TVSquad

This seems to be a very active week for celebrity deaths, and it's sad to report that Carol Burnett Show veteran Harvey Korman has died at age 81. He died of a ruptured abdominal aneurysm at his UCLA Medical Center.

Besides The Carol Burnett Show, where Korman teamed for a ton of great sketches with Tim Conway (often cracking each other up), Korman appeared in many other shows since the early 60s, including ER, Ellen, Perry Mason, Route 66, The Red Skelton Show, Dennis the Menace, Hazel, Jack Benny, Gidget, The Lucy Show, The Munsters, The Wild, Wild West, F Troop, and many others. He was a regular on the sitcom Mama's Family and did the voice of The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones. Movies that Korman appeared in include History of the World, Part 1, High Anxiety, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Blazing Saddles, Son of Flubber, Gypsy, and others.

Do you ever get the feeling that all of the great classic stars and performers are dying and it's going to be a very different world in a couple of years? Rather depressing.

(S02E12) "Save it for your iVillage blog, Lemon." - Jack, to Liz

Tonight's episode of 30 Rock had more jokes and one-liners - the kind where you actually smile and laugh out loud - in just the two minute opening teaser than According To Jim and Unhitched have in an entire season (combined). It got me thinking that the show is sort of like the live version of Family Guy: lots of crazy one-liners and non-sequiturs, often punctuated by a bizarre, seconds-long flashback. And I mean that comparison in a good way. There's no other comedy that's running on all cylinders like 30 Rock is right now.

While Liz deals with having Dennis back in her life, Jack looks for a new celebrity spokesman for the Republican party and Kenneth gets involved with an old TV star.

This isn't a very good day for companies under the Fox banner. First Zsa Zsa's husband, and now this.

Veteran comedienne Carol Burnett is suing Twentieth-Century Fox because they used her animated "charwoman" character (the cleaning lady with the mop and bucket from The Carol Burnett Show) in an April, 2006 episode without her permission. She's asking for $2 million.

I think I have to start taking law classes or something, if these celebrity lawsuits keep coming at this pace. I think I remember this episode. It showed the charwoman as the maid at a porn shop. If the show can be sued for pop culture references like this, the lawsuits will never end, since the show has about 20 of them in every episode, and some aren't too flattering.

[via TV Tattle]