From Spinner: We love a good crossover, especially when our favorite TV stars pick up a microphone and belt out some tunes.



The good folks over at Spinner have compiled a bunch of videos of TV celebs from Joey Lawrence to Zooey Deschanel as they showcase their vocal chops. Though a number of singers have moved from music to television, this list features stars who made it big on the small screen before picking up a microphone, to varying degrees of success.

Undeniably one of the big hits of the season, 'New Girl' is quite lovely. It makes me laugh, which I always appreciate, but it makes me laugh when I'm not expecting it, which is rare since so many of my favorite comedies are deep into multiple seasons.

But series star Zooey Deschanel has become a bit of a lightning rod for pop culture criticism and I'm always curious to know how others are interpreting what I see as 22 minutes of light entertainment. Sometimes seeing fiction through an insistently critical lens can ruin all the fun, but with 'New Girl,' the ideas being tossed around by writers at blogs like Jezebel make the show that much more interesting. Here's a quick guide to some of the themes the show is exploring, and how they're being discussed by critics.

Max Greenfield plays Schmidt on Fox's new hit sitcom, 'New Girl,' but he's cool being known as Zooey Deschanel's TV roommate. When he stopped by 'Good Day LA' (weekdays, 9AM PT on Fox), all the 'Good Day LA' crew wanted to talk about was the adorkable Zooey, and Greenfield was totally fine with it.

Steve Edwards tried to get a rise out of Greenfield by saying, "When she was here, she said she was the only reason" the show's a hit. But Greenfield didn't bite. "Well look, I'm not going to argue with that," he said. Although he's also had recurring roles on Fox's other hit shows 'Ugly Betty' and 'Veronica Mars,' he's grateful for 'New Girl';s success. "Everyone involved knows how seldom that happens," he said.

J.R. Martinez has managed to come back from a near-fatal explosion in Iraq and go on to star in a daytime soap opera and is now competing on 'Dancing With the Stars.' He talked about what happened to him in Iraq, and the two-and-a-half year recovery that came after, on 'The Tonight Show' (Weeknights, 11:35PM ET on NBC).

One of the hardest things for him was coming out of the coma and seeing his body for the first time; he suffered severe burns on 40 percent of his body. Only 19 years old at the time, he recalled, "Coming out of a coma and seeing your body for the first time and thinking to myself, how am I ever gonna get a beautiful girl?"

Fox's 'New Girl' is the highest-rated new comedy of the Fall TV season. For the "adorkable" Zooey Deschanel, the transition from movies to TV has been seamless. In an interview with 'Good Day LA (weekdays, 9AM PT on Fox), she explained why.

"I think of it as a little movie. It's more like every week we're making a little movie," she said. "Our comedy is all about building on the characters and it's not about jokes, it's about characters being thrown into situations."

After more hype than probably any other sitcom in a season with a lot of new sitcoms, 'New Girl' (Tue., 9PM ET on FOX) premiered.

Given the sweet spot on the schedule right after 'Glee,' the show lived up to a lot of its promise, though it could be accused of trying a little too hard to be cool and clever.

Zooey Deschanel is cute as a button, but here's hoping she dials it back a notch in future installments as she settles in with her new male roommates. In this premiere, the guys helped her get back out there in the dating world after a break-up, only to find out she was stood up on her first try -- for texting too much.

So they ditched a party to go meet her at her date and cheer her up by singing some 'Dirty Dancing!' It's the heart these characters show and the heart the show had in that moment that gives it promise for the future.

A lot will be written this fall -- and a lot already has been said -- about the bumper crop of new shows that revolve around female characters. Three women-centered comedies premiere this week, and they certainly have their share of interesting gender issues.

But before getting into that topic, it might be worth saying whether these comedies are funny or not, and whether they have the potential to be consistently amusing once they shake off the flop sweat that almost all comedy pilots display.

