'Modern Family' is batting a thousand in its first season for perfect, seamless celebrity cameos. We've had Shelley Long, Benjamin Bratt, Elizabeth Banks, and perhaps the best and most bizarre of them all, Edward Norton as Spandau Ballet's bass player. All of them have fit perfectly, and none has really felt like sweeps stunt.

Over at TV Guide, William Keck is trying to find out who else might be popping in on the sitcom. Last week, he talked to Eric Stonestreet about who should play his character's mother next season (his choice is Delta Burke from 'Designing Women'). This week, he asked Sofia Vergara who should play her character's mom, and she chose legendary Italian actress Sophia Loren.

FX schedules premiere dates for 'Nip/Tuck,' 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' and others, 'Hung' has a big debut, Liza Minnelli is a 'Diva' and more TV news.

(S03E13) Shirley Schmidt: This is getting ugly.

Denny Crane: Denny Crane ugly.

The whole Denise-Brad-Jeffrey sex plot has got to go! At first I thought it was kind of amusing. But, after three weeks of it the whole storyline has reached the tiring stage, especially if you saw the scenes from next week's show. It's like watching an episode of The O.C., except with much older people. Frankly, I really don't care who Denise is sleeping with. Hell, she could be sleeping with Paul for all that matters (that would make a much better story). It's time to get past it and have these three focus on the Legal portion of Boston Legal.

Now, with that out of the way, let's press on with this week's fairly Alan Shore-free episode.

When the networks all get together at their secret meeting. . . you know, the one where they laugh about how none of the mysteries will be solved on Lost and where they try to figure out how many more shows they can stuff into Thursday nights to cause our DVRs to have a meltdown . . . they need to adopt a new amendment into their secret constitution. An amendment that will be as important as the one that decrees that Cop Rock will never be duplicated, and the one that commands CBS to continually green light shows by Joe Pantoliano and then cancel them or keep them off the air entirely.

I'm talking about the amendment that prevents the networks from making live-action remakes of classic animated programs ever again. Especially if it is a remake of an animated holiday classic that millions of viewers still remember fondly. Because, no matter how hard they try to stay truthful to the original, they always manage to screw it up. Particularly when they decide to update the live-action remake of the animated holiday classic to reflect modern fads and values. When they try that disaster looms.

(S03E07) You're not getting in this dress. -- Alan Shore, dressed like one of the Lennon sisters, to Denny Crane, also dressed like a Lennon sister. Don't ask.

After last week's intense, and somewhat oogy, episode of Boston Legal, we get a palette cleanser of sorts this week as some storylines are closed and others are opened. It was also an extremely subdued episode. Even bombastic characters like Alan Shore and Denny Crane were unusually quiet this time around. It was so calm that I almost fell asleep halfway through the episode. Oh, that wasn't because the show was boring. It was more a result of traipsing out with the kiddies for a marathon trick-or-treating session.

Let's move along now, shall we?