What wasn’t there to love about last night’s Season Four premiere of Weeds? Albert Brooks as Andy’s disapproving father calling Nancy “Francie”! Silas finally entering dangerously hot boy territory! The absence of Mary Kate Olsen as the trippy hippie “sexy” guest star! And as THR reports today, we’re not alone. With 1.3 million viewers tuning in to find out Nancy’s fate with the high-level hard drug dealers (so realistically frightening for even a comedy as dark as this one), Mary Louise Parker and her merry marijuana-scented series premiere broke Showtime’s record as the most-viewed season premiere in history, topping Dexter’s second-season debut which lured 1 million. For a taste of the action warranting this kind of attention, see this clip from last night involving Parker’s adorable attempts at child rearing, dead grandmothers discovered by prepubescent boys, and our introduction to the Botwins’ omniscient neighbor named, of course, Rad.

For those of you who have been closely watching Molly McAleer's "reimagining" of the Defamer To Do's, you will note that there are a few common themes that populate a number of the videos. While we won't get too geeky and break them all down for you (after all, that's what the comments are for), savvy observers will note that a fair number of these videos involve the ritual consumption of food and/or beverages. Tonight's video is no exception, as Molls attempts to explain what's happening in Los Angeles tonight over a hearty serving of soup and salad at the Soup Plantation. Enjoy!

Death completed its triple crown of taking down talented people that we actually like and respect. First, came Tim Russert, whose passing was quickly and sadly followed by Stan Winston. Now comes news that Cyd Charisse, the actress and dancer perhaps best known for her role in Singing In The Rain, passed away today at the age of 86.

It's getting so that there are fewer and fewer places where Joan Rivers can peddle her celebrity-terrorizing wares lately, having been banished from virtually every red carpet in town—but the 75-year-old post-Vaudeville warhorse shows few signs of slowing down. Case in point, she stopped by British talk show Loose Women today to plug the West End debut of her one-woman show; Women then took the extreme measure of ejecting Rivers from their studio after she let fly a two-megaton F&S Bomb in describing Russell Crowe. Rivers later explained how she mistakenly thought the world in which she moves is on permanent seven-second delay:

Just when we thought we'd leave well-enough alone and let The Love Guru speak for itself on opening day, a pair of related developments stoked another confounded binge of concern around Defamer HQ. This morning came the film's first review in Variety, whose Brian Lowry offered an eyebrow-singeing, backhandedly optimistic pan forecasting Paramount's first flop of the summer:

What does privilege look like? This year, it was renting out an entire movie theater for your friends. But two years ago, it was a cleancut white guys playing air-fiddle on tennis rackets while singing Alabama's "Song of the South" horrificly offkey at Google society gal Marissa Mayer's birthday party, a scene captured and posted on YouTube by investor Kevin Hartz. How do we know it's Marissa, since she doesn't appear in the video? Listen closely for the really, really goofy laugh.

Depending on where you lie on the whole "insufferable, OCD-afflicted, house-flipping boss from Hell"-loving spectrum, news that the second season of Bravo's surprise hit Flipping Out premieres tonight will either come as a delight, or warning. Either way, it bears mentioning. Back again is the series's polarizing central figure, Jeff Lewis, who last season memorably spent 45 minutes entering a compound-drink order that involved the use of an overhead projector, a laser pointer, and a periodic table of the elements. In the preview scene above, Lewis has quite remarkably succeeding in adding yet another Boy Friday to his revolving menagerie of assistants. One week in, New Chris still seems eager to attend to his boss's fucking insane demands. To wit: stocking the meticulously numbered and aligned contents of his sparse refrigerator. (Coffee-Mates: 6. Yogurts: 6. Jars of martini olives: 3. Lunatics running the asylum: 1.) Like we said, you can either deal with this, or you can't. Personally, we're waiting for the series's breakout domestic to get her own spinoff, Feeling Zoila.

On yesterday's episode of Charlie Rose, Endeavor superagent and frequent HuffPo-contributing gripe-haver Ari Emanuel joined his two equally accomplished siblings—Rahm, an Illinois Congressman, Ezekiel, a National Institutes of Health bioethicist—for a roundtable entitled, "A discussion about healthcare with Ezekiel, Ari, and Rahm Emanuel." Asked by Rose how he ended up in the comparatively glamorous arena of entertainment, the Endeavor head explained how he considers himself not so much a Hollywood agent as a showbizethicist, taking on only those artists whose work can elicit some societal change.

Women earn 56 percent of all degrees in science and technology, but according to Newsweek, 52 percent of women leave those jobs, with 63 percent saying they experienced workplace harassment, believing they needed to "act like a man." It's one Tufts University's "Nerd Girls," featured in the clip above, are "working their pumps so hard" — to show that women engineers can be girls and geeks. Because the very best way to gender equality is to proclaim that what women want is to "put on lots of makeup, throw on some insanely high stilettos and walk down the street and get attention and be like Hah!"

Isobella Jade didn't have a computer when she started her modeling career in 2005. But she needed one for scheduling shoots. Her solution? Work from the Apple Store all day. When our MacBooks break down, we do the same! Except we're not "body parts models," so when the clerks ask if they can help, they're asking if they can help us please stop now. The "trailer" from Jade's autobiography,Almost 5'4", is embedded below. Skip two minutes in for the Apple Store's weird cameo.

