It uses role reversal; just swap the wife for Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, or the guy from King Of Queens. The point is: Gender stereotypes persist on TV.

Fox Reality Channel is debuting a new show called Househusbands of Hollywood, which focuses on five stay-at-home men who run the house while their wives head to work. You'd think that sounds like an outside-the-box twist on the Real Housewives. Yes. And no.

One of the Househusbands, Grant Reynolds, husband of Good Day LA anchor Jillian Reynolds, says: "It's not about cattiness, it's about raising a family and doing the best you can with what you have." Get that? Women are catty; men are strong and serious about raising families.

Cosby Show actress Tempestt Bledsoe, who is dating former A Different World star Darryl M. Bell, was hesitant to do the show because they're not married, and says: "Reality usually is a lot of fighting, but it's nice to see a show that's lighthearted and good-spirited and you don't have to sit down and cringe every time you look at the screen." Because you know, those shows with the women? Cringe-worthy.

Of course, it's not all bad for women on TV: as the LA Times' Mary McNamara pointed out earlier this week "women get to do just about anything on TV."

They can chase down aliens ("Fringe"), converse with angels ("Saving Grace"), race through jungles and time continuums ("Lost"), catch serial killers while wearing hats and high heels ("The Closer") and play both sides of the legal field with the likes of William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden ("Damages).

But it's interesting that popular "reality" shows — Rock Of Love, Real Housewives — rely on a catty, confrontational stereotype, while smart, accomplished ladies (Damages, The Closer) remain fictional.

Satirizing The Sitcom [Sociological Images]
'Real Housewives' Formula Gets A Twist With 'Househusbands Of Hollywood' [NY Daily News]
Shrew Versus Shrewd [LA Times]

Bravo describes Miami Social as a show about "the lives of a group of hot, young professionals – corporate types by day and party animals by night – as they navigate the sometimes murky waters of Miami's hottest locales." However, those who have seen it, say the show - which airs tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT - is populated by seven relentlessly shallow socialites who could have been culled from any city in the United States. The cast includes a divorced couple, George French and Sorah Daiha, who are still friends and live in the same apartment building. Two cast members are reality show alums: Katrina Campins, was on The Apprentice and Hardy Hill was on Big Brother. Homosexuals are well (or perhaps poorly) represented in the cast. Michael Cohen, who used to work at In Touch, is openly gay. Fashion producer Ariel Stein is alternately described as an openly gay or bisexual man. But, it seems his biggest claim to fame is either hating fat people or being vice president of the company that gave us The Wearable Towel. Rounding out the cast is Maria Lankina, a bisexual Russian photographer who ships her 13-year-old daughter off to a Swiss boarding school in an early episode. Below, we take a look at the reviews for Miami Social.

Variety

Taking vacuity to a new level, Bravo's Miami Social might provide a wake-up call to a network that risks running out of rich and fabulous people to profile. Lacking the connective tissue of the Real Housewives franchise, this new docusoap feels heavily directed and still manages to feature a loosely aligned group without a single redeeming quality among those in it, other than the cut of their jaw line or the size of their boobs. So what's Miami Social about? It's about an hour, and a long one at that.

The Boston Herald

Bravo even attempts to goose Miami Social with two veterans of other unscripted franchises: Hardy Hill is well-known to fans of CBS' Big Brother; Katrina Campins was a contestant on the first season of NBC's The Apprentice. Katrina's marriage disintegrates in the opener. That might mean something if Katrina didn't act like a cyborg. George and his fiery Russian girlfriend Lina fight a lot and make up a lot. George's ex-wife, Sorah, lives in the same apartment complex and finds herself drafted as a negotiator in their ongoing war. Maria steels herself to say goodbye to her daughter, heading for a private boarding school. Hardy's girlfriend wants a baby. The two gay men in the mix could set the gay rights movement back 20 years. Ariel, an ex-model turned fashion show producer, is pathological about people he finds unattractive. Having drinks with friends, he interrupts to point out, "Oh, my God! I look so good in this reflection - and hot." Who, outside of an asylum, speaks that way? The various Housewives shows work because everyone has or knows somebody like at least one cast member in their own lives. But few have friends like these and even fewer would admit it. Beyond the relatability factor, there's another problem: These people are boring.

