Normally, the Going Through Channels blog is your source for explicit instructions on what we think you should be watching on TV. But there's one show I feel strongly enough about to boss you around over here too: Adult Swim's Frisky Dingo.

WAIT. Hear me out! I know that Adult Swim is kind of hit and miss. You love Harvey Birdman, and then they come out with some crap like Squidbillies. But Frisky Dingo is really good: it's the epic struggle of a superhero (Awesome-X) and a supervillain (Killface), who are also sometimes best friends...when they're not trying to blow up the planet, maintain Train Island, or run for President. And yes, I realize that if you've never seen the show before and just tune in on Sunday night at midnight without any kind of context, it's going to seem insane. But that's how Glark and I first saw it: we were on vacation and saw, like, the eleventh episode of the first season's thirteen, and although it made no sense, it was so funny that we immediately had to watch the whole season. (It's available on iTunes for $10 or something -- COMPLETELY WORTH IT, I PROMISE.)

Seriously? It's hilarious. I don't even want to tell you too much about plot lines because I don't want to wreck it for you. Just trust me.

Our dear Miss Alli is on vacation this week, so in her absence, I have to carry the torch of not being able to forget the horror that is Married By America. Today, that means noting this fantastic item in The Hollywood Reporter: "FCC: 'Marriage' still indecent." Because it really, really is -- and not because of the pixilated genitals, either.

In case you're not so over the whole thing already that you're under it -- and Joe R and I have pretty much had it with the Academy by this point -- here's a quick rundown of notable coverage around the internet.

You can start right here on TWoP with the real-time blog of the telecast, featuring me, Joe R, Odie, and Matt Zoller Seitz.  We've also put together a Fametracker-style Galaxy Of Fame that you may care to enjoy.

 

Elsewhere, Joe R presents his alternative nominees; Green Cine Daily analyzes the victories (and offers a buttload of links to other critiques of the telecast, the winners, and What It All Means); A.O. Scott puts the Oscars in context; and you aren't only one wondering what the F was going on with some of those outfits (no more drunk stitch-and-bitches for you, Mrs. Day-Lewis) -- the Fug Girls have got you covered.

As we work our way through the vintage 90210 episodes on SoapNet -- I believe the "Jackie is pregnant with Cheating Mel Silver's baby" episode is airing today -- I'd like to take a minute to celebrate one of the unsung performances of the show's breakout second season: Jenny O'Hara as Dead Scott's unstrung mom, Pam Scanlon.

 

Mrs. Scanlon is dreadfully uncomfortable to watch.  This isn't unusual for a 90210 guest star of the era, since they usually can't act (see: Sue Scanlon); are the nexus of some ham-handed One To Grow On subplot that makes them central to the gang's doings, never to be seen again; and got dressed in the early nineties, enough said.  But O'Hara is genuinely hard to watch from a character standpoint, because we had, or had friends who had, moms like this -- not getting the difference between a kiddie party and one for teens; total hard-asses about getting the cake lit on time; aggressively frumpy and unsophisticated.

 

O'Hara is a Hey, It's That Incompetent And Mean Nurse Or Overinvolved Mom, and with good reason; her disapproving frown is the best in the business.  We salute you, lady.

Here's the thing about being Johnny Knoxville. If you decide to participate in a show like Jackass (which I love, by the way -- it speaks directly to the eleven-year-old boy in me), and abuse your body in ways big (getting covered in bees) and small (giving yourself wee papercuts in the webbing between your fingers), and continue doing this when you're pushing forty and clearly don't do a lot of stretching before your stunts or eat well or keep in shape, really...well, eventually you're going to tear your urethra. At least Knoxville's already fathered one child. Who may remain an only child.

So did you see My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad last night? It's sort of like Nerf American Gladiators, where dads and their kids do a bunch of wocka-wocka goofy stunts trying to score points, and then at the end, one of the dads has to answer questions to indicate whether he knows his kid (kind of like The Newlywed Game). It's mostly ridiculous, but it does have this weird, skeevy tone where it's like they actually are trying to make the kids think that their dads are either awesome or not, depending on how they do. At this.

The best part, though? The best part is where the dads take turns guarding a big plate-glass target shaped like a house, where the other team tries to fire big Nerfy projectiles that break the "windows" of the house and get points. And what does the dad use to defend the home? A tennis racquet and a frying pan, of course.

