Welcome to CraveOnline's Idiot Box Updates, where we run down all the latest TV news and separate the facts from the rumors and nonsense on and about the small screen.
Here's a list of the top 20 prime-time shows by viewership numbers, compiled by Nielsen Media Research for March. 23-29:
1. "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 26.03 million
2. "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 23.1 million
3. "Dancing With the Stars" (Monday), ABC, 20.34 million
4. "NCIS," CBS, 17.83 million
5. "The Mentalist," CBS, 17.62 million
6. "Dancing With the Stars Results" (Tuesday), ABC, 16.12 million
7. "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 16.1 million
8. "60 Minutes," CBS, 14.44 million
9. "Criminal Minds," CBS, 14.36 million
10. "CSI: Miami," CBS, 13.67 million.
Did you watch last night's "South Park"? Because I did, and I want that half hour back. The show, which has certainly seen more downs than ups in recent seasons, gave me hope with their last two episodes. You remember, the one where Cartman plays a superhero named The Coon, and the other, where Stan's dad breaks down the economic crisis in simplistic but bizarrely hilarious ways. They were great. I was telling my friends. I even Twittered (tweeted? twatted? whatever) about it. I looked forward to last night's episode. But it sucked. The queef jokes, which started grotesquely funny, got old really fast, and the plot became an utter mess of sociological satire.
I've stayed loyal and true for 12 long years, never missing a new episode along the way. But that may change soon if Trey & Matt don't get their shit together. I'm serious, you guys.
Chris Elliott is coming back!!!!! The "Get a Life!" comedian, who's made numerous appearances on both the big and small screen, has signed on for CBS comedy pilot "The Fish Tank," according to The Hollywood Reporter.
A teenager called Fish (Drake Bell) has adventures living home alone in his family house. Elliott will play the dad of Fish's best friend - yeah, a real show-grabber. Dash Mihok will play a whimsical neighbor.
Elliott was a cast member of the 1994-1995 season of " Saturday Night Live," on which his daughter Abby Elliott is currently a featured player. Hopefully she'll get some more skit time soon, because the show needs new blood and she appears to have inherited at least a little of her father's magic.
But really, she came from him??
Wanda Sykes, co-star in the CBS sitcom "The New Adventures of Old Christine," is headed back to Fox for a late-night series countering "Saturday Night Live" and offering a comedic look at current events.
The show, which doesn't yet have a title, will air on Saturdays and is scheduled to premiere this fall. It will likely fit into the 11 p.m. to midnight time slot now held by the sketch comedy series "MadTV," which sucks, hard, and wraps its 14-season run in May.
Fox promises that Sykes' will deliver "biting" commentary, field segments and panel discussions. Her short-lived comedy series "Wanda At Large" aired on Fox in 2003, and was pretty bad.
The Emmy-winning actress-comedian, who is set to host the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in May,
Word on the street is that "Osbournes: Reloaded" is a steaming pile of ass. The variety show, which features the soulless husks of Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne and his reality-raised brood, aired after last night's "American Idol," earning several... you know what, I'm sorry. I have to draw the line somewhere. That line used to be the rigged circus spectacle of "American Idol," but I can't stoop to covering this "Osbournes" bullshit. It's just not right. There's too much out there to waste your time watching rather than this. Let's move on. Please.
"Dancing With The Stars"... ok, that's cutting it close. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and surgically enhanced necrophiliac Holly Madison got the boot this week.
"This is a great show, a great process, a great system," declared the Woz, who said performing on the show made him feel "like the luckiest person in the world."
"It was a lot physically harder than I thought it was going to be, but it was so much fun and I'm so glad l got a chance to do it," the Girls Next Door star, a last-minute replacement for Jewel, said. "And I still love the costumes—that's still my favorite part," she added.
While I could give a rat's ass about all that action, I'm covering this because the show is worth watching for one reason: Steve-O. The guy's in the early stages of recovery, and he's clearly terrified of sobriety, something apparently entirely alien to the "Jackass" and "Wildboyz" star. It's heartbreaking to see the guy - who looks shockingly healthier and present - stumble through his routine, flailing badly without a schtick to hide behind. All the same, it's good to see him trying. Lets just hope he's got a safe place to land when he gets kicked off the show next week.
The U.S. Postal Service today announced plans to immortalize The Simpsons in a series of 44-cent first-class stamps. The limited-edition lickables will be available for preview online beginning April 9. At the same time, a sale date will also be announced.
The commemorative stamps will feature Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie (sorry, Flanders), and have been designed by Simpsons creator and mastermind Matt Groening. The stamps come as the show celebrates its 20th season with a yearlong celebration that is set to come to a head on Jan. 14, 2010.
MTV has ordered four more seasons of its long-running reality hit "The Real World." The 17-year-old docudrama, which is credited for spawning the "reality" revolution on television, will air its "The Real World: Brooklyn" finale Wednesday, and producers are already shooting the next round, "The Real World: Cancun."
