Yeah, I don’t know what the plan for the news is.

• In case you didn’t notice it in the TV Blog Coaliton post, Jace at Televisionary talked to Jane Espenson about death and TV.
• Simon Cowell: “I’m going to pretend I’m thinking about quitting American Idol so I can get more money.”  I’m paraphrasing.
• Singer Adele will guest star on Ugly Betty.
• Lost leads the pack in online viewings.
• Was the season finale of Sarah Connor the last we’ll hear from the show?
• The Tudors will have a fourth season. Guessing it will be sexy.
• Buy crap with Top Chef and the Real Housewives on it.
• An article on the rise of Chuck Lorre as the king of the sitcom.
• How is How I Met Your Mother is trying to hide two pregancies?
• No more of that TNT show with Erik McCormack and Tom Cavanagh.
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia will have a straight-to-DVD Christmas special.
• Can a big old gay win American Idol?
• Look at Amy Poehler and Will Arnett’s big baby boy.

Buzz got to wondering about the TV shows that are sort of the opposite of guilty pleasures, the ones you don’t even like very much but can’t seem to quit watching. (BuzzSugar)

Not willing to let go of the show without a fight, Give Me My Remote dedicated the week to Chuck. We had special features, polls, soundtrack listings and viewer testimony. Did you lend your voice? Here’s top hoping NBC orders a third season soon. (Give Me My Remote)

Rescue Me was back in fine form with its fifth season premiere. And as an added bonus: an Alex P. Keaton sighting. (Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green)

In case you didn’t know, Vance goes to the theatre a lot, and then blogs about it. He also likes to stalk celebrities like James McAvoy after the show. (Tapeworthy)

After thinking about a particularly shocking character death this week, Jace talked to former BSG and Buffy writer and current Caprica showrunner Jane Espenson and some other television industry insiders about the role of death on television today. (Televisionary)

Sara was all aflutter over the BBC reality show Any Dream Will Do, which is possibly the campiest thing she’s ever seen. Hear that Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber? (TiFaux)

Kate was oh-so-pleasantly surprised by Southland. (TV Filter)

Matt didn’t love the premiere of Parks and Recreation. But he won’t give up on it yet! [TV Fanatic]

This week, the TV Addict wondered if casting Leonard Nimoy in FRINGE is well, highly illogical (The TV Addict)

There are a couple of tired sketch formats Saturday Night Live writers never seem to tire of throughout the years, to the point where I wonder if they seem their mustiness and repetition as a challenge to somehow produce the well-written exception to the rule. That’s the only justification I can think of for a sketch like the one from this weekend’s episode where Fred Armisen (in drag) plays an actress who keeps screwing up takes on a commercial set by playing her scene as raving drama rather than inane comedy. I can’t remember the last time this oft-used formula actually worked. Typically, there are a few chuckles at whatever causes the first “cut!” and then a sharp decline as the sketch goes nowhere. The flubbed-takes format is inherently diminishing: reduction disguised as escalation.

Another favorite tactic: take a recurring character, and then have the host play more or less a copy of that character. This weekend, Zac Efron was given a particularly tricky assignment of that ilk: he had to play Cody Gifford, son of Kathie Lee Gifford, who is not just an overused SNL recurring character (in the fourth-hour-of-Today sketches, which I’m told by people who have actually seen the fourth hour of Today are, at least, pretty accurate) but an actual person. This gave Efron’s imitation of Kristen Wiig’s tics a particularly weak copy-of-a-copy effect.

Via Stereogum, here’s a clip of The Office’s Rainn Wilson and Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo covering Joan Osbourne’s it-was-even-embarassing-to-listen-to-back-then hit “One of Us.”

It’s a shame that was her breakthrough single because she’s a really talented singer. One of Us was probably simultaneously the most radio-friendly and worst song on the album.

But here’s the clip. The magic begins at 4:40.

If you listen to the New York Post, Washington D.C. is going to be the next location for the eighty-fourth season of The Real World. And, frankly, I’ll believe it when I see it.

D.C. has been the perennial bridesmaid when it comes to The Real World location finalists. And for good reason. While it is a big city, it’s not necessarily a city known for drinking and fighting — the two pillars of Real World drama.  The drinking and fighting that happens in DC tends to involve Hill staffers rolling up their shirtsleeves at happy hour and really getting into it about which bill is full of pork and what will or won’t get out of committee. I can’t imagine the kids are going to want to watch that.