That's right -- Dad is literally defending the home using a frying pan. I just...I don't know what else to say. Except that I missed the beginning, got to the end, and literally shouted out loud in my living room, "OH MY GOD, that IS Dan Cortese!"

You know, I'm not new to seeing the internet plotz itself into fits over things I don't care about, nor am I new to seeing it plotz itself into fits over things I don't care about that are related to American Idol. But the new "ringer" scandal, in which there is outrage -- OUTRAGE! -- that some of the contestants, particularly Carly Smithson, are properties somebody has tried to sell before and given up on...that one does beat all.

I understand the idea that Idol is supposed to be finding fresh-faced young talent that's undiscovered, but isn't the idea of that supposed to be that you give somebody a chance who's desperate to get one? If it is, I have to point out: you know who's more desperate for a chance than somebody who's never been given one? Somebody who's been given one and had it blow up miserably right in her face. Come on, what's more inspirational than a comeback tale from somebody who's already failed once? Isn't that the American dream, even more than being randomly discovered at a soda fountain? Can a serious case be made that discovery is any greater to see than rediscovery?

Unless you are enormously naive, which you are not, you know perfectly well that the fact that Carly Smithson flopped with her first album could -- and probably does -- have more to do with the fact that she was turned over to incompetent middle-managing nitwits who didn't know what to do with her talent than with the fact that she was untalented. Is that the story Fox is going to go with? Probably not. Is it inspirational for them to take potshots at the stupidity and short-sightedness of a music industry so fundamentally inept that it couldn't turn this beautiful, talented girl into someone capable of selling more than 378 copies of her album? Of course not.

The fact is that Carly Smithson is a more inspirational story than they're telling you. She is potentially being rescued by 19 Entertainment from...an experience very much like what people believe is the worst side of 19 Entertainment. Of course they're not going to present it this way, that one record company has already squandered her talent so royally that she wound up anonymous after $2.2 million was blown on marketing her. They're not hiding the fact that this is her history so you'll like her; they're hiding the fact that this is her history so you don't think about the fact that being the subject of a huge marketing push -- like Taylor Hicks was, like Katharine McPhee was, like Ruben Studdard was -- isn't enough to make you a star. The show's mythology is that a record company taking you under its wing is the same as becoming a star; her story proves that's not the case. Her previous failure to launch interferes not with the image anyone is trying to present of her, but the image they're trying to present of themselves.

This has nothing to do with "she's not undiscovered, and thus we've been snookered." This has to do with the fact that she is exactly the kind of person whose resurgence is so against-the-odds that it's much closer to the actual image of what this show is supposed to be able to accomplish than is the story of some spoiled brat who's been singing in county fairs up until now but has never seen the actual seedy parts of the music business.

When people questioned her teariness, I was stunned. Of course she's the most teary! She's the most shocked. She's the most keenly aware of the thin line between success and failure.How do you think it felt to have everyone counting on you, whispering in your ear that you were going to be a success, pouring money into your future greatness, and then selling 378 copies of your record? There is nobody in this competition, it seems to me, who's more equipped to know what it is to scrape the bottom of the hopeless barrel than this girl. This is potentially a great story. A great story. I saw her referred to somewhere, quite derisively, as "leftovers." Is it really true that the record industry is so good at capitalizing on talent that anyone who wasn't successfully marketed by one company and one company's marketing team can be dismissed as undesirable, somehow second-class and second-rate, for life?

There's no scandal here. She is undiscovered. She's undiscovered instead of non-discovered. First she was discovered, and then she was un-discovered, and her odds of ever being discovered again were a damn sight worse than the ones that were facing Katharine McPhee after she, per Wikipedia, had won a local L.A. theater award as a pretty young belter. There's nothing to complain about. Idol is fundamentally dishonest, yes, but not because of this. Here, they want you to believe that she -- like all the rest of the contestants -- is somebody who could really use a break, and it's exactly true.

I may be the only one who's pretty excited for the two-hour Knight Rider reboot airing this Sunday night...or I may be the only one who's admitting it.  But I'm trying to manage my expectations, because many of the things that made the original KR so awesome won't be present, including:

1. Hasselhoff.

2. Devon and April/Bonnie's "oh, Alice" reactions to the old-married-couple banter between Michael and KITT.

3. Garthe/Goliath.

4. KARR, an even bitchier queen than Kitt.

But we'll still be able to fashion a drinking game around KITT freaking innocent bystanders out by talking and driving himself, locking prospective car thieves in the back seat and delivering them to the authorities, jumping over large crevasses with the help of creative camera angles, and so on.  And KITT is now voiced by Val Kilmer, which I for one think is awesome.  Will Arnett is great, he could have made it work, but...the gig did seem like kind of a weird fit for him.  Not beneath him exactly, just kind of...down-market. 

