TVSquad

Fox's charge to make 24 a completely green show is admirable.

It's not only expensive and harder to do than one might think, but it also flies in the face of 24's core audience. Of course, that's not its boldest effect. These days, pissing off the right wing is more "in" than Twittering about your Snuggie.

The boldest move is the effect these new measures could have on the body of the show in ways you may not expect. You might even see Jack Bauer tie a guy to a chair and hook up his nipples to a car battery to get him to admit he doesn't put his plastics and newspapers in separate recycling bins.

Dennis Haysbert recently claimed that his role as President Palmer on 24 may have helped pave the way for a viable African American presidential candidate. He went on to claim that his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the movie Goodbye Bafana ended apartheid and that his role as Jonas Blane in The Unit cured polio. Haysbert was then wrestled to the ground by his handlers and is now "recuperating" at the Clay Aiken Home for Delusional Celebrities.

My first thought upon hearing this news was that Dennis Haysbert is obviously insane. Since I've been criticized in this space for not having an open mind about insane things, I decided to take Mr. Haysbert at his word. I then went even further and went to work putting together a list of other politicians who exist mainly due to the hard work done for them by TV actors. After researching Wikipedia for almost a full fifteen minutes, this is the list I've managed to put together...

After the first 15 minutes of the HBO movie Recount, I was so upset, so filled with rage that I wondered if I wanted to watch the rest of the movie. Did I want to relive the events of November 7, 2000? Did I want to watch what happened, the craziest election fiasco in the last 25 years? I was compelled to stick with it because I had lived through it and I was dying to know what I didn't know when it unfolded in real time. I thought the HBO movie might teach me something, and, in fact, it did.

For those who don't want to know what happened in Recount, I won't reveal any spoilers until after the jump. Of course, if you don't already know how the election turned out, you've either been in a coma or are woefully out of touch. Suffice to say that Recount doesn't rewrite history. The ending is exactly as it was in 2000.

(S05E18) And so ends a short, inconsistent, Family Guy season. I don't know if we should chalk it up to Seth MacFarlane being spread too thin with American Dad and The Winner to watch over, or just the show coming up on 100 episodes. Something just wasn't quite right at Family Guy HQ this season though.

Hey, Brigitte here with TV Squad Daily. I'll be covering the TV stories I find interesting each day, Monday through Friday, in this video blog.

Today on TV Squad Daily:

• Al Gore and his Live Earth concert plans are being questioned and criticized by Live 8 organizer Bob Geldof.
• This makes them my favorite couple of the month: Nicolette Sheridan and Micheal Bolton are moving to the country to raise horses!
  

The video's embedded below, or you can download the file directly (Quicktime required). You can also subscribe to this podcast via our feed.

Former presidential cadidate Al Gore will receive an International Emmy in November for his work in broadcasting, including Current TV, his cable channel featuring user-generated content, and his book and documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which examines the effects of manbearpig global warming. I'm not sure what the International Emmy has to do with his movie, exactly, but there you go.

Gore is actually receiving the Founders Award, which honors those who "touch our common humanity." More importantly, Gore needs more gold statues which he will melt down in order to create a solid gold island he plans to live on once global warming has turned the Earth into a aquatic wasteland. Gore will then elect himself king of the mer-people and begin the breeding process for this new race of Earth creatures, who will claim to adore him but ultimately elect someone else as their king.

"Welcome Back, Hotter": Al Gore has become a strange Hollywood sweetheart, so he's bound to be met with jealous cries and annoying "yes or no" questions in DC. The "flaming baby" graphic was awesome. I want that on a t-shirt.

"Showdown At Justice: Hereunder referred to as the 'Nonvoluntary Lawyer Disemployment Program' vis a vis certain events on or around 7 December 2006 (C.F. Appendix B, Codicil IX, Paragraph 7)": Tony Snow is being a big baby over a lot of things. Actually, Jon seems genuinely fed up with him.

No matter what I do to make my Oscar viewing experience bearable (parties, alcohol, hookers) I always end up wanting to put a gun in my mouth by hour two.

First, let me say that Ellen DeGeneres was very funny and did a great job hosting. Also the song by Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C Reilly was the funniest thing I've seen in a while.

Now let me ask you this...how stupid were those dancers?

Most people know that public radio is a huge thing here in Minnesota. We are the home of Lake Wobegon, after all. Recently, Minnesota Public Radio filed a lawsuit against Al Gore's Current TV, claiming that internet users would confuse Gore's independent network with "The Current" a popular MPR-owned music station here in the Twin Cities. The lawsuit claims the radio station had already applied for a trademark of the name "Current" four months before Gore's new venture was changed from "INdTV" to "Current TV." Representatives from Current TV issued a statement noting that over 300 businesses use the word "current" in their name.

It's easy to dismiss this as just a frivolous lawsuit. After all, who's going to confuse a radio station with an independent TV network? What bothers me even more, though, is that public radio should be championing a TV network that eschews corporate news for citizen journalism. I would have expected MPR to support Current TV, not try to bring it down.