element of the computer program that has somehow fallen into the rogue hands of a shadowy organization called Fulcrum. Of course, if The Intersect is restored, the question is, is Chuck necessary any longer, and the answer is, No. He is not. Thank God the American government is so stupid as to ship a vital piece of national security via a messenger service, and not have an agent transport it there personally.

But my main beef with this episode is with the music supervisor - if my clock radio awakened me two mornings in a row to Huey Lewis songs ("Hip to be Square," "The Power of Love"), you can be damn sure I'd change the channel. And they use Flight of the Conchords' "Foux du Fafa" in a scene without exploiting any of that song's humor, so, what's the point?

Next week, John Larroquette guest-stars as a James-Bond-style spy past his prime (too addled by martinis and women to actually save the world - "His liver must look like camouflage," Chuck observes) who schools Chuck in the art of seduction to score the Cipher away from a sadistic woman known as the Black Widow, because she "kills all her mates." This is another episode where a bunch of people conveniently disappear when the big action sequence comes down.

But that's nothing compared to week three, which actually becomes pretty insulting to viewers' intelligence. (One can just imagine the derisive jokes made by cast members on the set when they shoot these scenes.) "Chuck" is, above all, a comedy, and a serviceable one, at that. But when it makes logical and logistical lapses that strain every synapse in a viewer's cerebrum, you become less enamored of it.

Simply put: No thought = Utter enjoyment of "Chuck." Some thought = Less enjoyment of "Chuck." Real thought = Your brain explodes while watching "Chuck."

- "Chuck:" 8 tonight, NBC (Channel 4).

It's like shooting moose in a barrel, but she's awfully good at it.

Adult Swim's creators actually used to spend time developing characters for their programming (Space Ghost, Harvey Birdman and Meatwad all had discernable, blinkered personalities that went beyond merely "clueless"). Now, they seem to devote all their energies to creating the grossest gross-out gags, yet still neglecting the funny.

"Superjail!" is their latest transgression. Surreal and demented, it looks like what Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo" might've been had it been created by an unhinged psychopath who can't draw very well. It takes place in a subterranean prison where, basically, people get killed a lot in most unpleasant ways. The warden's a clueless fop smitten with a shemale guard, Alice; the warden's assistant has a life of perpetual suffering. The plots are random and would get you flunked out of Creative Writing 101 - in one, for example, the warden opens a bar in the jail but that leads to an attempted prison break and a meltdown of the entire prison. Well, it seems like every story leads to the prison imploding.

"Superjail!" will appeal to misanthropic teenage boys whose parents failed to socialize them. Which means it could be huge.

- "Superjail!": 11:45 tonight, Adult Swim.

So "Desperate Housewives" leaps five years into the future tonight. Given the current state of our economy, it's reassuring to know that we all still even exist five years from now.

And so, anyway, tonight's episode catches us up, with the requisite arch narration: "Where did the time go? How did the children I once cradled grow up so quickly? ... How did that woman I saw every day in the mirror become someone I no longer recognize?" And, most importantly, Why is Mary Alice still narrating, given that she's been dead for years and doesn't even know these people anymore?

Truth be told, the five-year-leap isn't really necessary for most of the stories that unspool tonight. You already know many of the particulars: Susan (Teri Hatcher) lost Mike (James Denton); Lynette's (Felicity Huffman) kids have grown up to be @ssholes; Gaby (Eva Longoria Parker) has grown frumpy, as have her kids; Bree (Marcia Cross, who delivered the most insincere kiss in the history of insincere kisses at last week's Emmy ceremony) is insincere, albeit successful.

So tonight's episode riffles through these plot points, and largely uninterestingly, but - it grabs you, finally, at the end.

Edie (Nicollette Sheridan) is back, with a new husband, Dave (Neal McDonough, whose disquieting intensity really should've popped a long time ago with his turns in "Boomtown," "Band of Brothers" and "Minority Report," but inexplicably didn't). Dave's charismatic, he wins over the other desperate housewives in a moment of something resembling less than desperation - and yet, oh, well, you don't want to know, except that he should emerge as the star of this season.

Next week, the best storyline involves Lynette trying to connect with her son via his online profile at a social networking site, where he reveals more of himself than he does to his family, and she reveals more of herself that she does to her family and - well, as Denise Richards once said, it's complicated.

Long story short: I was bored for vast swatches of these episodes, but the moments that counted pretty much hooked me.

- "Desperate Housewives:" 9 tonight; ABC (Channel 7).

There's a compelling reason, or three, or four, maybe five, that no other reality competition series has ever beaten "The Amazing Race" at the Emmys: Spectacular production values (amazing images of globe-trotting scenery), frenetic pacing (they could probably eke out several more episodes per cycle and still have it be riveting), non-mean-spirited depictions of the participants (rather than have strangers get up in one another's faces for "good television," the show focuses on the long-standing relationships between team members, either for comic or poignant effect) and it's just a really fun and exciting game.

I don't watch many reality shows willingly, and I don't watch "Amazing Race" all the time, but if it's on and I'm in front of a TV, I will happily watch it.

(Spoiler alert: Here's the route that contestants will traverse this entire season of "The Amazing Race." But it's really not all that much a spoiler, since CBS willingly provided it.)

The show does have one itsy-bitsy problem: They're recycling the relationships between team members. Once again, we have a couple in crisis (Ken and Tina, who are separated after Ken cheated on Tina - here's betting he hooked up with someone who doesn't nag him anywhere near as incessantly as Tina does in Sunday's premiere); goofy frat brothers (Andrew and Dan, who way overestimate the power that belonging to a fraternity has in terms of seducing women unless rufies are involved); a brother-sister team that are skeekily far closer than any brother and sister you've ever encountered (Nick and Starr); a parent-adult-child team that decorum prevents too much further psychological excavation (Toni and Dallas); the long-distance couple (Aja and Ty); the geek (as opposed to the aforementioned Greek) buddies (Mark and Bill, comic-book geeks who look a little like at least half the gay couple in "The Sarah Silverman Program"); the sistahs-are-doing-it-for-themselves couples (Marissa and Brooke, Southern belles who declare that they're "into fashion," though they wear unflattering couture; and Kelly and Christy, friends who both went through nasty divorces and can barely contain their contempt for differently abled individuals anatomically speaking); and couples who have been dating for a real long time (Anthony and Stephanie) and a very short time (Terrence and Sarah).

To mix things up (sort of), they add an old hippie couple (Anita and Arthur) who are also beekeepers and owners of the last tie-dyed T-shirts remaining in captivity and who conspired to steal Arlo Guthrie's hair.

So anyway, all involved head to Brazil and scurry around (another great thing about this show is how it demonstrates that corporate attorneys have not overrun the cultures of foreign lands - there still exist on the planet ill-advised tourist attractions that look totally fun but even more totally dangerous) until that fatal moment where the host announces: "We interrupt the frenetic, coke-addled pacing to bring the show to an abject crawl in order to present some utterly belabored product placement for an online travel service."

And still: Even that awful moment doesn't sink the show. "The Amazing Race" remains, startlingly enough, pretty amazing.

- "The Amazing Race:" 8 p.m. Sunday, CBS (Channel 2).

(One final aside: I ragged, wryly, to my mind, on the New York Reality TV School just one blog post ago; its founder, Robert Galinsky, has good-naturedly offered me full tuition into one of his classes. Which I totally intend to accept next time I visit NYC, so that I can learn how to get on "The Amazing Race" and get an all-expenses-paid round-the-world trip. All I have to do now is find someone who can stand me enough to be my other team member, and I'm golden.)

I've been sitting on this for a few days, trying to figure out a decent joke about it, but it's basically a joke in and of itself and so I'll just present it as the Fin de siècle crap that it is:

There's this thing called the New York Reality TV School, dedicated to training its students to behave in a fake enough way to land a spot on a reality show. From its literature:

"Every week thousands of people audition for Reality TV shows, (sic on the comma) the competition is fierce and the odds of making it past the first round of submissions are slim. Do you know what it takes to get noticed? And if you are fortunate enough to be called in, will you be able handle the pressure of this once in a lifetime opportunity?"

Lesson #1, I'm guessing, is changing your resume so that instead of "Aspiring Actor," you pawn yourself off as "Bartender," "Consultant," "Activist" or "Professional Goatherder."

(It may look like random chaos, but it's actually an intensive tutorial to help students prepare to make themselves look like utter fools on TV. Mission accomplished!)

There are one-time workshops ($139) and five-week courses ($299). From the syllabus:

"Students will explore on set behavior and will also learn how best to make a tape for submission with hands on exercises and the shooting of an actual tape. We will show how to make the camera work for you once you are on set and further explore: blocking, staging, wardrobe details and personally tailoring your look to your advantage."

Yes, blocking, staging and tailoring your wardrobe are all essential in preparing for reality shows. Who knew?

It will come as no surprise that Donald Trump is a celebrity spokesman. So you know it's classy.

So that's bad enough, but hey, if people want to throw their money away for a chance to humiliate themselves on national TV, that's their business. But, now there's going to be a reality show about the reality-show school.

Robert Galinsky, who created the school, does a pretty good job of describing what the show will be when he calls it "an uber-meta-circular-clusterf@¢& of camera seducing camera seducing cast seducing viewer."

Galinsky's next project is a school for people on how to watch reality TV without getting the urge to plunge knitting needles in your eyes.

OK, so let's say you're one of the people who saw "Mad Men" take the top prize at the Emmy Awards on Sunday and you think to yourself, "Well, if that show's as good as everyone says it is, I should give it a chance." And you tune in Sunday night, and so the first big bit of business is a guy p!ssing himself in the office. You - the hypothetical person who had never seen it before - are probably thinking, "Classy show."

Onto AMC's spoiler-rich synopsis:

"Freddy Rumsen disappoints his team during a pitch. Pete finds an opportunity at the office to exploit while Don proves his loyalty to an old friend. Betty finds a welcome distraction in Sara Beth."

As the episode opens, Marilyn Monroe has made headlines by committing suicide, and the more lachrymose types at Sterling Cooper are responding to the sad news. Don's (Jon Hamm) little secret - he and Betty (January Jones) aren't living under one roof - is slowly becoming not such a secret; Roger (John Slattery), for one, senses a seismic shift in Don's demeanor. Betty herself isn't responding too well to the separation, moping about the house, burying the pain under glasses of wine.

And so, the guy (the Freddy Rumsen of the synopsis) p!sses himself, passing out just before an important presentation, leaving Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and Salvatore (Bryan Batt) - who responds to Freddy's impromptu evacuation by just kind of sitting back and laughing at it - to fend for themselves. Freddy, awakens, and attempts to escape the office, his soggy shoe squishing ignominiously on his way out.

And make no mistake - he is on his way out; seems we've finally landed on some bad behavior that can actually materially hurt your career here. So, naturally, what do Don and Roger do for a guy whose alcoholism cost him his livelihood? They take him out for a night of drinking, of course, at an underground casino, which, given that the episode began with that Marilyn Monroe newsflash, may not be a great idea. Don and Roger ruminate on the nature of love and marriage, with unexpected results.

Oh, and remember that snippet of a flashback a few episodes back when a woman walked into the car dealership where Don was working and told him, "You're not Don Draper?" If not, you're in good company: The writers don't seem to, either, as they still haven't revisited it.

The façades are falling this year on "Mad Men:" Beneath the glorious production design and the dapper and pert costumes, the characters are downright curdling, barely holding it together. The season's entering the final homestretch now; it'll be fascinating to see who survives this psychic bloodbath.

- "Mad Men:" 10 p.m. Sunday, AMC.

... though a number of shows are losing steam. "Survivor," for example, clocked 12.9 million viewers, which is fine, except that that's almost 2.5m fewer than its premiere last year, and a full 4.5m fewer than two years ago. "Ugly Betty:" 9.77m viewers, down nearly 1.5m from the same point last season. "Grey's Anatomy:" 18.3m, down more than 2.5m from last year. "My Name is Earl:" 6.4m, down 2.2m. "ER:" 7.9m, down 2m - and had fewer viewers than an rerun of "CSI."

By comparison, "The Office" did OK - 9.1m, close to last year's premiere. And so Jim finally proposed to Pam already - there. You happy now?

(Congratulations to the happy couple!)

"Smallville," 4.1m. This is still on? Is he Superman yet? If not, maybe they're following the wrong Clark Kent. The real Clark Kent would be Superman by now.

During tomorrow's Presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, Current TV and Twitter will allow viewers to "Hack the Debate," or, more precisely, post onscreen commentary in what they're calling "close to real time." (They'll need a little time to cut out all the idiotic comments from people ruminating on Obama's ears and sharing what they'd like to do to Sarah Palin.)

So if you watch on Current TV, you'll be treated to all sorts of tweets along the lines of "OMFG! mCcAin just said a sentence! How Presidential!!!!" or "Obama's so dreeemy" or "If the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to -- a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don't go to the people who made the mess in the first place" (that is, if Paul Krugman is one of those twittering).

Al Gore didn't cook up the idea, says Current CEO Joel Hyatt, but he approves: "He certainly shares the belief that the punditry aspect of the process has not been enriching to American democracy. We're trying to empower young adults to participate in the process, to have their voice heard, to join the conversation."

At any rate, the tweets are guaranteed to be more enlightened and incisive than anything Sean Hannity or Pat Buchanan will have to say afterwards.

- "Hack the Debate" Presidential scrum, 6 p.m. Friday, Current TV (Channel 366 on DirecTV, 196 on Dish, 107 on Comcast and 180 on ATT U-Verse. All others, you're on your own. (Information on how to participate is here.)

What you'll see if you tune into Fox on Sunday:

"The Simpsons:" Springfield's booze-free St. Patrick's Day results in a brawl in which Homer is arrested and somehow parlays that into a job - with Flanders - as a bounty hunter; Flanders prays, "Dear lord, thank you for making so many criminals for us to catch."

"King of the Hill:" Waste-of-human-flesh Bill's junk-food diet gives him diabetes; rather than change his diet, he accepts the impending loss of his legs by getting a wheelchair, then befriends some wheelchair warriors who turn his life around. Dale marvels, "I've never felt more alive than watching bill feel more alive." Awfully wise for a Fox cartoon.

"Family Guy:" Brian falls for a fellow atheist but takes disastrous courtship advice from Stewie. Genital warts and repeated use of the phrase "Laura Bush killed a guy" figure in there somewhere.

"American Dad:" Stan and Francine have a panicked reaction to Steve entering puberty, resulting in wreaking havoc on his first date and a visit to a retirement home that "smells worse than the dumpster at the crab restaurant."

- "The Simpsons:" 8 p.m. Sunday, Fox (Channel 11).
- "King of the Hill:" 8:30 p.m. Sunday, Fox (Channel 11).
- "Family Guy:" 9 p.m. Sunday, Fox (Channel 11).
- "American Dad:" 9:30 p.m., F - oh, you know.

So John McCain "suspended" his "campaign" "yesterday," in order to save the economy and the human race. That meant canceling his appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman," to which Dave took umbrage:

To be fair, it makes sense for a Presidential candidate, in the middle of a crisis, to be interviewed by someone who seems like a real reporter (or, at least, Katie Couric) rather than a late-night comic. On the other hand, if a candidate "suspends" one's "campaign" and then issues "talking points" about said "suspension," as McCain did, then that's not really suspending a campaign, just coaxing it in another direction and hoping for some heretofore unrealized traction. (Oh, and Presidential debates have been conducted during crises before in America's history. Lots of things happen during national crises. Like, I haven't suspended this blog to save the economy.)

