VIDEO: Watch Five Minutes of the Beavis and Butt-Head Relaunch
VIDEO: Tyra Banks Wants to Be the New Disney, Is Creating a Celebrity Finishing School
Almost everything Tyra Banks says is nonsense, but she really outdid herself on Thursday's episode of Good Morning America. Sitting down with Robin Roberts, Banks immediately started spouting off about her upcoming young-adult novel Modelland, which sounds exactly what you'd get if you crossed Harry Potter with America's Next Top Model. Within 30 seconds, she was using the made-up word "Intoxibellas" and describing the single, giant golden eyebrow she was wearing as a "smize" (which is Banks' made-up portmanteau that means "smiling with your eyes"). Maybe a smize is what you use to smize in Modelland? It's one of those noun-verbs (like "iron" or "Swiffer"). At least Banks' nonsense is versatile...
Dance Moms' Abby Lee Miller On Ranking Students and Dressing Them Sexily
Dance Moms (Wednesdays, 10/9c, Lifetime) has enough bickering to put Real Housewives to shame and enough questionable parenting to make Toddlers & Tiaras seem like Sesame Street in comparison. At its center: Abby Lee Miller, who runs the Abby Lee Dance Company in Pittsburgh. Miller's "tough love" method of teaching features plenty of barking, scant praise (at least as far as what we're privy to, per the show's editing) and a pyramid, which she uses to rank her favorite students on a weekly basis. Viewers are, unsurprisingly, harrowed and riveted. We spoke to Miller about the theatrics of her vocation and show, and to hear her tell it, the pyramid is made-for-TV invention. Peppering her speech with reminders about her and her studio's accomplishments, Miller told us about her background, the impetus for her toughness and why she wishes she could teach orphans...
Platinum Hit's Johnny Marnell on Reality TV Contrivance and Real Relationships
Until he was eliminated on last week's Platinum Hit (Fridays, 8/7c, Bravo), Johnny Marnell seemed like the show's front-runner. But a song that was deemed a "miss" and an onstage showdown with antagonist Nick ultimately led to Marnell's demise. Below, he discusses his elimination (which, months after filming, he still disagrees with) as well as former castmate Melissa's allegation that Johnny's on-screen relationship with Nick was merely a "show-mance." That's not true, says Johnny, but doesn't mean you should believe everything you see on reality TV...
VIDEO: Paris Hilton Can't Handle the Truth
Below is an amusing Paris Hilton interview from Wednesday's Good Morning America. She's confronted with the idea that the famous-for-being-famous celebs of contemporary pop culture that she helped indoctrinate and sometimes befriended (like Kim Kardashian) have eclipsed her reach. She's asked about the anemic ratings of her unpleasant Oxygen show, The World According to Paris. Finally, when anchor Dan Harris wonders if she worries about her "moment having passed," she looks at her publicist and leaves the hot seat. That's all telling. But what would have been even more telling would have been to air the "long, heated conversation with Hilton and her publicist" that Harris describes...
American Idol Creator Simon Fuller Sues Fox, Fremantle Over X Factor
Simon Fuller is suing Fox Broadcasting and Fremantle North America, claiming that he wasn't given "executive producer" credit for the upcoming U.S. version of The X Factor as promised, the Los Angeles Times reports...
Eric Dane in Rehab for Pain Meds
Grey's Anatomy hunk Eric Dane has checked himself into rehab, E! Online quotes his rep as saying...
Jorja Fox Signs On for Full-Time CSI Gig
Jorja Fox will no longer guest-star on her old haunt of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation — come next season, the show's 12th, she'll be considered a full-fledged regular, TVLine reports...
Helena Bonham Carter, Dwight Yoakam Eyeing Lone Ranger Roles
Helena Bonham Carter is in negotiations to join frequent collaborator Johnny Depp in Gore Verbinski's upcoming take on The Lone Ranger, according to The Hollywood Reporter...
Robert Redford and Shia LaBeouf to Star in The Company You Keep
Robert Redford and Shia LeBeouf have signed on to star in the political thriller The Company You Keep, which Redford also will direct, according to The Hollywood Reporter...
Liam Cunningham Signs On for Game of Thrones
No stranger to fantastical swords-and-sandals premium cable fare, Camelot alum Liam Cunningham has signed on for a major role in Season 2 of HBO's Game of Thrones, Entertainment Weekly reports...
South Park's Run Extended Through 2013
South Park has more lives than even Kenny. It's already the longest-running cable animated series, and Entertainment Weekly reports that the ever-fresh cartoon show has been signed through 2013, which will bring its run up to 17 seasons...
VIDEO: It's a Boy (To Be) for Jenna Fischer
The Office's Jenna Fischer gave "the exclusive" on the sex of her baby to Jay Leno (and by extension, the world) on Tuesday's Tonight Show. In the clip below, you can see her tell him that she'll be having a boy come September, and that she saved this information just for Jay. Aww...
