I know, I’m supposed to be off work recuperating from pneumonia, and I promise I will go right back to bed as soon as I get done, but I couldn’t let this go.

Stanely Kamel, who played Dr. Charles Kroger on Monk (one of my all-time favorite television shows), has been found dead in his home:

Kamel was found dead in his Hollywood Hills home on Tuesday. He was 65.

Access Hollywood has learned Kamel died of a heart attack. […]

A rep for the USA network, which airs the Emmy-winning “Monk,” released the following statement to Access Hollywood:

“USA is deeply saddened by the news of Stanley Kamel’s passing. Stanley was an amazingly talented and extremely kind man, and an important member of the USA family. He will be sorely missed.”

This makes me very sad.  One of the best parts of the show was watching Dr. Kroger and Adrian Monk interact with one another, and I always enjoyed the episodes where Monk became involved with Dr. Kroger outside of the office (such as the one where the good doctor retired after believing he was responsible for the death of his cleaning lady).  He brought humor, warmth, sensitivity, and a multi-faceted portrayal to a part which could have ended up being very one-dimensional and staid.

It’s funny how we become immersed in these shows…one of my first thoughts was, “First Trudy, now Dr. Kroger…Monk has a hard enough time, what is he going to do now?”  Silly, perhaps…but for those of us who know personally what the character of Adrian Monk goes through on a daily basis, maybe it isn’t so silly after all.  You see, I got to thinking that it could be possibly the best testament an actor can leave…to somehow break down that wall that separates actor from audience and make us think beyond a character, beyond an actor, helping us to expand our horizons and incorporate new thoughts and feelings and ideas and ways of coping into our daily lives.  Anyone can mouth words off a page, but it takes someone special to mold and squish and mesh it all together and create a new person of themselves who truly touches others.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Kamel’s family and friends.

Have the folks over at Today gone off their rocker?  When I first heard this, I thought it had to be a joke…but no, it isn’t, the news is true:  Kathie Lee Gifford is joining Today:

Kathie Lee Gifford, right, the former longtime co-host of “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee,” is returning to morning television as the host of the fourth hour of NBC’s “Today” program, the network confirmed Monday. […]

 The assignment, beginning April 7, will be Ms. Gifford’s third morning show stint: she reported for “Good Morning America” before becoming Mr. Philbin’s co-host on “Live” for 15 years. Ms. Gifford was introduced on “Today” by Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira, the hosts of the first two hours. “I’m 8 years older, 10 pounds heavier and a half-inch shorter, just in time for HD television,” Ms. Gifford joked. […]

Ms. Gifford will join Hoda Kotb, her co-anchor for the fourth hour. Ann Curry and Al Roker, two members of the 7 to 9 a.m. team, will continue as co-hosts of the third hour but will no longer contribute to the fourth. Natalie Morales, who was named a co-anchor of the fourth hour last September, will become a host of the third hour.

Apparently the fourth hour of Today focuses more on “soft” news, things like fashion and makeup and women’s health and children and whatnot.  It’s news to me…I didn’t even know they had a fourth hour on Today.

Will anyone even tune in to see this woman?  Does anyone care?  Has there been a dearth of mindless, inane chatter in the morning shows that I was unaware of?  I know I had enough of Kathie Lee and her obnoxious voice back when she was with Regis.  The woman Never. Shuts. Up.  And while I’m at it, I’ll ask this…does anyone really watch four hours of Today?  I know when school is going on that’s what is playing in the background, but once I come back home the TV gets turned off.  It gets to be about eight o’clock and I’ve had all I can take.

Matt Lauer is okay and I hope he stays, but as far as the rest of the show…pfft.  Boring.  I can’t see how adding a blowhard like Kathie Lee doing segments on how to seasonally organize your kitchen towels and just what method of Botox application is ‘in’ this season is going to help matters any.

But, at least we can be thankful it isn’t Katie Couric!

(Spoilers below)

GO TRACE!!!

They both have great charities, and I’m glad they are raising lots of money for them.

But I’m Team Trace, all the way!

UPDATE:  I do have to say…I agree with Trace.  Wheatgrass juice???  Black nail polish???  The Backstreet Boys are coming across like they’re a bunch of sissy-boy wussies.

Oh wait.

UPDATE:  NO WAY!  What a ripoff…Piers won a lot of money, but what a jerk!  Seriously, what a jerk!  Trump is a joke, but so is Piers, so they both should be happy.  They both love to have people tell them how wonderful they are.

Don’t worry, Trace…I know who was the real winner was.  He may have won the game, but you win in life.  You’re going home to your beautiful family…what’s he going home to?

News is that Rachael Ray may have spread herself too thin, and as a result her ratings for her daytime show are slipping:

An impeccable TV source told Page Six, “They are seriously talking about taking her off the air.”