We'd seen this in bits and pieces since its Sundance premiere this year, but an incidental reminder in our inbox just prompted another visit to Isabella Rossellini's short-film series Green Porno. And under the influence of head-clearing morning air, it occurred to us that Rossellini's episodic forays into the reproductive lives of snails, earthworms, spiders and other bugs features not only among the most sickly prurient puppetry we've seen in years, but arguably the best work the actress has done in almost two decades. Porno's backers at Sundance Channel will tell you all about their pro-ecology mandate, but honestly, we could take or leave such shameless earnestness in the face of a bug-fucking resurgence like this. Follow the jump to view our favorite episode, Preying Mantis, whose misspelling makes all the sense in the world once its grotesquerie of oozing, carnal head-eating settles in. We'll never have sex again. [Sundance Channel via VSL]

Billy Ray Cyrus, virtue-hoarding father and achy-breaky-svengali to cultural tween phenomenon Miley Cyrus, appeared on The Today Show this morning, where for the first time he was made to address the now-infamous Virgin Miley study that recently graced the pages of Vanity Fair. An unwavering Meredith Vieira was determined to figure out where he was as photographer Annie Leibovitz crouched beneath a lighting umbrella, pressing two index fingers to her lips as she spitballed aloud, "For the next one, maybe lose the clothes, clutch that sheet to your chest, and give me your best 'Got Milk?' face."

Who uses David Karp's microblogging site Tumblr? To us, they are trustafarians and their hangers-on — men with beards and thick glasses, girls with rainbow leggings and bangs. They are Sanfrooklyn's creative types and those who dress like them. Or — according to David Seger's Tumblr: the documentary, embedded below — they are "the dumbest babies of them all." We take exception to this as a Tumblista ourself, though we can't deny a sad correlation between our self-worth and the number of those who follow us.

· Thanks to a visit from Snoop, Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson will never again have to second-guess the correct temperature for their baby's malt-liquor formula. [TRL]
· So according to Paris Las Vegas Rules, Lindsay, Samantha, and the Entourage boys count as a full house. [Gawker]
· We feel compelled to somehow touch upon last night's Tony Awards, so here's a gallery of stars in attendance. If Mandy Patinkin isn't playing Johannes Brahms in some musical, then we're concerned he might have let himself go. [bestweekever.tv]
· Martha Stewart has seen Paul Newman, and thinks he looks "a little thinner," but "absolutely fine," and his salad dressing, "tastes a little synthetic and chemically for my tastes." [ET Online]
·Goats for sale! Really, really weird looking goats for sale! [israelforum.com via BoingBoing]

While we normally don't like to dredge up memories of the dark, dreary Writers Strike days, Molly McAleer has a score she'd like to settle. You see, Molls went out and bought a prom dress in hopes of attending the Ben Silverman High Winter Prom. Alas, the prom never came to fruition and now, a good five months later, Molls is still feeling very Andie Walsh about the whole thing. Hear her reasons why the prom would've ruled after the jump.

Apparently Denise Richards' life of collecting alimony and contemplating posing for Playboy is so busy that she requires a full staff to function. In this week's episode of It's Complicated, she upbraids her two warring assistants about some clothes she had borrowed that were supposed to be returned but hadn't. To Denise, it's an issue of integrity. Much to our surprise, she managed to utter the word "integrity" without being struck by lightning.

As we’ve learned on our first few voyages into the Living Lohan household, where Dina Lohan knows best and familial ties do not exempt you from abiding by her all-knowing wrath, the multi-tasking Momager extraordinaire proved her managerial skills outstandingly in last night’s episode. The Other Lohan, the surfer-haired preteen brother whose dismal fate has been shoved to the side the more worried and concerned we become following rising rap star Ali’s increasingly deafening fits of rage, had his first shot at some real camera time during this episode. And despite Dina’s obvious disinterest in her son’s career prospects (that is, until he hits puberty and his marketing appeal among tweenybop girls increases exponentially), the queen of the house does find time to throw cash at the problem. Low-prioritized Cody-centric tasks include hiring a token age-equivalent friend, halfheartedly attempting to include him in yet another Ali photo spread, and feigning concern for all three moneymakers children during whiny, crocodile tear-filled cries for help aimed at Tough Love Lohan grandmatriarch, Ann Sullivan. Our picks for Dina’s three most inspiring parenting lessons from last evening’s half-hour are:

Watching Dave Letterman sucker-punch Hills axis of vapidity Spencer Pratt on The Late Show Friday night brought up one major question for us: why has it taken this long for a talking head to publicly shame the guylighted villain? Shilling, we presume, merely for the gruesome brand that is Spencer and Heidi, the numb and pathological Pratt answered a few very pointed questions regarding the MTV show's obvious scripted nature and what exactly Bromance nobody Brody Jenner does for a living. At that point, Letterman finally pulled out the big guns after Spencer boastfully claimed he "won't go to a club for less than $100,000." Dave's shock, insulting-yet-gentle series of guffaws and his no-beat-missed announcement that he wants Spencer off his set immediately sum up an interview too good to be true. See for yourself after the jump.