In a move that is seriously making my head spin, TNT is making an Americanized version of Cracker (the popular BBC show about a drunken detective, starring Hagrid). The fact that TNT is doing this isn't a big surprise, we remake British shows all the time. Just look at Viva Laughlin (actually don't) and the forthcoming (maybe) Life on Mars. We just love to take quality shows and create our own take on them, without the confusing accents and lingo. It is just too taxing for us dumb Americans to figure out what a lift is apparently.

Guess who's been cast as an assassin-slaughtering super-badass in an upcoming big-budget action flick. This guy! (Maybe he'll wash away the world's evil with ... his tears?)

Proof positive that the porn 'stache has reached critical mass and that the soft-rock renaissance is just getting started: according to Billboard, a cartoon starring John Oates (of Hall & Oates, duh) and his magical mustache is being shopped around to various networks. If all goes according to plan, J-Stache will focus on a buttoned up, family -oriented Oates whose infamous mustache is trying to lure him back into the rock & roll lifestyle.

It is as though the good lord has been peeking in at my dreams. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has partnered with Google to produce a new series of two minute animated web shows called Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. (As an aside, you guys are aware that web shows are the new black, right?) This is good news for the attention deficit cartoon-o-philes among us. In fact, I'd venture a guess that the majority of cartoon-o-philes by definition have a goodly touch of the ADHD, being that we all have the emotional maturity of a seven-year old and think that Corn Pops is a perfectly good dinner. All of MacFarlane's good bits are 2 minutes or under anyway. In fact, some of the best ones are no longer than 7 seconds.

One of these shows... maybe. The Academy of Arts and Sciences has released a list of the 10 comedy contenders and 10 top dramas that are in the running to be nominated for Emmys. Now, there's some good stuff on the list, along with some obvious shows that were overlooked (wouldn't be the Emmys if they didn't ignore some quality shows) and there is definitely a chance that we could have a good final five in both categories. ...Well, if the panel that's narrowing down the field does a decent job, which is where we come in. There are some tough choices, but here's what we'd like to see make the cut.

Holy jeez! The Fly is gonna be on Law & Order Criminal Intent you say? He is gonna be replacing Chris Noth, who will be departing after this season wraps you say? Well I just don't know what to think! I mean, Goldblum is a foxy Cleopatra and all, and as we saw on his short-lived NBC show Raines, he can deffies handle a role as a quirk-tastic police detective. But no more Noth is like no more Jerry Orbach: Just plain wrong. The upside of this new development is that we can most assuredly expect a spectacular Dick Wolf-ian send-off for good old Mike Logan. No budget cut-backs or polite pink slips for this guy. Not even a shot-in-the-line-of-duty plot twist is his equal. I'm thinking a car bomb with wicked pyrotechnics or a hostage situation gone bad or, hell, maybe a botched plastic surgery that he was getting for an "undercover" thingy he claimed he was doing. But something cray cray. I will accept no less.

With the recent addition of Wipeout to the world of stupid shows where people make themselves look like idiots in order to earn some cash money, we've decided to take a look back at some of the really ridiculous shows that involve rewarding those with little or no talent with cash. While Wipeout just barely missed making the cut, there are some others that are horrifyingly bad and are contributing to the downfall of quality television just as much as an average episode of The Bachelorette. That's not to say that some of these aren't entertaining to watch, but that doesn't really make them intelligent TV.

As you might have deduced, we here at TWOP are borderline obsessed with The Office and thus deem any and all newsy tidbits related to the show worthy of posts. So forgive me for being so effing stoked about the following Office nuggets:

1) Steve "Awesomer Than Jesus" Carrell has inked a deal that commits him to three more years as the fantastic Michael Scott. Rejoice, mother effers!

2) A clip from an upcoming Office teaser webisode, which will air July 10th, has leaked online. It features Kevin making a bumbling attempt to get a bank loan for an ice cream company whose strategy seems to be buying other ice cream, giving the flavors funny names and reselling it. [Via Videogum]

That is all. Carry on.