Even though the producers have claimed in recent seasons to search for cast members who have some substance, the only episode I’ve seen this season (the third time the show has gone to the New York well) involved one super-buff blonde guy locking up the kitchen cabinets as punishment to his other roommates (and another, in retaliation, stealing something of his and hiding it). While they may want to cast some smarties on this season, you’ve got to have at least a few dumb jerks to keep it watchable.

Generally speaking, to function in D.C. you need to at least be able to know most of the members of Presidential Cabinet and a few obscure congressmen to hold your own at cocktail parties. Let me put it this way: The most quintessential D.C. situation I can recall was a friend of mine telling me that he had found himself in a local gay bar, talking energy policy with a guy clad in a leather harness.

So, if The Real World does come to D.C. (and God help us all if it does), here are some possible neighborhoods they could live in:

Adams Morgan — If you want drinking and fighting, this is where it’s going to happen. While Adams Morgan is quite lovely on weeknights and during the day (hipsters brunching, grad students with their laptops), on Fridays and Saturdays it quickly turns into amateur night. There are girls in cute skimpy tops freezing their asses off in February, drunk guys in stripey collared shirts and fancy jeans calling each other ‘brah’ and any number of undergraduates puking their jumbo slices up on the sidewalk.

U Street — This is my new neighborhood. The U Street/14th Street corridor is rapidly becoming the new gayborhood (although maybe it’s already moved out to Shaw — it’s hard to keep track, the gays wear me out) and there’s a lot of nightlife with jazz clubs and rock clubs.

Columbia Heights — Probably one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Northeast DC (for now, the new Target is attracting the folks with strollers and nice sweaters), it’s still transitioning a bit. I can definitely see the cast at the Wonderland bar, a hipster dive that attracts a surprisingly eclectic crowd. But, then again, I wouldn’t want them there. So forget I said that.

Capitol Hill — Although this may change with the Obama administration and the powerful Democratic majority, the Hill has always seemed to be a haven for high school class presidents with pleated pants. The portion of the neighborhood in SouthEast DC is arguably the most happening area (a piano bar, the gay cowboy bar — ooh, I bet you they will totally cast some gay dude who wants to be a DC Cowboy) and they’ll probably be able to find a relatively cheap house to gut and redecorate.

Welcome to the city kids. If you stay away from Nellie’s, The Black Cat, The Fox and Hound, Toledo Lounge and The Raven, we’ll get along just fine.

Harper’s Island premieres tonight at 10:00 pm on CBS. I wrote a review of it for PopMatters.

I asked to review it because, early in the fall, I got a screener with an excerpt of the pilot on it, and it looked pretty interesting. If you don’t know, the story is a 13-episode murder mystery. Guests arrive on an island off the coast of Seattle for a week-long wedding celebration. The island also happens to be the site of some gruesome murders that took place seven years prior. Guess what? Before the party even arrives, someone starts picking off the invitees. (My guess? The bride’s father. Weddings are damn expensive, and I bet he’d do anything to cut down the guest list.) It’s a little Lost, a little 10 Little Indians, and a little I Still Know What You Did Last Summer all rolled into one.

The best part about that little half-screener, though, was that Bill Pullman was in it. Even better–he played a very un-Pullman character, the wacky uncle who shows up at the ferry with a mariachi band and immediately starts hitting on bridesmaids. The minute his grinning face flashed across the screen, everything about the show seemed awesome. Now, imagine my surprise when, after I get the official, honest-to-God, full-length pilot a couple weeks ago, the mariachi band shows up, the drunk man wearing the sombrero turns–and it’s Harry Hamlin. What happened to Pullman?

The stars search anxiously for Bill Pullman.

Now, it’s not fair to review a show based on the pre-screener. In PopMatters, I gave Harper’s Island a bad review based on what was there, not what could have been there. Unfortunately, the series premiere does not do so well as a full hour. Man, that thing is plagued with expositional dialogue. I still love the idea of a murder mystery that gets resolved after 13 episodes, and maybe it gets better as it goes on. But, somewhere between that first screener and the full pilot, all of the life seemed to get sucked out of the show. And I can’t help but think that, even though his character is minor at best, the loss of Pullman had something to do with it.

