From her buttery tone of voice to the slurpy tone of the conversation, Curry made her nearly question-free Q&A too soft, too giggly, too adoring (she "oohs" and "mmms" throughout) and far too non-confrontational with a subject who has been protected from media scrutiny--and now deserves some--throughout her father's presidency.

The purpose of the sit-down with Jenna Bush was to promote her book, Ana's Story. Curry did that by praising the book repeatedly and placing Ms. Bush on a pedestal. Even Curry's body language revealed something interesting. At one point, she bent double, as though bowing to the 25-year-old. She ended the encounter with a gooey handshake and slobbery sentiments about how Ms. Bush will be a "force for good" in the world from here on out.

Instead of firing questions at Jenna Bush, Ann Curry tossed sympathetic statements at her. The words could have been lifted right from a press release.

Let's listen in to Curry currying favor with the First Daughter:

[From the intro to the interview]: "The young girl we barely knew has grown into a young woman. And one looking to make a difference."

"You were transformed." [referring to Jenna's UNICEF trip to South America, where she met the subjects whose life stories were combined for Ana's Story]

"Your parents must be so...your mother has said she's so proud of you."

"One of the things I think people don't realize is being the child of an elected politician is like being a child of a person in uniform. You are also serving in some ways." [This should be news to the men and woman ACTUALLY serving in the military.]

"Your mother...I covered your mother when she was in Africa in 2005...Here you are doing work that she really cares so much about."

"You had a privileged upbringing and here you are worrying about the poorest, with the least voice...this woman...Your mother has been very involved, worrying about education...When you talk about her, you just light up."

And in the interview wrap-up, Curry stated: "I can tell you that I can see that whatever you decide to do, you'll be a force of good, Jenna Bush. I'm so happy to have met you. Good luck with this book. It will inspire people."

Egads.

ABC's daytime talker--such chat heaven for the year that Rosie O'Donnell occupied the chair stage right--has become the kaffeeklatsch of many clashes.

This week Barry Manilow announced he wouldn't go on the show because of his dislike of co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. She's the young, pregnant blond one who loves Jesus, George W. Bush and frilly blouses--not necessarily in that order. Barry doesn't care for her politics. She probably doesn't care for his. So he passed.

Lots of viewers are not fanilows of Elisabeth. She's a smug little pill who has grown more strident and frowny since Rosie left. They were polar opposites politically, but they related as moms. Until they didn't in that on-air tussel that ended Rosie's tenure at the table. Since then, Elisabeth's been in perma-pout mode.

So has Joy Behar, for that matter. Her smile looks as forced as a fat girl's at a beauty pageant. Her quips just aren't as fast and funny as they used to be. She may have competed with Rosie for the big laugh, but at least there were laughs when the two shared the stage. Nowadays The View is about as funny as a middle school parent-teacher conference.

The head schoolmarm, of course, is her highness, Barbara Walters. After the Rosie dust-up, Barbara was exposed as a bit of a phony (if you believe Rosie). Turns out she didn't have Rosie's back after all. Barbara merely protected her turf at all costs.

Now pushing 80, Barbara hasn't just lost a step. She's often so far behind the conversational flow, the others have to stop and explain what they're talking about. She stutters, stammers and seems confused. The Hot Topics segments at the top of the hour carry less zing because Barbara's idea of a hot topic is lukewarm at best. It's like she doesn't dare stir up the hornets' nest again. Easier if they all just follow the lead of the queen bee.

New co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg (this is the best she can do as an Oscar winner?) and Sherri Shepherd, a stand-up comic who played small roles on forgettable sitcoms, haven't clicked. Whoopi seems constantly to be editing herself, biting her tongue lest she say something outrageous that could cost her a lucrative gig.

Shepherd, rather than providing the happy yukkity-yuks the show badly needs, seems lost when the subjects turn to anything but tabloid gossip or show business. This week she announced she was firmly opposed to the teaching of evolution and she wasn't quite sure whether the Earth was flat or round because she'd never stopped to consider it.

Yipes. The View hosts have been many things, but they've never been dumb.

Cut to Joy, looking horrified.

When the Hot Topic turned to the latest OJ Simpson foibles, Whoopi weighed in with comments eerily similar to her opening day defense of Michael Vick (he of the dog-fighting scandal). "I get confused when people talk about OJ. I'm never sure what they're pissed about," mused Whoopi.