I admit I'm not a Joss Whedon fanatic like some (read: all) TWoP staffers are. So I was shocked and awed at the fuzzy, excited feeling I got when I watched the teaser for Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Whedon's three-part online movie/musical starring Neil Patrick Harris as a doofy supervillain to Nathan Fillion's equally doofy superhero. I suspect the presence of Doogie has a lot to do with it, being that he can do no wrong in my (correct) opinion. As Angel reported back in March, the plot centers on a classic struggle between good and evil (with show tunes!), and the catalyst is a cute girl in a laundromat -- isn't that always the way! -- who'll be played by Felicia Day. Still not clear when the first installment will be available, though internet buzz seems to indicate it will be up sometime in July. Peep the trailer [via Pop Candy] and commence plotzing!

Are casting directors, showrunners and network executives purposely trying to conspire to force me to stop watching my favorite shows? Seriously, people. I'm OK with a little bit of stunt casting, but I've about had it up to here (gesturing approximately 12 inches above my head) with the starlets who find more fame on the pages of the tabloids than from doing any actual work, coming onto my favorite shows and mucking things up and then getting a lot of credit when the show gets a ratings boost.

Dear Celebrities/Celebrity photographers,

Please, for the love of god, stop "re-creating" the following things for your photo shoots: anything Marilyn Monroe has ever done, anything Brigitte Bardot has ever done, anything James Dean has ever done, anything Bettie Page has ever done, The Wizard of Oz (I'm looking at you, New York), that late-night diner painting, anything from the '80s in an attempt to be ironic, Barbarella, Audrey Hepburn's cigarette holder and pearls photo from Breakfast at Tiffany's, scenes from Bond movies, the Abbey Road album cover, or the Rat Packers doing anything, especially in Vegas. It is played. It makes dead people roll around in their graves. Nobody likes that.

And just in case you get any ideas, don't start re-creating: Dogs Playing Poker, Britney's crotch shots, Einstein's "Wazzup?!" photo, Friends drinking milkshakes, the Pink Floyd back catalog poster every stoner has in their dorm room, Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, this thing, or this thing.

Love,
TWoP

In the battle of ridiculously stupid game shows specifically created to fill up the summer with cheap lighthearted and forgettable filler programming based on popular Japanese-style game shows where people do stupid stunts, there is no clear winner. Well there is, but it is Ninja Warrior on G4 and it is actually a Japanese game show. As far as these new knockoffs on ABC, there's good and bad about both of them, but I can't really see either of them sticking around for all that long. That won't stop me from trying to determine which one will reign supreme based solely on their premiere episodes, however.

Is it my birthday or what? Hulu has just rolled out 25 full-length episodes of ALF, so like any god-fearing woman I've been pretty busy scouring them all for the very best one to share, and I believe I've found just that in the episode entitled, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue." You see, in this episode ALF's crush, his human family's teenaged daughter Lynn, has a dreamy human boyfriend. A dreamy human boyfriend who's also in a hard-rockin' '80s garage band, no less. Not to be discouraged, our furry Melmac native puts his camcorder/musical prowess to use and bangs out the greatest music video ever created to win her heart! And let me tell you, ALF talk-singing the lyrics "You're the one who's out of this world, sweet baby!" while dressed as The Boss? Swoooooon! He also does a mean Stevie Wonder impression, and his ZZ Top get-up? Forget about it.

