Even though there was nothing juciy in it, I still got really excited when I saw that I had an email from the Dharma Initiative:

Octagon Global Recruiting, on behalf of the Dharma Initiative, would like to thank you for registering your expression of interest in our latest volunteer recruitment drive.

We will be launching in San Diego on July 24th at Comic-Con International offering select registrants the opportunity to take an exciting aptitude test that will give applicants the chance to demonstrate their unique talents.

The Dharma Initiative hopes you will be able to join us to find out more about their ground-breaking new research project. We will contact you closer to the date with more information.

For those not able to join us in San Diego, Dharma’s full recruitment program will be made available online to registered recruits after July 27th.

Madchen Amich, who was on “Gilmore Girls” (she played Chris’ baby’s Mama for two seasons), is joining “Gossip Girl.” She’ll play a cougar for at least five episodes and will be a love interest for Nate.

Even though he’s on hiatus while switching from TV Guide to EW, Ausiello is still dishing out the scoops:

My increasingly itchy moles report that Sam Witwer, best known to Battlestar Galactica fans as ex-Raptor ECO Alex “Crashdown” Quartararo, has been tapped to play the series regular role of Doomsday. Additionally, relative newcomer Cassidy Freeman is joining the cast as Tess, a sexy and vengeful firecracker with whom Lex hires to run his empire in his absence. Ironically, the actress’ most recent credit was the failed CW pilot Austin Golden Hour — starring none other than Green Arrow himself, Justin Hartley (who’s back on Smallville full time next season).

Looking for something to watch with the lack of TV? Then try out “Burn Notice” on Hulu. The whole first season is online for free and now is a great time to get caught up before the second season starts.

I decided to rent “Lost: Via Domus” and man is it a bad game. Now don’t get me wrong, I never expected it to be a great game or even a good game, but I had hoped that with writers from the show and the real actors doing the voice work it would at least be an “ok” game. The biggest problem (other than lack of story) is that the gameplay is in the vein of “Kings Quest” and “Monkey Island” but the puzzles lack any skill or intelligence. They are nothing more than fetch quests.

For months and months, Sci-Fi has been saying that the final ten episodes of “Battlestar Galactica” would air next fall. They lied twice! The show will actually be back for 12 episodes sometime in 2009.

My thoughts on last night’s winner or “Top Chef” (spoilers of course)… (Read on …)

Check it out here.

Jamie Kennedy is joining “Ghost Whisperer” full time with the departure of Jay Mohr. In fact he is such a replacement that he will play a psychology student at the college Mohr’s character taught at.

Oh my GOD! “Dirty Jobs” is the first show I’ve ever watched that has honestly freaked me out. For those of you who don’t know me personally, I like to be clean. I HATE being dirty and I shower frequently (though not at an OCD level). So “Dirty Jobs” has become my newest addiction because when I see the host Mike Rowe walking through knee high bat guano or crawling through a cave of fecal mater it just astounds me. In fact I find the show so amazing that I had to contact the producers to find out how Mike and the Crew clean up during production. I’ll be sure to make a post when I get a full response. Until then, make sure you check out the show if you already haven’t.

This cracked me up. William Shatner apparently watched some old “Star Trek” episodes and decided that his portrayal of Captain Kirk was quite good:

“I haven’t seen myself playing Captain Kirk in a long, long time,” he says. “And I watched it now, from my perspective of 40 years later, and I thought, ‘You know, that’s rather good.’ It’s a starship captain trying to do the accent, the Noo Yawk accent, trying to play tough, trying to be one of the guys. It’s not quite right, but it’s what a starship captain would have done — a decent imitation, enough to fool those guys but not the audience.”

This skit from “The Daily Show” is soooo my view on politics.

Conan O’Brien is having a contest where viewers submit commercials.  I’m toying with the idea of doing one but haven’t decided yet if I will. The winner gets some really lame prizes, but also gets to attend a viewing of the show. Since its a show I’ve always DREAMED of being on there is a good chance I’ll participate in the contest.

