Is it possible that there will be "a comeback of 'The Comeback'" — my all-time favorite TV comedy?

The AV Club asks the wonderful Lisa Kudrow:

Well, you know… Yes. “Tentative” is the operative word, though. But Michael [Patrick King] and I can’t help but talk about it whenever we’re together, and as I said, we keep coming up with “Wouldn’t it be funny if she was doing this, this, and this” ideas. And then at some point, we start wondering, “Is it a special that we ask to do? Or is it a limited series that we ask to do? What are we asking to do? What is it that we want to do? What do we have time for? What would you be willing to do?” So that just keeps going back and forth. And Michael truly has no time right now, that’s for sure. 

If you don't know "The Comeback," it was a 1-season HBO show that, I guess, was a little challenging for viewers. Some say people had trouble watching the main character get into humiliating difficulties. (Were we more sophisticated back in the 1950s when we had great fun watching Lucille Ball get stymied at every turn?)

Here, buy every episode of "The Comeback" ever made (so far!), and either love it or complain to me about why it really did deserve to be cancelled.

Speaking of continuing great Lisa Kudrow things, the linked article also says there's a possibility of a sequel to "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion."

"I need a moment alone... I don't want to talk to anyone."

A bonus clip from "The Comeback" — the great, great HBO comedy with Lisa Kudrow. I was looking for a different clip, but wanted to share this anyway, or let's just say it fits today's blog theme.

What I was looking for is the scene where Valerie Cherish (Kudrow) is posing for a publicity photograph and keeps doing that ridiculous pouting thing in an effort to make her lips look sexy. I was looking for that to go along with this hilarious slideshow of "Celebrity pouters."

"Web Therapy," with Lisa Kudrow.

I love this new web show. Boing Boing says:

Now there's a new entrant in the genre of "webcam narrative": Web Therapy starring, co-written and co-produced by the brilliant Lisa Kudrow. But Web Therapy as the name might imply, is not another one-sided windbag borefest, it's -- hello -- actual two-way conversations that purportedly take place in real time (just 3 minutes per session!) over dual webcams between annoying psychologist Dr. Fiona Wallace and her exasperated patients. What a simple, yet clever idea! One that makes sense that it occurs over webcams.

Dual webcams and annoying people? That's Bloggingheads-y. I mean, it's like what Bloggingheads could be if everyone didn't feel such a need to preserve their dignity and professional standing... and was allowed to create fictionalized conflicts....

Anyway, as you know -- or could learn by clicking the "Lisa Kudrow" tag -- I adore Lisa Kudrow. Not from "Friends," which I never found interesting enough to watch (other than that one time when Brad Pitt was on). I loved "The Comeback," which I consider the best TV comedy of all time.

The complicated story of Rielle Hunter and Jonathan Darman, the Newsweek reporter.

Jonathan Darman has his claws out:

The first time I laid eyes on , I could tell she was a story. She had frizzy blond hair with DARK roots, wore bright nail polish and moved like someone who knew how to work a room.

Huh? This made me a little suspicious of Darman. So what if her hair was frizzy and she wore bright nail polish? Lots of boring people do. And there's nothing amazing about dark roots. Why do you appear to be FREAKING OUT about it?

She was on a cramped commuter flight and she was flirting with a candidate for president of the United States. It was July 7, 2006.

I'm still not seeing it. Women flirt with the male candidates all the time.

Most of the other passengers seemed to have no idea who Edwards was. But this blond woman, putting away her bags, was visibly captivated by him.

One person recognizes a celebrity and others don't. The one that does is way more excited than the others. But in fact, Edwards and Hunter were already having an affair, and Darman is showing off — now — that he smelled something fishy back then. But give the man credit. He noticed, and he talked to her:

She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she'd previously had "many lives." She'd worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She'd been a New York party girl, she'd been married and divorced, she'd been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.

All right, then! We know a little more about John Edwards's judgment.

She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special "energy."

Blech. Energy. The buzzword of idiots.

Four months later, Rielle emailed Darman offering him a story. They meet for lunch at a restaurant in NYC and — shocking! — she's into drinking wine and is being smoochily friendly.

She told me that she'd felt a connection to me when we'd first met, that she could tell I was a very old soul. This meant a lot to Rielle.

Oh, did it? Sounds like one of her lines — along with what's your sign, sensing your energy, and feeling a connection.

At this point, I go looking for a picture of Darman. Well, damn! I feel a connection, sense his energy, and — sure — detect that he's an old soul. Let's meet for lunch and wine in SoHo, Jonathan.

Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon—human beings were dragged down by "blockages" to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness. A seminal book for her had been Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.

So I guess we know the seduction routine she aimed at Edwards — who perhaps got to thinking that Elizabeth was a blockage.

Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a "transformational leader" on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "He has the power to change the world," she said.

To feed his ego and serve the world. Ha. Note how that chimes with Edwards's self-analysis (in the "Nightline" interview):

Ego. Self-focus, self-importance... a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want. You're invincible. And there will be no consequences. And nothing, nothing could be further from the truth.

But the frizzy-haired energy lady said I could remove blockages, release my old soul, and serve the world....

Back to Darman:

"Do you talk about this stuff with the candidate?" I asked. "All the time," Rielle replied. "I'll lecture him on it when he's getting too much up in here," she said, gesturing toward her head.

And not enough down here, she said, pointing to her crotch. (Kidding!)

"He'll see a look on my face and say, 'Yes, I know, Rielle, "Power of Now" says …' " Rielle wanted me to know all these things because she wanted me to write about them.

Oh, yeah, I forgot. There was no confessing to the sexual relationship here. She was trying to get the news out to the world that John Edwards would make a great President, with his old soulfulness and his ability — encouraged by Hunter — to get through the blockages and release his powers that are somewhere other than in his head.

Even if they didn't have an affair, we should question his judgment in wanting to put up with listening to this bullshit and, certainly, in wanting her to film a documentary about him.

After Hunter is fired, she tells Darman she's working with novelist Jay McInerney "on a 'genius' idea for a television show about women who help men get out of failing marriages by having affairs with them." She also says she's in love but won't say with whom. When the National Enquirer starts writing about the affair, she calls Darman for advice and seems to be trying to pressure him to think that he can't use all the material she'd given him. He refuses — it was never off the record — and she stops talking to him. Darman opines that she must have been "saddened" to realize he'd always been a reporter when she thought he was her friend — I'm sure he's read "The Journalist and the Murderer" — but I would guess that she was using him as a media connection all along and that she was now, on stern advice from Edwards, doing what she could to keep him from writing anything that would corroborate The National Enquirer.

