· Oh, Johnny Drama, you're so much better than this: Kevin Dillon will star in the 300 spoof National Lampoon's 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas. Will someone please book him for some personal appearances and save him from this kind of strike-insurance slumming? [Variety]
· Cavemen's overhauled series premiere "performed OK" in the Tuesday night Nielsens, while House lead Fox to victory in primetime. [THR]
· Natalie Portman joins the cast of the remake of the Danish love-triangle drama Brothers, in which she'll play the sister-in-law boinked by dreamy-eyed homewrecker Jake Gyllenhaal while sleepy-eyed soldier Tobey Maguire is off fighting in Afghanistan. [Variety]

If, like me, you've been rooting for filthy-rich dotcom entrepreneur Mark Cuban, then take heart: The grace-challenged terpsichorean has made it to the next round on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." But he may not have won new fans with his moment of exultation: Wearing an ubergay sleeveless shirt, he pumped his arms straight up in the air, exposing his hairy, sweaty armpits. Then again, maybe you're into that kind of thing.

Even though the network might not want critics to have advance access to its retooled Cavemen premiere (weirdly, as we typed those words, we could've sworn we heard Peter Krause whispering from the sidebar, "The comedy that has everyone talking debuts at 8 p.m. tonight , only on ABC"), they realize the importance of making sure that awareness of the show is high among audiences who expect intellectual engagement from their television programming.

Internet billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban takes the stage again on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." As I watched this, I had three thoughts: "Wow, that outfit is gay, even for 'Dancing with the Stars'"; "Mark Cuban is a really good bad dancer"; and "Those are not spirit fingers! These are spirit fingers!" Still, Cuban is the geekiest contestant on the show this season, so give him a little love, won't you?

· Agenting's Evil Empire joins forces with its baseball equivalent, luring the New York Yankees into their nefarious embrace with the promise of brokering lucrative new corporate sponsorships and keeping the clubhouse buffet stocked with the most delicious babies the Bronx has to offer. [*Full disclosure: As a lifelong Yankees fan, this one really hurts.] [Variety]
· Now using fifth-grade English reading lists to fill out his development slate, NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman has ordered 13 episodes of a drama series based on Robin Crusoe. [THR]

Is ABC not sending out advance screeners of the primitively retooled Cavemen to critics because the network doesn't have any confidence in their product? Of course not! "'They're not ready,' the spokesman said. 'They want the "finishing touches" completed before critics take a peek, and that won't happen before the premiere. 'That's all there is to it.'" And if critics don't get a chance to depress Tuesday's debut-night numbers with their silly opinions, well, that's just a bonus of the network's obsessive—and not at all suspicious—perfectionism. [LAT ShowTracker]

· Rob Reiner officially endorses Hillary Clinton, immediately embracing her campaign's talking points on Barack Obama: "Based on the experience I have had in politics, and I have been on the front lines in a lot of these fights, I came around to realizing that we do need the most experienced and most qualified person to run the country." [Variety]
· The much-anticipated premiere-night Nielsen deathmatch between NBC's Bionic Woman remake and ABC's Grey's Anatomy spin-off is won by Bionic; meanwhile, Kid Nation dropped off from its unspectacular debut numbers of last week. [THR]
· Mark your calendars, Michael Bay fans, because giant fucking robots are coming again, eventually: Paramount and DreamWorks have staked out June 26th, 2009 for Transformers 2. And the project stays even if Spielberg and his pals go. [Variety]
· Bonnie Hunt is getting a daytime talk show. [THR]
· And on the development battlefront, NBC and ABC set up competing, Famesque projects about young people chasing their performing arts dreams in NY. [Variety]

Reluctant martyr for all bullied gay TV doctors T.R. Knight returned to The Ellen DeGeneres Show today, eight months after sitting in the very same seat to jumpstart his Evil Gay Mastermind plot to undo his McThreateningy co-star, Isaiah Washington. In that time, T.R. appears to have relaxed a great deal, having had some time to acclimate to his new out status and fully savor the bottomless pit of emptiness that accompanies entering the L.A. gay dating pool.

And as for the guy who challenged his manhood over the way he handled the aftermath of Reilly's unexpected firing, Silverman acknowledges there's some buzz on Pushing Daises, but does take a shot at Steve McPherson's beloved Cavemen, which internet blogsite Cavefamer has called "twenty-two rollicking, Cro-Magtastic minutes of laughing and thinking that will make you forget all about auto-insurance commercials!"

