This hit the web a few days ago and hasn’t gone wide yet, which is a surprise, because it’s hilarious. It’s the latest top show at Channel 101, the L.A.-based web-video operation also responsible for such brilliant goofballery as House of Cosbys, Yacht Rock, and The ’Bu. This is by excitable House of Cosbys creator Justin Roiland, the funniest writer-actor-animator-director-pervert-scatologist working on the web today. Ladies and gentlemen, 2 Girls, 1 Cup: The Show.

(If you’re unaware of the 2 Girls, 1 Cup phenomenon, make sure you read this Wikipedia entry before deciding to watch this.)

According to this gossip column posted yesterday on E! Online, the brilliantly antic Fox sitcom Arrested Development will be returning for at least one more season. The show’s low ratings (in a very bad time slot) led Fox to shorten the show’s second season from 22 episodes to 18, and the network seemed unlikely to give the show another chance. Few people, myself included, actually expected Fox to green-light a third season. Anyway, if the facts in the E! Online column are true, this is fantastic news indeed:

Earlier this week, a friend here at E! interviewed Jason Bateman at a charity event with his good friend Ben Stiller. When asked the status of Arrested Development, he lit up like a banana stand: “Actually, great. Supergreat. There is a heartbeat. There is no flatline. And there may be twins. I’m going to let Kristin figure out what that means. I can’t comment any further, but there will be an announcement next week.”

… But glory be, after much badgering and pestering, two rock-solid Fox sources, who have never failed me before, caved and gave me the lowdown.

Arrested Development is coming back! These highly placed sources confirmed late Friday it has been renewed for a full season of 22 episodes. How freaking fantastic is that?

Initially, Fox president Peter Liguori’s plan was to order two seasons—hence, the “twins” reference—in order to keep the licensing fee down. But ultimately he went with a single season. And hey, I’ll take it.

According to these insiders, even though the ratings weren’t exactly American Idol numbers, Liguori, bless his perceptive little heart, has faith that the show will do well in a different time slot. He also wants to bring AD up to the magical episode number required for syndication and feels the show will do very well in repeats and also in DVD.

This is a relief—I thought I might have to brandish Lucille’s rape horn to help save the show.

This short glossary of scriptwriter slang, from the blog of a longtime TV writer, outlines some behind-the-scenes terminology that scriptwriters use as shorthand for various situations and cliches:

“A Nokamura”: When a large number of jokes are all predicated on a single, earlier joke. This can entail great risk.

Based on a Cheers episode. A day-player was named “Nokamura”. A vast chunk of the second act’s jokes were based on people mispronouncing, repeating, etc. the name “Nokamura.”

But the problem was, on tape night — the first mention of “Nokamura” didn’t get a laugh. This meant the rest of the jokes wouldn’t work. The rest of the show was shanked.

The worst thing about a Nokamura is that when the first joke fails, you as the writing staff know what’s coming. All you can do is watch in horror as your show unravels, the Nokamura too deeply entrenched to require anything but a complete between-tapings rewrite.

(Note: We have recent e-mails suggesting the origin of this term was actually The Bob Newhart Show. We are investigating)

[…]

“a Squiggy” or “the ‘hello’ gag”: From Laverne & Shirley. Can only be defined by example.

Laverne (crossing to door): “What sort of degenerate freak would agree to that?” Squiggy (door opens): “He-looooo.”

This is a variation of but distinct from …

“the Gilligan cut”: When you cut directly from a character declaring there’s no way he’s going to do something, to him doing it, for comedic effect.

Also called “the flip joke”, but I’ve heard this usage, and it’s more interesting nomenclature. Thanks to Jacob at Yankee Fog.

(previously listed as “the red dress”, This name comes from the way it was always described to me: a burly guy saying”There’s no way I’m going to get into a red dress and pretend to be your wife”. SMASH CUT to … you get the idea.)

In 1983 and 1984, long before he became famous as the star and co-creator of the genius BBC comedy The Office, Ricky Gervais was the singer in an obscure synth-pop duo called Seona Dancing. I’ve seen some pictures of him from that period, but nothing as mind-blowing as this one, which Maura just alerted me to:

In other Office-related news, Gervais and his Office co-creator, Stephen Merchant, are developing a new sitcom called Extras for BBC Two:

Extras is the new sitcom he is writing with Merchant, in which Gervais plays a struggling film and TV comedy actor.

“My character is a moaner who bitches about the stars and laughs in the face of adversity,” Gervais said. “It’s not filmed as a documentary this time, but fans of The Office should like it.”

Movie stars Jude Law and Kate Winslet have signed up for cameo roles in Extras, which is being filmed in March and is due to be broadcast on BBC Two this summer.

[Update, 2:25 p.m., February 1: The bandwidth for this video file is costing me a lot of money, so I’m going to have to take it down at the end of today, February 1. If you can host the file yourself, or you know a place where a 5-megabyte video file could be hosted at no cost, please let me know and I will link to it. Thanks, my apologies.]

[Update, 11:55 p.m., February 1: Okay, I’ve taken the file down. Sorry…]

The six-minute video linked at the end of this post contains two compelling and somewhat disturbing Tonight Show clips from the mid-’70s. The video is from an episode of the superb Manhattan public-access program Media Shower, a clip show that was on the air from 1997 until 2000. The Tonight Show clips are introduced by Media Shower’s host and creator, Jamie Greenberg, a New York comedy writer and performer.

What’s special about these two clips? Well, let’s just say that they wouldn’t win Johnny Carson any racial sensitivity awards. At the very least, they show that Carson was capable of egregious lapses in judgment. I don’t have any reason to think these clips reveal something dark about Carson himself, but they do reveal a lot about the sort of race-oriented humor that was acceptable on television even in the late 1970s.

In the first clip, an apparently unscripted incident from 1977, a mock-angry Carson gets up from his desk and walks down the hall to confront Don Rickles, who is taping an episode of the sitcom C.P.O. Sharkey in an adjacent studio. After a few seconds, Carson points at a black cast member and shouts, “Hey, a black man! Yo, black man! How’s it goin’ there, daddy?” Carson walks over to the actor and gives him five. And then he walks back over to Rickles and says something incredibly shocking. You may not catch it the first time, but Jamie comes on after the clips and explains what to listen for, and then he shows that part of the clip again.

[Continue reading "Two Johnny Carson Clips You Won’t See on CNN This Week"...]