So now I have "a 'genius' idea for a television show about a woman" who has an affair with a presidential candidate and who befriends a reporter — leading to all sorts of complexities about whether the woman is falling for the reporter, looking to him as a friend, or — most likely — massaging him into writing stories promoting the interests of the candidate. The woman travels with the campaign in the guise of a film documentarian, so our show can use her badly done and embarrassingly revealing video clips as a narrative device — in the manner of "The Office" or "The Comeback." And maybe her real job — for which she deserves the money that seems thrown away on her as a filmmaker — is to hand-feed favorable stories to reporters. Our adorable reporter tries to do his job as he teeters between falling for her and figuring out what is going on.

Email me, Jay. Lunch in SoHo?

UPDATE: The complicated story continues.

Live-blogging the Texas and Ohio primaries.

6:15 ET: Let's just get this post set up. And I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be doing some commentary on C-SPAN at 8 ET and 9:30 ET. Meanwhile, here's Jonathan Alter's Newsweek analysis saying there is no way that Hillary can get enough delegates, even if you project the rosiest possible results for her in all the rest of the primaries.

So no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.

And here's a WSJ piece trying to figure out what Hillary needs tonight to keep going:

Should the senators split the states' contests -- or if Sen. Clinton wins, but only by narrow margins -- the debate will turn to how to interpret the results. Two smaller states, Rhode Island and Vermont, also vote today. Clinton aides have started to imply that even just one big win today would allow her to claim she had broken Sen. Obama's momentum, justifying a continuing competition....

"We expect on Wednesday the momentum of Sen. Obama will be significantly blunted and new questions will be posed as to whether he is the right candidate for the Democratic Party," said Mark Penn, Sen. Clinton's chief strategist, in a conference call with reporters. "Then this nomination will go straight to the convention."

7:20: I've just been setting things up here with the webcam and the lighting. Now, I need to check out what's going on, so I'll have something to say.

7:28: Obama's victory in Vermont is declared, but we're very close to the time when they will spill the exit poll results on Ohio. Exciting!

7:30: CNN won't call the Ohio race on the Democratic side. It's "competitive," we're told and I take that as bad news for Hillary.

7:32: The CNN exit poll shows that 59% of the Democratic voters were women, which ought to help Hillary. It also seems to skew old, which should help her. The Texas primary ends at 8, and then the Texas caucus starts at 8:15. Both my sons are caucusing in Texas, so I may get some photos and first-hand reports. I should add that McCain has been declared the winner in Ohio and Vermont.

7:43: Politico on how Hillary could come back. And here's Dana Milbank on Clinton "moving the goalposts." "My husband didn't get the nomination wrapped up until June" — she keeps saying that.

7:54: CNN is showing 60 to 38%, Hillary over Obama, in Ohio. But it's competitive! Keep watching! Only 1% of the vote in.

8:08: My son John is waiting in line for the caucus at Red River Church in Austin, TX. The line looks long to him.

8:25: I just did my first of 2 little bits on C-SPAN. Did anyone watch?!

8:46: John is reporting from the caucus, which he just got out of at 7:46 CT. The pews in the church were completely filled up. A party leader addressed them, saying it was "historic" and "we've never seen anything near this level of interest." There were lots of kids there. And some dogs. It pretty much seemed like voting, except that you could see what people around you were writing down. The party leader who directed them to come up to the tables to write down their choices said: "You can come up and it will be like taking communion." John heard someone chide him for saying that, but it wasn't clear whether he was kidding.

9:18: Congratulations to John McCain for clinching the nomination. Now, here's Mike Huckabee, conceding. He will "do everything possible to unite our party and to unite our country." He observes that the 2 most dignified campaigns are the ones in the Republican Party. A nice little speech, which isn't over, but it's down to the list of thanks, so I'll publish this update.

9:26: Huckabee is still talking. Some woman sold her wedding ring to make a contribution to his campaign. Would you even want that money? I wouldn't. I'd rather not hear about that. But he features it in his speech. Anyway, I note the percentages in Texas and Ohio: Hillary is winning Ohio by a much wider margin than Obama is winning Texas. She's got a 20 point margin: 59 to 39%. And Ohio is the state the candidate needs to win. [ADDED: I mean Ohio seems to be the state to win in the November election.] Huckabee is still talking, running on about the men who died at the Alamo. Finally, he's done. I hear McCain should speak soon. I hear that from C-SPAN, which is telling me to hang around until after the McCain speech.

9:50: McCain is speaking. Given the alternatives, he says, his election "is in the best interests of the country we love." That's a nicely modest way of putting it. He didn't grow up thinking the country owed him anything. But he felt "part of a kinship of ideals" that made him think he owed a life of service. Now, he's working the national security theme. We need to "combat Islamic extremism." On to trade: his adversaries "want to pretend the global economy will go away." On health care, he'll work to bring down costs without "ruining the quality of the world's best medical care." Energy: alternative sources. (He stops to cough. Don't look old!) And he wants to listen. We're "the captain of our fate." "We don't hide from history. We make history." Hope, values, principles, greatness, trust.

10:08: Wolf Blitzer keeps saying Ohio is "very competitive," even while looking at numbers showing a blowout by Clinton. What kind of numbers do you need to see before you stop saying that? Meanwhile, it's 50/48 in Texas. I'd say things look pretty good for Hillary (who also won Rhode Island, as expected). Obviously, she's not going to bow out. So, settle in folks, and wait for Pennsylvania, and all the ugly little globules of mud that will dribble out over the next 6 weeks. How about that Rezko trial? Should be delightful.

10:55: CNN calls Ohio for Hillary Clinton. And Clinton is currently ahead in Texas: 50/48. I'll have some photos from the Texas caucus very soon!

11:01: "Has anyone started calling her The Comeback Kid yet?" says Wolf Blitzer.

11:13: Okay, the pictures from the Texas Caucus are up (in a new post).

11:16: Clinton looks happy. She's all aglow. "For anyone who's ever been counted out, but refused to be knocked out..." She wants to symbolize the fighting spirit. Ohio is special, the key state that must be won if the presidency is to be won, and she's won it. She reels off a list of other states she's won — and it's a surprisingly long list. Obama's run of 11 victories in a row had obscured those victories, which include some awfully big states. "We're just getting started." She makes a big deal out of saying her website address, and the crowd chants it along with her, which strikes me as incredibly dorky. She going to be a fighter and a champion. "We're ready for health care!" "When that phone rings at 3 a.m...." She thanks a lot of people, including the 2 most important people in her life, Bill and Chelsea. Then, she also thanks her mother (an unnecessary slight snub to Mom). She gets a new chant going: "Yes, we will." Get it? "Yes, we can" refers to capacity, but it's not enough just to be able to do something, you have to actually do it.

