I don’t think I realized how much I missed House until it came back with new episodes tonight. (By the way, Robert Sean Leonard — definitely a candidate for your triply-named-80s-stars who need to give up one of their names, Cristin. Hello, Dead Poets Society.) Sometimes I think that I watch too many medical shows. After a while you just have to wonder why the writers need to rely on sick people for drama. No one has ever once been sick on Gilmore Girls, with the minor exception of that one time Grandpa went to the hospital, and that show’s still fun (a certain stupid secret love-child aside).

Also, I tend to worry about things. The more diseases that I know about, the more I will worry that I might have one. People on House have crazy shit, too, and they never just have one disease — it’s always seizures caused by drugs which is actually hiding a horrible malignant tumor which is inoperable because of a rare degenerative tissue disorder. And your husband’s been cheating on you. But praises be, we saved you!

I love this list. It includes all the best of the best, especially excellent number 8, and sadly struggling number 5. This list is so good, I can’t even think of anything to add to it. (Normally I’d be adding Veronica to the list, but The AV Club’s got its act together.)

I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating, now: watching How I Met Your Mother is like looking in a well-scripted mirror. CBS has managed to consolidate the amount of funniness generally expressed by my friends over the course of, say, 6 months, into 30 minutes, conveyed by much better looking people (no offense to my posse, I’ve got nothing but love for you). And, they’ve also managed to make Doogie Howser a sex symbol (…kind of), which is a Herculean task pre-Harold and Kumar if ever there was one.

Poor NPH. You were depicted in a major motion picture snorting coke of some chick’s lovely lady lumps, and you’re still going to be Doogie Howser, MD for the rest of your life. It could be worse—for example, the presence of your small Italian friend in Newsies (“That’s my cigar!” “You’ll steal another…”) causes me to yell “That’s VINNIE from DOOGIE HOWSER!” every time I can tear my gaze away from pre-American Psycho Christian Bale—and you’re among friends. To wit:

• Tiffani-Amber Thiessen: How long before you legally change your name to Kelly Kapowski? I noticed you pulled a John Mellencamp and tried to drop the “Amber.” Frankly, I don’t care what IMDB calls you, you will always be Kelly, every school dance will always be Zack and Kelly’s Prom, and every relationship infidelity will always be Kelly Cheating On Zack With Her Manager At The Max Who Then Cheats On Her At The Teen Dance Club “The Attic.” Even though your appearance as Valerie Malone in her good-girl-who-smokes-doobies-alone-at-night was enough to inspire every girl in my grade to rock one of those awful empire-waisted, sunflower print baby doll dresses to 8^th grade graduation, you’ll always appear in my mind how you did in Zack’s on his first day of high school, when he pulled the life-sized cardboard cutout of you in your volleyball uniform out from under his bed. Also, you and everyone else on earth who thinks you’ve earned the right to have people call you by not one but two first names needs to be taken down a peg. I’m looking at you, NPH. And you…



• Mark-Paul Gosselaar: Again. The hyphen fools no man. Take it down to two names. You have to earn the three names (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tommy Lee Jones, Melissa Joan Hart… wait….) and not even your recent turn on Commander in Chief will convince me that you’ll ever be anyone other than Zack Morris. You should be listing “Bayside High’s Loveable Prankster” on your 1040 form until the day you die. I thought you might have a chance at rising above until the day I taped your stunning Lifetime Originial Movie She Cried No and wrote out on the VHS label “The One Where Zack Rapes DJ.” You have no chance in hell of ever being an actual person, Zack, let’s not play it out like you do.



• Sean Astin: You’re a lucky one, cause you get to take it down to just one name, like Cher or RuPaul. You can just put “Rudy” on your drivers license, on your office nameplate, and on those scantron sheets for standardized tests that only give you 6 characters for your first name, truncating my brother Brendan into a Brenda. He used to love that. If you are able to walk down the street without someone chanting RUDY! At you, then the youth of America is really falling down on their job. You’ll always be Rudy to me, “Sean.” Unless you continue to override Jack Bauer’s authority at CTU when you’re not busy getting your hobbit ass beat down by your junkie sister’s thug life friends, in which case I will simply resort to calling you “Asshole.” No one messes with Jack Bauer without meeting the business end of a hissy fit from yours truly, got it? You’re angling to get a mouthful of Jostens from this girl if you don’t slow your roll and let Jack save the world. Simon Says should be named Jack Bauer says because if Jack Bauer says something then you Better. Fucking. Do it.