chriskattan

Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni sign a two-year deal with 'SVU,' Drea de Matteo moves in to Wisteria Lane, Disney crows a new 'Princess' and more TV news.

Good news for all you Chris Kattan fans. The Saturday Night Live veteran has snagged a regular role in the new ABC single-camera comedy The Middle. He will play a car salesman alongside series star Patricia Heaton.

Based on what I've read, this sounds like one of those safe, non-controversial, family comedies that the networks love and I loathe, such as According To Jim and Two and a Half Men (nowadays I prefer sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory). As a result, I doubt we'll be seeing characters such as Mango make an appearance (that and the fact he's on a competing network to NBC and would likely be sued for doing so).

And here I thought Kattan would end up like one of those obscure SNL celebrities like Garrett Morris or Rich Hall. In a tough economy, he's got a job. More power to him.

In a perfect example of "you never know", Chris Kattan has separated from his wife, model Sunshine Tutt, after two months of marriage. I would have called it "nuptial bliss," but I don't think that qualifies here. This was a quickie, even by Hollywood standards (although they were dating since 2005. I guess the actual wedding was a catalyst for a reexamination of the relationship).

They must have foreseen problems since a prenuptial agreement was signed. Thank goodness there are no children to worry about. Children always make a separation more messy.

This whole announcement came three days after Kattan's rep announced the split, but stated that no divorce was in the works. How quickly things change.

After a two-month wedding, you have to wonder if any romantic feelings were involved at all, or if someone just wanted a career boost. There can be such superficiality and phoniness in Hollywood. It couldn't have been a real marriage like Christopher Knight.

The best of the night so far. It starts off innocently enough with Troy Aikmen commenting on the action in the first quarter when Joe nods off and bangs his head on his mic. Queue music ("What is Love?") and we then get a montage of people across all industries nodding off at their jobs, at dinner, at awards shows, on game shows. I'm pretty sure that's Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J and Macy Gray nodding off while they were up for "Song of the Year." This keeps up until Diet Pepsi Max comes along on a mail cart and everyone starts doing "The Roxbury," or the head bopping made famous by Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell in the recurring SNL skits. The bit ends with Troy staring at Joe as Joe bops along. But the best part is after the blurbs about Diet Pepsi Max and the slogans, we get a quick shot of Chris Kattan shopping, yelling "Stop it!" to two girls doing the head bop.

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.