TVSquad

(S02E20)

This is an early review.

This two-parter really made me hate Clay Puppington, and I don't think I can say that about any other cartoon character. Hell, Cartman from South Park has done tons of horrible things, even indirectly killed people, but watching Clay treat Orel so poorly and so dismissively made me want to break off his frail, wire-supported arms.

(S02E19)

This is an early review.

Clay Puppington: Hunting dogs are just nature's rabbits.

With every episode, more and more layers have been peeled back from the dynamic between Orel and his father. At first, Orel seemed blissfully ignorant of his father's distance and abuse, but over the course of this season, Orel, like all kids do eventually, is realizing his father is only human, and not a very sane one, either.

Daniel Smith, the twenty-year-old son of Anna Nicole Smith, was found dead yesterday in the Bahamas hospital where his mother had just had a baby. According to the AP, there is currently no word on how he passed away; Anna Nicole's attorney, Howard K. Stern, says the cause is under investigation.

Remember that Daniel was a prominent player in Anna Nicole's reality series The Anna Nicole Show, so he's not unfamiliar to TV viewers. Of course, the death of such a young man, compared with the wacky life his mother leads, is going to make people speculate right away that drugs were involved. But at this point, no one knows the cause.

By the way, the picture above was taken by the AP in 1999, when Daniel was 13.

Related:
Son of Anna Nicole's ex-husband dies
Say it ain't so! Anna Nicole is pregnant
Supreme Court supports Anna Nicole Smith

(S18E01) When Bart refuses to let Lisa sit with him on the bus, she tries to complain to Otto, but he'd rather rock out to his Grand Funk Railroad tape than bother with her. She tries to get his attention but manages to break his tape in the process, leaving him with no musical options except the kids' rendition of "Old MacDonald Had a Fart" and whatever crap his bus radio is spewing out. At that moment, he sees Metallica's tour bus stranded on the side of the road, but they opt to get a lift from Moleman, who once slept with Lars' grandmother. Oh yeah, and Bart steals the bus.

Enraged, Otto encounters Bart outside the school and spanks him. The corporal punishment is witnessed by Skinner, who instructs Otto to turn in his beaded seat cushion and gun. Until Otto is reinstated, the kids will have to rely on car pooling to get to school. On the first day, Marge takes Bart, Lisa and their friends, including Fat Tony's son, Michael. Since he's the son of a mob boss, everyone is afraid of Michael and wants nothing to do with him, but Lisa sees he's not the hardboiled criminal his father is and befriends him. Michael reveals he wants to be a chef, which upsets his father who wants him to take over the family business.

(S05E07) Dr. Kroger, Monk's shrink, typically plays a small role on the series. That isn't to say he's not important to Monk. Actually, he's very important to Monk, and Monk considers Kroeger's office his home away from home, the place where, as he tells Natalie, "it all doesn't happen."

When a cleaning lady in Dr. Kroeger's office is stabbed to death, Kroeger fears it may have been one of his patients. This becomes too much for him to bear so he decides to retire. Of course, Monk doesn't take this very well at all, and goes through all the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The difference is that Monk goes through them all in just a matter of seconds, and then repeats them over again as if stuck in a loop.

Kroeger suspects a patient named Joseph Wheeler, who once threatened him, may have been the killer. Wheeler works at Animal Crafters, a Build-A-Bear Workshop-type place, but his alibi checks out so they have to rule him out as the killer. Monk and Wheeler have a moment of solidarity when they realize they both lost someone very important when Kroeger quit his practice. They each stand clutching teddy bears and mourning the loss of their shrink.

(S06E10)

Homer (talking about his father): He said I was an accident. He didn't want to have me.

Marge: You didn't want to have Bart.

Homer: I know, but you're never supposed to tell the child.

Marge: You tell Bart all the time. You told him this morning.

Homer: But when I do it it's cute.

I don't think I would want to see Abe "Grandpa" Simpson made the center of every episode, but I like it when they occasionally give his character a little more dimension than just being a simple satire of elderly people. "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish" is a great example of such an episode, but this one isn't too bad, either, and it gives ol' Grandpa a chance to venture outside the rest home and actually do something.