Really? She has no idea why the public might have problems with a man who got away with double murder and now faces numerous felony charges for leading an armed hold-up in a Vegas hotel room? Really, Whoopi?

Back when Rosie briefly ruled the round-up, The View caused buzz. The chemistry among the ladies was great. Hot Topics sizzled. Laughs were many. The guests acted like they'd been invited to a great party (remember Danny DeVito?).

Now The View is just another daytime dud.

As her first guest, she welcomed one of the few celebs who hasn't been toadying up to the Big O for two decades: David Letterman. Strolling out from the wings with his hands in pockets, Dave slowly made his way to the pair of puffy beige chairs center stage.

"People call you interview-phobic," said Oprah in her opening gambit.

"When you have your own show, you have plenty of time to talk about what you want to talk about anyway," Dave explained.

As Oprah leaned in, he cracked, "You're causing my glasses to fog."

Oprah does look hot this season. With longer, curlier hair than last year, Oprah sported bright red lipstick, smoky eyeshadow and black high heels right out of a dominatrix catalog.

Dave and Oprah relived his series of "Oprah Log" entries on Late Show with David Letterman. "Why didn't you just pick up the phone?" asked Oprah.

"It was humiliating," Dave said of Oprah's years-long boycott of his late-night talk show.

"It's over," she said of their "feud." She also told Dave that along with framed photos in her office of Stedman Graham, Stevie Wonder, John Travolta and Sidney Poitier, she treasures a photo of Dave walking her across the street from the Ed Sullivan theater to the Wintergarden for the opening night of the Broadway musical The Color Purple, which she produced.

Dave riposted with a list of Top 10 Reasons I Love Oprah. Among them: "She smells great" and "We're yoga buddies." And No. 1: "She's giving everybody in today's audience a new house." Cue the screams.

He was kidding. "I'm getting a house," he muttered as they cut to the first commercial.

A little re-invention, a little loosening up of her tightly wound persona and familiar format would do O some good this season. Too often last year she seemed bored by topics and angry at guests (remember the dressing down of author James Frey?). She'd sometimes bring on best friend Gayle King, it seemed, not because Gayle's a super-entertaining TV guest, but because she needed a sidekick to carry some of the weight of the hour. Gayle giddily complied, playing chortling Ed McMahon to Oprah's Johnny.

Next up with Oprah and Dave on Monday's show: A look back at their 10-second acting gig together on a Super Bowl commercial. "You ate probably two bowls of chips," Oprah said of the shoot. Dave added that Gayle helped direct the spot, which took only about a half-hour to do.

Dave and Oprah talked about Dave's nearly 4-year-old son Harry. "I'm so damn old," groused Dave.

"Sixty is the new 40...you don't seem 60 at all," said O. "You are what 60 now is."

"And Regis is what the new 90 is," cracked Dave.

"Do you want more kids?" pried Oprah.

"I'm doing what I can!" said Dave.

Occasionally, Harry gets put in the "naughty chair," said Dave, who perhaps has been sneaking peeks at Super Nanny. "We put him in the naughty chair yesterday...and he's still there," said daddy Dave.

Guests don't do naughty things in the chairs on Oprah Winfrey's set. They often reveal their real selves under the Great O's gaze. David Letterman played it pretty cool, going for the funny and being the gentleman that he is.

Nice of him to repay Oprah's visit to his show with an appearance on hers. For Dave, mellow is the new naughty.

She entered at around 3:15 p.m. and was released around 4:37 p.m.

Richie, author of the novel The Truth about Diamonds, managed to pen her prison diary during her incarceration. Herewith, exclusive excerpts from Soleil on Ice:

Minute 14: The walls are closing in.

Minute 15: The walls haven't gotten any closer. I think it's the light and the color--an icky green.

Minute 19: I still haven't met the other prisoners. What a relief. I'm not looking for trouble. Lindsay isn't here yet, is she?

Minute 27: The screams! The horror of solitary!

Minute 53: Another mark on the wall to show the passage of time. One minute is just like another in this hellish place!

Minute 60: The hour passes like an hour. That's an hour, right? 60 minutes?

Minute 61: My feet are sweating in these prison shoes. They're worse than Crocs. I hate them. By the way, Crocs are SO over.

Minute 69: I am made a trusty and sent to work in the prison library. Wonder if they have my book. I'd like to read it sometime. Maybe I'll get a library card. It's all so new!

