"Glee" gets Charice to play a foreign exchange student
The Filipino pop star will recur next season as a rival to Rachel.
FX nabs Mary Steenburgen for "Outlaw Country"
She is expected to sing in the crime thriller/family drama.
Why are "True Blood" vamps obsessed with "boring" Sookie?
"Why any vampire would want to put up with Sookie's thudding earnestness is the real mystery," says Jason Zinoman. "She makes a few moves toward jokes—'I ain't that blond'—but her deadly earnest seriousness, which borders on smugness, is too often at odds with the invigorating bad taste of the best parts of the show. In an ethically-challenged world of happy fools, proud scamps, and lovable killers, she always remains boringly correct."
HBO renews "True Blood" for Season 4
Vampire King of Mississippi speaks // Kristin Bauer on Pam's journey
Richard Dean Anderson joins USA's "Facing Kate"
The former "MacGyver" star will join Sarah Shahi on her mediation drama for five episodes.
History channel relaunching its website to make it more historical
"We’re basically Wikipedia with multimedia, that’s fact-checked," a History rep says of the revamped site, launching July 4th, which will have more than 15,000 topic pages, over 4,000 videos and 550 audio clips.
The 1st season of "Treme" has made Simon look less of a TV visionary, says Sean Fennessey, who points to the over-reliance on music, the lack of memorable dialogue and the failure to make each character part of a larger story. Simon and co-creator Eric Overmeyer "are too reverential," says Fennessey. "Simon had Baltimore in his guts and so The Wire never pulled a punch, detailing the worst possible thing and then refracting it with a morsel of hope. In Treme we never feel like we're with a native. There's so much blind commitment to the greatness of the city, even in the face of boldfaced tragedy, that it never becomes anything more than an extended travelogue, with music. Ultimately, Treme is a glimpse of people at work in life, but really, just a glimpse."
Robert Smigel says he took a shot at a movie back in 2004 that was part Michael Moore and part Borat, but the studio saw the footage and found it to be too much like a long remote. "I still have standing offers to do Triumph as a movie or a TV show," says Smigel, "and its one of those things where I guess I’ve been extra-protective of that character because it’s been by far the most popular thing I’ve ever been associated with. The idea of tanking it is just too upsetting."
"It’s worth a laugh," says Jessica Bennett, "but if you think the unenlightened will learn anything about 'real' mainstream lesbianism from 'The Real L Word,' which premieres on Sunday, think again. This may be the first group lesbian reality program to hit mainstream cable, but the show is anything but barrier-breaking … The series is a kind of 'Housewives' meets 'Queer as Folk,' purporting to show the 'real' lives of 'real' lesbians who, as the Showtime marketing spin puts it, are 'every bit as glamorous, fashionable, fabulous'—and 'cutthroat'—as their hetero housewife sisters."
Oprah's 2004 season-opener ranked No. 1 on "TV's Greatest Surprises," as compiled by the Paley Center for Media, beating Dr. Romano getting killed by a helicopter on "ER," Marie Osmond fainting on "Dancing with the Stars," the it was all a dream finale of "The Bob Newhart Show" and Rosalind Shays falling down an elevator shaft on “L.A. Law." PLUS: 
"Breaking Bad's" dramatic strengths, says Ross Douthat, punctured, "ever-so-gently, the mystique that’s built up around Matthew Weiner’s show." He notes that on "Mad Men," you don't care about the characters the way you do on "Breaking Bad." "I actually care deeply about whether they live and die," he says of the "Breaking Bad" characters, while on "Mad Men," "I’m not as invested in their fates as I might be if their motivations were a little less complexified, and their psyches somewhat more transparent."
The 88-year-old is suddenly all the rage, but she should have turned down this TV Land job, says Hank Stuever. "If nothing else, her appearance on TV Land's new listless sitcom, 'Hot in Cleveland,' makes clear that White is not perfect, nor is she everybody's surrogate grandma and bawdy, muffin-making comic emerita. She is showfolk. She works when the jobs come and makes the best of what's at hand, sometimes even if the material is dreck. She works because, at 88, she still can."
