It was a shock to read yesterday that Charlie Sheen was reportedly not going to return to 'Two and a Half Men' next season. Could it be true that the star of CBS's top sitcom was ready to walk away from nearly a million bucks an episode because he was ready to "move on?"

Hmm... interesting. If Charlie is well enough to move on to other things, then why isn't he well enough to complete his run on 'Two and a Half Men?' Yes, the mixed signals are as difficult to read as smoke signals.

On one hand, if Charlie Sheen is really so damaged by his personal issues -- domestic upheaval, overzealous partying, the pre-emptive entry into rehab, the sober coach on set to counsel him during his return -- how would he be ready to move on? And if he can't work anymore even with all the help he's getting from the network and the production company, not to mention cast and crew and producers, could he do better elsewhere?

I've been waiting all day for an official announcement from NBC or Conan O'Brien or God on what the network plans to do with Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and the late night dynasty that is The Tonight Show. It looks like we'll have to wait just a little bit longer.

Bill Carter of the New York Times reported on the paper's "Media Decoder" blog that the talks between the network and the show have reached a road block over how much Conan's staff should receive as a severance.

It seems the network isn't ponying up enough dough for putting Conan's people out of work in this wintry economic climate. Conan's people are trying to score his staff members who aren't under a network contract at least $12 million, a number the network has yet to put on the table.

Stay tuned, TV Squadders. An announcement about the announcement is bound to land soon.

Hey, Brigitte here with TV Squad Daily. I'll be covering the TV stories I find interesting each day, Monday through Friday, in this video blog.

Today on TV Squad Daily:

• Haley Scarnato is talking about life after American Idol, and wearing other people's hair.
  
• Carson Daly is a Fanjaya! (And it's because of the hair?!)
  
• A scene from The Office causes Wikipedia major problems with their entry on "negotiation."
  

The video's embedded below, or you can download the file directly (Quicktime required). You can also subscribe to this podcast via our feed.

First Stephen Colbert, now The Office.

On a recent episode of the NBC comedy, boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell) went to Wikipedia for tips on how to fire one of his employees. So fans of the show have, naturally, gone to the site and started to edit the entry on negotiations like crazy. Because, as Michael put it (I'm paraphrasing here, don't remember the exact quote), "having a bunch of people edit a web site is best way to get accurate information."

(S01E05) This show is just too formulaic. It's not that the plots aren't a tad innovative - not just hostages at a bank but hostages in a airport control tower, a diner, and in this episode, a hospital operating room - it's just that the structure is just so formulaic and tedious. Guy with a gun takes over a place, the only two hostage negotiators in L.A. are called in, one of them calls the guy with the gun, things seem to be about to go well, then someone screws it up and this pisses off the guy with the gun and it makes everything harder for the FBI team. So they have to work harder to figure out what is motivating the guy, by going into his past (with the help of the cute girl with the Apple laptop back at HQ). That's pretty much what happens.

(S01E04) I hate it when TV shows or movies are really "predictable" in how "unpredictable" they are. Case in point, tonight's Standoff. Have I just been watching too much television the past 40 years or were the two "twists" at the start of this episode pretty easy to guess? Yeah, it was kinda obvious that the first team assault on the house was just a training exercise, and it was equally obvious that the girl was in on the bank thefts with the serial bank robber, just wearing different wigs.

That's not to say that there are worse ways to kill an hour than watching Standoff. This was actually the best episode so far.

This week, watching Commander in Chief, I felt as if I was in the middle of a lovable Steve Martin movie, one where the children were full of hi-jinks, the sexual escapades were many, the adults were in charge of Very Important Things and, at the end, everyone met over the breakfast table to giggle and eat homemade pancakes. In other words: schmaltz. In other words: saccharine. Gah! And just when we thought Nathan Templeton was going to be evil again.

Speaking of Donald Sutherland's evilness, I was happy to see just a glimpse of it, but it was prefaced by such a terrifically (I almost wrote, monumentally) obvious and overplayed line from Jim. I'll get to that in a minute. But first:

Isn't this show supposed to be award-winning? Oh, right, it was Geena Davis. Well, congratulations sweetie, I think you deserve it. But with dialogue like this, you may not keep the honor for long.