As of today, our fantasy of an exotic lifestyle of TV criticism is officially over — beaten, bloodied and left for dead by Ray Richmond, who compares the debauched good old days of the Television Critics Association press tours to the nearly irrelevant confab starting tomorrow in Beverly Hills. It's the first such event since July 2007, back before last winter's conference was scuttled by the writers strike and mainstream media had begun shearing critics and culture writers from their ranks like slabs of fat.

At long last, The Bachelorette—that epic, six-week-long search for eternal love in which inarticulate Mediterranean beauty DeAnna Pappas is made to choose a suitable lifemate from a man-harem of 25—reaches its chilling conclusion tonight on ABC. Stopping by the GMA studios to show off her sparkly new hardware for a visibly envious Chris Cuomo, Pappas explained the difficult-to-grasp concept of having to choose between "two totally different people. You got one guy on one hand, and another guy on another hand, and I'm two totally different people with each guy." This suggests that Pappas is the relationship equivalent of tofu, her spongy personality absorbing the flavors of any man with which she comes in contact. Somewhere, Brad Womack is breathing a sigh of relief that he ditched this chick at the Fantasy Proposal Gazebo, and chose instead to hold out for some hot, Serbian supermodel ass like his tire-fortune-heir predecessor.

After the election, Tom Brokaw will end his stint as host of Meet the Press (which is too bad, because as smug as the dude is, he's been good). Then no one—least of all NBC—knows what will happen. Howard Kurtz seems to think Ted Koppel might get the job, and Koppel has not ruled that out. But he is old, and he retired from regular TV news to do 50-part documentaries on China. If NBC plans on poaching someone so expensive from ABC, they should go after Diane Sawyer, who is bored with Good Morning America and pissed off at the network for sending Charlie Gibson to the evening news and keeping her in the morning ghetto. DC's elite will be able to get over their horror as the prospect of a lady in the Meet the Press chair by reminding themselves that she's a Republican hack who once dated Kissinger. And so the Sunday Morning Circle Jerk will continue.

Faced with the dilemma of a lifetime last night—or, rather, six months of contractual P.D.A.s before an In Touch exclusive declares their televised romance to be over—The Bachelorette's DeAnna Pappas had to winnow down her remaining pool of recreational soulmates by one. But which one? Each of the final three was jetted off to the Bahamas for the shared-date they've surely always dreamed of. As the lapping waves beckoned in the distance—offering the promise of a slow but sweet watery escape from the constant droning of Pappas's voice—they were presented with an engraved invitation from host Chris Harrison to join the prize in a designated "Fantasy Suite." (Think of it as an ultra-softcore, petal-strewn sex-dungeon, where Pappas could sample the goods and decide with whom she most feels a ribbed connection.)

· If the Mini-Me sex tape wasn't enough to convince you to abstain from sex for the rest of your life, this clip of The Ladies Of The View debating whether or not to go topless in Vegas likely will. [The View]
· Remember that scene in One Crazy Summer where Savage Steve Holland's "cute and fuzzy bunnies" turned into mass murdering psychos? Well, this is kind of like that, only for real. [Videogum]
· Has modern life killed the semi-colon? We're not sure ... but we do know that ellipses are more popular than ever... [Slate via Fimoculous]
· The naming rights for the historic Los Angeles Coliseum are for sale. Here's hoping Jumbo's Clown Room starts up a collection fund, 'cause that's one cause we'd totally contribute to. [LA Observed]
· The missing link between Kanye West and Gary Busey has finally been discovered. And that link is ... squid brains? [Detroit News]

Jessica Simpson has officially perfected the art of turning every opportunity to promote whatever is currently going on in her “career” into a public display of desperation. Ever since that gruesome Chicken Or Fish fiasco, we cannot think of a single time the game day curse has appeared on television without making a complete ass of herself. And Jessica managed to continue the pity parade on The View today. Dodging all questions related to her shockingly successful new country single, Simpson instead spun the interview into an embarrassingly blatant attempt to announce to the world how totally in love she and long-suffering QB Tony Romo still are. See Simpson hard at work, and tell us if we’re the only ones noticing a very eerie resemblance between the new Jessica and the bleached, gum-chewing, tear-drenched Britney Spears circa her “We’re just country, y’all!” era.

