All in all, the once creepy show looks much more palatable. By that, I mean at least they’ve scaled back on the bronzer from last season.

That’s actually not true at all. We write about it because it’s the best comedy of the past million years, and stories about Arrested Development are largely more interesting than stories about anything else.

This one is no exception.

After months of rumors (that I apparently had never heard) that the new season of A.D. was going to be constructed in such a fashion that the episodes can be played in any order, it turns out that creator Mitch Hurwitz has taken to Twitter to deny that.

Oh well. As far as I’m concerned, the first three seasons can be watched in any order with a such a small drop-off of enjoyment that I’m pretty sure this next season will be the same thing.

Unless the season sucks.

OH NO!

The show, so far untitled, has a murderer’s row of comedians, including T.J. Miller, Thomas Middleditch, Josh Brener, Lindsey Broad, Christopher Evan Welch, Amanda Crew, Angela Trimbur, ZachWoods and Kumail Nanjiani. But those guys will be pretty funny!

The tagline that has been bandied about here is “the people most qualified to succeed are the least capable of handling success.” Ugh. That describes every Aaron Sorkin project ever. Of course, it’s Mike Judge, so we needn’t worry.

You know, staplers, and whatnot.

Soooo… (SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN SEASON 8 FINALE)

If Ted doesn’t find his wife over the course of this weekend, I’m pretty sure this announcement allows us to bludgeon the producers, the cast, and most any other person on the planet out of sheer frustration.

It’s anticipated that the future wife/mother will be played by Cristin Milioti, and it’s been revealed that Ted will be the last of his friends to meet her, possibly because he’s a whiney tool, possibly because it helps the story.

However, you’ll have to make peace with your decision knowing that there is a fake Tobias Fünke website out there that serves the fictitious purpose of promoting a closeted homosexual’s fledgling acting career.

So, you can refuse to binge on AD hype for the next few days, or you can give in to those urges and visit Insert My Anywhere.

If it helps, Insert Me Anywhere has this banner ad:

Yet here we are as Robert Rodriguez divulges that the adaptation will be the backbone of his El Rey Network, which is an English-language station that will be geared towards Hispanic audiences. Already, I can hear hipsters salivating over the prospect of enjoying this channel ironically, spilling their taco truck tacos all over their vests and mustaches.

What a bloodbath.

Yesterday came news of Seth Meyers plans to move down the hall, it’s suspected that Jason Sudeikis will leave to focus on film work, and Fred Armisen’s future with the show is uncertain. Unfortunately, there have been no reports that Kenan Thompson plans to depart.

Meyers will wrap up SNL’s fall season before moving to Late Night this winter, and then probably return to SNL when Leno decides he’s not giving up The Tonight Show after all. (NY Times)

Namely, he doesn’t like that cable bundles force us to buy channels we don’t want or use. It’s a familiar criticism, but one that’s unlikely to change due to the power of cable companies, McCain’s distance from the Senate Commerce Committee, and the fact that the cure might be worse than the disease.

Should cable companies unbundle, subscribers will have to shell out big bucks for their favorite channels like ESPN, FX, AMC, USA, TNT, and TBS, forcing them to realize that maybe they weren’t paying all that much for the Lifetime Movie Network in the first place.

The plan McCain is sponsoring is called the Television Consumer Freedom Act. The phrase “Television Consumer” makes me think of a fat person on the couch watching Anger Management, and “Freedom” makes me think that person is holding a tiny USA flag while doing so.

“We’re in way over our bloody heads here. Let’s just license Raymond.”

(That’s how I imagine the BBC producers addressing the issue. You can tell they’re British because of their colorful language.)

It’s called The Smiths, and it will star Catherine Tate and Lee Mack as the schlubmaster general.

Of course, Russia already took to adapting Raymond, which tells us that a) TV execs aren’t very creative in other countries either, and b) lots of audiences worldwide hate their families.

Enter Twivo, an app that strips all the spoilers from your Twitter timeline. Actually, it removes all references to TV shows and characters that you select, leaving you with a Twitter feed that’s probably just a bunch of pictures of food with the hashtags #belieber and #selfie.

SOOOOOO, if, for instance, you didn’t want to know that (SPOILER ALERT FOR REALS) Jamie Lanister lost his hand right before a bitchin’ Hold Steady cover of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” then you would probably pull “Jamie Lannister” and “Game of Thrones” from your Twitter feed using the app.

You can now find the app as a Chrome plug-in, but expect to see Twivo as a standalone app sometime around the end of this sentence.

May I editorialize?

Thank you.

Veep is perhaps the funniest half-hour of TV on…TV. You know how people like funny shows that offer up a lot of heart as well? Those people didn’t like this show because this show hadn’t shown any heart. Until the last episode which offered an ending that leads the audience to believe that Selina Meyer MIGHT care about the decisions she makes, and her political career isn’t just one giant game.

While the show serves as a pretty bleak vantage point of contemporary politics, it doesn’t have to. You CAN just like the show because it’s a bunch of inept, weird people cursing at each other and their fun idiosyncrasies.

I promise no more editorializing for ten days, at least.

Oliver, in typical dry, pithy, British fashion, blogged, “”Don’t worry, it’s still going to be everything that you love about The Daily Show, just without the thing that you love the most about it.” Oh, John with an “h,” you’re just as special as “h”-less Jon, and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

Oliver steps in on June 10th with guest Seth Rogen, who many of you may know as having played schlubs his entire acting career.

Here is the message sent along with the grotesque image:

“Our man vs wild producer suffering from a brutal snake bite – fighting the injury with courage.”

