TVSquad

Sissy Spacek is set to star in Pictures of Hollis Woods, a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie based on the book by Patricia Reilly Giff. The movie tells the story of Hollis Woods (Jodelle Ferland), an artistic twelve year old girl who is adopted by an art teacher, Josie (Spacek), who cares for Hollis. Josie's trouble with remembering things gets worse and worse until Hollis is faced with the task of caring for her. Alfre Woodward plays the social worker assigned to the young girl, who is taken from foster home to foster home before ending up with Josie.

Ann Peacock (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) wrote the screenplay. Tony Bill (Untamed Heart, Flyboys) will direct. The movie has been greenlit, though no premiere date was mentioned.

Spacek was last seen on television, I believe, in the TV movie Last Call, about the final days of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Studio 60 actress Amanda Peet gave birth to a baby girl this week. According to People magazine, the baby's name is Frances Pen. She weighed in at 6 pounds. 10 ounces. The father is Peet's husband and Troy screenwriter, David Benioff.

Amanda first announced her pregnancy on Letterman last fall. Her pregnancy has been written pretty predominantly into the script for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. NBC recently replaced Studio 60 with The Black Donnellys on Monday nights and a return date for Studio 60 is unknown.

The second season of Everybody Hates Chris kicks off on October 1 at 7pm. Here's a brief look at what you can expect in the season opener, "Everybody Hates Rejection," and no worries, I'm not going to give anything away.

First of all, Whoopi Goldberg guest stars as the family's new nosy next door neighbor, Louise, but you already knew that. Louise and Chris' mom Rochelle are at odds over how to deal with the escalating crime in the neighborhood while Chris finds himself attracted to Evette, a new girl at school who turns out not to be the angel he imagined her to be.

(S01E06) The very fact that you were willing to set a monkey on fire for us, that means a lot. - Kevin Beekin

This episode begins with the team talking to an image consultant about making Kevin look better when he's on camera. It seems most viewers don't find him very attractive and one even sent an e-mail saying his skin was so pock marked it looked like a Band-Aid. The consultant, like everyone else on the show, has no idea the news team is really a bunch of comedians, but she does manage to maintain her cool even when Marty tells her everything she's saying is wrong.

Tillie gets a call during the meeting about a girl who has been kidnapped in Florida, and the team begin to cheer and high five each other since this could be a story that gets them national exposure. It's also good news that she's a young, pretty white girl and not some Mexican grandfather, because no one tunes into the news for that sort of thing. Marty adds that the girl must be either found or killed before a certain date if it's to work into Kevin's schedule. It's a funny scene made even funnier by the fact that there's a woman in the room who has no idea it's all a gag.

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of your favorite shows, in order, every week.

(S01E01) It is clear, right from the opening scene of this first episode of Strangers with Candy, that the people behind the show knew exactly which notes they wanted to strike and exactly the kind of world they wanted to create around Jerri Blank, the forty year old self-described 'boozer, user, and loser' who is trying to get back on track by starting high school all over again. The opening sequence -- a school assembly in which a swaggering policeman warns kids against the danger of drugs while somehow making the drugs seem appealing -- has a great meta moment when the educational filmstrip starts, and shows the policeman making the exact same introduction and then showing a film within a film. Tiny surreal moments like this pop up throughout the rest of the show's run, which is just one reason some of us latched onto the series while it remained largely ignored by most television viewers.

(S17E19) "Honey, you're just as smart as a man. Sometimes when I'm with you I feel like I'm doing it with a dude." --Homer, to Marge

Last night's episode grew on me slowly. To quote Lisa from an early episode, it started off kind of "meh" but by the end I was drawn into its hysterical appraisal of both sexes and their inherent flaws. The Itchy and Scratchy musical at the beginning had some moments that cracked me up, but spoofing the Lion King musical seems like an idea whose time had passed long ago.

As Annie reported earlier this week, Jon Stewart is M.I.A. from The Daily Show lately because his wife gave birth to their second child over the weekend. Stewart and his wife, Tracy, named their baby girl Maggie Rose Stewart. She weighed 6 pounds, 9 oz. She joins Nate, 19 months.

No word yet on when Stewart will return to the anchor desk.