Law & Order is moving back to Wednesdays, where it belongs! I mean, come on, Friday nights are for girl shows and marginal procedurals -- not the totally amazing ones that have hung on for eighteen freaking seasons and have spawned multiple spinoffs and a Presidential candidate and "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" I don't care what anyone says: Law & Order is the shit. What other shows can have you reading the news just to guess which headlines are going to get ripped from?

It's funny, the life cycle of a syndicated sitcom. When a show you like first starts airing every night at 7 or 11:30 or what-have-you, it seems like you've been given an amazing gift: you don't have to wait for that one night a week anymore! It's on all the time! Hooray! But after a few years, you've seen every episode fifteen times, and you can't even remember why any of the jokes were funny the first time. That's how it was for me with Seinfeld: when it was first on in syndication, the first-run episodes were still at a creative high. But I think I ODed on it. Some episodes also haven't aged that well. Remember the one where the four protagonists are supposed to be meeting up at a movie but keep missing each other? All I can think now when I happen upon it is, "Why don't they just call each other? ...Oh, right. This is from before cell phones." It just makes it seem so dated. Another show I was really into in syndication was The Simpsons -- at least, until the air schedule would come around to the first season, and then I'd have to find something else to watch at 5 PM for a few weeks, because those suck ass.

The Good News: Showtime renewed Weeds for a fourth season. That's awesome news, as far as this viewer is concerned; I've really enjoyed Season 3 (due to end November 19). And if a Season 4 means the possibility of some kind of Marge Simpson/Ruth Powers sassy criminal rampage featuring Celia and Heylia, it's hard not to be very excited.

The Bad News: ABC is blaming the strike for delaying the launch of Cashmere Mafia. That's bad news for all the viewers who were highly anticipating a November premiere! Just kidding: no one cares about that shit except to see what kind of crazy-ass getups Lucy Liu's going to be wearing.

You know, if I ran a TV network, and I had spent several days touting the return of the best reality show on TV, I might take some pains to make sure its scheduled début wasn't thirty minutes late due to some stupid sporting event no one even cared about. But then, if I ran a TV network, I might take more seriously the concerns of the content providers I employed and try harder to see that they didn't go on strike, so what do I know?

And the thing is, it was only half an hour's difference -- CBS could have still started their primetime lineup as scheduled if they'd just "joined 60 Minutes in progress." I know that I, at least, was not that interested in some rich jagoff's yacht. And yet, I know it will never happen that CBS would privilege 60 Minutes over The Amazing Race, regardless of the aged TV-news audience. There's something kind of reassuring about that, no? Even with the inevitable commentary by Andy Rooney, who I am always scared to make fun of because I assume that as soon as whatever thing I write actually gets published, he's going to die and make me look like an asshole.