According to the entertainment reporter over at Fox News, actor Bradley Whitford "almost" got the role as the new Assistant District Attorney on Law & Order. Sam Waterston is vacating that position to play the District Attorney, now that actor Fred Thompson is leaving the show to run for president.

Everybody got that? Good.

Once again, lots of things happen. Christina (Julianne Nicholson) is heartbroken over an emotional case involving a dead baby, Billy (J. August Richards) is trying to keep his perfect record in the courtroom, Cabot (Stephanie March) and Steele (Anson Mount) get it on, Potter (Jordan Bridges) grows some balls, and Peluso (Eric Balfour) hounds the beautiful but icey girl in the office. By the way, did anybody catch why the title of this episode is 'Savasana'? I don't get it.

Well, Billy is a jerk. In his personal life and his work life. He sleeps with a girl who turns out to be a clerk and then totally shrugs her off when he sees her in the courthouse. But, even worse than that was his attempt to get a woman to drop her 1974 rape case because it wasn't a slam dunk for him. He tells the rape victim, "I don't want to put you through any unnecessary pain." Grrrr.

Is anybody else wondering where this show is going? It's trying to balance a procedural drama, which is Dick Wolf's cup of tea, with a bunch of personal storylines, which are usually not included in Dick Wolf shows. It seems clumsy, fragmented, and packed with too much information. I still don't know any of the characters' names and I feel like I'm not getting any time to get to know them because the show jumps from character to character so quickly.

If you caught The Colbert Report last night, you heard Stephen tooting his own horn over the fact that "truthiness," a word/phrase he claims to have coined, was chosen as the Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society (ADA). I assumed, like probably many others, that Stephen was completely and utterly full of crap, having a bit of fun with all of us. The folks over at BC Beat dug a bit deeper, however, and found that yes, there is in fact an American Dialect Society, and yes, "truthiness" is indeed the 2005 Word of the Year. I doff my hat to you, old timer. You are indeed a wordsmith to be reckoned with, and I am humbled in your presence.