11:51: Andrew Sullivan is very upset:

To keep oneself from despair....

I just had a Jager shot, and hope to get drunk very soon. So this is my last post of the night. Here's what I'll do in the morning: find out who won the most delegates in the March 4 states, and check someone else's math (yes, I'm not going to get it wrong myself) to see who subsequently has the numbers to win. And then take a deep breath. And say what I think. Right now, emotion clouds the mind. Oh, and Jager.

Chez Althouse, the drinks have been: 1 Bolthouse Farms "Vedge" and 3 waters. It fits with my cruelly neutral viewpoint.

12:04: My other son, Chris, also caucused in Austin (at McCallum High School). He describes the caucus as extremely chaotic and confusing. He had volunteered to work for Hillary Clinton. He was at the rally in Austin last night, and he drove all over town today putting up Hillary Clinton signs. At one place where they needed people to hold up signs, Bill Clinton made an appearance and shook everyone's hand. Chris was impressed by Bill Clinton's handshaking technique. It's very quick but fully engaged, with an instant of eye contact that leaves you feeling that you met Bill Clinton. There were a lot of schoolgirls at the event — perhaps 6th graders — and they were ecstatic about shaking Bill's hand. They were jumping up and down, almost crying, and saying "I shook his hand!" They were acting, Chris said, the way you would expect them to act if Justin Timberlake had kissed them. Chris contrasted the experience with coming within arm's length of Hillary and Chelsea at the rally last night. They were not shaking hands, but giving autographs, and he didn't have the same sense that he met them, not that he faulted them for that. There was some pushing in the crowd that was infringing on two old women in front, and Hillary came over and told them to stop. Chris said that Hillary and Chelsea looked exactly like the do on television, and that was "surreal." As for the disorganization at the caucus, Chris said that people didn't understand the rules. Could they just sign in and leave, or were they supposed to stay? Staying seemed to have to do with being chosen as a delegate for the state convention [actually it was the county convention], and they needed something like 40 delegates for the 300 voters in that precinct. What were they supposed to do if there weren't 40 caucus goers left in the end? The voters themselves had to "kind of take over and figure out what was happening." And this was in Austin with educated, politically involved caucus-goers, but there are 8,000 precincts in the state. Imagine the confusion on that scale. Caucuses are horrible, he said. Anyway, he ended up as one of the delegates for Hillary at the state county convention.

1:09: And now, Clinton has won Texas — the primary, that is. So the Obamomentum is broken.

Let's talk about the New Hampshire primary.

Are you watching the results on TV? What channel? I'm hanging out on MSNBC at the moment. I knocked NBC the other day, so I want to make a point of saying I love listening to Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw, who are on Chris Matthews' show right now. I was doing a little CNN before, but it got a little too Lou Dobbsy, so I changed channels. And let's give Fox News equal time. (I'm back in New York City, and I had a hard time finding Fox News, which isn't clustered with the other news channels the way it is in Madison. The New York cable channels are annoyingly jumbled.)

Anyway, the polls close soon. Are you all excited?

ADDED: Hmmm... Mitt Romney was arrested long ago for sledding on an ice block on a golf course. And he was once in a car accident in Paris in which some French cop wrote "Il est mort" on his passport. (Source: Fox News.)

AND: Fox News is saying Obama wins, but it's not a blowout, so Hillary can claim some species of victory. And McCain over Romney, but "too close to call."

MORE: Zombie! Will Hillary fight her way back?

AND: MSNBC calls the Republican contest for McCain, while the Democratic race is too close to call! Ooooo!

AND: Mitt: "Another silver." He wants the gold, but who's done better than 2 silvers (and Wyoming gold)?

MORE: Wow! What a disappointment for Obama-lovers. Can it be that Hillary and her crying turned things around? Did people see how much Bill Clinton wanted to keep going and feel sympathy? Or is it a case of: New Hampshire voters not wanting to be told what to do? But when I read of the huge turnout, I assumed a big Obama victory. I guess her collapse was quite odd, and the news that it wasn't real makes sense.

AND: Huckabee speaks. Expresses enthusiasm at doing at all well. "This ole southern boy... in New England...."

AND: McCain speaks. The chant is "Mac is back." He can't call himself "The Comeback Kid," because he's not a kid. But it's a great comeback. "I'm going to New Hampshire, and I'm going to tell you the truth.... I talked to the people of New Hampshire. I reasoned with you." Did anyone ever concede like that before? I reasoned with you. Beautiful. [ADDED: Mmmm.... "concede" isn't quite the right word!]

AND: Uuuuggghhhh.... I'm reeling in shock! Hillary overcame The God Obama? Noooooooo!

AND: Did people just get disgusted with the hype?

When Barbara Walters met Louie C.K.

I loved this AV Club interview with Louis C.K., which has a lot about why his HBO comedy "Lucky Louie" failed. The part about Barbara Walters is rich:

AVC: How did The View initially approach you to come discuss Lucky Louie? Did they say "Barbara Walters has seen your show, she thinks you're the antichrist, you're vulgar, and we'd like to have you on so you can defend yourself"?

LCK: Oh no. Wouldn't that have been nice, if that's what they did? I actually reached out to them, because I had been on the show before. Joy Behar used to do a thing called "Comedy Corner," where you'd sit with her and she would set you up and you'd do your jokes. They asked me to do that a bunch of years ago and I said no, because The View is not my crowd. But the producer of the show called me at home and said, "What are you doing Tuesday that you can't take a town-car and just go be on a ladies' TV show?" So I said sure, and I did it, and I had a great time. The thing about the audience there is, they're very enthusiastic, positive people. And I like ladies. I like all ladies of all different ages. Ladies 40-plus, they're a great target for Lucky Louie. They come up to me in droves on the streets. That's a big demographic of who comes up to me to say they love my show, these older ladies.