Kilmer, on the other hand, is perfect.  Notoriously difficult to work with and notoriously hammy?  Perfect recipe for this dish.

Now that we know the ceremony is definitely on...should it be? Host Jon Stewart and his writers will have less than two weeks to assemble some material, which everyone involved seems to think is a very very very tight deadline. On the other hand, maybe if they don't have days and days to futz around with it, it'll mean less time spent second-guessing what are probably good comedic ideas. And let's face it, it's not as though past telecasts that have been written over a period of months have generally been all that uproarious anyway. In fact, maybe the real question will be whether we can tell the difference, quality-wise, between this show and others that have had longer to gestate.

If you live outside New York (or just don't read New York magazine), you probably haven't been following the ongoing analysis of Jay Leno's Tonight Show performance during the WGA strike. First, Sam Anderson wrote (essentially) that his monologues weren't much affected by the loss of his writers because they weren't so hot to begin with. Then the Vulture blog did a detailed breakdown of Leno's last scab monologue. Finally, there was a brief post-mortem this morning on the first monologue involving the Guild. Thank God so many dedicated New York-ers are watching this -- for science -- because I certainly couldn't do it.

Happy Valentine's Day! How are you going to celebrate? Dinner? Dancing? Throwing a Molotov cocktail through the windows of as many Hallmark stores as you can find? Many performers around the world will be participating in productions The Vagina Monologues as part of V-Day, playwright Eve Ensler's ongoing project to end violence against women and girls. But only one of them interrupted millions of Americans' pleasant mornings by totally saying the C-word (yes, that one) on Today this morning. Way to go, Jane Fonda! (I assume it goes without saying that the clip may not be safe for work...depending on where you work.) Also, if any Today producers are reading this: there's no such thing as a "playwrite."

Different writers spent their ninety-day down time during the WGA strike in different ways. Our Pamie, for instance, got heavy into crafts. Whereas My Name Is Earl executive producer Greg Garcia apparently spent a month working at an unnamed fast-food restaurant. He says it helped him to get back in touch with his audience, and that he worked with great people in an impeccably clean location. So...we can probably rule out Taco Bell as his erstwhile employer, then.

The WGA membership is back at work, as of yesterday. Yay! If the AMPTP doesn't smarten up, SAG could go on strike next. MAN ALIVE WHAT IS THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY TRYING TO DO TO ME?!

Maybe it's just because I only hang out with people who watch TV and love TV and make TV, I kind of feel like the result of the WGA strike has been to turn public support toward the producers of content as opposed to the wieners in the giant offices with the gianter annual bonuses. But if that were the case, any notion that NBC and/or the Hollywood Foreign Press Association might sue the Guild over the cancellation of the Golden Globes would never get any further along than some goober's fevered dreams. And yet, here we are. Huh.

According to TV Guide, a scheduling shuffle at ABC is going to result in a lineup, starting in about April (I assume), of Ugly Betty at 8 PM, Grey's Anatomy at 9 PM, and Lost at 10 PM. While Ausiello sees this as an enormously powerful 1-2-3 combination, I think it's more of a 1-2 punch, given that I don't think, unfortunately, that it will do much for Ugly Betty, which will still be against Survivor, which, by hook or by crook, is ratings-formidable. With Lost being an awfully difficult show to pick up in the middle, I'm not sure how much moving it is going to help, but it will be interesting to see whether, as Ausiello expects, it shifts the power on Thursdays more towards ABC. I realize it's endlessly naive, but I continue to be one of those people who's really irritated by the insistence of scheduling everything watchable at the same time, because...do we really need to put all this stuff and 30 Rock and The Office on the same night? Save some love for stupid, neglected Tuesday.

With the strike reportedly just about to wrap up (yay!), E! Online is reporting that Saturday Night Live will return on February 23 with host Ellen Page (that's the night before the Oscars, y'all). And The Futon Critic has a list of which shows are going back into production and how many episodes of your favourite shows you can expect to see in the near-ish future.

