TVSquad

If I had a dollar for all the times I've written about Oprah Winfrey in the past few weeks, I'd be able to retire. Well, the O is one busy lady. She's just booked another TV program. On Sunday, December 13, ABC will broadcast Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special. Set the DVR for 10 p.m. because that's when President Barack Obama will welcome Oprah into America's grandest national house.

Take that, Barbara Walters! Not so fast with that ascension to the upper echelon, Robin Roberts. Back off, Diane Sawyer. Oprah Winfrey has an 'in' with the First Family and that's why she's going to be visiting the Obamas for a tour of what the holidays are like at the White House. This is the first time President Obama and the First Lady are having Christmas there, and it'll be all new to them.

If you're like me, and I know I am, you've wondered what it would like if the U.S.S. Enterprise descended on the Hollywood Hills.

Fortunately, Paramount held the big DVD and Blu-ray release party for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie at the Griffith Park Observatory Monday night, and the Enterprise took up a standard orbit around the famous planetarium landmark.

While the film's creators and cast mingled inside the observatory, a high-definition multimedia system projected video images of Trek visual effects up against the building's walls.

So, for a few moments, the Enterprise (almost to scale) swooped in for a visit before heading away at warp factor one.

Enjoy a glimpse of it below.

As in years past during the World Series, FOX has started up the marketing machine for the new season of 24 and this year is no different. The official trailer for Jack Bauer's eighth very bad day (which has 24's traditional 2-night 4-hour premiere on January 17th and 18th) aired last night.

While it doesn't shed too much light on the new season (which takes place in NYC), one thing is for certain -- despite how we last saw Jack, sick as a dog with Kim by his side, the guy seems pretty healthy now. And a healthy Jack Bauer means an ass-kicking Jack Bauer, retired or not.

It's been revealed that the new season will focus on the assassination attempt of a Middle Eastern political figure played by Slumdog Millionaire's Anil Kapoor. He gets a little bit of play here in the trailer as well as a quick glimpse of the resurrected CTU. But let's be honest -- all we care about seeing is Jack, even though he is a grandpa now. Check it and tell us what you think!

This past Monday's episode of House, "Brave Heart," showed us a side of House that we've seen bits of this season, but finally got proof of - he is getting better. Granted, a healthy House means a return to many of his old shenanigans but apparently it also means trying to forgive the past.

House's military brat upbringing was brought to light in season five's "Birthmarks" where we saw House say good-bye to his father - a man he didn't seem to have too much love for. In this past Monday's episode, House took a cue from Wilson (who'd been conversing with Amber) and before dozing off to sleep, he spoke to his late father admitting that maybe he'd been focusing on the wrong things because there had been some good times.

Well... what good times? There was no context to back up House's claim. Now we have it. House producer Greg Yaintanes has posted a deleted scene, a flashback, where young Greg recalls some of those good times. I never pegged House as an ice-cream cone fan. Take a look.

[Watch full episodes and clips of House, as well as other shows, over at SlashControl.]

Modern Family is really firing on all cylinders right now and after last night's stellar episode (which seamlessly folded in Shelley Long as Jay's [Ed O'Neill] ex-wife DeDe), the show has finally taken over Community as my favorite new comedy of the season.

The episode, entitled "The Incident," was the easily the strongest episode thus far and had so many laugh out loud moments - Manny stroking his Sharpie marker goatee was hilarious. But as Jason pointed out in his review, Dylan's song for Haley and the subsequent montage of the entire family not being able to get the tune out of their heads was brilliant.

Turns out that despite Phil and Claire's objections to Hayley hanging out with Dylan (he did write a song about doing their daughter), Dylan and Hayley went and made a music video for "In the Moonlight (Do Me)." Ahh - nothing says young love like champagne flutes filled with milk. Take a look and good luck getting it out of your head - it is catchy.



[Watch clips and full episodes of Modern Family over at SlashControl.]

Before it got self-referential and started playing up its own celebrity, NBC Dateline's "To Catch a Predator" series was a distinct guilty pleasure. It did the heart good to see some genuinely depraved lowlifes humiliated on nationwide TV before heading off to prison where they'd no doubt meet predators more adept than themselves.

Meanwhile, with so many in Hollywood reaching out to defend confessed child rapist Roman Polanski, It was inevitable that some clever video editor would bring "Predator" host Chris Hansen and moviedom's most prominent pedophile together for a brief interview on YouTube (video after the jump).

The exchange hits all of the "Predator" chestnuts as, whenever Hansen ambushed one of these depraved disasters, there'd be excuses and denials galore. Sadly, Polanski outlived the real "To Catch a Predator" as lame lawsuits involving tired notions of due process and entrapment ruined the fun for everyone.

With the return of Friday Night Lights right around the corner (it premieres on Wednesday, October 28, at 9PM on DirecTV's 101 Network), there's been a lot of talk about who's returning, who isn't, and just what the heck is gonna happen now that Eric (Kyle Chandler) is coaching the East Dillon Lions and not the Dillon Panthers anymore. There's been plenty of news, too, regarding new characters and how the good-bye arcs for favorites like Matt (Zach Gilford), Tyra (Adrianne Palicki), and Lyla (Minka Kelly) are going to play out

Well, DirecTV has finally released a short promo for the new season and guess what? Despite the fact that it features new footage (as opposed to a recycled season three montage), it gives us absolutely nothing.