At least I can picture him leaving the show in the manner of his grand entrance–full of tequila and with a screw-it-all attitude. I’m guessing it was his choice to go. For some reason, I don’t think the show dumped him Harry Hamlin. Maybe if it was Tom Hanks.

Photo: Chris Helcermanas-Benge/CBS ©2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Since Gossip Girl was a repeat this week (I know! I was sad too), I thought I’d share with y’all what my roommate and I did Sunday night (aside from watching the Academy of Country Music Awards, because I know you don’t care).

We watched a zillion hours of the BBC reality competition series Any Dream Will Do and squealed like insane people at every hilariously cheesy music cue, kick-ball-change, and pinched glare from LORD ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER AND DON’T YOU FORGET THE “LORD” PART.

How can you not love this hot mess?

So Any Dream Will Do, which is about casting the lead role in a new West End production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, originally aired in the UK two years ago, and the winner has presumably been playing Joseph eight times a week ever since in the finest tradition of Donny Osmond Jason Donovan. I’m kind of trying not to find out who wins the show, because I like suspense, but if you want to know, mosey on over to Wikipedia. They’ll tell you.

But the best part isn’t who wins. It’s the SHEER TECHNICOLOR INSANITY of this show. First, the … I don’t know what to call them. The judges? But they’re also mentors. And several of them appear to want to sleep with various contestants. I shall call them the Seacrest-Gunn-Abdul team. They include host presenter Graham Norton and judges/mentors John Barrowman, LORD LLOYD WEBBER, and several other people who are not as cute as John Barrowman or as bitchy as LORD LLOYD WEBBER so I don’t care about them. There are also eleven remaining Josephs after an audition process that went a lot like American Idol (I guess): They started with like 100, invited 50 to “Joseph school,” and then cut it down to 12 for the first live show. And Joseph school, let me tell you, was fucking hysterical. The part where the producers decided to score a dance rehearsal with Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” was the first time I spilled wine all over myself because I was laughing so hard.

Ah, shit. I just found out who won. Oh well. I will enjoy anyway.

So. This show is fantastically campy, especially the SING-OFF AT THE END. The two wannabe Josephs who got the fewest phone-in votes from the discerning theatre critics of Britain had to battle each other in song. It was epic. I present to you: The Bridge Over Troubled Fashion.

And then when the fellow on the right was eliminated by LORD LLOYD WEBBER, the other Josephs took his Dreamcoat away! And they made the poor eliminated sap sing “Close Every Door To Me”! That was the fifth time I spilled my wine in a fit of giggling glee. This show is awesome and I’m going to watch every rainbow minute of it.

Last week Life On Mars died a quiet death.  Like a mouse. Who was born without a larynx. In space.

The low-rated show was never necessarily a must-see — the supporting characters tended to be a bit one-note and all of the drama always felt a bit silly.  But it was pleasant and tolerable for the strong cast, the seventies style and the clever teasing of its time-traveling mystery.

I suppose the whole mystery of the series (why Detective Sam Tyler teleported to the seventies after being hit by a car in the present day) is what kept me — intermittently — watching. If this had been just another procedural, I can’t imagine I would have given it more than a obligatory pilot screening (hi there, Lie To Me!).

So the whole series ended during the show’s series finale last week, with the uncommon luxury of being able to wrap up the story — unlike, say, Pushing Daisies. And the end was safely ‘outside the box.’ All of the characters ended up being astronauts on their way to (guess where?) Mars during the year 2035, with Harvey Keitel’s character ending up being Sam Tyler’s dad and a brunette Gretchen Mol having a perhaps budding romance with him. The entire series was a bizarre dream that he experienced while in a deep sleep on the voyage to the Red Planet.

While I appreciate the high concept and the risk-taking, I suppose I am a little bit disappointed that the 2008 frame never got any sort of resolution (a romance with Lisa Bonet, a psycho killer on the loose). Although perhaps part of that was resolved on an episode I never watched.  Anyway, tra la!

The one part of the ending I could have done without was when the Ed Harris-y mission control guy said something about President Obama not being able to make it because SHE had to go visit her ill father in Chicago. I suppose I’m just leery of any bit of dialogue that just screams “ZING!”

For what it’s worth, this was a cleaner resolution than I had expected. Which is nice. It seems more upbeat than the original British series’ conclusion.

In case you missed it…