The problem is Ray’s ratings. When she debuted two years ago, she had a meager 2.5 rating, which her syndicator, King World, nonetheless trumpeted as “The biggest syndicated debut since ‘Dr. Phil.’ ” In fact, one insider said, “They had hoped for more. ‘Dr. Phil’ beats ‘Oprah’ and gets like a 5.0 rating - and Rachael’s set is very expensive and elaborate; his is just chairs.” […]

In 2007, Ray’s syndicated show averaged a 2.2 Nielsen rating and has already dipped to 2.0 this year. An insider said, “Anything below a 2.0 is asking for trouble.”

Another bad indicator is that in 2007, the average age of a daytime “Rachael Ray” viewer was 53.4, with only 776,000 women between ages 18 and 49 (the show’s target demo) tuning in. In 2008, both numbers have taken a turn for the worse. The average-age viewer today is 55.1, with only 688,000 women between ages 18 and 49 tuning in.

Okay, wait.  Rachael Ray has a daytime television show?  Since when?

No, I’m serious.  I didn’t know that she had a show.  According to her official site:

Rachael Ray is an Emmy Award-winning, daily one-hour syndicated talk show and is among the top-ranked daytime programs on television. Now in her second season, Rachael continues to bring her warmth and no-fuss attitude into the homes of millions of viewers with her signature quick meals, celebrity surprises, provocative discussions, hot musical performances and groundbreaking features.

Well, wait a second.  According to Wikipedia and IMDb, her daytime television show hasn’t won an Emmy, although Rachael has been nominated.  It is actually her show “30 Minute Meals” which won an Emmy.  Note that it doesn’t say that Rachael Ray, the person (non-italics) won an Emmy, but that Rachael Ray, the show (italicized) won an Emmy, indicating that the show won.  Which, apparently, it didn’t.

[EDITED TO ADD:  After extensive searching, I did finally find where her show won one Emmy, for Outstanding Achievement in Technical Direction/Electronic Camera/Video Control.  However, the wording on her site makes it sound like the entire show in itself won an Emmy, because when one reads it, that is the impression one gets.  Winning one technical award does not make the premise of a show, its host, and the whole show in and of itself an “Emmy Award Winning” show, it just means one part of a show won.]

She has a contract through 2010, but everybody knows that contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, and anyone can be bought out.

My beef with her is this, plain and simple…she’s annoying.  She grates on my nerves (and apparently the nerves of many other people).  I have never liked her.  That voice, that ditzy demeanor, the way she says things like “sammies” and “YUM-O!”  Ugh.  Do people really say “Yum-O”?   I mean, people who aren’t trying to feed a baby mashed turnips, that is.  Critics have slammed her cooking techniques and ”30 Minute Meals” show.  Oh yeah, and there was that Dunkin’ Donuts coffee thing, where she called their coffee (which she’s supposed to be promoting) a name which I won’t repeat here but that rhymes with something her show isn’t.

Don’t even get me started on her cooking shows.  Sorry, but it is just another indication of the “dumbing down” of Food Network, willing to pander to the lowest common denominator in their programs.  Do programming executives really think the American woman is that stupid?  To answer my own question…some women must be, since the powers-that-be gave her a show in the first place.

And seriously, I didn’t know she had a daytime television show.  Guess that doesn’t say much for her program, huh?

I’m probably a network television executive’s worst nightmare, in that I very rarely watch network TV.  Pretty much the only time I tune in is for a sporting event, or when one of my kids is watching something like Celebrity Apprentice (yeah, I know, but I gotta see if Trace Adkins takes the whole thing).  There is one exception…House.

House has been a recent addition to my viewing habits, but a welcome one.  For those of you unfamiliar with the premise, Dr. Gregory House is the head of a team of diagnosticians at a teaching hospital, who’s patients typically come to them after having failed to receive a diagnosis, or an incorrect diagnosis, at other hospitals.  He’s cranky, irritable, egotistical, cynical, unorthodox, curmudgeonly, and a medical genius.  Oh, and he also abuses Vicodin, due to a past infarction in the quad muscle of one of his legs (the dead muscle was removed), which requires him to use a cane and keeps him in constant pain.  While this addiction hasn’t caused his grating personality, it doesn’t help it any.

Hugh Laurie, the ruggedly handsome, extremely talented, and versatile British actor who plays the doctor, has recently admitted to experimenting with Vicodin to get a better feel for his character:

Not that he’s been labeled a realistic Method actor before, but Hugh Laurie admits he attempted to get closer to the character he portrays on House — by experimenting with Vicodin, the strong painkiller to which Dr. Gregory House is addicted.

“I wouldn’t recommend it — we have to be careful,” Laurie, 48, tells Britain’s Radio Times magazine, “But then again … if you’re not in pain it gives a floaty, pleasurable feeling.”

