• California representative introduced a bill to silence loud commercials
• SciFi netowrk is changing their name to SyFy
• What we aren’t watching: Kings pulls in only 6 million viewers
• Joss Whedon reminds us that this is the week Dollhouse gets awesome
• MacGuyver is going to the big screen
• LA Times: Layoff the cast of The Office and bring in a new crew
• Henry Rollins will film a 6 episode arc on Sons of Anarchy
• Because I love you: Oldie but a goodie, Nietzsche Family Circus
• Is Food Network heading in the wrong direction?
• Top Model stampede caught on video
• This day in lists: Top 20 retooled shows

With news of Leighton Meester landing a film role, Buzz wondered which TV actors could shine on the big screen. (BuzzSugar)

This week, we listed 5 reasons why KINGS could help rebuild NBC’s empire (the TV Addict)

Remember that great promotional photo of the cast of BSG in The Last Supper pose? Ever thought about hanging that on your wall in memory of the best television sci-fi epic ever? Enjoy drinking? If you’re like me and you answered yes to all three, get over to Time Out New York and enter their BSG drinking game contest.

Hurry up and enter while you still can — this closes today. (Thanks to Ali for the tip.)

With former longtime cast member Tracy Morgan back for his first hosting gig, Saturday Night Live took a turn for the retro. I don’t really mean the agreeable if somewhat uninspired revival of Morgan’s Brian Fellows and Astronaut Jones character, which come from his early-aughts heyday on the show. This outing more closely recalled episodes from the late nineties when Morgan was more of a background-dweller and Will Ferrell was ascendant, in that the first hour was packed tight with recurring characters and easy laughs, while the last half-hour went in stranger directions. In other words, don’t look for Family Flix in E! reruns next year.

That power half-hour kicked off with a quick, funny digital short full of literalized cliches, and then saw Morgan moving into Dr. Spaceman territory with an ad for Suppressex, an erection-reduction drug. The High IQ game show and Family Flix talk show sketches were similar in that they both featured a gleefully oblivious Morgan character derailing a recognizable format, but they each took this idea in separate, hilariously unhinged directions.

It was a good thing, too, because while there were some funny moments in the View and Dateline sketches, the re-return of Kenan Thompson’s scared-straight character was classic recurring-bit hackery: take a tired concept with a thin and not particularly funny character and have a guest star play… that character again, at the same time. Even the actors seemed bored, which is probably why the most spontaneous and amusing moments were Bill Hader (rarely one to break character Fallon-style) struggling not to crack up as Morgan seemed to improvise some physical schtick, and everyone else trying not to lose it a few minutes later, as Jason Sudeikis contributed some goofy body language of his own.

In the scattered spirit of Tracy Morgan’s cue-card readings, the rest of my thoughts on this episode will be in note form:

-As far as semi-obscure impressions go, I prefer John Malkovich to the cast of Big Love, although I have to say, Abby Elliott does a pretty decent Chloe Sevigny and Casey Wilson does a commendable Ginnifer Goodwin. But these young kids, why don’t any of them know how to imitate politicians?

-Tracy Morgan used to play Star Jones on View sketches. Now he plays Sherri Shephard, who plays his character’s wife on 30 Rock. Also, he used to be the only one doing a View character in drag. In this episode, it was three out of five.

-Update was kinda weak, save the Malkovich bit and Tracy Morgan’s misinterpretation of the “Really?!?” feature.

-Lots of sketches tonight, and yet they still had to repeat two fake commercials. You’d think they’d try to stockpile more of those at the beginning of the season.

-Maggie wondered which sketch(es) garnered Tina Fey her additional material credit. Looking over the sketch list, I really don’t know. Maybe the View thing, since she used to write the Cheri Oteri-era incarnation? Nothing else really pops out.

-Kelly Clarkson has cemented her status as Earth’s most tolerable American Idol, but she should probably stop dressing like Stevie Nicks.

