As mentioned near the start of this panel, “The Simpsons” has pretty much beat every other prime-time television show in terms of longevity, number of episodes, etc. — except for “Gunsmoke” and “Lassie,” which also makes it the all-time king of sitcoms with a reservoir of goodwill able to withstand more than one below-par season. This appearance by the show’s main creative team was a predictably relaxed and mirthful affair in which creator Matt Groening and writers Al Jean and Matt Selman did most of the talking — quieter panelists included director David Silverman, who helmed “The Simpsons Movie,” and writer Carolyn Omine.

Before the official start of the panel, Groening introduced some clips from next Fall’s “Treehouse of Horror” episode, including a brief segment involving Homer Simpson and a particularly violent form of vote rigging that goes well beyond the worst imagingings of Diebold-fearing liberals, as well as a spot on parody of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” with a Linus-like Milhouse accidentally tricking the supernatural pumpkin into a form of vegetarian cannibalism. (It’s complicated.)

Wasting no time, the event was immediately thrown open to questions. The first young questioner asked if the long-suffering Marge Simpson, tiring from her numerous attempts to get the permanently obese Homer to lose weight, would start gaining weight herself. The writers’
response was they would promptly steal the idea and that it would likely show up in Simpsons comic book, if not the actual show.

Another question referred to a recent episode parodying the comic book world featuring an appearance by mad comic writing genius Alan Moore (”Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” “From Hell”) and a joke about an animated “Watchmen Babies” series. Writer Matt Selman expressed his own intimidation at working with the artistically and personally imposing Moore, who apparently got the joke but also stipulated that the gag itself was also an example of an evil corporation (this is Fox, after all) debasing one of Moore’s creations.

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Belle/Hannah (Billie Piper) goes for a meeting with Stephanie (Cherie Lunghi) at a swank-looking restaurant, and notices some of the other girls are giggling at a laptop screen. Turns out Belle has been given a terrible online review by a client – a review that ends with “the word frigid comes to mind.” She laughs uncomfortably and says “Who listens to the critics anyway?” But then she nervously looks at the viewer, which seems to tell us something else. Sure enough, her business begins to suffer, which results in Stephanie sending her a rather odd client late one night.

At first Lewis (Kevin Doyle) seems fairly normal, but almost as soon as Belle closes the door, he begins acting strange. When she goes to make a usual business call to Stephanie, he becomes cold and demanding. It’s a very strange scene for this series, but realistically isn’t at all out of place. It almost looks as if things could get violent when Belle all but throws him out of her apartment. She’s left alone, shaken and confused. Who else can she turns to but buddy Ben (Iddo Goldberg)? He’s closing up the bar where he works when she shows up. He rambles on about his upcoming wedding to Vanessa and her insistence that the napkins should look like doves before even noticing that something might be wrong with Hannah. She tells him what just happened with the client and he, of course, becomes immediately overprotective. Stephanie calls and Hannah goes off on her, questioning why she would send her such a client. Turns out, he’s someone that another girl no longer wanted to deal with and she thought Belle could “handle it.” Belle accuses her of being nothing more than a pimp these days and hangs up. Then to the audience she says, “What a difference a year makes.”

Flashback to her first meeting with Stephanie. The woman asks her about her A-levels, and Hannah rattles off a list of her scholastic achievements, and Stephanie replies, “What I meant was, do you do anal?” Groan! What a godawful joke. Would anybody actually ask such a question using the phrase A-levels? Stephanie tells her, “I’m going to keep you safe. I’m going to be your best friend Hannah - a best friend who takes 40% and doesn’t tell you her real name.” Back in the here and now, Ben suggests that maybe she should take a break from her job – just for a while. In fact, he bets her that she won’t miss the job.

Apparently taking a break from being a whore means spending your days sitting on park benches watching “normal” people live their lives – as if Hannah never noticed what other people do before now. All the while some really goofy music plays in the background. Go figure. Of course, out of boredom she calls Ben for lunch – a repetitive moment that again exposes how few people Hannah has in her life on this show. Hopefully next season the show writes a few more characters into the mix. Anyway, Ben cannot meet her since he’s consumed with work and wedding planning. She decides to take the opportunity to go shopping for a wedding present and meets a clerk named Tim (Matt Smith). She takes a sort of liking to him and ends up bringing him back to her place and sleeping with him, and then he simply won’t go away. Hannah’s not used to people not going away. At one point he discovers her collection of oils and such in the bathroom, and deduces that she must be a masseuse. She awkwardly says that she doesn’t like telling people because most assume a masseuse is also a whore (a word she cannot bring herself to use…ha, ha.) Eventually Ben comes over claiming to be her fiancé and the guy quickly exits. The two friends converse and she insists that she won the bet. Being “normal” just isn’t her thing. He says that the least normal thing about her is her love for marmite(!). For the record, marmite, a yeast extract the Brits spread on toast, is actually pretty tasty.

Belle gets a call from Stephanie saying she’s once again in demand as someone wrote a sparkling review of her online. She tells the agent she’s ready to go back to work, but more or less threatens her business if she ever pulls anything like that again. (Could Belle ever really be a threat to Stephanie?) As the episode draws to a close, we see it was Ben who wrote the review for Belle, a scene that brings to the forefront the biggest problem with this episode: Why didn’t Belle just get online a write a new review (or even several) after the bad one? The answer is that we then wouldn’t have an episode, or at least we wouldn’t have this episode. Overall, this really seems to be the weakest entry thus far and it really doesn’t do much of anything other than further strengthen the friendship between Hannah and Ben, which could’ve been done dozens of other ways. The rest of it, Belle embracing her inner Hannah was really pretty weak, unless the goal was to show that there no longer is a Belle and a Hannah, but just one woman. Maybe that was the point, and maybe I missed it. (Or not, since I just mentioned it.) In any case, the tone was all over the place, going from dark and disturbing to light and airy. If someone tuned in to the show for the first time and saw this, they likely wouldn’t tune in again.

(This recap was very late. Apologies to regular readers, but the good thing about Showtime is that this series plays over and over throughout the week…and then there’s always Showtime On Demand. In fact, as I type there’s a “Call Girl” marathon going on on one of the Showtimes!)

It’s rather gratifying to see Showtime continue to grow into its own as a premium cable network that can compete with HBO. For so long, they were hovering just a shade higher than Cinemax in the eyes of viewers (I don’t know about anyone else, but I distinctly remember seeing many a bare breast on the network back in the day), but now they’ve got a reputation for having at least as much quality original programming as the folks over at Home Box Office, and their popularity is such that the network earned their own executive session.

Matthew Blank offered us a heartfelt introduction, along with the announcement that “Inside the NFL” will be coming to Showtime next season, then promptly passed the buck to Robert Greenblatt, the network’s President of Entertainment, who provided us with several other revelations about upcoming programming:

* Coming soon: “The United States of Tara,” which stars Toni Collette and John Corbett, is executive-produced and based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, and is written by Diablo Cody.

* There are very serious discussions about an “L-Word” spin-off, though it seems to exist predominantly on paper at this stage of the game. “Eileen Chaiken is creating that for us,” said Greenblatt. “We’re going to be shooting it right after ‘The L Word’ wraps this year, and it will star one of the girls from ‘The L Word’ as a sort of crossover. The storyline at the end of ‘The L Word,’ the final episode in the final season, there will be an open-ended component to it. And Eileen is going to carry that story along on the Internet, which we think is an interesting way to keep ‘The L Word’ experience going. Then if we decide to go ahead with the spin-off that storyline will segue into the new series.” He would not, however, commit to which girl was intended as the star of the spin-off, mostly because the actress hasn’t even been told that she’s under consideration yet!

