Weevil love you long time...

...Just not on Veronica Mars. He will, however, appear on the next episode of my favorite LA crime drama, The Closer, on Monday, July 30 at 9 on TNT (confession: I usually watch the repeat on Tuesday). So come to find out what's wrong with Brenda (pregnancy is obvious, maybe it's something scarier) and stay for Weeves. You know you miss him.

Veronica Mars: Debasement Tapes

Paud Rudd! And a bunch of other people you love! Seriously, the gang's all here. Vinnie and Bronson and that radio chick and that bell hop and scary Danny Boyd. There's Vinnie being all sketchy (my theory on Vincent Van Lowe: still working for the Fitzpatricks and the whole save the day schtick was a ploy to get a dirty sheriff back in office). Max is being all cute and Sacks is just being Sacks.

One of the things I love about this show is the established universe in which it exists. That's part of why I found last week's "Oh, we eat at Babylon Gardens ALL the time and I totally know your daughter" bit annoying. Cause guess what, Veronica? I know a lot of people in Neptune and bitchy Amira is not one of them. She's nothing buy a fly-by-night plot device and there's nothing you can do to convince me otherwise.

But enough of all that ugliness. On to last night's episode, which will air in LA at 9 PM on Saturday. It's also available online at cwtv.com. Shoddy detective work aside (seriously, she didn't ask to see the bag before starting the investigation?), the writers were on their A game. It was snappy and funny with lovely bits of pathos (Desmond) and angst (Logan, who else?). And while I'm not sure if Veronica really likes Piz or just thinks she should, I love him. So much that I'll continue to watch that Grey's spin-off even if it's assy and they keep making self-referential elevator jokes. I can't help it, folks. I'm about two episodes away from getting "Stosh" tattooed on my ass.

With the end of the season in sight (two more weeks and three more episodes), I gotta tell you: I'm holding out hope for the FBI redux version. Previous skepticism be damned. Alias wasn't all that bad the first couple of times it got revamped and it's not like a fictional Leonardo Da Vinci factors into this whole FBI thing. Though if it does, I'll still watch. Word is that the network presentation of Veronica: FBI Agent went very well. That combined with a slot left open by the departing Gilmore Girls and I have my fingers firmly crossed. Random question time: is it me, or is that totally Veronica creator Rob Thomas as Desmond's late bandmate? I realize the pic's small, but peruse your Tivo and I think I'll be proven right. Or legally insane. One or the other.

What do these two men have in common?

Other than WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER and holding the key to my heart?

Paul Rudd will soon guest star on Veronica Mars! It's back on Tuesday, May 1. Set your tivo!

Belated Aquaman Viewing

Um, Friday Night Lights' Adrianne Palicki as a murderous siren?

Veronica Mars' coked-out Dr. Griffith as a shifty fed?

That chick from Hang Time as little AC's totally dead mama?

Fox from Passions and Lem from the freaking Shield?!

Why didn't I watch this thing sooner?

Battlestar Galactica viewing update: Hey, it's that guy!

So I'm watching the second fantastic season of Battlestar, and I'm like "Hey, professional pyramid player dude, you're kind of cute." And then I'm struck with a sense of paralyzing humiliation when I realize who he is, and that I just called Nathan's uncle Cooper cute. Ew! He almost died in a stupid limo accident as an indirect result of having sex with a crazy high school girl.

Being on those two shows simultaneously must have been mind-blowing. One week you're shooting Battlestar, which is arguably one of the best shows in recent history. And the next you're shooting One Tree Hill, which is One Tree Hill.

Logan broke her heart, but Beaver killed her cat, assaulted her best friend and grew up to be a kiddie rapist

Now available on NBC.com is an episode of Medium entitled “The Boy Next Door.” It guest stars Jessy Schram (AKA Veronica Mars’ Hannah Griffith) as the high school incarnation of Patricia Arquette’s Allison. She’s haunted by dreams of a future case in which she is reunited with a friend from high school and eventually learns that he has raped and murdered a girl her daughter’s age.