Episode Grade: B-

• Krisin Bell to star in Heathers Broadway musical?
• Why Heroes should set an end date
• Lost: A major character death is coming
• Big Bang Thoery gets renewed for 2 more seasons
• Firefly wins 1st annual Hulu award for Shows We’d Bring Back
• Ashlee Simpson joins the Melrose Place remake
• Paris is now your #1 source for fashionable decapitated muppet heads
• Futurama’s return still up in the air
• Guy who robbed Lost’s Josh Holloway gets 30 years in prison
• This day in lists: Top 10 most controversial South Park episodes
• And finally, some cheese for ya. Neverending Story and Goonies performed by Kids Incorporated
  

Kings premieres this Sunday, but I got to see the first three episodes already to review the show for PopMatters. They were supposed to put up the review today, but the film section ran long and they decided to push it until the weekend. I guess that means that you guys get the first scoop on my opinion, but I’ll just give you the gist to avoid repeating myself. Check PopMatters.com this weekend for the full thing. [ETA: Official review is up here.]

The bottom line: I like it, as Maggie said, for its constant WTF factor. It’s just weird. Well, on some level, it’s the same as any primetime soap. There’s a fish-out-of-water that has to learn how to roll in an impossibly beautiful, elite social circle while everyone’s parents are distracted with their bad marriages. But, in Kings, this formula is injected into something truly bizarre. I dig alternate realities, and this one looks like a prettied-up, super-corporate version of New York. Figuring out the ins and outs of a modern, warring monarchy is the best part. So, while the “epic” nature of the show can drag things into boring, I liked it because it shows me something that no other series does. It’s not set in a hospital, or in a police station, or in a recognizable era from America’s past, or some combination of those (a prison hospital transported to the ’70s?). It’s off in its own crazyland. I fully support that.

Hey, something great happened on TV last night! No, I mean other than Jon Stewart pwning Jim Cramer. Half of the original cast of ER showed up to help bury that creaky old workhorse. And I say that in the most affectionate way possible.

Yeah, my roommate and I are like the last people in America watching ER. We may be the only people who care that after fifteen freaking seasons, the show that actually was Must-See TV back in, um, eighth grade, is coming to an end. And we are not (or at least I’m not) particularly ashamed that we squealed like thirteen-year-old girls when George Clooney showed up.

Here’s the best part of last night’s episode, if you’re not interested in seeing Susan Sarandon cry or Eriq La Salle show up to needle Noah Wyle. Although that was great.

Also, and stop reading here if you DVRed the episode and actually care what happened, I appreciated that Doug and Carol never find out that the kidney went to Carter. I watched Private Practice earlier in the evening (after missing about a month’s worth of episodes. Strangely, this does not affect my comprehension), and when the hot cardiac surgeon that Addison was flirting with in the scrub room (DANGER, WILL ROBINSON. HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT HOT SURGEONS?!) turned out to be her high-risk pregnancy patient’s wannabe wandering husband, the contrivance actually leaped out of my television and smacked me over the head.

Like, I get it, Shonda. You think everything is connected. But sometimes everything is not connected. Would it have been dramatically weaker if the hot surgeon was just married to a lady we, the audience had never met? (Nice touch that they kept meeting in the scrub room, where he wouldn’t be wearing his wedding ring, though.) Would we have been okay with Addison sleeping with a married man if we hadn’t known that the man’s wife had had two miscarriages and was now on bed rest to keep their much-hoped-for baby inside her body until it’s viable? I don’t think so. As much as we think sometimes that there are only about 100 people in New York and everything else is done with mirrors, sometimes strangers happen, SHONDA. ER gets that. And while that’s not the only reason it’s lasted 15 years, it’s something I appreciate. Also, George Clooney. I missed you.

One’s a pasty, black t-shirted British comedian. One’s a blood red, usually nude American kids entertainer.

Via Best Week Ever, here’s a glimpse of a remarkably light-hearted Ricky Gervais and a remarkably dark Elmo.

Totes awk, y’all.  But satisfying nonetheless.

This is part two, where the meat of the interview begins.  Here’s part three.