TVSquad

This season of The Celebrity Apprentice may not have Piers and Omarosa to spice things up. However, poker player Annie Duke and comedienne Joan Rivers are a close second.

In the first episodes of the season, we didn't see much of the rivalry between the two ladies but the past two or three episodes have shown them as enemies. The two of them have done and said pretty harsh things about the other. The war between the two is still ongoing so before one of them is fired, it's time we take a few minutes and make our predictions as to who will win the war: Annie or Joan?

Bryan Cranston and Dean Norris have been on a collision course since the beginning of AMC's Breaking Bad. For the uninitiated, Cranston plays Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher with terminal lung cancer who turns to cooking meth to leave his family financially secure. Norris plays his brother-in-law Hank, who happens to be a DEA agent. Which made family get-togethers in Season One pretty interesting.

Season One pushed White's story to the brink of believability -- he took on drug dealers using chemistry in one of the most amazing scenes on television last year, and never quite found his way out of the meth trade, even as it became harder to hide from his family, including Hank. I'm curious to see how the story continues, whether they continue to push White further and further out, or if he gets a break somewhere.

This fake interview on Dailymotion, supposedly taped for the show's electronic press kit, isn't quite the ultimate confrontation between White and Hank fans may have in mind. For that, you'll have to tune in to Season Two, which premiers March 8 at 10PM. But it is an amusing bit of improv between the two actors.

I recently mentioned NBC.com was giving viewers a chance to create montages to celebrate Jay Leno's fifteen years on The Tonight Show.

I'll admit I took a few jabs at Leno, and in doing so prompted a couple readers to suggest checking out some of Leno's earlier, pre-Tonight Show work, specifically his appearances on Letterman before the kerfuffle in the early '90s that would see Leno getting The Tonight Show and Letterman, well, not.

The feud continues.

After Rosie O'Donnell announced on The View that she has been treated for depression (and that she hangs upside down every day), Donald Trump had to go and make a statement to one of the gossip shows about it (seriously, does The Insider have a crew stationed outside his office 24/7 in case he does something?). The video is after the jump, but here's the text of what he said:

"I have no compassion for Rosie...I can fully understand that when she looks in the mirror she suffers from depression."

O'Donnell wrote one of her poems about it on her blog, and if she comes up with more gems like "it has been my goal/for so long/to give a balding billionaire a boner," I might have to bookmark her site.

[via Best Week Ever]

From time to time, we get commenters telling us that we write like we're jaded and don't like our jobs. Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth; we all feel very grateful that we get paid to watch and report on one of our favorite things to do in the world. And anyway, there are other writers out there who actually do sound bitter about having to write about TV, and that they'd rather be doing anything else but.

Take Tom Shales, the sourpuss who the long-time Washington Post TV columnist. His writing always conveys a sense that he'd rather be writing for the travel or food section, but he's been doing the TV beat so long, he's stuck. On his blog on TVWeek.com, he seems to have conjured up some sort of "feud" between David Letterman and his longtime band leader Paul Shaffer, and he uses that speculation to take a couple of cheap shots at Paul's comedic and musical abilities (Bob mentioned the post this morning in his review of TV-related blogs).

If ratings are any indication, Rosie O'Donnell appears to be winning the stupid public feud with Donald Trump. Since Trump went off on Rosie, ratings for The View have been up. The show is up 13% in overall viewers and 23% in women 18-49. ABC chalks the ratings increase up to Rosie's... ahem... personality. The network downplays her public feuds with Trump, Kelly Ripa and the Chinese, but all the media coverage seems to be helping.

Ironically, ratings are down for The Apprentice. We all know that the only reason Trump is sounding off is to get viewers to watch his show, but it appears to have backfired as the viewers are opting for Rosie instead. Even Trump's move to Los Angeles and his constant nagging of Rosie couldn't pull his series from its slump. Sunday night's premiere averaged about 9 million viewers.

By the way, here's the latest from Trump. Gawker has a faxed letter, allegedly from Trump to Rosie. It sounds like something one of those chicks from Laguna Beach would write... if they were literate.

How's this for a hip-hop feud? 50 Cent vs. Oprah. In the January issue of Elle magazine, 50 Cent states that Winfrey "started out with black women's views but has been catering to middle-aged white American women for so long that she's become one herself." The old Oreo accusation - white on the inside, black on the outside.

It's bad enough that 50 has dissed every rapper in the game - Ja Rule, Nas, Fat Joe, Shyne, Jadakiss, D-Block and The Game. Now, he has to go and diss one of the most important black public figures of the past twenty years. I don't see 50 using his fortune to open schools for girls in South Africa or getting America to read Toni Morrison novels. There's a great deal you can take down Oprah for, but questioning the integrity of her "blackness" is ridiculous - particularly when done by a rapper who owes much of his success to industry mentor and white boy Eminem. Seriously, 50, stick to telling us how to party like it's our birthday instead of picking fights with the big O.