Minute 75: Steel toilet. Cool.

Minute 80: Is that two hours? The guards took away my Patek-Philippe.

Minute 82: I hear someone coming. They're unlocking my cell! Have a nice life, bitches!

The way some of the staff at the little CBS affiliate in Tyler, Texas, acts, you'd think they were doing 60 Minutes, not a low-budget 5 o'clock UHF newscast featuring "Stormy the Weather Dog."

Jones is blond and jiggly. She has to be told how to dress appropriately for reporting and anchoring (not so much cleavage, please! Longer skirts!). She's warned that she shouldn't flirt with the people she interviews. When she screws up a live shot by falling out of her cubicle chair during another reporter's on-camera shot, she's given a stern talking-to by station management. Then they send her out to do a story on how recent heavy rains have made the lake...wetter.

There hasn't been a goofier newsroom on TV since Mary, Lou and Ted fumbled and fumfered around WJM. The best "character" so far is Wilton, a lumbering photographer (Jeffrey Tambor would play him if this were a real sitcom) who seems to hate everyone he works with. He fancies himself a mentor, the old hand who looks askance at the lightweights who float through the station on their way up or down.

But on the first two episodes, Wilton patiently guided Jones through some awkward on-camera interviews. "Ask questions, don't tell them what words to say," he tells Jones.

The villainess, if you can call her that, is dark-haired Annalisa, who calls Jones an "idiot" (behind her back, of course) and resents all the attention the new rival reporter gets for NOT making mistakes.

Good ol' boy Wilton says Jones is already better on-camera than Annalisa. Ouch.

Tyler, Texas, is known as the "Rose Capital" of the Lone Star State. On Anchorwoman, will Lauren Jones come out smelling like one? And when will she start reacting to the thorny comments of her new co-workers?

THIS JUST IN: Fox has zarched the show after just one episode. So much for that!

This weekend's ShoToo feeds from the Big Brother house featured marathon midnight sessions of the drinking games. For beer pong, they tossed bottle caps at plastic cups. For quarters, they bounced coins off the table into plastic cups. For every successful hit, they drank some beer.

As entertainment, this ranked up there with that 24-hour Internet video feed from the English dairy of the molding wheel of cheese. Except compared to the personalities of this summer's BB8 houseguests, the cheese is wittier, sexier and far more cunning a gameplayer.

More than the previous seven go-rounds of the summer reality-competition show, this season has been a slow-starter. The housemates spent weeks forming and breaking weak alliances and doing basically nothing much of interest as the 52 cameras inside the Big Brother house whirred and zoomed, looking for something to focus on.

Then last week the remaining houseguests started to snap. "Evel/Evil Dick," the chainsmoking L.A. rock-hanger-on-er, launched a vicious verbal attack on cocktail waitress Amber for her druggie past. She wept hysterically and prayed aloud into the microphones, saying she took drugs to "help me work harder" to raise money for her daughter.

This was also the week Eric aka "America's Player" revealed the secret Amber had shared with him -- and with several million viewers -- about lying about being pregnant twice to keep her boyfriend around. Nice.

Dick's next move as house antagonist was to rag on Jameka for her perpetual prayers and Bible quoting. He lashed out at her as a "hypocrite" and mocked her Christianity. Jameka, who earlier had declared that God had put her in the house and pre-ordained who would win, often interrupted her praying for loud, angry outbursts of profanity at Dick.

"You bitch!" yelled Dick. "Yo momma!" snapped Jameka.

Dick spent some of the wee hours of one night lsat week clanging pots and pans to interrupt the sleep of gay housemate Dustin, who remarkably kept his cool. Nothing seems to upset that guy, or the house's nearly invisible muscle-boy, Zach, whom nobody likes but who manages to stay in the game week after week.

Another shocker came in last week's Head of Household competition, which saw Jen, the bikini-wearing bee-atch of the group, offer to give up $250K of the half-million-dollar prize in order to advance in the game. If she does win, she'll save the network a bundle.

Meanwhile, Dick's daughter Daniele, to whom he had not spoken for eight years prior to their being thrown together on the show, saw her "showmance" with cute Nick terminated when the others voted him out. She then outed Eric as a quisling and put him up for expulsion. Kail was voted out. Eric survived and as the network-designated house mole has been successful at manipulating the cabal called the "Late Night Crew" (Jameka, Dustin, Jessica)into doing viewers' bidding.

