It's official. As of today, Lauren Graham will replace Maura Tierney in Parenthood, the NBC mid-season family drama. After the talk of Helen Hunt getting the role of a divorce mom struggling to get by, the former star of Gilmore Girls has landed the role... just like Bob wrote.

Hip-hip-hooray! Don't get me wrong. My heart goes out to Maura Tierney who had to drop out because she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I wish her a speed recovery and a great role in another series after her treatments are successful. And Helen Hunt might have been a lovely choice, too. But I am a major Gilmore Girls fan. I'm thrilled to pieces that Lauren is coming back to series TV.

(S02E04) "Momentum can be deferred, but it must always be paid back in full. As I always said to Walter, physics is a bitch." - William Bell to Olivia, on the dangers of jumping universes

Cryonics, frozen heads, worm juice, mercury blood, shapeshifters, and Leonard Nimoy were all featured in this episode, and I loved it all.

Let's start with the worm juice. Olivia must have been seriously craving her William Bell memories to drink that awful stuff. And what a trooper that she was able to keep it down, too. I guess it must have worked. She got some of her memories back, along with some help from the bell -- both the bell they chimed during Rebecca's psychedelic adventure and William Bell. Or Willem, as Olivia used to call him.

Is she right not to trust him? Could he have started the war? It's certainly possible, given his mysteriousness. He said for reasons she might understand later, he couldn't come back to this universe right now, possibly never. Why? What's he doing over there? Is he the one building the army? Is he being forced to? Will he and Walter face off eventually?

(S19E04) So far we've had one of those lopsided seasons on Survivor. We've seen this happen before -- one tribe keeps winning, the other keeps right on losing. The numbers on the latter are decimated going into the merge which allows the stronger tribe to keep picking them off one by one. I prefer things a bit more evenly matched. The tribal losses affect both the strong and weak players across the board. Once a tribe keeps losing every challenge, morale goes down. Then they lose some more.

Did you see Kristin Chenoweth on Glee the other night? Fully recovered from her migraine the night that she won the Emmy for Pushing Daisies, the prolific Kristin Chenoweth talked about the appearance on Glee -- including an interview with Nick the other day -- and she was enthusiastic about it.

She said it was a blast playing a character as wild as April Rhodes. She liked it so much, Kristin would like to make Glee a permanent thing. Or at least be asked back for future guest appearances.

She may get her wish. Kristin told TV Guide, "Ryan Murphy, the creator and genius behind Glee, has indicated that he'd love for April to come back some time. However, they are all working hard to figure out stories all the time. It'd be great for it to make sense for her to come back."

(S02E03) "Get my portable chemistry set ... this means bodies!" - Walter to Astrid

This episode of Fringe sort of went along without too many shocker moments -- until the last few minutes, that is. I wasn't all that surprised about the serum that turned people into human explosives, or even that it might be part of a top-secret military experiment. But I was wondering when our friend The Observer would turn up again in a big way and dump something spicy all over his plate of food.

(S01E02) Let all the doubters stand and face the wall in shame. This cast is not too big and this is absolutely the funniest new show of the season. Tonight, rather than have the characters interact directly (except for one small scene), the connection between them was thematic. And tonight it was all about fatherhood.

When they opened the show with the fathers talking about what they thought fatherhood meant, I knew this show was going to become a huge hit. They absolutely get it. They've got something really special with the three family dynamics they've set up. Something that represents almost every facet of modern America all in one show. And one by one they can talk about anything through these families.

It's brilliance in its simplicity, brilliantly executed. Not only did we get so many funny moments throughout, but if we paid close attention, we learned several lessons about life and parenthood between the laughs.

The fall season has begun and we have a ton of new and returning shows to watch again. It's great to have The Office and The Mentalist and 60 Minutes and The Simpsons back with new episodes, but I still feel a huge void in my TV-watching pleasure. And it's not because Lost and Chuck won't be back until next year.

I'm talking about 30 Rock. While all of the other NBC Thursday night comedies (Weekend Update Thursday, Parks and Recreation, Community, and The Office) have returned, 30 Rock won't be back until October 15. Not sure why that is, but Thursday nights just aren't the same without it. I even saw a promo for NBC's Thursday night lineup and how the show were back, and they included 30 Rock in the montage. That was just painful.

You're probably going to say that Dancing with the Stars was one of them, but actually those episodes were numbers 9 and 10. And it wasn't one of the CSI shows or one of the comedies on CBS and it wasn't Grey's Anatomy.

Hint: the two shows are related, and I think they're taking over the television landscape. Here's the full list of the top 20 shows in the Nielsen ratings last week. Three new shows made the list.

In last week's season premiere of Dollhouse, we learned that the usually empty-headed Echo is becoming self-aware and is now able to access memories from her many personality imprints.

This puts her in a very dangerous place, star Eliza Dushku told reporters during a conference call this week. While a self-aware Echo might be more fun and challenging for an actor to play than a "dumbed down Doll," Dushku reminded us that any sign of Echo's evolution in the Dollhouse might get her sent to "the attic," aka Doll hell.

The vulnerable Echo will be looking for allies this season, Dushku said. She and former FBI agent Paul Ballard (Tamoh Penikett) "may possibly be trying to bring down the Dollhouse from the inside," she teased. During the conference call, Dushku also talked about the unaired first season episode, "Epitaph One," working with Summer Glau, and she teased more origins and back stories for the show's other characters.

(S07E02) After last week's action packed NCIS, you might think that tonight's episode would be more sedate. Not really. There was a gruesome murder scene at the open, and plenty of mystery involving a cop who was out for revenge, but all that was a backdrop for something far more interesting. Ziva's return to the fold. More after the jump.

(S09E05) Monday was the first night that all fourteen contestants danced against each other on Dancing with the Stars. With the help of Baz Lurhmann, the scores were too close for week two.

We get the first opening sequence and I vomited seeing it. With too many contestants, the names and faces swooped by too fast in swirled high-def colors. Having Macy Gray and Ashley Hamilton back to back is ironic and laughable.

Samantha is apparently growing a nest for birds. I kept trying to look for myself in her mirror neck-piece. It's a shame because the dress is pretty, but the hair and accessories failed her.

Every now and again (mostly now), something small and insignificant will waft in front of my snark radar and won't go away until I point it out to someone. Right now, something with the new season of Showtime's Dexter has found its way through my skull and is gnawing on parts of my brain, and the only way to kill it is to expose it for the brain sucking parasite that it is. This is exactly like the first time I voluntarily watched Blossom.

So Dexter 4.0 kicked off last Sunday and the episodes I've seen are highly entertaining on just about every level (emotional, comic, spiritual, etc.). It's interesting watching Dex play the role of daddy in a non-fun stepfather kind of way while trying to juggle the needs of his dark side, which lead him and his other relationships down all sorts of roads you don't see coming.

When word broke that the Stargate franchise was moving into darker territory with Stargate Universe, fan reaction ranged from cautiously optimistic to downright angry. The anger mostly came from fans who felt jilted by Syfy's sudden cancellation of the veteran show Stargate Atlantis (it didn't help that Syfy announced the new series in a press release shortly after announcing the cancellation of Atlantis). To some, it seemed like the fan favorite (Atlantis) had to die so the edgy new experiment (Universe) could live.

Universe –- a fine, scrappy show packed with great actors – might now be facing an uphill battle with some of its target audience members. Stargate fans unwilling to give the show a chance should know one thing: The franchise's spirit of adventure remains intact in the first three episodes of Universe. It is different and darker than Stargate: SG-1 and Atlantis – even blatantly dreary at times – but it's still Stargate.