The Los Angeles Times

It is a comely enough group, and the Miami Social cocktail-hour conversations seem less fake than other show-enforced cast get-togethers, with Cohen happily burbling Addison DeWitt-meets-Paul Lynde banter and Stein providing central-casting bitchy. Early episodes deal with couple problems — Katrina separates from her husband-business partner, Lina lies to George, Hardy's girlfriend Trixia wants a baby. But when the only real moment of tension comes during an argument over Kim Kardashian — Cohen depicts her harshly, while Stein, self-proclaimed Kardashian pal, defends her — one does begin to worry. The presence of Cohen alone [who used to work at In Touch] seems to indicate that our celebrity feeding frenzy has overfished its waters and led to cannibalism. So if you find yourself longing for an all-night marathon of Friends or even Days of Our Lives, you will not be alone.

The New York Daily News

The early candidate for the most obnoxious member of this crowd is Ariel, who organizes fashion events. He distinguishes himself tonight by arriving at a restaurant after the rest of his party, checking out his table across the room, and getting on his cell phone to tell the owner he wants "the fat girl" removed before he will sit down. And so it goes. And like so many "reality" shows that have little to sell beyond neuroses and obnoxious, self-centered behavior, Miami Social in the end feels tedious and a little sad.

The New York Times

Ariel thinks of himself as a person of considerable importance: he produces fashion shows in Miami-Dade County. But as long as Miami isn't New York or Paris or Milan, saying you are the biggest fashion producer there is like saying you are the biggest auto maker in Tuscaloosa. Ariel claims to be attracted to both men and women, but mostly he is attracted to himself. "Oh my God, I look so good in this reflection," he remarks, "and hot." ... Fat people in particular gross him out, and you get the sense that if he could institute zoning laws to prevent them from entering South Beach, he would be moved to civic purpose. "What if you were born an ugly girl?" he asks rhetorically. "I mean, you can be an ugly guy, but an ugly girl? That's so depressing, every day waking up and knowing that you're ugly."

Hollywood Reporter

Housewives who have to be labeled "real" was just the warm-up; Bravo has now stepped fully into the Twilight Zone with its new reality series that focuses on the lives of alien beings, filmed in their natural habitat! Sure, it's called Miami Social, but don't be fooled — these are not people from our planet. Friends even before the cameras showed up, they are all things to all viewers: gay, straight, bisexual; married, dating, divorced; friends, bitchy, air-kissing. Their "jobs" deal with parties, photography, selling rich peoples' homes and celebrity gossip (the Kim Kardashian "reality whore" debate is awe-inspiring). They hint at a distant "bad economy" but clearly have no experience with it — living on another planet as they do — and spend hours sipping champagne on the beach and taking the day for mani-pedis. Real humans would drown in water this shallow.

Salon

Since we all secretly feel that we should be far richer and far more attractive than we actually are, any show about hot rich people is bound to enrage us. Why must we toil away at our lackluster jobs, when we could be teetering around town in bad shoes, letting smarmy macho men sip icy cold tequila out of our spray-tanned bellybuttons? Next, our envy sours to self-righteousness: What has our culture come to, that such vulgar indulgences are paraded in front of our faces every few seconds?

Although it's easy to mistake Miami Social for part of the problem, the show actually performs an important service to the public by revealing just how unspeakably dull the life of the club-hopping socialite actually is. Sure, stretching ugly tops over your enormous fake tits and spending way too much money at awful, overpriced night spots might sound like living the dream, but get to know these overly bronzed, gel-haired, empty-eyed souls a little better, and you'll no longer spend your afternoons at work (the way we all do) daydreaming about fishing your bra out of a South Beach trash can at 4 in the morning. Despite its strenuous attempts to glamorize the lives of these young, wealthy, ultra-beautiful denizens of Miami's hottest circles, Miami Social reveals them to be horribly mundane.

The Miami Herald

Before we go any further, let's be clear about something: I'm not saying Miami Social is so bad it's good. I'm saying it's so bad it will make you regret being born with eyes. I'm saying it's so bad that if you saw a member of the cast burst into flame on the street, you wouldn't waste your spit putting him or her out. I'm saying Osama bin Laden, if he sees it, will weep bitter tears of frustration that he went after the wrong American city.

According to Bethenny (who is from the New York cast), Teresa Giudice — the "stage mom" whose husband is in "construction" — hates Bethenny because of comments Bethenny made about Teresa and her children on her blog.

Tomorrow, New Jersey cast member Danielle will be hosting, then NeNe from Atlanta on Wednesday, and finally Tamra from Orange County on Thursday. No housewives are scheduled for the Friday show, as of yet.