Even the Showtime Too nightly three-hour live feeds are starting to amp up. Saturday night's featured a long bedroom confessional between Jameka and Amber, wherein they dished everyone else and promised to take each other to the "final two" (dream on, chicks!).

As Amber blowdried her crispily overpermed hair, she bragged to a lip-chewing Jameka that she wanted to go on America's Next Top Model. "I have the hair and the face, I just need to be thinner," she said. The adverb "delusionally" seems almost redundant as a modifier to that statement. Couldn't tell if Jameka was serious or facetious when she told Amber she couldn't wait to see her picture on magazine covers.

With Daniele and her greasy dad Dick both up for eviction this week, Tuesday's episode should be a pip.

Hey, at last we have a show! Go, BB8, go!

So far his biggest assigned prank was squirting mustard on a houseguest's pillow. Animal House, this ain't.

Watching the most recent installment of BB8--an hour of endlessly dull chatter about "the game," "HOH" and "POV" competitions--inspires these suggested task for "America's player."

1. Speak only pig Latin to Kail and see if she understands it. (She won't.)

2. Try to say something to Amber that DOESN'T make her cry.

3. Use three-syllable words around Zach and allow the camera to catch his confused reactions. The guy's dumber than lumber.

4. Pee in the pool, then yell "Splash party!"

5. While he's sleeping, draw a new tattoo on Evil Dick and see how long it takes him to notice.

6. To Jesus-lovin' Jameka, who declared "God put me in this house," share a secret: That you're the grandson of famous (and now dead) Atheist Madelyn Murray O'Hair.

7. Go a whole day without acting like a lovestruck idiot around Jessica.

8. Ask Jen how much her implants cost.

9. Ditto the above to Daniele and Kail.

10. Tell the other houseguests you've seen a new banner fly over that says, "America hates all of you. Get out now."

On MSNBC Keith Olbermann, with the help of some crackerjack producers and newsgatherers, provided a lengthy and impromptu backgrounder on other bridge collapses in American history. He explained the architectural requirements of bridges and how "seismic waves" by wind could cause some badly constructed bridges to collapse. He explored the possibilities of terrorist involvement--and put that idea to rest with back-up from the Department of Homeland Security. Olbermann kept talking as the visuals showed smoke, crumbled roadway and crushed vehicles. When needed, he repeated the story "to now," as they say in TV news. Thoroughly professional, succinct and respectful, Olbermann showed he could handle breaking news.

On Fox News, it was Shepherd Smith at the anchor desk in New York. He reported from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune website about the number of deaths. Over dramatic visuals of cars perched precariously on cantilevered sections of broken bridge, Smith cued his reporters on the scene. Fox had the best visual coverage, with closeups of boats in the Mississippi trying to pluck injured victims from the water and from mangled wreckage.

And over on CNN, Paula Zahn showed why replacing her with Campbell Brown is a good idea. "I wish I could be more help," she said with a weary shrug. She fumfered and stumbled, allowed for awkward pauses and seemed utterly confused about how to narrate a live event. At one point she broke away from the live story to go back to her prepared material for her 8 p.m. ET nightly Paula Zahn Now, as if she couldn't be bothered with the live stuff. She was rescued, finally, by a call-in from a highway official from the scene and later by info from an eyewitness via a really fuzzy cellphone connection. Not good.

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Every summer brings the return of the show about human hamsters, Big Brother on CBS. This summer's eighth round of the reality series is the worst yet. The "houseguests," as the players are called, are the whiniest, weepiest, wimpiest bunch ever.

Instead of allowing viewers to play voyeur for live glimpses at diverse people reacting to enforced incarceration in their "velvet prison" (booze, pool, Jacuzzi and fairly swank furnishings), BB8 airs choppily edited hours (Tue-Thurs-Sun) that focus almost solely on "the game." Endless and terribly boring conversations ensue about "strategy" as the players form alliances and plot whom they'll use as "pawns" and whom they'll "back door" during each week's vote-outs.

Dreadful stuff.

Showtime Too on cable shows live nightly feeds from the BB house, a new addition to the show this year. But do the houseguests use this time to play strip poker or do something--anything!--that viewers might be entertained by or that might make them as interesting as, say, evil Dr. Will from BB's best summer? Heck, no. They drone around the kitchen in their baggy shorts and scraggly hair, clanking ice cubes and checking out their own reflections in the house's two-way mirrors.