* Another season of “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!” has been ordered, and with this 7th season, it will officially become the longest-running series in the history of Showtime.

* There will be a new reality documentary series called “Locked and Loaded,” which is not about Denis Leary but, rather, about a gun store in rural Colorado. Greenblatt described the series as “sort of a fly-on-the-wall show. You see many, many different kinds of people coming into a gun store, and you see the reasons why they buy handguns and rifles and all kinds of other things.”

* Based on the creative success (but, ultimately, due in no small part to the ratings success) of “Weeds,” the network has ordered two more 13-episode seasons of the show.

* After much discussion on the ‘net about the possibility, Greenblatt confirmed that the Edie Falco pilot, currently known as “Nurse Jackie” (a title which may or may not stick), has been ordered to series. She plays what Greenblatt describes as “a very complicated nurse in a New York City hospital,” and based on the clips we saw, by “very complicated,” he means she’s a drug addict. And, yes, someone else did bring up the similarity to “House,” but Greenblatt assured us that “it’s not going to be big medical story of the week necessarily. I think it’s a different take on a medical show that’s grounded by a really iconic, caustic character played by a great actress.”

* Even though they’re limited by history, Greenblatt thinks that there’s at least another two years of plot possibilities left in “The Tudors.” “The third season is the next two (wives of Henry VIII), Anne of Cleves and Jane Seymour…I love meeting people who think Jane Seymour, the actress, is in the show…and then the following season, I think, will be the final two wives,” he theorized.

* The future of “This American Life” is murky. “Ira (Glass) is not only the most dedicated person in the world, he’s a perfectionist and he doesn’t want to put any episode out that isn’t really extraordinary,” said Greenblatt. “And I will tell you that’s not true of all producers. He’s also doing a radio show, and he will not let anything affect the quality of the radio show. And the same people are doing the radio show and the TV show. So every year, we step back and have a conversation with him. ‘Can we do ten? Can we do eight? Can we do six?’ There may be a year where we do a couple of long-form specials with him and we don’t do episodes of the show, per se, because it’s really hard to find those stories. They don’t just fall into his lap.” To put a fine point on it, a third season has not officially been ordered, but per Greenblatt, “We’re talking to (Ira) about how many he wants to do and what form it might take.”

* Showtime is currently planning to air the three seasons of “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” - one’s already aired in the UK, Season 2 premieres there in September, and the third has been commissioned but hasn’t yet begun filming - and reserves the right to consider airing any future seasons, should there be any. “But,” added Greenblatt, “it looks like a
franchise that there’s a lot of interest in.”

Okay, that’s that. Now, we move onto a panel described as “Showtime’s SHO Stoppers,” which featured the stars and producers of the network’s four signature series: Weeds (Mary-Louise Parker and Jenji Kohan), Californication (David Duchovny and Tom Kapinos), Dexter (Michael C. Hall and Clyde Phillips), and Brotherhood (Jason Clarke and Blake Masters).

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Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t deny that CBS has been talked about quite a lot in the last couple of years. First, “Jericho” got the network lots of press as a result of their decision to resurrect the show for a second season because of fan demand, then it got them even more when they canceled the show for good after it failed to win the appropriate ratings. In recent weeks, they’ve been dealing with bitter vampire fans who can’t believe that “Moonlight” managed to win the People’s Choice Award for Best New Series, only to get canceled when it, too, failed to win the ratings necessary to earn it a sophomore season. Last year, Mandy Patinkin’s abrupt decision to bail out of “Criminal Minds” was all the talk of the TCA Tour, and, now, William Petersen is leaving “C.S.I.,” which is also chat-worthy.

CBS President Nina Tassler took all comers in her Executive Session, and here are the highlights…besides that bit about “Moonlight,” of course.

* The future of “Swingtown” is ambiguous at best. “I’m very proud of the show, I love the show, everybody knows how passionate I’ve been about it,” she said. “I wish the ratings were better, but this is the life we’ve chosen for ourselves. But right now, we’re behind the show and we are proud of it.” When further questioned as to whether “proud” translated into “second season,” however, she wouldn’t commit. “We haven’t made that decision right now, but I am proud of the show. Creatively, I think they’re doing a great job.” (She also reiterated her disappointment in the ratings, which is surely not a good sign.)

* Despite much prodding, Tassler claimed to have no actor in place to fill the shoes of “Billy Petersen” in “C.S.I..” “I don’t think you replace Billy,” Tassler said, “but you sort of look at adding elements to the show that are really going to invigorate and contribute to the alchemy of the show where it is today. They’ve created a great character. He’s a doctor, a scientist who’s got a very interesting DNA that is going to inform the duality of the character. Like I said, it’s not necessarily replacing Billy, but it’s adding an element that is going to sort of inform the dynamic of the team today. What I know of him so far…Carol (Mendelsohn) and Naren (Shankar) are still working on him…is that he is an outsider coming into the CSI unit. When Gil Grissom leaves, he’s the head of the unit, (but) this character doesn’t come in at the beginning as the head of the unit. He comes in a little bit as an outsider, someone who is ultimately going to work his way up within the team and ultimately become the head of the unit. But he has an interesting genetic profile that, in certain sort of medical contexts, they’ve noticed that many times serial killers have that same genetic profile. And this gentleman knows this about himself and is sort of in this journey and to discover who his true character will ultimately become.” The gentleman in question, however, has not yet been cast, and if there’s anyone under discussion, his name did not leak out during the course of the panel.

* Disappointingly, “Harper’s Island,” the new thriller series starring Bill Pullman, is not scheduled to debut ’til mid-season. (Okay, granted, it’s probably not any better than your average slasher flick, since that’s clearly what it resembles, but I was still entertained by the teaser reel they sent us.)

* There is no controversy over the omission of Jay Mohr’s new sitcom, “Gary Unmarried,” from the panels. “Jay is re-taking his vows with his wife and her entire family on the other side of the world someplace,” Tassler explained. “He planned this about a year ago, and he flew over his in-laws and his whole family, so that’s why he’s not here right now.”

* Sophina Brown has joined the cast of “Numb3rs,” and Rocky Carroll has become a regular on “NCIS.”

* Despite doing relatively well on CBS this summer, there are no plans to continue re-running “Dexter” on CBS.

* There are six more episodes of “Password” being filmed, but there is no concrete time-frame as to when they will air. There is no word on the return of “Power of 10,” though CBS apparently reserves the right to bring it back. (At the very least, Tassler never said it was canceled.)

* There will also be more Hallmark movies aired on the network, though no specifics were offered.

* Despite rumors to contrary, there is no plan for an overhaul of “The Price Is Right.” “We are very respectful of the brand and the integrity of that show,” Tassler assured us, “and probably about a year, two years before Bob finally stepped down, there was a multiyear strategy to perhaps put a fresh coat of paint on some of the games that hadn’t been touched in years. As you’ve seen, the sets have been refurbished, but certainly respectful of what those doors looked like, what the lights looked like, but this is all basically it was a plan that was put in place years before Bob left just to sort of make some minor adjustments to the show.”

* Tassler revealed that Sarah Chalke will be doing multiple episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” this year (hey, maybe Bill Lawrence was right!) and that Jason Alexander and Luke Perry would be turning up on “Criminal Minds.”

* As to the problems with “Two and a Half Men” becoming “Three Men,” Tassler says, “You’re going to see Angus is going to be going through typical teen things. I mean, he’s 14. So it opens up a whole new treasure trove of stories. Charlie’s got a whole host of issues that he has to deal with in terms of having a teenager in the house, so it forms a great season of new storytelling for them on the show.”