So I said, "Let's get on The View," and we called them, and they said sure. The producer told me, "Oh we got the tapes, and the shows are great. It's a great show, it's going to be so much fun, we're excited about it." And then I get there, and I meet Fonzie. He loves the show, and everybody keeps coming—people with headsets and in suits and clipboards keep coming by my dressing room to say that they just love the show. And then the segment producer comes in my dressing room and says, "Okay. I have to talk to you. It turns out Barbara and the ladies didn't really watch it 'til last night, and they were horrified, and Barbara's going to say something about it in her 'Hot Topics' moment." Then she turns on the f*cking monitor and I'm watching her, live, saying that it's a terrible show. So it was a bit of a sandbagging. I didn't expect it.

AVC: It wasn't just her saying, "I watched your show, it's not really my cup of tea," it was her saying it's vulgar, it's disgusting what your character does with his wife, the whole idea was sexist and racist…

LCK: Yeah, that made me really mad. She said that, and they told me this before, too, that her objection to the show was that we're having sex and my wife looks bored. This is what's f*cking wrong with c*nts like her, is that she thinks women should be depicted, you know, the way my wife on the show makes fun of. Like, with her hand on her head, "Oh, it should be romantic." And the idea of letting a woman—and, by the way, it's her story, it's the wife's story—letting her show what it's like to be bored in bed with your husband and trying to find something in bed without cheating on him, like f*cking Desperate Housewives and all these whorish shows that people like Barbara love… They love shows about cheating, they love soap operas, and on the segment before me, they're telling women how to eat malnourishing food while keeping their figure. I mean, it's just all so obscene to me. They do nothing for women, and then she goes and calls [my show] sexist. And yeah, we do an episode where we confront race, and we talk about the awkwardness of race relations, and she calls it racist. So inside, I was shaking. I was like, "I f*cking hate her right now."

(Asterisks added.)

They love my show, these older ladies. Yeah, Louie, I loved your show. Though I kind of hated it at first because it replaced "The Comeback," which was another great HBO comedy that not enough people got, and HBO didn't keep around long enough to let more people figure it out or just to support edgier sitcoms that some people love.

By the way, it's her story, it's the wife's story... Yes, isn't it interesting that people don't want to see the gritty reality of a married woman struggling with an inadequate sex life and not demanding more romance?

It's just all so obscene to me.... He's talking about "The View"!

ADDED: Video of the "View" appearance: Part 1 and Part 2.

"It is my honour to burn for the sake of the nation's ideals and defend the system."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responds to hecklers at Tehran University upon seeing them set fire to a picture of him. So he's good with the comeback to hecklers. May he move on to a career as a standup comedian.

"Lost in the Amazon."

Regular readers know -- unless you're skimming... and forgetting... -- that one of my favorite TV shows is "I Shouldn't Be Alive." In fact, this is the only show that I find myself telling other people to watch. (I used to tell people to watch "The Comeback," which is now off the air.) Part of it is that real-life situations can remind you of something that happened on "I Shouldn't Be Alive." Things go awry and you can say, You know, if this was "I Shouldn't Be Alive'... well, you know, all sorts of unfortunate decisions and bad consequences would ensue.

Usually, the characters on "I Shouldn't Be Alive" are hardy, experienced outdoorsmen taking on a tough challenge and running into some bad luck. The new episode, "Lost in the Amazon," is not like that. You have a young couple, fulfilling their dream of seeing the Amazon rain forest, starting out from a lodge, onto what they know know to be a 3-mile hiking path. All they have to do is stay on the path. Like little children, they become charmed by the cute animals they see and totter about pointing at things -- ooh, it's a toucan! -- until they realize they're not on the path. They have a compass, but they've left the map back at the lodge, and instead of preserving their awareness of their starting spot and meticulously exploring the possible ways back to the path or just staying put and waiting for rescue, they decide they're sure which direction on the compass point is the correct one and hike straight into the forest trying to go as far as they can. They trudge on for days, into unmarked forest, completely destroying any chance that people who go out to search for them can possibly find them. They keep going as if they've got a shot at coming out on the other side of the forest, when, if they remember anything about where they are, there could be nothing but 1000 miles of forest ahead of them.

In all the other episodes of the show, the tough guys with problems display an astounding will to live. Horribly crushed leg bones, -70 degree temperatures, an elephant stampede, trapped under a boulder.... they deal with it. "Lost in the Amazon" is different. These characters don't just give up, they get tired of struggling and decide to commit suicide! And their struggle, on the physical level, consists of foot blisters, unclean drinking water, mosquitoes, sleeping outdoors, and -- despite much talk of scary animals like jaguars and snakes -- a herd of little pigs. The man does a decent job of yelling at the pigs to make them go, and the woman has the good idea of straining the water through her bra cup. But mostly, they slap mosquitoes, keep walking (as if it's a solution), and talk about ending it all. They happen to run across a man in a boat who saves them, but this is right before the deadline on their suicide pact, which was premised on the notion I'd rather die than spend one more night in the forest.

I was picturing an alternate version of the couple who realize that they are so deeply lost that they may never get out and decide they will live out their lives in the forest. Build a camp, develop your hunting and gathering skills, and find a way to make life good. Wouldn't you get to the point where you'd look at each other and say Hey, we're Adam and Eve.

TiVo-blogging the Emmys.

The Emmy show gets off to a spectacularly bad beginning with a prerecorded comedy sketch. We see Conan O'Brien on a plane, asked by a flight attendant if he's nervous, and he says, "What could possibly go wrong?" There's an explosion that rocks the plane, and then there's a cut to a beach, with Conan crawling out of the surf and the plane, in the background, sinking into the ocean. The folks on the laugh track are yukking it up. That would have been pushing it, considering the recent foiled terrorist plot, but with a plane crash in the news today -- 49 people were killed -- it's just atrocious. Don't they have the sense to pull it? The message is, we've got this preprogrammed, and there's nobody here with a brain.

Well, they worked so hard on it. It's a play on "Lost," and Conan finds a hatch. Descending, he's in the set of "The Office." This leads into a "24" sequence. Am I forgiving them? No! He encounters "House," then he enters the "South Park" trapped-in-a-closet closet. And then on to a "Dateline" exposé about child predators.

Man, they put a lot of effort into this. They should have thought of the air crash problem when they planned it.

Okay, Althouse. Settle down. Your censoriousness will only drive readers away.

Conan paces back and forth on the stage, spitting out his monologue jokes, interspersed with shots of the audience, seemingly enjoying it. There's lots of actress flesh on view, and it jiggles as they applaud the jokes. Whatever happened to anorexia? Everyone looks plump tonight. Are the jokes any good? He hands out rules for acceptance speeches. Sample: "Anyone who makes a heavy-handed political comment tonight will be forced to make out with Al Gore in a Prius."

