guest stars

Be on the lookout for a number of famous guest stars to appear on your favorite shows this season. Check out a round-up of some recently-announced apppearances:

• Actor/producer Jerry O'Connell is set to star opposite his real-life wife Rebecca Romijn on the season's final two episodes of Romijn's ABC hit 'Eastwick.' O'Connell will play Kat's (Jaime Ray Newman) new neighbor, Colin, who isn't what he appears to be. Husband and wife have worked together twice before, with O'Connell making a brief appearance on 'Ugly Betty' and Romijn guest-starring on O'Connell's short-lived comedy 'Carpoolers'. [Entertainment Weekly]

More casting news after the jump ...

Every good football team needs practice and now it looks like the Dillon Panthers will be getting more than their fair share. According to Entertainment Weekly, NBC's latchkey football series 'Friday Night Lights' will be bringing aboard a new cast member: Steve Harris.

According to Entertainment Weekly, NBC's latchkey football series 'Friday Night Lights' will be bringing aboard a new cast member: Steve Harris.

While a lot of shows seem to be thriving in cable, in the last couple of days, two series have bitten the dust. TBS dumped The Bill Engvall Show after three seasons, and now A&E Network has canceled The Cleaner, opting not to give the drama series another year. Hmm... does that mean Benjamin Bratt is available to return to Law and Order?

Probably not. Been there, done that, you know. But the TV pro is now unemployed although I doubt that'll be for long. The Cleaner just never really clicked for A&E. It was as intense as the network's hit reality show, Intervention, but it wasn't nearly as compelling.

(S01E08) Warehouse 13 finally delivered an insane episode worthy of the show's strange and ridiculous premise. Steve Rubel's bewitched disco ball mated with Lewis Carroll's magic mirror to make Myka switch places with Carol's "Alice," who turned out to be a really creepy serial killer. Now this is the kind of stuff I wanna see.

If you ask Syfy's marketing folks, tonight's ep was all about the guest stars, Eureka's Erica Cerra and Niall Matter. They were serviceable as married grifters addicted to a cool little artifact, but they were pushed to the background just like Tricia Helfer and Joe Flanigan before them. "Duped" was really all about watching the Warehouse team do some much-needed bonding (and bringing the weirdness and the screwball comedy elements to the forefront, of course).

We all knew this was gonna happen.

Along with Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox starred in one of the most popular ensemble TV comedies of all time. It's inevitable that at least one of her former Friends co-stars will eventually show up on her new ABC comedy, Cougar Town, for a guest spot. Even show creator Bill Lawrence knows that this is something the TV Gods demand.

"You and I both know that we'll do that eventually," Lawrence told EW's Michael Ausiello about the possibility.

But don't expect to see any of Cox's old friends visiting Cougar Town any time soon. ABC is set on selling the show's star and not potential guest actors this fall, Lawrence said.

"'30 Rock' is just brilliant. I love it. Tina Fey is a goddess."

The biggest fans of actors are fellow actors, and we applaud those TV stars who appreciate shows other than their own.

We asked some of our faves which series they'd like to guest star on -- and ran into sci-fi lovers, crime-scene enthusiasts, Liz Lemonites ... and a few surprises along the way.

See which shows stars daydream about appearing on.

Guest stars can be good and guest stars can be not-so-good, but this one sounds like a winner to me. EW's Michael Ausiello has an exclusive report that Florence Henderson will be on Samantha Who?

And if you think Christina Applegate kind of looks like she could be related to Florence, you're not alone. The Brady Bunch veteran has been cast as Samantha Newly's grandmother, Jean Smart's mama. And if that's not blonde goodness and potential hilarity for you, TVGuide.com has another exclusive; Christine Ebersole will play Sammy's aunt. In the very same storyline!

This season of Project Runway lost some star power when Jennifer Lopez pulled out of judging the final runway shows due to a "foot injury" (which apparently didn't hamper her in a triathalon the next weekend).

But the reality show plans to make up for it. Access Hollywood says that Lindsay Lohan will be the guest critic in the premiere of the sixth season, the first with new producers and a new network in Lifetime.

