“TV shows about writers are notoriously hard to get off the ground, but ABC’s Castle [2009] sounds like a brilliant disaster of train-wrecky goodness,” notes our top-secret tipster (okay, our very own Colin) of the new network showcase for BG’s beloved Nathan “Captain Hammer” Fillion.

“It is, in fact, so bold in its multi-genre mutant hybrid cloning experiment that it has to be great. At least for the four episodes they will be allowed to air.”

Headline of the week from The Daily Mail: “50,000 women abandoning church every year as Buffy the Vampire Slayer turns them on to witchcraft.”

Dr. Kristin Aune of the University of Derby, “said many young women are put off going to church because they link it with traditional values,” the Mail reported, adding, “She also said television icons such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who promote female empowerment, discourage women from attending services.”

Hmm! Reminds me of that classic from BG anti-crush Pat Robertson: “Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Well. Who says we can’t have it all?

Advertising Age reports that The Parents’ Television Council (PTC) is wagging quite the stern finger at broadcast networks for undermining marriage, they say, by making affairs look much more interesting. Networks show sex between married couples as “boring, burdensome or nonexistent, while depicting extramarital sex as positive,” according to the PTC. “[Prime-time] verbal references to nonmarital sex outnumber references to sex in marriage nearly 3 to 1, and scenes implying sex between unmarried partners outnumbered similar scenes between married couples 4 to 1.”

Sure: Shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lipstick Jungle, and Sex and the City certainly have their philandering plot lines, even if they end up with Carrie ending up with Mr. Big. Sunday’s episode of Mad Men showed Don Draper having ho-hum coitus with his wife, while sultry, unmarried Joan Holloway had anything but. And let’s not even get into the implications of Swingtown. Of course, in fairness to writers — TV and otherwise — a happy marriage makes a happy couple … but maybe not so great a story. (At least once the reality-wedding show ends.) But still: have we come so far that it is no longer risqué enough to merely say “Sex Sells,” but that “Forbidden Sex Sells”? And does it not just sell, but also, you know, drive us to seduce the pool boy?

(more…)

Something about New York Magazine’s “Vulture” blog’s plug for the film “Mardi Gras: Made in China,” caught my eye. Perhaps it was the post’s title, which contained the phrase “Ritual Breast-Baring”? Reading on, I learned that the film profiles four of the Chinese teenage factory girls who make those infamous love beads, making the point that the Western women who — in that infamous Bourbon Street courtship rite — don the beads… well, they enjoy quite a different set of human liberties. “The documentary earns an intimate, easy confidence with the girls,” says the post, “who blush and scream when they see how their product will eventually be used.”

Check out the trailer here, in versions both S and NSFW.

While we’re on the subject, what do you think? Is Are women at Mardi Gras (and while we’re at it, women on Spring Break vying for a free Girls Gone Wild t-shirt) reveling in their freedom of sexual expression and celebration of their bodies, or are they merely cheapening themselves and keeping their global counterparts from ever advancing and earning equality and respect in their own countries? Is American bad-girl behavior (if you classify this as such) what the rest of the world has to look forward to in terms of cultural advancement? Weigh in your thoughts in the comments below!

“Horrible” news: there’s much more in store!

(Including, if we’re lucky, a comic/character called “Woman Scorned.”)

Also: Chuck-tastic!

This week on Oprah.com (via Men’s Health): The five best cities to meet men over 35. (They don’t say how much over.) Here, we’ll spoil the slideshow: the winners are … San Jose, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, San Francisco, and Arlington “FUN CENTRAL”(tm) TX. Hmm! Perhaps our own “Feeling Rejected” should consider becoming (if she’s not already) a massive Rangers fan?

P.S. While we’re on the website, props to Oprah for addressing abuse in relationships. Say what you want about her weepy (or jumpy) couch confessions, or Dr. Phil, you can’t deny that when she talks, people — including people with something they need to hear — listen.

Alas, the bloom’s off this rose: Bachelor Brit Matt Grant and his chosen fiancé Shayne Lamas have, as you may have heard, announced that their engagement is off.

“We tried hard to make it work but we realized that we were both heading in different directions,” the two said in a statement. “We truly care about each other and will remain close friends.”

Over the past 12 seasons, The Bachelor‘s ratings — as opposed to relationships — have remained fairly solid. Who knows what’s to blame: the pressure of the spotlight, the alleged unlikelihood that a true bachelor will ever change his spots, or retribution from the gods for ABC’s casting almost exclusively white people.

Yet we can’t help but watch, and we can’t help but hope. Could season 13 prove to be the luckiest in love? Maybe … if Brooke and Matt from Farmer Wants a Wife write some sort of self-help guide. (No country wedding yet, but at least they’re definitely still together.) That, or perhaps all Mr. Season 13 needs to do is ditch the tux and hop a tractor?

… including the terms “elk hunting,” “biological weapon,” and “career brassiere,” plus bonus cameo by BG imaginary boyfriend Adam Baldwin. Both videos, plus other awsm linkage, here.

FOBG Rebecca Traister’s ode to Scully is more than worth a day pass to Salon.com’s premium offerings. After all, you’ll need something to last you till tomorrow.

Highlights:

Dana Scully was not standard television beautiful, but a diminutive pre-Raphaelite, pale of skin and red of hair, who could give equal amounts of soul to lines like “Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, just in contradiction to what we know of it” and “Well, seeing as how it’s Friday, I was thinking I could get some work done on that monograph I’m writing for the penology review: ‘Diminished Acetylcholine Production in Recidivist Offenders.'” A woman who, when asked by her pestering partner to examine a cadaver’s head just one more time for a set of horns, can snap on her gloves and mutter “Whatever” like she really means it.

And, about TV romance — or at least spooky chemistry:

The pairing, based mostly on the dynamic between actors Anderson and Duchovny, crackled, and the show had at its core a professional relationship that was not just sexually, but romantically, electric. Of course, back then, when we all walked a mile to school and programs started the season in September and finished them in May, slow-burn television relationships burned really slowly, especially in comparison with today’s short-attention-span theater, when an unrequited prime-time couple can maybe make it to sweeps before kicking off their panties. Not only did the sparks between Mulder and Scully fly fast and far, but the drawing out of their relationship allowed their audience to fall for them too, despite the irritating imperfections of both character and plot.

See you at the movies!

Bravo — speaking of staying friends — is premiering a new dating show that sounds like it could be all about the awkward. Date My Ex: Jo and Slade stars the ex-couple from Real Housewives of the Orange County. Jo De La Rosa has moved from the OC to the L-to-the-A to get busy with her music career, but Slade Smiley has come along as her friendly “business manager.” Jo’s friends will be setting her up each week with a new guy they think’ll be good for her, but here’s where Slade really gets all up her business. Not only will he be grilling and testing the guys each week, he’ll be weighing in on how pure he thinks their intentions are. Oh, and he’ll be living with them. Could Slade possibly be interested in seeing Jo independent and happy, or does the very premise of the show prove he’s not ready to move on? Check out a sneak peek — especially if you missed Monday’s premiere — to see the first of many priceless (sad, shocked, or masochistic?) looks on Slade’s face.