He does a parody of "Trouble" (from "The Music Man"). It's about how bad NBC ratings are. Why should we care? Get to the awards! It's like they're desperate to prove to us that they're putting on a show. And it's a show on NBC. And if this is your idea of a show, well, maybe you deserve your bad ratings. Go cry about it in private somewhere.

One of the first presenters is Ellen Pompeo, wearing a long dark blue dress that she's clutching together with her hand at the right buttock. Is she just holding it up so she won't trip? No, she's at the mike, and she's still keeping her grip! Must be a wardrobe malfunction. The award is Best Supporting Actress. Megan Mullally wins. Doesn't she always win? She's in dark blue too. Sort of a bathrobe-like thing. She incites us to be all emotional about the end of "Will and Grace." Sorry. I don't care.

In the next presenter set, we've got Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and she's wearing a white dress that has a sparkly black "H" superimposed around the breasts. The award is Best Supporting Actor. The clip of William Shatner makes me laugh out loud so I switch my loyalty t0 him from Michael Imperioli. Alan Alda wins, and he's the only one not there. That's so wrong.

Dragging things out, Conan has a comedy bit about how the show won't go over three hours. They've got Bob Newhart sealed in a tube with only three hours of air. He's about 80 years old, so threatening to kill him is a little disturbing. But it's nice to see Bob again, albeit entubed.

Martin and Charlie Sheen. They awkwardly read the cue cards. Best Supporting Actress again? Oh, now it's in a drama. Sorry, those previous awards were limited to comedies. Emmys, I see, follow the Golden Globe, not the Oscars, approach. Blythe Danner wins. She's all actressily effusive, like it's not memorized. And her dress is yards of teal-colored fabric that looks like it was draped together in a 1-day challenge by the losing contestant on "Project Runway."

Supporting Actor in a Comedy. Oh, I see the previous supporting actor award was for the drama actor. They are not doing this in an orderly way. I will catch on. As you can see, I'm not a regular Emmy viewer. The winner is Jeremy Piven.

Oh, Heidi Klum is giving an award. Variety, Music or Comedy Series. "The Daily Show" beats "The Colbert Report" (and Conan O'Brien).

Ooh, Simon Cowell, with the neck of his shirt all open revealing his furry chest. It's a tribute to Dick Clark and "Bandstand." You know, I watched that show, even as far back as the 1950s. I remember seeing "Little" Stevie Wonder on the show doing "Fingertips" on his 13th birthday. I remember when the kids who danced on the show were celebrities, written about in the teen magazines. It was once necessary when talking about Dick Clark to make a joke about how he looked forever young. But that's not the way it is anymore. He looks very old. He can't walk out, and, recovering from a stroke, he can't speak clearly, and his voice is very deep. He introduces Barry Manilow who comes out dancing -- and he has hip problems -- and demonstrates that the "Bandstand" theme song has lyrics.

Variety or Musical Performance is the next award. Manilow is one of the nominees. And he wins! Beating Stephen Colbert and David Letterman.

Guest Actor? Oh, come on. Too many categories. But they speed through this, and I'm glad to see Patricia Clarkson won for "Six Feet Under." I'm skipping some of these awards. I'd be crazy not to.

Conan does a routine on TiVo fastforwarding using TiVo fastforwarding, which I discover while fastforwarding on TiVo. So it's double fastforwarded. That was freaky.

Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. Tony Shaloub. Doesn't he always win? I don't watch his show, so I was rooting for Steve Carell or Larry David, whose shows I do watch.

Candice Bergen is stuffed into a white shirt and teal-colored skirt and held together with a big bulky leather and metal belt. She says something about TV not being a vast wasteland, and it just draws more attention to her vast waist land. She's introducing a tribute to Aaron Spelling. He was, apparently, a veritable god.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert present the Reality show award, and Colbert throws a tantrum about losing to Barry Manilow. "Singing and dancing is not performing!" "The Amazing Race" wins. I've watched that a couple times. Don't enjoy it. Travel travails. Ugh! I wanted "Project Runway" to win. Did you notice they spotlighted Andrae in the little clip. What happened to Andrae?

In Memoriam: Shelley Winters. Don Knotts. Richard Pryor.

I love the look on Annette Bening's face when Helen Mirren beats her for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Movie. [ADDED: It's the look of no reaction at all, except that in that frozen expanse, there is an expression.] And I love the way Mirren says, "My great triumph is not falling ass over tit as I came up those stairs." It's all British, so it's not rude, right? Ahhss.

Lead Actress in a Drama. Ah, here's a big category. Mariska Hargitay wins. Another show I don't watch.... so I have no opinion.

Actress in a Comedy. Okay. This is actually the only thing I care about. I want Lisa Kudrow to win for "The Comeback." Not that I think she will. Julia Louis-Dreyfus wins. She's all weepy, like she can barely get through it.

Actor in a Drama. Kiefer Sutherland. He's the opposite of Julia. He's all calm and mature. Dignified.

Bob Newhart is released from his tube to do the award for Best Comedy Series. He's bizarrely short standing next to Conan O'Brien. "The Office" wins. That makes sense.

Annette Bening does the Drama Series award. I only watch "The Sopranos," but I don't think it should win. It wasn't that good this year. "24" wins.

And that's it for a night at the Emmys!

Biggest Emmy snub and the Emmy thing I'm thrilled about.

No nomination for Edie Falco. Good! I think she's a terrific actress, and she's done a great job of bringing dimension to the loathsome Carmela Soprano over the years, but the whole show was trying way too hard to deliver her the Emmy on a silver platter this season. I said it here:

Are these scripts a gift to Edie Falco? Is the actress groveling for an Emmy with all of these harshly lit, no-makeup bedside scenes?

I'm glad the Emmy people, whoever they are, stand up to this kind of begging. Beating her out for the nomination are Frances Conroy ("Six Feet Under"), Geena Davis ("Commander in Chief"), Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"), Allison Janney ("The West Wing") and Kyra Sedgwick ("The Closer").

But here's the real news I care about: Lisa Kudrow is nominated for "The Comeback." Her competition in the comic actress category: Stockard Channing ("Out of Practice"), Jane Kaczmarek ("Malcolm in the Middle"), Debra Messing ("Will & Grace") and Julia Louis-Dreyfus ("The New Adventures of Old Christine"). Though her show -- cancelled! -- did not get a nomination -- the comedies are "Arrested Development," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "The Office," "Scrubs" and "Two and a Half Men" -- perhaps the recognition she's getting might inspire HBO to let "The Comeback" come back. That was a brilliant, brilliant comedy, and her performance was truly sublime.