That Letterman replaced McCain with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann speaks volumes. And Olbermann was on his best behavior, perhaps saving his vitriol for his own show:

Remember this, and everyone said it was the New Yorker's fault that people were too stupid to get the joke?

What will stupid people make of this?

Probably that Stephen Colbert is a cross-dressing revolutionary.

Any bets as to which one dresses up like Sarah Palin field-dressing a moose inside the issue?

A number of flops littered the primetime lineup last night, and we're not even talking about President Bush's address on the economy at 9 p.m. "Knight Rider" is already out of gas - 7.7 million viewers tuned in, about half of the number that watched the TV movie last season. The stupid David Blaine special on ABC did similar numbers. "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and "Gary Unmarried" couldn't even manage 7 million viewers apiece. "Lipstick Jungle" barely enticed 6 million viewers to watch. "'Til Death" scratched together 4.8 million viewers, and "Do Not Disturb" was untroubled with fans, with a mere 3.5 million tuning in.

(Jay Mohr asked me to drop his grandmother's name into today's interview with him in the paper, saying she reads the paper and seeing her name in it would "Melt her heart and mind." Alas, there was nowhere I could fit it in organically. So, hey, Helen Alice Spohr! If you're on the Internets, your grandson Jay says, "Hi, Gram!")

Successes included "Dancing with the Stars" (15.57 million), "Criminal Minds" (15.1 million, up 2.5 million from its premiere last season) and "CSI: NY" (15.5 million, also up, by 2.7 million).

Doing OK enough were "Bones" (9.6 million) and "America's Got Talent" (10.2 million).

The CW was The CW.

My favorite part of this is the "NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN" disclaimer. Why? Does it actually kill people?

I did a little math, and a $700 billion bailout translates into $2,333 for every man, woman and child in America. Jon Stewart finds that CNN has an even dumber way of explaining it:

And John Oliver reports that George W. Bush has achieved the Epic Fail hat trick as far as his legacy is concerned:

"It wasn't easy. It was like finding a vein on a failure junkie."

"I've got a godlike erection right now and it seems a shame to waste it."

"Don't make me beg; it's unseemly."

"I'll pull out and hose you down."

"Get ready for Thor's hammer."

Hank gets a vasectomy; the doctor's assistant comes on to him.

A past conquest flirts with Hank in a convenience store. He tells her he's attached; she replies, "That's too bad - you were a great lay."

"Hold on a second - I'm not sure how I feel about two ladies with whom I've made love lunching together. (pause) OK, I'm pretty sure I feel pretty good about it."

"I like to of myself as having a 12-inch (go ahead, use your imagination) but it doesn't make it so."

At a party, Hank mistakenly performs oral sex on the wrong woman. (No, really! It happens, doesn't it?)

"I'm not a rapey kind of guy."

"I could pick your (female body part) out of a police lineup of (female body parts)."

Not that I'm taking it personally, as he wants to crush the entire newspaper industry: "'One of the advantages of the Internet is we're taking money away from the newspapers,' he said gleefully."

("Once we destroy the newspapers, people won't be smart enough to know that 'Worst Week' and 'Gary Unmarried' are lame - bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!")

Today's reviews:

"Knight Rider" boasts some spiffy special effects, but that apparently is where all the effort has gone in this updating of the cheesy '80s show.

(Due to budget cutbacks at NBC, after tonight's episode the role of KITT will be played by this car.)

Justin Bruening stars, in a bland sort of way, as Mike, who works as an agent for Knight Industries, whose function isn't exactly clear but they have a laboratory filled with contraptions that seem to have no function other than to look cool. Knight Industries' coolest contraption, of course, is KITT, a muscle car with the ability to morph into a pickup truck and all sorts of other bells and whistles, such as artificial intelligence.

Val Kilmer provides KITT's vocals, and you can practically hear the Dilaudid drip in his voice as he reflects on the direction of his career. KITT's ostensibly witty, but the show's writers don't give him very clever lines; he merely advises Mike to "reduce the extracurricular activity with your lady friends."

Tonight's episode begins, a title card tells us, at "Foreign Consulate - USA" (thanks for being so specific). Mike and Sarah (Deanna Russo, who gives the liveliest performance in tonight's episode) are at one of those glamorous parties where high espionage always seem to occur, and they barely get out alive - KITT catches on fire during their escape, forcing them, naturally, to strip down to their underwear.

Everyone here has the same sort of jaunty attitude, even when their or their colleagues' lives are in danger. They treat the whole enterprise like some sort of video game, which isn't far from the truth: Much of tonight's episode is given over to car chases.

Except that there's some sort of conspiracy afoot - Mike can't remember vast swatches of time during his stint in Iraq, about which agents Rivai (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) and Torres (Yancey Arias) seem to know more than he does. Their boss (Bruce Davison) warns Torres, "One day, Mike's going to remember everything, and when he does, he's going to come after you."

Are they compromising Mike's missions? Does NBC not remember what little good the whole can-you-trust-your-employer mythology did for last year's "Bionic Woman?" It's not a persuasive way of giving the light-hearted proceedings any heft; it just kind of messes with the tone.

And speaking of messing with the tone, my first suggestion for fixing the show would be to fire the music supervisor or whoever shoehorned some really bad songs into inappropriate moments in tonight's episode. It won't fix everything, but it's a start.

*

If "Knight Rider" is based on an '80s show, then "Gary Unmarried" comes to you directly from some Generic Sitcom-world from anywhere over the past four decades. Jay Mohr stars as Gary, a likable lummox who's recently divorced from his shrewish ex-wife (Paula Marshall). (Apparently, on the planet this takes place on, there is no other type of ex-wife.)

When Gary grouses about having to knock on the door of his former house, his ex replies, "Of course you don't have to knock. You can ring the bell."

(This is what they drink on sitcoms like this.)

To be fair, some of the other punchlines have a little more snap to them than that, but you get the sense creator/writer Ed Yeager has already run out of ideas for storylines: Tonight's episode has him starting a relationship with Vanessa (Jaime King), but she gets mad at him because he neglected to tell her that he's divorced with children, even though she has a big secret of her own, as well.

So plot logic and human motivations are apparently not a consideration here, and the jokes can't carry the day, either. Mohr was more engaging as the venal studio head he played in "Action."

... would appear to be CBS's "The Mentalist," which debuted opposite "Dancing with the Stars" and "Fringe" with 15.55 million viewers. (It wasn't so strong in the 18-49 demo, though - even "Fringe," which had nearly six million fewer viewers, had more in that age bracket that is celebrated over all other humans on the planet.) But CBS's "NCIS," the little sleeper hit that could, continues to boggle the mind - opening its sixth season last night, it had 17.72 million viewers, nearly four million more than its premiere a year ago.

Night two of "Dancing with the Stars, and Kim Kardashian, Too" averaged 18.2 million viewers over its two hours, but ABC's "Opportunity Knocks" was a no-show in its premiere with 6.63 million.

In the "Physician, Heal Thyself" department, Fox's "House" took a hearty tumble with 12.14 million viewers, down 6.17 million from its numbers last year. To be fair, it won the hour in that 18-49 demo that advertisers get on their knees and pray extravagantly unctuous prayers to, and it's now on at 8 p.m. rather than 9, and viewing levels tend to be lower in that hour, but I wouldn't have expected it to be so roundly spanked by such a meat-and-potatoes show like "NCIS."

But if "House" is limping along, "Law & Order: SVU" is staggering, punchdrunk. One week last season, "L&O:SVU" was the only NBC show to have more than 10 million viewers; last night, it didn't even manage that (9.52m, down 2.6m from last season's debut); "Without a Trace" beat it handily, by almost 2 million viewers. And "Biggest Loser" was ehhh with 7.18m chubby chasers tuned in.

Am I forgetting anything? No, just The CW, where that "90210" show that everyone was salivating over a month ago fell below 3 million viewers.

Truth be told, I've never been much of a fan of "Criminal Minds." It's too lurid, too misogynistic, too, well, too. But tonight's episode had me fairly well hooked, for a while, at least.

The fourth-season opener begins where the season-three cliffhanger left off - with Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) and that British agent Kate that he seemed kind of fond of getting the hell blown out of them by a terrorist blast in New York. All sorts of attendant chaos rains down as the team (and the word "team" is used in this show as if it's some sort of holy relic) tries to locate those behind the bombing.

(The cast of "Criminal Minds" debates whether Paget Brewster looks better with bangs or without.)

Hotch and Kate are left dangling in the wind because protocol suggests that since the true target is apparently the wave of first responders, they must hold back and not really do anything. So Kate's guts and bare feet (she was literally blown out of her shoes) are exposed to the world, since she's but a bit player who's not even mentioned on imdb.com, while Hotch, who's a series regular, just has a little blood trickling out of his ear, even though he was just as close to the blast.

Intrepid Agent Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore, who gives this episode its oomph and more) has to bully his way past cops who have cordoned off the block and basically left Kate to die. An ambulance finally breaches the barricade, which I initially wrote off to the sort of sloppy plotting the show usually trucks in but actually turns out to be something of a plot point.

But, still, the episode boasts a lot of propulsive urgency and an impressive body count and is pretty exciting despite gaping holes in both security perimeters and plot logic. Putative stars Joe Mantegna and Paget Brewster are given next to nothing to do while their co-stars are saving Manhattan - Brewster's big scene involves Mets tickets - but as Hollywood sage Donald Rumsfeld once said, you go in with the storyline you have, not the storyline you want.

- "Criminal Minds:" 9 tonight; CBS (Channel 2).

A reader wrote in:

"So I'm watching Conan O'Brien (last night), and just as he launches into what sounds like a funny routine about smashing together 'celebrity douchebags' in a collider, NBC 4 cuts into the broadcast with Colleen Williams. She states, 'We'll be going back to Conan in just a couple of minutes. Right now, in New York, though, Conan is doing a comedy routine about trains crashing. And we feel with our recent train collision here in Southern California, it is just not appropriate for us to show it. In the meantime, though, here are some of the stories making news this morning.' ...

"I'm sure some viewers were annoyed at missing the routine, while others might have appreciated the sensitivity. ...

"(By the way, I DVRed the episode, so the quotes from Colleen ... are accurate.)"

Well, we checked out the offending clip at NBC.com's page for Conan's videos, and after some false starts (DSL collapse, NBC misidentifying the episode's segments - the bit in question is in the episode's first segment, not the second, as labeled), were shocked beyond all rational thought.

Well, not really. KNBC was erring on the side of caution, but, given how big a story this was locally and how disturbing the original images were, I suppose I can sort of understand why they did it. Since those with sterner constitutions can find it online, no First Amendment harm, no First Amendment foul. I guess.

(Conan had something similar happen a few years back when he hosted the Emmys - he shot a pre-taped bit featuring the plane crash from "Lost," and a plane crashed somewhere that day, and some people complained about the insensitivity, and other people complained about the people who complained, saying we're a nation of whiners or something.)

"We just thought it would be fun to smash things together at high speeds," Conan explains of his celebrity douchebag super collider. They had previously sent Spencer Pratt and Dog the Bounty Hunter careening headlong into one another, he explained, but unfortunately Pratt survived the collision, so they brought him back to smash into magician Criss Angel.

Promising "complete douchebag evisceration," Conan introduced his super collider - toy trains on a track with photos of Pratt and Angel affixed to the front of the trains. Conan was careful to insist that what we saw was, in fact, not a train set: "Do not be fooled. That is a super collider built by MIT."

"Jordan, our somewhat anal retentive producer," as Conan introduced him, emerged and declared, "Conan, I'm sorry, I can't let you do that. ... It could tear a hole in the douchebag continuum," a riff on the recent unfounded controversy surrounding the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and France.

Conan explained, "Tonight's experiment is being closely watched by douchebags all over the world," introducing images of Paris Hilton, Gene Simmons, Ryan Seacrest, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Geraldo Rivera eyeing the experiment. The trains circled the track, hit one another and burst into flames. The others then exploded, as well as Conan's producer.

In all, a pretty innocuous (and only slightly amusing) bit - the idea was better than the execution. Unless you lost a loved one in the tragedy, your mind probably wouldn't have immediately wandered back to the incident, but then, if you lost a loved one in the tragedy, you're probably not watching Conan O'Brien at this point, either.

Perhaps the train angle was just subterfuge - maybe KNBC is staffed with a lot of douchebags who took umbrage with being treated with such disrespect.

What do you think? Was KNBC displaying appropriate sensitivity in hiding this fairly juvenile joke from local viewers? Or were they being overprotective parents who force their kids to wear raincoats because there are a couple of clouds in the sky?

In one of those online polls that are probably meaningless, a fifth of those responding thought Sunday's Emmy ceremony was "terrible." (Six percent thought it was "great," which either means that six percent of the American public is utterly delusional or that Tina Fey voted a whole bunch of times.) 53% had the right idea and didn't watch.

Even more amusing is the fact that in the same poll, a full 70% don't give a damn that "30 Rock" and "Mad Men" are really good shows, they're going to stick to watching crap. 17% said they already watch the shows; only 13% said their big wins Sunday will coax them into checking them out.

Here's that 13%'s chance to prove it: AMC is offering a marathon of all eight episodes of season two thusfar Thursday, from 4 p.m. to midnight (EST and PCT).

The first night of the new season didn't have much that was surprising. "Dancing with the Stars" dominated, averaging 21.12 million viewers and clocking in at No. 1 in the 18-49 demographic advertisers and network executives care about so much, as well as the demo of people who enjoy watching Cloris Leachman lose her mind.

CBS's comedies did reasonably well, though the new "Worst Week" piddled away nearly 4 million viewers provided it by "Two and a Half Men" (and now that viewers have been treated to a glimpse of its cartoonishness, I predict even worse weeks to come for the show). Nearly 17 million celebrated David Caruso Day by watching Horatio fake his own death on "CSI: Miami."

But the bad news comes for the fanboy crowd - your shows disappointed if not outright tanked last night. "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and "Prison Break" managed fewer than 6 million viewers apiece and came in fourth in the 18-49 demographic. In "Sarah's" case, the show's so expensive to produce that they're paying $1 for every 2 or 3 viewers.

"Heroes"' two-hour season premiere averaged just under 10 million viewers, which doesn't sound so bad - until you consider that its season debut last year attracted nearly 17 million fans. That's an awful lot of viewer attrition for one season, and in fact, there was significant viewer attrition over the course of the episode itself:

9:00 p.m. - Viewers: 10.15 million (#3)
9:30 p.m. - Viewers: 10.28 million (#3)
10:00 p.m. - Viewers: 9.61 million (#3)
10:30 p.m. - Viewers: 9.52 million (#2)

Its recap show tanked, too.

And The CW managed more than three million viewers last night and I'm sure they'll be crowing about it all day.

Jeez, either I'm losing my sense of humor or every broadcast-network sitcom writer in the country is. "The New Adventures of Old Christine" returns Wednesday and it's, well, not very funny. But at least it's not awful, unlike some of the other "comedies" I've had to sit through have been. It's just inoffensively blah.

(Wacky!)

It opens with Christine's (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) ex Richard (Clark Gregg) announcing that he's "going to ask New Christine (Emily Rutherfurd) to marry me." That, of course, will not go well. Then Barb (Wanda Sykes) barges in with more expository news - now that her divorce is final, she may not be able to stay in the country - she was born in the Bahamas.

(OK, now I know the whole country has become increasingly paranoid these days, but I call bullsh!t here - the rules used to be, once you get your Green Card they can't give you the boot even if you did divorce the dupe you used to get your Green Card (and even if you did so within weeks of getting said Green Card). And since Barb has been in the country for 20 years, as this episode establishes, she's clearly not a security risk, and so - oh, why the hell am I trying to make sense of a sitcom episode?)