I think it's better for everyone if I just come out and admit that I am a food voyeur. I watch the Food Network like horny teenagers watch porn. Plop me in front of a Barefoot Contessa marathon and I'm rapt for hours on end. So you'll forgive me if I'm inordinately excited about the new lineup of shows that the Most Delicious Channel has announced. According to a press release, the new slew of shows will include:

When I heard that Diddy's former pretend butler and sometime R&B recording artist Fonzworth Bentley would be turning 14 "gangsters" into old timey upperclassmen on a reality show called From G's to Gents for MTV, I could only imagine this is how the sole creative meeting for it went down:

You've probably heard about this Baby Borrowers show, right? You know, the one where five teenage couples are given the responsibility of caring for infants, toddlers, teenagers, and the elderly... Good luck! It will be like watching Jamie-Lynn Spears and her fiancé care for their new baby girl. Although I haven't yet seen the show, I can already determine the outcome just by looking at the preview clip (see below). They think they are responsible and well equipped to handle screaming babies at 2 AM. You know, because they are "mature" for their age. Give the couples five hours, they will be crying, screaming at one another and pulling their hair out. Give them one week and they are exhausted, need a break, and realize this is a lot harder than it seems. Give them the full six weeks and all five couples realize how much work caring for another human being really is. The social experiment will hopefully teach them what it really means to compromise and to take on adult responsibility. I don't even need to watch the show to know what happens, but it might be pretty entertaining to watch ten teenagers fail miserably... or maybe learn a thing or two.

First, you can't say that I didn't warn you about the Olympics obsession. Second, I just found out that I might have new and different ways to watch the Olympics without making my TiVo explode. Awesome. Some geniuses as a company called Wavexpress (hi there, my new favorite people, can you make it friendly for Macs too?) came up with a way to make events available for download onto your laptop during the Olympics for free so that fans can watch them closer to when they actually happen instead of hours and hours later after all the news networks have already "spoiled" the winners because Bejing is 12 hours ahead of us here in the States. Apparently people who subscribe to this free service (which is too long and boring for me to explain so just read about it here.) can pick their favorite sports (um, how 'bout all of them) and get nice, nearly high-def content (which would look so nice on my beautiful macbook... hint, hint) in the middle of the night, so they can watch while commuting. If I can either convince my husband to let me use his laptop and upgrade to Vista, or if those nice Wavexpress people find a way to make it Mac friendly (they've got a whole month and a half), or I can convince my boss that I really need Vista at work to do my job, then this news will make me very happy indeed. I'm still holding a grudge against the girls in my old office who spoiled the Tara Lipinski gold medal figure skating win during the Nagano Olympics in 1998 before I had a chance to go home and watch it. Trust me. It was a very upsetting experience.

These three shows are going to head up the CW's fall roster: 90210, Gossip Girl, and Privileged (which used to be called Surviving the Filthy Rich), a show about some privileged people starring Anne Archer. Can anyone tell me the difference between these shows and why we need three separate shows about mean rich people on one network? Throw in a reality show about mean rich people (Stylista) and you've got a network on a serious appeal-to-people-who-just-can't-get-enough-of-mean-rich-people mission! Also, they cancelled Friday Night Smackdown (too many mean poor people on it?), which broke my heart into a million little pieces. Yes, I'm bitter.

I am an Olympic junkie (my obsession will probably reach its fever pitch by the time August 8th rolls around, expect lots of rants about scheduling) and I'm already feeling baffled and overwhelmed by the prospect of having to figure out how the new gymnastics judging system is going to work.

I, like many others (there are others, right?), consider myself a bit of a sofa judge. I pay little attention to the popular sporting event in the off years, but by the time it rolls around I feel overly qualified from my sedentary position to critique how well someone performed on the balance beam or if they really stuck their landing.

So there's a company that's making a Knight Rider-themed global positioning system for your car. It's black, with flashing red lights, and it speaks in the voice of the original KITT, William Daniels (not the new KITT, Val Kilmer, thank god). And while this sounds pretty damn cool and totally worth the $300, we can see some problems with it.