I’ve caught the first three episode of “In Plain Sight.” If you missed this week’s premier you can watch it online here. The show isn’t “bad” but it’s nowhere near on par with USA’s “Monk” or “Psyche.” Also the humor and acting don’t hit a comfortable zone until the third episode. I mean for summer when nothing else is on then this is something to watch, but its nothing special. You might even be better off catching up on shows like “The Office” “How I Met Your Mother” or classics like “Gilmore Girls” on Netflix.

Edit (my cat) has figured out how to turn on the TV using the remote (though she has no clue as to how to change the channel). So now when I leave the apartment I always put the TV on Animal Planet before turning it off. As a result Edit has discovered Meerkat Manor and she LOVES the show. She either watches it mesmerized by the Whisker Family or she gets crazy hyper and runs around the apartment trying to play with them.

Now to be honest I’ve only watched the show in five or ten minute interviews. From what I’ve seen its “ok” and it is narrated decently by Sean Austin. So although I can’t personally recommend it, I can say that Edit fully endorses the show.

To deal with the loss of Lex Luthor and Lana Lang, Green Arrow is returning to “Smallville” as a series regular. Chances are this is also the new producers trying to set up things for a spin-off since next season is the final season of the “Smallville.” Having Ollie around with a secret identity will also most likely lead into Clark finally creating the “Superman” Persona.

“The Simpsons” will be back for a record setting 20th season. The fate of the show was previously in question because the voice actors’ contracts were up and FOX hadn’t decided yet if they were going to give them the pay increase they were demanding.

Just got caught up on every episode of Discovery’s “Alaska Experiment” and man the show was bad. Like realyyyyyyyyyyy bad.

The two biggest issues are the editing and narrator. The narrator does nothing but repeat himself and the things he says don’t always agree what the visual images. For example in the sixth episode he says 17 times how the location is dangerous and should the people get hurt they would die because no one can get there to help them in time. However warnings constantly pop-up saying: “Due to the extreme danger wilderness experts were always present off camera to provide survival and emergency aid”

TV is sooooooo scarce that I’ve branched out to the Discovery Channel and was shocked when I discovered (pun intended) “Deadliest Catch.” The show follows fishermen searching for king crabs in the Bering Sea (which I remember from my reporter days is one of the deadliest occupations in the world).

What I find most fascinating about the show is that it is very drama-like with chain smoking manly-men cussing and risking their lives while sometimes bickering over the the silliest things. I mean its basically like “Gossip Girl” without sex and with scary guys.

David Tennant (37)is now dating Georgia Moffett, the 23-year-old single mother who plays his daughter in this friday’s new episode of “Dr. Who.” At least this is nowhere as creepy as Matt dating his mom on “Nip/Tuck.”

After nearly 2 year years “Venture Bros.” returns tonight!

There are lots of theories floating around about last night’s episode. I even spent over 2 hours  (updated) 4 hours discussing it with someone. However I only have one big theory I want to share and I’ll post it after the break… (Read on …)

There has been crazy time travel this season and I hope tonight’s 2 hour finale clears up on who and when and where its been happening.

I hate to admit it, but I was so disparate for TV last night that I watched “Wife Swap.” This has motivate me to compile a list after the break of when all the summer TV shows will be premiering: (Read on …)

Michael Ausiello, one of the best spoiler-journalist on the web announced yesterday he is leaving TV Guide for EW. Ausiello has been providing spoilers for over eight years and has gained split second cameos on shows like “Scrubs” “Gilmore Girls” “Felicity” and “Veronica Mars.” No word yet on if he will be doing spoiler-work for EW or what.

Fox has come in as the most popular network in America, beating out ABC, NBC, The CW and CBS. This is the firs time since the network started in 1987 that it has come in at #1 in the ratings for the season. It’s also the first time since the 90’s that CBS didn’t take first place.

I started a discussion over at Pop Candy about the female characters best in Film and TV:

So the comic-book blogsphere is still talking about the Iron Man movie, specifically about whether or not the character of Pepper Potts was a bad character or not. This led me to think, “Hmm, who is the best female character of all time?” I only came up with one answer: Lorelei Gilmore. So I ask ye … what other female characters in film/TV are on par with Lorelai’s overall awesomeness? — Scott K.
You think Lorelei is better than Buffy? I may have to disagree with you on that one … She probably ranks at the top for me. Another person who comes to mind is Maude from Harold & Maude – I love her spirit! Annie Hall is another good one. Frances McDormand’s character in Fargo, Marge, is another one of my favorites.