At long last we came to the family visits episode on last night's The Bachelorette, where husband-hungry Bachelor ejectee DeAnna Pappas—befuddled by how her stunning Mediterranean looks and alternately vacant and needy personality has yet to bag her a man—was practically smacking her lips as she assessed the studding viabilities of her four final suitors. Would she settle on freespirited snowboard instructor Jesse, strongly silent real estate attorney Jeremy, wholesome single dad Jason, or guy-she-really-wants-to-bang Graham? While we're still several weeks away from learning who the lucky guy is, we do know which of the four it won't be: That's right, it's Graham, whose aloofness and off-the-charts nail-ability carried him this far into the competition, but who ultimately never quite slobbered enough to convince Pappas that some sparkly hardware would be making an appearance at her moment of Gazebo Redemption. May the best rose-holder win.

Salty old radio crank Don Imus may have moved from CBS to ABC (by way of shame and unemployment), but he's as charming and irrepressibly bigoted as ever! Just 14 months after getting fired for referring to Rutgers' women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos," Imus interrupted an announcer on his ABC show to ask about the race of a Dallas Cowboys cornerback who was arrested six times. "What color is he?" Imus asked. Told the cornerback was black, Imus said, "there you go. Now we know." To the casual observer, this might look like an open-and-shut case of racism, but Imus has basically never been held accountable for his many slurs against blacks, Jews, Arabs or gays, so he's probably assuming ABC will eagerly swallow his comically implausible excuse for these latest comments: "I meant that he was being picked on because he's black." Oh, Imus. We knew no 40-second delay could stop your wacky racism. Audio clip after the jump.

An interesting philosophical question: Should employees get paid overtime for checking their BlackBerries outside work hours? Money-grubbing writers at ABC News say "Yes." Money-grubbing executives at ABC say "No." We say: throw away your BlackBerry and it becomes a moot point.

Finally, after years of thinking good girl Anne Hathaway's sleazy (possibly ex!) boyfriend was the K. Fed to her Britney (or is it the other way around?), the formerly controversy-free actress is beginning to show the most subtle of signs that all is not fairy dust and rainbows in her world. In this clip from today's View, resident bitch-in-benevolent-clothing Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked how Anne got along with the more frequent tabloid cover flier Kate Hudson on the set of this fall's Bride Wars. And after witnessing the normally cool under pressure Hathaway struggle to grit her Chicklet teeth and pretend all was peachy keen between the two leading ladies, we finally got some visual confirmation of the rumors of tension between Hathaway and Hudson that we've been hearing about for months. Watch Anne's true colors fly after the jump.

"Makegoods," where a television network fulfills its inventory obligations for ads that were purchased but not aired, are of particular interest this year in the wake of last fall's WGA strike — where lots of prime-time inventory was lost because new episodes of shows were delayed or cancelled. ABC's solution has begun to offer advertisers digital inventory instead of broadcast inventory, which is smart for two reasons.

The battle this spring between hands-on artiste Ed Norton and the Marvel Studio brass over the relaunch of the Hulk franchise has proven to be one of the most acrimonious displays of "creative differences" that we have seen in some time. The notoriously "passionate" (read: difficult) actor has been accused of "posturing" over how the final cut of the movie he famously claimed to have re-written played out, which led to a brisk retort written by Norton and emailed to, of all places, the actor-friendly confines of Entertainment Weekly. And although accuracy-challenged scribe Roger Friedman reports that Ed Norton "slipped off to a desert island rather than do publicity for the movie he stars in and nominally wrote," the cantankerous diva appeared in a Hulk promotional parody skit that aired on last night's Jimmy Kimmel Show. And while Norton brought the funny, he didn't resist the urge to get in a potshot at action-averse auteur Ang Lee.

