Buzz launched a printable night-by-night TV calendar so you can know when your favorites are on. Pretty! (BuzzSugar)

This week, Joshua Jackson and J.J. Abrams talked about their new show Fringe. (Daemon’s TV)

With everyone complaining about how terrible the new 90210 is, Marcia made the point that the old one was pretty damn awful when it started, too. (Pop Vultures)

WWE Diva Mickie James makes a guest appearance as a derby girl on this week’s Psych and we spent some time chatting with her about the experience. (RTVW)

How can a show like Raising the Bar be bad when it features not one but two Bayside alumni. Now if they can bring back Mr. Belding. (Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green)

Vance finally has time to start posting about the Fall TV Preview (Tapeworthy)

This week, Jace found that he was less than thrilled with the CW’s relaunch of 90210, complete with overplayed songs, one-dimensional characterization, and found it to be much less fun overall than Gossip Girl, The O.C., or Skins. (Televisionary)

TiFaux never got around to watching TNT’s premiere of Raising the Bar, but Dan had some very important things to say about Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s new shaggy mane. (TiFaux)

Never miss your favorite show this fall! Download and print theTVaddict.com’s Ultimate Fall 2008 Season Premiere Calendar (The TV Addict)

We gave you our take on summer’s TV landscape — and it wasn’t pretty. (TV Filter)

It’s confession time, Internet.

I watch ER with stunning regularity. I mean, I won’t stress out if I miss an episode or watch it on the TiFaux in a less-than-timely manner, but I’ve safely seen the lion’s share of the past several seasons (after taking a break from it in, uh, my early-to-mid twenties).

And it’s a little shameful, I know, because the show is just a glorified, past-its-prime soap opera. I’ve definitely been in social situations where the topic of “did you realize ER is still on the air and it has Uncle Jesse on it?” has come up and I’ve just looked down and taken another swig from my Yuengling. Because it’s embarassing, and in a different way than watching “The Biggest Loser” is embarassing.

At least watching The Biggest Loser is ridiculous by any standards and I can explain it as a vice (I just love the competition aspect and making love to Trainer Bob with my eyes). With ER, I have nothing to blame but my unwillingness to break a habit and my own love of comfort television.

It’s the difference between unabashedly singing along to Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” in the car and air-tenor sax-ing to Kenny G.

Why am I talking about this?…  oh yeah.  First up, if you didn’t know, Angela Bassett is going to be on the show next season. This makes me sad because even though it is a high profile network gig, I really feel like Angela can do better. John Stamos -> step up. Angela Bassett -> step down.

But now Anthony Edwards is coming back!  For real!  He’s not going to be a twin brother or a back-from-the-dead incarnation of Dr. Greene, he’s just going to appear in flashbacks to give backstory to Bassett’s character. I guess this will be interesting to watch play out, but mostly it just makes me feel bad for Anthony Edwards — especially since IMDB says his resume has been pretty barren since he left ER.

Oh well.  Welcome back, Anthony. Perhaps Mandy Patinkin can show up and there can be an old-school ER/Chicago Hope crossover!

More music!

This is a video by a fun band called CSS — which is short for Cansei de Ser Sexy (”Tired of Being Sexy” in Portuguese). They’re a mostly-female Brazilian band that plays sassy electronic rock music, much of it having to do with pop culture. Remember that song “Music is My Hot Hot Sex” from the iPod commercial?  That’s them.

The video for Move finds the band galavanting about, taking Polaroids of each other doing wacky things. It’s enough to make you wish that instead of working in an office you were actually just a free-wheeling hipster with tight pants, an old-fashioned van and an entourage of like-minded bohemians.

Recently this Web site run by the Nielsen company — Hey Nielsen — sent us an e-mail asking for our feedback on a variety of shows that are starting up this fall. They didn’t choose to spotlight any of my insightful comments, but it’s an honor just to be asked. I suppose.

Here are the results. You can read all of my comments by going here and then searching down the page for TiFaux. That’s something for you to do at work, eh?  After that, maybe you can go see if there are any muffin scraps in the conference room.

My hope is that they will use this as a repository for networks to try to hype their new slates and somehow we’ll see TiFaux comments on promotional materials. Probably not, though because (surprise, surprise) I didn’t have a lot of effusive praise to give out.  It was mostly limited to me saying that True Blood might not suck if they re-shoot the pilot and Joshua Jackson is a hottie.  And they hardly need me to say any of those things.

