Charlie Sheen appeared in a Colorado courtroom on Monday where a judge adjusted a protective order, allowing the actor to be in contact with his wife, Brooke Mueller, The Associated Press reports.


Charlie Sheen arrested on domestic violence charges




Sheen, 44, was arrested on Christmas Day after police responded to a 911 call reporting a domestic-violence situation at a house in Aspen, Colo. On Monday, prosecutors filed charges of...


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</br>[b]Other Links From TVGuide.com[/b]

• Two and a Half Men
• Charlie Sheen
• Brooke Mueller

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Somewhere in the CBS press release about Undercover Boss's boffo debut ratings was the claim that this was the biggest debut for any new TV series since the Dolly show in 1987. If you're like me, you're thinking, Wow! And also: What the hell was the Dolly show?
I was not watching a lot of TV [...][img]http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/time/tunedin/~4/XytrPJtUyjE[/img]

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[img]http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d834518cc969e20120a876a53e970b-150wi[/img] I just wanted to let readers know that we've added a bunch of cool new items to the Watch Us Care eBay auction to benefit the people of Haiti. And I also wanted to let people know there's only one day left to bid on rare and/or swell memorabilia from "Battlestar Galactica," "Dollhouse," "Friday Night Lights," "Lost," "Supernatural" and "Sons of Anarchy."

All the proceeds from the auction and from this direct-donation page go to the Haitian medical charity Partners in Health.

Here are a few recently added auction items that you might find of interest:

• [img]http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d834518cc969e20120a8769a92970b-120wi[/img] A Nirvana "heart-shaped box" with the band's wavy smiley-face logo
• A book about the making of the HBO series "Rome."
• We've got several items from "Heroes," which is airing its season (and possibly series) finale Monday: A limited-edition necklace, a Sylar watch, a book and two different T-shirts.
• A swatch from detective Adrian Monk's jacket and a "Monk" DVD set.
• Three seasons of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" plus the recent "Sunny" Christmas special.
• Seasons 1 and 2 of "Medium" signed by star Patricia Arquette.
• An autographed "Warehouse 13" photo signed by stars Eddie McClintock and Joanna Kelly.
• A book about the making of the making of "Ugly Betty" (by the way, ABC recently announced that the show's current season will be its last). 

A few final notes:

• If you found yourself outbid in the soon-to-end auction of the framed, limited-edition "Battlestar Galactica" "Last Supper"  print, you may have better luck next time. We'll be putting another limited-edition "BSG" "Last Supper" print up for auction in a couple of days.
• [img]http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d834518cc969e20120a876ab53970b-115wi[/img] Keep checking back on the eBay auction site, more cool DVDs and other items will be added to it midweek and early next week.
• "Lost" fans get a Dharma pin for donating $25 or more to Partners in Health via this page. And Jo Garfein of the fan site Get 'Lost' With JOpinionated has sweetened the pot quite a bit. Fans who donate $15 to the Watch Us Care Partners in Health page and email her the receipt will be entered into a lottery to win very cool "Lost" swag, including items autographed by the show's executive producer Carlton Cuse and members of the cast, including Jorge Garcia and Evangeline Lilly. Check Jo's site for more details.
• "Chuck" fans, we haven't forgotten you. We'll announce in a week or two that we'll be giving away a few more "Chuck" goodie bags for PIH donors, and soon we'll also be auctioning some very cool (and one-of-a-kind) "Chuck" items.

On behalf of myself and the other people who've been working on this charity effort, I just want to extend our very heartfelt thanks. Via the Partners in Health page and the eBay auction site, we're on pace to raise $6,000 in the first two weeks of the charity effort. You did that -- thank you.


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When Andr&eacute; Leon Talley joins America's Next Top Model as a judge, he'll be replacing "Miss" J. Alexander, according to Women's Wear Daily.


Talley has decided to join the modeling competition show now that it's established. Tyra Banks had asked him to join at the start of series. But he declined.


