TVSquad

So, the redemption tour of former teenage star turned uncontrollable addict Lindsay Lohan begins on network television, does it? According to an article in The New York Observer that may certainly be the case. And, I guess there's no better place to get back in the public's good graces then on a high-profile show like Ugly Betty.

According to unidentified sources on the set of Betty, Lohan's people are in serious talks to have her appear in a three-episode arc. She would portray the assistant manager of the fast food restaurant where Betty's father currently works. Our darling Betty would take pity on the hapless manager, who would be a former high school beauty queen who has hit hard times, and get her a job at Mode.

Interesting piece over at The New York Observer that fans of How I Met Your Mother will probably agree with: why isn't this show a bigger hit?

Mark Lotto thinks the show is as good as Friends and deserves to be promoted more by CBS and talked about around the watercooler the next day at work. But he wonders why CBS isn't promoting it more (ads for the show are lacking and CBS didn't push it after the Super Bowl) and seems rather confused to hear that the show might indeed be canceled at the end of the current season.

While I don't think that HIMYM is as good as Friends (except for maybe the last couple of years), I do think it's a solid little show that should not be canceled. This is a show that could easily grow into a long-running staple for CBS. It has the characters, it has the writing, and it does what it does a lot better than most similar shows that have been on the air recently.

[via TV Tattle]

This week's issue of The New York Observer has a pretty lengthy article about Katie Couric, discussing not only the multiple parties celebrating her fiftieth birthday, but talking about the tough sledding her first few months at the helm of the CBS Evening News has been. Rebecca Dana does a good job of showing all the issues that have surrounded her tenure at the anchor desk, speaking to CBS News producers, executives, and people on her old NBC staff who made the move with her.

Turns out that, not only are people at CBS uncomfortable with Katie's more conversational anchor style and her favoritism towards lengthy interviews and lighter fare, the viewers aren't taking to it either. "The most stunning thing about this experience has been to discover how resistant people are to change," executive Paul Friedman told Dana.

They're not just changing the sets and the theme music over at The CBS Evening News, they're also changing the personnel. In a move that is becoming more and more controversial, CBS has gotten rid of medical reporter Elizabeth Kaledin and hired Katie Couric's personal doctor, Jonathan LaPook. Kaledin says she is "heartbroken" by the move.

LaPook is not only Katie's doc, he's also the son-in-law of veteran TV producer Norman Lear.

Maybe we could use a new song for Katie, sung to the theme from one of Lear's shows, Maude:

Miss Couric had a colonosopy
She didn't care if the whole world looked
CBS got rid of Liz Kaledin
And then they hired Dr. Lapook

Hey, I never said I was Cole Porter.

[via TV Newser]

I don't really get this New York Observer article. Writer Tom Scocca talks about YouTube's influence on pop culture. How some things that we thought were good (or bad) years ago can be seen in a new light now. How incidents like the famous World Cup head butt can be uploaded a minute after it happens and viewed over and over and over again, something that would have been unheard of 10 or 20 years ago. All that's well and good, but he claims that YouTube also shows that Dennis Miller wasn't funny in 1992.

Um, yeah, actually, he was.

Now, I'm not going to defend Miller's recent work. I thought his declaration that he wasn't going to joke about Bush on his talk show disturbing, plus there was that whole Monday Night Football fiasco (though I liked him on that, but I'm not a football fan, I'm the audience they were trying to woo with that move). But the NYO uses as "evidence" this clip of Miller interviewing the Pixies after a performance on his show. You're going to judge whether a comedian is funny by what he says in the 30 seconds after a band plays? Then Carson, Letterman, and Conan aren't funny either.

I submit as evidence that Miller was funny his standup work, his Weekend Update spots on SNL, and his guest appearances on other talk shows. He's had many lines over the years that I still quote to friends.

Fran Drescher either has superior genes or a great plastic surgeon, because, at 48, she looks like she could pass for 35. I mean, this is a woman who was in Saturday Night Fever, for Christ's sake. But the former star of The Nanny seems to be aging very, very slowly, to the point where you have to wonder if she's got a got a photo of her aging self stored away in her basement somewhere.

You can tell she knows she's lucky; she's taking any advantage she can to show herself off. Not only does she like to go to parties in outfits that don't leave a lot to the imagination (see the picture with this post), but she has no compunction about stripping down to her bra and panties on stage, as she's doing right now in the Off-Broadway play Some Girl(s), which is written by Neil LaBute. In this New York Observer profile, Drescher talks about the play, her non-dating life, her former relationship with a younger man, and the chances that her current sitcom, Living with Fran, is coming back (she doesn't think it is, and doesn't seem to mind).