Christine is shocked to learn that the Bahamas aren't under U.S. jurisdiction: "Are you sure? American Airlines flies there."

For some reason, they've decided to make Christine really obtuse, moreso than usual even, this episode. When she discovers that California has legalized gay marriage (really? She hadn't heard that? Like, doesn't, most of the country know this?), she dismissively responds, "Yeah, gay marriage between two men."

Once she's clear on the concept, Christine asks Barb to marry her. Their marriage, she tells her, will have "everything real marriages do," including that bonus of "no sex." Barb asks Christine if she really wants to do this, and - spoiler alert - she responds with a genuinely funny line: "I never do what I don't want to do, except on second dates, but that's just good manners."

There's an almost-funny scene when they go to get their marriage license, and just as they're working their way to a graceful climax (sorry, poor choice of words), the writing and/or directing finds a really clunky way of ruining the final scene.

Apparently, I was more prescient than I realized.

- "The New Adventures of Old Christine:" 8 p.m. Wednesday, CBS (Channel 2).

The Washington Post's impeccably droll Lisa de Moraes has declared today David Caruso Day. (We would've posted this earlier, but the blog server was down. Still, there's plenty of time to join in the fun.) Some of the tips:

"When speaking, head must be cocked to one side, hands on hips (aka Caruso Handles).

"If you are using more than 10 words in a sentence while speaking, you are doing it wrong. ...

(Every single publicity still of David Caruso looks like this. Every damn one.)

"At least 75 percent of statements made in the course of the day by participants must be delivered as a question. Example: 'It's ... cold outside?' ...

"When speaking to someone at length, you must first address the person's feet, then slowly look up and, before making eye contact, look away, then walk out of the frame. Exception: It is acceptable to look a small child in the eye."

Further assistance in perfecting your Caruso can be found here (it's old, but it's still great):

In the meantime, there's tonight's season premiere of "CSI: Miami" to consider. Horatio (the name they call Caruso on this show) was shot at the end of last season, but, even worse! His sunglasses got shattered.

So, tonight: Horatio is put in a body bag. No! you gasp. Yes, I must sadly report. Even Emily Procter is upset, and I hate to see her upset.

OK, so not to give anything away, but, well, Horatio's really not dead. (Oh, wait - that gave it away. Sorry.) See, he was working on this case and decided that he needed to do some investigating incognito, so he faked his death. But: He staged his murder - he took a bullet to his flak jacket - but somewhere where there were no witnesses? And broke his sunglasses, to boot? Couldn't they just ring up the media and say, "Oh, bad news - could you report that Horatio's dead so we can fool some bad guy he's after?"

Anyway, they try to cover that up with some editing so disorienting I thought the disk had some sort of glitch in it that was causing it to skip. And I was watching a rough cut, but boy did I have to ride the remote's volume buttons, because the episode's all whisper whisper whisper EXPLOSION GUNFIRE EXPLOSION GUNFIRE whisper whisper EXPLOSION GUNFIRE EXPLOSION!

Just another day in Miami.

- "CSI: Miami:" 10 tonight, CBS (Channel 2).

Today's reviews:

"Good will battle evil," reads the promotional copy for the season three premiere of "Heroes." Memo to NBC's marketing department: That's pretty much the plot of all of Western literature. Could you be a little more specific?

NBC only made the first hour of the two-hour premiere available for review, but, really, that's enough. There's some intriguing stuff in it, but a lot of nutty stuff in it, as well. It's not really a strong-enough return for a show that was roundly considered to have lost a lot of steam in its truncated second season.

(Comic book drawings can assume hokey poses just like real actors.)

Which, if you'll recall, ended with what seemed to be the deaths of Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) and Niki/Jessica (Ali Larter). Nathan appeared to die at the end of the first season, too; he's still up and kicking. Initially, the idea was that the characters were expendable, but now "Heroes" just seems to be crying wolf when they off their main characters.

Tonight's installment opens four years in the future, with an evil Claire (Hayden Panetierre) and an at least semi-evil Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), though Peter at least seems to want to put things right when he ventures back to the present day.

Where, good Claire is being threatened by Sylar (Zachary Quinto) - she locks herself in a pantry, and he can't get the door open, though even the biggest wimp in the planet could easily kick through the thin slats in the pantry doors.

Meanwhile, in the dumbest subplot, Hiro (Masi Oka), flush with his late father's (George Takei) inheritance, watches a video instructing him as to his destiny: Never open the safe in his office, he's told. That's it?

It plays like a bad joke: A minute later, he's watching another video: "I asked you not to open this safe," his dad sternly scolds. And of course, that opens a potentially deadly Pandora's box.

"Heroes" can't really be accused of spinning its narrative wheels, though with some of the odd revelations in tonight's first hour, those wheels do seem in danger of spinning off the hurtling vehicle that was a once-addictive show.

*

There's no polite way of putting this: "Worst Week's" Sam (Kyle Bornheimer) is an irredeemable moron. Sam has gotten his girlfriend, Mel (Erinn Hayes), pregnant, and they're planning on breaking the news to her parents (Kurtwood Smith, Nancy Lenahan), who for reasons that will become all too obvious disapprove of their little girl's "friend."

(If anything, the show's worse than this still suggests.)

So, in the course of tonight's premiere of CBS's new sitcom, Sam manages to lose his clothing in the company of a drunken female co-worker, miss dinner with her family, lie to his fiancée repeatedly, injure her father a couple of times, cause no end of property damage and mistake a pot holding a brining goose for a toilet during a blackout.

Huh? How does a sentient human being mistake a kitchen for a bathroom, even in the dark? More to the point, why does Mel stay with this guy?

"Worst Week" is based upon a far superior British series, "The Worst Week of My Life," which played out in seven-episode seasons and managed to escalate the absurdist havoc in a drier, funnier and more credible fashion. Here, the characters and actions are far more cartoonish but far less entertaining.

"I'm starting to wonder if something's wrong with me," Sam laments late into tonight's premiere. You're just starting? We had that problem about five minutes into the episode.

Despite a fairly inventive premise and a good cast, "How I Met Your Mother" has too often been content to simply be a standard-issue sitcom, exulting in boorish behavior and riffing on catch-phrases and eschewing anything that might be construed as genuine human interaction. No wonder Entertainment Weekly loves it so much.

(Hey, we've all been at this point somewhere in our lives, right? Am I wrong? Anybody? Or is everyone here just giving your average sitcom reaction shot?)

Last season left us with eternally earnest Ted (Josh Radnor) proposing to Stella (Sarah Chalke), and inveterate womanizer Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) realizing he was kind of in love with Robin (Cobie Smulders), if, in fact, he actually understood the notion of "love."

Tonight's season-three premiere finds Ted realizing, thanks to Marshall (Jason Segel), who's otherwise clueless but fairly attuned to women, that he knows precious little about Stella, and decides that they're only destined for one another if she loves his favorite movie - "Star Wars" - as much as he does. Meanwhile, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) advises Barney on how to win Robin's heart - but can a guy who's heretofore proven himself willing to sleep with anything that traverses his line of periphery persuasively convince anyone with a palpitating heart and something resembling a soul he's capable of change?

There are decent jokes at the expense of TV news's decadent exploitation (Robin's miserable job), and even the show's most simplistic characters are allowed some depth in tonight's episode. Harris is granted a pretty good soliloquy celebrating "bimbos" - a lot of people had him pegged to win the Supporting Actor in a Comedy Emmy last night, and he didn't, but this episode might grant him the opportunity to deliver an acceptance speech a year from now.

- "How I Met Your Mother:" 8:30 tonight, CBS (Channel 2).

Or at least that's how it goes in "The Big Bang Theory's" universe. In tonight's second-season premiere, Leonard (Johnny Galecki) has a date with Penny (Kelly Cuoco) that doesn't seem to go too well, but it doesn't go disastrously, but that's no reason that Leonard and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and their buddies and even Penny can't worry it into an utter debacle.

Next week, you'll think that there's an episode missing that almost utterly cleaves Leonard and Penny, because they're history and Sara Gilbert plays Leslie Winkle, a self-confident wonk who makes a play for Leonard and insults Sheldon mercilessly.

The insult comedy can be amusing because it's so willfully obtuse, and Parsons again reveals himself as the show's secret weapon, selling his laugh lines discreetly and making them even funnier than they actually are (and, often, they're more than funny enough) - his deadpan hangdog act is genuinely funny, even if the show's writers don't always understand that his character is plenty funny without their stuffing him in dopey costumes - in fact, doing so actually kind of tamps down his most inspired moments.

Still, and I understand this isn't necessarily the case in real life, but wouldn't genius nerds who research everything else on the planet so assiduously bother to investigate the precepts of social interactions, just a smidgen, if they're vaguely interested in scoring with women? "Big Bang Theory" has its moments, but if it really wants to win bigger audiences, it's going to have to accept its braniac characters' humanity rather than foist them off as MacBooks with flesh, bone and "Star Trek" fetishes.

- "The Big Bang Theory:" 8 tonight, CBS (Channel 2).

Here's a slightly expanded version of something running in tomorrow's paper:

After the deadly opening featuring the five nominees in the Outstanding Host of a Reality Series category, it's safe to say the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences will go back to having someone with an actual sense of humor host the Emmy ceremony next year.

"American Idol's" Ryan Seacrest (who hosted solo last year), "Deal or No Deal's" Howie Mandel, "Dancing with the Stars"' Tom Bergeron, "Project Runway's" Heidi Klum and "Survivor's" Jeff Probst co-hosted the ceremony. After their opening segment, they remained largely in the shadows, appearing just long enough to introduce the celebrity presenter of the next trophy.

But the damage had already been done - the five's opening bit was a flat-footed disaster. Introduced by Oprah Winfrey, the five shuffled onto stage sheepishly. "Something I've learned from television - never follow Oprah," Seacrest said, awkwardly, to not much of a response.

"We feel like the step-child of television and we thank you for making us feel welcome," Mandel said, prematurely, as that welcome feeling would soon reveal itself to be all in his mind.

"We wanted to make this night special," Probst, well, lied. He, Seacrest and Mandel spoke over one another, then Probst confessed: "Two minutes in, we have nothing for you."

"Check the teleprompters," Seacrest said, assuring his audience that the five co-hosts couldn't be bothered to come up with something remotely entertaining for a vast worldwide audience.

"We are on Sarah Palin's bridge to nowhere," Mandel joked, wanly. "The government can't even bail us out of this."

After a little more busking, Probst announced, "By doing nothing, we have fulfilled our obligation," and he, Mandel and Seacrest fled the stage, leaving Bergeron and Klum alone. For some reason, William Shatner then joined them onstage, and Bergeron and Shatner tore off Klum's tuxedo, revealing a short little spangly number underneath. It was so embarrassingly leering that the lecherous, sexist '60s gents of "Mad Men" would've cringed.

The torpid opening received an instant pan from the evening's first winner, "Entourage's" Jeremy Piven: "What if I just kept talking for twelve minutes - what would happen?" he asked after a joke in his acceptance speech fell with a thud, then answered his own question in adding, "That was the opening!"

Backstage, Piven continued the thought: "I thought we were being punk'd. I was confused. It was like in 'The Producers' when they do 'Springtime for Hitler' - (you wondered,) 'What was actually happening right now?'"

Later, Probst, in accepting the first Emmy for Outstanding Host of a Reality Show, acknowledged their failure by addressing Jimmy Kimmel, who presented him with the trophy. Probst told Kimmel, "You tried - you told us the 'nothing' bit may not work, but we stuck to our guns."

And in the process nearly ruined the evening and underscored for millions of viewers just why they loathe reality TV so much.

The other asinine thing from the ceremony - which had to hurdle through the last few categories because it was running behind - was how it was padded with clips from old shows, ostensibly tied together from the theme of, uh, set design? Without, um, actual sets?

For no discernible reason, they trotted out clips from "Seinfeld," "Desperate Housewives," "The Simpsons," "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," "The West Wing" and "M*A*S*H." Then someone from those shows would present an award (the "Laugh-In" cast yokking it up not just old-school but Jurassic-school about today's best TV comics - Stewart, Colbert, Maher - was especially distressing), except for "M*A*S*H," which inexplicably segued into Sandra Oh and Patrick Dempsey presenting an award. (Oh, I get it - they're all TV doctors. Idiots.) For the zillionth time: Why not scrap the bells and whistles dragging the production down and just focus on the awards?

Well, good news - mere hours before the fall season begins, NBC has taken a vested interest in getting its new programming sampled. A screener of "Knight Rider's" pilot showed up yesterday; today, an episode of "My Own Worst Enemy" and two episodes of "Kath & Kim" turned up.

(Since there's apparently only a couple of shots of "Kath & Kim" out there, both pretty much looking the same, here're stars Molly Shannon and Selma Blair without their goofy costumes. There - not so bad, right? They look like folks you might want to spend some time with, right? But then, this isn't how they dress on the show.)

We'd grouse about the paucity of episodes to sample and note that pilot episodes aren't a reliable gauge for the potential ongoing quality of a series, but none of the networks have exactly been sharing much beyond the pilots. The fact that the networks have been so generous with screeners for returning shows (except for "The Office" - where's that?) suggests they have more confidence in their venerable fare rescuing them from audience attrition than their new (and in more than a few cases, slapped-together-haphazardly) programs.

Time to pop "Knight Rider" into the DVD player! David Foster Wallace, I may be seeing you soon.

Friend to this blog and creator of the reason the Internets were invented, The Parallel Universe Film Guide, Spencer Green has issued his annual faux fall-TV schedule. Actually, it's the real fall-TV schedule, only the shows have more honest - or, at least, more gleefully misanthropic - titles.

Spencer's keyboard has a real potty mouth, so I've tried to clean up some of his verbiage as best I can and yet maintain the spirit of his tastelessness. Enjoy.

2008 FALL TV SCHEDULE

MONDAY

8-9

ABC - Simplifying Federal Tax Codes With the Stars

CBS - Oh, Those Geeks and Their Unloved Co¢%$; Not Half As Clever As It Thinks It Is

NBC - The Computer Wore a Pocket Protector

FOX - No Offense to Summer Glau or Lena Headey But Schwarzenegger's @ss Was Tighter

CW - Can't Get Enough Rich, Spoiled s!

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

9 - 10

ABC - Hasn't TV Taught Us That In Order to Restore an Amnesiac's Memory, All One Needs to Do Is Hit Said Amnesiac On the Head With a Two-by-Four?

CBS - Christ, The Kid On This Is Starting to Look Like Junior Samples; Anything That Gives Gainful Employment to Kurtwood Smith Is Okay By Me

NBC - Will Any of Them Be Fighting King Tut (Victor Buono)?

FOX - Is He Studying Birds Now or Trying to Secure Attorneys for Criminal Defendants or What?

CW - Let Them Fast Forward 60 Years So They're All Dead

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

10 - 11

ABC - When F. Scott Fitzgerald Said "There Are No Second Acts in American Lives," He Was Clearly Not Thinking Of William Shatner

CBS - CSI: Wasilla, Alaska

NBC - Which Personality Will Get the Pink Slip?

TNT - When a David E. Kelley Door Closes, a Steven Bochco Window Opens

MTV - See "Can't Get Enough Rich, Spoiled s!"

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

TUESDAY

8-9

ABC - Families Cut Each Other, Wait, Then Pick the Scabs Open

CBS - If Anyone Reading Has Actually Watched an Entire Episode of This, I Will Give You a Cookie **

NBC - Weight Loss + Families + Inspiration = Multi-Colored Fusillade of Vomit

FOX - He's Still a Brilliant, Self-Pitying @sshole, Right? Okay, Just Checking--See You Next Year

CW - The One Show That Makes the Original Look Good By Comparison

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

9 - 10

ABC - Census Taking With the Stars

CBS - I See...Three Weeks

FOX - Just to Put Things In Perspective, J.J. Abrams Once Wrote the Screenplays for "Regarding Henry" and "Forever Young"

CW - Rich, Spoiled s Learn Things!