Come on, HBO, bring it back. I'll say I love "Lucky Louie" if you do!

ADDED: I see that the nomination procedures were changed this year:

In February, Emmy officials revamped guidelines in hopes of making the nominations more inclusive.

Under the new approach, the AP observes, blue-ribbon panels pick the five nominees each for comedy and drama series from 10 front-runners as decided by a vote of the academy's general membership. Videotapes of shows were used by panelists in their decisions. Previously, leading vote-getters in the general vote were declared the final nominees.

Great.

I'm glad to see that Robin Givhan won a Pulitzer Prize.

Here's the report in her newspaper, The Washington Post. The category is Criticism. Criticize all you want, but she's my favorite bloggable columnist. There was that column on Condoleezza Rice's stiletto boots:

As Rice walked out to greet the troops, the coat blew open in a rather swashbuckling way to reveal the top of a pair of knee-high boots. The boots had a high, slender heel that is not particularly practical. But it is a popular silhouette because it tends to elongate and flatter the leg. In short, the boots are sexy.

Blogged here:

Robin Givhan... heavy-breathes about the sexuality of Rice's clothes, even though all we're really talking about here is that the outfit was all black ("The darkness lends an air of mystery and foreboding"), that the boots had high heels ("Heels … alter her posture in myriad enticing ways, all of which are politically incorrect to discuss"), and that women often dress much less attractively ("She was not wearing a bland suit with a loose-fitting skirt and short boxy jacket with a pair of sensible pumps").

Women with power easily unleash ideation about sex -- and sex and power. If the woman can't be contained by the thought that her powerfulness has removed her sexuality altogether, then the thought becomes that her sexuality has merged with her power. In the case of Condoleezza Rice, who has a high position of power and is distinctly attractive, she seems to become a strange new being -- a superhero – like Neo in "The Matrix"!

Is it wrong to talk about powerful women this way? I say no. Image, fashion, and beauty are all important. And we certainly didn't refrain from talking about how the male candidates for President looked in 2004. We obsessed over their ties, their hair and their makeup, and the bulges under their clothes. So go ahead and spout your theories about the meaning of Condoleezza Rice's high-heeled boots.

Mine is: these boots are made for running for President.

There was the one about John Bolton:

The fulsome silhouette of the mustache makes for a particularly dreary distraction and seems to pull his whole face downward. It makes Bolton, who is only 56, look hoary and dour. For a man who has shown little evidence of a capacity to charm -- an ability that can come in handy for an ambassador -- the mustache makes him appear unwelcoming. For all of the testimony about his spiteful dealings with both colleagues and underlings, and his denials of such behavior, he managed to look mean.

Blogged here:

Well, that goes along with my longtime opinion of mustaches: they make men look mean. Charlie Chaplin might be the only exception. Please men! Let us see your philtrum! Nothing makes a man more adorable than a well-shaped philtrum. And nothing uglifies like a mustache!

There was the one about what Judith Miller and Li'l Kim wore for their sentencing walks:

The women seemed acutely aware that the sentencing walk -- like its predecessor, the perp walk -- defines them in the public's mind. In its execution, it is not enough to stand straight and hold one's head high. This is a powerful visual image capable of conveying subtleties and broad strokes. Both women were playing to their fans.

Blogged here:

Givhan goes on to describe the effect serving time will have on the two women's careers. Since Li'l Kim is a rap artist, according to Givhan, it can only help. For rap fans: "The prison term seems less an ordeal than a right of passage." Well, you can argue about whether that's politically incorrect, but it sure is a usage error. Where are the WaPo proofreaders?

(Whoops.)

There was the one blogged here:

"Why dress in 'ho gear' and risk being treated like a hooker?"

Oh, come on. You're not going to blog every single essay Robin Givhan writes, are you?

Well, I don't know, maybe I should. You know she does ask some pretty tantalizing questions:

If clothes function as semiotics, where does the power lie -- with the sender or the receiver? And what happens when the sender is purposefully offering up misinformation?

Yeah, you find those questions tantalizing?

Uh, no, I guess not. Now that you mention it.

There was the one about Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish:

All of ["The Comeback"]'s nuances are reflected in Cherish's most distinctive physical characteristic, her long red hair with its painstakingly organized curls that have been flipped back and away from her face. That hair is gloriously thick and the waves fall with an unnatural precision. The hair appears Breck Girl clean, devoid of the styling products now used to give hair an informal, slightly messy appearance. Hers is hair meant to be tossed in slow motion during the opening montage of "Baywatch."

In constructing the character, Kudrow has said that Cherish's hair color was a calculated decision. In Cherish's mind, "blond is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy." And, presumably, brunette isn't funny at all.

Blogged here:

Givhan doesn't mention it, but red hair and comedy are indelibly associated with Lucille Ball. But of course, Cherish is wrong about a lot of things, so Kudrow's analysis of how Cherish thinks must be understood in that light. But I have a feeling Lisa loves Lucy....

Why is red hair so meaningful?

There was the one blogged here:

"Standing alone, Mrs. Bush looked lovely."

"But next to Camilla, whose Robinson Valentino blazer and skirt made her look like a large rectangle, the first lady reminded one of a radiant bride shining brightly next to a dutifully bland bridesmaid." That's the description from WaPo's Robin Givhan, who also takes note of the President: "The president looked handsome in his tuxedo. For once he didn't have the body language of a kid with a bad sunburn forced to wear a wool suit."

The one blogged here:

Saddam on trial -- in a Western suit with a pocket square but no tie!

Robin Givhan wonders what that means:

The pocket square was a particularly distracting flourish. Paired with a tie, a pocket square tends to make a man look more formally attired. But without that accompaniment, it can look almost jaunty and rakish -- like Sinatra or Dino in Vegas.

Hussein's style choice throws the viewer off balance. Is his modest paean to the Flamingo a simple reflection of his hair-dyeing, gold-leaf-loving, frightful vanity? Or has he decided to beat the "occupiers" from within their own system? Take it over, or mock it?

There was the infamous slam at the Alitos, as blogged here:

"They often looked as though they had coordinated their ensembles in the manner of a family heading off to the Sears photo studio."

