TVSquad

Everyone who has been laughing at the idea of Fran Drescher taking over Hillary Clinton's Senate seat for the state of New York, you can stop laughing now. It's not that wild an idea, not when you consider that Fred Grandy -- Gopher from The Love Boat -- was a Congressman from Iowa, and pro wrestler Jesse Ventura was the Governor of Minnesota, and there's a really good chance that Saturday Night Live alum Al Franken (remember Stuart Smalley?) has won the Senate seat for Minnesota, too. (They're still recounting the votes!)

Oh, and let's not forget the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger from the great state of California. In other words, why not Senator Fran Drescher!

Funny ladies Rosie O'Donnell (Nip/Tuck) and Fran Drescher (The Nanny) are working together on creating a new "fun, happy, family comedy" for TV. On Rosie's website, Fran and Rosie teamed up on camera to talk -- primarily about Fran's "cancer schmancer" campaign for public awareness -- but at the end, Rosie and Fran revealed a sitcom they are planning in which they'll star together.

There's no question that Fran and Rosie are funny women with loyal fans. The Nanny was a CBS hit for six seasons. Rosie, who more recently has been a source of controversy like her very tumultuous time as a cohost on The View, has also been a success on TV. While she was on The View, the ratings were higher than ever before or since. She also had an Emmy-award winning daytime talk show for six years straight which had a vociferous following.

(S05E11) The title of this episode led me to expect something much different than what we ended up seeing. The reference to The Life Aquatic made me think that this episode would find the Griffin's on some sort of adventure. No such luck there, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think that idea could have made for a funny episode, but this one worked out ok.

It was something of the opposite of "Peter's Two Dads." Where that one excelled with the structure of the story, this one wasn't as strong. But the collection of cutaways presented with this episode was far superior. Of course, given that I only liked one of them last week, that's a pretty low bar. We'll save those for last though, and get to the meat of the episode. As is often the case, we had a Peter story balanced with a Stewie story.

Fran Drescher either has superior genes or a great plastic surgeon, because, at 48, she looks like she could pass for 35. I mean, this is a woman who was in Saturday Night Fever, for Christ's sake. But the former star of The Nanny seems to be aging very, very slowly, to the point where you have to wonder if she's got a got a photo of her aging self stored away in her basement somewhere.

You can tell she knows she's lucky; she's taking any advantage she can to show herself off. Not only does she like to go to parties in outfits that don't leave a lot to the imagination (see the picture with this post), but she has no compunction about stripping down to her bra and panties on stage, as she's doing right now in the Off-Broadway play Some Girl(s), which is written by Neil LaBute. In this New York Observer profile, Drescher talks about the play, her non-dating life, her former relationship with a younger man, and the chances that her current sitcom, Living with Fran, is coming back (she doesn't think it is, and doesn't seem to mind).