The weird thing is, as her friend points out, HS Allison doesn’t have a pal named Steven. Enter Kyle Gallner (AKA Veronica Mars’ Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas) as her new neighbor, Steven. Dun dun dun! He does a nice job vacillating between awkward charm and shiver-inducing creepiness as a guy just getting started on a long and winding road to being a sexual predator. And when Allison dreams inform her to pull away from Steven, he tries such classic wooing techniques as murdering her beloved cat and nearly raping her aforementioned BFF.

I’ve never watched Medium, but I can understand why my mom digs it. The ending was satisfying and fairly chilling as we saw young Allison embrace her psychic abilities and change the future for the better. I did think Future Steven was a bit of a knob for willingly giving up his DNA. Was he so desperate to save face in front of his old crush that he’d do something that stupid? Maybe.

Also, must Kyle Gallner always play the psycho? I know that after that Columbine-inspired Cold Case, the Jon-Benet-inspired episode of Bones and the Season 2 finale of Veronica that his reel must have some choice scary kid moments, but doesn’t anyone remember how cute he and Mac were? You know, before we found out he’d raped Veronica. And set up his dad for financial ruin. And murdered all those people…

Vada v. Lemon

Look who grew out of her awkward stage! It took me until the scene where Liz fired her rival for Jason Sudeikis' affection to realize that Other Liz is a very grown up Anna Chlumsky. Weird.

The stuff with Nathan Lane as Jack's estranged brother was fairly predictable, but funny. And it was nice to see more about Jack's oddball background. All in all, a uniformly excellent episode, which is pretty standard for 30 Rock. If you're not watching because of Grey's Anatomy, check it out online at NBC.com.

Mac Attacked!

That's right, kids! Mac from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was on Lost last night. So was the governor from Oz and that dude from Suddenly Susan who killed Matthew Fox in Smokin' Aces. I'd look their names up on imdb, but I think those descriptions should suffice.

The episode was pretty good. Stuff went down, pulses pounded, mysteries deepened, people continued to look hot despite being covered in grime and sweat. I've said before that I'm not that into Lost anymore. I just kind of let it wash over me and try not to think anything deeper than "Cool" and "Lame," with an occasional "Aha!" I have a sneaking suspicion that thinking too hard about it is just a slippery slope to madness.

When Casting is Not Enough

Last night’s Law and Order: SVU was weak. Normally that would be disappointing, but the fact that it was packed with high profile guest stars makes it somewhat baffling. Kal Penn and Adam Beach may not be household names, but they’re certainly well-known. Beach has recently earned great reviews for his performance in Flags of Our Fathers and Penn is the likeable star of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Van Wilder 2. So why did last night suck?

1. Casting Penn as the fame seeking serial rapist was a mistake. Sure, he wasn't shown in the previews, but the minute you see him standing behind the suspect, you think "Hey! It's Kal Penn!" The role was fairly thankless, so why not just give it to a lesser-known actor the role, who wouldn't be a dead give away? It's not like Penn brough anything to the table beyond a thoroughly inscrutable performance. Was he retarded? Was he just weird? Did this episode even have a director?

2. Manufactured tension between Beach's Brooklyn cop and Ice-T. I still have no idea what their beef was with one another. But because of it, we were subjected to Beach's speech about how he belongs in the city as much as Ice-T because his father was a steel worker. What? Were we supposed to think that T cared about the fact that Beach was Native American or that he was from Brooklyn? I still have no idea and none of this was helped by Beach's stiff channeling of Brando.

3. The story was paper thin and poorly executed. They knew where to find Penn because Beach walks the streets at night and knows all the sounds, including that of a specific recycling plant? Are you kidding?

It's like Chris Meloni had the week off so the writers decided to follow suit. Rather than find a compelling way to work two gifted (though after this and his turn as a Teen Terrorist on 24, I'm beginning to wonder about Penn) actors into what's normally an outstanding show.