• Interviewer Daphne Barak is filming a documentary about Amy Winehouse in St. Lucia that will be released later this year. Barak promises a "truthful and revealing look at her complicated life." [People]

• People harassed Oksana Grigorieva's mother, who lives outside Moscow and doesn't speak English, to ask if the rumors that she is pregnant with Mel Gibson's baby are true. She claims her daughter didn't break up Gibson's marriage and as for the baby, "I can't say anything," she said, "Wait for the official statement from them." [People]
• While Rachel Bilson was spending time with Hayden Christensen in Canada, someone broke into her L.A. home and stole jewelry and designer clothes, including her vintage shoe collection and her grandmother's jewelry. "She's shaken," a friend says. "She feels violated." [People]
• More scary news: A man broke into three homes in Washington State, took off his clothes, and said he was looking for Jennifer Aniston. In one case he woke up a 15-year-old girl in her bedroom while he was drunk, and she had to force him out of the room. [UPI]
• Dash, the new South Florida boutique owned by the Kardashians has been vandalized before tomorrow's grand opening. Police are trying to determine if it was a random crime or if someone was targeting Kim and company. [TMZ]
• Britney Spears' former bodyguard is suing her because he claims she "negligently operated her home and business thereby causing injuries to [him]." [TMZ]
• Lawyers for Britney Spears' conservatorship have filed legal paper saying they are owed $2.5 million because they have revitalized her career and stabilized her personal life. [TMZ]
• T.I.'s jail sentence has been reduced to 60 days because he already served 305 days at home. So if one say, blogged from home, could that help shave time off a future prison sentence? [Perez Hilton]
• Rumors going around the internet that Patrick Swayze died are not true. "This is to confirm that Patrick Swayze did not pass away this morning contrary to severely reckless reports stemming from a radio station in Jacksonville, Florida," says his rep. "Patrick Swayze is alive, well and is enjoying his life and he continues to respond to treatment." [People]
• Nadya Suleman will be in the hospital for the next day or two after undergoing a second surgery in four days. She went in for an operation on Thursday to remove benign muscular tumors on her uterine wall, but excessive bleeding forced doctors to stop the surgery. Her second surgery to complete the procedure went well and she is resting in the hospital. [Radar]
• Brad Pitt and his brother Doug Pitt have donated £392,155 to Drury University in their hometown of Springfield, Missouri. The money will help the school's sports arena earn a Gold Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design (LEED) certification, making it the most eco-friendly arena in the U.S. [The Daily Express]
• Angelina Jolie watched the trial of a Congolese warlord accused of using child soldiers in the International Criminal Court today. She praised the former child soldiers who came to testify against him, saying, "After watching the proceedings from the viewing booth, I stood up and found Thomas Lubanga Dyilo looking at me. I imagined how difficult it must be for all the brave young children who have come to testify against him." [AP]
• Robert Pattinson is going to star in all sorts of serious indie movies, to show the world that he's much more than just that dude from Twilight. He shares some deep thoughts about his upcoming roles at the link, but assures fans he'll have a lot of screen time in New Moon, even though in the book his character doesn't. [Variety]
• Robert Pattinson is committed to doing the fourth Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn. "I went into it thinking it was a trilogy," said Pattinson, "I'm looking forward to doing a saga." [E!]
• The following shows are cancelled: The Unit, My Name Is Earl, and Medium. But, the following shows were saved at the last minute: Chuck, Dollhouse, and The New Adventures of Old Christine (which will switch to ABC if CBS cancels it). [The Live Feed]
• Also cancelled (before it even ran) the Gossip Girl spinoff Lily and Privileged, which will be replaced by the new Melrose Place. [N.Y. Magazine]
• Rashida Jones and Andy Samburg star in the fake trailer MTV Movie Awards "Best Villain" nominee Gentle Dismemberment, which is frankly not the best of Samburg's promos for the awards show. [Funny Or Die]
• Ellen DeGeneres was the Tulane University commencement speaker, which is apparently one of the finest graduation speeches ever given. You can watch it at the link and decide for yourself. [Perez Hilton]
• Everyone thought Pink and Carey Hart were renewing their vows at her house because she was Tweeting about a "white wedding" but as the ceremony started she wrote: "My best friend is getting married. Hahaha. Not me." [The Daily Express]
• Here's the new trailer for Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr.. It looks awesome, but purists will probably point out that Irene Adler never handcuffed a naked Sherlock Holmes to a bed. [People]
• Hindu leader Rajan Zed was hating on Gwyneth Paltrow's, saying she shouldn't use lines like "nourish the inner aspect" on her Goop newsletter. "The actress needs to grow-up and stop writing about mundane topics like ‘Boots by Gucci', ‘Banana Pancakes', ‘The Hungry Cat' and ‘Tweezerman' - in which she talks about taming the unruly eyebrows of men." said Zed. "Instead, she needs to talk about topics like realizing self, immortality, deeper reality, eternity, soul, inner realms of the mind and spirit, pure consciousness. That's if she's truly serious about inner aspect." [Pop Crunch]
• Kylie Minogue has been dating what The Daily Mail calls her "Spanish toyboy" for seven months. She says, "It is all going well and I know I am very happy right now. I want the happy ever after ending. I've definitely changed. I'm just letting things happen and seeing what does. In so many ways I am behind the mark for my age. I'm not married and I don't have children but my attitude now is that things may happen or they may not but just be happy." [The Daily Mail]
• As part of a weekend of birthday surprises for Tori Spelling, husband Dean McDermott got a tattoo featuring "a large Koi fish symbolizing Tori, a tiger representing Dean, and three baby Koi fish for Liam, Stella, and (McDermott's son from a previous marriage) Jack." The tattoo also featured peonies and the word "forever." [People]
• Here's an update on everything Jon and Kate Gosselin plus their eight kids have done since Saturday, including fascinating tidbits like Kate running errands with her daughter Alexis. [People]
• While he wasn't allowed to do a cameo in Star Trek, William Shatner is excited about his new YouTube cartoon The Gavones. "It's the mafia in Hollywood trying to make a hit – and half the family think it's murder and the other half thinks it's a movie," says Shatner. "It's a comedic Soprano family." [People]
• Producers from Bravo are looking for cast members for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. [TMZ]
• "I am nobody's white bitch, gold digger or fame chaser!" - Russell Simmons' new girlfriend. [The Awl]
• Pedro Almodovar explained his directing style, saying, "I play all the roles on set," for example, "In a film I made a long time ago ... I even performed cunnilingus on an actress to show the actor how to do it." [Yahoo]

