TVSquad

As I type this, there are 11 court shows currently in first-run syndication, with Judge Judy leading the pack. These shows have become one of the more stable franchises for stations across America, as original programming has made way for pre-packaged fare. With the market seemingly saturated by the amount of court shows, you would think that the studios would be holding off in producing any new series.

Hello! It's television -- the obese glutton of the media world!

Four new series are being worked on right now. Three of these will make their first appearances as the fall season officially begins in a few short weeks. The fourth may not appear until 2009. However, when it does, it may push Judge Judy out of the top spot its held for several years. According to TV Week, former Minnesota governor and pro-wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura is currently in negotiations to host a court show aimed at the daytime television audience. Should the negotiations work out, Jesse could be presiding over some type of court cases by the fall of next year.

The mystery of the spaghetti-eating cat has been solved.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the skinny. During a segment on binge drinking on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, the show suddenly - and without any explanation at all - switched to a picture of a cat seated at a table eating a plate of pasta. The cat wasn't on the show and they never said why it happened. But now a spokesman for the show has explained what happened. It wasn't a technical glitch or similar error, it was actually done on purpose! The woman talking about binge drinking said something shouldn't have said, so instead of using the usual "bleep" the show went to this picture of a spaghetti-eating cat. If you watch the clip after hearing this explanation you can actually tell that's what happened, because the audio drops out too and when they come back co-host Juliet has a half-smile/half grimace on her face, as if something bad was just uttered.

It's not unusual anymore when a primetime star suddenly makes the jump into daytime. Recently, Michael Gross has signed on to The Young and the Restless. Patrick Duffy is a semi-regular on The Bold and the Beautiful, Bruce Weitz is a Mafioso kingpin on General Hospital, and if you tuned in yesterday you got to see John James terrorize half a dozen Oakdale residents on As the World Turns as a deranged doctor. If you're keeping score, they were previously the stars from Family Ties, Dallas, Hill Street Blues and Dynasty, respectively. So, really, a primetimer coming to daytime is SOP (standard operating procedure) these days.

However, when a daytimer goes to primetime and then returns to daytime, that can be interesting. Sarah Brown's return to GH qualifies and so does this one: A Martinez is joining One Life to Live. For the last decade, A's been a regular guest or regular on Viva Laughlin, Raines, CSI, Huff, JAG and Profiler. All good roles, but nothing to match his daytime experience.

There was no surprise when SoapNet announced that it would be broadcasting another season of the late night spinoff of General Hospital Night Shift. The premiere season was a ratings blockbuster for the cable channel, a big hit with fans and well-received by the critics.

What was surprising was news that a new head writer, Sri Rao, would be taking over from Bob Guza, Jr., and that two major players from GH's history -- Tristan Rogers and Antonio Sabato, Jr. -- would be starring in this go-round.

I enjoyed Night Shift, year one, so I was inclined to check it out. I'm thrilled to report that after three episodes, I'm loving Night Shift 2008! Here's five reasons why:

I think I'm one of the very few people - maybe not even David Letterman himself - who remembers the very first David Letterman Show with a real fondness. No, not NBC's Late Night with David Letterman, I'm talking about his morning show, which ran on NBC for a very short time in 1980. I'm not quite sure how I watched this show. I would have been in high school in 1980, so I don't know if I skipped school to see some episodes or what (it was way before I had a VCR). Anyway, I thought it was quite good and had some real style, fun regulars (Edie McClurg!) and great guests (Steve Allen, Andy Kaufman). It's interesting to see how much this show resembles later Letterman. I wish he'd bring back some of these segments (like viewer mail and videotaped humor) on his current show.

After the jump is the first part of the September 12, 1980 episode (with original commercials!). After you watch that check out the other three parts here (on the right). If you've never seen this particular show it's quite intriguing.

This could be the first of a new series of features here at TV Squad, where instead of reviewing shows ourselves, the ones we wouldn't ordinarily review, we get celebrities to review them. So Tom Hanks and Kathy Griffin, get your video cameras ready!

The clip after the jump is from Live with Regis & Kelly. Anderson Cooper is guest hosting this week, and during yesterday's show he took the opportunity to review Living Lohan, the E! reality show that stars everyone in the Lohan family not named Lindsay. This isn't some "oh, I don't bother with that show because it looks stupid" brush off, Cooper really goes after the people in the show, calling them "horrific" and saying that Ali Lohan "is 14 but looks 60...but I say that with concern and love."

Perhaps the strangest soap opera of all time has come to an end now that Passions has been canceled by DirecTV. The gothic, modern psycho-drama set in a small Maine town replete with witches, elves, zombies and even some regular people, lasted nine years on the air. In primetime terms, that would be a hell of a run. For soaps, it characterizes Passions as a noble -- to some -- failure.

I never cared for Passions. It turned me off in the first season, 1999, but it wasn't because of the outre elements. I was actually interested in the gothic stuff because I'd grown up enjoying Dark Shadows with Barnabus and Quentin and Angelique and all those horror classic reinterpretations on a next-to-nothing budget -- furniture provided by Stern's Department Store, as I recall -- including werewolves, Frankenstein's monster and The Innocents, and parallel universes. Dark Shadows remains a vivid, happy memory.

The addition of Hogan Sheffer to the headwriting duties on The Young and the Restless is already making waves. In quick order, David and Sabrina have been killed off to make way for new characters. With new characters comes news of a major former prime time star joining the cast.

TV Guide's Michael Logan reports that Michael Gross will be playing River Baldwin, Michael's father, the one whom he thinks is a low-life, reprobate. A guy who refused to go to Vietnam and left Gloria to raise their son alone.

