I saw a stand-up comic a few years back that noticed the weakness in the whole "pet psychic" premise. Whenever the animal clairvoyant -- someone who is supposedly able to read pets' minds -- enters a home to "sense the thoughts" of a house pet, they always ask the same question first:

"What's your pet's name?"

What? Couldn't Fido or Mr. Fluffy-Kins give you a psychic business card?

With the prime time arrival of Pet Psychic Encounters on Saturday nights over at Animal Planet, we have yet another show that exists comfortably in the realm of the unprovable. You can't disprove that series host Sonya Fitzpatrick is a pet psychic because an Alsatian is very unlikely to hop up and scream, "No, I did not say I prefer dry food to leftover meatloaf! I object, sir!" You can't prove a negative. The same rule holds up for the endless march of ghost shows on "reality" TV.

Wow, there's a sentence I'll never type again.

MeetUp.com has a series of new commercials out, and they seem to suggest that this guy's cat really wants him to have a better social life. In fact, in this ad, the cat is so bummed that the guy doesn't have any phone messages that he... well, you'll see.

It's been my experience with cats (I'm a dog person) that they don't care enough about you to even think about your social life. You could be dying on the floor and they'd probably just look at you for a second and then continue to look out the window or clean themselves. (Here's a better ad.)

[via Adfreak]

(S05E13) "What does L.A. have in store for us today?" -- Brenda

Major crimes was back on the job with a case that was gruesome and grim at the same time. How Brenda managed to face the morning crime scene without blanching is proof that she's as tough as nails beneath that smiling, sweet Southern facade. Brenda needed to be when dealing with a triple homicide, gang rape and possible gang war. Welcome to L.A. More on the case and the kitty situation, after the jump.

(S05E04) After an intense, heavy-duty The Closer last week, it was probably a wise move to roll out a lighter episode. That's what this show was, a change of pace with some insight into the delicate dance that makes Fritz and Brenda's relationship work.

The decision to not work together since they're not married was news to me. But Fritz had an ulterior motive in getting Major Crimes into the case of missing person Austin Blair. The motive was not just to distract Brenda Leigh from her grief of losing Kitty, but at first that seemed to be his intent.

The mystery of the spaghetti-eating cat has been solved.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's the skinny. During a segment on binge drinking on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, the show suddenly - and without any explanation at all - switched to a picture of a cat seated at a table eating a plate of pasta. The cat wasn't on the show and they never said why it happened. But now a spokesman for the show has explained what happened. It wasn't a technical glitch or similar error, it was actually done on purpose! The woman talking about binge drinking said something shouldn't have said, so instead of using the usual "bleep" the show went to this picture of a spaghetti-eating cat. If you watch the clip after hearing this explanation you can actually tell that's what happened, because the audio drops out too and when they come back co-host Juliet has a half-smile/half grimace on her face, as if something bad was just uttered.

Via the AOL viral video site This Just In (AOL also owns TV Squad) comes a video featuring a very young-looking Mike Rowe (currently the host of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel) selling a cat toy on QVC. Rowe was a presenter on the channel in the early '90s.

Give Rowe credit, because he's trying his best to sell a product that is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified grocery bag, but how enthusiastic can the poor guy get about a bag that even QVC's resident cat doesn't seem to care about? I suppose he could have got inside the bag himself . . . oh wait, he did.

Remember Battlebots? Someone uploaded a chunk of video from that old show to YouTube and I have spent the better part of the last hour watching it over and over. (Maybe it's an end-of-the-week thing and I'm tired) It's about Elvis the cat and the robot wheelchair that his owner created for him. At first, I thought it was a spoof but now I'm fairly certain this guy really thinks his cat knows how to operate a robot. God, I miss those robot geeks.

Video is embedded after the jump.

TV Squad readers tend to know a lot about the inner workings of the television industry, so it's not a surprise to many of you that some shows we grew up with were actually retoolings of British sitcoms. Three's Company, Sanford and Son, and All in the Family are all based on shows that first aired across the pond. Sometimes, however, networks will try to turn a popular British series into a popular American series and fail miserably, and such was the case with Red Dwarf. I was a pretty big fan of the original Red Dwarf, and I would hear occasional rumblings that an American version was being planned. It turns out a pilot was actually shot with American actors, as well as Robert Llewellyn reprising his role as the android Kryten. NBC passed on the pilot but still wanted to try to turn it into a series. In the end, though, an Americanized Red Dwarf never came to fruition. Television Obscurities has a wonderful history of this failed attempt, complete with video clips of the unaired pilot.

You know, I really don't like reality programming, but I'll consider a reality series that's only three-minutes long and features a house full of cats but no humans an agreeable compromise. Well, actually, it's not a "reality series" per se, it's more like a three-minute promotion for Meow Mix catfood on Animal Planet, but hey, let's not split (cat) hairs. The series, called Meow Mix House, debuts on June 16 during the 9 p.m. EST hour and will focus on a house filled with cats from animal shelters in New York and Los Angeles. They'll take part in competitions, and those who are voted off will be placed in a permanent home and receive a year's supply of Meow Mix. The winner, however, wil be given an executive job at Meow Mix. So yeah, it's essentially a commercial for Meow Mix, but it also reveals the importance of pet adoption. The cats will be given personalities, as well, through voiceovers. It should be both cuddly and adorable. The series will run for ten weeks, though it may not always run in the same timeslot.