Bravo - The Real Housewives of Gasoline Alley

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

10 - 11

ABC - Dreamy Lawyer (Who Dreams)!

CBS - Try Looking for Human Dignity, Huh? If You Can Find That, Let Me Know, Huh? Thank You

NBC - Law & Order: Alec Baldwin Suicide Watch Unit

MTV - Rich, Spoiled s Need Friends!

E! - The Hepatitis C Has Mutated Into a Virus Which Causes Her Heart to Explode If She's Not On Camera Somewhere

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

WEDNESDAY

8-9

ABC - Overcooked Whimsy Pie Rammed Down Your Gullet

CBS - Boy, Does Wanda Sykes Annoy Me; Gee, I Hope Jay Mohr's Book About This When It Dies Is As Entertaining As The One He Wrote About "Saturday Night Live"

NBC - Unfortunately, It Only Gets Two Miles In the City, Three On the Highway

FOX - Hot Damn, Those Deschanel Girls!

CW - Please Explain Exactly How Tyra Banks Reconciles This With the "Body Issues" Episodes Of Her Other Show

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

9 - 10

ABC - Best Argument For HMOs

CBS - All the Serial Killers in America Team Up and Form an Evil Justice League

NBC - Not Fit to Hold the Jock Strap of "Match Game"

FOX - He's Tall, She Has Big T!t$, So There You Have It; The Reason Why Three-Camera Shows Are Dead

CW - The Wussification of America Knows No Bounds

DirecTV - Get Tom Brady to Guest Star, I Hear He's Not Doing Anything

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

10 - 11

ABC - One Can Only Hope the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy Sends Them All to Hell

CBS - CSI: Kilimanjaro

NBC - I'm Confused--If Nobody Watches a Show and Nobody Talks About a Show, Doesn't It Generally Get Axed?

FX - They Shot Captain America On the Causeway

E! - Untitled Pat O'Brien Reality Show To Be Determined

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

THURSDAY

8-9

ABC - Now 30 Percent More Arch!

CBS - Survivor: Hoa Lo Prison

NBC - Unless Earl and Randy Get Raped By the Kid From "Deliverance," I Don't Plan to Watch; We've Run Out of British Sitcoms to Steal So Now We're Ripping Off Ones From Australia

FOX - We Drill Holes In People's Heads and See If the Pennies We Drop In Them Fit

CW - When Does General Zod Show Up?

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

9 - 10

ABC - Dear Katherine Heigl: This Season, All Of Izzie's Sub-Plots Will Involve Her Sitting In a Corner and Staring at the Wall--Love, the Writers

CBS - CSI: 13 Rue Madeleine

NBC - Rainn Wilson and John Krasinski: Definitely Keep Your Day Jobs; I Would Comment on the Incessant, Unyielding Tina Fey Media Circle Jerk But Dammit, the Show's Funny

FOX - Tonight's Special: Apoplectic Brit En Croate

CW - Look at Me, Damien! It's All For You!

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

10 - 11

ABC - A Quinn Martin Production! Tonight's Episode: Green Eggs and Death

CBS - A Procedural Show From Jerry Bruckheimer? Whaaaaaaat?!

NBC - In the Final Episode, It's All a Figment of Dr. Westphall's Kid's Imagination

USA - Law & Order: Endlessly Rotating Lead Actors Unit

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

FRIDAY

8-9

ABC - We Switch Babies At Birth, Give Them Back to Their Real Families Five Years Later and Let the Fireworks Kersplode!

CBS - Will George and Marion Kirby Ever Show Up And Teach Jennifer Love Hewitt How To Loosen Up?

NBC - America's Shiniest Foreheads

FOX - Are You Less Talented Than Dane Cook? ***

CW - I Think By Now Everybody Is Just Indifferent To Him; Whatever Follows "I Think By Now Everybody Is Just Indifferent To Him"

Disney - When Walt Is Defrosted, He'll Be Happy to See His Company Is Still Doing Crap With Twins

VH1 - How Many More Useless Lists of Pop Culture Detritus Can We Spew? I Think You'll Be Pleasantly Surprised

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

9 - 10

ABC - Practically Puerile In Every Way

CBS - Hot Chick Can't Find Romance! Boo Mother F#¢%ing Hoo!

NBC - Seriously, I Want to Meet the Executive Who Greenlit This--How About "Extreme Barry Lyndon" Next?

FOX - Uh...So When Does "24" Start?

CW - Remember When Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Sanger Were Role Models For Young Women? I Feel 120 Years Old

VH1 - Top 100 Things You Could Be Doing Instead of Watching This Sh!t

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

10 - 11

ABC - 20/20: We're On the Air To Make "Dateline NBC" Look Good

CBS - All the Serial Killers Kicked Out of the Evil Justice League End Up On This Show

NBC - Yes, Moving This From Wednesdays at 10pm to Fridays at 10pm Will Surely Help Things

USA - If I Have a Choice Between Watching Debra Messing In This or Debra Messing In the Remake Of "The Women," I Will Take a Garrote Around My B@!!s

Starz - Even More Foul Than Its Movie Progenitor

G4 - We Sew Up People's Anuses, Then Give Them Fleet Enemas and Have a Good Ol' Time

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

SATURDAY

8-9

ABC - Who Will Be the Next Peyton Manning? Who Will Be Serving You Fish Tacos?

CBS - Yes Folks, We Used To Be The Tiffany Network

NBC - Dateline NBC: We're On the Air to Make "20/20" Look Good

FOX - Fun With Tasers!

CW - Billy Graham Crusade From 1974

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

9 - 10

CBS - Crimetime Saturday: Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Ellery Queen and Sherlock Holmes Play Gin Rummy, Make S'Mores

NBC - And Network Executives Continue to Scratch Their Heads And Wonder Why, Oh Why Audiences Continue to Leave In Droves

FOX - Maybe John Walsh Can Take Over For Jerry Lewis and the MDA Telethon--If Anyone Can Find a Cure, John Can

CW - Reruns of "Mayberry R.F.D."; Reruns of "Camp Runamuck"

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

10 - 11

ABC - Seeing That You're Home on Saturday Night...

CBS - Why Not Try the Fabulous Film Parody Website:

NBC - The Parallel Universe Film Guide (parallelfilmguide.com)

AMC - And Now the Plug Is Over

SUNDAY

8-9

ABC - Attention: Spend the Whole Season in Galveston, Texas and Make Yourselves Useful

CBS - This Year the Couples Include Neo-Nazi Bounty Hunters, Headless Interior Designers and Two Newlywed Salamanders

NBC - Being From Miami, I Notice the Dolphins Are Not Currently Scheduled to Appear Here And I, For One, Am Shocked

FOX - How 'Bout a Crazy Wedding Where Something Happens and Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo; Most Underrated Show Ever, I Tell You Whut

CW - Crap of the Titans

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

9 - 10

ABC - Remember When People Talked About This Show? Really? What Did They Say?

CBS - Investigate How This Has Been On For Six Seasons

FOX - If I Rip Off "The Simpsons" and Make a Lifetime's Worth of Bad "Star Wars" Jokes, Can I Get $100,000,000, Too?; Really--Can I?

CW - Maybe They Can Bail Out Washington Mutual When It Goes Into the Toilet

Showtime - He Can Be the King of the Evil Justice League!

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

10 - 11

ABC - I'm Guessing Jon Robin Baitz's Stories About This Show Are a Whole Lot More Interesting Than the Show

CBS - If Our Government Lavished One-Tenth the Effort It Takes to Make This, Bin Laden Would Be Dead and Ahmadinejad Our B!tch

HBO - Hollywood Sure Spends a Lot of Money Being Scathing About Itself

Showtime - Mr. Duchovny Can't Be With Us Tonight Due To a Prior Engagement Of F#¢%ing Anything That Moves, Please Make a Note Of It

AMC - Did We Mention We've Got "Mad Men"? "Mad Men," In All Its Heavy-Handed, Douglas Sirk-In-Slow Motion, Hindsight-Festooned Glory! "Mad Men!"

** In order to claim cookie, you must write an essay about the episode you saw, five pages, single-spaced, describing the plot, character arcs, general themes and atmosphere. If the essay is approved, you will be given a location to go in order to receive your cookie. This location may be anywhere in the United States and may be changed at any time for security reasons. One essay per person. Supplies of cookies are limited.

*** no

The real job intrudes today. In the meantime, here's a little Emmy story that'll appear in print tomorrow:

If the evocative advertising-world drama "Mad Men" wins the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series on Sunday, as many expect it to, it could signal a sea change in television's tremulous new world order. It will serve as a tacit admission that not only are viewers slowly but surely migrating from the broadcast networks to cable, but the quality programming is, as well.

And for that reason alone, it may not happen. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is hopelessly old-school, largely considering broadcast TV to be, if not the only game in town, then at least the only one worth aspiring to. The pay's better, potential payoffs are off-the-chart and the challenges are greater at the Big Four.

(Archaeologists recently unearthed this early, rejected, design for the Emmy trophy.)

It's tougher to create something good intended for a mass audience for network executives who love to interfere with the creative process than it is for a niche programmer whose tolerance for artistic freedom can result in works of recherché, if precious, brilliance. So that trade-off (or sell-out), to voters' minds, deserves accolades.

Consider: HBO's "The Sopranos" didn't win the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy until its fifth season, and won only twice in its seven seasons. It took a long time to for ATAS to acknowledge that HBO truly belonged on the same landscape as the broadcast networks when it came to the major awards.

A basic cable series, on the other hand, had never even nominated before in either the drama or comedy series category before this season, and this year, there were two. In addition to AMC's "Mad Men," FX's legal thriller "Damages" was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. They're joined by Showtime's tension-filled serial-killer saga "Dexter," Fox's snarky medical mystery "House," ABC's mythology-laden cult hit "Lost" and ABC's venerable dramedy "Boston Legal."

In "Mad Men's" favor is the fact that it was returning for its second season to even more acclaim as Emmy ballots were reaching voters' hands, something none of the other shows can boast. (In "Damages"' case, it's been off the air for over a year, which really, well, damages its chances for a win.)

(Some historians consider this the first "For Your Consideration" ad. They're just not sure what show it was for.)

Working against "Mad Men" is a not-so-well-kept secret of the Emmys (and the Oscars, for that matter): They don't really reward the best entertainment, but the best of mainstream entertainment. Audiences for "Mad Men" (and, for that matter, "Dexter" and "Damages") is a fraction of that of "House" or "Lost."

But that perception has been changing, slightly, thanks in large part to TV comedy's flagging fortunes. "Arrested Development" won the 2003/04 Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy after struggling through its first season, but its audience never grew and it was eventually cancelled.

"30 Rock" won the trophy last year - and is pretty much expected to again on Sunday - but saw virtually no uptick in viewership this past season. Given the vast potential audience for American television, these shows' audiences aren't appreciably larger than those for "Mad Men."

TV audiences have grown so fractured that the notion of "mainstream" entertainment has been greatly diminished. If "Mad Men" does indeed win on Sunday, it will be proof that the Academy has accepted this fact. If not, it'll simply mean they're still stuck in what Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross called the "denial" stage in accepting the inevitable.

(Scholars are trying to discern whether this Hurricane Ike photo is a metaphor for the broadcast networks.)

Naughty-minded teens, rejoice: "Sex and the City" co-creator Candace Bushnell has signed a deal for a series of books featuring the iconic character of Carrie Bradshaw as a teenager.

(These kids were doing it? Who knew?)

It'll be part of an ever-expanding universe of prurient teen literature, the contents of which parents probably go blissfully unaware, merely grateful that their kids're actually reading anything. Other similar randy series include "The A-List," "It Girl," "The Clique" and of course, "Gossip Girl."

The New York Observer found the new book series' money shot (or, at least, one of them):

"If the universe of the books is consistent with the universe of the show--and it very well may not be--readers should anticipate a scene featuring an 11th-grade Carrie sharing 'half a joint' with one Seth Bateman and then doing it with him on the Ping-Pong table in his 'smelly rec room.' At least this is how Carrie describes her origin story to Charlotte in episode 38, 'The Big Time.'"

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is such a high-energy, high-wire act that it's bound to fall sooner or later, but here we are as it's about to begin its fourth season and they're still finding new ways to shock and appall - and, oh, yeah, amuse - us.

The show features monumentally stupid and venal characters doing foolish and awful things in a manic, cartoonish fashion. It's not a show for grown-ups, though one of the funniest things about it is imagining someone tuning in because they liked that funny little Danny DeVito on "Taxi" and are expecting more of the same, only to have their head explode.

(Many episodes end with a variation on this theme.)

Tonight, two new episodes debut. In the first, Mac (series creator Rob McElhenney) and Dennis (Glenn Howerton) decide to go all "Most Dangerous Game" on us and hunt their childhood enemy, the homeless priest Cricket (David Hornsby). If they catch him, they have further indignities to launch upon his person.

Cricket's unclear on the concept, so they tell him, "If I were you, I'd spend a whole lot less time asking questions and a whole lot more time running."

Meanwhile, Charlie (Charlie Day) and Dee (Kaitlin Olson), believing they've become addicted to "human meat," head to the local morgue, where the attendant, bored, tells them, "Fifty bucks gets you 10 minutes alone with one of the bodies." Let's see "'Til Death" do a cannibalism storyline!

In the following episode, Mac, Dennis and Charlie come up with a fairly hare-brained plot to profit off the oil crisis, while Frank (DeVito) waterboards Dee - his own daughter - in a particularly unsavory location.

Stumbling upon Frank's nefarious lair, Mac's less interested in Dee's distress than in asking, "Does that waterboarding thing work?"

Frank, exultant, replies, "You bet your ass - I got Dee to admit to things that she never did!"

Usually, "wrong" isn't intended as a compliment. It is here.

- "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:" 10 and 10:30 p.m. Thursday, FX.

We're nearing the homestretch now: The Fall TV season will begin on Monday, and the trickle of new shows that have been coming out in recent weeks, while not exactly hitting geyser proportions, will certainly accelerate. NBC, however, has still seemed to be reticent to provide critics with screeners of their new shows.

As we've noted in the past, traditionally, we see pilots in late May/early June, after the fall schedules are announced. The writers strike prevented that, we were told (though CBS managed to come through, and Fox provided their new shows in a timely fashion). Even given that, we're still generally provided screeners a month or so ahead of the premiere date.

"Knight Rider" debuts on NBC in a week. I still hadn't seen anything or heard when I might be seeing anything on Monday, so I sent the network an Email asking if they were going to be sending out a screener of the first episode. The reply:

"It is still being finished up. There are a ton of special effects, but that is the plan. Don't have a date at the moment though."

(The new KITT is so technologically advanced that it breaks all product-placement records established in the '80s and it piddled on that fire hydrant in the background.)

Well, those special effects got finished up right quick, it seems, as today NBC announced that they'll be offering sneak peaks of new and returning shows online. "Knight Rider" went live today at a variety of sites, including, of course, NBC.com.

Two things:

1) Would it have killed them to just 'fess up and say, "It'll be available online in time for you to review - we'll provide you with a link when it's ready?"