Best known as Steven Keaton on NBC's Emmy-winning sitcom Family Ties (1982-89), Michael is sure to bring instant credibility to the role. For one thing, we're going to find out that River is not at all what we've been told he is. In fact, I'm betting that River will be a politically charged character, a man who objected to the war and chose not to fight because he didn't believe it was a just cause.

Watch for Michael Baldwin to discover all kinds of things about himself and the kind of man he is because he shares the genes of a man he's never known.

Michael Gross will begin appearing on August 15.

If there's one thing we can count on with General Hospital, it's the mob. Other soaps lean on corporate shenanigans, the fashion business, medical drama. GH used to be about the latter, but that was a long time ago. Now, the hospital storylines are thriving more on Night Shift, General Hospital's SoapNet spin-off. But on GH proper, the mother ship if you will, the main thrust remains Sonny, Jason, the Zaccharas and mob wars.

They're bringing in a new actor to the scene, and he carries major TV mob credentials. Vincent Pastore is joining General Hospital as Maximus Giambetti, father of Sonny's two main bodyguards, Max and Milo. Vinny is best known as Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpenserio on HBO's The Sopranos. On GH, Maximus comes to Port Charles to see his boys, under the false assumption that Max and Milo are running the syndicate in town.

A few weeks back, I enthusiastically reported the plans for One Life to Live's 40th anniversary celebration. Viki was going to have a near death experience and heaven; a classic OLTL moment would be re-created, the Iguaza Falls plunge; and in an elongated mini-arc, Bo and Rex would be transported back in time to 1968, the year OLTL began. It was an ambitious undertaking, but it was still nice to hear that they were thinking big, as opposed to General Hospital which did virtually nothing to commemorate their 45th anniversary in April.

So, now that Viki's visit to heaven -- which did not include Pearly Gates -- has concluded and Sarah and Cristian have gone over the falls -- and look to be dead -- I felt compelled to comment. First, Viki. I really, really like Erika Slezak. She's the Meryl Streep of daytime, able to take on all kinds of stories and make them work. Fortunately for Erika, she didn't have to sing any crappy ABBA songs like poor Meryl in Mamma Mia!

Guiding Light has landed a big star for a new role, someone you might be surprised to see on a soap, but someone well known to daytime. If you haven't recognized him from the photo on the right, it's talk show host Montel Williams. Montel, who recently ended his talk show (after 17 years!), will be playing Clayton Boudreau on Guiding Light, is Remy and Mel's father.

If you've been watching Guiding Light lately, you know Remy's world has been turned upside down of late. Remy's best friend and the girl he loves, Ava, has just given birth and in a stunning surprise, the child is mulatto. The surprise is based on the fact that Ava is married to ambitious businessman/politician, Bill Lewis. He accepted that Ava wasn't pregnant with his baby, but he believed Ava's explanation and reasoning for getting a Bill-look-alike donor from a sperm bank. Yeah, it's complicated...

When Drew Carey takes the stage later today to begin taping the 37th season of The Price is Right, he'll be seeing whatever changes they have in store for the first time. Why? Because he's just as much in the dark about it as everyone else is. "They don't tell me anything," he told me on Friday night at the CBS all-star party at the Boulevard3 club in Hollywood. When I asked him if he prefers it that way, he told me "No. It's disheartening. They don't tell me what they're thinking about doing or changing."

Drew also told me that he found out about longtime producer Roger Dobkowitz' dismissal the night before it happened. Executives at Fremantle told him about the change at a dinner near the Price studios. He felt bad for Dobkowitz, especially because of how well he got along with him. When asked if that put a damper on a fairly successful first season, he at first said it didn't, then he reconsidered. "Well, yeah it did, actually, because I really thought the world of him and I was sad that he let go. But like I said, I'm like an employee. They don't discuss their personnel changes with me."

The entire interview, including a response from CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler, is after the jump.

If there's one thing about success in the entertainment business it's this: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That means if something is working on another show, steal/borrow the idea. As I've pointed out before, the soaps are inspired by movies and TV shows all the time, including Ugly Betty and The Devil Wears Prada and 24 and anything else that the daytime dramas can adapt into the soap opera format.

The latest form of flattery will be on All My Children with the introduction of Beth Ehlers as a new character in Pine Valley, Lieutenant Taylor McBride, a U.S. Army vet who has recently been deployed in Iraq.

One of the biggest stars of daytime is coming back to the tube. Genie Francis, the Emmy-award winning actress who created the role of Laura -- as in Luke and Laura -- will return to General Hospital on August 26 for a brief guest stint. This will be a very interesting return, too, because her last tenure on the show in 2007 was not only award-worthy, it also ended with her character resuming the catatonia in which she's been trapped for the past few years.

So how can she return to General Hospital? There's a hint in Genie's quotes to the Associated Press. "This is a short visit. It's a mother-daughter story. Years ago when I started playing the character as a 14-year-old girl, it was a mother-daughter story, only I was the daughter. So it's kinda cool this is full circle."

So how do you like your Jerry Springer Show: less freaks or extra freaky?

Well, those of you who like the latter might be disappointed in the upcoming 44th season of Jerry's show. The producers promise that they're going to make the show less crazy and actually focus on one person/family for the entire show, something they did when the show first started.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the show is suddenly going to turn into Charlie Rose. I'm sure the topics will still be cheating, sex changes, family problems, and everything else that has made the show a hit. And if someone were to pick up a chair and throw it for some reason, I'm sure the producers wouldn't mind.

The article above says that there will no longer be guys that can walk on their hands, mimes, plate-spinners, and puppets. Wait a second, did Springer turn into The Ed Sullivan Show the past few years? I should pay attention more.