If you're a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, you may remember a while back that there was talk of doing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer cartoon. Some concept art was drawn up, and a pilot was made, but then it was never spoken of again, and the pilot was apparently sent to the bottom of the Hellmouth. Well, someone call the Slayer, because the pilot has returned from the dead! ...Too cheesy? Yeah, that's what I thought. Look, someone found the pilot, okay?

Apparently the god of all cheesy teen shows of yore has seen fit to grant my fondest wish and put the Nickelodeon shows Clarissa Explains It All (which I just gleefully babbled about the other day) and Hey Dude on iTunes! There will be a bunch of other shows, like The Amanda Show, Rugrats (or as my 2-year-old likes to call it "The Babies"), Rocko's Modern Life (he's a wallaby) and Doug, available for download as part of Nick Rewind. I know what I'm buying myself for my birthday this year.

Former Dawson's Creek cutie Katie Holmes made a big splash this week when it was announced that she'd be returning to the small screen in a guest role on Eli Stone. Her former co-star Joshua Jackson also landed a gig on the hopefully decent fall series Fringe. Not to even mention that practically the entire cast of 90210 is either heading back for the spinoff or adamantly denying that they are (they'll change their minds in a year.) Apparently everything old (well, 15 years old) is new again. Yay! Here are the ten people we'd really like to see back on the small screen in a nice juicy recurring role or guest gig.

Umm... I don't really like to speak ill of Jack Bauer, so... I'm just not going to say anything about the 24 movie trailer except that you can watch it after the jump. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go find a way to super glue my broken 24-loving heart back together. It's been broken since 2005, so it's about time I did something about it.

Visitors to the Sol system's "City of Sin," Las Vegas, will have one less place to spend their hard-won gold-pressed latinum come this fall. The Star Trek Experience, a theme restaurant, museum and tourist attraction located in the Las Vegas Hilton dedicated to all things Star Trek, will close its doors on September 1, after 10 years of waiters in Klingon costumes. First the new Star Trek movie gets delayed, and now this? What kind of God would allow something like this to happen? Also, what does God need with a starship?

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.

In an attempt to become more like Grey's Anatomy (but with more bloody bodies) ER has cast four hot young things as regulars for next season (which, if there is a god, is supposedly the final season ... though they've said that like the last two years). Two guys who I don't recognize, Julian Morris and Victor Rasuk, will join Emily Rose (of Jericho fame) and the formerly famous Roswell starlet Shiri Appleby as new interns. Hmm... didn't House try adding a bunch of whipsmart new docs last season? Look how well that turned out. Anyway, given that the show has become increasingly reliant on having everyone hook up with each other (yeah, we get it, John Stamos and Linda Cardellini are attractive... does that mean they need to sleep with everyone?) we're sure these four newbies will fall victim to the charms of the dreamy Gates or Neela's pretty innocent seeming glare. Though the gals will probably also be subjected to some inappropriate comments and leering from Morris as well.

I feel Diddy, and witty, and gaaaaaaaaaay!  Making The Band 4 is back for another confusingly-numbered season (I think it's MTB 4:2, in which the "4" is the number of bands the show has made and the "2" is the...season number?  Sorry, I lost my slide rule and can't figure this shit out).

And I am STOKED, people.  I don't know why I love the show, but I do, and I love it EVEN MORE now that it is the province of one Sean Combs, and I will tell you why: a show this superfluous must take itself with the utmost seriousness, otherwise there isn't any point to watching.  It's kind of the same concept that allows Wile E. Coyote to keep running even when he's already over the cliff -- he believes he's on solid ground, and as long as he believes that, he's okay.  It's only when he looks down that it all goes pear-shaped...and so it is with Diddy, who never looks down.  (Or, based on that ridonkulous lynx/leather jacket contraption he had on last Monday, in a mirror.  Eddie Murphy called; he'd like the area rug from his Raw dressing room back.)

If you're not watching, you should start.  You really don't have to have watched a single minute of the show before, or of any television really, because everything is mercilessly recapped for you every five minutes, usually by my second-best MTB Girlfriend, Aundrea.  Why should you watch?