Buffy is of course a great answer and in my opinion she’s almost tied with Lorelai (after all BTVS is my all time favorite TV show), but the problem with Buffy is that when you get into season 6 and season 7 she goes through a weird personality change for a bit (had to do with being pulled out of heaven) and for a big chunk of episodes she’s just wasn’t not as strong of a character as say Lorelei is.

Posted after the break is the big list of all the recently canceled TV shows. I was actually going to post a list of all the renewed shows, but then saw this on E! and decided to swipe it. (Read on …)

This is the Japanese version of “The Office” from last weekend’s “Saturday Night Live.”

If you missed them, here are the two promo pics from “Dollhouse.”

Stole these from Pop Candy. Happy Mothers Day!

AMPTP walked away from the negation table with SAG, which means a second strike could very well happen. Word on the street is that AMPTP doesn’t think SAG has the balls to strike after everything Hollywood had to deal with during the writers strike and apparently SAG and willing to call AMPTP’s bluff.

Seriously, who else has been bored out of their minds with the current season of “Battlestar Galactica?” I hoping the show is ending.

Eric Kripke did gave a very sarcastic answer during an interview that cracked me up:

And then about the finale, “No Rest for the Wicked,” I assume Jensen Ackles’ character dies and that’s the last we’ll see of him on the show? Yes, Jensen wanted to focus on movies, and he wouldn’t give me the 25 percent salary kickback I demanded, so he’s leaving the series. Chad Michael Murray is joining the cast to replace him, and next year will be like that season on Dukes of Hazzard where it was Vance and Coy instead of Bo and Luke. Everything’s gonna be a little bit off, but it’ll be good…I think you’ll like it.

“Ugly Betty” announced earlier this week that the show will be moving production from LA to NYC. Most of the press has seen this as a good thing saying it will add to the realistic-feel of the show. However the crew is pissed and blaming Schwarzenegger as well as the state of California for losing their jobs (because the crew won’t be following the show to NYC). As a result the crew ran the following add in Variety:

To Whom it Should Concern
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Members of the State Senate and State Assembly, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles City Council, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors:

We are writing to you because we just lost our jobs. We are the 300 plus members of the crew of the television show Ugly Betty. We were informed this Tuesday that the production of our show is moving to New York primarily because of the 35% tax incentives being offered by the state of New York. Instead of making good wages and paying our fair share of California state income tax, we will all be collecting Unemployment Benefits. In addition, we will certainly be cutting our spending back to the bone, which will not only cut back our sales tax contributions substantially, but it could end up costing the jobs of the people who provide services and products to us. Not only are these crew positions being lost; all of our local vendors are losing our business. (Read on …)

Brea Grant, who was on “Friday Night Lights” for like three episodes, has been cast as a new series regular on “Heroes.” Her character name is Joy and described as being “quick on her feet — and adept at getting herself into and out of trouble.” Sounds like she may have super-speed.

Michael Rosenbaum has wrapped production on this season of “Smallville” and is officially done with the show. However he (or one of is PR people) wrote/distributed the following letter to fans of the show:

Dear Smallville Fans,

Well, it’s been seven wonderful years. Your support is what has made Smallville so successful, and I appreciate you all more than you know. That being said, it is time for me to start the next chapter of my life and career. I hope that I gave you some enjoyment over the years, and that you found my portrayal of Lex Luthor to be satisfying. I am truly grateful, as Smallville fans are the best fans out there. I sincerely hope that you will continue to follow my career through my hair growth period and beyond. (Read on …)

Just want to clarify because I’ve had two friends ask me about “Scarlet.” It’s not a TV series, it’s a series of TVs made by LG. If it was a TV show, the commercials would not air on all the major networks, just the ones that have ties with the channel it’s airing on. It’s a big viral marketing stunt for TV’s that has really mislead a lot of people.