TVSquad

Welcome to Subtle Subtitles. For those of you who are uninitiated to the purpose of this feature, we're asking you to come up with your funniest quote or description for what's going on in the screen grab we choose for the week. Winners are announced in the following Friday's contest.

Last contest's winner: apronk

"Clay Aiken is breeding!!!"

This week, a scene from the series premiere of CBS's Swingtown ...

Do you remember coming back from your first semester at college and running into a kid you used to go to high school with who decided to use college as an excuse to totally reinvent him or herself? Like he was the class dork and in three months he's all of a sudden a death-metal anarchist? Or she dated the basketball team (the varsity, junior varsity, AND the freshmen) and now she dresses like Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman?

There was always something disturbing about it. Not so much that they had changed -- everyone has a right to change -- but because what they now were was different from the template you had made for them. When the universe doesn't act like you expect it to, you get uneasy; it's a natural reaction. I couldn't help but feel that way this week, when I watched A&E's new show Parking Wars.

It's time for us to give away some stuff ... again! One of today's giveaways is for three copies of The Kids in the Hall - complete series megaset on DVD, which is in stores October 31, but through Wednesday, October 17th, you can order the set at 50% off. All you've got to do is submit a comment below before 5PM Eastern, October 19, and mention your favorite sketch from the series. We'll randomly choose three winners to receive the DVDs!

Some other details:
Click here for complete Official Rules.

The producers of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist are developing a new animated series for A&E, Hollywood DMV. This will be the first animated series for the network, and will feature animated versions of stand-up comics as they stand in line at the DMV. The main focus of the animated series, however, will be the employees.

If it were anyone else but the producers of Dr. Katz behind this, I'd probably dismiss the series without even watching it, but Dr. Katz managed to find that balance between recycled stand-up material and multi-dimensional main characters, so I'm optimistic.

When people who have met John Stamos say that he's a nice, charming, down-to-earth guy, they're not kidding. He's so damned charming that twice during my phone conversation with him last week, I told him that since he already had my number, he should call me to talk about TV off-the record. (Hey, the guy said to me both times that he enjoyed the conversation. And we talked about New Jersey -- he did a movie in Freehold once. So I caved.)

It's that likability that has carried his career for the last twenty-five years, from General Hospital to Full House to ER. It's also what he hopes will draw people to Wedding Wars, an A&E original movie that will air Monday at 9 PM. In the comedy, he plays Shel, a gay party planner who sparks a national pro-gay-marriage movement when he goes on strike while planning the wedding of his brother Ben (Eric Dana).,The strike happens after he finds out Ben wrote an anti-gay marriage speech for his boss, the governor of Maine.

I spoke to Stamos about the movie for The New York Post, but while I had him on the phone, I couldn't resist asking him about ER, his Uncle Jesse mullet, and his friendship with Howard Stern. The interview is after the jump.

Beginning January 10th, A&E will begin broadcasting a cleaned-up version of The Sopranos. No violence. No nudity. No swearing. How likely is it that the PG-13 version of The Sopranos will suck? According to A&E's vice president of program planning Tom Moody, "The Sopranos is so well written and so well acted, it doesn't rely on language, violence or nudity to carry story arcs. It overcomes any of those tiny obstacles." Ah, yes, "tiny obstacles" - like how the characters speak to each other, how their actions convey meaning, etc. Not a prob.

Fortunately, HBO thought ahead. Alternative shots and scenes with tamer dialogue were filmed alongside what originally ended up on the air. Less than one minute and no full scenes will be edited out of the seventy-seven episodes destined for syndication, or so they say. If Sex and the City can be cut down to a thirty minute basic cable-friendly show with no dirty talk, than anything may be possible. Do what you will to The Sopranos - just don't get any fancy ideas about syndicating Deadwood.

Bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman, who was arrested in 2003 on charges of illegal detention after his 2003 capture of Max Factor heir Andrew Luster that eventually led to the A&E series Dog the Bounty Hunter has been released from federal prison along with his son Leland and his partner Tim after posting bail (Dog's bail was $300,000 whereas Tim and Leland's was $100,000 each). The three have had charges pending against them for posting bail but never returning for their court date. A judge has ordered the men to wear monitoring bracelets, not to possess any firearms and to remain in Hawaii until they return to court for extradition hearings which will determine whether they'll go to trial in Mexico. If convicted, Chapman could face six months to four years in prison.

A crowd of supporters gathered at the court house, and A&E filmed the event for the next season of the TV show.

MSNBC just this afternoon broke the news that Duane "Dog" Chapman, star of the Dog the Bounty Hunter reality show on A&E, was arrested in at his home by United States Marshals for an extradition hearing to Mexico. Mexican authorities are requesting that Chapman be extradited for kidnapping charges related to Chapman's capture of Andrew Luster.

[Update: Chapman, his brother, Tim, and son, Leland were apprehended at Chapman's home separately. Chapman's wife Beth goes on to say that the Federal Marshals explained Chapman was being charged with "deprivation of liberty of Andrew Luster." Bounty hunting, incidentally, is illegal in Mexico.

Luster is a Max Factor heir, and when Dog first caught him in 2003, Dog spent three days in a Mexican jail over the incident. Dog the Bounty Hunter was in the midst of producing its fourth season during this most recent arrest. Luster is currently serving time on three rape convictions.]

Related:
Lawsuit file against Dog the Bounty Hunter

Within the next couple years, both A&E and the History Channel plan to launch individual high-definition channels. A&E's offering, called A&E HD, will come first, premiering this September. The channel will kick off with a CSI: Miami marathon on Labor Day weekend, so get ready to become intimate with David Curuso's pores. After the launch, the channel will simply simulcast A&E's programming. The History Channel's new high-def channel, which has the similar unoriginal name of History Channel HD, will launch next year. I'm not sure how the History Channel plans to take advantage of high definition, but I'll bet you'll be able to see mites crawling around inside Hitler's mustache. That's actually a really good idea for a Disney cartoon. Or maybe not.

[via Lost Remote]