While I lament the fact that all of Ugly Betty's pretty boys are heading off this season, and while in general I'm not a fan of stunt casting... I'm sort of OK with this news. The Karate Kid, er, Ralph Macchio will be dropping by for a one-episode stint. He'll be playing some sort of city official or whatever, but really, it doesn't matter. I'm watching to see if he does one of those fancy crane kicks or encourages Wicked Wilhelmina to sweep Daniel's leg during a fight. God, that would be so awesome. You know what else would be amazing? If they played "Cruel Summer" when he walked on. Just softly... in the background... so my teenage self can giggle a lot.

The Law & Order franchise of shows is known for the caliber of its guest stars. From movies, TV and theater, they come to play victims -- or, more often, perpetrators -- of horrible crimes. And to kick off the new season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the producers scored a couple of doozies. Luke Perry, formerly of Jeremiah, Oz and the original 90210 plays the father of a troubled boy, and Sara Gilbert of Big Bang Theory and Roseanne fame plays a rape victim who had to give up her child. The two of them participated in a conference call recently with show producer Neal Baer, and they talked a lot about the process of playing such intense roles -- including a certain Dylan McKay... read on for the highlights of the conference call.

A bunch of us blogger types were recently invited to get on the horn with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles' newest cyborg, the fabulous T-1001 Shirley Manson, to discuss all manner of things, including her longtime love of the Terminator franchise, acting without training, recording soundtrack material (that voice singing at the beginning of Monday's episode was Manson after all), impending new albums, and why Glenn Close is totally a Terminator. Read on for choice quotes from the conference call while you still can, lowly humans!

Yesterday I did my fair share of bitching about the recent slew of stuntcasting news for 30 Rock's upcoming season, saying as a longtime fan I personally don't care to see an episode where Jennifer Aniston or Oprah Winfrey eats up significant screen time, but that I understand 30 Rock is in desperate need of ratings so I'll just suck it up for now. It's fair to say I owe them at least that much for all the hilarity they've given me. My resolve to give the show a break is wearing a little thin, however, with today's news that Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester and Blake Lively will be appearing in a November sweeps episode. Really? Now I have to endure those two as well? And more importantly, why those two over Chuck Bass?! He's hilarious! This begs the question -- how much worse is this going to get?

The all-powerful Oprah Winfrey is in talks to lend a stuntcasting hand to our beloved 30 Rock, the greatest show on television that hardly anybody is watching. She's thisclose to playing herself in an episode this fall, though it's not clear what her storyline will be. I for one hope she just shows up at TGS as a representative of The Black Crusaders, the group of highly powerful African-Americans who terrorized Tracey Jordon at the end of Season 1. Not so sure how down Oprah would be with that idea, but the mere fact that she's agreed to be on the show in the first place probably means she's aware of The Black Crusaders storyline and isn't too terribly offended by it. Or The Black Crusaders are real, and she's just come to disperse disinformation about them. I'm leaning towards the latter, because conspiracies are fun!

Wait wait wait wait wait. What is this? Jen Aniston on 30 Rock? Well okay. If anyone can make that work, it's Tina Fey. Look how not crappy David Schwimmer was when he guested as AWOL eco-superhero Greenzo! And if they can work that kind of magic on Ross, who is by far the most annoying/least successful/unfunniest Friends alum, then they have more than a fighting chance with Maniston, who was always the highpoint of that dumb-ass show anyhow. The only thing that has me the slightest bit concerned is that, according to published reports, Jen, Tina and Jane Krakowski are going to engage in some sort of Friends dream sequence wherein Aniston will reprise her role as Rachel, Fey will be Courtney Cox's Monica and Krakowski will step in for Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe. This is TV you guys! 30 Rock has never failed to churn out solid, knee-slapping parodies, but can't we get a little fantastical one of these days instead of trotting out the "clever" and "interesting" meta tropes that've become so ubiquitous of late? Ohhh look! It's Jerry Seinfeld playing Jerry Seinfeld! It's Tracy Morgan playing a sometimes drunk, hilariously inscrutable whackadoo who stars in a sketch comedy show! It's NBC playing a corporate monolith that's more interested in marketing microwave ovens than fostering artistic growth in its secondary incarnation as an entertainment company! We get it! It's cute! It's funny! But can you quit winking at us and give us some escapism instead of one big inside joke for once?

Actually, it might not be. I'm not really sure what extortion is exactly, but I do know the 90210 writers are trying to persuade Luke Perry to return to the show, against his very publicly stated will, by writing Dylan McKay into the show as a deadbeat dad. A deadbeat dad! That's one of the worst things you can be! You see, Jennie Garth's character, Kelly Taylor, has a four-year-old son on the show whose father it will be revealed is Dylan McKay. So basically, either Luke Perry comes to claim this fictional kid he had through no fault of his own, or the character that made his career is a toddler-abandoning bastard for all eternity.

I suppose I should say "spoiler alert," but if you're reading the Telefile for TV news, you're begging for a good spoiling. (You naughty minx!) Even TV Guide isn't spoiler-free anymore, so you're going to have to bury yourself in a bomb shelter in order to avoid this tidbit of news. Ready? Last chance! Ana Lucia is coming back to Lost. ...You hear that? That's the sound of numerous Lost fans groaning in dismay. For a second there, I thought I was on the Dharma submarine, and we were about to implode.

I always thought Dancing With the Stars should quit trying to sound all highbrow and just call itself People You Probably Forgot Existed But Whose Pathetic Career Trajectory Is Now Obvious By Virtue Of The Fact That They've Been Cast On This Show. That is, until I read the lineup of "celebs" they have on deck for the new season. Ladies and gents, this is the créme de la créme of D-Listers. One might even say the A-List of D-Listers. Hey, let's call them Delta Force Listers! Seriously, someone must've sold his soul to Heidi Montag, because this season is jam-packed with people I actually kinda give a crap about! Here are the bright and shining "stars" I'm most excited to watch shaking his or her thang for the world to see.

At one point, professional wrestlers Hulk Hogan and Jesse "The Body" Ventura were on top of the world. Hogan was arguably the face of America in the 1980s, and the star of numerous films that hilariously pointed out how muscular he was. While Ventura's film career was not quite as impressive, he did manage to parlay his frequent appearances in Arnold Schwarzenegger movies into a public seat, acting as governor of the great state of Minnesota from 1999-2003, much to the dismay of Garrison Keillor. But now, with their careers on the decline, they have fallen into the quicksand trap from which there is no escape: reality television.