Thanksgiving is coming and for many of us it's time to eat, drink and watch football. It's also a time to reflect on the things you're grateful for and since TV Squad is all about television, here's what I'm grateful for this holiday season, with regard to the tube.
Mad Men season finale
There was really nothing as satisfying in the entire year for me. Matt Weiner promised a game-changing episode and he delivered it with a whopper of a wrap up. Actually, nothing was really wrapped; it was more like the cards have been dealt and we're still waiting to see how the hands are played.
There's another Bravo to NBC crossover afoot. First, The Real Housewives of New Jersey popped over to play themselves on Mercy. Now it turns out that Kathy Griffin is on her way to Law and Order: SVU. And, get this, she's not playing herself. The queen of the D-list will be acting.
Kathy has been tapped to play a lesbian activist in the February 10 episode. As anyone who's watched Kathy on her Emmy-award winning reality show, My Life on the D-List, Kathy is a shameless over-achiever and loves to work. She's ambitious and determined to get off the D-list. As she might say, she would go to the opening of a refrigerator if it would help her career.
Attention, attention! This is not a joke. It's not a spoof or a gag. Kathy Griffin will host a dance show for ABC. That's right, the funny lady of Bravo's My Life on the D-List, has said yes to hosting Let's Dance, a new celebrity reality show in which stars compete with one another by re-creating classic routines from pop culture. That means someone is going to try and do Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" dance from Motown's 25th Anniversary Special, don't you think?
I am not a Dancing With the Stars fan, but this show sounds like something I'd be interested in watching for a couple of reason. Number one is Kathy Griffin. I think she's hilarious. She also loves celebrities, so I could see her really getting into this show and being the perfect built-in zingmeister. She'll say whatever comes to her mind, and -- fortunately -- that's usually pretty funny.
Oscar roulette is usually played when it comes time to figure out the nominations. However, this year there seems to be a wheel of fortune spinning with the names of possible hosts for the show. Of course, the folks running the show have intimated that they might want to have a few stars sharing the duties. Historically, that hasn't worked out too well.
He's currently on Broadway in a play -- with 007 Daniel Craig -- and he "quietly turned down the job" according to sources. It's not because he was a bomb emceeing the proceedings either. He didn't do the "Oprah, Uma, Uma, Oprah" joke nor did he trip on his shoelaces in the opening number. Quite the contrary, in fact. Hugh Jackman was a perfectly fine host.
But he doesn't want to do it in 2010. Maybe he doesn't want to push his luck? Maybe he just doesn't want to work that hard.
It's been too long since Kathy Griffin has been on Bravo! My Life on the D-List ended in August, but it seems much longer since we've had some Griffin humor. That drought will end next month. On November 3, Bravo will air Kathy Griffin's new stand-up special, Balls of Steel.
I'm smiling already. Kathy is hilarious, by far the funniest woman on Bravo... and unlike the females on the Real Housewives, she is intentionally funny. Her stand up concerts are especially well-done because she gets to really dish about pop culture, skewering the likes of Oprah, Rosie, Cher, Paris, et al.
Kathy Griffin was on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night to promote her new book Official Book Club Selection. You can see the whole interview on YouTube or on ABC's site, but the highlight was a clip from her new biopic where she plays reality show star Kate Gosselin.
A couple of years ago, I interviewed Joan Rivers for the Boston Globe. She was playing a local theatre, and I hadn't yet had a chance to talk to her, and I wanted to talk a bit about her past in Second City and as a pioneering female comic. But since a lot of her shtick is slamming celebrities, and she helped invent what I guess you'd call "red carpet comedy," I thought I'd try to find a couple of people to do a point/counterpoint. Funny thing is, I couldn't find anyone for the counterpoint, anyone who wanted to go on record saying anything uncomplimentary against Rivers.
You can find plenty of people who will make jokes about her plastic surgery, or her failed talk show from the 80s, or her TV marketing, but that all seems a bit superficial. No one seemed to have a terribly valid criticism outside of those clichés. And that's what I think you'll see at the Comedy Central Roast of Joan Rivers Roast Sunday (10PM). From the clips I've seen, some of the sharper comics have found a new approach to those tropes, and you'll see plenty of plastic surgery jokes. And I'm sure you'll hear plenty of them from Rivers herself (a debt, there, I think owed to Phyllis Diller).