* “Flashpoint” may return. Or it may not. “Like I said, we’re in the ratings game,” said Tassler, “and if they do well, it’s certainly something for us to consider.”

And that’s the end. From there, we move into…

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Because for the second year running, he bought us pizza for our TCA meeting.

My Disney Channel coverage is going to consist solely of me saying that there’s a new Cheetah Girls movie on the horizon where the gals take on India (”The Cheetah Girls: One World”) and that, while they might be hot, the Girls were way too damned perky for a 9:00 AM panel, constantly giggling and talking over each other. (Pity the poor transcriptionist.) Despite some insidiously catchy songs and Bollywood-styled production numbers, there’s no chance in hell that I’m going to be watching this…well, that is, unless my daughter wants to watch it. But she’ll only be three when it airs, so I’m hoping she’s not quite of “Cheetah Girls” age yet. If your kids are in that demographic, though, God speed to you.

Okay, how about a little ABC Family Channel love? This network keeps impressing me with its programming, even if they aren’t necessarily aimed at people my age. They first caught my attention with “Kyle XY” (which returns in January), kept it and held me rapt with “Greek” (returning on August 26th, woo-hoo!), and now that they’ve added “The Middleman,” they’ve secured a position where I’m instantly curious about pretty much anything they put on the air. Of course, by casting Molly Ringwald as the mother of a pregnant teen in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” (which just got picked up for 13 more episodes, by the way), they’ve made an entire generation feel really, really old, but at the same time, that generation suddenly has ABC Family Channel on their radar, and I sense that will pay off handsomely for them in the future.

Coming in September is a six-hour miniseries event from the producers of “Alias” and “Gossip Girl” that should really grab those of us who appreciate a chick who knows how to kick ass: “Samurai Girl,” starring Jamie Chung, Stacy Keibler, Brendan Fehr, and Kenneth Choi.

Though “Samurai Girl” is based on a popular series of books by Carrie Asai and Annabelle Verhoye, producer Andre Nemec says we shouldn’t be looking for a precise translation from print to screen. “We really took the spirit and the archetypal nature of characters from the books,” said Nemec, “but because we didn’t really want to tell a story that had already been told, we spun a little bit of a different web. You can read the books, and they’re exciting and they’re wonderful and, obviously, the base for all of this, but the show goes off into a different direction in terms of the overall arc of the story, so it’s exciting and new.”

Hmmm. That sounds a little dodgy, but having checked out some of the miniseries, I do have to admit that it looked great and flowed nicely between drama, action, and even comedy…but, most importantly, Jamie Chung kicks some serious ass…and looks good doing it.

Man, I love “Scrubs.”

I’m not gonna tell you that I love every episode equally, because I think even the show’s most diehard fans would concede that it hasn’t entirely been firing on all cylinders for the last year or two, but even the episodes that weren’t consistently great invariably still had moments that made me laugh out loud. So when Bill Lawrence says he’s excited about the prospect of this new season and that he’s feeling creatively reinvigorated, I couldn’t be happier.

“I’m really proud of the show this year,” he assured us. “If you go online, there’s a lot of nerds and blogs…I say “nerds” affectionately…that love to say this season was the best or that season was the best. But I’m going to put some of the shows that we’ve done this year out to people that are interested early before we premiere because I’m really proud of them, and I think they’re as good as anything we’ve done.”

Let’s start off with a few revelations that Lawrence laid out during the course of the panel:

* Ken Jenkins will remain a regular on the show. “Dr. Kelso won free muffins for life on the show,” Lawrence reminded us, “which gives him an excuse to hang around the hospital and be somewhat of a different character.”

* Courteney Cox will be appearing for a three-episode arc as Dr. Kelso’s replacement as Chief of Medicine, and “we would have her back in a heartbeat,” said Lawrence. “I wrote on the first year of ‘Friends,’ so I know her a little bit, and her greatest attribute, besides the fact that she is hilarious and just a great actress, is that she is what we call a gamer. She is up for anything, and I don’t think you get that all the time with high-profile actresses.”

* Don’t hold your breath waiting for another musical episode. “I think we were not the first people to do a musical, nor do I think we are definitely the best people to do a musical, even though I liked ours,” said Lawrence. “I think for us to do another one would be slightly insane, but, as always on this show, there’s a huge musical presence and already there’s a fantastic song that we wrote called ‘Steak Night.’ But probably not another musical.”

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Life on Mars: As you may (or may not) have read in my previous posting, there have been a lot of rumblings on the ‘net about how this show has had to deal with the dreaded “R” word. That’s right: retooling. It’s one of the dirtiest words in the TV business, since it implies that something’s gone so horribly wrong with the show…or, more likely, it never gelled in the first place…but whether or not this is truly the case with “Life in Mars” depends on how much you trust the ‘net.

The original series told the story of Sam Tyler of the Greater Manchester Police, who, after being hit by a car in 2006, found himself in the year 1973, where he split his time between being a cop and trying to figure out what the hell happened to him. But what’s going to happen when this thing gets Americanized?

According to producer Josh Applebaum, the differences aren’t quite as dramatic as you might want to believe, but there was a version by David Kelley at some point. “I think the main difference,” said Applebaum,” is that we’re moving the show to New York, which, for us, is a huge part of it. We’re New Yorkers. We think the show kind of will live beautifully being set in New York. When we think of the early ‘70 cop genre, it speaks so much to New York as a whole, and that’s primarily the difference. David’s version was set in Los Angeles. We’re moving it to New York and just trying to recapture the spirit of the British version.

“We actually spoke to the creators from the BBC, and we sort of asked their permission to change the mythology of what’s going on with Sam Tyler, because in their version, ultimately, he was in a coma. And for us, to be doing hopefully a long-running series where you know that the whole thing is a dream or that he’s in this coma state, it felt unsatisfying. So with their permission, we are changing the mythology. And each week, we’ll be kind of deepening that mystery as to what’s going on with him. They have the three options that they sort of posed. Has he traveled through time, has he lost his mind, or is he in a coma? ”

Time will tell which of the three it is. We certainly don’t have a clue; the original pilot was scrapped, of course, but no new pilot was available for our perusal. As stands right now, I guess we should just be glad that the clips we saw did indeed feature the Bowie song which gave the show its title. (American tastes in the ’70s were just nowhere close to as cool as the UK’s tastes.)

We’re psyched that Michael Imperioli decided to sign onto the show, given that his only truly notable post-”Sopranos” appearance has been a short, underrated stint on “Law & Order”….and even that was only a temporary gig. “Well, I definitely was picky,” admitted Imperioli. “I mean, something like ‘The Sopranos’ that fulfills your creative drive for such a long period of time and challenges you is a hard act to follow. If I’m going to commit to something that hopefully is going to be on for a long time, you want something juicy and you want something different. That’s really what I was looking for. I got the script, and I was not familiar at all with the British show. To be honest, I’d never heard of it! But I thought it was very well written and a really cool idea, and the idea of doing New York detectives in 1973 really, really appealed to me a lot, just of the flavor of it and the period. Culturally, what the city was like then…the ’70s is a period of time that I have an affinity for - the music and just politically what was going on - so I was really into it. And the character…I thought there was a lot of truth to the character, and I thought he’s different enough from what I had done in the past…although it seems to be most of the stuff I’ve been doing is either a cop or a robber! But if that pays the bills, that’s okay. The other thing was that it shot in New York, which was something that I was hoping to do; if I was going to do another series, it would be in New York. So it kind of satisfied all those things at once.”