· Thumbing its nose at coldhearted, Spielberg-disrespecting corporate partner Viacom, DreamWorks Animation names legendary Sumner Redstone shitcanee Tom Freston to its board of directors. That'll teach you not to fuck with a national treasure, unfeeling new CEO Phillppe Dauman! [Variety]
· Now here's some casting chatter we can get behind: Jessica Biel is "in talks" to play Wonder Woman in Warner Bros.' comic book megamovie Justice League of America, a project that may include other DC heroes like Superman (but not Brandon Routh), Batman (ditto on Bale), the Flash, and Aquaman. [Variety]
· In lower-budgeted comic book project news involving stars further down Hollywood's alphabetical hierarchy, Dominic West, Doug Hutchison and Wayne Knight join Lionsgate's new Punisher feature. [THR]
· The season premieres of Heroes and Dancing with the Stars both build on last season's debuts, while new CBS "look at how socially inept smart people are!" sitcom Big Bang Theory (seriously, will those geeks ever get laid? We can't handle the delicious tension!) actually drawing a bigger number than lead-in How I Met Your Mother. [Variety]
· Conspicuously silenced Emmy blasphemer Sally Field is attached to play Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Liam Neeson's Abe in Steven Spielberg's slow-developing Lincoln biopic. [THR]

Anarchic headline-discussion site Fark's predictably juvenile — if completely on target — take on a videoblogger's departure from mainstream TV: "Amanda Congdon and her world-class breasts are gone from ABC.com" [Fark]

ABC has finally realized that popular, busty, vacuous Internet anchorwomen do not translate into popular, busty, vacuous television anchors. The network is severing its one-year relationship with Amanda Congdon, who shot to Internet fame hosting the videoblog Rocketboom. So what now?

ABC is now offering free streams of its shows at AOL.com in an effort to expand its Web viewing audience. Viewers will be delighted to know that the webcasts will use "geo-targeting," so you'll continue to receive local ads, like that shouty used-car salesman you've grown so fond of. [Wall Street Journal]

While being a "perfect storm" of a television executive certainly sounds glamorous, the demands placed on an individual possessed of a heretofore unseen combination of populist taste, dealmaking experience, and the ability to look at a hit foreign series and say, "Yeah, that would probably work in America. Buy ten episodes!" can sometimes slow a party-train to a crawl. Consider the plight of NBC's Ben Silverman, who on Saturday night had a difficult decision to make about his Emmys seating arrangement, a choice that carried significant political ramifications. Reports TV Week's blog:

· We're impressed with Variety's show of headline-pun restraint with this one: The plug has been pulled on Stopping Power, Jan De Bont's planned action thriller starring John Cusack, after funding fell through at the last minute. [Variety]
· Conflicting with other reports, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution "thrilled" Venice audiences. One journalist asked if the graphic sexual sequences were real, to which the director responded, "Have you seen the film?" Funny—we always felt what The Hulk could have used were some Brown Bunnyesque elements. [Variety]
· ABC orders a script for The Fixer, about "the most powerful woman in New York." We knew it was only a matter of time before Leona Helmsley's dogwalker had her own show. [Variety]
· NBC and Apple have a parting of the ways, with NBC's content disappearing from iTunes as soon as December. Why can't Steve Jobs and Ben Silverman just iron this bullshit out over a couple of primo bong hits? [THR]
· Giovanni Ribisi is pulled in by the CAA Death Star's tractor beams. Run, Giovanni! They're nothing but a greedy and secretive institution that want to have undue influence over your life decisions! [THR]

It's heart-warming to see that somebody in this country understands the plight of the plucky immigrant. After enduring the extreme physical and mental stress of dodging the paparazzi with a sex doll dressed up in your likeness and finding the perfect multi-million-dollar mansion in Los Angeles all by her lonesome, our malnourished heroine Victoria Beckham has been clutched warmly to Ugly Betty's ample, restorative bosom:

• Blackmen [YouTube]

For all TMZ's gloating about thoroughly chapping ABC's hide by printing a leaked list of Dancing With The Stars contestants, it seems the network merely made the site its pawn in its cunning game of lies: That roster was fake, and the actual cast was revealed today. Notably absent is the one person — Lou Ferrigno, bodybuilder, cranky green giant, and heroic L.A. Country reserve deputy sheriff — whose rumored participation might have enticed us to watch for, oh, at least ten minutes. And anyone hoping for a showdown between 90210 vixens will be likewise crushed:

The Best Week Ever blog positively identifies this Crunk & Disorderly photo's central, pteryodactyl-flipping Neanderthal—according to the caption it was taken outside the Ivy, so we suppose they were there recently—as BWE contributor and Cavemen star Nick Kroll. This time, however, we're not going to make any crazy assumptions about ABC's involvement in the trio's obviously unauthorized activities—we're sure they rented a convertible, spent hours putting on their own elaborate makeup, and hired a location-shoot crew all on their own, just because they're the wildest, craziest, free-publicity-cravingest Cro-Magnons in primetime.

A little while ago, a representative from ABC's program publicity department wrote in to let us know that the Cavemen-on-the-street shoot encountered by a pair of our readers (whom, by the way, we know not to be affiliated with ABC) at Hollywood's Gower Gulch shopping center yesterday afternoon was not connected with the network's series. Despite our utter confusion about why some guys in Neanderthal make-up and a camera crew not on the network payroll would be chatting up the series (weird!), we are happy to pass along this clarification about ABC's avowed non-involvement in whatever it was going on at the Gulch.