TVSquad

Bethenny Frankel has been busy making news. First, she was feuding with the other women on The Real Housewives of New York City. Then, she was replaced on Real Housewives by Sonja Morgan because Bethenny is getting her own Bravo show. Last week, she announced her engagement to Jason Hoppy. Today, Bethenny's confirmed that she's pregnant... and yes, Jason is the father.

Bethenny is two months along and claims she would have preferred keeping the baby news quiet until she'd gotten through her first trimester. It's understandable because it's her first baby and some people are superstitious about saying anything too soon.

(S05E01) Is there a word that describes the feeling of "missing fictional characters?" If not, there ought to be one. Flurj, maybe, to take a word from last week's wonderful SNL cold open. As in, "I don't know about you guys, but I flurjed the hell out of Jim and Pam and Michael and Dwight all summer long."

What about you guys? Did you flurj your friends at The Office? Well, everything is a-okay now. Your fictional friends from Dunder-Mifflin are back, and your good buddy Jay (quite possibly fictional, we're working it out in therapy) is back reviewing every episode mere seconds after it's aired! So, sit back, relax, and sharpen your commenting fingers! On to the review!

(S03E16) Well, even with Bree on her honeymoon, it looks like things are going to be interesting on Wisteria Lane. I had the thought at the end, when Rex was narrating about the Suburban Lanes of Broken Dreams that maybe Carlos is going to offer to adopt Edie's son. Yeah, yeah, I know Charlie is just supposed to be gone for a month, but this is Desperate Housewives. That means Charlie is probably going to die.

I was minding my own business in my massive marble home-library, reading a book on French existentialism, listening to a bit of Mozart, and enjoying some fine Ramen (Top Ramen!), when, suddenly, I heard a low scream outside my window. Living in the middle of a very urban area, I paid no mind, assuming it was just another mugging or stabbing. But then there was another scream. And another. And another. All of which were distinctly male and sounded something like "Becky, whyyyyy?!". I set aside my Sartre and jumped online to check for any major tragedies, and then I saw it. Oh, boy.

Anna quickly mentioned this in her post about the Scrubs video, but I think it's worthy of a full post... Sarah Chalke (Becky from Roseanne, Elliot from Scrubs) is now engaged to her long-time boyfriend, Jamie Afifi. He proposed to her on vacation in Hawaii last week.

Sorry, boys, looks like she's taken. And yes, I spent about ten minutes looking for the prettiest possible picture to accompany this post, just to make the news even more painful.

Ah, another Hollywood fairytale is created. This time around it involves Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria and her boyfriend, Tony Parker of the NBA's San Antonio Spurs. According to their spokespeople the couple is now officially engaged. Yes, I know, the world is better place with that knowledge.

The couple met back in 2004 in the Spurs locker room after Longoria told a local news reporter that Parker was her favorite player. The whole thing was caught on tape (what isn't these days?) and aired on NBA Access With Ahmad Rashad. After secretly dating for several months they officially announced they were a couple in the summer of 2005. After a brief split in September of this year Parker proposed to Longoria Wednesday night at the actress's home.

The couple will tie the knot sometime next summer, which is when our official utopia will begin. And, yes, I am being snarky.

My wife made me tune into the big finale of ABC's The Bachelor last night. I tried desperately to talk her out of it (something about the resulting dip in testosterone from being exposed to the show might harm our chances at conceiving), but she persisted.

Like Jesse Palmer, and (inexplicably popular) Bob Guiney before him, last night's "Prince" Lorenzo (a man who has less claim to actually being a prince than the musician Prince does) decided to opt out of going through with proposing to his choice. He did give her a ring, but called it a "family ring" instead of an engagement ring. This takes even more guts than the other Bachelors who went with the more promising "promise" ring nomenclature.

Yup, the two have been dating since 2004.

The reality show king and the former star of Touched By An Angel have gotten engaged, officially. I knew that Burnett was divorced, but I didn't know that Downey has been married twice before, once to actor Leland Orser (currently Dr. Dubenko on ER) and once to director David Anspaugh (Rudy, Hoosiers, Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, E-Ring, The Bedford Diaries).

I wonder if Burnett will turn this into another show. There's no wedding date yet, but I'm sure the couple will honeymoon on some beautiful desert island, where they will be immediately separated into two different tribes and forced to compete against each other in races, puzzle-making, and the eating of monkey testicles.

[via TV Tattle]

I usually bypass gossipy items like this, but this one caught my eye for two reasons: it involves one of my favorite actors on television, and because this story didn't give me the dry heaves. Scrubs star and former TV Squad interviewee John C. McGinley revealed to People magazine how he got engaged to his new fiancée, yoga instructor / birthing doula Nichole Kessler, on Aug. 19. Zap2It.com reports that McGinley told People about the engagement on the red carpet of the Creative Arts Emmys, which happened to be later that same day. The story itself sounds like it was very low key; he called Kessler down to their garden to ask her about some flower ideas, they sat down to look at the ocean, and he produced the ring. Very nice. Well, at least it's a whole hell of a lot better than putting the proposal up on the Jumbotron at a Yankee game.

Anyway, it sounds like the type of engagement story that most other couples have. Well, except for the Malibu estate. And the fact that they live in a bird sanctuary. And the huge ring. And the whole birthing doula thing. But other than that, they're just regular folks, right?

(S03E08) A friend and I were talking about a third woman, one who's involved with a volunteer organization. "I want my donation to be therapy for her!" said the friend. This week's episode of The 4400 opens that delicious possibility: the ability to force therapy onto someone. Oh, were it only true! I totally would have stolen that lady's herbs, too.

As it turns out, the therapy isn't always beneficent. Three people commit suicide at the opening of the show, haunted too cruelly by figures from their past. This sends Tom and Diana into a quest to find the source of the hallucinations -- a brand-new street drug called "Blink" -- and quash their own demons, personified by Tom's dead father and Diana's old fiancé.

Speaking of fiancés. The plot took its most delicious turn yet.