We've already seen the half-hour preview, and the hour-long series premiere runs tonight at 11 p.m. (10 p.m. Central) after the Real Housewives of New York reunion special. (It will move to its regular 10 p.m. time slot next week.)

This is Bravo's fourth Real Housewives series, and for the first time, most of the cast are related to one another somehow. The show features Dina and Caroline Manzo, sisters who are married to brothers Albert and Tommie Manzo. The family runs the Brownstone, a catering business/wedding factory in Paterson. (Though it's not mentioned on the show, several reviews note that the 350-pound body of the brothers' father, Albert (Tiny) Manzo, was found riddled with gunshot wounds in the trunk of his car in 1983.)

The rest of the cast includes Jacqueline Laurita, a former Las Vegas cosmetologist, who is married to Dina and Caroline's brother. Teresa Giudice is a friend of the Manzos, but not related. She has three young daughters and her husband owns a construction business. Jacqueline's friend Danielle is the outsider on the show. The divorcee is not a relative of the Manzos or even Italian-American.

Some reviewers say the women's family ties make their fights seem more believable compared to the series set in Orange County, Atlanta, and New York. The show relies heavily on Sopranos-influenced stereotypes, even featuring signs from the New Jersey Turnpike in the opening credits, even though these women actually live 20 miles away. Oddly, some reviewers argue that the show is more "real" than previous seasons, precisely because the women live like characters on the aforementioned HBO series. But let's be clear: The idea that any of these programs reflect the lives of most "real housewives" just proves you've been watching too much TV. Below, the reviews:

The New York Times

The New Jersey housewives are more real and more riveting than their predecessors because, well, they are from New Jersey, and also because they so closely mirror the make-believe characters in The Sopranos. The best reality shows look like fiction.

This may be the most preposterous Housewives edition, but it's also the most believable. The suffocating family ties are an improvement over past incarnations, when producers often threw together women who were not really that close and whose frictions often seemed forced. These women actually do know one another well, talk every day and raise their children together (badly). The camera crew seems to be eavesdropping, rather than masterminding. Some of the women seem to have a sense of humor, or at least to enjoy the joke that is their lives on film.