2) NBC (as well as CBS and Fox) have been pretty aggressive in getting screeners of returning shows in my hands. So far, NBC has provided half of the "Heroes"' two-hour season premiere, three episodes of "Chuck," two of "Life" and "My Name Is Earl's" hourlong season premiere (basically two episodes, the second entitled "If You Vote For This I Will Do Something Crazy At The Emmys" - nothing like baldly trying to curry favor). Apparently, NBC wants to make sure we see their returning shows under optimal conditions on our Big-Screen Critic TeeVees, but we can just watch their new shows - the ones they're banking their season's success upon - on our tiny computer screens, at the mercy of our broadband speeds (mine can be pretty dodgy). Not exactly the way to lay those Ben-Silverman's-on-his-way-out rumors to rest.

By the way, anyone who wants to click on the link above and watch the "Knight Rider" pilot and write a pithy review, we'll post it here. Maybe I'll even plagiarize yours as my own.

It's the job of network-TV executives to put a happy face on vexing situations, to - apologies to the 2008 Presidential campaign - put lipstick on a pig. So, when an executive breaks from the pack and sounds an alarm, you better pay attention.

This summer, Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly addressed the foundering fortunes of the sitcom: "I can't even go to the platitude of 'it's cyclical; it's going to come back.' My observation is, a lot of confidence has left the creative space on a day-to-day basis. I see really talented people coming in very skittish, not knowing what to pitch. I see executives trying to figure out, where is that nerve to hit. ... We've got to do anything to mix it up."

There have been a couple of really good sitcoms in recent years, and there are a couple of successful ones, but there hasn't been anything on the order of a great hit sitcom in years. I'm no doctor, but I have been monitoring the life-support systems quite some time now, and so I'm ready to call it: The mainstream, broadcast-network sitcom is dead. Break out the toe tags.

That doesn't mean the genre won't limp along, zombie-like, for years to come, that "Two and a Half Men" won't continue to be a success or that NBC will cease arguing that "The Office" and "30 Rock" hit the sweet spot of some desirable demographic. But, barring an act of genius or an influx (or complete absence) of audience good taste, network sitcoms will either attract cult audiences or continue to be utterly culturally irrelevant.

¿Quién es más divertido?

(Hint: It's not "According to Jim.")

And the reason is that thanks to our current cultural divide, we're divided largely along age lines as to what we think is funny. As Rob Roy Thomas, who has created comedies for both cable (Bravo's acclaimed "Significant Others") and broadcast (Fox's short-lived "Free Ride"), puts it, "Is it cool to go to your high school and say what you watch on a broadcast network?"

Well, no. No, it isn't. Cable comedies provide edgy, anarchic fare akin to their audience's sensibilities: Shows like FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (which returns Thursday for a fourth season) and Comedy Central's "The Sarah Silverman Program" and "South Park" offer up plots and punchlines that come from so far out in left field that Manny Ramirez wouldn't bother to try to run them down. They're dark and borderline crazy, but they actually do have something on their minds and are actually sane responses to a world seemingly gone insane.

("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" takes the p!ss out of old-school sitcoms like "Friends.")

And Adult Swim's surreal, primitively animated offerings were punchy, short YouTube films before YouTube even existed. Sites like YouTube and FunnyOrDie.com have emerged as younger viewers' comic meccas - jokes come immediately, without getting muddled in tedious storylines that today's short-attention-span lifestyle can do without.

Older viewers, brought up on the elegant precepts of decorum and narrative coherence, are well within their rights to watch these things and wonder, "What the hell ...?"

On the other hand, the situations in most network situation comedies today are beyond tired, and the punchlines are either hopelessly old-school or a queasy, usually only semi-smutty compromise that pleases neither the traditional sitcom fan nor the younger viewer. ("Family Guy" is about the only network show that draws young viewers, but then, it's basically a mash-up of YouTube shorts peripherally linked by a rambling, non-sequitur-cluttered storyline.)

Only four new sitcoms will premiere this fall. One, Fox's "Do Not Disturb," has already arrived DOA, with fewer than five million tuning into its premiere. NBC's "Kath & Kim" promos scarcely look promising. CBS's "Gary Unmarried" is something that could've aired at any point in the past 35 years, while its "Worst Week" can't figure out if it's a cartoon or a character comedy, so opts instead to wring humor from having its protagonist pee in a pot containing his prospective in-laws' celebratory goose, something that might happen if a couple of quarts of tequila were involved but, otherwise, just represents desperate cynicism or cynical desperation; they're so hard to differentiate. ABC didn't even bother to try to air a new sitcom this fall.

("Do Not Disturb's" Jerry O'Connell and Niecy Nash sassily debate who's playing the most clichéd character.)

So we have a comedy arms race that one side (the old guard) can't possibly win and that the other side (the young anarchists) aren't interested in winning so long as they can continue in their rude ways. No point in asking, "Can we all get along?" Because the answer is no. Each side will laugh at what they think is funny - and also at the opposing side in this humor-generation gap, secure in the knowledge that what the other thinks is funny is so obviously not.

What do you think? Can the sitcom be resurrected? Or will the obsession with demographics create a further rift in our senses of humor?

All you need to know about those CW upscale teen soaps (and, uh, "The Hills") in just under three minutes:

From CNN.com:

In the wake of the five creative-arts Emmys AMC won Saturday night, the most of any basic cable network, "Mad Men's" going on the shelf this Sunday. AMC's now apparently hoping viewers instead turn to the big ceremony on ABC, where "Mad Men" seems to have a chance to win some serious hardware.

"Mad Men" won in some pretty no-brainer categories: Art Direction For A Single-Camera Series, Cinematography For A One-Hour Series (both for the episode "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"), Hairstyling and, of course, Outstanding Main Title Design. (AMC's "Breaking Bad" also won an Emmy, for editing.)

Instead, they'll run a repeat. And then, hoping those who saw the Emmys will be interested in a taste (have they seen Emmy ratings numbers in recent years?), they'll offer up a "Mad Men" marathon of the first eight episodes of season two on Thursday, Sept. 25 from 3 p.m.-midnight, PCT. (According to AMC's website, at 11 p.m., they'll offer up the episode that's being pre-empted this Sunday and will air on the 28th. Dunno if that's true, but that's what it says.)

Just in time to steal fire from the Emmys, TelevisionWithoutPity.com has announced the winners of its annual Tubey Awards, honoring TV's best, worst and whatever else might fall into their scattershot assortment of serious and trivial categories. Here are some of the highlights:

Best New Show: "Pushing Daisies"

Worst New Show: "Living Lohan"

Best Returning Show: "Lost"

Best Drama: "Battlestar Galactica"

Best Comedy: "30 Rock"

Favorite Actor: Neil Patrick Harris, "How I Met Your Mother" (Barney was Favorite Character, as well)

Favorite Actress: Tina Fey, 30 Rock

Least Favorite Actor: David Caruso, "CSI: Miami"

Least Favorite Actress: Katherine Heigl, "Grey's Anatomy" (Izzie was Least Favorite Character, as well)

Most Egregiously Offensive Reality Show: "The Moment of Truth"

New Series with the Most Wasted Potential: "Bionic Woman"

Most Overrated Show: "Grey's Anatomy"

Most Anticipated New Show of 2008-09 Season: "Dollhouse"

Most Appalling Reality TV Star: Tila Tequila (who also won Worst Reality Show and the "Why The Rest of the World Hates Us" Award)

(Miss Tequila prepares for battle against the rest of the world, which hates her. Justly.)

In addition to a couple of other things, Sarah Palin is famous for giving her children names that ensure they'll be taunted at school, names like Track, Trig, Bristol, Arcade Fire and The Google.

Now, everyone can get into the act with this ingenious Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator.

From this moment forth, please address me by my new moniker: Skein Chug Palin.

Stop me if you've heard this one: Against the backdrop of a President with record low approval ratings, a Senator from a Northeastern state with a penchant for blustery speeches and an attractive, wise-cracking, thinly vetted good-ole-girl with questionable experience and some family issues square off for one of the highest governmental positions in the land.

Of course it sounds familiar - it's the plot of Christopher Buckley's latest comic novel, "Supreme Courtship."

Reviews of Buckley's new book were written and/or published before John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate (the book was released the week of the Republican National Convention), so they weren't able to comment on the fairly astonishing similarities between Palin and Pepper Cartwright, "Supreme Courtship's" protagonist, the popular host of a TV-judge series who is recruited by President Vanderdamp as a nominee for the Supreme Court. Senator Dexter Mitchell would like that seat on the Court himself, but, as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is determined to keep any of Vanderdamp's nominees from getting approved.

Mitchell, apparently, was based on Joe Biden, so those similarities are less of a surprise. Of the character, Buckley writes, "He had uttered his first full sentence at the age of fourteen months and hadn't stopped since" and "(C)ampaign advisors had tried without success to get him to give briefer answers, but nothing had stemmed he logorrheic tide, the tsunami of subordinate clauses and parenthetical asides, the inexorable mudslide of anecdotage."

But the mind fairly boggles at the Pepper/Palin parallels. True, Pepper's from Plano, Texas, not Alaska, and she doesn't believe in God, whereas Palin most decidedly does. But her outsized character, and the cynical strategy behind the choice itself, could almost lead one to believe McCain's people had Buckley's book in their war room.

One aide tells Pepper, "You might as well be yourself. That's presumably why the President asked you in the first place. The real America. Ah, the real America. That elusive thing..."

The aide later tells the President, "I don't know why you're always carrying on about the so-called 'wisdom of the American people.' Half the population seems to me to be demented. Belong in cages..."

The media weigh in, approvingly: One editorial writes that the President "finally appears to have done something politically astute - almost certainly by accident." A TV pundit notes, "(A) striking majority of people favor Judge Cartwright's nomination. They like this lady. ... (I)f nothing else, they tell us that we've reached the point - for better or worse - where being a TV personality is a qualification for the Supreme Court."

(Is that a gun strapped to your thigh or are you just happy to see me?)

During her confirmation hearings, Pepper's straight-shooting betrays a pride that she's underqualified for the job for which she's being considered. She says, "I've spent the last couple weeks cramming my locomotive with suggested answers Mr. Hayden Cork and his folks supplied me with. ... They gave me these briefing books. Great big pile of 'em. Looked like a back-to-school sale at Wal-Mart. You'd need a forklift to carry 'em all. Anyway, I memorized all the answers. I warn you, though, Senator. They're pretty darn dull."

As whimsically insightful as Buckley can be about the political process, he's curiously disinterested in bringing that same verisimilitude to his evocation of the TV world. Pepper's show is a prime-time hit, while all judge shows are syndicated afternoon programs, none with an audience remotely large enough to have a character as universally beloved as Pepper. There's a reference to "sweeps week," when in fact sweeps come in month-long increments and no longer carry much weight, anyway. And Buckley misses a great bet at humor in declining to depict cable-news talking heads apoplectically debating the merits of her nomination.

I haven't finished the book yet, but I've read a number of Buckley's other political satires ("Thank You For Smoking," "Little Green Men," "Florence of Arabia") and they all start off with an inspired premise and clever skullduggery and snappy dialogue. But they tend to go soft in the end; Buckley lets his characters wriggle free from their plights too easily. But boy, he sure hit the Zeitgeist square on the nose with this one.

Episode two of "Fringe" makes it pretty clear from the outset that it's not going to be like "Lost" or "Alias" - it's dead set on taking viewers by the hand and guiding them through the bumpier passages of the show's mythology. There are several scenes of bald exposition recapping what happened in last week's premiere; relationships between the characters are re-explained and then hammered home; the show's central theme - science has run amok and we're merely treading water instead of keeping up with it - is explained several times, with and without big words.

Not that this is a bad thing - it's a well-known trope in TV that when starting a new show, you essentially make the pilot five times in a row to get viewers up to speed. But it's a clear departure for series co-creator J.J. Abrams, who likes his viewers to pay attention, rabid attention.

Tuesday's episode opens in typically attention-grabbing fashion, with a chatty hooker getting pregnant immediately after a tryst in a dumpy motel and giving birth and the baby aging and dying - all in the matter of less than an hour. (They grow up so fast these days. And fruit flies think they have to live for the moment!) A nurse shrieks melodramatically, because I guess that's what nurses do.

So FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) is called in, because growing old in an accelerated fashion is apparently a violation of some Federal statute I wasn't aware of. But this incident conveniently has echoes of a case Dunham never solved, of a ghastly serial killer who removed women's pituitary glands from their brains, and it also taps into a secret project that mad scientist Walter Bishop (John Noble) was working on during his tenure with the U.S. government before he went bonkers, involving creating adult soldiers in a matter of three years.

(Can this page from Fox's website help you unlock the mysteries surrounding "The Pattern?" No, it turns out.)

Turns out there's a product of those experiments running around out there, and he needs those pituitary glands to curb his aging process. (How does this guy score so many women in the first place? He's a pretty creepy, uncommunicative guy.)

So J.J. Abrams is showing his influences: This is essentially the plot of the TV flick "The Night Strangler," which starred Darren McGavin as intrepid and wisecracking reporter Carl Kolchak, only with a layer of science drizzled over it to coax viewers to buy into it more.

It's OK stuff, but I sense "Fringe" lapsing into a conventionality that "Lost" assiduously avoided. I'd like a little more out of Torv's acting, to be honest, and a whole lot less from Noble, whose performance threatens to devolve into camp if it hasn't already. His sonorous voice and melodramatic, vaguely pompous line readings seem to come from '50s potboilers, and the writers aren't helping with the sort of dialogue they stuff into his mouth: Introduced to the concept of auto seat warmers, he fairly purrs, "It warms your ass - wonderful!"

(Dial it back, old man. Certainly you have a contraption in your laboratory that can manage that, don't you?)

You find yourself agreeing with his exasperated son Peter (Joshua Jackson), who asks, "Would you just talk like a person?" Peter's default setting seems to be cynical exasperation, but Jackson's exuding the most charisma here so far, reminiscent of early (and grumpier) George Clooney.

But there's a little game you can play while watching "Fringe." As it's part of Fox's clever "Remote-Free TV" strategy, each episode is about 9 or so minutes longer than the average primetime show these days. So you can try to figure out what scenes will get cut when the show airs on cable or in syndication, when it'll have to run with the normal battery of commercial interruptions. I'll start by saying the whole last scene can go, and the interactions between Olivia and Massive Dynamic's Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) can be trimmed down significantly, as well.

- "Fringe:" 9 p.m. Tuesday, Fox (Channel 11).

House (Hugh Laurie) has but one friend, Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), and now, he doesn't even have him anymore. At the end of last season, House's drunken stupor was responsible, at least tangentially and probably even moreso, for Wilson's girlfriend's death (those responsible for Leonard not scoring an Emmy nomination for that episode are probably the same folks who blew that last-second fumble call in the Denver Broncos-San Diego Chargers game), and so, as season five begins, Wilson wants nothing to do with House or, even, the show in general - he's getting the hell out.

(Even hopped up on Vicodin, he should know better than to chew on his shirt cuffs. Or to wear that color after Labor Day.)

Of course, last season began with House's previous team (Omar Epps, Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer) having gotten the axe, and that didn't even last one episode. So do we really expect Wilson won't be sticking around in some capacity? And if they keep threatening to bounce some key characters but don't, they're just going to become the "House" that cried wolf.

Tuesday's season-five premiere is a reliably strong episode, as the patient du jour is an assistant to a driven harpy who champions women's causes but denigrates the women who serve her. Her ailment resonates with Thirteen (Olivia House), who has been diagnosed with Huntington's and wishes the patient were more assertive, but the patient lives only to serve - that is, if she actually survives her malady.

So it's an interestingly back-handed look at feminism, while also exploring House and Wilson's relationship - House actually implores Wilson for help, telling him, "Your friendship means more to me than this patient." Wilson, however, is unmoved, or, at least, unwilling to be manipulated further. Sundry members of House's team offer Wilson disparate advice on how to deal with this grave impasse.