(S01E03) Writers are the most shameless, self-centered bastards in the world. We lie, we seduce, we'll steal your soul. Anything to look good on the page. -Sam Landry

I thought I had read every story from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and I might have, but nothing about "Umney's Last Case" was familiar when I read it just recently. Nevertheless, it's not a bad story, and it's also very "meta" as the college kids like to say.

In the story, as in the TV adaptation, we begin in the 1930s where a grizzled private eye named Clyde Umney is leading a storybook life that he'll soon learn is more "storybook" than he realizes. He wields snappy dialogue with the precision of a trapeze artist, and always knows just what to say to get what he wants, at one point managing to turn two women to jelly in his office one after the other.

(S01E05)

Principal Blackman: Talk your monkey ass off. I'll be watching you.

This episode, in which Jerri comes face to face with her long lost son (though she doesn't realize it until the end of the episode) was co-written by Tom Lennon of The State and Reno 911!

This episode starts off, as all the season one episodes do, with Jerri explaining who she is and why she's in her forties and attending high school. She tells her tale to a ficus she's inexplicable planted in the middle of a baseball diamond (it's an Arbor Day thing). Meanwhile, it's also almost time for the Sadie Hawkins Dance, which, as many of you may know, is when girls have to ask the boys to the dance instead of vice versa. Her friend Orlando begins to drop some not so subtle hints that he'd like to go with her, but Jerri finds herself attracted to the new student, Ricky, played by Frederick Koehler (a.k.a. "Chip" from Kate and Allie). Jerri likes Ricky but she can't let anyone know because Ricky is hated by everyone, including the teachers, simply because he's new. When he first arrives in Noblet's class, Noblet doesn't give him a desk but instead makes him sit in the back on a box of slightly irregular jeans. Jerri tries to maintain a friendship with Ricky while also maintaining her status among her peers, such as one scene where she uses a tire iron to smash his car to impress her friends, all the while insisting to Ricky she really does like him.

Here's a shocker: Donald Trump doesn't like stinky poopie diapers, and he's not ashamed to admit it. He told the New York Post that he hasn't helped his wife Melania change one diaper on their 10-week-old son Barron, and doesn't expect to do any of that in the future. "Melania probably wouldn't let me. I'd just do it wrong," he told the Post.

I would suspect that Melania doesn't change Barron's diapers, either. But that's neither here nor there. I can imagine, though, Trump looking down Barron's full diaper and saying something like, "My son makes the greenest and smelliest poops I've ever seen. No one in the world soils his diaper better than my son." I guess we'll never know, though...

Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy and "star" of the reality series "The Osbournes," is apparently writing his autobiography, titled 21 Years Gone and set to be released by Pan MacMillan. The book will obviously touch on Jack's problems with drugs, his stint in rehab, and what it was like growing up with his famous father. While I suppose it's easy to laugh at the idea, given that Jack has been in the spotlight without having done much, my only minor complaint is that it's too soon. Given a few more years, the sort of people who read celeb bios might actually enjoy hearing what it was like growing up as Ozzy's son. Right now, though, I'm not sure people are clamoring for such a book.

[via Best Week Ever]

Danny Pino, who plays Det. Scotty Valens on CBS' Cold Case, became a father this week. His wife, Lily, gave birth to the couple's first child on Wednesday.

They named their son Luca Daniel Pino. He was a healthy-sized baby, weighing 8 pounds, 3 ounces. A spokesperson for the new family says everyone is doing well.

Perhaps this news won't exactly set the world on fire, but it caught my attention. I grew up watching Robert Schuller's Hour of Power on Sunday mornings, where the gray-haired pastor would preach the word of God in a manner that was friendly and amicable, not the loud, obnoxious revivals you see nowadays. Schuller is now 79 and his son, Robert A. Schuller, will take over as head pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, the all-glass house of worship. The Hour of Power still takes in a worldwide audience of about twenty million. That's pretty impressive, and it continues to slaughter Cooking with Satan in the ratings.