CW's midseason schedule revealed




"At that point, I said no because ...


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</br>[b]Other Links From TVGuide.com[/b]

• America's Next Top Model
• Tyra Banks
• Andre Leon Talley

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Super Bowl ad duty kept me up late last night without time for Big Love (which, by the way, just got a fifth-season pickup!), and some more pressing duties mean I won't be able to review "Sins of the Father" soon. So feel free to post your thoughts here, and if I catch up in [...][img]http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/time/tunedin/~4/Ee94dR4dfMs[/img]

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There was a time when "Heroes" was popular with TV fans and critics alike, when the ratings were big, when the show was being held up as getting right everything that "Lost" at the time was doing wrong, when its first season was named Program of the Year by the Television Critics Association (over the fourth season of "The...



Hayden Panettiere and Jack Coleman in what may be the series finale of "Heroes" tonight.There was a time when "Heroes" was popular with TV fans and critics alike, when the ratings were big, when the show was being held up as getting right everything that "Lost" at the time was doing wrong, when its first season was named Program of the Year by the Television Critics Association (over the fourth season of "The Wire," no less, which has since acquired a "best season of TV drama in the history of ever" reputation).



As the show comes to the end of its fourth — and, barring some weird accounting from NBC, what should be its last — season tonight at 9, those glory days feel like a very long time ago. Today, some of the most die-hard "Heroes" fans I know are hoping NBC will put it out of its misery.



This column isn’t an excuse to beat up on "Heroes" again. Lord knows I’ve done that enough over the years. Instead, I want to point out that the weird arc of "Heroes" — from phenomenon in its first season to afterthought in its fourth — isn’t that unusual.



ABC recently announced that this will be the last season for "Ugly Betty," which debuted the same fall as "Heroes," and to similar levels of buzz.



We can argue about the reasons why each show ultimately failed to have cultural staying power — with "Heroes," I’ve long believed that the creative team was good at laying a foundation (introducing the original characters and their powers) but had no idea how to build on it with interesting stories or additional heroes and villains — but TV history is riddled with other shows that similarly burned hot, burned bright, and burned out, even if the realities of the business meant that they kept on flickering for years after anyone stopped paying attention.



Some other examples:



"Twin Peaks" (ABC, 1990-91): Famously weird indie filmmaker David Lynch and writer Mark Frost teamed up for this bizarre gothic soap opera and murder mystery about a quirky small town with dead girls wrapped in plastic, a "log lady," dancing dwarves who spoke backwards, psychic giants and some damn good coffee. It was a sensation for a couple of months, but Frost and Lynch admittedly didn’t believe they’d be renewed, and had no plan in place when they were. The second season was even more incoherent, and far lower-rated, and the series ended on what’s either one of the most frustrating cliffhangers or darkest endings in primetime history, depending on your point of view.



"Ally McBeal" (Fox, 1997-2002): This off-kilter dramedy about a single, miniskirted lawyer was at one point so influential and yet controversial that Time magazine put star Calista Flockhart on its cover for a story that asked, "Is Feminism Dead?" Like all shows from writer David E. Kelley, "Ally" eventually overdosed on its own quirkiness, and limped through its final seasons with a series of guest stars who failed to juice the ratings.



"Moonlighting" (ABC, 1985-1989): Legend has it this show was killed because Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd’s characters finally consummated their relationship. The legend is wrong. What ruined "Moonlighting" — a bracingly funny private detective series where the bickering, sexually-charged heroes were often aware they were in a TV show — was the long delay it took for the two to hook up, in part because Willis and Shepherd couldn’t stand each other, in part because creator Glen Gordon Caron was so slow to produce episodes that there would be huge gaps between new installments. By the time Willis and Shepherd got together, everyone had already stopped watching.