So, Tuesday's episode is rock-solid. Next week's episode, I'm not so sure - it introduces a dodgy character that seems sleazy and scarcely much fun, a private investigator engaged by House to poke around in patients' backgrounds in the same way he had his team members do so, recalcitrantly, in the past.

It's a splashy episode with a lot of death and mayhem, leading back to an organ donor whose organs must've been pretty dodgy.

And so, season five: Three colonoscopies in two episodes! And one on a dead guy! And that one, with a really queasy result! Boom!

(Would they really break up this dream team? And, if so, who would stick around to watch "Fringe" afterwards?)

- "House:" 8 p.m. Tuesday, Fox (Channel 11).

The best that can be said about this season of "Weeds" is that it has been one of ... uh, transition. The show went from being a transgressive comedy about dealing pot in the dreary suburbs to, well, something else.

(This sort of publicity still has long since failed to reflect "Weeds"' sensibility, but Showtime's brain trust apparently decided that if Mary-Louise Parker is still willing to pose for them, who are they to turn her down?)

Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) and her brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) and kids vamoosed after last season's wildfires to the San Diego-Mexico border, where they cozied up with a meaner, rawer branch of the drug trade, as well as smugglers trucking in illegal immigrants and guns. Doug (Kevin Nealon - can any character really be memorable if played by someone who hosts a basic-cable tribute to TV commercials?) and Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) made their way down south, as well, in one of those convenient plot contrivances that doesn't so much bespeak narrative credibility as it does the desire to keep cast members the producers like drawing paychecks.

(Least Valuable Player.)

(Most Wasted Most Valuable Player.)

There was one particularly inspired episode this season, in which Nancy discovered her sons' sundry sexual peccadilloes - Silas (Hunter Parrish) was involved with a woman roughly Nancy's age, while Shane (Alexander Gould) was in possession of a cache of saucy photos from Nancy's younger days that he was fantasized over while knocking one out (even pervy-and-proud-of-it Andy acknowledged, "This is way outside my kink zone") - and realized she didn't have much moral standing to do much about either situation.

Otherwise, Nancy (and the show in general) has been found itself in what a dumb@ss action flick called "Tokyo Drift" - sliding this way and that for splash but to no real ends. Nancy's dealing with folks far more cutthroat than those pikers she hung with in Agrestic, while her sons are abandoning faith in their mom.

Nancy, for reasons only truly understood by the show's writers, has fallen in love with Esteban (Demian Bichir), a nominally ruthless but even more nominally charming Mexican drug kingpin who discovers that Nancy may have been the informant that got his smuggling tunnel shut down.

So tonight, in the season-four finale, two semi-surprising and only semi-logical revelations are uncorked, just in time for a cliffhanger. Meanwhile, Andy and the boys prepare for life without Nancy, while Nancy herself prepares for life without Nancy and her buds.

(After a grueling year, Parker is going to relax and reflect upon how to cook up even more saucy publicity stills for a season five that doesn't promise to be all that sexy.)

One character quotes Bob Dylan - "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose" - but seems to be commenting on the plot convolutions more than anything else. Ah, well, for those enticed by such things, Parker grants fans a luxuriant topless scene.

But it may - or may not - be interesting to see if creator Jenji Kohan and her writers can satisfyingly escape from the corner they've painted themselves into this year when next season rolls a blunt around.

- "Weeds:" 10 and 11 tonight; 10 and 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, 10 p.m. Wednesday, 9 p.m. Thursday and so on and so forth, Showtime.

What the heck has gotten into "The Closer?" When it began, it was an agreeable, slightly moody but most of all eccentric crime procedural that focused on the quirky personalities of its characters, particularly Kyra Sedgwick's Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson. She and her team broke down criminals through guile and intelligence.

These days, it's more a full-blown cop show, filled with dark and edgy crimes; accentuating the characters' lighter sides as much as the show once did would be inappropriate and tonally clunky. Which means a lot of the show's rich characterizations have gone by the wayside; a lot of her team feels kind of interchangeable these days and, in their stead, there's splashier, more grisly violence. Her unit has even been renamed, from Priority Homicide to Major Crimes Division, which is suggestive of a de-emphasis on investigating and prioritizing tear-@ssing around and shooting things up.

Monday's "summer finale" underscores "The Closer's" transformation. It's a fairly apocalyptic yarn, with some unsavory characters hellbent on a grandiose act of domestic terrorism - they call themselves "Evolution's End."

Asst. Police Chief Will Pope (J.K. Simmons) has devolved from a wry leader who knows how to wrangle the cats on Brenda's team to a more generic TV boss cop, demanding results and jumping the gun in announcing resolutions. And I don't think anyone associated with the show would have imagined a riotous climactic sequence involving the team running around and shooting wildly in super-slow-motion, as we get Monday. These aren't characters you'd expect to get all macho-like; they're more in their element doing the cerebral slow-burn.

Which is not to say that "The Closer" has become a bad show - the summer finale is effectively executed - just a little less of a distinctive one. TNT had finally cooked up a wry campaign for the show more in keeping with its sensibility, only to have the show back away from that tone. Right hand, meet left hand. Ask it what it's going to be doing.

- "The Closer:" 9 p.m. Monday, TNT.

David Foster Wallace, author of one of the most audacious, ambitious, wild, messy, hilarious and heart-crushing books I have ever read, "Infinite Jest," took his life Friday. He was 46.

Wallace received a genius grant after the book's 1996 release, and never published another novel. Subsequent short-story collections seemed to betray something of a growing disinterest in linear narrative ("The Office's" John Krasinski has been working on a film version of "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"); his books of essays, on the other hand ("A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" and "Consider the Lobster"), offered breathtakingly meticulously observed and often hilarious ruminations on subjects ranging from cruise ships, the porn industry, right-wing talk radio and David Lynch.

His most recent book was an expanded version of a magazine article about time he spent with John McCain's 2000 Presidential campaign. Though the original piece was admiring of McCain, Wallace recently told the Wall Street Journal, "His flipperoos and weaselings on Roe v. Wade, campaign finance, the toxicity of lobbyists, Iraq timetables, etc. are just some of what make him a less interesting, more depressing political figure now."

As "Infinite Jest" is famously over 1,000 pages long, one could spend paragraphs explaining what it is about - tennis, addiction, product placement, humans deformed by chemicals in the environment, wacky characters, random apocalypse, giant roaming feral babies on the East Coast contained by giant fans trapping contaminated air, footnotes as a precursor to online hypertext, you name it. A lot of scenes lead up to or immediately follow some big plot action or development, which we're not quite entirely made privy to.

Mainly, it's about efforts to rein in one's brain. The title (a phrase courtesy Shakespeare) refers to an underground film made by one of the characters, a black-hole of entertainment that anyone who partakes of, as with Monty Python's "killer joke," literally amuses themselves to death - they're physically incapable of doing anything but watching it over and over on an endless loop until they die. The book endlessly explores the difficulty of human interaction, about how we get in the way of our connecting with one another.

Perhaps no other contemporary writer (aside from, maybe, Richard Powers) thought so long and so hard about what he was writing about. His sentences could run for pages, such were his vaunted, valiant efforts to wrangle the contents of his mind.

In a 2005 speech, he said:

"It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."

For the record, Wallace hanged himself.

In my so-so review of HBO's new vampire show "True Blood," I praised its opening-title sequence, which is as evocative as the memorable sequence that opened every episode of Alan Ball's previous series, "Six Feet Under." Both were created by Digital Kitchen, a group that has 10 of the past 26 nominations in Emmy's Outstanding Main Title category.

An alert reader pointed me to this essay, which argues that "True Blood's" title montage borrows key images from the trailer for the film "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus."

Dave Skaff of Digital Kitchen responded to that site:

"The accusations are not at all unfounded insofar as 'Wrong Eyed Jesus' was one a myriad of other influences - features, docs, material found online, in print, somewhere in the deep recesses of our collective cobwebbed psyches. That's how creativity works - we put these pieces in the blender, press the eviscerate button and then see what comes out in the pour. ...

"The tone of the 'True Blood' title - in audio, coloration, dynamics, editorial style, etc. - is so obviously different from the WEJ trailer as to make accusations of plagiarism obviously nitpicking. It's tantamount to claiming the opening of 'The Sopranos' is ripped from 'Night Court' - look it's New York!"

Well, yes and no. "True Blood's" main title uses other arresting images not found in that trailer - time-lapse photography of rotting animals, a Venus Fly Trap attacking - but those cribbed from the "Wrong-Eyed Jesus" trailer are among the most vivid in both artful editing jobs. And I'm not sure their tones are "so obviously different."

When I discussed his new show's title sequence with Ball, he was rightly proud of it, and one reason he gave was that it didn't feature any clichéd shots of vampires. Now we know why - there were no vampire pic's in the "Wrong-Eyed Jesus" trailer.

That said, I still think it's a cool main title. Just maybe not as original as I had first believed.

And you? Do you think this is a case of artful theft, or just much ado about nothing?

- "True Blood:" 9 tonight; HBO.

Here's Showtime's new campaign for "Californication," starring David Duchovny as a decadent and troubled writer in Hollywood:

Here's Showtime's campaign for "Out of Order," a 2003 series starring Eric Stoltz as a decadent and troubled writer in Hollywood:

Part of Showtime's green initiative, I imagine. Recycling is a good thing.

Apologies to AMC, who in fact did send out this week's "Mad Men" episode; it just arrived today (usually they're in my hands by Wednesday).

Last week's episode ended powerfully, with Betty (January Jones) receiving confirmation on something she's intuited for some time now: that Don (Jon Hamm) was cheating on her. This revelation gnaws at her as she's preparing a dinner party for Don and some colleagues. Eventually, and finally, she confronts Don; inevitably, he stonewalls.

"You think you know me - well, I know what kind of a man you are," she tells him, her sweet voice turned bitter and brittle.

Meanwhile, Father Gill (Colin Hanks) entreats Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) to work up a poster for a dance for young parishioners. Busybody biddies at the church find her work a touch on the risqué side and ask for changes, as if a chaste sales pitch will lure the kids in. "You asked me to do this based on my expertise," Peggy - who didn't think this act of charity would entail so many headaches - tells Father Gill, only slightly trying to hide her exasperation.

The episode sort of plays out in a prolonged hush. In one a disquieting sequence, characters sit alone, engulfed by the mistakes of their pasts. I know the feeling.

- "Mad Men:" 10 and 11 p.m. Sunday, AMC.

Hunter S. Thompson died a joke, right? A desiccated, drug-addled parody of his former self, no? A washed-up, wrung-out former celebrity journalist whose name got him a job typing semi-coherent copy for ESPN.com, am I right?

So here's his paranoid lapse of lunacy he unleashed just one day after the terrorist attacks of 9/11:

"Make no mistake about it: We are At War now - with somebody - and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

"It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. ...

"We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? ...

"This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed - for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. ...

"The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. ...

"The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy."

So: An addled, drug-gobbling anarchist's fever dream has become our reality.

Quietus©. You decide when.

Saturday night's episode of "Primeval" on BBC America was the British show's first-season finale. Next week's episode was the second-season premiere. A lot of time transpired between the two in England; a mere seven days separates the two here. But there seems to be a world of difference between the two installments.

(Goofy special effects gone wild.)

On Saturday, things change. This time, it's a beast from the future, not the past, that enters a time anomaly and terrorizes our present-day. Helen (Juliet Aubrey), Nick's (Douglas Henshaw's) semi-estranged, semi-strange wife who has spent the better part of the past decade traversing the time-space continuum, warns of "a serious creature incursion." As if all the others that killed and maimed people were just minor glitches.

Meanwhile, Claudia (Lucy Brown) is menaced by a goofy looking monster - in a dream. Twice. And she finally proclaims her love for Nick, which wouldn't seem to be such a good idea on a show like this, if you get my drift.

(Careful: Though it might seem like a good idea to stick your carefully coiffed noggin between those jaws leaking viscous slobber, saner heads might suggest otherwise.)

There's frenetic monster-on-monster violence, some unsavory revelations and history is changed so that Nick doesn't quite associate the present he enters at the end of the episode with the present he left about mid-episode. Huge cliffhanger.

But something seems to have happened between the two seasons with the show's brain trust - next week's episode seems pretty dumbed-down, more stunt- and action-oriented. What else can you say about an episode in which Nick punches a velicoraptor in the face?

Nick's still trying to make his way through a changed world that leaves him empty, when a bunch of raptors terrorize a local shopping mall after hours. Connor (Andrew Lee-Potts), a geek ostensibly trapped in a genius's body (or is it vice versa?), manages three thoroughly bone-headed plays in the mere expanse of one episode: He wanders out, alone and unprotected in a mall crawling with killer raptors, in search of a Slushie, he shoots Abby (Hannah Spearritt) with a tranq dart intended for a beastie, and then, lesson clearly not having been learned, he leaves her unconscious body alone and vulnerable to further attack. Idiot moves all.

"Primeval's" shift in sensibility isn't quite like they replaced "Mad Men's" writing staff with that of "According to Jim's," but it's kind of in the same ballpark. The attitude seems reflective of one character's declaration in this Saturday's episode: "Stuff professionalism."

- "Primeval:" 6 p.m., 9 p.m. and midnight Saturday; BBC America.

ABC News has released a couple of tiny clips of Charlie Gibson's interview with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and they're too stingy to allow me to embed them here, so here're the links:

Palin says she's ready to lead this country and "reform" it, which sounds like the country needs a good spanking or something.

Palin backs off the God talk, a little, tries to make her original statements a little more palatable for mainstream audiences and calls Gibson "Charlie" about five times in two minutes because she took that how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people course that says that people like to hear their own name a lot.

Added bonus: You get to sit through two 30-second commercials to watch a 90-second and a two-minute clip!

(This was not Photoshopped.)

These were questions any reporter would've asked, so obviously she was ready for them (she manages to compare her God talk to Abraham Lincoln's - huzzah! - though evidence suggests otherwise). Here's hoping Gibson will bring his A game to other portions of the interview. Though it probably doesn't matter - a lot of the people who love her do so mainly because of the boost it gives McCain's chances of winning and not for any reasons having to do with merit, though obviously they'd never actually say that. Plus, it means that Obama can never use the word "lipstick" again because he'll reveal himself to be the sort of sexist the GOP has assailed for centuries.

- "20/20," 10 p.m. Friday, ABC (Channel 7). Plus "ABC World News," "Nightline," "Good Morning America" and who knows, maybe even "The View."

(Oh, and Charlie got this little action figure, too, so the trip wasn't a total wash.)

(A toast to radio silence.)

For the first time, we didn't receive a "Mad Men" screener in time to discuss it in advance. That's the bad news. The good news is, I don't have to figure out how to discuss the show without accidentally revealing something that AMC's Powers That Be consider a spoiler.

At the "Mad Men" web site, they offer this synopsis for Sunday's episode:

"Father Gill convinces Peggy to contribute on a pro-bono church project. To win the business of a foreign beer brand, Duck and Don try to create market appeal to a new demographic. Harry is overwhelmed with the workload in his department and recruits assistance from an unlikely source."

After that, you're invited to click through to access more information on the episode, and get ... the exact same synopsis.

A friend (who's just as big a fan of the show as I am) writes, "I think your ribbing them about spoilers is appropriate - the show is hardly about the what - great art is all about the how - everybody knows that. How could they be so naive?"

Maybe FedEx just lost it. I got a FedEx package today with episode two of "Fringe," and Massive Dynamic had gotten to it in advance - the DVD was in pieces. (Well, that's one way to curb online piracy.)