Not much else to tell you, really, except that all the Anglophiles in the viewing audience will be ready to rip this thing to shreds, so they’d better come roaring out of the gate or be ready to face the consequences.

No pressure.

Opportunity Knocks: While you have to pat the guy on the back for carving himself a niche as a television producer when just about everybody expected him to fall flat after “That ’70s Show,” I’ve never been a huge fan of Ashton Kutcher’s reality series. “Punk’d,” like all hidden-camera prank shows, had its moments, and as a self-professed geek, it would be a lie if I didn’t find myself rooting for the the guys in “Beauty & The Geek” once in awhile, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually seen an entire episode of either series. As such, there was really only one reason I stuck around for the panel for Kutcher’s new traveling game show, “Opportunity Knocks,” and that’s that…well, I just wanted to see Ashton Kutcher. (He’s a pretty big deal, you know.)

As it happens, the panel ended up being a lot of fun. The premise of the show is that the producers of the show go to the contestants’ houses, talk to their friends, family, employers, and even their friendly neighborhood postal carrier, and then they ask personal questions that, in theory, they should know the answers to. Or sometimes they’ll flip it around and play it “Newlywed Game” style, where they asked the contestant a question about themselves, and people close to them have to get it right before they reveal the answer.

The show’s host, J.D. Roth, decided that the best way to get the critics involved in the series was…well, to get them involved in the series! They called TV Guide’s Matt Roush up to the stage, and when he arrived, they revealed that, while he’d been out at the TCA Tour, they’d been in his office at TV Guide…and they had the footage to prove it. They then quizzed him about what was written on a cue card that he had saved from his work on “America’s Next Producer.” He was unable to do so…so they brought up Brill Bundy from Zap2it.com, along with both her husband and co-worker, to see which of them knew her best. Which one did? Well, let’s just say that her co-worker won’t be sleeping on the couch for the next week or so…

Sounds like a cute enough show, and the questions don’t appear to be malicious. It wouldn’t surprise me if this turned into a sleeper hit come the fall.

Okay, maybe this needed its own posting and maybe it didn’t, but to my way of thinking, any panel that includes Matt Groening and Al Jean (producers of “The Simpsons”), Mike Judge and John Altschuler (producers of “King of the Hill”), Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman (producers of “American Dad”), Mike Henry and Richard Appel (producers of “The Cleveland Show”), and Seth MacFarlane (producer of “Family Guy,” “American Dad,” and “The Cleveland Show”) is automatically gonna be funny enough to get it’s own posting.

I was proven right when MacFarlane came onto the stage and, knowing that the previous panel had been for Fox News, asked, “Is this where Karl Rove sat? ‘Cause I don’t want to get AIDS…”

(When the room erupted in boos, MacFarlane grinned and replied, “Use that as the bar.”

Here are some of the panel highlights:

* The “Empire Strikes Back” episode of “Family Guy” just had its animatic screening, according to MacFarlane, and will be shipped off to be animated in a few weeks or so. No air date has been set yet, however, and there’s apparently some question about whether it might be released on DVD prior to being aired on Fox. (MacFarlane would also like to do a “Family Guy” version of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” but he’s pretty sure Paramount won’t let them do it.)

* Don’t look for any crossovers between “The Cleveland Show” and “Family Guy” anytime soon. “Cleveland’s moving out of town, and there’s a whole new fresh crop of characters,” said Henry, “and we’re not going to have Peter come visit anytime soon. Cleveland’s not going to go back anytime soon. We’re really looking to establish ourselves.”

* This year’s “Treehouse of Horror” will include a “Peanuts” parody called “It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Millhouse,” where a pumpkin comes to life and is so upset at what humans do to pumpkins that he tries to kill and eat everybody.

* Seth Rogen is writing an episode of “The Simpsons,” where Comic Book Guy creates a superhero that gets turned into a feature film, with Homer playing the lead. Seth Rogen plays a personal trainer who helps slim Homer down and get him into great shape, but when the movie ends, he can’t afford this trainer, so his life goes back to hell.

* There was silence when I first asked the panel if they had any guest stars in the upcoming season they could discuss, but Jean finally responded, “We had Mark Cuban and Jeff Bezos playing themselves with what’s probably the richest supporting cast in the history of animation.” (”Other than the ‘Simpsons’ cast,” quipped Groening.) Inspired by Jean’s forthrightness, MacFarlane then admitted that we could expect a “Family Guy” episode where Stewie and Brian go to Russia with Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd.

* Despite years of gossip to the contrary, Matt Groening and Seth MacFarlane do not dislike each other. “Matt and I get along very well,” MacFarlane assured us. “People want us to hate each other. We get along extremely well. He’s a wonderful guy.”

* When one writer mentioned that “Family Guy” was on the list of the Emmy Awards’ 10 finalists for Best Comedy and asked what Stewie would wear to the Emmys, Seth MacFarlane turned to the crowd and laughed, “Jack McGee over there, with his hard-hitting questions!” (After the laughter died down, he thanked us for getting the reference.)

* Matt Groening has an issue with 3-D eyeballs. “Know what really bothers me about animation?” he asked us. “This shows that I’m from the wrong generation. Every one of those CGI animated movies that has a cute animal in it, for me they look like toys. They look like figurines that you would see in the toy store. But that’s okay, I can get by that. It’s that they have human eyeballs with little human irises, and so whenever I’m watching any of those movies, I get freaked out because I go, ‘They put human eyeballs in those characters,’ and that really bugs me. So I like the fact that I get to work with animators who is are able to draw almost perfect circles, little ovals with dots. That’s an eyeball.”

* Although a George Bush presidency has been great for “American Dad,” Mike Barker is willing to put the country ahead of the show and root for the Democrats. “It’s going to be really interesting,” he admitted. “Stan has been on the winning side for so long. To see him deal with what is hopefully going to be the other side, it’s going to be an opportunity. It’s actually really cool for the show because it gives us a chance to see him kind of vulnerable and kind of more frustrated. So we’re looking forward to it for more reasons than one.”

* When someone asked the panel what they might say to the person who might say, “I can’t watch this, it’s just a cartoon,” MacFarlane suggested, “Give ‘Scrubs’ a chance?” (After the “Scrubs” panel, Lawrence was informed of this jab and replied with a smirk, “Wow, MacFarlane’s doing another cartoon, huh? Gosh, but he does so much other stuff!” He then clarified that he and MacFarlane have a relationship, and that “it’s okay to fuck with each other.”)

* When the panel was asked if they were concerned that they might accidentally steal stuff from each other, Appel assured them that he consciously steals stuff from them, while Mike Henry said, “I don’t know if people know, but the scripts for ‘The Cleveland Show’ are just going to be ‘Good Times’ episodes.”

* As long as Fox wants “The Simpsons,” Groening and Jean are ready to keep doing the show. “We’re having a really good time,”confirmed Groening. “The task that we face at ‘The Simpsons’ is trying not to repeat ourselves, trying to come up with new ideas that we haven’t done ourselves already. And under the guidance of Al, the animators and writers are coming up with ideas that I don’t think we’ve done before.” “And that we’re really excited about,” added Jean, who also acknowledged that “since we’re not now doing a movie and a ride at the same time as the show, it’s kind of easy.”

* Mike Judge has no definite idea when “King of the Hill” will end, but it sounds like he wouldn’t be surprised if it ended tomorrow. “I keep thinking I’ve got one bad season in me, and then we end up having some really good episodes,” he said. “Then I think the next one will be the bad last one. I don’t know. It seems like as long as the episodes are still good, I’ll keep doing it as long as FOX renews it and, you know, it’s still fun.”