Great. Now I need to take a shower.

Ever wanted to see a hooker bang Rick Fox in the ass with a strap on? Yeah, me neither. And yet I was curious about Courteney Cox’s new series Dirt, and that was part of the price of admission.

Maybe it’s because this weekend I caught Scream on TV for the first time in ages, but I was really excited about Cox returning to TV as an ice cold bitch. Unfortunately the series was murky and muddled. The stuff with the schizophrenic paparazzo seemed like it was from an entirely different show and there were just as many confusing jumps in character as there were simulated sex scenes, which is to say: a lot.

At first I thought “actor’s actor” Holt was stoned all the time, but by the end I decided that he was probably just not very good. I wish they’d cast Callum Blue. I take that back, I’d like Callum to be doing more worthwhile things with his time. Like vacuuming.

Here are my questions:

1. When did Lucy decide that her one night stand (a douche who reads Proust at movie premieres—that whole sequence killed a piece of my soul) was not just using her? Was it after she tasered him? Was it off screen? Do I even care?
2. Did Holt crash the car on purpose? Cause it kind of looked like he did.
3. Why was Lucy crying when the cat died? Did she feel bad about the cat? Or the people whose lives she ruined? I don’t buy either explanation.
4. Was that really David Fincher? Shouldn’t he be doing something a tad more productive?
5. Why, Courteney, why?

Attack of the kickass guest stars!

I was excited about the return of Men in Trees (shut up, it's good), but I was pretty distracted after seeing Justine Bateman's name in the opening credits. I kept looking at the brunette regulars and thinking, "That's not Justine Bateman" and then questioning my own actor-recognition prowess. Then at the last minute she shows up as the bitch who broke Jack's heart. Just in time to screw up Jack and Marin's budding love! I do love a formidable opponent for affection. It's no fun when one side of the love triangle is a Duncan (was that mean?).

Earlier in the evening Kadeem Hardison (or as we all know him Dwayne Wayne) and Dean Winters (my favorite Irish sociopath on Oz) showed up on My Name is Earl and 30 Rock, respectively. Hardison was underused as a guy who turned Earl onto an illegal betting ring, but Winters was awesome as Tina Fey's on-again/off-again boyfriend, who by virtue of being the only retailer left, is the Beeper King of New York. Since he turned her attempt to dump him into an invitation to move in, it looks like we'll be seeing more of Ryan O'Reily, er... The Beeper King.

Nathan Fillion on Lost

I haven't been a big Lost fan since the first season. It's still a good show and I'm not really bothered by the lack of answers, as long as they can keep it interesting and entertaining, I don't need to be able to figure out all the crazy mysteries. Generally I half-watch the show because the Sub-letter likes it and he can fill me in on the stuff I missed last year when it was on opposite Veronica Mars.

Last night's episode was an exception. I'd heard that Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Serenity, Two Guys and a Girl..., Slither, etc.) would appear in Kate's flashback. I do enjoy some Nathan Fillion (even as the evil priest on Buffy), so I made it a point to be home when 9 o'clock rolled around. Fillion was good. He was endearing as Kate's cop husband, but he didn't have a whole lot to do. Kate was still the conflicted con artist that makes me yawn. All in all, it was kind of a let down.

Not such a let down: Sawyer and Kate finally doing something about their mutual attraction (other than send one another mixed messages) and Jack hijacking Ben's surgery and holding the Others' leader hostage under the knife. I think my favorite thing is that the Others were so shocked, like they're the only ones allowed to play dirty.

Reunited and it feels so good

And I'm not just talking about the fact that Lily and Marshall are back together (yay!). Last night's episode of How I Met Your Mother was a reunion of Joss Whedon alums. Morena Baccarin of Firefly and Serenity displayed her comic chops as Marshall's crazy-eyed date Chloe, former Buffy star Alyson Hannigan is a series regular and although imdb doesn't list him, I'm pretty sure Tom Lenk (Buffy's Andrew) was Chloe's co-worker. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking...