Access Hollywood I know that this...

Access Hollywood
I know that this program is on right before prime-time programming, but I had to share this. A segment on Oprah Winfrey's 50th-birthday bash showed her getting help blowing out the candles on her cake — from Stevie Wonder. Huh?

Friends NBC makes up for torturing us with an abbreviated (although seemingly endless) final season with a supersized episode in which Danny DeVito guest-stars as Phoebe's bachelorette-party stripper. Only Pheebs would end up with a gyrating Louie DePalma shakin' his groove thing for the funky bride-to-be. And he's actually got some moves! That Rhea Perlman's one lucky woman. Also hilarious was Joey's appearance on the Donny Osmond-hosted Pyramid. His desperate attempts to figure out white things he'd find in his refrigerator (cream: "Paper! Snow! A ghost!"; mayonnaise: "Paper! Snow! A ghost!") were inspired. Too bad they can't take away the horrified rage I experienced when the writers trashed my fix of flashback scenes from Ross and Chandler's college days by having Chandler and Rachel kiss. Wha-wha-wha-what??? Well, at least now she's come full circle and has kissed everyone: Ross, Joey, Monica (to get their apartment back), Phoebe (in that lame Winona Ryder sorority-sister episode) and now Chandler. Cheap, guys. Real cheap. And don't even get me started on that icky story about a Ross-Monica mistaken-identity smooch. I know this is sweeps and the show is now competing with Survivor, but lame stunts like these should not be our last impressions of such a great series. (Luckily, tonight's last impression was a dancing Fat Monica falling into a beanbag chair. Now that's funny!)

Survivor: All-Stars I know die-hard fans of this series have been salivating for months for this installment to arrive, but I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Eighteen familiar faces from the past seven seasons are back to compete for $1 million. They're cold; they're wet; they're starving. Yada, yada, yada. Maybe I feel this way because this is only the second episode and I've learned from watching the other seasons that things don't really heat up until the midway point, when strategies and alliances are fully formed. Of course Saboga was going to give everyone flint. The team wanted fire, who cares if everyone else has it, too? And no one can be shocked that 76-year-old Rudy got the boot. If you are, you probably also believe that a certain pop singer's costume "malfunctioned" during a performance at a certain football game last Sunday (more on that later). We all know that friendship is a luxury these players can't afford and the weak must be winnowed out early to avoid garnering too much sympathy. Rupert, you may be your tribe's provider, but get a grip on your emotions and put on your game face. Tears are like blood and fear; predators can smell them.

The Apprentice
So the teams have now blended, four girls and two guys each, with Kristi and Nick picking their team members. It looked like a grade-school gym class, as the captains took turns making their selections, with Omarosa the last woman standing. (There's a shocker.) Tonight's assignment was for the new teams to take seed money to purchase a product and sell it at a profit at a flea market. First things first: I had no inside info whatsoever and I still knew that it was time for a woman to get canned — although I knew it wasn't going to be Omarosa. That said, however, I was also sure it was going to be that annoying little Judas Jessie and not Kristi. Jessie coached Kristi on how to defend herself when she faced Trump, yet Jessie blamed Kristi for the team's failure at the task when Trump asked her who she thought was responsible. Amazingly, Kristi didn't call her on her backstabbing behavior and chose Omarosa and Heidi to face Trump in the Board Room, where she again wimped out and got the ax. I just can't wait until next week: there's supposed to be a budding romance. Maybe that's why Nick was smiling so much...

Extreme Makeover This episode is a prime example of why I don't like this series. A couple who have already improved their lives by losing significant amounts of weight get a couples makeover. But there's more, they get engaged right before they are supposed to have their surgeries and they won't see each other again until two months later — at their wedding. In Disney World. Reality TV my big toe. If anything, I think that this series (and especially this episode) gives average people false hope that plastic surgery will make their lives the fairy-tale existence they always dreamed about but never believed they'd have. I just don't recall nose jobs, chin implants, liposuction or reconstructive surgery in Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty.

ER Let's get right to it: In the wake of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "mishap," NBC decided to edit a scene that featured an elderly female patient's bare breast. Let me put this in context for you. The woman is brought into the ER because of a pulmonary problem and Carter needs to use the paddles on her to shock her heart. One of her breasts briefly appears in two shots (the body part was blurred, the rest of the scene was untouched), for a total of maybe two seconds. Seconds, gang. Blink or sneeze and you probably would have missed it. Though I think this edit is a knee-jerk reaction to the conservative backlash over antiquated issues of decency on TV, I also can't help but wonder why we need to see a breast (or butt, &#224 la NYPD Blue) at all. I know that ER has always gone out of its way to present an accurate as possible picture of hospital life — blood, guts, puke and all. But this show is 10 years old and I don't recall ever seeing a breast before, so why now? (I'm pretty sure NBC and Jackson didn't have this scenario planned.) Honestly, with folks like Jessica Simpson, Dr. Phil and Billy Bush on the air, aren't there enough boobs on TV already?