TVSquad

To some people, George Clooney's affable good nature and sincerity comes off as smug over-confidence. I fall into the former rather than the latter category.

I think George is ambitious and grateful to be working in the business. I think he remembers the years of struggling to become a star -- those years on The Facts of Life and Riptide and E/R (the Elliott Gould sitcom, not the Emmy award-winning NBC medical drama).

Failures like Leatherheads have to keep him humble. Anyway, his efforts to expand as an actor and director and producer strike me as someone who is wisely not resting on his laurels. That said, today it was reported that Clooney's production company, Smoke House, is behind a new pilot for Showtime called The Fall of Bob.

Soap operas thrive on drama and they're not above borrowing from other sources. You could say it happens all the time, because it does. Of course, you can also go by that old Hollywood axiom that there are really only seven stories and they're told over and over again in a variety of new and different ways. Be that as it may, a look at some soap stories going on now will remind you of some other media.

For instance, on All My Children, you might look at Erica Kane's incarceration for insider trading (or whatever she was supposed to have done that was criminal) and think it's reminiscent of the Martha Stewart case. After all, like Martha, Erica is host of a TV show and an entrepreneur of the highest order. But the part of Erica's story that made me giggle was when she was on the run from prison with fellow con Carmen. Being handcuffed together was right out of The 39 Steps (the Hitchcock movie and now on Broadway) and The Defiant Ones, but the two women from different worlds clicking was more like Ugly Betty. Remember, last season when Claire Meade escaped from prison chained to a tough girl named Yoga? Think the AMC writers were taking notes?

I've never been a fan of Dateline's "To Catch A Predator." Despite helping to put sexual predators behind bars, the series is tainted by egregious spectacle, and recently resulted in the suicide of one man in Murphy, Texas. Consequently, the district attorney has refused to prosecute the other twenty-four men who were caught in the sting.

Readers can discuss in the comments the value of one man's life over that of anyone else's, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I'm saying is, despite selling the show as some kind of humanitarian crusade, reporter Chris Hansen and the producers behind "To Catch A Predator" both want and need that moment of public humiliation for the show to work and for people to watch. They're putting out a fire, yes, but they're doing it by throwing manure on it.

TMZ is reporting that WWE wrestler Chris Benoit is suspected of killing his wife and 7-year old son before committing suicide. Benoit and his family were found dead in their Atlanta home on Monday afternoon, the same day he was supposed to appear in a "memorial" episode for Vince McMahon's WWE character. TMZ reports that Atlanta police suspect Benoit strangled his wife on Saturday and then smothered his son in bed the next day. Benoit was apparently text messaging friends as he watched Vengeance, a WWE Pay-Per-View program, on Sunday.

I do not watch wrestling, but everything I read says he was very popular among fans. His signature move was the "Crippler Crossface". WWE quickly changed up its programming last night so it did not focus on the "death" of McMahon's character. McMahon made a brief statement to fans about the tragedy, saying Benoit was "one of the greatest WWE superstars of all time."

*UPDATE: Atlanta PD says Benoit killed his wife on Friday, his son on Saturday, and hanged himself (possibly) on Sunday. Sick.

(S03E23) I have to admit, I swore at the end of this episode/season Edie was going to end up getting pregnant. I was so not expecting this. If you haven't watched tonight's episode yet, I suggest you stop reading now and NOT click on the link for the rest of the post.

Gaby
Let's go ahead and start with Gaby since today was her big day. Her little hissy fit that Bree was late certainly took on new meaning after seeing her fight with Victor from the night before. Wow, how many excuses is she going to make for him? It's not too late to get the wedding annulled, or is it? He and his father seem to have a lot of power, and I am not convinced she could get out of the marriage at this point. I think they would do what they could to stop her, regardless of what that might entail.

A lot of stories are popping up about the scene in the most recent episode of South Park that shows the Queen of England putting a pistol in her mouth and blowing skull fragments and brain matter all over the wall behind her. These stories, mostly coming from the UK, tell of the "controversial" scene and how it "shocked viewers."

And yet, not a single one of these stories, from what I can tell, gives any real evidence that the scene in question stirred up any controversy whatsoever. The stories merely suggest that, given the series' knack for courting controversy, people were probably bothered by the Queen's suicide, as well.

I'm not from the UK, but I am a South Park fan, and as I said in my review of the episode, the Queen's suicide was so quintessentially South Park I hardly batted an eye. If anything, the whole sequence seemed a little too easy, especially by South Park standards. I'll admit I'm not easily offended, but South Park hasn't shocked or surprised me in several years. That's not a slag against the show, it just means I'm tuned into its sensibility.

Here's a few shows coming down the pike from PBS and National Geographic:

Tonight at 9 p.m. (but check listings) on PBS, "Hijacked" will be shown on American Experience. The film tells the story of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine whose members hijacked four commercial aircraft and commandeered a fifth in 1970 to attract attention to their cause. Six hundred people were taken hostage, four planes were blown up, but no one was killed. The documentary will explore both the parallels and differences between terrorism then and now.

I have to admit I hadn't paid much attention to the work of comedian Richard Jeni over the last few years, but when I was in middle school and his specials aired on Showtime, I thought he was one of the most hysterical comedians I had ever seen. This equation of his is one I still quote from time to time:

'God is love. Love is blind. Therefore, Ray Charles is God.'