Felicity's haircut"Dawson’s Creek" (WB, 1998-2003), "Felicity" (WB, 1998-2002) & "The OC" (Fox, 2003-07): Dramas about teens and young adults inherently have a short shelf life, because the target audience is more fickle, and it doesn’t take much to get them to bolt. "Dawson’s" became a victim of its own stylized, repetitively articulate dialogue, and the other, better WB shows it spawned. The head of the WB actually blamed the fall of "Felicity" on star Keri Russell cutting off her trademark curly hair. "The O.C.," meanwhile, burned through five or six years worth of story in its first season and had nothing left by the time renewal came, other than to introduce a series of boring replacement characters.(The fourth season was a major creative resurgence, but by then, few viewers were left to notice.)




"Miami Vice" (NBC, 1984-1989): Born from an NBC executive’s request for "MTV cops," this Michael Mann-produced drama would be hugely influential to both filmmakers (thanks to its editing style and heavy dependence on popular music) and would-be fashion plates, all of whom grew their beard stubble to a fashionable length, threw on pastels and threw away their socks. Like any fashion trend, "Vice" fell out of favor after a couple of years, and the season where Crockett and Tubbs switched to earth tones marked the beginning of the end.



"In Living Color" (Fox, 1990-1994): When it debuted, "In Living Color" was celebrated as an antidote to the then-15-year-old formula of "Saturday Night Live." New stars! New characters! Cutting-edge racial humor! After a while, though, it turned out that Keenen Ivory Wayans and company were actually even more willing to recycle the same characters and jokes over and over and over again. The show ended with a whimper, but the Wayans brothers, Jim Carrey and Jamie Foxx all became movie stars to varying degrees, so they have no complaints.



"Joe Millionaire""The Apprentice" (NBC, 2004-07), "Joe Millionaire" (Fox, 2003) and "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (ABC, 1999-2002): Some reality shows, like "American Idol" and "Survivor," prove remarkably durable. Others are lucky to pump out one or two good seasons before crumbling. The original, non-celebrity version of "Apprentice" fell apart after the first season, once Donald Trump realized he was a TV star and began basing his behavior and firing decisions accordingly (and once the producers mistakenly believed that Omarosa was the reason the first season was a hit and began casting more and more obnoxious, untalented troublemakers). "Joe Millionaire," with a handsome but poor construction worker posing as a wealthy heir, was a show that by its nature shouldn’t have been tried more than once, but that didn’t stop Fox from trying (and failing miserably) with a second edition featuring gold-diggers from other countries. "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," meanwhile, was so popular in its first two seasons that ABC eventually put it on most nights of the week — and the overexposure killed the primetime version in a hurry.



One of the things all these shows (including "Heroes" and "Betty") have in common is a certain novelty factor that was there, independent of the quality of the show itself. ("Ally McBeal," for instance, combined legal drama with fantasy with farce with musical numbers, while "Moonlighting" and "The OC" both brought self-aware comedy to their respective genres.) And novelty fades, which can be particularly damaging if the quality fades with it.



Or to put it another way, if I was a producer on "Glee" right now, I wouldn’t be resting on any of my recent awards show laurels.



Alan Sepinwall may be reached at asepinwall@starledger.com, or at 1 Star-Ledger Plaza, Newark, N.J., 07102-1200. Include your full name and hometown.








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The way my week broke, I never got a chance to write about CBS' "Undercover Boss," which debuted after the Super Bowl. But my take is more or less in line with what Fienberg wrote, in that the show is well-made and effectively manipulative, but ultimately completely full of it. Did you stick around after that great Super Bowl...



CBS' "Undercover Boss."The way my week broke, I never got a chance to write about CBS' "Undercover Boss," which debuted after the Super Bowl. But my take is more or less in line with what Fienberg wrote, in that the show is well-made and effectively manipulative, but ultimately completely full of it.

Did you stick around after that great Super Bowl to watch? And, if so, what did you think?






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Now that Lux (Britt Robertson) and Life Unexpected have found a home on the CW, it's time to dig into what's next for the family that puts the "fun" in dysfunctional. TVGuide.com caught up with the cast, who revealed what's ahead, including a possible wedding, some radio station antics and a huge blowup that will find a character on her own for a while...