- "Mad Men:" 10 and 11 p.m. Sunday, AMC.

Note to our loyal customers: You may have noticed that this blog has not been filling up with drivel at the accelerated rate with which it usually does. For which we apologize, and attempt to explain away in this brief history of physical discomfort:

4,000 B.C.: In order for His constituents to better appreciate the pleasure that fills their lives, God creates suffering.

2007 A.D.: "Cavemen," the sitcom.

2008 A.D.: For the second time in 30 months, Your Mayor endures a physical malady of some sort that is described in WebMD.com entries as "really just incredibly unendurable even for those who have a high pain threshold. Side effects include smacking one's head against the wall to alleviate the agony."

2008 A.D.: Given the shortage of actual pleasure on the Planet Earth due to global warming, a lousy economy and the Bush Administration, God considers eliminating pleasure altogether, so that his constituents won't realize just how much pain they're muddling through.

(Gabrielle Anwar and Jeffrey Donovan in a rare moment of repose, where they're not shooting at people or causing vehicular mayhem.)

Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) has been doing a lot of very efficient multitasking this season on "Burn Notice." He's handled two plotlines or so per episode - many of which were tricky enough to serve as entire episodes on other series - while also dealing with his increasingly needy mom (Sharon Gless).

Relief for Westen - sort of - is in sight. The final two episodes of season two premiere tonight and Sept. 18. It ends with a real cliffhanger, so it's safe to say it'll be back for a season three.

Tonight, Westen stumbles across Larry (Tim Matheson), a spy he had long thought dead, who offers him cash-money to kill a woman and, if things go awry, Larry advises Westen to just kill everyone in sight. Obviously, that's not how Westen rolls - he's more into keeping people alive, bless his soul - so he has to seem to take the job and botch it simultaneously.

Meanwhile, he's also trying to figure out what the heck is up with his handler Carla (Tricia Helfer, whose acting assignment this season has essentially been to look inscrutable) and some sort of assassination plot she's cooking up. And Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) has a new boyfriend. And Mom tries to get him to go through therapy - again.

(Tricia Helfer in perhaps her most overwrought turn of the season.)

Next week, same deal, pretty much - someone wants to take care of a woman (the bad guy bears more than a passing resemblance to Matheson - "Burn Notice" wants to warn America about the threat posed by doughy, middle-aged white guys); Michael insinuates himself into the action to keep her safe; that murky assassination plot procedes apace - and, oh, yeah, Mom needs yet more assurance.

"You can never be sure if you're in control or you're being played" in the spy game, Michael tells us next week - and that's true of watching these shows, as well. "Burn Notice" would be quite a different show if Westen didn't have such dedicated and talented pals as Fiona and Sam (Bruce Campbell) - for one thing, he'd never get out of so many scrapes so breezily. But Donovan, Anwar and Campbell work their chemistry with a diamond-cutter's precision, and there are a lot of splashy stunts for a show on a basic-cable budget, so the show goes down quite nicely as escapist fun.

(In this outtake from "Spiderman 3," Thomas Haden Church disguises himself as a viral ad for "Burn Notice.")

We've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: USA does pure-and-simple crowd-pleasing better than the broadcast networks these days. "Burn Notice," "Monk" and "Psych" hit all the right buttons, they don't try to get too edgy but are simultaneously mainstream and quirky enough to appeal to sizable audience factions. Were these shows originated by a broadcast network (as opposed to being repurposed during a writers strike), they'd do extremely well, I think. So if those rumors about NBC's "Entourage" bit player Ben Silverman are remotely true, USA's Bonnie Hammer - already a part of the NBC-U family - would be a no-brainer replacement.

- "Burn Notice:" 10 tonight and Sept. 18 (season finale), USA.

Last night, the creator of "Family Guy" unveiled his latest project, "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy," which we first discussed a couple of months back, which will hit the Internets today in force, at a party in West Hollywood projectile-vomiting distance from Barney's Beanery. Besides MacFarlane, who added this lucrative paycheck in addition to the $100 million Fox burdened him with back in May, there were a host of other celebrities, such as "Borat" co-star Ken Davitian and ... OK, that's all I saw, though Seth Green, Jonah Hill, Joel McHale and James Kyson Lee of "Heroes" were supposedly there, too.

Oh, and a guy dressed in that Burger King costume that MacFarlane said was Kevin Nealon. (He was joking. I think.) (The fast-food franchise is the sponsor of the initial series of these films.) If you think that Burger King in that petroleum-based-product mask is creepy in commercials, you should see him in person (shudder).

MacFarlane has produced a series of 50 short films, two of which debut today (more will roll out over the coming weeks at SethComedy.com and YouTube.com/bk). Or, you can just watch them here:

"A Dog on 'The $25,000 Pyramid:'"

"Super Mario Rescues the Princess:"

MacFarlane is the perfect person to launch this sort of project, as the short films are essentially those non-sequitur cutaways you see on "Family Guy," without the bother of having to try to retrofit a plot around them. Future funny shorts involve ducks watching "Meet the Parents," then deciding watching a blank screen offers better entertainment value, a Scotsman shouting at the screen while watching a series of famous movies ("You're not using your brains!" is a recurring cry) and Matthew McConaughey in a life raft, driving a fellow survivor to (justifiable) violence. (During the screening, some guy behind me wondered aloud, "What is he smoking?")

(A friend of Your Mayor is getting that Scotsman understandably wound up.)

This is a big deal because it proves that someone has figured out how to make serious cash off the Internets. Google, a partner in this venture, will place ads across the online universe offering MacFarlane's offerings on sites frequently visited by MacFarlane fans and/or fast-food fans.

Of course, the lesson here seems to be, if you want to make money off online content, it helps if you're already a millionaire a hundred times over or more. The rest of us plebes will still have to work it out.

Just a few minutes after watching, and mostly enjoying, the shorts that were screened, my friend and I had trouble recalling all of them, so here's my blurb for this project: "Fun and forgettable!"

Hey, the Daily News has created a really spiffy interactive site that includes all reviews of new shows, as well as recaps of returning shows and some really great graphic stuff, quizzes, photos, video - well, just check it out for yourself. Jon Gerung's the guy who's making it happen and when seeing the dedication he's put into producing the site, it makes me wish I wrote everything better.

This Q&A with Alan Ball, whose "True Blood" debuts tonight on HBO and whose directorial debut, "Towelhead," opens Friday, appeared in today's paper, though not online. Here it is, with some bonus supplemental material saved for the DVD at the end.

Alan Ball is not one to shy away from difficult subject matter. He won an Oscar for his screenplay for "American Beauty," a story about suburban dysfunction and unrest, and an Emmy for directing an episode of his landmark HBO series "Six Feet Under," a seriocomic drama about a family-run funeral parlor that each week contemplated themes like grief and mortality.

This week, he's venturing into his trickiest territory yet, with "Towelhead," the story of a 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl's treacherous encounters with sexuality and racism. But he's also leavening the film's heaviness with "True Blood," his latest HBO show about the clash of bayou vampire and redneck cultures, a show he calls "pulpy" and "rowdy."

"There are some thematic similarities, but they're also worlds apart - 'True Blood' is a different beast from anything that I've done before," Ball says of the show which premieres tonight. "It's more like a fun amusement-park ride or a Saturday matinee."

"Fun" isn't exactly a word one'd associate with "Towelhead," which is based on Alicia Erian's acclaimed novel of the same name and has spurred protest from the Los Angeles chapter of The Council on American/Islamic Relations for its racially charged title.

The film stars Summer Bishil as Jasira, a normally ebullient girl with a neurotic mother and a distant father who have divorced. When her mother sends her to her father's Houston home during the first Gulf War, she's subjected to some virulent racist cant and the disquieting attentions of her neighbor, Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart), who, like Kevin Spacey's character in "American Beauty," is not a villain but a very troubled man doing troubling things.

"True Blood," on the other hand, is based on Charlaine Harris's "Southern Vampire Mystery" series, set in a sex-strewn world where vampires are attempting to enter mainstream society but meeting fierce resistance from the religious right and other tremulous groups. Anna Pacquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse, a small-town Louisiana waitress who can read minds and finds herself in danger of being ostracized by her neighbors when she takes a liking to a 170-year-old vampire named Bill (Stephen Moyer).

"They're both the stories of young female outsiders who are struggling in their ways to connect with the world at large and also to connect romantically," muses Ball, battling a mean cold after spending weeks on the road promoting his twin projects. "When I read the source material of both, I really felt that I was right there in the world the stories were taking place in."

In a pristine hotel room - the only personal effect in it was Ball's copy of a book about Dionysus, the god of wine and champion of madness and ecstasy - the writer/director discussed the Yin and Yang and controversy behind his latest projects.

Q: Is it frustrating to be accused of racism for making a film assailing racism?

Ball: "The dialogue about hate language in general and the word 'Towelhead' in particular is a good dialogue to have. I certainly honor and respect their position. We screened it for the Muslim Public Affairs Council. It provoked a very lively discussion, and they came on the side of the movie being on their side, dramatizing what it's like to be victimized because of one beliefs.

"My position is that to ban the use of that word in any context only gives the word that much more power. However, I understand that there are people who feel that the word should never be spoken, and I respect their opinion. I don't agree with it but I certainly respect it.

Q: The tone in Erian's book made it easier to absorb some of the awful moments, but actually seeing them played out in the film can be pretty difficult.

Ball: "It shouldn't be easy to watch a character you care about have this happen to her - it's horrifying. But some estimates have it as high as one in three women had some sort of untoward sexual attention forced upon them by an older man when they're a child.

"What I loved about this book was that it presented that in all of its messy, complicated reality and it also allowed both characters in this dynamic to be human. It doesn't absolve Mr. Vuoso of any responsibility, and it doesn't victimize Jasira and it doesn't suggest she asked for it.

"But we had a screening and one man said, 'Don't you think the movie's kind of one-sided? She was asking for it.' This is a grown man, and literally the whole audience was like, 'What?'

"Vuoso is an adult; he knows it's wrong. Jasira is a child; you cannot hold her to the same standards as him. He's the one who should have stopped it. He's the one who committed a crime, not only legally but morally and spiritually, and he pays for it dearly.

"She's just trapped in a life where she has no power and she's looking for something to make her feel good. That, I think, is a more interesting story than just a child who is victimized by a sub-human monster."

Q: Your previous work didn't have bad guys, per se, but morally ambiguous characters dwelling in dark areas. What's it like working with characters in "True Blood" who are just flat-out bad guys?

Ball: "Certainly, in the source material, they're bad. That's part of the joy of it. It takes place in such a fantastic world where vampires exist. I think it makes me less inclined to seek the humanity in every single character. In 'True Blood, it's pretty clear that these are bad people and you're not supposed to want to see them do well. There's enough moral ambiguity going on elsewhere."

Q: You've said you've never been a big fan of vampire tales, but there's a cult addicted to the genre. Why do you think there're so many huge fans?

Ball: "I only have my own half-baked theories. Vampires are certainly a huge sexual metaphor. At one point, Chris Albrecht, back when he was [running] HBO, asked me, 'What is this series about?' And I thought, 'I can't say, (in a dopey voice) "It's about a lot of vampires, 'cause I think they're real fun,"' so I said, 'It's about the terrors of intimacy.' (laughs)

"But the more I think about it, the more I think that's true. It's about how terrifying it is to really let your guard down and open your psyche up to another creature. And with vampires, you're not only opening yourself up emotionally, you're opening yourself up physically - you could die.

"We live in a world where emotion and the need to connect with something deeper and more profound has been distilled into these negative doctrines - 'Feel bad about yourself. You have to behave; you have to be controlled.' We live in a culture that wants people to be afraid and protect themselves from everybody else, which is the exact opposite of what the human soul wants.

"We all have that part of ourselves that needs abandon. We all have a need for transcendence, so maybe people turn to this fantastic fiction for that."

Q: "True Blood" pokes fun at the religious right's intolerance, and "Towelhead's" subject matter is certain to offend them. Are you prepared for their attacks?

Ball: "I don't really care what they think. There's already been some vicious, kneejerk reactions to it. You know what? Yeah, this stuff punches emotional buttons and some people are going to be able to see beyond that and some won't. And some people are just going to flat-out not like it. And that's OK; I don't need to be liked by everybody. I think there's an audience for both of these; that's the audience I write for and that's the audience I belong to. I'm not interested in people who are close-minded; I don't care what they think."

*

Now, the extras:

Ball on "Towelhead's" sex scenes: "It was hard in that what we were shooting was very intimate. It was hard also, technically, because the first scene with Aaron and Summer takes place in the foyer of that house, and his hands unzip her pants and then the camera tilts up to his face and while it's tilting up he's lifting his hand out so the makeup woman can apply fake blood to it. If you see it happening out of context, it's kind of ridiculous. But the actors knew what they were signing up for, and it was a hard day, but I had harder days on 'Six Feet Under.' It wasn't that difficult because they were really on their game and I didn't have to coax them to places they didn't want to go."

On his career: "At this point in my career, I'm aware that some people are not going to like what I do. I'm a victim of my own success - I get judged differently now than I did before 'American Beauty.' There's no way around it. My approach is to try to do work that I would really be entertained and moved by, and that's all I know how do. Anytime that I tried to think, 'How is this going to play?' I created a television show ("Oh, Grow Up") that was totally manufactured to appeal to as many demographics as it possibly could and it was an abject failure. I've been successful writing things that I have fun making."

On the suburbs, as depicted in "Towelhead:" "There's this great book I read a while ago called 'The American Replacement of Nature,' and it's about how as a society we seem to have a desire to control and replace nature with something manmade. I have nothing against suburbia - I live in suburbia. But it has a lot of growth and it's a lot different from a place that seems as if someone just added water and it just sprang up. When I drive to my place in Lake Arrowhead, I drive past acres and acres and acres of beige houses so close together and think if I had to live there I'd go mad."

On his favorite TV shows: "I love 'Mad Men,' just like everybody else. I was like a gushing schoolgirl to Matt Weiner when we were on the picket line. I'm still a huge fan of 'South Park' - it just makes me laugh like no other show. I love 'Flight of the Conchords.' I just started watching 'In Treatment,' and found it way more fascinating than I thought it would. I've not seen 'Damages,' but I hear that it's great."

- "True Blood:" 9 and 10:30 tonight, HBO.

In tonight's season-five premiere of "Entourage," Michael Phillips gives a stirring, poignant and resonant performance as a TV-movie critic whose struggles with personal demons is just barely concealed behind a wry façade, a man whose very soul is slowly and mercilessly being chipped away by every piece of cinematic flotsam foisted upon his weary eyes. It's a vital, memorable tour de force, a performance for the ages, and I hope he's remembered come Emmy time.

Well, nah, but Michael's a friend of mine so I thought I'd toss him a blurb for his for-your-consideration ad. Phillips and Richard Roeper appear briefly as themselves on "Ebert & Roeper," tearing Vincent Chase's monumental folly "Medellin" to shreds.

(Incidentally, "Ebert & Roeper's" producers have changed the format and title of the show and given my friend and Roeper the boot, in order to try to appeal to a younger audience. Because, you know, nothing ruins a movie-review show like experience and perspective.)

(A 21-thumb salute to your fine performance, Mr. Phillips.)

Ari (Jeremy Piven) is apoplectic over the pans, naturally, and not even an office full of sympathy ("Michael Phillips is a d!ck," a charge commiserates) can help.

Meanwhile, Vince (Adrian Grenier) is in Mexico, f@%&ing away the humiliation with every beauty in sight. Even though he's box-office poison, a director says he's willing to hire him for a modest genre picture with potential, if Vince'll meet with him pronto.

