JILLIAN'S BACK!
REALITY
Jillian Harris gave herself one of the worst opening lines in the history of dating when, at the start of last season's Bachelor, she asked Jason Mesnick about his preferred hot-dog toppings. Yet she lasted into the final three, by which point she'd established herself as one of the most endearing characters to come out of reality TV. Now, deservedly, she gets her own show. Cute but not gorgeous, talking in a rabbity rush as she delivers classic Bachelorette sentiments ("I am 100 percent ready to find love again!"), Jillian seems guileless, adventuresome, even a little sad. One thinks of Sandra Bullock movies or the sidekicks in Jane Austen stories, the nice girls who end up contentedly wed to farmers. This time, though, the male universe revolves around Jillian, and you may wonder if she isn't too good for the bunch. In the premiere one suitor actually asked, "What's up, you sassy little minx?" Another, a foot fetishist, maneuvered her into removing her shoes.
Maybe, dear Jillian, it's the men who are the hot dogs.
Lifetime, May 30, 9 p.m. ET/PT |
ROMANTIC COMEDY
Like Debra Messing's The Starter Wife, this two-part frothfest is based on a novel by Hollywood insider Gigi Levangie Grazer. Sarah Chalke is Clarissa, a socialite who schemes to marry rich and guarantee her stupidly expensive lifestyle. She pursues a film producer (Philip Winchester), unaware he's playing her too. Chalke has some good scenes at the end, when a humanized Clarissa—in truth a voracious romantic—learns that life is not a spa treatment. The rest is cardboard.
TLC, May 25, 10 p.m. ET/PT |
NEW SERIES!
REALITY
Buddy Valastro, who runs his family's Italian bakery in Hoboken, N.J., whips up vast, elaborate cakes that require visual inspiration, infrastructural forethought and lots of molding chocolate. For what he refers to as a "fashionista" cake, he simulates quilted leather out of icing. The show is very slight but sweet—a dolce course to Bravo's brassy Real Housewives of New Jersey.
>1 POST NUP MON. 5/25, 10:02 P.M. ABC Season 2 of Here Come the Newlyweds includes Makayla and Kenny McMorris.
2 CHEZ TORI TUES. 5/26, 10 P.M. OXYGEN Fetch my Spelling salts! A new season of Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood.
3 THE STRAIT STORY WED. 5/27, 8 P.M. CBS A legend gets his due on George Strait: ACM Artist of the Decade All Star Concert.
4 DANCE FEVER WED. 5/27, 8 P.M. FOX It's audition rounds for So You Think You Can Dance, hosted by Cat Deeley.
5 WIPEOUT WED. 5/27, 8 P.M. ABC The extreme-obstacle summer hit is back, with enjoyably silly commentary by John Henson.
>• On Memorial Day weekend, the NBC anchor will salute the remaining recipients of the congressional Medal of Honor, whom he continues to feature on Nightly News.
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT We're down to fewer than 100 living recipients of the Medal of Honor. [They are] America's most highly decorated military veterans. They embody everything great about our country. So I work [on the board of the congressional Medal of Honor Foundation] to raise money and awareness.
THE SOLDIERS' HUMILITY To a man, they all say they are wearing the medal for those who did not come home. There isn't an ounce of selfishness in any one of them. I say at every gathering, "It's an honor just to breathe the air that you exhale."
TEACHING NEW GENERATIONS There are hundreds of graves of Medal of Honor recipients without markers. Now we're placing markers going back to the Civil War so people will know: Here lies a hero. In Erie, Pa., a struggling public school system, the board of education has found that teaching medal-winners' stories has turned [the students] around. When these guys show up at the school, they're mobbed. The kids want their autographs.
HONOR AMONG US [Medal of Honor recipient] Jack Jacobs is on our staff at NBC. Sometimes I look around the newsroom and wonder, "Do they know that the guy next to them is a piece of living American history?" These are living guys that we get to know. I get so much more out of it than anything I've contributed.
>• Jesse James, 40, stares down danger and risks his life with high-octane stunts on Spike's Jesse James Is a Dead Man, premiering 10 p.m. ET/PT May 31.
WHAT SCARES YOU? Trying to talk to my 14-year-old daughter about Juicy Couture stuff. That's the biggest challenge.
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WON'T DO? I won't jump out of a plane. I know myself, and it would be one of those things: If it's that good once, I'd need to do it 4,000 times. I would probably like it too much.
YOUR INJURIES? I've had a concussion, bruised lung, broken two ribs, chipped a bone in my elbow and got crazy whiplash.
HOW DOES YOUR WIFE, SANDRA BULLOCK, FEEL ABOUT THIS STUFF? She's used to making Saturday-night trips to the emergency room. She doesn't want to know what I'm doing; she just wants to know that I'm going to come home safe.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