NBC publicists sent us some promotional clips to celebrate the release of the fourth season of The Office on DVD. I’m generally disinclined to just post things that publicists send us, but I’m helpless to resist a good blooper reel.

Plus, it’s interesting to see how they film the show — trying to keep the scene going despite crack-ups.

Last week was fun. Ish.

The Democratic National Convention was fun because it definitely filled me with hope — if not specifically the Obama-style promises of “hope,” but because I actually felt reassurance that there will be a regime change. That said, you had to take the good and bad throughout the event. While Michelle Obama is always amazing and that Montana governor was fun and adorable, you also had to deal with the sweaty, drunken outbursts of Chris Matthews (b-t-dubs, I totally saw him once on the street in DC and he was definitely muttering to himself).

Now it’s the Republicans’ turn. As I type this, I’m watching our Commander in Chief speak and I’m waiting for him to read “pause for applause” aloud from the teleprompter.

Moving on, I just came across this series of advertisements that I like from a “non-partisan” organization called The UnConvention. The organization aims to “create a forum in which to promote the democratic and free exchange of ideas on important issues” in a contrast to the scripted nature of the convention itself.  It doesn’t appear that this took place at the DNC, however, if you catch my drift.

PS: Cindy McCain — not that I’m really trying to help your team out, but one bit of advice: no more severe up-’dos.

I think I’m going to post more music videos on TiFaux.

It may seem like a bit of a distraction from our main topic of television, but I have justified my music posts before. Basically, I can excuse myself for shifting focus because MTV doesn’t really show a lot of music these days, rendering a lot of videos useless (especially indie ones).

Plus, with the lack of television news to write about in recent months, there’s a lot more going on in the music world than on TV. You have no idea how hard it’s been to come up with shit to write about over this summer.

Here’s Crystal Castles’ scary new video for Crimewave.  It mixes zombies and hipsters.  The result, as you may be able to guess, are some people who look very, very hungry.

Crystal Castles - Crimewave (Crystal Castles VS. Health)

I’ve had the series premiere of Raising the Bar on my bedroom floor for a while now. The good folks at TNT decided they wanted some coverage of their fledgling legal drama on this humble blog, and sent me the pilot far in advance.

However, my ability to procrastinate on watching said DVD far outweighs their initiative in sending it weeks ahead of time. As such, I have nothing to say about TNT’s new lawyer drama — except this: get a load of Zack Morris’ hair.

“Well, hello.”

The show stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar as the ‘idealistic public defender’ archetype.  Thus, he pairs his stylish, fitted suit with long, tangled, devil-may-care tresses.  It’s ivy league education meets the gentle carpenter.  It’s all-American earthiness meets exotic heartthrob. Mostly, though, it’s a continual (yet foolhardy?) effort to distance himself from our favorite adolescent imp, Zack Morris.

God bless you and all three of your names, Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Early notoriety is hard to overcome for any child actor and you may never earn yourself a clean slate. But all you can do is try. Some may have fallen in their quests (when’s the last time you called Lark Voorhies, M-P?), but good luck in your efforts.

Meanwhile, if you’re actually interested in the content of the show (it’s about lawyers or something), here’s a preview…

Buzz chatted with 90210’s Shenae Grimes about the responsibilities of being “The new Brenda.” (BuzzSugar)

Marcia returned from the Edinburgh TV Festival with tales of Heroes and Doctor Who, straight from the showrunners’ mouths. Also, new site design! (Pop Vultures)

Rae’s spent the summer with her nose buried in a book and it’s finally paying off for us with her review of the Burn Notice novel “The Fix.” (RTVW Online)

A reason to check out the new season of Greek: chicks in socks. (Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green)

Vance loves Gavin & Stacey and insists that you all watch it too so that you too can fall in love. (Tapeworthy)

This week, Jace took an early look at the first three episodes of the new season of Gossip Girl and offered up which new and returning series he’ll be watching this fall. (Televisionary)

Before the conventions started and we got all partisan, Sara got all “thinky” and discussed the optimistic nationalism of the Olympics. Never fear, we’ll soon return to our guttural reactions on Project Runway. (TiFaux)

The TV Addict had the time of his life at Fox’s Fantastic FRINGE series premiere party in New York City (The TV Addict)

Raoul got excited about the possibility of a (re)animated Buffy Summers. (TV Filter)