From this clip below, it looks like Rivers is going to give as well as she gets on theJoan Rivers Roast this Sunday at 10PM on Comedy Central. I also like how the celebs dump on other celebrities at the roast. That's a nasty but funny dig at Carl Reiner.
Bob Sassone already did a post on how the amazing Anderson Cooper caused a little bit of an accident on the set of Live with Regis and Kelly yesterday morning when he subbed for the Reege. As funny as that -- and really, the entire "host chat" segment was -- it was not my favorite thing that happened on the show yesterday.
That honor goes to Cooper's interview with The Bachelorette's Jillian Harris. Harris was on the show with her "fiance," doing the post-finale press tour and shilling for the jeweler who provided the diamond ring that Ed bestowed upon her on Monday's season-ender.
While Kelly stuck to the script and asked the common, "when did you know he was the one?" questions, Anderson wasn't having any of it. He's Anderson freakin' Cooper, and as he demonstrated with his swift takedown of the Lohan clan, he doesn't have time for the shenanigans of D-list reality stars (except Kathy Griffin). So Cooper, always trying to get to the bottom of the story, flat-out asked Jillian how many dudes she boned in the Bachelorette mansion.
The traditional comedy roast has been hijacked by the cable networks and reproduced with more disappointing results than a sperm bank run by General Motors.
Comedy Central has done the best job for the most part while others like A&E's extremely mismanaged Gene Simmons Roast made for lower quality television are as horrific as those painfully dated Dean Martin's Roasts that are sold on infomercials in the wee small hours of the morning.
The secret to doing a good roast isn't really that much of a secret: hire people who are actually paid to be funny. That's why the Roast of Joan Rivers could be the best one yet.
As it often is in show biz lore, Whitney Houston is on the verge of a comeback. On September 1 will be releasing a new CD called I Look To You, and some time in the preceding week, ABC will air a one hour Whitney Houston special. No word yet on whether it's going to be a concert format or an extended set of music videos or a mix of both, but the ultimate goal is clear: present Whitney in the best possible light and show off her big voice, one of pop music's most celebrated.
It will hopefully be a positive change of pace for La Houston. The last time Whitney was all over TV was when she "co-starred" on the Bravo reality series Being Bobby Brown. That slice of life, unscripted gem might have been the worst thing Houston ever did in her professional career.
Kathy Griffin is so ubiquitous these days, you might have to dust off an old cliché (and change it slightly) to describe her - The Queen of All Media.
Kathy Griffin: My Life On the D-List is getting the best ratings of its run, she was a guest on Privileged, her CD, For Your Consideration, was nominated for a Grammy, her book comes out in September, and she continues to tour as a stand-up comedian. She was also recently tapped to host the Shmemmys (The Creative Arts Emmys) and to roast her good friend Joan Rivers for Comedy Central. She may not be getting Ryan Seacrest's 45 million dollar paycheck, but she may be challenging him for most entertainment jobs held simultaneously.
I caught up with her by phone recently and had a long conversation. So long, in fact, that we have posted two different versions - this is the short one. There is an unedited version here, for those who need every last morsel of Griffin they can get.
Griffin actually started out by asking me a question.
There's another Bravo to NBC crossover afoot. First, The Real Housewives of New Jersey popped over to play themselves on 
Attention, attention! This is not a joke. It's not a spoof or a gag. 
TBS has a marathon of The Office all night.
Oscar
So 
It's been too long since Kathy Griffin has been on Bravo! My Life on the D-List ended in August, but it seems much longer since we've had some Griffin humor. That drought will end next month. On November 3, 
A couple of years ago, I interviewed Joan Rivers for the 
Discovery's Shark Week continues all night.
The traditional comedy roast has been hijacked by the cable networks and reproduced with more disappointing results than a sperm bank run by General Motors. 
As it often is in show biz lore, 
Kathy Griffin is so ubiquitous these days, you might have to dust off an old cliché (and change it slightly) to describe her - The Queen of All Media. 
Mike Henry and Daryl Hall on a Cleveland Show Thanksgiving
The TV Squad Podcast: The Prisoner, '80s TV, soap news and more
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