WaPo's Robin Givhan analyzes the Alitos from the fashion standpoint:

He and his wife of almost 21 years wore similar wire-rimmed glasses. His were only slightly more angular than hers. They both have short-cropped brown hair....On the first day of hearings, her red suit with its contrasting piping matched his red tie. On the second day, she echoed his pale blue shirt with her blue sweater, which fell discreetly to mid-thigh. On the fourth day, her white jacket over a red dress mirrored his white shirt and red tie.

Givhan skirts very close to sneering, but in the end, she seems rather admiring. Or is that patronizing?

Earlier she'd written about the more perfectly dressed John Roberts family, in a column called "An Image a Little Too Carefully Coordinated":

Dressing appropriately is a somewhat selfless act. It's not about catering to personal comfort. One can't give in fully to private aesthetic preferences. Instead, one asks what would make other people feel respected? What would mark the occasion as noteworthy? What signifies that the moment is bigger than the individual?

But the Roberts family went too far. In announcing John Roberts as his Supreme Court nominee, the president inextricably linked the individual -- and his family -- to the sweep of tradition. In their attire, there was nothing too informal; there was nothing immodest. There was only the feeling that, in the desire to be appropriate and respectful of history, the children had been costumed in it.

Reading about the Pulitzer Prize reminded me first of that column, which I was suprised to see I didn't blog about. Didn't everyone blog about that one? Looking back at my blog from that time, I can see why I didn't get to it. I was incredibly busy dealing with the nomination itself.

Givhan put down Hillary Clinton too:

After eight years as first lady wearing innumerable skirt suits that did little to flatter her physique, she now wears pants almost exclusively. As a matter of personal style, this is a good thing. The senator looks more streamlined and elegant.

Oh, don't say that's not a putdown. No woman wants to hear a compliment like that! Blogged here (getting to the subject of men in skirts).

Most recently, she caught my eye with this one about the way they dress on "American Idol," blogged here.

So congratulations to Robin Givhan! Keep up the richly bloggable work.

"Project Jay" -- what's really going on here?

I finally got around to watching "Project Jay," the reality show that follows around Jay McCarroll, the Season 1 winner of the reality show "Project Runway." I was surprised to see that he played a little role on "The Comeback," that fiction show about a reality show that follows around Valerie Cherish, the star of the fictional fiction show "I'm It." He played the designer whose red dress Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) accidentally wears backwards to the Emmys.

Well, so, how real is "Project Jay" anyway? We see him getting a call from "Project Runway's" Heidi Klum asking him to make her a red dress to wear to the Emmys, and this sets off a flurry of activity with him rushing around trying to complete an assigned task that isn't really what he wants to do -- just like on "Project Runway." The task takes him out to Los Angeles, where he seeks out Kara Saun (from Season 1) to help him and where Heidi inflicts extra surprises on him to create tension: he didn't have her correct measurements (and expresses on-camera amazement at the immensity of her breasts), so he must remake the dress (with some weird old guy sent in to do the actual work), and then she rejects it anyway (making him cry). I smell phony, phony, phony.

And how about the scene where he just happens to be shopping at Mood (the fabric store incessantly featured on "Project Runway") and -- ooh, look! -- there's Austin Scarlett! (Another Season 1 contestant, in case you don't know.) Austin just happens to have a fashion show soon! What a coincidence! Then Jay goes to Austin's show, and Wendy is there. (If you don't know why that's ridiculous.... just get the Season 1 DVDs and get up to speed, please.)

Okay, all of this is just too absurdly set up! And how about the beginning, where he's back in rural Pennsylvania living with his parents and whining about how isolated he is? But the cameras are there making a reality show about him! Are we supposed to be idiots, or is this a spoof of a reality show?

Well, maybe the tip off is "The Comeback." We're supposed to laugh and enjoy our inside knowledge of the phoniness of reality shows. It's deliberately over-the-top phony, right?

I found this interview with Jay, which kind of hints at the real situation. He has some sort of contractual dispute with the "Project Runway" people, where I think maybe they all hate each other but still want to use each other. He refused the two main prizes he won, and, in the interview, says he can't talk about it but "use your imagination." Apparently, they wanted to own too much of him. I'll bet the Season 2 contracts lock the contestants into the deal beforehand.

TIME OUT NEW YORK: Who do you think will win the new season?

JM: I would love Santino to win. He’s edgy and I’m sick of this one-trick-pony thing that the judges keep telling him. That’s his style. That’s why Calvin Klein makes f**king tunics and why Betsey Johnson makes f**king floral chiffons. Mixing shit up is what he does. He’s arrogant as f**k and people will put him in his place along the way but, once again, he’s covering up for his insecurity. Look at him! He is a gigantic weirdo, six foot five, voice like the devil, looks like Lurch. Would I want to see more of Chloe? Probably not. Would I want to see more of Daniel V.? Probably not.

TONY: Will it be weird for you when there’s another winner?

JM: Let it move on. I’m trying to distance myself from the show and to establish Jay McCarroll. Am I supposed to be more thankful for the process? I feel like I’ve given so much. You saw ten weeks of me. I showed you my family, my collection, my thought process, I cried, I laughed. And I didn’t receive a penny.

Some very hard feelings there. We also learn that "Project Jay" was originally an 8 episode series, but that it got edited down to that one hour we saw. Okay, so I no longer think it was some "Comeback"-like spoof of a reality show. I think it was a crazy manifestation of contractual hostilities and commercial exploitation.

Oh, the things that can entertain us these days!

The return of Valerie Cherish?

As you may know, I loved the show "The Comeback," which, the news was, HBO did not renew. So I was happy to see this in the email:

The guy who played Lisa Kudrow's gay hairdresser came into read for a part in the movie I'm making. I told him how much I loved the show and how much I hoped another network would pick it up and he said that what he heard was that...

"The show won't be coming back but Lisa Kudrow's character will."

He didn't know anything else but it sounded promising.

Let it be true! Hmmm.... Will she be a character on "Entourage"?

By the way, "guy who played Lisa Kudrow's gay hairdresser" is the wonderful Robert Michael Morris. I wrote about him here.

MORE: From the same emailer:

You'll be glad to know that he is a very very nice man and the few minutes I had with him were a lot of fun. Very down to earth and funny. A real gentleman and exactly like his character as well -- which doesn't diminish his acting ability because being natural is the hardest thing. But he said he and Lisa Kudrow were both heartbroken and shocked at the cancellation. One executive at HBO found the show too "painful" but I guess not exquisitely painful like we fans did -- and that's all it took.