That makes perfect sense to me, but what's always a little more difficult to figure out is why a person would take their own life. According to Jeni's family, who released a statement saying Jeni's career was going fine and that they believe his death was probably a suicide, spurred by Jeni's having been "diagnosed with severe clinical depression coupled with bouts of psychotic paranoia." No official announcement from the autopsy has been made yet.

You can read the full statement on Jeni's official site.

(S03E15) Whoa! Didn't see that coming! When Andrew got tossed down the stairs, I thought for sure he was going to be the one who bought it this week. But this episode was absolutely, 100% better than last week's episode. Somebody said last week in the comments that they thought last week's episode was like a connector piece in which nothing happened so things could build to this week. I think that's what happened.

I have to admit that I am really happy to learn that Orson is innocent of all wrong doing. As much as I love it when Kyle MacLachlan plays evil, it's nice to know that the worst thing he is guilty of is hitting Mike with his car. But I think we know now that there is even a reasonable explanation for that, considering what Gloria had put him through.

GM has agreed to edit a commercial that premiered during the Super Bowl which shows a despondent assembly-line robot contemplating suicide. Earlier this week, GM had said it would not remove the ad, despite complaints from a national suicide prevention group.

The commercial features a robot that drops a screw. Because of GM's high quality controls, it's forced to leave the plant, take up several other part time jobs, and finally it jumps off a bridge, only to wake up in the plant and reveal that the whole thing was a dream sequence.

CNN's Nancy Grace, the most heinous woman on television, needs to be unplugged. She is a contemptible being who gets her kicks off of lashing out at people and flat-out accusing them of crimes that are still being investigated. Earlier this week, Grace verbally accosted a woman over the telephone about her two-year old son, who had allegedly been kidnapped. The next day the woman, 21-year old Melinda Duckett, shot and killed herself just hours before her interview was scheduled to air. Apparently, at the end of the interview, Grace pounded the desk and said to the distraught mother, "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?" Grace denies any responsibility, saying, "I do not feel that our show is to blame for what happened to Melinda Duckett. The truth... is not always nice or polite or easy to go down. Sometimes it's harsh, and it hurts." So... once again Nancy has decided that someone is guilty.

We'll never know if uber-bitch Nancy Grace pushed this mother over the edge. And that's not even the issue. The problem here is Nancy Grace believes she can investigate cases better than the actual investigators. Maybe the mother is responsible for her son's disappearance. Is it Nancy Grace's job to get a confession?

(S01E112 Angered over the suicide of a fellow prisoner (Number 73) resulting from relentless badgering from the new Number 2, Number 6 decides to pull out all the stops to avenge Number 73's death. What transpires is an elaborate game of cat and mouse whereby Number 6 gets Number 2 to question his own sanity.

At this point in the Prisoner story, it seems that Number 6 is not interested in escaping from the Village. That doesn't mean to say he's given up--but it appears that his motivation is more to frustrate and humiliate his captors.

(S05E06) I think it's fairly easy to tell a person's high school or college experience by how excited (or not excited) they become when it comes time for a class reunion. I know my response to people asking if I was going to attend my ten year high school reunion was pretty much "hell no." My school experience was decent enough, but Adrian Monk's wasn't so great. In this episode he returns to Berkeley for his college reunion, after receiving an invitation addressed to "Captain Cool." We later find out he received that particular nickname not because he was popular, but because he defrosted the dorm refrigerator every weekend.

Before all that, of course, we get the obligatory Monk opening murder. A man, his face more or less obscured, pushes an old woman down a flight of stairs, and then breaks a beaded necklace to make it look as if she slipped and fell by accident. Disher and Stottlemeyer investigate, and Disher falls for the ruse, but Stottlemeyer points out that there are a lot of gaps Disher himself didn't notice. He turns it into a homicide investigation, which is good because otherwise the episode would only be five minutes long.

(S02E07) This episode begins with Tom sitting in a jail cell with another prisoner (Judd Hirsch) who's in jail because he locked his fifteen year old nephew in the cellar over the weekend for pooping and peeing all over his house. Tom, on the other hand, is in jail for killing about four thousand people. His cell mate reacts to this news with, "people are too sensitive these days."

Tom's tale of woe begins when he becomes a salesman for a new device called "Spray a Carpet or Rug," a gigantic machine that emits a foam that turns into carpet instantaneously. The Mayor loves the device because he can carpet all of Jefferton and not have to pay the "lawn mower man" who takes care of the grass and has been pestering the Mayor about a raise. The city council allows Tom to do a test run on Memorial Park, so Tom dons his chemical suit (the foam causes him seizures) and carpets the whole park.

As we began to learn more about Earl Hickey and his quest for karma, we find that he has become a much more compassionate man and is one who can't just walk away from a situation where he can lend a hand.

Number 62 on Earl's list of past transgressions was his siphoning gas out of a neighbor's Yugo (with the help of brother Randy). Earl decides to right his wrong, and finds that the owner by the name of Philo is a very depressed guy with no job, no friends, no nothing, who is determined to commit suicide. It turns out that Earl was actually saving Philo's life by stealing the gas since Philo was trying to end it all by sitting in his car with a line running the exhaust into the driver's area. The car always ran out of gas before anything happened. It's karma, I tell you!

Philo tries to get run over by a car or truck on the highway, but Earl and Randy prevent it from happening. They decide to help Philo find a reason to live by lifting his spirits. He can't find any joy in small talk, motel hockey, or Earl offering up Catalina (she refuses to be with him because of the smell), the boys learn that Philo has a crush on a girl. Of course, things get a bit stick when the girl turns out to be Joy, Earl's ex-wife and Darnell (Crab Man's) current wife.