Okay, now that the Executive Session is out of the way, let’s get into the show-specific panels.

So You Think You Can Dance: Proving yet again that I’m not the target demographic for reality shows, I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full episode of this series…or, if I have, it was almost certainly one of the first episodes of a season, solely so that I could get a laugh out of the auditions by the various not-ready-for-prime-time dancers from around the country. Those of you who are fans, however, will probably be impressed by the fact that we were gifted with performances by Matt and Kourtni as well as Thayne. Heck, I’m not even a fan, and I was impressed by their moves.

As to the comments made during the panel, the only one that really caught my ear occurred when Nigel Lythgoe was asked if he thought that America ever got it wrong when voting off contestants.

“From my point of view, the public often gets it wrong…on this program and ‘American Idol,’” he said. “At the end of the day, they sort of put things right; it’s along the way they get things wrong. It’s like losing Tamyra Gray or something. But at the end of the day, Kelly Clarkson justly deserved to win. With dancers, it’s the same. I think we’ve lost some really good dancers along the way, but at the end of the day, when you look at Benji and you look at Travis and you think one’s a brilliant dancer and one’s a brilliant performer, the brilliant performer won. Last year, brilliant performer in Sabra and her whole story. Brilliant dancer in Danny. Sabra won. I have never seen the best dancers necessarily win ‘So You Think You Can Dance.’ Personalities have got so much to do with it, as in any form of competition on television. It’s about your charisma. What’s the difference between a brilliant actor and a star? Charisma.”

True enough.

Well, I’ll just close with the comment I made in a Facebook update I posted during the panel: I don’t really care anything about “So You Think You Can Dance,” but I could watch and listen to Cat Deeley all day…and while I can’t readily provide you with a soundbite, I can at least provide a picture:

Fringe: J.J. Abrams, creator of “Lost,” comes to Fox with his mysterious new show which - you may or may not be pleased to know - is nowhere near as impenetrable as the series for which he’s most recognized. Bill Harris and I were discussing it, and I was considering approaching Abrams and saying, “Hi, I watched ‘Fringe,’ and…I was able to follow it. Are things okay at home?” Bill’s plan, meanwhile, was to indicate to Abrams that he wasn’t at all confused while watching the pilot, then ask, “Is this a problem with me or with you?” In the end, neither of us asked our questions, mostly because Abrams tackled head-on the issue of his shows being problematic for casual viewers.

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The halfway point of “Call Girl’s” first season sees the concept stretching its wings even further, while also providing viewers with what is allegedly the ultimate straight man fantasy: A threesome with two incredibly hot, wanting women seemingly willing to do just about anything. Hannah (Billie Piper) tells viewers in the precredits sequence, “It’s not that I don’t like going down on girls, it’s just that I never really enjoy going out with ‘em.” Before the episode is over, she’ll do both.

The installment begins with Hannah in a bridal shop trying on a wedding dress. Why? Is this some kink dress up thing for a client? She receives a call from Stephanie (Cherie Lunghi) asking her if she’d be game for a threesome. She doesn’t rule it out, but wants to know who the client is. It’s Ashok (Ace Bhatti), last seen in the third episode, and Belle’s regular. She seems immediately put off. Why after all this time does Ash want two women instead of just Belle? Why didn’t he ask her about it first? She takes the job, but does so more out of curiosity than anything else. There’s no way she’s going to let two strangers get their lascivious paws all over her beloved, trustworthy Ash.

Then we find out why she’s in the shop in the first place. She’s there shopping with Ben (Iddo Goldberg) for his wedding tux. The shop assistant mistakes Hannah for Ben’s bride to be, and he indignantly points out that she’s not his bride, she’s “just here to help out.” They haven’t yet spoken about the e-mail she sent him in last week’s episode – the one that gave the address to her website. But apparently it’s not such a huge a deal to Ben that they go out shopping. Afterwards they go out for a drink and the ice is finally broken. His biggest question – which also answers something we’ve been asking ourselves since the series began – is, “Were you doing it when we were still seeing each other?” Hannah answers no. So Hannah and Ben were an item once upon a time! Perhaps not a huge revelation, but it does explain quite a bit about their friendship, as well as beg for further exploration. He presses her further, “Why do you do it?” She replies, “Would you believe me if I said I enjoyed it?” He asks what she’s doing tonight and she tells him of the threesome and Ashok and that “he’s lovely and he’s my oldest client – he’s like a friend.”

We then get a brief flashback showing how Belle got into the biz. It was almost like an accident. She met a man and went home with him for the night. The next morning her gives her cab fare to get home, but when she looked at the amount, it was well over what a cab ride would cost. Thus began her journey. Back in the present, Belle goes to the hotel room to meet Naomi (Beth Cordingly), her partner for the night. They prepare for Ash’s arrival and when Naomi asks what Ash is like, Belle gives a vaguely romantic sort of reply about the man, to which Naomi replies, “What I meant was is he into vanilla or anal?” Once he arrives there’s an extensive montage of the three of them in all sorts of positions and situations throughout the evening, and it’s really sexy stuff and shows more skin than I think has been shown thus far on the show. Afterwards, the trio lounge in bed and Ash thanks Belle for the book he recently gave her, and admits it really moved him.

After he leaves, Belle awkwardly asks Naomi if she’d like to hang out some time as friends. She agrees, which leads to the real meat of the story. They become fast friends, going out for Chinese and comparing work stories. They’ve got a lot in common, clearly, and they can talk about stuff back and forth that they can’t speak about with anyone else. One afternoon Belle gets a call from Stephanie asking if she’s got room for a new client on Wednesday. But Wednesday is Ashok’s day? “He’s with Naomi this week.” Boom! Not what she wanted to hear. She’s not interested in the new client, and she feels betrayed by her new friend, although it’s been clear since the beginning that Naomi’s approach to business is a little more businesslike than Belle’s. She’s crushed, and tells the viewer, “The end of the affair was written from the beginning. He’s a man who pays women for sex. I’m the whore. At some point his tastes were bound to change.” She then deletes Naomi’s info from her cell phone. It’s really a very sad scene, and shows how much we’ve come to care for Belle/Hannah in a short amount of time. In reality, we probably wouldn’t have sympathy for such a situation, but this isn’t reality, it’s TV.

She, of course, turns to the only friend she’s got, Ben. He comes to her place and they make some amends. He admits that much of his problem stems from her work being such a huge part of her life that he just didn’t know about. He says, “You’re the only girl I’ve shagged who still likes me.” She replies, “Except Vanessa.” The episode ends with Ben asking Hannah to be his best man. Really this was an episode about friendship and what exactly cements that institution, with the point being an understanding of the friends involved in the relationship. Ben understands Hannah and vice versa. Hannah and Naomi didn’t understand one another, of course they never really had a chance. Ben and Hannah continue giving each other chances, despite the fumbles.

You know how these executive sessions work, so I’ll just do a quick run-through of the tidbits offered up by FOX’s President of Entertainment, Kevin Reilly:

* On the origins of “Fringe” coming to Fox: “We knew J.J. (Abrams) had made his new deal at Warner Bros. last year. We knew he was coming out with a show. Before he even started, Peter Liguori and I talked about who’s at the top of our list. We made the call, like, day one. We offered him a series day one. We knew the logline, that it was sort of an ‘X-Files’/'Indiana Jones’ kind of thing. Sounded good to us. And, you know, he was going to write it with Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci. We brought Jeff Pinkner in now to run the show. And I’m happy to say that this show just feels right. You know, sometimes with these big showrunners, it’s all hype and no delivery. I actually am very happy to say that I think this one is going to deliver the goods.”