Hey, sign the petition. I can't bear to think of Robert and Lisa as heartbroken! How candyass is HBO not to stick by a show that inflicted some pain?

Coined word: shrediting.

Shrediting: shredding someone through editing, as typically seen in a reality TV show, where a film editor, to create a story line, selects clips from hours of footage to give a very negative impression of a person. See "The Apprentice," Season 4, Episode 4 (character: Toral). See also, "The Comeback" (a sitcom in which the central character is filming a reality show without realizing when she is unwittingly providing the material that will be used in the final edit to shred her).

A comedy intervention.

Ron Rosenbaum slams Larry David:

Again, Larry, what makes the difference this season is that the character you’re playing isn’t being mocked for his self-absorbed sense of superiority. He’s being portrayed as the lone Truth Teller, who can see through politically correct sensitivities and tell it like it is, even if it costs him.

But Larry, nothing prepared me for the third episode. You know I was a little worried about the third episode, because I’d begun writing you this letter on the basis of the first two. What if the third episode represented a turn-around? I’d have to revise everything.

No worries! The third episode reaches a new low; it is mainly devoted to making fun of Hispanic household help! Now I know this is an important issue for your new super-rich crowd, and perhaps in an earlier season you’d do a satire on your rich friends’ concern about their Hispanic help. But here you just gratuitously abuse the help, Larry. Portray household help as thieves and fools. (There’s a particularly unfunny and cruel mockery of a handyman called Jesus. And needless to say, Larry, you can’t resist the cutting-edge ethnic humor that comes with asking Jesus whether he pronounces his name “Jeesus” or “Hey-soose.” So fresh and funny!)

I don’t know what to say, Larry. I’m speechless. A comedy intervention is required. Or should we just give up and watch the genuinely edgy work of, say, Sarah Silverman or Mary-Louise Parker (so devastatingly funny and sexy on Weeds)? Or even Lisa Kudrow—far braver, even self-destructively braver (her show was cancelled because it was so uncompromising), far more cutting-edge than this season’s pretense of being cutting-edge.

Ah, the brilliant Lisa Kudrow, whose wonderful show "The Comeback" was just too painful for people to take.

But is Rosenbaum right about the new season of CYE? I'd been thinking something's not quite right with the new episodes. Some of the scenes struck me as hastily filmed and haphazardly cut together. Maybe Larry could write some episodes about how Larry's show "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is going to the dogs ... including a certain racist dog named Sheriff, the central figure in the second episode, which Rosenbaum calls "a woefully dated, grindingly unfunny 30 minutes which I would venture to call the most annoying TV episode of the century so far."

I love HBO, but...

I am so mad at them for cancelling "The Comeback." I thought they were known for giving a show the chance to catch on, and "The Comeback" was notorious for the way people didn't get it at first. (Chez Althouse, we got it, but for some reason, people found it hard to get.) But only 1 million viewers saw the finale. I guess there's a limit to what is worth supporting.

What's wrong with people? The low popularity of that show makes me feel so lonely!

"The Comeback" — especially Mickey.

Did you watch the final episode of (my favorite TV show) "The Comeback"? As expected, we got to see the edited version of the reality show, which — no one could have been surprised — humiliated Valerie Cherish. Beautifully done, down to the final theme music, "Cherish."

One of the best things about the series was the character Mickey, who came out of the closet last night, a big deal for him, but not worth noticing to anyone else. Here's an interview with Robert Michael Morris, the 65-year-old teacher and theater actor — and former monk — who played Mickey so brilliantly. An excerpt:

Mickey fixes Valerie's hair a lot, and it never really looks any different.

That's a wig she wears. I was told, "Whenever you're not doing anything, touch her hair."

Is Mickey maybe a tiny bit of a sycophant?

He's not a sycophant at all. I think Mickey completely adores her. He wants her to always look her best. If he was a sycophant, and it was only what she could do for him, he wouldn't protect her as much. Mickey and Val share that history that she can rely on.

Why was Mickey so sensitive about people knowing he was gay?

I don't think he's sensitive about being gay. It's just that he's never been open about it. He thinks of himself as just being him. He doesn't think of himself as being almost a stereotype. People always want to say to me, "Are you gay?" My standard answer is, "If I was playing a serial killer, would you ask me if I was a serial killer?" De Niro played Al Capone. Did people think he was a gangster? I let them think what they want to think, because it's nobody's business. Look what happened with "Will & Grace." Eric McCormack and Sean Hayes spend half their time saying, "No, we're not gay."

Oh, yes, isn't it gauche the way those actors who play gay characters go on talk shows and the instant they sit down find ways to make references to their wives?

"The Comeback."

Did you enjoy the second-to-the-last episode of "The Comeback"? There were some richly satisfying moments this week, especially regarding my favorite villain, Paulie G. And I loved Valerie's song in the end, after she cast off the "plain vanilla" style.

"Red hair is smart, sexy comedy."

That's the opinion of Valerie Cherish, channeled by Lisa Kudrow, as told to WaPo fashion theorist Robin Givhan, who writes:

All of ["The Comeback"]'s nuances are reflected in Cherish's most distinctive physical characteristic, her long red hair with its painstakingly organized curls that have been flipped back and away from her face. That hair is gloriously thick and the waves fall with an unnatural precision. The hair appears Breck Girl clean, devoid of the styling products now used to give hair an informal, slightly messy appearance. Hers is hair meant to be tossed in slow motion during the opening montage of "Baywatch."

In constructing the character, Kudrow has said that Cherish's hair color was a calculated decision. In Cherish's mind, "blond is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy." And, presumably, brunette isn't funny at all.

Givhan doesn't mention it, but red hair and comedy are indelibly associated with Lucille Ball. But of course, Cherish is wrong about a lot of things, so Kudrow's analysis of how Cherish thinks must be understood in that light. But I have a feeling Lisa loves Lucy.

Red hair is a touchy topic with me. My natural hair color is red — see it here — but not so red that I couldn't spend my entire childhood insisting that my hair was in fact not red, despite the tendency of strangers to call me "Red" and even "Carrot Top." As an unstably pigmented American, I had to endure both freckles and the early loss of hair color. Anyone fighting the latter problem should know that going lighter makes it less noticeable. If you see me today, you may consider me blonde, but I am incapable of seeing myself as a blonde. Though I spent my entire childhood denying that I had red hair, I now insist that I have it. I know it's a delusion, but the mental imprint is too strong to shake.

Why is red hair so meaningful?