The Boston Globe

It's also totally believable, from start to finish: For all of its absurdity, this series feels more "real" than other popular docudramas such as MTV's The Hills, its characters completely authentic. Some reality stars seem completely aware of the images they're building; every conversation feels calibrated to serve some future career in fashion, publishing, or reality TV. The varied Housewives, by contrast, have built their lives and amassed their fortunes already. Now that they're fully realized, they feel they deserve recognition.
Their lack of self-awareness is intoxicating; it makes the premiere the most engrossing hour of pure TV escapism I've seen in a very long time. I watched nearly every moment with jaw agape: Don't they hear themselves saying things like, "My whole house has nothing but marble, granite, and onyx"? Don't they know that hating rich people is a quintessential TV experience? Do they care? They don't care! It's fabulous!

Compared to its predecessors in Orange County, Calif., Atlanta, and New York, The Real Housewives of New Jersey is the apotheosis of conspicuous consumption. Set in a town where every house has a hangar-size foyer with a massive chandelier, it follows what might be the closest to a group of true housewives the series has seen. "I think I'm one of the last generations to have the old-school attitude," one character, Caroline, says. "I live for my children, I live for my husband, My career is secondary."

Slate

When I say that The RH of NJ is the most synthetic installment of the show yet produced, I refer not to the cast members' investment in plastic surgery; the specimens of Orange County bionic science edge them out on that count. Rather, the drama queening in these parts is much too blatantly contrived. In the premiere, you can see the whole season's worth of conflict lurking in the foreshadows. The catfights get hyped as if arranged by Don King. The five housewives-raring to depict themselves as the heads of the Five Families-are terriblly aware of the requirements of reality stardom.

The Los Angeles Times

Maybe it's just that the women, two of them sisters married to brothers, their sister-in-law, their nice friend and New Jersey's own Cruella de Vil are actually recognizable as human beings, even with their wads of cash and strange relationship with eyeliner ...

The Real Housewives of New Jersey promises to do what the rest of the series in the franchise never really did: show upper-middle-class families living something that approximates their actual lives. Sure, there's rigging going on. In the pilot, the dreaded Danielle makes a scene over not being invited on some "girls night out" that these shows are so fond of staging. But these gals seem less interested in creating TV personas or proving themselves the "hottest Housewife" than in reacting the way they might actually react if what was happening were real.

The Washington Post

Real Housewives of New Jersey is a rhapsody in beige, a fascinating journey through a world of $1.5 million houses, minimum price — although the full effect of the nation's economic collapse seems not yet to have been felt, in the premiere. The women keep themselves in shape, most of them, but their major exercise is acquiring stuff. And always the homes must get bigger, bigger, bigger ...

The word "housewife" fell out of favor with the first flush of feminism, but these women use it without complaint to describe themselves. Besides, the term implies being married to a house, and for some of the women, that seems clearly to be the case. Meanwhile, it seems from the very first chapter that — unless later episodes get into the recession — a sequel is in order, a chance to see whether these women escape economic calamity or succumb. "I don't want to struggle with money," Danielle says. Who does? If only the choice were ours to make.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

These creatures may be so desperate for attention they'll do almost anything, but they probably aren't that bad. So much of the show is more obviously fake than Dina's parking scene, right before she drives by the exclusive-looking High Mountain Golf Club, which actually is open weekdays to anybody with $74 and a shirt with a collar ($86 on weekends).
Don't count on any figures you hear: Though there are lots of multimillion-dollar houses in Bergen County's Franklin Lakes, home base for our "real" housewives, prices start at about $250,000, not the $1.5 million Dina mentions.

And if Teresa Giudice really did pay cash for the $120,360 in goods she is supposedly shown buying in a few minutes at the furniture store, the more than two-and-a-half pounds of hundred-dollar bills would have made an ugly bulge in her designer handbag. Not to mention how it would have drawn IRS attention to her husband's construction company.

Variety

One of the moms is trying to turn her moppet daughter into a pint-sized actress/model, injecting an element of child pageantry a la Showbiz Moms and Dads, as a beaming mom sings along in her seat while the kid struts onstage. Another housewife has a twentysomething son whose goal in life— wait for it — is to open a strip club ...

These are, in short, a pretty loathsome array of deliciously shallow stereotypes, almost feeling stitched together from pieces of other programs. And one suspects while the producers sifted through footage in assembling the premiere, the smiles in the editing bay were even bigger than those haircuts.

The New York Daily News

To confirm the obvious up front, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" owes way more to the likes of Melrose Place and Dirty Sexy Money than it does to any actual New Jersey housewives.