More entertaining? Watching pedestrians in any suburban mall or any city sidewalk.

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The nightly gossip shows--Access Hollywood, ET, Inside Edition--need to wean themselves from over-coverage of the High Five: Britney, Paris, Nicole, Lindsay and Angelina. Even on days when none of these crazy ladies are doing anything newsworthy, they nevertheless merit breathless ongoing reports about awful stuff they have done or will possibly do in the future.

I am begging the producers of these shows now: Enough with Britney and her mean-face and thunder thighs. Enough with Paris and her puppy-appendages and vacant expressions. Stop with the footage of gaunt little Nicole hiding behind her hubcap-sized sunglasses. Hold off on further speculation about Lindsay's whereabouts and whether she is or isn't in rehab. And watching Angelina starve herself to nothingness, accompanied by her dour-looking adoptees--so sad, so boring, so over.

Find some new stars to stalk, folks. What, Posh Spice didn't go shopping today? Katie Holmes' glassy-eyed star isn't hot anymore?

"Entertainment news" these days is emptier than the Olsen twins' dinner plates.

The docu-series tries to pass itself off as a real look at the cogs and wheels inside a high-end resort hotel. Trouble is, the show comes off as phony as the signatures on a no-tell-motel registry. Scripted? Not so much. Full of obviously set-up situations that make for exploitable reality show fodder? Yeah, boy. Check out the end credits, which feature a "head of casting" and "casting director."

Somebody must have cast those 16 guys who claimed to be a ping pong club from Los Angeles. In the first episode, they arrive at the Parker for a weekend wearing mullet wigs, neck braces, cheesy track suits and other paraphernalia. They're 30-somethings who say they're ad execs and movie guys. One says he's a "professional sports fan" hired by teams to rev up crowds. Only one of the men is identifiable: Jay Chandrasekahr, director of the godawful Dukes of Hazzard movie starring Jessica Simpson.

These clowns proceed to tear up the $5K-a-night "Gene Autry Suite" like drunken frat hounds, wrecking furniture and moving the table tennis tables to places the hotel management would rather they not. Glasses are smashed. A room service three-wheeler is commandeered and ridden through the joint. The potted palms are saturated with booze.

Do I believe actual Hollywood execs would act this way if they hadn't had their shenanigans underwritten by Bravo (allegedly, as Kathy Griffin would say)? Urged to misbehave while cameras rolled, they came off as A-one A-holes.

Then there's an "international food critic" named Leslie McElroy who checks in with much fanfare to "review" the service and food at the Parker's various eating establishments. She and her sister-in-law chow on a $169 lunch, later order some room service hot dogs (which Leslie proclaims taste like sawdust) and then sit down in the Parker's dressy restaurant, Mr. Parker's, to plow through a $900 multi-course dinner.

Since when do authentic food critics announce themselves to the reviewees? There are reasons Ruth Reichl and Gael Greene wore disguises when they dined out. Restaurants should never know a critic is in the house. The whole point of restaurant reviewing is to catch the eatery unaware. That's how you get the honest-to-nosh take on the restaurant.

Ms. McElroy also sits down with hotel management to detail her complaints about what she ate and how it was served. Another no-no for legit food writers.

I Googled "Leslie McElroy" to read some of her food reviews. Guess what? Didn't find a one. She looks like another shill for the show, sent in to stir up some drama. If she's not one of the "cast," she should be whisked out of the food reviewing profession for her unprofessional conduct.

As a fan of reality television--which often outdoes scripted fare for conflict, humor and unexpected thrills--I'm getting tired of being taken for granted. Viewers aren't stupid. We can smell a fake. And no amount of lovely Parker Palm Springs bath products could cover the stench of this one.

Real good:
Who's better than Kathy Griffin at being exactly who and what she is when she's on camera? She's shallow and media-obsessed in real life and 'fessing up to that for her TV show, My Life on the D-List, ending its season tonight (July 24) at 10 p.m. ET on Bravo, has made her everybody's best TV-friend. This season she's been seen dealing with her dad's death, moving her mom into her L.A. home and recovering from divorce. For fun and publicity, she goes out on a fake date with the likes of Ron Jeremy just to get in the tabloids (it works). Even if she's a little bit diva in real-real life, she comes across on her show as really nice to her family, friends and staff. She gets what it means to be less than a superstar and we love her self-deprecation. This is a hardworking woman who dishes great dirt about the biz. She deserves an A-plus for D-List. We can't wait to see what Griffin gets into next year.