Intriguing? Yes. But don’t look down any further. Please don’t look down any further. This is far more gross than what you’re expecting. Looking any further after these warnings is akin to reading from the Necromicon and unleashing psychological hell beasts on your mind.

Okay. I’ve prepped you. Here it is:

The above picture is an approximation of the injury just in case you think you want to pull out now. Honestly, I’m not sure why you’re intent on seeing this. But if I must share, I will.

We here at ScreenJunkies would like everyone to join us in wishing this Man Vs. Wild producer got this on tape. (Bear Grylls Twitter)

The interview will air Sunday, and will mark Jason Collins’ historic 1,000,000,000th interview this week. PROUD OF YOU, JASON!

It’s unlikely Opes will break any new ground in her interview, as the subject became well-worn territory the afternoon that it was announced, but she can inject a gravitas to the interview that no one else can. And to her legions of followers, Oprah

The premise of a school teacher traveling back to the 1960′s to stop the assassination of JFK seems to be right up Abrams’ alley with both the time traveling and the elements of 1960′s culture.

This announcement should keep Abrams’ attention until next week, when he will get behind a gritty reboot of Mario Bros. or something.

The film will be based on graphic novels of the beast which paint the MONSTER as endearingly human and vulnerable. So that’s where the similarities to Seth Rogen stop, apparently. Just kidding. JUST KIDDING. He’s likable in small-to-moderate doses.

Rogen will be teaming up with his writing partner Evan Goldberg and American Dad writer Matt McKenna, so…expect a comedy?

This isn’t his first stab at the undertaking, having developed a pilot in 2003 that never went anywhere, but that’s back when TV was terrible, and now it’s really good. Which means it should be made on a cable network, possibly on, I don’t know, a Sunday night?

Assuming it does get picked up, it probably won’t find its way to FX, where they’re developing Shakedown, a similar concept about tabloids and corruption in LA in the late 1950′s.

I think there’s room for two shows this awesome on TV at the same time. (A.V. Club)

With the working title Cocoa Beach, the show was announced to the mayor of the Florida town, a man who probably isn’t normally so “in the loop” when it comes to breaking entertainment stories. Which is odd, because they still require a subscription to read their quaint stories, which means I’m not going to link to them at all. Oh well.

No news on stars, networks, or time frames, but that just provides us with an opportunity to recklessly speculate: Danny Glover and Dev Patel, ESPN Classic, June ’14.

Oh, did I mention that the plane crash was “MYSTERIOUS?” Because AMC sure did.

In investigating the crash, his life begins to slowly unravel, thus confirming that it is, in fact an AMC show. No news on who the actor playing Lewis Bernt, NTSB investigator is, but I would hazard a guess it will be someone awesome. Perhaps the girl that plays Sally Draper. Everyone likes her!

MTV has announced that they’ve given the green light to a television pilot based on the Scream films. Written by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven, the Scream films are best known for skewering horror movie tropes as well as literally skewering attractive teens. In a news release, the network said it was working with Dimension to “reinvent the successful horror comedy franchise that spawned three sequels and unleashed ‘Ghostface’ to a legion of unsuspecting fans.” While the network is still speaking with writers, Dimension is still working on a deal to have Craven return to direct the one-hour pilot.

I’d imagine that the series would be presented as a season long mystery as the audience tries to figure out the identity of the masked killer (or killers) that is terrorizing the student body. However, I’m not sure the format can sustain that concept with more and more of the cast being killed off each episode. The Scream movies have always managed to keep it fresh and subvert expectations, so let’s hope the eventual series will be able to do the same. At the very least, let’s hope it’s better executed than Teen Wolf. (NY Times)

Both Stiller and Vince Vaughn will be returning, teaming up against an even bigger threat (terrorism?), so bring your shades, cause you’ll get blinded by all this starpower!

No other news is available, but I’m comfortable guaranteeing that Lance Armstrong will not be making an appearance.

And judging by Ringling Bros claims that the HBO doc is “one-sided,” you would be totally correct. Variety is reporting that HBO initially wished to discuss with Feld, the parent company of the circus, their involvement in both conservation, as well as the use of elephants in their circus. However, they later scrapped that plan, telling Feld that they didn’t want to focus on the conservation issue, presumably just the nasty stuff.

The circus spokesman claimed that HBO may “clearly have an anti-circus political agenda.”

But where do they stand on capades, both ice and regular?

While its reincarnation hasn’t made many waves outside the scope of the original fanbase, that rabid fanbase was good enough for a huge second time around for the show, which managed to keep much of its production and voice cast intact despite the obvious lag between iterations.

It’s all over now. At least, until someone else sees Futurama as an opportunity to capture a market segment that’s eluded them until now. NBC, that’s your cue to do something reckless and crazy.

GO!

Here we’ve got a still featuring Walt seemingly pleading with Jesse, with Jesse looking all, “Talk to the hand girlfriend.” Or maybe he’s looking all, “I ate too much Lotaburger, and I was supposed to cleanse today. I hate myself.”

In any event, one guy looks desparate and one guy looks nonplussed, which makes this still no different than every other frame of film that’s manifested itself in seasons 1-4.5.

Here’s the pic. LET THE GREAT EXPERIMENT BEGIN!

So you’re saying there’s a chance, Marta? Oh. No. You’re not.

This means no Friends movie, no Friends reboot, no Friends sequel. It’s a sad state of affairs when we feel the need to report that some beloved old property such as this refuses to let itself go around the bend again, but it’s also pretty nice.

Friends was really good. Let’s enjoy the place it occupies in our hearts and memories and use the effort we would have spent recycling it into making something better.

Like, I dunno, an Arrested Development movie or something.