1. My very best MTB Girlfriend, Aubrey (shown above with the Aubreytones, and either girlfriend had some work done or Miami Beach is clean out of double-sided pageant tape).  I used to like her back in the day because she seemed fun and fashion-y, and was the underdog.  I like her now because she's turned into kind of a preying mantis, or a preying blonde-weave-is, or whatever; she's all arrogant and aggressively trampy, and it's kind of rad.  Rumor has it she and Diddy had a thing, which is why he's in her face all the time, and I would kill for confirmation of that.  Still, now she's the bad girl, AND she's set her mantis sights on Donnie.  Watching the two of them make out in the season preview is like watching Predator eat one of the baby penguins from Surf's Up: "Awwww.  [crrrrunch]  ...Oh my GOD!"

2. Diddy's one-on-ones with the camera where he's all Red-Bulled out, throwing the hook-'em horns, whipping his sunglasses off to wink at you and there's a little "ting!" sound effect.  Takes himself more seriously than the UN.  Hilarious.

3. Qwanell and his hats.

4. Brian gives the impression of viewing the goings-on with the same gossipy glee that I do, and also he's cute.

I even like the music pretty well (I downloaded a couple of Danity Kane songs shut up), but really, I'm just fascinated by how the kids react to Kim Jong Diddy and his reign of terror.  Remember last season when Donnie said, "Really?" all mouthy when Diddy said he couldn't dance?  Remember how the entire house of guys had to run five or ten miles as a result?  Of course you don't; they didn't tell us that even happened until last week.  Why would you put up with this?

Same reason I watch the show -- you kind of can't believe Diddy is for real. 

If you watch Idol, don't act like you're too good for the Diddles, people.  Watch the show.

What I'm about to mention is the least of the outrages committed by the average Miami Vice episode -- the one I'm watching right now, thanks to my DVR, features Billy Ocean on the soundtrack; guest shots by Gene Simmons, Luis Guzman, Penn of Penn and Teller, Pam Grier, and Charles S. Dutton; and Crockett and Tubbs on an undercover field trip to New York City, with all the tired performance-artist sight gags that that implies. 

But I seriously cannot believe how much ammunition is discharged during the average firefight on this show.  First of all, criminals have zero compunction about shooting at cops -- to kill.  Using approximately seventeen thousand machine-gun rounds.  Second of all, the cops have the same lack of compunction, and their guns seem to hold several dozen rounds each (even though Tubbs's weapon is clearly a six-shooter, even to my untrained eye).

Contrast that with The Wire, which doesn't have all that many gun battles considering the subject matter of the show; it sort of depends on the season, but even in S3 where you see like five murders an episode, they're not spraying ammo around like a demented sprinkler like they are on MV.  Police officers are, I'm pretty sure, required to keep their firearms certification up to date -- can't these guys shoot straight?  How about firing two or three times and actually hitting the bad guy instead of discharging 42,945 rounds?

...Not really.  Dunbar cheating on his girlfriend with Ashbob Squareface is not exactly the shocking plot twist of the year.  But it could get interesting if Julie reacts to her on-air cuckolding the way I hope she will, to wit: dropping a taser down the front of his sweatshorts and pushing him into a swimming pool, then marching into the house and flushing all his steroids down the toilet.  Free Julie!

Even crazier than that, though: Kelly Anne.  Between Shauvon's boyfriend, Captain Controllo, demanding that she come back to the States pronto and Trisha's stripper weave attacking Parisa, we haven't had many episodes lately that focused on Kelly Anne's pathological neediness -- but even though last night's didn't exactly focus on it, it showed it off to disturbing effect.  First she's spitting in Parisa's direction; then she's getting a lecture from her new BFF Ashli about how she should interact with Parisa, even though Ashli has lived in the house for all of 12 minutes; then she's, like, PAWING Parisa in the hot tub while Parisa semi-leans away from her all "I...didn't miss this, actually."  Keh-RAZY!

It's like Kelly Anne doesn't know how, or who, to be if someone else doesn't tell her, or if she can't see herself reflected in people around her, and it's really just to an insane degree with her; she seems like a sweet person, at bottom, but that's got to be exhausting to live with.