I once again checked out Stargate Universe this week. Apparently, the first two episodes hooked me enough to watch this one, even though I'm still a little in the dark on the whole portal jumping / chevron stuff.

So I'll let you veterans talk about all the inter-dimensional Stargate stuff, and will just point out a few things I liked about this episode, part three of "Air." For one thing, I'm really liking the kid, Eli Wallace. He sort of grounds the series and keeps it from being completely in a sci-fi universe where none of us could ever imagine going, because that's exactly what's happening to him.

I'll preface this by saying that while I'm familiar with the Stargate franchise and recently watched the 1994 movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, I've only seen an episode here and there of the various TV shows. So this is my newbie look at Stargate Universe, which premiered Friday night. (And, uh, there really isn't that much on Friday night, and it happened to be on Charter's video on demand, so I checked it out after the premiere aired.)

I'll say right off the bat that it seems a little cheesy, so I'm wondering how it compares to the previous Stargate incarnations. The characters seem a little cliche:

• the blowhard politician with health problems (and his caring daughter), which resulted in the episode's most heartbreaking moment
• the nerdy guy with long hair and a sad past
• the nerdy kid who ends up being transported to a spaceship and helping the crew with important stuff
• the tough-guy military people with guns and crew cuts
• the gorgeous female crew members

Hollywood's latest choice for a Saturday Night Live film remake is both the strangest and most interesting choice they could make, short of a big screen "Weekend Update" action epic or a "Toonces the Cat" feature-length Pixar film.

Variety reports that Lorne Michaels and company are creating a big-screen remake of the show's popular "MacGruber" sketches. Cast member Will Forte will take on the title role and pen the movie's script along with SNL writers John Solomon and Jorma Taccone, the latter of whom is better known as one-third of the musical comedy group The Lonely Island.

Kristen Wiig will also star as MacGruber's object grabbing sidekick Vicki. Ryan Phillipe and Val Kilmer have been attached to the project, but their roles haven't been nailed down yet.

SyFy's Stargate Universe will kick off with help from two familiar faces this fall. Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks will reprise their Stargate: SG-1 roles in the series premiere of Universe, which is billed as a darker, character driven sci-fi show.

Shanks' appearance will be a one-time cameo, according to consulting producer Joseph Mallozzi. Anderson, however, will make multiple guest appearances in Universe in addition to showing up in the two-hour premiere. The actor said he would make "slim appearances" in the first "half dozen" episodes or so.

What are the odds that a big screen adaptation of ABC's 1980's hit MacGyver will be a success? Judging by the success-to-failure ratio of TV-to-movies, I'd say it's 50-50 at best. For every The Fugitive, there's The Wild, Wild West. A Mission: Impossible reboot works well enough as a Tom Cruise vehicle, but a live action Speed Racer is an unmitigated disaster. Still, the optimist in me will hope that New Line's MacGyver to the big screen will work. They first mentioned this about a year ago, but it's picked up some traction now.

There's no star attached as yet, but a lot of De Laurentiises -- Dino is exec producer, Raffaellla and Martha are producing for Raffaella Productions. (Giada is sticking to the Food Network.) Fortunately, the series creator, Lee Zlotoff is attached, too.

(S34E18) When I heard The Rock -- I mean, Dwayne Johnson -- was hosting again, the first image that popped into my mind was him in that Mr. Peepers sketch with Chris Kattan back in the day. I believe red overalls, apples, and aggressive humping was involved. Though Mr. Johnson traded in his red overalls for a sequined black halter top in this episode, he still did incredibly well. I had forgotten: Those aren't muscles; the guy has had charisma surgically inserted into his upper body over the past decade for easy access. Anyone else would have looked like an idiot trying to pull off The Rock Obama. Check out some video highlights and see what I mean.

Get your paper clips and elastic bands out because there is a MacGyver movie in the works! According to the Dark Horizons website, MacGyver creator Lee David Zlotoff announced over the weekend at Maker Faire 2008 that a big budget movie based on the series was in the planning stages.

Sadly, he revealed no specifics about the movie other than he got the movie rights a few years ago and has total control over the movie.

Has it really been 45 years since General Hospital started broadcasting? Four decades + five years of medical machinations, legendary love stories, action and intrigue. Yes, yes, it's true, on April 1, ABC's General Hospital will celebrate 45 years on the air. Current executive producer, Jill Farren Phelps, will cut the cake and members of the cast will blow out the candles, but we're the ones that probably should be smiling. Memories of the great years gone by are inevitable with any show that's run as long as GH. But there's something special about this ABC soap.

%Gallery-18945%

On the heels of news that Paramount will release The Andy Griffith Show as a complete set in May comes news that the same company will release MacGyver as a complete set just a couple of weeks later, on May 22.

The set will include all seven seasons of the show, and the set might also include the two post-MacGyver movies that aired on ABC: The Lost Treasure of Atlantis and Trail To Doomsday.

Maybe studios should just start releasing complete series sets instead of individual seasons. People might stop buying single season sets because they know a complete set is probably on the way. I know I often think that way when it comes to buying DVDs. Of course, if single season sets for a particular show weren't popular they probably wouldn't release a complete set.

"Super bad guys
Try to crush us
Fight for freedom
And for justice."

For some reason, network promos and commercials have been seared in my mind. I remember pretty much all of them, going back to the late 70s. The ABC promo after the jump is completely new to me though. It looks like it's from around 1985 or 86, judging from Richard Dean Anderson's hair and the clips they show of early MacGyver episodes.

But the thing that's interesting about the promo is that they actually use Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." as the promo's theme song! Though it's not Newman singing the song. Listen to the lyrics and you'll see how crazy and lame network promos can be. (The slogan that fall on ABC was "You'll Love It!" Though I'll always have a soft spot for "Still The One!") The announcement that they'll return to The Concorde: Airport '79 is just icing on the cake.

TVshowsonDVD has info about the final season DVD set for MacGyver. The season seven set (14 episodes) will be released on October 24. There was a rumor going around that the two MacGyver TV movies that Richard Dean Anderson made a couple of years after the show ended - The Lost Treasure of Atlantis and Trail To Doomsday - would be included in the set. But that's not the case. No word yet on whether that will be in some later special set (though I would bet yes).

Wow, the final episode of MacGyver aired in 1992? I feel so old.

Taking a page out of the Law & Order and CSI handbooks, MGM Television is considering a third Stargate series to run concurrently with veterans Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. This is according to MGM TV executive vice-president Charles Cohen.

On the heels of the upcoming 200th episode of SG-1, whose 10th season begins July 14th on the Sci-Fi Channel, Cohen is discussing a feature film derived from the series. That film would then dovetail into a third Stargate show. However, that doesn't mean that SG-1 would end for the movie to appear. In fact, Cohen believes that the movie could run while the series was still producing first-run episodes.

According to Cohen, Stargate SG-1 represents the same sort of franchise on television as the James Bond series does; while it is good financially it also keeps their name in the marketplace. He proves this by putting more money into new episodes, hiring new people such as Beau Bridges, Ben Browder and Claudia Black (both formerly of another Sci-Fi channel show, Farscape), and bringing back old favorites like Richard Dean Anderson's Jack O'Neill.