If there's such a thing as a typical New Jersey housewife, she's a soccer mom who barely has time to brush her teeth in the morning. She's not a woman whose BlackBerry probably tells her that her first appointment of the day is phone sex at 3:30.

But then, the Real Housewives series has never been about "real" anything. The cast for a show like this, by definition, consists of exhibitionists.

Earlier: The Real Housewives Of New Jersey: Bronzer, "Buh-bies," And... Blow Jobs?
Real Housewives Of New Jersey Sneak Peek

The purpose of all of this? Charity, supposedly. Viewers can vote for the Housewife they thought did the best job putting together an outfit with the budget they were given, and the winner will be announced on May 12, during the premiere of Real Housewives of New Jersey. The winning Wife will have $10,000 donated to the charity of her choice.

I voted for Kim — the woman who wears a wig because she thought she might've had cancer two years ago — and the security text to secure my vote was totally ironic:

All of The Real Housewives of Orange County were there, four of the original Atlanta cast were there, and only three — Bethenny, Ramona, and Kelly — from New York were there.

The most interesting (to me at least) was that Gretchen from Orange County was there with Slade Smiley, the guy from the first two seasons of Real Housewives, who dated Jo, and then was later arrested on back child support payments. We posted a little while back that we heard that the two began dating before the body of Gretchen's late fiancé got cold. Does this confirm it?

Earlier: Real Housewives Star Arrested For Being A Deadbeat Dad?

• Sources say the woman who texted Chris Brown, "triggering" the assault on Rihanna was his manager Tina Davis, 40, who is rumored to have had a relationship with Brown when he was 16. [TMZ]