Real exciting:
Man vs. Wild on Discovery Channel pits its star, Bear Grylls, against the worst that Mother Nature can throw at him. He's airlifted into the Everglades, an Icelandic lava field, a Costa Rican rainforest and the Rockies and he's scrambled his way out without benefit of bottled water, granola bars or four-wheel-drive SUVs. Sure, there's a camera crew with him (now THERE'S a story), but they're forbidden to give him a leg up unless he's about to be devoured by something with four of them and lots of teeth. Recent reports in the Hollywood Reporter and elsewhere accuse Grylls of cheating by spending a night or two in motels during his outdoor treks. As long as they were Motel 6's or below, we'll count those as roughing it. And the stuff he can't fake--chomping on carpenter ants and squeezing drinking water from elephant dung--makes up for any other shortcuts.

Real scary:
If you can't stand his hot temper, get out of Gordon Ramsay's kitchen. The star of Fox's Hell's Kitchen and BBC-America's Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is no creampuff when it comes to teaching others how to cook fancy restaurant meals. He may be amping up the tantrums for his onscreen persona, but the reactions from the chefs-to-be he's training are anything but fake. He's caused lesser cooks to pass out cold from fear. And that's what makes him such a hot potato to watch.

Real scripted:
MTV's Real World ceased being real about 17 seasons back. Now the episodes come off as scripted, over-directed and as badly acted as Passions. Why else would young unknowns let themsevles get that stupid, drunk and slutty for TV cameras? Same can be said for CBS' Big Brother and Survivor, VH1's Charm School, Oxygen's Bad Girls and ABC's The Bachelor.

Real crazy:
Bravo's Hey Paula. Ms. Abdul seems to have no clue how much this show is damaging whatever was left of her reputation. Petulant, woozy, prone to bouts of weeping, apt to scream at her hapless assistants about the tiniest errors, Abdul is a monster in Manolos. Her PR guy makes endless excuses for her awful behavior: flu, insomnia, jet lag, hunger. But clearly her problems would take a team of specialists to treat. Hey, Paula, get some help. And do it far, far away from the cameras. The only time on Hey, Paula that she isn't slurring her words or falling asleep midsentence, she's reading what someone else wrote for her in awkwardly stiff monologue/confessions. Like so many other celebs, her greatest talent is faking incerity.

His career's in the crapper, first of all. Those ellipses in the show title could be substitutes for "Not Working Much."

The actor's most recent credit on IMDB is a 2006 TV movie called Van Stone: Tour of Duty, shot partially on location in Afghanistan. He did a few episodes of Arrested Development before that, but not much since. On the VH1 show, we see Baio's agent tell him he's up for role in a Hallmark Channel flick, one of cable TV's last outposts for has-beens, and a spot on the career ladder just a half-rung up from hosting an infomercial for acne cream.

It's not work but another area of Baio's life, however, that's the focus of the VH1 show. As the title announces, he's 45 and single. Baio has never been married and he's starting to worry about dying alone, or so he tells the life coach nicknamed "Doc Ali" who tries to help him overcome his fear of commitment.

Like other bachelors his age, Baio has issues. He still fancies himself a player, but he just isn't the handsome kid he once was. His hair is thinning, his midsection is thickening. He shuffles around with his trio of sycophantic "wingmen"--including Jason Hervey, who played the older brother on Wonder Years and is co-producing Baio's reality show. They spend their days smoking cigars, shooting bad golf and reliving past conquests with Playboy Playmates (Baio's bedded at least 50 over the years, according to one of the entourage).

Baio says he's ready for a change. He has a cute girlfriend named Renee whom he's been with for over a year and she's pushing for marriage. But Baio is balking. He doesn't understand women, he says. They talk too much. They're annoying. All of his relationships implode at some point. He's not sure why.

With the help of Doc Ali, and with camera crew in tow, Baio embarks on a made-for-TV journey of self-discovery that includes revisiting some old galpals to ask what he did wrong. "Cheat a lot," say the ones we see on-camera, including Erin "Joanie" Moran, who was 14-year-old Baio's first love back when they co-starred together on Happy Days. (Baio tells his life coach that Moran complained about the size of his...talent...which may or may not have stunted the length of all future relationships.)

