TVSquad

Peter Berg (currently a writer/director/producer for Friday Night Lights) and screenwriter Sheldon Turner have teamed up to create a pilot for FX that takes place within the world of the Russian Mafia.

The series (no title yet) centers on two undercover law enforcement officers who find themselves immersed in this world. One goes crazy and disappears and the other is forced to track him down. As Variety points out, it's not unlike Heart of Darkness (or Apocalypse Now, for those of you who don't read books).

While Tyra has been looking a bit drag queen-y these days, you're far more likely to catch her playing a drag king. Following up on last year's vapid Tyra-in-a-fat-suit episode of The Tyra Banks Show, Ms. Banks became a Mister in order to infiltrate rapper Chingy's posse.

Set to air on November 13th, Tyra underwent five hours of prep to achieve the gender transformation and donned a suit that gave her pecs and a six-pack. Apparently Tyra isn't going undercover as a guy unless he's cut. Her guise was enough to fool most of Chingy's entourage, but her voice was a dead give-away. The only person she really pulled one over on was a Chingy groupie who kissed Tyra-as-man to get closer to the rap star. Does that qualify as hot lesbian action or not?

(S08E06) First of all, let me just say that the "eco-terrorists" have surprisingly good fashion sense. And access to showers. As someone who lives in Oregon, where we have real eco-terrorists, I kept having to chuckle at their portrayal on this episode of SVU. But enough of the nit-picky stuff... Mariska Hargitay is back!

After her maternity leave, Mariska looks amazing. I thought the writers came up with a great storyline to get Det. Olivia Benson out of her undercover gig. She got bored with the squeaky clean environmentalists she had infiltrated so she started investigating the murder of the head of a pharmaceuticals company when her friends are suspected of his death.

(S02E14) The city of Jefferton has a problem: dangerous levels of starch are plaguing the residents, and Tom Peters is very concerned for his family. He's even purchased an Eez-Zee Stool Strips tester so he can make sure his stepsons don't have too much starch in their system. The machine, as demonstrated in an infomercial, is easy to use. In fact, you can test your stool on a bus in less than ten minutes. All you have to do is lick the tester, stir it around in your stool, enter the number that comes up into the machine, and then hold your thumbs on the special identicators for two minutes (it helps if you have some stool on your thumbs).

It turns out Tom's stepsons do have high levels of starch in their system, which he suspects to be the fault of the food they're eating at school. The Mayor suggests he and Tom go undercover, Tom as a student, and himself as the vice-principal. To fit in with the young crowd, Tom has a special surgery in which his knees and shinbones are removed and his feet are reattached to the bottom of his thighs. Also, his vocal chords are removed and stretched on a tiny rack in order to change his voice. The result is a dwarfish version of Tom with a voice that sounds like he's been inhaling helium.

I never would have thought a show about a couple of narcs could have been so popular, but Miami Vice proved me wrong. Speaking of Miami Vice, I'm sure you've all heard of the upcoming film based on the popular television series starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two undercover agents who mix t-shirts and suit jackets like it's no one's business. In celebration of the new flick, NBC will be re-broadcasting the original two-hour pilot as part of a three-hour event called Miami Vice: Undercover which will also include a featurette about the upcoming movie from director Michael Mann. Stars Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell will host the special, which airs on July 22 at 8 p.m.