* Coming to Fox sooner than later: “Lie To Me,” created by Sam Baum and starring Tim Roth, “Courtroom K,” created by Paul Attanasio (executive producer of “House”), and “Boldly Going Nowhere,” a sitcom from Rob McElhenney (creator of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”).

* On Joss Whedon coming back to Fox, even though he’s been burned before: “Joss was a gift. The only reason Joss wasn’t on my list is because I thought there was no way he was coming back. And every time I’ve called about him, they said, ‘He’s busy. He doesn’t want to do it.’ Joss will tell you himself that he got hit in the head with a lightning bolt of an idea. He’s respected Eliza Dushku as an actress. He’s wanted to work with her. They got together. He left that lunch and said, ‘Dammit, I’ve got an idea. Now I’ve got to do it.’ And he just showed up, and the answer was yes. And I have not seen any skittishness. In fact, I’m really enjoying working with the guy. His reputation is well-earned. We’re having a good time.”

* The upcoming “24″ movie - not the theatrical one that’s been rumored for awhile, but a TV movie - will be a self-contained entity which encompasses a separate day’s events…specifically, the day of the swearing in of America’s first female President. It will, however, help to set the scene for the upcoming season.

* On the controversy about there originally being no black voice actors on “The Cleveland Show” (and the subsequent addition of three black voice actors): That was the intention going in. I mean, the Cleveland character pre-existed, you know. They’ve been doing that…Mike (Henry’s) been doing that character for a long time, so we knew going in that was a fix: we’re going to have a white guy. But clearly, the idea was just to make an ethnically diverse show in front of and behind the camera, which we are. We’ve got a diverse writing staff. We’ve got an African-American guy playing a redneck character in the show. So the whole intention here was just to cast it, you know, with the best people we have, but clearly to create a largely African-American cast for the family.”

* On the negotiations with the writing staff of the new animated series, “Sit Down, Shut Up”: “I don’t mean to be evasive because I can’t really comment on it because I was hoping to have 100 percent finality on the thing by this meeting today. There are still T’s being crossed. It’s been a very, very tricky situation trying to resolve a deal on this. My presumption, what I believe is going to happen…? I know that Mitch Hurwitz is going to stay with the show. A couple of writers will probably exit the show. A couple of new writers will join or remain with the show. I’m very hopeful that, even by today, we will be moving forward with a writing staff and resolve this.”

That was the 14th, and today’s the 16th. Since there’s been no formal announcement as of yet, it seems that hope alone was not enough to score a resolution…and, frankly, I’m getting more and more depressed about it. Hurwitz’s name is, thanks to “Arrested Development,” an instant mark of quality; as far as I’m concerned, Fox should do everything in its power to get this thing wrapped up quickly, so we can see this show!

UPDATE: Nikki Finke just broke the story at Deadline Hollywood Daily that some - but not all - of the writers on “Sit Down, Shut Up” have indeed signed off on the Animation Guild’s offer, with the others “holding out for the ability to have their pension contributions applied to the WGA plan.” Hey, it’s a start, anyway…

“Frontline”: “The Choice” and “Heat”: Well, this’ll be short, as I was up in my room, writing blog posts when this panel was taking place. As to “The Choice,” you may have seen previous editions of this special in 2004 and 2000, as it’s become a regular tradition on PBS to provide a dual biography of the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates, so if you’re a political junkie, you’re probably gonna want to check out the latest entry in the series of specials. “Heat,” as it happens, is produced by Martin Smith, who served as producer on an earlier edition of “The Choice,” but his latest work is all about global warning. with twelve countries from around the world participating in the special. That’s all I’ve got. Check it out if it sounds interesting to you.

“Nature: American Eagle”: Eagles are beautiful, beautiful creatures, and “Nature” is a gorgeously filmed program. Two great tastes that taste great together. ‘Nuff said. (Can you tell I was still up in my room for this panel, too?)

“Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business Of America”: Even though the film buff in me is admittedly psyched about that Warner Brothers story doc, I’m way more excited about this series, which, per filmmaker Michael Kantor, “starts with Charlie Chaplin and ends somewhere in the Jon Stewart world.” I’ve been a huge fan of comedy for as long as I can remember - we’re talking TV, film, albums, and, God help me, I was even a dedicated “Dr. Demento” listener until his program stopped being aired in my area - and I positively foaming at the mouth with the clips they showed us. The breaking news came at the beginning - Billy Crystal has been signed to provide narration for this six-part series - and, from there, we were treated to some extremely funny comments from the panel, which included Richard Lewis, Anne Beatts (an original “SNL” writer as well as the creative mind behind “Square Pegs”), and Larry Wilmore (otherwise known as the Senior Black Correspondent for “The Daily Show”).

Richard Lewis on the appropriate use of profanity in comedy: “Listen, you know, when I would listen to a double album of Lenny Bruce at Berkeley, I mean, I had no idea I was going to become a comedian. I was about 18. But a bar was set, and it wasn’t the expletives that I was focused on. It was, like, these insanely brilliant routines in that double album, and it had a lot of his great bits. And once I, two years later, became a comedian and Pryor was already a star, basically, and he’s a genius. He’s arguably the greatest, to me, stand-up comedian. Lenny may be the most important, and Jonathan Winters in a lot of ways perhaps more spectacularly open-ended, hilarious human being I’ve ever known, but he was worked very, very clean…in fact, totally clean, Jonathan. The other two guys didn’t, but it was more street talk and character stuff for Richard. And for Lenny, the same. But, you know, there are a vast majority of comedians who use expletives almost as a punch line to get laughs at clubs or at a concert, and as a comedian myself…and I’m a little blue from time to time, it sneaks out, but it’s never a premise, or it’s never a punch line. Tragically, it cheapens the art form.”

Larry Wilmore on Bill Hicks: “He probably didn’t get a chance to really get into the mainstream, but all of the comics at the time during the ’80s respected Bill Hicks. I remember working with him in Houston, I think, in the mid-’80s, and I couldn’t believe how just raw and funny he was.”

Anne Beatts on Tina Fey: “She’s great, hilarious, wonderful, talented, pretty, good legs, everything. She’s terrific. But I did misguidedly tell her not to wear her glasses on television. I was so wrong.”

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The ABC Executive Session Q&A began with a gentleman asking if there was any truth to the rumor that the network was courting Jay Leno for a late-night position, but Stephen McPherson, President of ABC Entertainment, responded that he didn’t really want to discuss it in this particular forum.

“Are you at all concerned,” the gentleman continued, “that, if you do pursue Mr. Leno, that Jimmy Kimmel might do something terrible to your car?”

At this point, it became very evident that this “gentleman” was, indeed, Jimmy Kimmel.

“NOVA: The Bible’s Buried Secrets”: It might’ve been appropriate to open the Sunday sessions with a Bible story, but it was pretty heady stuff for us to absorb so early in the morning. Paula Apsell, producer of “NOVA,” introduced “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” thusly: “Shot in Israel, Egypt, Syria, and the U.S., the film challenges viewers to think about the Bible in an entirely new way, one that exams the message and the meaning even as it looks for a historical core. What emerges is provocative new evidence surrounding the origins of monotheism and the ethical code that accompanies it, ideas that change the world and resonate for us today as it did then.” Fascinating stuff, sure, but way too much to take in at 9:00 AM. But there was at least one portion of the discussion that captured my attention: the question about whether God had a wife.