In order of both laughs and potential, I'd list the shows in the following order: The solid '2 Broke Girls' (9:30PM ET Monday, CBS) is at the head of the class, 'New Girl' (9PM ET Tuesday, Fox) is in the middle of the pack, and 'Whitney' (9:30PM ET Thursday, NBC) is the most problematic of the three.

Superfans of Jimmy Fallon may remember a certain song he recorded a decade ago. If not, he refreshed all of our memories on 'Late Night' (Weeknights, 12:37AM ET on NBC). He did so because Zooey Deschanel was on the show, and she was the co-star of his 'Idiot Boyfriend' video.

With bright blonde hair, Deschanel was almost unrecognizable in the clip, while baby-faced Fallon doesn't seem to have changed much at all. Not that Deschanel looks at all old enough to have even been an adult woman ten years ago.

The two of them were clearly having a blast hanging out together, doing goofy valley girl voices back and forth and just chatting it up like old friends rather than a host and a guest. Fallon is always a lot of fun behind the desk when he feels more comfortable with his guests.

Craig Ferguson has slowly evolved a trio of options for when he's completed his interview with guests on 'The Late Late Show' (Weeknights, 12:37AM ET on CBS) because he's never known how to gracefully close an interview.

So the guests now can choose between an awkward pause, playing a harmonica mouth organ, or they can touch his glitter ball. When Zooey Deschanel chose the harmonica, Ferguson revealed that if she was good she could earn a prize: The Golden Harmonica Mouth Organ!

We should have known something was up when Deschanel killed a lot of time saying she should have won one of those for her previous appearance on the show. "I actually played it quite well," she said.

Virginia Madsen is headed back to television following a recurring role on 'Monk.' The Oscar nominee will next star in the ABC dramedy 'Scoundrels,' playing a mom of a family of criminals who finally decides to clean up her act. The network has picked up eight episodes of the series, which will air in the summer. [Hollywood Reporter]

More casting news after the jump.

Wilhelmina Slater just can't catch a break.

Not only does she have a conniving daughter, a dead lover and Daniel Meade's ineptitude to deal with, now she's set to discover that she has a long-lost twin ... well, kind of.

The Ausiello Files is reporting that 'Ugly Betty''s resident devil in Prada is in for a shock in early 2010 when she discovers that she's the subject of a drag queen impersonation act, ingeniously named Wilhediva Hater. But that's not even the best part -- Ausiello's sources say that the man behind Willie's fabulous doppelganger is none other than Vanessa Williams' real-life brother, Chris Williams. There's nothing like keeping it in the family.

In light of this fierce casting, we at Inside TV have taken it upon ourselves to compile a list of our favorite real-life sibling co-stars to have graced the small screen in recent years:

Bravo has announced the show Top Chef Masters will begin Wednesday June 10th. The show is basically the celebrity version of Top Chef, where "world-renowned" chefs will compete for $100,000. The money will be given to their favorite charity. The format hasn't changed: the quickfire and the elimination challenges remain, but there will be a five-star grading system implemented.

There are 24 chefs, but I will have to trust the producers with their use of the words "world-renowned" since I'm just an average guy. One of the few chefs I know is Top Chef guest judge Wylie Dufresne, who is well known for his work on molecular gastronomy. The contestants' bios are available on the Bravo website.

(S19E17) "Sorry, Lise. I can't be a vegetarian. I love the taste of death." -- Bart Simpson

Another Bart-centric episode, which means another decent installment of The Simpsons. It's unfortunate that these types of episodes couldn't have been dispersed more evenly throughout the season. This would have made for a less Homer-centric run of shows during the first half of the year -- something that many fans (or maybe just me) were expressing concern about.

Entertainment Weekly announced earlier this week that Zooey Deschanel and Glenn Close would lend their voices to upcoming episodes of FOX's hit animated series The Simpsons. Deschanel will appear in an episode that will air in April, while Close will reprise her role of Mona, Homer's mother, in an episode that is set to air in May.

Spoilers warning!

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