Producers tweaked the format for the Brooklyn season by not giving the cast members jobs. "It's something I've been wanting to do for a while, and it's easier to do in a big metropolitan area," executive producer Jon Murray said. "The season after Cancun, a location that hasn't been announced yet, I think might be like that too."
Fans of NBC flagship comedy "The Office" have plenty of reasons to celebrate - the show is gearing up for a fall launch in syndication, with local broadcast stations representing more than 93% of the U.S. market taking part in rerun rights.
Fox stations will carry "Office" in the top markets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Orlando, Baltimore and Memphis. CBS-owned stations will air the show in Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, Miami and Pittsburgh.
The off-network take for "Office"'s initial syndication run to about $3 million an episode, in line with distributor NBC Universal's original projections.
Speaking of the funniest show on TV, Amy Ryan's character Holly, soul mate to Michael Scott (Steve Carrel), may have some competition down the line when she returns to the show as Michael's love interest. His former boss and ex-flame Jan Levinson moved away after giving birth to baby daughter Astrid.
Melora Hardin, who plays Jan, recently told an interviewer that she doesn't think she'll pop up again this season, but she'll definitely return for the next.
"Jan's probably got all the mixed feelings [about Michael and Holly] that Jan has about everything," Hardin said. "Jan is probably annoyed and happy for him and hates him for it. But she also thinks it's great, because she doesn't want him anyway, but also really wants him and doesn't want him to fall in love with anyone else."
Whatever the case, I'm in. Between "The Office" and "30 Rock," Thursdays are far and away the best night on television for comedy. I would tell you to tune in this week, but the whores over at "ER" think we need a three-hour block of prime-time positioning to say goodbye to a show people stopped caring about when George Clooney left over a decade ago.
That's right, "ER," the longest-winded hospital drama since "General Hospital," flatlines tonight after 15 years of service. Thursday's two-hour season finale (plus the one-hour memory lane recap!) on the NBC network brings to an end a drama series that won 22 Emmy awards.
Viewers shouldn't expect a tidy ending or grand emotional farewell with many former stars appearing on the final show. Clooney, who left the show in 1999, and other "ER" alumni including Julianna Margulies, Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle and Noah Wyle appeared earlier in this 15th and final season.
"We've spread them out over the season," Executive Producer John Wells, who wrote the finale, told Entertainment Weekly magazine. "I didn't want to do something like somebody dies, or there is a celebration, or the hospital closes, so that's why everybody comes back (during the season). I wanted it to be natural."
Author Michael Crichton, who died of cancer last year, wrote the screenplay for "ER" in 1974 based on his experiences as a medical student in a busy hospital emergency department.
Andy Hallett, an actor/singer who is best known as Lorne from the TV series "Angel," has died from heart disease at the age of 33. His big break came when singer Patti Labelle brought him up onstage to sing, according to IMDB.com. From there, he became a singer/songwriter who performed at various places in Los Angeles.
It was at one of those clubs where "Angel" and "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon discovered Andy and cast him as Lorne, a friendly demon who just wants to sing. He could also “read” people when they sang, being able to tell what’s really going on in their heads.
The legendary Mitch Hurwitz spoke recently about his upcoming animated show, "Sit Down, Shut Up," about self-obsessed teachers, as well as the upcoming Arrested Development movie.
"I think it will be equally insulting to every part of the country," Hurwitz said of his new show. "People are similar everywhere, they're motivated by self interest. This show started in Australia. It's just about oblivious people. The original show in a way kind of led to 'Arrested Development' - I just loved the idea of people who were equally clueless and equally self involved. I think they're representative of people everywhere."
"Sit Down, Shut Up" is an animated show about teachers at a small-town school in Florida. It features drawn characters on real photographs, something traditional animation generally frowns upon.
"The early response from bloggers was 'These guys don't know what they're doing,'" Hurwitz says. But by using photo backgrounds, there's an illusion that the show still takes place in the real world. But, "[The background shots] are incredibly dull. It reminds us what a prison school was." The shots don't look much like Florida, either, but that's part of the joke too. "It does take place in a small town, but whenever they go out of town, they're clearly in Glendale and Pasadena."
Though the show is set in a school, you shouldn't expect a lot of kids running around stealing the show. "The kids are almost non-existent," says Hurwitz. "They're as integral to the show as paper is to 'The Office'."
Speaking of "The Office," Hurwitz is quick to compare Will Forte, who voices the character Stuart Prozackian, to a young Steve Carrell or Jim Carrey. He's even considering casting Forte in the upcoming Arrested Development movie.
"I haven't even written it yet," says Hurwitz, of the Arrested film. "But yes, we're hoping to make the movie this year. We have a lot of little pieces. With the show it has always been about tying all the pieces together, but none of them really make a movie. We’re still working on the pieces."
Hurwitz is quickly picking up on the differences between writing an animated show versus a live-action show, but not everything is going the way he thought it would.
"I thought maybe I could avoid some work by doing it as an animated show," Hurwitz explained. "Cut to 17 months later and I'm rewriting the pilot… it just never ends."