Professor William G. Dever responds: “The reason why God is so bad-tempered in the Old Testament is mostly he was lonely. And if he had listened to his wife, he wouldn’t have done those bad things. We know that in the minds of many ordinary Israelites, there was a pair of deities. Why shouldn’t there be? There was everywhere else in the ancient world. You have to remember monotheism is a difficult consideration. The development of monotheism is late, in some cases arbitrary and even artificial. A much more natural system is to have a plethora of gods, one for each need. And that’s what most peoples in the ancient world thought, and so did they in Israel. The very fact that the prophets and reformers condemned the worship of other gods means it was going on all over the place. Otherwise, why talk about it? So it’s clear that while those who wrote the Bible and edited it and passed it down were rigid monotheists, so to speak, all men, in the minds of many, God, of course, had a consort. And why not? If women had written the Bible, the portrait of God would be different.”

How would it have been different? Too…many…jokes. Must…move…on…to…next…panel…

“NOVA: Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives”: This one was actually even more headspinning than its predecessor, since it was about the late physicist Hugh Everett and his Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which predicts that every time we make a decision, a parallel universe splits off from our everyday reality (ow, my head just exploded!), but what made it stand out was the fact that it views Everett’s work through the eyes of his decidedly non-mathematical son, Mark…who you may know better as E, the heavily-bearded frontman for The Eels.

The key to the show is the relationship between E and his father…or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Hugh Everett died in 1982, so he never saw his son become a famous musician (at least from a cult standpoint), but…you’ll pardon the unintentional pun…they really were living in two different worlds. “I think it is a common thread with a lot of families that fathers and sons have their issues and maybe don’t always connect,” said E, “but we didn’t connect at all. I mean, it was sort of shocking the degree of how isolated he seemed to me, growing up in the same house with him all those years. But how do you relate to the rest of the world when that’s what’s going on in your mind, you know?”

E did have some fond memories of his father, despite their lack of a connection. “I remember him delighting in things like ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Twilight Zone’ and science fiction books. We’d have neighbors come running over and…they’d be sitting in a hammock one summer day, reading a science fiction book, and it would have a reference to my father, and they’d come running over and knock on the door, all excited.”

There’s a scene in the film when the producers find some tapes of E with his dad, and for all his enthusiasm about working on this project (he calls it “an extraordinary process” and “probably the single-most life-changing thing I’ve been through”), there was clearly still a certain amount of annoyance about the way he found his way to hearing these tapes. “I didn’t want to listen to the tapes,” he admitted. “It was a really awkward moment for me when I walked into the room. The filmmakers had already listened to some of the tapes, and they were all kind of looking at me like…it was like they set a trap for me. I was scared. It was just the weirdest thing was hearing his voice for the first time in, whatever, 25 years or something. I couldn’t even remember his voice, but then as soon as I heard it, I remembered it really well.”

E’s comments make it pretty clear that the gene for physics skipped a gene, but he’s resigned to it. “I’m not bitter about not being a mathematics genius at all,” he assured us. “I’d much rather be a rock star. The groupies are a lot better.

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Sorry, but this won’t be as quick an entry as you might think.

First off, I have to announce the Lifetime news that made me legitimately happy: they’ve already committed to a third season of “Army Wives.” Yes, I really am a fan of the show, and I’m psyched to hear that Lifetime is going ahead with Season 3, though given the absolutely crazy ratings success of the early episodes of Season 2, it’s certainly one of the least surprising revelations of the tour. Still, it’s nice to have the confirmation. Stay tuned to Bullz-Eye for my Q&A with Sally Pressman, who plays Roxy LeBlanc on the show and was more than happy to answer my question, “Why should guys watch ‘Army Wives’?” (Unsurprisingly, though, the first words out of her mouth were to point out that there are four females leads and not a one of them is hard on the eyes.)

Okay, on to the three panels.

First panel: the second season of Carson Kressley’s series, “How to Look Good Naked.” Great concept, wonderful for helping women build their self-esteem, but ultimately not really something that I need to talk up but so much.

Second panel: “Rita Rocks,” the new sitcom from executive producers Stan Zimmerman and James Berg, last seen as consulting producers on “Gilmore Girls.”

Okay, with credits like that, we’ll give this panel a little bit more love. Nicole Sullivan (”Mad TV,” “The King of Queens”) stars as Rita, an overworked mother in the middle of a full-blown identity crisis. She’s happily married to Jay (Richard Ruccolo, a.k.a. the guy in “Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place” who wasn’t Ryan Reynolds), but while juggling her marriage, her job, and her maternal duties, Rita realizes that to reclaim her sanity, she has to carve out time for herself. At the encouragement of her nosy postal carrier, Patty, (Tisha Campbell-Martin), Rita forms…a garage band? Okay, c’mon, how are we defining “garage band” here? Because when I think “garage rock,” I think of Little Steven’s radio show, and what we see in the pilot - Rita kicking out a not-bad version of “Try A Little Tenderness” - only falls into the descriptor of “garage rock” because it’s actually performed in a garage.

“We’d love to do a lot of covers,” said Zimmerman, “and then maybe eventually she’ll put a song up maybe that she’s written when she was 17 and be real exciting.”

“We don’t want it to become kitschy in that it’s all ’80s music,” clarified Sullivan, “because that tends to lead to that sort of feeling. We don’t want it to all be silly. We want it to be emotional.”

At this point, a writer asked Sullivan what she listened to while growing up?

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TBS is such a mixed bag of comedy. I’ve become a huge fan of “My Boys” after scoring a review copy of the Season 1 set and blowing through it in about two days, and I’m excited at the prospect of “10 Items or Less” getting a DVD release so I can finally get in on that show from the ground up. But “The Bill Engvall Show” is a little too pedestrian for my tastes (I think Engvall’s a great stand-up, and Tim Meadows never fails to make me laugh, but even his stuff on the show rarely earns more than a light chuckle from me), and to each their own, but if I never see another episode of “House of Payne,” it’ll be too soon. (Reviewing the first DVD release of the show was quite enough of that particular Tyler Perry production for me, thanks.)

Somewhere in the middle of these shows lies “Frank TV.”

I’ve always been a huge fan of impressionists. I mean, I can’t tell you how excited I’d get as a kid when I’d hear that Rich Little was going to be making an appearance on this show or that. Frank Caliendo definitely falls into the tradition of the greats, make no mistake, but despite all the love the guy has received for his spot-on impression of John Madden, he earned a major, major backlash as a result of the absolutely ceaseless promos for “Frank TV” that aired during the baseball playoffs last year.

So how is he going to handle the advertising blitz this time around?

“I’ve actually asked them to tone it up, just to make people angrier.”

In truth, Caliendo didn’t know anything about the constant promoting of his program…though he has already apologized in advance for the fact that it’s almost certainly going to happen again. “It was the weirdest thing in the world,” he said, “because I actually had called over to Steve Koonin and Michael Wright, and I said, ‘What’s happening?’ And they’re, like, ‘It’s working. People are talking about it.’ The thing that you probably don’t know is that — and this is their belief in the show — we had not shot a single sketch before those things aired. So the baseball playoffs were going on with all those promos, they believed in the show and thought it was going to work, but we hadn’t put (together) anything other than a pilot.”

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Okay, kids, we’ve got a lot of stuff to cover here, so let’s start off by just hitting the highlights of the initial HBO panel, which was simply the network’s programming group president Richard Plepler and co-president Michael Lombardo opening up the floor to questions.

* The next season of “Big Love” is shooting now and will hopefully land on the air in the first quarter of 2009.

* Larry David is currently filming a Woody Allen movie, but he’s planning to get back to “Curb Your Enthusiasm” once he’s finished with that, so fingers crossed for Season 7 in late 2009.