Some reality shows seem realer than others. Scott Baio Is 45... and Single has much more in common with the warts-and-allness of Breaking Bonaduce than with, say, Hey, Paula. Like Danny Bonaduce, another former child star gone bitter past 40, Baio seems to sag under the burden of his early fame and fortune. He hates being recognized by fans and winces when someone calls him "Chachi." Where Bonaduce dulled his pain with alcohol, drugs and bodybuilding, Baio did it with womanizing, which he openly admits. But even he sees how pathetic it is to be a 45-year-old skirt-chaser whose biggest claim to fame is a TV show that ended before some of those skirts were born.

Baio doesn't appear to be faking anything for the cameras--unlike Paula Abdul, who appears to fake everything on her reality show, including her sobriety. With Baio, you actually see the guy not acting. He's scruffy and cranky. He scowls more than he smiles. And with those old girlfriends, he looks genuinely hurt when they unload all the pent-up resentment toward him they've held in reserve for 20 years or so.

Whether Baio obeys Doc Ali's rule about being celibate during their eight weeks of therapy is one of the running themes of the show (the wingmen make bets a la Seinfeld about how soon Baio will break the no-sex barrier). And as recurring "characters" emerge, including a wild-eyed Moran, who ropes Baio into one of those pay-per-picture autograph signings, the show could provide some all-too-real glimpses into life as a once-very-famous and now not-so-much celebrity.

Some of the best footage, by the way, is on VH1's web site for the show. Check out the extended clip in which Baio meets Moran for lunch.

Baio's future, personally and professionally, could be at stake in whatever transformation he makes on this show. Will he break like Bonaduce or get to the altar like Chris Knight on My Fair Brady? Or, like for those other fading celebs (Farrah Fawcett, for instance) who let cameras into their personal lives for a reality show, is being back on TV reason enough to let Baio believe that happy days are here again?

Grylls, a former member of British Special Forces who has climbed Mount Everest and written a book about it, loves a challenge. For the docu series, he parachutes smack dab in the middle of the Australian Outback or the Rockies or the Arctic and has four days to scramble back to civilization.

He has a two-man camera crew in tow, but they're not allowed to interact with him unless he's in mortal danger. They have survival provisions; Grylls has only the clothes on his back and a lifetime of experience surviving in the harshest corners of the wilderness.

This is a man who loves being on the move. Steering clear of grizzlies, rattlesnakes and other critters, Grylls can be seen trekking for 24-hour stretches. And the whole time he's hoofing it across hot sands or "chimney-climbing" between two slabs of limestone up a cliff, he's talking to the camera, explaining what he's doing, why he's doing it and why you may have to do it someday.

For those of us who consider "roughing it" to be a resort where the spa isn't open after 6 p.m., Grylls' adventures in no-man's-land are unimaginable. But nothing seems to faze this guy. He starts his campfires in ingenious ways that put those Survivor tribes to shame. He gobbles live bugs, worms and other crawlies like he's auditioning for Fear Factor. And Spiderman has nothing on Grylls when it comes to climbing. Grylls does it without pitons, ropes or computer-generated special effects.

Throughout each thrilling episode, Grylls provides a nonstop monologue about the secrets of surviving in nature. Hear a bear sniffing around your campsite at night? Skedaddle immediately or become a midnight snack. Stranded in the desert without water? Drink your own urine--or, as Grylls does, use it to dampen a cloth and tie it around your head for cooling.

When he's hungry, Grylls reaches into a river, grabs a trout and eats it raw. "Best sushi ever!" he declares. Seeing a snake in his path, he grabs it by the tail, kills it by whacking its head against a rock, skins it, cooks it and eats it. On Man vs. Wild, the barest landscape becomes a nonstop buffet of exotic meals.

Through rain, snow and hot lava, Grylls trudges on. Besides the sheer survival story of each hour of Man vs. Wild, the best reason to watch is to see planet Earth at its most raw. It's scary-beautiful in that Costa Rican rainforest. The dark blue glaciers in Iceland are a frozen hell for a solitary hiker, but they're one of the natural wonders of the planet.

Grylls' travels provide some vicarious thrills for us less adventurous types. Watching him swig down that brackish pond water, we might not be quite so likely to squawk next time the foam on that latte isn't just right.