Chris Brown Cast in Think Like a Man
If the words "romantic" and "comedy" don't cross your mind when you think of Chris Brown (and who could blame you if they don't?), get ready to have your worldview shaken. The regularly furious singer has been cast in the upcoming romcom Think Like a Man, according to Us Weekly...
Michelle Obama to Guest on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
Michelle Obama's initiative Joining Forces has shuttled her around pop culture, from Oprah to iCarly. The next stop on the Forces express will find her making her reality TV debut on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition...
VIDEO: Jennifer Lopez's Subtle Signs of Relationship Turmoil on HSN?
Jennifer Lopez appeared on HSN to hawk her new Love and Light fragrance two weeks before she announced her split with Marc Anthony — although in retrospect, she may have been signaling it. We put together the video montage below of J.Lo handling the question of Anthony during her six hours on live TV on July 2, and while none of these jump out as clear indicators of imminent divorce, together they paint one uncomfortable picture...
Lisa Kudrow on Her Cable-TV Comeback, Web Therapy
Fiona Wallice is affected, self-entitled and narcissistic. She is a former businesswoman who stumbled into therapy and then when she found other people's lives too tedious to tolerate, she modified her job into a new "treatment modality," she calls "Web Therapy." Give her three minutes and she'll give you ... something, even if it's just further confusion. Fiona is the character Lisa Kudrow developed alongside Don Roos and partner Dan Bucatinsky for Web Therapy, an Internet series that bowed on L/Studio in three-minute bursts in 2008, and has now been converted into a cable series for Showtime by combining webisodes and fleshing out previously unseen aspects of Fiona's personal life. At the show's heart is Kudrow, who spends nary a minute off-screen. Web Therapy (Tuesday, 11/10c, Showtime) finds Kudrow doing that thing that is uniquely hers...
VIDEO: Man Hoards Himself on Hoarders
Randy Senna is something of a local celebrity in the resort town of Wildwood, N.J., where he once ran a boardwalk game center called Flipper's Fascination. He's been the subject of profiles and a forthcoming documentary, in which he's generally regarded as an eccentric. Now, it turns out — at least according to Hoarders (Monday, 9/8c, A&E), he's a hoarder. You know how it goes: the medium is the diagnosis...
VIDEO: The Best News Blooper of the Day
News bloopers! They are so fun! Even when they're as dry as this one (via Mediaite), featuring writer and man-about-the-intellect Michael Wolff, who's mistakenly thrown to for a BBC story on Roger Clemens' trial. After blinking quizzically when introduced as Ben Walker, the baseball editor for the Associated Press, the anchor assumes that his beamed-in guest can't hear him. Then Wolff chimes in...
VIDEO Exclusive: This Is What 22 Years' Worth of Nail-Growing Looks Like
Meet Jazz, one of the subjects profiled on this week's My Strange Addiction (Sunday, 10/9c, TLC). Jazz has been growing her fingernails for 22 years. Her longest is 24 inches long. How she isn't a local celebrity in Atlanta, where she lives, is beyond me. In fact, how she isn't the Queen of the World is beyond me. Like, why am I just hearing about this woman now? Why hasn't she been issued presidencies and Purple Hearts and Congressional Medals of Calcium and Nobel Cosmetic Prizes? She is amazing, and her hands are by far the wackiest things I've seen on TV all week (and I watch America's Got Talent, so that's really saying something)...
Mark Cuban Signs On for Season 3 of Shark Tank
Dallas Mavericks owner and Dancing with the Stars vet Mark Cuban is one step closer to becoming a full-time shark. The entrepreneur, who also owns Landmark Theaters and is chairman of HDNet, has signed on to sit on the Shark Tank panel in 10 out of 13 of next season's episodes, reports Entertainment Weekly...
Leslie Birkland on Going From Welfare to Big Rich Texas
The premise of Big Rich Texas, the Style Network's riff on the Real Housewives template that premieres Sunday at 9/8c, is simple: Self-made woman, pageant coach and model Leslie Birkland moves to Dallas and attempts to enter society by joining the exclusive Woodhaven Country Club. It's so simple that the series takes Birkland's decision for granted (after all, the premiere would have no narrative arc without it). Watching it made me wonder why anyone would want to subject themselves to the kind of superficial scrutiny that joining a country club (or pledging a sorority or attempting to sit at the cool kids' lunch table) conjures. The potential for humiliation is great and there are no guaranteed rewards when you put effort into winning over a group of people you barely know and may not end up liking yourself. In a way, joining any of these reality shows where strangers are thrown together basically for the sake of arguing is a lot like joining an exclusive country club. That makes the narrative of Big Rich Texas either perfectly tailored to its medium or redundant (give us a few episodes and we'll let you know which). People want to be accepted, just like they want to be on TV, but is it worth the headache? We spoke to reality newbie Birkland to get to the bottom of this...
