M2tv

Kristanna Loken is one kick-ass babe.

When the lights came back up following an action-packed clip of Sci Fi Channel's Painkiller Jane series last Friday, lead Kristanna Loken - the blond, beautiful T3 actress - flung out her arms, fingers forming "V" for Victory, and hooted and hollered "Yeah! Woo-hoo!!" at the crowd.

She fiddled w/ a button on her low cut blouse, then pounced on the hapless reporter who mispronounced her name. "Oh and...it's Krist-aaahhhhnna, by the way," she corrected.

Kristanna has an enlightened boarder energy. She gives the impression that she could tear up some slope. She's tough when she wants to be. She's protecting her turf w/ a co-executive producer credit.

Guys are gonna luv her.

Scifi's mftv movie Painkiller Jane, based on the comic book of the same name, stalled on attempted liftoff. But Kristanna was recast as the lead and she seems the perfect choice to play this complicated character.

EP Gil Grant (24, NCIS) was brought in to showrun. So now we get to see what Grant - recently liberated from Camp Don Bellisario, an ex-Marine one ER writer says runs his shows just this side of Attila the Hun - can create in collaboration w/ Sci Fi EVP of Programming Mark Stern.

After a strong start, SNL unravels.

Saturday's SNL sizzled when Jake Gyllenhaal gave his Brokeback fans a cherry on top - a perfectly lipsynced rendition of Dreamgirls, in drag. Jake was too sexy, clad in a black, low cut, fitted sequined gown. Three red-dressed female "back up singers" pumped and writhed in the background.

The SNL girls are proof positive: you're flat out wrong, Christopher.

Even the Ciingular ad - featuring two clueless white guys who download The Clash's Rock the Casbah into a cell phone and just can't get the lyrics straight - entertained. The twenty-somethings rock out as they hop into their car, singing "lock the cashbox" and "stop the catbox."

But then SNL weirdly unraveled during a skit skewering the Rosie-Donald spat - or at least that was the conceit we were supposed to buy into.

Facing a TCA-like roomful of entertainment reporters, Darrell Hammond as The Donald answered questions about his "hit" series, The Apprentice, but compulsively laces his remarks w/ over the top insults directed at Rosie.

It could have been funny but it wasn't, not at all. It was just four repetitive minutes of the same joke which wasn't all that funny in the first place. We laughed once.

Here's some of the gushing copy:

Host: I'm truly honored to introduce the creator and star of NBC's hit show The Apprentice.

The Donald: You're smart enough to be here today to talk about the sixth, and by far the best, season of my smash hit show and ratings bonanza, The Apprentice: Los Angeles.

Reporter: How has it been working w/ your daughter Ivanka on this season's Apprentice?

Reporter: How is doing the show in Los Angeles different from doing it in NY.

Reporter: We've heard in the new Apprentice the losers have to live in tents behind the mansion. How are they handling that?

The Donald: I can assure you this season of The Apprentice is going to be huge.

Well, most assuredly, The Apprentice ratings are off this season. The Jan. 9 season premiere reportedly waffled, losing about 25% of the viewers handed off by its lead Grease. The second outing, per Variety, "took a tumble," down more than 30% in the 18-49 demo from the week before.

Tinged w/ NBC's fourth place desperation, the SNL skit fell flat, coming off like a clumsy infomercial.

NBC's cross-promotion is frequently clumsy, like Bravo's Raal Housewives of the OC appearance on this morning's Today Show. (Al Roker was short on time and, seemingly, couldn't wait to get outta there.)

It's a Chayefsky-esque world we live in and everything about the Rosie-Donald spat feels contrived, like just another publicity stunt leading up to The Apprentice sixth season.

TCA finally gets its mojo on.....

An unusually tedious and news-lite TCA finally picked up a little speed at MTV's presentation yesterday afternoon. Sarah Silverman warmed up the crowd when she responded to one question by suddenly yelling at the reporter to "Shut the fuck up!"

It was all down hill from there, thank god.

When Comedy Central's post-modern Smother's Brothers - Naked Trucker and T-Bone and their back up band - took the stage at MTV's evening bash, television critics were ready to cut loose. Gripping and sipping from bottles of booze, Naked Trucker and T-Bone performed their "Chaucer-inspired" country western "hit," Two Dollars and a Hand Job and the moving country ballad Who's Your Daddy?, among others.

Seriously - MTV brought some desperately needed spice to the tour. I've reached saturation point w/ the obsessive focus on southern California and the LA play base, Las Vegas. Only Entourage does it well but still the cable nets unveiled close to a dozen new series preoccupied w/ the Southern California-Las Vegas corridor lifestyle.

One of the worst is Bravo's current series, Real Housewives of Orange County. In A&E's Sons of Hollywood cameras track the antics of Aaron Spelling and Rod Stewart spawn as they hot tub and club their way through their twenties.

And why is Tori Spelling's sonogram and garage sale camera-worthy?

E!'s High Maintenance 90210 promises "a glimpse into the lives of those who serve the ultra-wealthy and overly demanding residents of Beverly Hills, Calif "

It's also is perhaps the most perplexing and silly and irrelevant. E! introduced a recent graduate of some Dutch butler school who aspires to serve in the White House. Said butler is hired out to "recording artist" Norwood Young who decorates his sweeping lawn w/ a dozen statues of David that apparently require constant buffing. On stage, Young clutched his pair of pink and blue dyed Shitzus.

Young claimed he's been working since age 16 but couldn't explain to the press how he actually supports his lavish lifestyle, leading us to wonder if perhaps the whole thing is an E! set-up.

Earth to Hollywood: it's mostly not that interesting. It's actually a great big lens into our deadly consumption habits. Jared Diamond could have used some of these series as a case study when he wrote Collapse.

The energy picked up a bit this morning at SciFi Channel's presentation featuring the sexy, kick-ass Kristanna Loken, the Painkiller Jane lead. More later.