• It just keeps getting worse. Not only are Chris Brown and Rihanna reportedly recording a duet for his new album, TMZ reports that a music producer rushed them into the studio because "the heightened emotions would translate powerfully into the music." Sources claim the two were "very, very emotional ... the feeling in the room was pure love." [TMZ]
• Akon says he's be happy to work with Chris Brown again. "I wouldn't take anybody's personal issues or problems- I won't hold them accountable for that when it comes to work. I think it's two separate things," said Akon. [AP]
• Jesse McCartney would also love to work with Chris. He says: "From what I've seen and from what I know of [Brown], he's always been a gentleman. I've always known him as just a really nice guy. He's always been supportive of me too. Even in the early years when he was on top and I was just building my way up. He's always been really supportive…I think he'll be okay." [Perez Hilton]
• Not everyone is heaping praise on Chris Brown, but don't get too excited. This criticism comes from Donald Trump. He says he stands by a recent quote in which he calls Rihanna a loser. "If she goes back to him, she's absolutely crazy — they say that hitters are quitters," said Trump. "If she goes back to Chris Brown, who beat the hell out of her, she's a loser." [Extra]
• Oprah is dedicating a show this week to "all the Rihannas of the world" and talking about domestic violence. It's unclear why Tyra Banks is a guest. [Jossip]
• Ha. Someone took a picture of Columbia student James Franco sleeping in class. [TMZ]
• It was announced this morning that Nadya Suleman has accepted the help of Angels in Waiting, but now the organization has issued a statement saying they are not connected to Suleman in any way. It appears there may be more than one organization called "Angels in Waiting." [Perez Hilton]
• With everyone in the Suleman family constantly doing interviews, Nadya has decided it's time for the octuplets to get in on the action. She holds each of the babies in the hospital in this video. [Radar]
• American Idol told viewers to call 1-866-IDOLS-13 to vote for contestant Anoop Desai, but that number is already in use by a phone sex company. [TMZ]
• American Idol has set up another number for tonight's voting. [New York Magazine]
• Britney really is back. She went on a shopping spree in Miami. [People]
• Hayden Panettiere is supposedly trying to get ex/co-star Milo Ventimiglia fired. Sources on the set say she's behaving like a child. "She is making it difficult for everyone involved… She refuses to be on the set at the same time as him," said one source. [Perez Hilton]
• Jay Leno is performing a free show on April 7 in Detroit for unemployed autoworkers. It's called "Jay's Comedy Stimulus Plan." [NY Times]
• Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green are back together. Their rep says: "They hit a rough patch. But in every long-term relationship, people go through ups and downs. These two are very much in love and plan to be together for a long time." [Perez Hilton]
• Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins testified before Congress today about musicians getting paid fairly. [Politico]
• Anne Heche's divorce has been finalized. She and ex-husband Coley Laffoon will share custody of their son Homer. [Star]
• Here's the trailer for Powder Blue. There's probably a plot to the movie, but people seem to be excited about it mainly because Jessica Biel goes nude for her role as a stripper. Sigh. [ONTD]
• Tom Felton, a.k.a. Draco Malfoy has Twittered that he's releasing his album "In Good Hands" on iTunes next month. [ONTD]
• Paris Hilton says she hopes BFF Nicole Richie is having a boy. "I would love for Harlow to have a little brother to look after her," says Paris. [ONTD]
• After a party at the Kabbalah center in Beverly Hills, Ashton Kutcher tried to get a drunk Demi Moore into the car without alerting the paparazzi. Judging from this series of pictures, he was unsuccessful. [Socialite Life]
• Here are pictures of Freida Pinto in the new issue of Elle. [ONTD]
• Lily Allen says she is not promiscuous. "I haven't slept with many people and on a promotional trip you don't get a chance to meet or shag anyone, and I don't like one-night stands," said Allen. [ONTD]
• Tony Award nominee Domhnall Gleeson is expected to join the cast of the new Harry Potter film as Bill Weasley. His father Brendan Gleeson plays "Mad Eye" Moody. [Muggle Net]
• Apparently Alex McCord of The Real Housewives of New York City had a job, but she's been laid off. She worked from home in visual merchandising for Victoria's Secret. She says she may have to get rid of her nanny. [Perez Hilton]
• There will be a Battlestar Galactica retrospective at the U.N. on March 17 about how the show explored themes of "human rights, children and armed conflict, terrorism, human rights and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faith." There will be a panel featuring U.N. representatives, show producers, and actors moderated by fan Whoopi Goldberg. [ONTD]
• Ewan McGregor found out someone was writing a fake Twitter account pretending to be him and had it taken down. [The Business Insider]
• Coolio has been charged with one felony count of drug possession and two misdemeanors, battery and possession of a smoking device, following his arrest last week at LAX. [People]
• Disney has moved the Christmas release of The Princess and the Frog up two weeks. They don't want to compete with Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel. [Variety]
• David Alan Grier's Chocolate News won't be renewed. [The New York Times]
• Tina Turner has postponed two U.K. concerts because she has the flu. [The Star]
• Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian describe themselves as "kissing bandits" because, as Khloe says, they "kiss then run away." The newly-single Kourtney says, "I have made a ban for myself – to be single. I cannot have a boyfriend until at least a year." [People]
• Chris Rock's brother Tony has been charged with drunk driving. [TMZ]
• Marcia Cross says her daughters Eden and Savannah are big talkers. "They happen to be very verbal girls and I think that comes from me. Their mom is pretty verbal," she said. [People]
• Bad news for those planning on drinking away their economic woes: A popular bartender at the Boston bar that inspired the show Cheers has been laid off. [CBS News]
• Jimmy Boyd, the child singer and actor best known for the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" died of cancer over the weekend. He was 70. [AP]
• Kelly Clarkson says she has no desire to have kids. "I would not be a good mother. I mean, I love being an aunt to my niece and nephew. And I used to want to, like, adopt 10 kids — because I had friends who were adopted, and I thought that was the coolest thing, to be chosen. But again, my job is too selfish." [Star]
• Kelly also says, "I've never been in love. I want to be so badly – I'm a hopeless romantic, but I haven't been there yet." [People]

By being a bitch, in the grand tradition of other awesome bitches like Tina Fey and Hillary Clinton. Zalaznick gets things done, and she doesn't mince words. “Most people who are in a position like that will relentlessly hype what they do and tell you how amazing everything is,” former Vh1 executive Michael Hirschorn tells the Times. “With Lauren, there’s kind of a refreshing jolt of self-criticism…You sort of get the sense that she’s part of the game but not fully submerged in it.”

Even more telling is this anecdote from her Vh1 days:

In 2000, when Zalaznick was still working at VH1, she and [coworkers] Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato had a public contretemps that many thought would sever their collaboration. Barbato accidentally sent Zalaznick an e-mail message that he intended for Bailey. In the e-mail, he complained that Zalaznick was trying to get rid of their writers’ credits and suggested she was controlling and overcritical of him. Most infamous, he referred to her using a crude epithet, probably the crudest one reserved for women…Zalaznick’s response was telling. She neither laughed it off nor fired anyone. Instead, a few weeks later, she wrote an essay about the experience and published it on a literary Web site called Open Letters. The essay is a thoughtful, brutally honest meditation on the expectations of a woman in power. “I’m probably regarded as being tough, fairly hardhearted, outspoken,” she wrote. “I am occasionally criticized for digging in and being less accommodating to other people’s ideas and criticisms than I ‘should be.’ But this is a weird sort of (double) standard to be held to, especially in a ‘creative’ job where passions are usually what get ideas heard.”

