TVSquad

Rita Rocks is premiering its second season on Lifetime tonight, along with Sherri Shepherd's new sitcom, Sherri. For those of you who haven't seen the show before, Rita stars Mad TV's Nicole Sullivan, who plays Rita, a suburban mom of two daughters who plays in a rock band on the side. Rounding out her garage band are her friends Owen (Ian Gomez), Patty (Tisha Campbell-Martin) and Kip (Ricky Ullman), Rita's daughter Hallie's (Natalie Dreyfuss) boyfriend.

The second-season premiere doesn't really focus on Rita's music so much. While we do still see her at practice, she's mainly dealing with mom stuff, specifically in relation to Hallie, her oldest daughter. In fact, what we have is a perennial family-sitcom classic-- the parent having to give the child "The Talk."

When I interviewed Susanne Daniels, the President for Entertainment at the Lifetime Network, she was high on the success of Army Wives, and anxious to bring more comedy to the network.

"Viewers tell us that they love our comedies, our movies, Army Wives. I would argue that more people identify Reba and Will and Grace with our network now than the networks that launched them. And I was at the WB when Reba launched!" she said in TV Week. Well, now she's launching a new comedy, this time for Lifetime.

Lifetime has ordered 13 episodes of a new sitcom called Rita Rocks for this fall and cast Nicole Sullivan as Rita. The show will be part of a one-hour comedy block with Reba. "We've assembled a fantastic team in front of and behind the camera," said Ms. Daniels in a statement today.

Look, I'm not a doctor; I don't even play one on TV. However, after watching Tuesday night's episode of Scrubs and reading brother Joel's review I got to thinking (which is always a bad idea): was the diagnosis wrong?

Well, no. To recap, in Tuesday's episode three patients at Sacred Heart died after rabies infected organs (liver, heart valve, kidney) were transplanted into their bodies. The organs came from a patient (Jill Tracy, played by Nicole Sullivan) who J.D. (Zach Braff) though passed away from an overdose.

In actuality it seems that the case of rabies-infected organs was 'ripped from the headlines' from an event that occurred in 2004. According to the CNN article,  three recipient patients at three different hospitals in the United States died after the infected organs (one liver and two kidneys) were transplanted. It also turns out that the organ donor also died of rabies, which infects the central nervous system and can cause symptoms such as hypersalivation (foaming at the mouth), insomnia and anxiety.

Rabies is normally not tested for during transplant procedures. More common infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B and C and syphilis are more commonly tested.

And you thought you couldn't learn anything from TV.