I've been staring at this story for a couple days and thinking about writing up the info in case you are a Big Brother fan who lives in the Los Angeles area and likes to get dressed in business casual style. (If you are, you can go see the evictions in person...) But the reason that I haven't gotten around to posting about it before is because I've just been irritated by the fact that the show is sticking to the ridiculous schedule it first employed during the lame "winter" season just a few short months ago. As I ranted in my gallery of the 10 Most Annoying Things About Season 9, the Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday airings basically just suck, and make the show irritating for anyone who cares about what is actually happening in the house and bothers to purchase either the live feeds or watch Showtime After Dark. If I get the live feeds (or read the blogs of those who do), which is presumably something that CBS wants you to do since they offer them, then by the time the Sunday episode airs all those days later, I've already figured out who was nominated and usually who has won the power of Veto, and Veto isn't even dealt with until the Tuesday show. By the time the Tuesday CBS airing plays out, the houseguests have already been back and forth like 400 times on who they are going to evict. This basically makes the Sunday and Tuesday airings pretty much useless to me, especially since they don't even have the added bonus of having the Chenbot making odd wardrobe choices. I'm already kind of dreading the next Big Brother since I've barely had time to recuperate from the aforementioned winter edition, and this news doesn't make me any happier. It's gonna be a long summer.

In what universe do we witness both Rachael "Yippy Dog" Ray and Tyra "Love My Fat Ass" Banks lauded with awards and given thank-you speech airtime? Why in the Daytime Emmys universe of course! The soaps and chat show circle jerk took place on Friday, and as always, there were winners and losers. In many cases the winners were, in fact losers, as in the case of the aforementioned Ray. (My view of Ms. Banks is a bit more complicated and not worth getting into here, but I'm thinking that any instance in which Banks gets more ammo for her delusions of omnipotent, Oprah-style grandeur is not necessarily a good thing.) I don't give a dang about the soap opera winners (As the World Turns swept four categories but really, who cares?) but I am happy that Ellen DeGeneres won for Outstanding Daytime Host (one of four Emmy wins this year), because she is the only TV personality besides Joel McHale who has managed not to grate on my last effing nerve. Props to the Emmy judges also for giving Everyday Italian its due, and for finally recognizing the zeitgeist-y behemoth that is The View -- a show that has been nominated ten times over the course of its run and just this year nabbed an actual award. Two, in fact. Say what you will about its choice of topics, the show is a force to be reckoned with. And further proof that Oprah is becoming obsolete: the daytime diva earned a measly two awards. Hubris, dudes. It's a bitch.

Colbert's at his finest in this clip. He's all up in arms because kids are eating healthier foods instead of snacking on cookies. Fruit that isn't in loop or pebble form? That's positively un-American (his words, but I completely agree... just don't let my nutritionist find out.) Anyway, he blames this trend squarely on the shoulders of one Mr. Cookie Monster. And that is exactly where this belongs. Ever since the muppet started in with the "cookies are a sometimes food" shtick, kids are following his example, and maybe some adults too. Not Colbert though, he gets in an intense debate with the googly-eyed creature who ends up revealing way too much about his "Robert Downey Jr." like addictions to the delicious treats. This clip may be NSFW just because you'll be cracking up so much. It's a good thing my office mate is home sick today.

Tired of us telling you what we think all the time? Don't answer that, it is one of those rhetorical questions. But if you are, now is the time to do something about it. The Tubey Award categories for this year have been chosen and announced, now we want to hear from you on who you think the nominees should be. This isn't like those boring old Emmys where we tell you who we nominated and who wins. We actually give you a say, for a change. So get those thinking caps on and start deciding who should be the most appalling reality star and who the character most in need of killing off is. Then tell us who you've picked here.

If there was ever a time to take up swearing, it's now. George Carlin, comedian, is dead at the age of 71, from heart failure. The Manhattan-born comedian had been doing comedy since 1960, and was the host of the very first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Before that, he made history for his routine about the seven words you can't say on television, which he was arrested for performing at a comedy show in 1972 (the charges were dropped). The routine later reinforced the government's ability to sanction radio stations when it was played on the air, for some reason. (Hey, thanks, Mr. DJ!)