She continues to work with Bailey and Barbato to this day. Not only did she not let that incident bring her down, she was able to get past it and move forward to greater success. However, sometimes Zalaznick's honesty and drive causes her to be, well, really bitchy. During a breakfast meeting, one of Zalaznick's underlings, Andy Cohen, referenced a workout mix he made called Fit-n-40. He later claimed, "I was being ironic!" But during that meeting after Cohen made a few other suggestions Zalaznick deemed lame, Lauren told him bluntly, "Just so you know, you have become that person who thinks he knows what is going on in the universe, but you really don’t. You’re really out of it. You don’t have the same reference points as anyone."

But back to those new Bravo shows. Zalaznick prides herself on being an arbiter of cool, an arbiter of the current and aspirational tastes of a certain group of people, and I fear with these new shows, she might have missed the boat. She claims that her network, which glorifies outrageous extravagance with The Rachel Zoe Project and The Real Housewives franchise, will thrive through this recession even though they continue to produce programs about the uber wealthy. Though the money is the backdrop, Zalaznick reasons, people watch the shows because “They’re about extreme personalities. Our stories are about the meanings of these things, and their stories and their struggles of how you get it."

What Zalaznick misses is that sometimes the wealth is so over the top wasteful that it obscures these struggles and becomes a turn off. As a 26-year-old educated woman with some disposable income, I am absolutely, smack dab in the middle of Bravo's target audience, and since the stock market Kamakazied, I've been unable to watch many of Bravo's shows. I was a huge fan of the Real Housewives of Orange County and New York, and after 15 minutes of the new Atlanta-based arm of the series, I had to turn it off because their wastefulness appalled me. What I found amusing a year ago is no longer so laughable. It makes me wonder if Bravo's wealth-based programming has jumped the Louis Vuitton-monogrammed polo pony.

The Affluencer [NYT Magazine]
Bravo Sews Up Projects [Variety]

Earlier: Tina Fey On SNL: Bitch Is The New Black

"I'm very proud of its timelessness and, you know, the fact that it has a political edge that is even more relevant now than it was then," Roseanne tells EW. "I set out to talk about America's working women, and yeah, I guess that's groundbreaking.''

But that's not the only way in which Roseanne broke new ground. Martin Mull, who played Roseanne's openly gay boss, Leon, tells EW, "One of the reasons that I was delighted with the part… was the way it was handled....Whereby let's say both Rosie and Goodman both had a little bit of a weight problem, the show was not filled with fat jokes. And by the same token, when Leon came along, the fact that he was gay was kind of like 'Okay, next! Now, let's deal with him as a human being.'" Sandra Bernhard also played an openly gay character on the show — Roseanne's friend Nancy — and her sexuality was treated with care and dignity, not like a sideshow.

And then there were Roseanne's daughters, Darlene and Becky. Neither girl was a plastic stick figure like the over-plucked teen heroines of 90210 or even the daughters on red state family friendly sitcoms like The Bill Engvall Show. Both Darlene and Becky were shown to be bright and headstrong, just like their mother. Sara Gilbert, the actress who played the sardonic Darlene, has this to say about her character, "I loved that she goes away to art school or to be a writer or whatever. I loved that she, it's the story of this family that sacrifices and is so poor, and this mother does everything for her kids, and her daughter goes on to make something of her life. I think that's so moving."

One could argue that the sitcom format is dead, and that a show like Roseanne is a relic of the sitcom age. But it still doesn't change the fact that families like the Connors are not present on television in any way, shape, or form, even on reality TV. When Bravo airs the "Real" housewives of Atlanta, NYC, and Orange County, they show only the frivolous and the uberwealthy. John Goodman said of Roseanne's debut, "'We came on following Moonlighting, and there was stuff like Dynasty and Dallas with all of these happy, rich, feel-good people, and then there was us. We knew we were different, and we knew she was really plugged in to what was going on in the country. People who looked like us were not doing too good." Looks like we could use another Roseanne these days, if only so she could kick the crap out of those wussy, whiny Desperate Housewives.

'Roseanne': The Cast Looks Back On the Show's 20th Anniversary