I haven’t been able to find the rest of the interview (it is advertised as being in the new issue, so maybe it just isn’t online yet…I’ll have to visit my local bookstore).

While I believe that the show provides a balanced view of House’s drug addiction, (he doesn’t believe his addiction is a big deal, since it doesn’t interfere with his work, while it is obvious to all around him that it is…however, no viable alternatives are suggested or tried, other solutions having been attempted and discarded), and I don’t see the show glamorizing his drug usage in any way, I am uncomfortable with this admission that Hugh tried Vicodin and admitted that yeah, they do make you feel good.  If you’ve ever taken one, you already know how they make you feel, so that’s no big surprise.  I don’t necessarily think some kid is going to think it’s okay because some actor who isn’t on a teen drama did it, I’m just uncomfortable with the whole thing.

Fortunately, it doesn’t seem that he’s repeated the experiment.

His father was a doctor, and Hugh has a view on that which is one of the most balanced I’ve heard:

Your dad was a doctor. What would he have thought of House?

He couldn’t have been more different to House. He was a hero to me. A very gentle man who would take any amount of time with patients.

You never thought about going into medicine?

I think I was too lazy to be a doctor. I do feel bad that now I’m pretending to do what my dad did and getting paid more for it than he ever did.

Just don’t repeat that little experiment with the Vics and we’ll be fine.  I have to get my weekly dose of the good doctor, you know.  It hurts when I do this…

After a strike that lasted longer than most thought it would, writers laid down their picket signs and once again picked up their keyboards, to the delight of television audiences everywhere:

More than 92 percent of the Writers Guild of America members who cast ballots Tuesday in Los Angeles and New York voted to end their work stoppage over residuals for writing in the digital age, including new media and the Internet. The new deal is for three years.

“The strike is over. Our membership has voted, and writers can go back to work,” said Patric Verrone, president of the WGA’s West chapter.

While the new deal does not give the writers everything that they had asked for, it is a better deal than what they had previously:

Verrone said the WGA achieved two of three goals through negotiations with the studios.

The first goal relates to writers’ “jurisdiction” in new media, Verrone said, meaning that any content written by guild members specifically for new media, such as the Internet or cell phones, will be covered by their contract.

The second goal relates to reuse of content in new media, Verrone said.

The agreement bases payment for reuses on a distributor’s gross formula for residuals, “so that when they get paid, we get paid,” he said.

It is the “first time in our history that a new delivery system pays on a residual formula superior to the prior existing system,” Verrone said.

The third goal, which Verrone said the guild did not achieve, was to shore up writers’ shares of the revenue from animation and reality television.

“Giving up animation and reality was a heartbreaking thing for me personally,” he said. “But it was more important that we make a deal that benefited the membership, the town as a whole, that got people back to work and that solved the biggest problems in new media.”

Well, maybe next time.

The new deal also means that workers who were affected by the strike, but not directly involved in it, can go back to work as well…people like makeup artists, hairdressers, set designers, camera operators, and the person who operates the Teleprompter.  It was my belief that the studios held out so long because they believed that by creating collateral damage (the non-striking workers affected by the strike), writers would feel pressured to cave in and go back to work.  It does seem to have worked somewhat, as the strike drug on for months, workers were fired or laid off, and the WGA eventually did have to concede on one of their points.

This also means that the Oscars can now go on as planned, with scripted banter and A-list stars.  Had the strike continued, many stars said they would not cross the picket lines out of solidarity, and the planners would be forced to rely on either improvised jokes or letting Jon Stewart write his own material for the hours-long telecast.  And actors who have waited a lifetime for an award can now rest assured that the show will go on.

Of course, some late-night shows went back on the air before the end of the strike, so that the jobs of their crews could be salvaged (a precedent set by none other than the late, great Johnny Carson during the 1988 writer’s strike), and some shows negotiated deals with their writers independent of the greater strike.

But don’t set up your Tivos just yet…it will take about four weeks to get new episodes of comedies back on the air, and six to eight weeks to get drama episodes aired.

Okay, not just Kevin, but the entire cast shown in this clip.  Now, I’ve never seen One Tree Hill, and I don’t really know what it’s about, and I will refrain from making cracks about Kevin’s flat delivery (hey, at least he’s working), but I do have one question…are all the episodes this jittery?

I guess it’s supposed to be “edgy” and show tension and energy, but it just looks like the camera is mounted in Jell-O.  It looks like they’re filming in a high wind.  I need Dramamine to watch the clip.  The cameraman looks like he’s coming down off a three-day bender.  HOLD THE CAMERA STILL!

Anyway, here’s Kevin and his haircut, doing a great imitation of a grandfather clock with a broken pendulum.