But it is pretty damn cool to look at. The set up of a tornado-esque storm ripping apart Dillon and culminating in a rift across the football field while everyone just sort of casually watches and walks away is pretty poetic. You know what else would be poetic? Seeing Eric shove his fist down Joe McCoy's throat in the season four premiere. We can only hope.

Have you seen the Brooke Shields' commercial for Latisse? Were you as confused by it as I was? It sounded like a cosmetics commercial, which I think was the idea. They soft-sold the whole pharmaceutical angle because of the side effects. After all, getting longer eyelashes is worth risking red and itchy eyes, or "eyelid skin darkening," isn't it?

Generally speaking, I like Brooke. I watched Suddenly Susan. I even watched Lipstick Jungle. But I don't like this commercial, even if she's endorsing the best eyelash growing stuff in the world. The way it's put together is deceptive. It looks and sounds like she's selling eye makeup, which she's not.

Funny or Die has up an amusing clip starring a group of television and movie stars including Alyson Hannigan, Emily Deschanel, Kat McPhee, Minka Kelly and Jaime King in which they are at a slumber party together. One of them feels a lump on her breast and starts to panic. The issue gets resolved but not before the paparazzi show up to get some rather embarrassing photos of the group.

The sketch was co-written by King and Taryn Southern and is sponsored by Her Energy in support of breast cancer research. The entire six-part series is called "Tit for Tat." Let's hear it for amusing double-entendres.

Still, it's for a good cause and stars a plethora of television personalities (including the ever-cute Ms. Hannigan whom I've adored since her days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), so it's worth a look even if you're just a perv who likes watching female celebrities grope each other. Video is after the jump.

When FX initially picked up six episodes of its first foray into animated comedy, the plan for Archer was to pair it with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Since that greenlight, two things happened.

First, FX got trigger-happy and greenlit a whole bunch of other shows (from the likes of Louis CK and Don Cheadle). Second, and more importantly, according to FX it turns out that from start through post, it takes almost a whole month to complete one episode of Archer. With Always Sunny premiering this Thursday night at 10PM ET on FX, slotting in Archer's six eps suddenly became impossible. So the plan has changed. Instead of pairing Archer with Sunny mid-season, FX plans to launch its fantasy-football themed sitcom The League instead. However, if you were looking forward to seeing Archer, I've got some good news.

True Blood pulled in record ratings for last week's insane episode, "New World in My View." The ep ended with most of Bon Temps still zombified by Maryann, Sam naked and on the run, and Bill about to meet with the Vampire Queen of Louisiana, played by Evan Rachel Wood.

Over at the Stackhouse place, Sookie, Lettie May and Lafayette were left caring for a bruised Tara, who's determined to rescue her man, Eggs. That's where the following preview clip for Sunday's ep, "Frenzy" picks up. Click through to watch.

The video below features a group of gay dudes in speedos dancing on the beach to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA." And Disney loves it.



Seriously. In a surprising move, Disney, who owns Miley's music (as well as her soul), has allowed the video to become a hit on YouTube, and Disney employees have reportedly been e-mailing it to each other all week. It even got the seal of approval from Rich Ross, the president of Disney Channels Worldwide. Mr. Ross recently placed a phone call to the maker of the video, Esquire marketing exec Dave Fudge, just to tell him he "loved it."

Yesterday, FOX officially announced the connection between its on-going Snakes on a Cane viral campaign to their drama House. While I don't really understand why a reveal was necessary (I mean, c'mon - who hadn't figured this out?!?), there is one nifty little piece of info that came out of it - according to Joe Adalian at TV MoJoe, the whole thing was Hugh Laurie's idea.

No wonder FOX's in-house marketing gurus felt the need for a reveal - they didn't even come up with the idea in the first place. However, they certainly have capitalized on Laurie's cleverness.

Today's dose of Whedoncrack comes from the red carpet watchers over at Access Hollywood. They recently caught up with Eliza Dushku at a party and asked her about the upcoming season of Dollhouse, which kicks off Sept. 25 on Fox.

Dushku didn't reveal much we didn't already know – upcoming guest stars will include Jamie Bamber, Keith Carradine and Angel alum Alexis Denisof – but she did play up the fact that season two will be shot entirely on HD, like the unaired thirteenth ep, "Epitaph One." Dushku said the format change makes the show feel more real and less "science fictiony." Video after the jump.

In anticipation of the season premiere on Friday September 25th (and nothing says 'the last season" like a move to Friday nights), a new promotional trailer for Smallville Season 9 has been released (it's on the EW.com site and is sadly not embeddable). The good news is that the trailer gives a pretty clear view of Clark's new costume.

It's somewhat different than the leaked Comic-Con trailer, and that's a good thing. As for the outfit itself: others have said it reminds them of Neo's outfit from The Matrix. While there are similarities to that, it reminds me more of the outfits worn by the Phantom Zone villains in a recent Superman comic co-written by Richard Donner and Geoff Johns. Given this season's big bad, the costume design was likely done that way to evoke Clark's Kryptonian heritage.

So what do you think of the trailer? Does it make you want to stay in Friday nights and not miss an episode?