Ari instructs Eric (Kevin Connolly) to deliver Vince or consider both of their careers dead: "We are living in a post-'Medellin' world."

Meanwhile, Drama (Kevin Dillon) is an @sshole for a weakly motivated reason at a photo shoot. Embattled NBC honcho Ben Silverman appears just long enough to say a bad word.

Next week, Vince wants to do a script that Eric has found, sending Ari into yet another rage: "No indies, E! Think of it like the Holocaust - 'Never Again.'" (Piven gets one, maybe two good lines and several tantrums per episode.)

Meanwhile, Vince bumps into an old girlfriend, Justine (Leighton Meester), who invites him to a video shoot and wrap party that day. (The time frame in this episode is cheated something awful - the party takes place during the day, for one thing, which is pretty unlikely but seems a result of "what-the-hell" plotting, as does the utterly random but serendipitous-for-the-story encounter between Vince and Justine in the first place. But then, Hollywood verisimilitude outside of Piven's character has never really been a strong suit with "Entourage.")

Vince - a couple of days after slutting it up in Mexico - is suddenly thinking long-term relationship with Justine again, only to be deflated to discover she just wanted to introduce him to a friend of hers. And Drama does yet another @sshole thing. He's a wearying one, this Johnny Drama.

Oh, and Michael Phillips didn't appear in the second episode, so I didn't like it as much. "Entourage" has always seemed like a wish-fulfillment show for everyone - the characters live lives viewers envy, and the producers hope that fans think this is what Hollywood's really like.

- "Entourage:" 10 p.m. Sunday, HBO.

Before we discuss Sunday's episode of "Mad Men," allow me to stir up a little panic within you by noting there's a slim chance that series creator Matthew Weiner won't be back on the show next season, as he's not contractually tied to a season three and is currently shopping his services around to studios, networks, etc. Of course, AMC and Lionsgate (which produces the show) will do everything in their powers, one presumes, to keep him around - and happy.

Which is something precious few characters on "Mad Men" seem to be these days - even brief periods of bucolic grace collapse within days or even minutes, it seems. As snappy and spiffy as the show is, it's thick with melancholy, and Sunday's episode is no different. Here's AMC's synopsis:

"Don buys a brand new car which befits his image as an executive who has 'arrived.' Pete, Harry and Ken strategize to attract new business. Don's secretary makes a grave error, which could spell trouble for Joan. Cooper has a new piece of art in his office that attracts the interest of the employees at Sterling Cooper."

They should've added, "Don litters."

The artwork is a Rothko, who's never done much for me (the characters don't know what to make of it, either), although it is used arrestingly here, kind of like the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

And Don gets himself a Cadillac Coupe De Ville, and it's pretty funny watching the master salesman on the other end of a sales pitch: When Don tells the dealer he currently drives a Dodge, the guy smoothly responds, "Those are wonderful if you want to get somewhere. These are for when you've already arrived."

And since we're in the middle of the season, it must be time for a Don Draper Flashback, to a time when he had funny hair.

As usual, AMC's synopsis spares us the things at the heart of the episode - a glimpse into Salvatore's (Bryan Batt) home life and a swanky party thrown by Angriest Comic Alive Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler) and his wife Bobbie (Melinda McGraw). Oddly, that whole Don-tying-Bobbie-to-the-bed-and-stranding-her-there thing from last week doesn't come up. But what does - just Jimmy being Jimmy - is even nastier and more uncomfortable.

Enjoy that new-car smell while you can, Don.

- "Mad Men:" 10 & 11 p.m. Sunday, AMC.

"Monk" achieves a rare milestone on Friday - its 100th episode, appropriately entitled "Mr. Monk's 100th Case," set around the framing device of a lurid newsmagazine show, "In Focus," with Eric McCormack playing the smarmy host James Curry.

Our regular cast is watching the show - which tracks Monk (Tony Shalhoub) solving his 100th case, naturally - at Curry's home, and while taking it in, Monk is convinced he's made a mistake.

Where this is going is actually pretty obvious, but there's some fairly inspired comedy. Disher's (Jason Gray-Stanford) girlfriend, who performs crime re-enactments in "Mostly crime shows, junk like this," as she tells Curry, demonstrates her, uh, skills to amusing affect. And there's a classic Monk sequence in which he uses a mini-vac to vacuum his vacuum, and an even smaller mini-vac to clean the other mini-vac.

Special guests from previous episodes also turn up to wax poetic about Monk, including John Turturro, Sarah Silverman, Brooke Adams, Andy Kindler, David Koechner, Howie Mandell and Angela Kinsey. After 100 episodes, "Monk" may be a little pro forma, but it remains a whimsically light confection.

- "Monk:" 9 p.m. Friday, USA.

All you need to know about History Channel's "Jurassic Fight Club" in 3 and a half minutes:

In a phone press conference this morning, Joshua Jackson, who stars as Peter Bishop, the son of an embittered and quite likely crazy scientist on Fox's highly anticipated series "Fringe," was asked about his other TV role, as Pacey on "Dawson's Creek," and said, bluntly, "If I get labeled as that it's probably because I'm not good enough to define myself as something else."

Romance may be in the air for Peter and Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), the FBI agent drawn into a world of scientific horrors. There's chemistry between the two in the pilot, which airs Tuesday, but, as Jackson drolly noted, "It would be ... awkward to hit on a woman while her boyfriend's dying right in front of her."

"A slow-burn relationship will develop," series co-creator J.J. Abrams revealed. "It's a dynamic that we will play up. But it needs to be earned. There's a lot going on in their lives - they have more urgent issues to deal with. But definitely, over time, they'll (get close)."

Abrams was asked about his take on the corporate world - in the first episode, Dunham's investigating what would seem to be some sinister activities at Massive Dynamics, where one Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) speaks evasively and elliptically. One Fed tells Dunham with weary resignation that corporations are more powerful than the government.

"The series doesn't quite hit on the corporate conspiracy aspect as much as the pilot might suggest," Abrams said. "What's much more important is the relationship between (Nina's) boss and John Noble's character (the possibly crazy scientist guy).

"Having said that," Abrams added, "I don't trust corporate culture at all."

Another pretty brilliant "Daily Show" clip, evisceratingly demonstrating how Republican talking points flip-flop more than actual flip flops, particularly when it comes to Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

Palin gave a rousing, crowd-pleasing speech last night - she was wittier and more attractive than, say, Rush Limbaugh has ever been. She had little to say in terms of policy specifics, fairly lied about her opposition to that famous "Bridge to Nowhere," misrepresented Barack Obama's policies like a champ (is Champ one of her kids?) and even made fun of the notions of helping poor people and honoring the Constitution.

But she proved to be the sort of "celebrity" that John McCain's campaign had heretofore mocked - she had withering words for speeches that inspire wild applause even as she gave one, no easy trick.

If she can dodge any further embarrassments that were divulged by the McCain team's fairly lazy vetting, which is not a given, Palin will prove to be a most uncanny choice for McCain's ticket. She seems so aw-shucks likable to many who are looking for a reason, any reason, to vote against Obama except, of course, you know, that one because they're not racist or anything.

And any attacks on her political philosophies (even her edict against abortions even in the case of rape) are already somehow being construed as sexism (how touching that the Republicans have become such champions of women's rights, given that McCain is against equal pay for equal work). So Democrats and the media are being warned to treat her with kid gloves, while it's already obvious Palin's pretty good at punching below the belt.

It'll be a wildly entertaining campaign, more compelling than most of the new fall shows and more lurid than the worst reality programs. Offer your predictions: Who'll have an on-air aneurysm first, someone at Fox News or at MSNBC?

Here's a clip from last night's "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" that keenly combines the middling Day One of the Republican National Convention and Hurricane Katrina coverage three years ago:

So The CW premiered "90210" last night without letting any critics seeing it beforehand, and insisted that they weren't hiding anything from anyone, and maybe that was true but usually it's not, and the new show is clearly aimed at people who grew up on the original show but haven't grown up a smidgen since then.

And so:

The first line of dialogue in the show was: "This sucks."

And within five minutes, we saw a guy getting a blow job in his Beverly Hills car outside a Beverly Hills high school. He then protested, "I'm not that guy," and then showed up at a party and then at the Santa Monica Beach, surfing, in a time frame that'd make "24's" Jack Bauer's traversing the Southland's time-space continuum seem palatable.

And the show's colorful granny (Jessica Walters) got to deliver lines like: "Just grab unto those jewels and twist them like a garbage bag" and "I need to finish my memoir before my friend Virginia - we've slept with all the same people." Sometimes, these lines are utter non sequiturs.

Other lines of note: "It's like the Oscars and everybody's Scarlett Johansen;" "You'll learn to dig me; trust me;" "Where's your boyfriend - the cow?"; "I could drive you home and we could swap stories about Harry's penis;" and "Ty Collins is into you - you should be into Ty Collins."

And bad girls behaved badly and bad boys behaved even worse, and the fresh faces from Kansas were kinda overwhelmed but basically weren't, and everyone was f@%&in' hot, and looked like someone 10 years older than they were supposed to be, and the local CW affiliate promoted the living sh!t out of it, interviewing cast members mid-show and even desperately promising more cast-member interview in its subsequent newscast, and it wasn't awful but it wasn't anything approaching good, either, despite the executive producers' insistence that it wouldn't be a "guilty pleasure," which is all it could ever hope to be.

And it seemed like there were an insane number of commercial breaks, and an unscientific poll (looking at a nearby digital clock) suggested that the longest commercial break (six minutes) was longer than the shortest stretch of actual showtime (four minutes). And, anyway, what was up with that ad featuring the Domino's Pizza gangsta penis penne?

This was what America was highly anticipating? No wonder people are jazzed about Sarah Palin.

("Remind me, again - what carries our show? Our breezy chemistry or my shooting the bejesus out of everything in sight?")

If a show becomes fairly successful, and its producers are adept at negotiating, then occasionally they can wheedle a vacation overseas under the guise of producing an episode or two. So it is with "Bones"' two-hour season-four premiere on Wednesday, in which Temperance (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) find themselves in London, delivering lectures at Oxford and Scotland Yard, respectively (alas, the rest of the cast remain back in Washington).

And, of course, they're called upon to help solve a murder, and then, to help prorate their costly time across the pond, yet another murder, extending their time in England over two episodes.

("I deserve better scripting!")

In tonight's first hour, Temperance and Booth are asked to investigate the murder of an heiress with a Paris Hilton bent who had ties to British royalty. Temperance is pursued by her womanizing British counterpart, Ian (Andrew Buchan), who's equally adept at poring through archaeological flotsam as she is, while Booth exchanges glances with Inspector Pritchard (Indira Varma). Their doppelgangers share the same frisson as do our heroes, only it turns out (predictably enough) that they're not so coy about resisting one another, since they don't have a show that has to run a whole bunch of seasons.

("No - I deserve better scripts!")

"Bones" is one of those shows where the scripts are pretty pro forma, but the chemistry among the actors is so inspired that you don't mind the routine plotting and dialogue.

So, Wednesday's installments has all sorts of tired gags about England - Booth cluelessly drives on the wrong side of the road and tries to break the façade of one of the Queen's guards. In the first hour, Booth's railing virulently against England and all things foreign; in the second, he finds it the best thing since spotted dick (oh, grow up; it's a British pudding). Yet, somehow, you're still engaged.

Oh, and Montenegro's (Michaela Corlin) and Hodgins' (T.J. Thyne) relationship takes an unexpected turn. And Pritchard gives Temperance some advice re: Booth that fans have been no doubt shouting for years: Just get it on already.

- "Bones:" 8 p.m. Wednesday, Fox (Channel 11).

(Vic Mackey in a light moment by his standards.)

If you're the typical Hollywood showrunner, and you're on season seven, chances are good you're running on fumes; you're phoning it in. But then, Shaun Ryan's not your typical showrunner, and "The Shield" is not your typical drama.

"The Shield's" not unlike "Prison Break," which returned yesterday, and which is long on adrenaline and rabbits along like a crazed, rabid animal addicted to sordid pulp storylines but is short on common sense. But unlike "Prison Break," "The Shield" still seems to have all the balls that are still darting about in the air make sense in one way or another.

Sure, Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and his corrupt crew of L.A. cops are looking at a hard fall somewhere down the line - hell, they've been doing that since episode one - and the stories can seem awfully convoluted, but this hasn't driven me crazy yet and I'm still compelled to find out what'll happen next.

(In case you haven't noticed, this guy's a bad-ass.)

And tonight begins the show's final season, about which Chiklis says of its finale, "What thrills me ... is you will not see this coming. You will not know what we do. Then, when you look back at it, you'll go, 'Holy cow. Yeah, that's exactly right.'"

After watching the first three episodes of the swansong season, I have no reason to doubt him. To catch everyone up: Vic has everyone p!ssed off at him - the Armenian crime gang, the Mexican cartel, L.A.P.D.'s Internal Affairs, a Mayoral candidate (Benito Martinez), even members of his own Strike Force and his estranged family. None of them would weep were he to receive a brutal comeuppance. Few would come to his side were he in need.

And yet, he soldiers on. He's a bizarre blend of sordid self-interest and a demented brand of idealism, ridding the streets of its worst elements while always straddling a line that prevents him from becoming the very thing he hates. And, as his world comes crashing in on him and threatens to expose his sundry corruptions, he nonetheless strives to honestly protect and serve. Of course, he's leaving behind him a heady body count in the name of justice.

And yet - and this is perhaps "The Shield's" particular lapse into cynical brilliance - Vic always has something on those who want to take him down. The system is so utterly corrupt, the show suggests, that Vic's own brazen, craven, abject peccadilloes are but a blip on society's radar screen, and his genius lies in exploiting everyone else, who's trying to pass themselves off as reputable.

The only person more honorable in "The Shield's" world is Captain Claudette Wyms (CCH Pounder), whose love/hate relationship with Vic has veered more toward hate recently, but she's hobbled somewhat in her quest for cleaning up her precinct by her lupus.

(And where has being the "good cop" gotten you in this series, Claudette? They gave you some obscure and awful disease! Meanwhile, Vic champions the rights of @ssholes everywhere!)

Tonight, Vic tries to turn attention away from his own many indiscretions by blithely creating a gang war between the Mexicans and Armenians. Next week, in a particularly good episode, his unique talents are required as the gang wars escalate. No main cast members have been offed yet since Shane (Walter Goggins) shockingly killed blew Lem to holy hell, but you get the feeling that it's only a matter of time. "The Shield's" nervous, jittery title sequences have perhaps never been more appropriate than as this season begins.

And now, a tribute to the "Shield" cast members who have persevered though their characters have kind of faded from relevance:

Catharine Dent (Danny Sofer): Vic knocked her up, which took a lot of her edge off; now, she's just sort of showing up at crime scenes and offering exposition.

Michael Jace (Julien Lowe): The particulars of his gay-yet-Christian character have faded into the background; again, he's like one of those "Star Trek" red-shirts, only with immunity from death.

Jay Karnes (Dutch Wagenbach): Clearly, his wry wit has made him a favorite among the show's writers, but he really only seems to be good for solving each episode's B story.

Anyway, if you've strayed from the series, this'd be an excellent time to return to the fold, just before the sh!t comes down and hard. You don't really need all that many refreshers, just to know that Vic has dug himself in even deep and no one really seems to be pulling for him to succeed. The show has three obvious conclusions - Vic dies, Vic gets busted or Vic gets away - but here's guessing that Ryan and his writers have cooked up an even more inspired form of poetic justice.

- "The Shield:" 10 tonight, FX.

This video of John McCain's furtive glances and body language after introducing his Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin suggests why he decided to pick her after only meeting her a couple of times. Enjoy - and be edified.