Welcome to the Big Damn News. Sadly, there are no Firefly morsels to be had today, although we do have news on who will be joining that show's Morena Baccarin and Party of Five's Scott Wolf in the new V TV series. Plus: we find out when Anthony Head's new series will debut, when Mischa Barton will work again and why we can't wait to see next week's Dollhouse.

Our gut reaction to this new Idol rule where the judges get to save one person a season from certain elimination was "Hell No!" It takes away the whole premise of this being a contest that America gets to have a say, since ostensibly America is the one that is going to be buying the albums of the winner at some point down the line. But then we got to reflecting and thinking about how sometimes, America is just stupid and succumbs to the whole thing as one giant popularity contest keeping less talented people (Sanjaya) while others with actual singing chops get sent home. Or the pity vote (and don't even pretend like that wasn't why Anoop got saved this week) where America feels bad for someone because the judges reamed them out and voted. Or because America is just a bunch of lazy asses and didn't vote because their person was safe. Basically, the American Idol watching/voting public kind of sucks, and if once in a while the judges who have a knowledge of what might actually sell in the world (by which I mean Simon and maybe Kara), get a chance to override their hastily made choices, it might not be an entirely bad thing.

Happy Thursday, everybody! Gosh, remember when Thursday was Must See TV night on NBC? Yeah... it was a while ago. But guess what, nostalgia-cravers? George Clooney's (supposedly) back on ER tonight, so from the hours of 10-11PM you can pretend it's 1997 again and the world had never heard of such things as Survivor or American Idol or Celebrity Circus! Man, what did anyone watch before the year 2000?

This season, Supernatural's hell-raising, demon-blooded and/or soul-torturing Brothers Winchester have been given a holy quest by the angel Castiel. (Yeah, I know, it seems kinda weird to us, too.) That quest? To stop the demon Lilith (Dean's killer) from opening the 66 seals binding the fallen angel Lucifer. (There are actually 600, but only 66 need to get popped.) While we've seen two of them -- the Rise of the Witnesses and the Summoning of Samhain -- apparently at least 34 have been opened off-screen, leading us to wonder what the heck they were and where the Winchesters were when it happened. Well, it turns out they actually tried to stop a bunch of them between episodes, with mixed results. We made some calls around the Hunter hotline and found out what went down recently with six of the seals.

I watch a lot of reality television. A lot. And I love cooking shows. So a new one that combines both seems like the perfect thing to fill the Top Chef vacancy in my schedule. But The Chopping Block is not going to be my new addiction. Well, unless I have insomnia and need something to put me to sleep. Seriously. This could put Ambien out of business. It is a bad sign when the thing that I found most impressive was the little bumpers that they had to introduce each segment. They were "borrowed" from Panic Room's opening credits, but at least they were cool.

It has been far too long since Ian McShane was fronting a series. Instead he's been doing voiceover work (Coraline, Kung Fu Panda) and acting in such stellar movies as Death Race. Clearly, a fine use of his talents. Not to say that he doesn't have the perfect voice to bring an eerie lilt to animated fare, because he does. And not that he wasn't the best part of Death Race, because he was. But those of us who watched him on Deadwood, as the tough Al Swearengen, know that he can throw someone in a pig pen while rattling off a speech that Shakespeare would have loved. So we're glad that he's back on TV in Kings, a modern-day retelling of the David and Goliath story, with McShane in the juicy, slippery role of the commanding King Silas. While not a perfect series, it is a far better use of his time than any sort of Death Race sequel that might have existed. We got a chance to talk to Mr. McShane on a recent conference call about his new show (which starts on Sunday at 8 on NBC), and we're passing on the highlights to you.

Just throwing it out there that Jon Hamm is going to be sexy no matter how hard he tries to be ugly. Want proof? He dons a bald cap to play Lex Luthor (begging for a government bailout for LexCorp) for a funnyordie sketch. Still hot. Especially when he gets all angry and uppity about how hard he works. Anyway, there's actual news and whatever happening in the entertainment world, but to me, this is the most pressing matter of the day. I don't know what that says about me. Someone better bring Mad Men back soon, because I can't take it anymore ... otherwise I'm going to start posting news about other random barely MM-related things to keep me occupied until it finally returns.

In many ways, this season of Smallville has been a drastic improvement over what has come before. There were more superheroes, more supervillains, more comic-accurate storylines... but there were also awkward career changes, forced romances and the return of tired characters we had more or less written off for dead. With the show recently renewed for a ninth season, we thought it was time to look at what needed to change on the show in order to keep us watching. ...Of course, we're not making any promises, but it will be a hell of a lot more likely.