A nation was enthralled last week by the scrap that spanned A Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Late Night With Conan O'Brien (culminating on O'Brien's show, here). And with a dearth of new material as the WGA strike winds down, Late Night has posted some great behind-the-scenes outtakes. I have to say, I loved the brawl; my favourite thing is when Colbert or O'Brien gets to do a field piece and goof off because they're both so hammy. Stewart is always kind of too cool for school, but he did his best with this thing. (Link via EW Popwatch.)

Because David Cassidy is on Oprah at 4 PM ET today, promoting his new album: "David Cassidy Dance Party Remix." 

Obviously.

Let's have a look at the record company's promo materials, shall we?

Timeless idol David Cassidy and producer-mixer Craig J (Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani, Madonna, Kelly Clarkson) present club-rocking remixes of Partridge Family classics! These cutting-edge versions of "Come On Get Happy," "I Think I Love You" and "I Can Feel Your Heartbeat," among other gems, are a unique gift from the singer to his fans. "To do brand new dance versions of these iconic tunes was an amazing experience," says Cassidy. "It's so cool!"

Um.  First of all, I'll give them "idol," but Cassidy hasn't aged gracefully -- think hairplugs and an aggressive facelift that's placed him squarely in Christian Slater territory.  Second of all, this is at least the third repurposing of "I Think I Love You" (remember that pappy adult-contempo version he was croaking during his Behind The Music episode?), and it's not that I don't like the P. Fam (I have a ton of their songs on my iPod, and I watch Breaking Bonaduce, for God's sake), or that the concept of remixing those songs isn't a good one, in theory.  I have to admit, I'd like to hear the songs.  But it's kind of unseemly the way he's still dragging buckets out of that well almost 40 years later -- if I'm not mistaken, he's written two memoirs of his days as a teen heartthrob (neither one of which provides a credible defense for those moose-knuckle overalls he wore onstage), and he just keeps remixing and rerecording the big PF hits, like, dude: find something else to do.  Find something else to work on; find something else you're good at.  Learn to type.  Law school.  Fund-raising.  Something

Doesn't it seem like everything we've been hearing lately about the news business makes it seem really grim and depressing and makes you question the validity, accuracy, and straight-up newsworthiness of whatever stories actually do somehow trickle down to you? How budgets are being cut all over the place even as the sheer volume of coverage available just keeps going up? And how the internet keeps making inroads into what used to be the domain of real, trained journalists? Well, CNN just made things worse.

Sarah and I have a complex relationship with old Dr. P. Because we enjoy judging strangers, we like it when he rakes his guests over the coals. We are less fond of his Christian-y insistence on trying to save every marriage (y'all, some people just need to get divorced), and his hoary generalizations about what men and women are like. Over the years, too, the show has gotten a lot less must-see; there's the whole "Dr. Phil Now" thing he does where he responds to the news, and the Dr. Phil house, and other gimmicky shit. Also, the increasing participation of Mrs. Phil is not something I signed off on. And this latest business with Britney hasn't covered him with glory.

Look, I understand that the networks were getting desperate for programming. I get that they may have considered the successes of imports like Ugly Betty, The Office, and Survivor and thought that Canada was due an opportunity to make a cultural gift to America's strike-ravaged TV schedules. And I get that people will watch just about any damn thing when it's packaged into a reality show. But Rockstar Curling? Really? They think they might get Bruce Springsteen Or Jon Bon Jovi to host it? REALLY?! I mean, Richie Sambora, maybe. But even Clarence Clemmons wouldn't touch that shit. And I can (kind of) see something like this getting off the ground in Canada (proposed contestants: Gord Downie, Lee Aaron, and obviously Céline Dion), but do Americans even know what curling is? If they didn't get on board with bull riding, this shit is going to be an even tougher sell.

"Over" is in sight for the writers' strike; that doesn't mean it's a done deal, at all.  Check Deadline Hollywood Daily.com, and particularly this post, for a sense of what has to happen for a deal to get done.  Joss Whedon's take is up on United Hollywood.com, and you can also find it in the comments section of the piece I linked to just now.  My own quick take, not knowing the issues as intimately as those on the front lines: a speedy resolution is in everyone's interests...unless it's not in the WGA's, and I urge everyone involved to read the fine print, repeatedly.  Everyone's exhausted and possibly running out of money and wants this over with, but if what this boils down to on the conglomerates' side is wanting to avoid the embarrassment of a 28-minute Oscars ceremony, well, that has a price.

Fingers crossed.