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</br>[b]Other Links From TVGuide.com[/b]

• Kerr Smith
• Shiri Appleby
• Kristoffer Polaha
• Liz Tigelaar
• Life Unexpected
• Britt Robertson

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Hey there, "Lost" fans! Sorry that I've been neglecting the ABC show lately.



[img]http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/.a/6a00d834518cc969e201287773e991970c-150wi[/img] I kid! I know I've been writing about "Lost" a lot lately (all my pre- and post-premiere coverage is here), and I spent part of Sunday obsessing on the show as well -- with company. Welcome to a new weekly podcast: "Orientation: Ryan Station."



My friend and fellow blogger Ryan McGee, who writers Zap2it.com's Guide to Lost, have teamed up to create a "Lost" podcast. The format we followed was a little bit of a tribute to "Mystery Science Theater 3000," in that Ryan, who lives in Boston, and I synced up our recordings of the "Lost" season premiere and provided commentary throughout the entire two hours. (By the way, my Tuesday evening blog post on the season premiere and readers' comments on "LA X" are all here.)



This was our first time attempting something like this, but I have to say, it was even more fun than I expected. We not only talked about moments and conversations and revelations we found significant, we also noticed things we hadn't noticed on other viewings of "LA X" and we offered new or more detailed theories about where the season might go and what the revelations all mean. 



Plus we made fun of those funky Temple guys wearing turbans. Because... how could we not?



Anyway, here are the two parts of "Orientation: Ryan Station." Each part is about 46 or 47 minutes long, and you can listen to these recordings on this site or on Ryan's site. You can also download these files to your hard drive and/or drag them into your iTunes library and listen to them that way.



Part 1 (which covers the first hour of "LA X") is here:

Download MoRyanLAX



Part 2 (which covers the second hour of "LA X") is here:

Download Moryan lax2_web





If you have any issues with downloading and/or listening to the podcast here, try listening to it on Ryan's site.

One more thing: I know that my end of the podcast sounds a bit tinny. If more experienced podcasters can help me with that problem, leave your input in the comment area. Of course feedback of all kinds is welcome!



Before I sign off, I want to let you know about a great initiative from Jo Garfein from "Get Lost with JOpinionated." As you may know, some friends and I have started a charity effort to aid Haiti. There are two aspects to it: Direct donations to the Haitian medical charity Partners in Health (and you get a "Lost" pin if you contribute $25 or more there), and an eBay auction, which we're adding to all the time. This week the auction has a very unusual item from the band Nirvana and choice memorabilia from "Battlestar Galactica," "Sons of Anarchy," "Supernatural," "Heroes," "Lost," "Dollhouse," "Monk," "Ugly Betty," "Rome," "American Idol" and many other shows (all of the new items for the auction should be posted by 11 pm Central Time Sunday).

For "Lost" fans, Jo has kicked things up a notch: Via her site, raffle winners who donate to Partners in Health could end up with some rare "Lost" memorabilia.

Those who donate $15 or more by Feb. 18 and send Jo their donation receipts will be entered into a raffle with these great prizes:

• "Lost" cast photos
• Custom-made tote bags from the recent Season 6 premiere in Hawaii
• "Polar Beer" and "What Would John Locke Do" T-shirts
• Autographed items from executive producer Carlton Cuse, Jorge Garcia (Hurley), Evangeline Lilly (Kate), L Scott Caldwell (Rose), Blake Bashoff (Karl) and Brett Cullen (Goodwin).

Big thanks to Jo for coming up with those prizes!

And see you next week for more "Lost" coverage and podcasting.


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Did you miss a commercial everyone's talking about? Want to watch one again?

See all the new ads after they air during Sunday's big game &mdash; as well as past Super Bowl commercials &mdash; after the jump. And be sure to weigh in on your favorites.




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</br>[b]Other Links From TVGuide.com[/b]

• Super Bowl XLIV

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