I was very excited when it was announced that Heather Locklear was returning to her Melrose Place roots as the bitch-in-heels Amanda Woodward. This new series, while oddly watchable, needed a jolt of something to really get it going. Since she'd saved the previous incarnation from dullness/cancellation, it seemed fitting that she'd boost this version as well. But now that we've actually seen her first episode, I'm not sure her appearance is helping matters much.

As if I didn't already have high enough hopes for Season 8, the news that 24 is bringing back disgraced president Charles Logan is very good news indeed. He's one of my favorite villains and it got me thinking about the few established characters still alive in the 24-verse that I'd also love to see back, and the ones I'd rather have choke on the Cordilla Virus somewhere off-screen.

On the surface, these two teen dramas created/produced by Kevin Williamson seem to have little in common. One is about a wholesome group of kids growing up in a harbor community in the Northeast and dealing with their normal, non-supernatural, everyday issues. The other is about a few blood-sucking vampires who have tormented a small Virginia town for centuries. However, when we put the two shows side by side, we quickly realized that they have a lot more in common than one might initially think.

If you're a member of PETA, you may not want to watch the following videos. They contain the brutal murder of one of nature's most beautiful and misunderstood creatures: the common housefly. Apparently, PETA is not happy that President Obama killed a fly during an interview on CNBC (seriously?), but we couldn't be happier, because Late Night with Jimmy Fallon digitally inserted the president into the famous fly-catching scene from The Karate Kid, and it's the funniest thing we've seen in the past several hours. Here's the original footage, as seen on the Today Show:

Tonight's episode of Burn Notice features a guest appearance by Terminator: Salvation star Moon Bloodgood as a police detective, and she's only the latest in a long string of spies, killers, cons and lawmen who have come through Miami with a bone to pick with Michael Westen. It's only going to get worse from here on out, what with Michael losing his protection and all, so we thought we'd run down some of our favorites, specifically those that we already knew and loved from other TV shows. This list will self-destruct.

After five seasons of pitting unknown chefs against each other to see who can make the fewest stupid cooking mistakes, Top Chef is mixing things up and pitting world renowned chefs against each other! Hopefully, there will be a lot fewer stupid mistakes, since by now these people have probably made them all, and we can get down to seeing who is actually a better chef. But we have one problem. Are any of these chefs better than Lafayette from True Blood? Or Ned from Pushing Daisies? We compiled a list of our favorite fictional chefs to see how each would do under the pressures of the Top Chef competition.

In theory, Comedy Central's new series Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire should not work. For starters, it's a parody of sword-and-sorcery shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules, which are already two steps away from being parodies themselves. Second, the title role of warrior rebel Mandoon is played by Sean Maguire, who isn't exactly a known comedian in the U.S., aside from his turn as Leonidas in Meet the Spartans. Third, isn't everybody much more into science fiction nowadays? Who wants to watch a fantasy series? Well, apparently I do. Call it good counter-programming, low expectations or just chalk it up to the show's non-stop, self-conscious wackiness, but the first couple of episodes of this series were highly entertaining, and made me reconsider my stance on LARPing.

Better Off Ted premiered last night, and I'm already getting ready to bid it a fond farewell. Not because I dislike it -- far from it. I'm saying good-bye now because the show, created by Victor Fresco, feels a hell of a lot like his previous office-based, single-camera series, Andy Richter Controls the Universe. Andy was amazing, and this show is almost as amazing, but Andy only lasted 19 episodes -- a decent run, I suppose, but that's less than a season by most counts, and if Ted lasts as long as Andy did, I will consider it a success. Because, like Andy, Ted may be too smart for the room. (Not my room, but other rooms. Not that I think that other people are stupid, but... a lot of them are.)

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.

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.