TVSquad

The "Ask TV Squad" column, published every Wednesday, answers your questions about current and past TV shows, as well as about the celebrities appearing on TV. Every week, I will pick a question (or more) sent to us and provide answers in the column. If your question is not picked for a column, it may be answered in a subsequent column. To submit questions to the "Ask TV Squad" column, you can post them below in comments or email them at asktvsquad@gmail.com.

This week, I answer questions about Flash Forward, Eureka, NCIS, The Philanthropist, and V.

Let's say you were trapped in an elevator with Samantha Who? star Christina Applegate. Just you and her, stuck between the 7th and 8th floors of a high-rise, waiting for someone to come and get the elevator moving again so you won't be late for your Pilates class. What question would you ask her?

Well, you have the chance to ask Applegate anything you want, and you don't even have to be trapped in a box. It's actually via Outside The Box, over at AOL Television. You can submit a question to either Applegate, Jean Smart, or Barry Watson. If your question is chosen they'll even use your name and where you're from. You can even leave your question in the comments section below.

I have no idea if you'd want to ask Applegate about Married...With Children or Smart about Designing Women or Watson about 7th Heaven. But if you do ask Watson something about that show, I'd like to know if Jessica Biel is still going out with Justin Timberlake or if she's available.

You know you love Buffy, but could you beat me in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer trivia contest? Nope, this is not a challenge, but I did challenge myself by taking some of the online trivia quizzes.

There are scads of Buffy and Angel trivia quizzes online, some totally lame, others a fun romp down Nostalgia Lane, still others so bizarre and obscure that you wonder about the mental health of the creators. I took 'em, I rated 'em, and now I'm sharing my thoughts with you.

Ultimate Buffy Trivia on Cool Quiz (1/5)
My apologies to Josh Spears, but this quiz was not very challenging. I got all of the questions right, as would just about any fair-weather fan (of which I am not!). It is a fun quiz to take if you love Oz, because many of the questions are about him, but it runs extremely slow and is relatively painful overall.

Funnyman Graham Norton will be hosting a new reality pilot for Lifetime.

The new show will serve as a kind of popularity contest in which an audience of women vote off one woman at a time from a group of seven as they answer challenges and tackle different challenges. The Hollywood Reporter article doesn't go into much detail than that, so it's hard to say exactly what the hell the point of the show is supposed to be, other than showing women at their most judgmental and catty. Oh yeah, and the show was originally called Judgment Day, which probably isn't a good sign, either.

Norton will still appear in TV in the UK. The Graham Norton Show, his BBC2 series, hits BBC America on June 2. Previously, he hosted So Graham Norton, a Channel 4 series that was adapted into an American version which ran on Comedy Central for a short time.

Happy Easter Sunday, everyone. Is everyone enjoying their day? Are you spending time with your loved ones, stuffing a rabbit with candy and cooking it over a fire pit, building a gigantic Jesus out of marshmallow Peeps, or whatever the heck it is you do to celebrate? That's great, I salute all your traditions, lovers of TV and stuff.

Since you've obviously decided to take some time to check out this blog, I thought I'd direct you to this nifty collection of TV quizzes. Some of them are harder than others, or maybe they're not, I guess it all depends on who much you know. Perhaps you're at a Paul Goebel level of knowledge, or maybe you only know as much as Bifford Glaffenploeg, who is a person I just made up, and therefore knows nothing about anything.

Anyway, have fun with the quizzes, then come back here and let me know how you did. I can't believe I actually missed two on the Disney or Warner Bros? quiz. I feel so common.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: our pals at AOL also have a new TV quiz posted every week. I didn't do very well on the "glasses" quiz.

MANswers, a new game show for Spike centering on the kind of questions men want to ask but don't find "socially acceptable" will be given a nine-episode run and will debut sometime this fall. The show will pit contestants against one another and include re-enactments and interviews with experts.

Variety reports that some of these so-called "socially unacceptable" questions include "how long can a man survive on just beer?" and "what's the best organ to eat if you're a cannibal?"

If you watched Jeopardy yesterday, you saw the first three way tie in the show's history. Each player ended up with $16,000. The three players had a rematch, which will air this Monday.

But some were immediately asking: why did champ Scott Weiss, who was in the lead at the end of "Double Jeopardy," wager just enough for a tie? Well, Weiss gives the answer on his friend's blog. Seems that Weiss, well, is just a great guy, and thought it would be cool for all of them to end up with a bunch of money! I guess it's our cynical nature to immediately think that Weiss had made a mistake in betting the way he did. So good for him.

Now, I'm not sure if I would have done the same thing, but then again I don't see myself every being in that position, so...

That's not me saying that, it's The Los Angeles Times. But I have to agree.

As several of us here have pointed out in the past, just look at the shows that pass for game shows nowadays. Deal Or No Deal has the gimmick of hot chicks and shiny suitcases. So far, so good (every show needs something). But then we get the most annoying guests in the history of television. Seriously, these people are so OUTGOING and have big PERSONALITIES, all of them, that the producers must give them a test before the show and won't pick anyone normal. Even their family members are this way. This was never the case on game shows before, and if you got an episode where it was like that, it stood out.

Now all of these contestants are the same, and so are the shows. After all, what is Identity but Deal Or No Deal, only with humans instead of suitcases? More annoying guests, more luck, and more stupid decisions (honestly, quit while you're ahead). And the l.......o......n.....g, drawn out pauses and "suspense" each show tries to build. Ugh.

This is either big news for game show fans or much to do about nothing.

The show sent out a note this week that promises something major is going to happen on the show tomorrow (Friday) that has never happened on the show before:

"This Friday, March 16, 2007...for the first time in 23 years, Jeopardy history will be made...it was such a remarkable event we consulted a game theory expert, and he said it may never happen again!"

OK, now they have me curious, and since they mention game theory, I think I've narrowed it down to three possible events.

The investigation into the missing $3,000 begins with Oscar, Kevin, and Angela questioning Phyllis. Beforehand, Angela tells the documentarians that they are pretending to ask other people about the money but they still strongly suspect Michael. However, they have to go through the motions to make sure all their bases are covered.

As they question Phyllis, she admits that she once used the Dunder Mifflin corporate card to while out at a sales call. A heel broke on her shoe, and she ended up spending $14 to fix it. She does say that her boyfriend Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration allows her to use a Vance Refrigeration credit card in case of emergencies, but Kevin seems to think that melting ice cream cake is the only situation that can be addressed with it.

In any event, the investigation continues. Who will be questioned next? My guess is Creed, since he has admitted to taking stuff before. We'll find out next time.

(UPDATE: You can watch this episode here.)

You might see a few familiar faces if you tune in to ABC Family's Beautiful People (Mondays, 9 PM ET), a relatively new show about a family that moves to New York from New Mexico to make a fresh start. Starring as Lynn Kerr, we have Daphne Zuniga, who you may remember from her days on Melrose Place and, a little more recently, as Shelly Pierce on American Dreams. Playing her daughters on Beautiful People we have the 21-year-olds Sarah Foret as Sophie and Torrey DeVitto as Karen.

I was lucky enough to catch all three ladies for a new feature that I call "A Quint of Quick Questions." The questions aren't altered from person to person, so their answers can be pretty interesting. I'm still working out the final list of questions (got ideas? Let me know!), but Daphne, Sarah and Torrey were nice enough to answer them like champs.