On last night's The Bachelorette, a visibly frazzled DeAnna Pappas—clearly crumbling beneath the pressures of having just five short weeks to adequately assess the high-grade man-cattle brought in for her personal studding services—had nothing short of a completely fake breakdown. We're still not entirely sure what brought it on—something about the discouragement of chef contestant Robert, doomed from the start for a demonstrated reluctance to taking off his shirt.

ABC has the most popular television network website, just a shade more popular than NBC.com among the six broadcasters sampled by HitWise. But both websites are down in their relative share of the online audience, while CBS has greatly increased visits. Why? Well, for starters, CBS is ahead in the year-to-date ratings race for actual television. The top draws to the network sites are, once again, competitions and other game shows — American Idol was the top draw for Fox, Deal or No Deal for NBC and Dancing With the Stars for ABC. Almost every site, however, kept users on longer, with the average user spending three more minutes on CBS. Only visits to NBC got shorter, probably because some users are going to Hulu to watch full episodes of shows like The Office and 30 Rock

On last night's installment of The Bachelorette—ABC's envelope-pushing social experiment in which a houseful of horny male actors split their evenings between discovering each other's bodies and convincing a deeply deluded young woman that they are actually there to woo her—the remaining suitors were treated to a surprise field trip to The Ellen DeGeneres Show studio. There, they were grilled by the talk show host on what, exactly, they found so alluring about designated trophy-object DeAnna Pappas. (This proves especially challenging, as Pappas quite noticeably suffers from a congenital personality-deficiency that prevents her from doing or saying anything of interest beyond recalling the death of her mother.)

Last night's Lost season finale—spoilers ahead—was as gripping as TV comes. (Even if you're like us and stopped watching regularly somewhere around Season Two, thus forcing you to concoct your own cockamamie plotlines. We've now settled on the island being a secret Revlon animal-testing facility from which no one escapes alive.) No sooner had we recovered from the hapless bunny accidentally sent back to King Arthur's Court, when googly-eyed island bully Ben dislodged the Land-Mass-Disappearing Frozen Donkey Wheel of Doom.

Asked to assess their Daytime Emmy chances, straight-talking Gay and the City Mario Cantone pointed out for the ladies of The View that voting traditionally favors the lesbian nominee, effectively shutting them out of the race. Still, it wasn't too late to mount an 11th hour, for-your-team-swapping-consideration campaign; before long, the proceedings had devolved into a shocking, four-way sapphic hug-in orgy, the likes of which daytime TV hasn't seen since New Jersey Disney Channel-watchers accidentally glimpsed a portion of Anal Gang Bang Co-Ed Sluts #19. [The View]

· Excuse-making for the lackluster Prince Caspian rides all the way up the corporate flagpole, with Disney president Bob Iger blaming the month of May. Sure, Bob—blame lunar cycles! Those made your movie suck. [THR]
· Live Nation has signed a deal with Facebook that will allow users to purchase concert tickets directly through their social networking site, with bonus features that allow you to status update ("...is loving the Stones despite Keith's left arm just falling off,") right from the event. [Variety]
· The search for America's Next Street-Smart Business Mogul is on, and 50 Cent will be your Tyra. Ooh, look everyone! Fitty Mail! [Variety]

Just hours after professing her dedication to zipping her lips when it comes to airing any dirty laundry from her marriage to Charlie Sheen on The Today Show, Denise Richards showed up on The View to dish with the gals. And though she wasn’t continuing her passive aggressive attack on Sheen’s sperm and promising us all that she just adores it (“I mean, we have two beautiful daughters!”), she went ahead and brought up her former bestie Heather Locklear in the conversation. As we all fondly recall, Denise appeared to have stolen Richie Sambora away from Heather and committed double adultery during the top secret couple's many lobstery beach ventures. But it just isn’t true, says Denise, and Denise doesn’t do drugs, says Denise, and Denise is just not a whore so stop calling her that, says Denise.

"The chatty, weed-loving crowd went silent at [the ABC News correspondent's] call to legalize hard drugs, and Stossel admitted his own 22-year-old daughter doesn't think it's a good idea." [Post]