Lohan's already in New York for her guest role on Ugly Betty, and the cast can't believe the "mayhem" she incites everywhere she goes. Ana Ortiz told ABC News Radio, "It really puts it into perspective the bubble that she has to live in ... people yelling at her and cussing at her. It's unbelievable."

Another week, another guest star announced for NBC's 30 Rock. But this is one I'm actually looking forward to.

Actually, I'm looking forward to all of the guest stars that have been announced for 30 Rock this season (OK, maybe not so much the Gossip Girl cast), including Jennifer Aniston and Oprah Winfrey. But this one seems particularly impressive and funny. Steve Martin will appear on the Thursday night comedy.

(S07E07) Too often when a show reaches an anniversary, like say 100 episodes, the producers feel the need to mark the occasion with an extraordinary entry. That was what happened with Monk.

To commemorate the 100th episode, they created Mr. Monk's 100th Case, and using a show within a show format, celebrated Adrian Monk, a modern day Sherlock Holmes. San Francisco's defective detective

Thank goodness it all worked! I was afraid we were going to get a clip-laden, down-memory-lane type of show with nothing remotely intriguing. No, writer Tom Scharpling and company were more clever than that.

The legacy of Star Trek includes many memorable guest stars, Joan Collins as Edith Keeler in "City on the Edge of Forever," Ricardo Montalban as Khan on "Space Seed," Jane Wyatt as Spock's mother on "Journey to Babel." And those are just the ones that come first to mind.

But what about the less celebrated stars who appeared on ST? There were many who made a great impression because of the larger than life character they were given to play, and the ability to seize the spotlight.

Here are five of my favorite, and most memorable, though less celebrated, Trek stars...

Here is Reason #243 why I like Neil Patrick Harris, or NPH as people have taken to calling him: He thinks that How I Met Your Mother is perfectly OK without all the guest stars. And, yes, that includes that nutty gal from Louisiana.

"I worry that if they start Will and Grace-ing us too much, that the show will suffer, " NPH told Erin Carlson of the AP. He's referring to the fact that W&G spent many of its later years building comedy around a parade of high-profile guest stars. He went on to say that "we're all really proud of the content of the show. I mean, viewership is not our game. It's the network and the studio's game, you know. It's the promotion department's game."

NPH feels he's in "the minority" with his view, according to the article, and he thinks the fact that the show is opposite Dancing with the Stars (or, as he calls it, "an awkward reality dancing competition") has caused the network, as well as creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, to scramble for viewers.

(S03E01) Welcome to season three of How I Met Your Mother. If you read my Early Look post on the season premiere, you'll know that season three picks up where season two left off.

Well, kinda. Yes, Robin and Ted have gone their separate ways after a year together. Yes, Marshall and Lily have just gotten married (and I guess are back from their honeymoon, but they never say).

But something didn't happen --at least not right at the start of the episode -- that I think almost every HIMYM fan expected to happen.

When we last left the group of five intrepid twenty-somethings from How I Met Your Mother, Ted and Barney were smoking cigars after Lily and Marshall's wedding. Ted had just finished telling the tale of how he and Robin broke up. And, after some uncharacteristic sympathy, Barney gets all charged up about being a wingman for Single Ted. The season ends with Barn launching into his signature line: "Ted, my boy, this is going to be legend... wait for it..."

Well, we waited all summer. And Carter Bays and Craig Thomas know how long we waited; they named the third season premiere, which airs on CBS at 8 PM ET on Monday, "Wait For It." Was it worth the wait? Some non-spoilery thoughts after the jump.

Since the very first season, The Simpsons have had numerous guest stars. Some have only appeared once, while others have returned again and again. Now, with the eighteenth season recently wrapped up and no end in sight, The Simpsons have had roughly twelve billion guest stars. That number might not be accurate, but I think it's close.

I mention this because our friends at AOL (which owns TV Squad), want to know who your favorite Simpsons guest stars are. If your brain needs a bit of prodding, you can check out this list I made a year ago, but I think my fellow Simpsons fans should be able to come up with a list of actors just fine on their own.

Oh yeah, and AOL also wants to know what your favorite episode of all time is, so be sure to mention that, too.

So, start filling up the comments, folks. The most popular choices will be featured on AOL TV sometime in the near future. We'll keep you posted.