* There are six completed episodes of Linda Bloodworth-Thomas’s “12 Miles of Bad Road” floating around, but HBO has decided that the series isn’t right for them, so it’s anyone’s guess if, when, or where we’ll ever see it.

* There is enormous interest by Warner Bros./New Line to do another “Sex and the City” movie, and they’re trying with HBO’s help to put that together.

* David Chase is on vacation in France, but if he wants to do a “Sopranos” movie, HBO would be “delighted to explore that.”

* Pilots have been greenlit for “Treme,” dealing with post-Katrina New Orleans, “The Washingtonian,” based on a Jessica Cutler book, and one-hour drama about 1920s Atlantic City that’s written and executive-produced by Terry Winter, with Martin Scorsese also executive-producing.

* David Milch is working on a pilot called “Last of the Ninth” about New York City Police Department in the 1970s, which means that the likelihood of a “Deadwood” movie happening is slim to none.

* Both “In Treatment” and “Tell Me You Love Me” will be returning.

* The network’s upcoming miniseries, “Pacific Theater,” executive-produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman, just wrapped principal photography, and should air in either late ‘09 or early ‘10.

* Coming soon: “Number One Lady Detective,” based on the series of books by Alexander McCall Smith.

* Also coming soon: “Hung,” a half-hour comedy with Alexander Payne directing.

* Chris Rock will be doing his fifth HBO concert on September 27, 2008.

So there you go. Not a bad slate of stuff to keep you looking forward to for the next several months…and that’s not even counting the shows that earned their own panels.

First up: Ricky Gervais.

Though many Americans remain unaware of this fact, Gervais has stretched his career beyond television and film into the world of stand-up comedy. (His possession of the ability to do hilarious stand-up will come as no surprise to anyone who’s become addicted to the podcasts he’s done with his longtime writing partner, Stephen Merchant, and their associate, the inexplicable Mr. Karl Pilkington.) There are actually three DVDs worth of Gervais’ stand-up available in the UK - “Animals,” “Politics,” and “Fame” - but, to date, his Stateside fans have been given little opportunity outside of YouTube to investigate his facet of his work. Thankfully, HBO stands ready to change this by filming his performance next week at the Wamu Theater at Madison Square Garden, for air in the very near future. (The venue, according to Gervais was chosen because “I’ve just bought an apartment right near it, so I can walk.”)

Despite being one of the most distinctively British comedians working today, Gervais assured us that he won’t really have to change a great deal in his act for American audiences. “I obviously take out cultural references you wouldn’t get,” he admitted, “but I think it’s as simple as changing sort of stones for pounds. There’s nothing that I think an American audience wouldn’t like. It’s purely cultural references that might not be mutual. The things I pick on are probably global…and, you know, America, by its definition in the world, is pretty global, anyway. It’s a huge part of the world. Particularly the English-speaking world. I pick on the comedy classics. You know, Hitler, famine…

“What I do is, I have a bag of observations that I think might be funny, and I jot them down. I probably start with about half an hour, and that becomes an hour, and the other half an hour is sort of ad-libs and additions over the course of a
tour. The audience chooses the best bits for you. It’s a process of natural selection. So over a hundred dates, they’ve chosen your best hour. You thought it up and you said it, but they’ve sort of done the difficult bit for you.”

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Remember what I said about not digging TV Land as much since they started losing some of their classic TV line-up and instead making with the reality shows? You should’ve heard me ranting about MTV and VH-1 abandoning their music-related programming in favor of reality shows. But I don’t do that anymore. Well, not much, anyway. I mean, what’s the point, y’know? That ship sailed years ago, and my disgust about networks whose acronyms stand for Music Television and Video-Hits 1 showing way less music-related programming than they ought to be isn’t going to change a damned thing.

Ahem. Sorry about that.

Okay, here’s a compliment to take a little of that sting away. Jeff Olde, head of programming for VH-1, made me laugh out loud with his opening line: “I just have to say that, as a teenage boy growing up in Edgewater, Colorado, I could only have dreamt that one day Sheila E’s ‘The Glamorous Life’ would be my walk up music.” Nice. From there, Olde revealed that the network would be premiering no fewer than 12 original series throughout the rest of 2008, featuring folks such as Sharon Osbourne, P. Diddy, Eddie Griffin, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew fame, and music mogul Irv Gotti…and, okay, from a statistical standpoint, they’re music-oriented than not, so that seems at least vaguely promising.

Today, however, the focus was only on two of those shows, the first being “Glam God,” featuring Vivica A. Fox and her stylist, Phillip Bloch, in a competition which is described by Olde as “a fierce red carpet competition to crown the next break-out celebrity stylist, a true triple threat, a master of hair, makeup and wardrobe. Our winner will receive a $100,000 prize, and they’ll have their career launched in a major A-list celebrity weekly. And hopefully land themselves on speed dial of the Hollywood elite.”

Meh. Don’t care. But for the sake of propriety, I’ll still tell you a little bit about it…or, more specifically, I’ll let Fox and Bloch tell you about it.

Vivica A. Fox: We really, really tried to teach the kids more than anything else to be professional. You know, so many times it wasn’t about them becoming a star. It was like do you have what it takes to style an A-list celebrity? Can you take yourself out of the equation and do the job? We kept on making sure that we made sure they did the work. We had a lot of characters on the show with very vibrant personalities that you guys will all come to like and love and enjoy watching them turn into professionals. But I’m going to tell you the one thing that Phillip made sure that he stressed every week was…professionability?
Phillip Bloch: Professionalism.
Vivica A. Fox: Professionalism…thank you…and integrity.

Oh, I just can’t even do this anymore. If you like “Project Runway” and “America’s Top Model” and all that stuff, I’m sure you’ll like “Glam God,” but I’m already tired of talking about it. Before I depart from Ms. Fox altogether, however, I’ll offer up her comments about whether or not she can do anything about her former “Curb Your Enthusiasm” co-star Larry David’s style.

“No, he ain’t changing,” she replied, with a laugh. “Larry’s going to wear his Converse. He’s going to drive his hybrid, and he is going to be LD. But the only time he talked to me about fashion is when he wanted to make sure that Vivica Fox didn’t show up in my character, Loretta Black. He was very conscious about my hair and my makeup and he wanted to see the character blossom into a beautiful swan. But I sure was rough around the edges when I showed up in Beverly Hills, wasn’t I?”

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If you’re a regular reader of Premium Hollywood…and while there aren’t many of them, I have to believe there are some of them, so don’t correct me even if I am wrong…you know that while I’m definitely not what you’d call a reality-show addict, I definitely have my favorite guilty pleasures amongst that particular genre. I watched every episode of The CW’s “Crowned” and “Farmer Wants A Wife,” thank you very much, and I enjoyed the former so much that I actually traded a couple of E-mails with one of the contestants, Hollis Scarborough, on MySpace. (She and her mom were totally robbed, by the way.) Falling chronologically between those two series, however, was another show that I found myself sucked into: CMT’s “Gone Country,” which took a heaping helping of disparate celebrities - Bobby Brown, Maureen McCormick, Carnie Wilson, Diana DeGarmo, Julio Iglesias, Jr., Sisqo, and Dee Snider - as they attempted to live the country music lifestyle and, in the process, earn enough country cred for one of them to win a recording session as…you guessed it…a country music artist. The winner was Julio Iglesias, Jr., but there was a trio of individuals who bonded so well together that the producers decided to spin them off into their own series, this time trying to blend reality and scripted comedy into something called “Outsider’s Inn,” which finds Brown, McCormick, and Wilson running a bed and breakfast in a small town.

But we’ll get to that.

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