King, showing even more signs of dementia than usual, lobbed his trademark Nerfs. Then asked the same lame questions again a few times--Hello! Aren't you even listening to yourself, old man?--eliciting vapid answers from his eyelash-batting guest.

Hilton, 26, allowed that her 23 days in a Los Angeles jail were "traumatic." Showing no signs of remorse for breaking the law by driving drunk (she says she had one drink that night) and later driving under a suspended license, she complained that "the crime didn't fit the punishment."

Poor Paris. Having earlier said in a phone chat with Barbara Walters that being in jail was like "being in a cage," she told Larry King she suffered from claustrophobia in the slammer. Um, doesn't everyone? isn't that the point? What was she expecting, an upgrade to a deluxe?

She also admitted to having ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder...and are we surprised to learn that?), which King then referred to as "ATT" and "ADT." Maybe he has it, too.

Hilton had no TV or radio in her cell, which she occupied alone (unless you count her massively inflated sense of herself). She read the Bible and her fan mail and she wrote things. What sort of things? After King's many pre-commercial promos for Hilton's "notes from jail," she read an excerpt: "They say when you reach a crossroad or a turning point in life, it really doesn't matter how we got there, but it's what we do next after we got there. Usually you arrive there by adversity, and then it is then and only then that we find out who we truly are and what we're truly made of."

(Thought balloon over my head while listening to this: "Judging by her writing skill, she's made of marzipan!")

Illegally blond continued: "It's a process, a gift and a journey, and if we can travel it alone, although the road may be rough at the beginning, you find an ability to walk it. A way to start fresh again. It's neither a downfall nor a failure, but a new beginning."

Paris Hilton, siren of the synonym.

Throughout the interview, Hilton played the victim and tried and failed to convince the public that she's changed in some positive way. She claims to have had an epiphany in jail--to put it in Hiltonspeak, a turning point, a change of heart or a dim bulb, er, lightbulb moment.

She wants to do something with her life besides party, though she said she would still be "social." She squeaked some verbiage about wanting to raise money for "breast cancer and multiple sclerosis." And she said she wanted to "start a place" for women who've done time and need to get back on their feet. (These days, that "place" seems to be show business.)

Admirable pursuits. Hilton's actions hence forth will speak louder than her words, which won't be difficult since even she says that when she gets nervous her "voice gets high."

Only her voice?

The high point of the Larry King appearance was when he asked Hilton if she'd been strip-searched in jail. What was that like? he asked.

Answered Hilton: "The most humiliating experience of my life. I never had to do that, you know, doing that in front of someone you don't even know. It's pretty embarrassing."

Pause. Rewind. Getting strip-searched by a female prison guard was the most humiliating experience of her life? To review: Paris Hilton starred in her own porn tape, which was sold to the public and from which she profited. On that tape (yeah, I watched it, so what) she is shown buck nekkid in bed with then-boyfriend Rick Solomon, doing things that they can't even show late-night on Cinemax. And while she's doing it, she's looking straight into the camera. This woman was also photographed by the paparazzi in numerous panty-free poses long before Britney Spears caught onto that trick as a way to get her hooha into the hotsheets. Paris has had public fights with other starlets and carried on a feud with her "best friend" and Simple Life co-star Nicole Richie. On this season's Simple Life, she administered enemas to overweight campers. And she says stripping in front of a jail matron was the most humiliating moment of her life?

Anyone hoping to see a new Paris Hilton walk out of that jailhouse saw the bitter truth in the Q&A with King. Surrounded by women prisoners who surely could have taught her a thing or two about hard times, tough lessons and adverse circumstances, Hilton spent her time behind bars focused on the one person in her life who matters most: herself.

She sure doesn't seem any smarter about the Good Book for all that Bible-reading. King asked Hilton to quote her favorite Bible passage. In the best dumb blond moment of the interview, Hilton got that doe-in-the-headlights look, glanced over at some papers and then went with the safe, stupid answer: "I don't have a favorite." She could just as well have been referring to her favorite pair of shoes or her favorite sexual position. Perhaps her jail Bible was the pop-up version.

As all of us who've gone through Vacation Bible School know, the surefire answer to "favorite Bible verse" is "Jesus wept," the shortest and most quotable of the New Testament.

The savviest answer Hilton could have given PR-wise would've been "Love they neighbor as thyself." Then again, while she's loved some neighbors--on video!--there's nobody Paris Hilton could possibly love more than Paris Hilton.