SueTube – Let’s talk TV with critic Susan Young

Win tickets to the Country Music Awards this Friday.

Yeah, yeah. We know it’s short notice. But, for those of you who are all doing things at the spur of the moment, here’s the moment and the spur to go along with it.

Answer these three trivia questions correctly and you’ll be included
in a random drawing for VIP tickets to the Country Music Awards held
Friday, Nov. 3 in Nashville.

You’ll have to provide your own transportation and lodging, but the tickets are valued at $350 a piece. If you don’t win, or can’t go, you can watch the CMA Awards at 8 p.m. Monday on ABC-Channel 7.

1. Who was Kenny Chesney married to for about half a minute?

2. What two Dolly Parton songs earned Oscar nominations?

3. What country singer currently stars in the movie “Flicka”?

Send your answers, along with your name, address and phone number to
syoung@angnewspapers.com. The drawing will be held at 3 p.m. Oct.
31, and tickets will be shipped overnight to the winners.

Good luck!

Jason Dohring, who plays bad boy Logan Echolls on “Veronica Mars” says he loves co-star Kristen Bell, who plays the title role.

But only in a platonic way.

Jason, 24, has been married for two years to Lauren. But he says that Kristen, “like the misses,” is someone that you just keep liking more every day.”

“Ryan Hansen, who plays my friend Dick Casablancas, is also married and Kristen is in a committed relationship,” Jason says. “So we don’t sleep around much on the set.”

That might rule out the cast from being featured on a tabloid cover – or not.

“It was so safe before bloggers,” Jason says playfully. “Now, you could be YouTubed (relieving yourself) on the side of the road. You can’t do anything about it, so hopefully people show enough of the good stuff about you so that when something bad pops up, it doesn’t seem so bad.”

Jason says he doesn’t have a Web site together yet, but he’s working on it.

“I’d love to go shoot some video with my friends and put that on the site,” Jason says. “Hey, I could YouTube me first.”

When Lauren came to sit with us, Jason decided to take the digital recorder and play reporter:

J: So, how old are you?

L: 25

J: How did you meet Jason?

L: We met in high school.

J: I was the Man in high school!

L: He was a nice guy and we were friends for a couple of years before dating.

J: I was a freakin? catch…OK, I paid her to go out with me. We got together up in Northern California. We sat on the dock at Clear Lake and talked for seven hours. We got married 50 feet from there, at sunset with our families and friends.

J: So how do you like Logan Echolls sleeping with all those girls?

L: Not so much.

So how is it being married?

“At the end of the day, it’s great to have someone who is your good friend, to talk to and being able to be around someone you can be yourself with makes for a long-lasting relationship,” Jason says. “It’s just so comfortable.”

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have a pilot deal with CBS for a project the Hollywood Reporter describes as “the medical adventures of the CDC doctors who fight the diseases and viruses that threaten people worldwide.”

We describe it as a failed 2004-2005 NBC series, “Medical Investigation.”

That series, starring Neal McDonough, Kelli Williams and Christopher Gorham, centered on the cases of an elite government investigation unit specializing in sudden, mysterious and dangerous medical outbreaks.

Now, we understand that there’s plenty of doctor, lawyer and police-centered dramas on the air that could sound similar on paper. But this one seems just a tad too close for comfort.

Besides, viewers already passed on this the last time around. But if CBS can get Will and Jada to star, the network just might have something here to draw viewers.

“Lost” co-creator J.J. Abrams says he knows what “Lost” is and what it isn’t.

“It isn’t a puzzle before it’s a character piece. It’s not a sci fi series before it’s a character drama and an emotional drama,” Abrams says in a phone interview today. “A lot of people put the facade of what `Lost’ is and put it first. To me, while I would say it is (a sci-fi thriller), it’s almost an anthology. What’s going on in the flashbacks is about who these people are.”

Abrams says in Season Three, a whole new group of people get thrown into the mix. We assume he’s talking about The Others.

“(Copycat) shows like ‘Threshold’ or ‘Invasion,’ while they had great promise, were all happening in response to (the success of ‘Lost’),” Abrams says. “But (the success of ‘Lost’) wasn’t about genre, that was secondary. It’s all about what really makes Locke tick and what has Jin gone through.”

Abrams says the creative team knew even before the pilot was shot that there would be a hatch and there would be a man inside the hatch.

“It wasn’t clear that this man was going to be involved with the people or not,” Abrams says. “The beauty of a good idea of that you can explore different versions. It was clear where we wanted to go in short term (with Desmond), then we cast the actor. Now, wouldn’t it be cool if (we did certain things with that character). That’s the fun of series television, if you are lucky (enough to stay on the air), is to continue to make those decisions.”

The final moments on “Grey’s Anatomy” tonight may have been some of the sweetest ever.

After deciding he needed to come clean with wife Addison about his sizzling prom sex with Meredith, the rather smug Derek tracked Addison down to her hotel room.

He sat on the bed, telling the sensual Addison _ who was wearing nothing but a bathrobe _ that he wanted a divorce. And just when he was at the height of his condescending speech about the sadness of their relationship ending, out walks McSteamy wrapping a towel around his waist.

Yes, the magnificent Dr. Mark Sloan, played by San Francisco native Eric Dane, is back by popular demand.

We’re wondering what lies in store for McDreamy after Patrick Dempsey told TV critics during a set tour last summer that he thought the men on “Grey’s” were emasculated and needed to man up a bit.

We don’t think creator Shonda Rimes took kindly to those remarks.

In any case, there were campaigns to bring Eric’s character back as a love interest _ even if it was with Meredith.

OK, maybe it was just my campaign.

But Eric’s one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, and after his performance last season he certainly deserved more screen time on one of my favorite shows.

So tonight, when he walked half-naked out of a steaming bathroom, we knew it was game on time for McDreamy.

Who may just find himself McSingle.

I’m sorry, but I have to say that my favorite after the first episode has to be Yul. And it’s not just cheering on the local San Mateo/Walnut Creek guy.

And I think he’s got some backers in the other tribes.

After Yul jumped into the water to save his chicken (this isn’t a metaphor, people, watch the damn show), he arrived on the island with his Asian-American tribe cluckless.

Turns out Jonathan, one of the guys from the white tribe swiped his chicken!

But that’s OK. Steal a chicken, be the first to go to Exile Island. The members of the African-American tribe decided they didn’t like the way Jonathan plays the game and chose him as the first exile of the game.

What they didn’t know that the white tribe had already lost not one, but both, chickens they snagged. Teammate Jessica decided to lift up the up-ended box they were trapped in.

And, being brighter than this Survivor, took the opportunity to escape.

Go figure, Jessica. You’ve already been outwitted by chickens.

Time to pull up the big girl panties and admit that a few weeks ago I blogged a cranky little post about getting a postcard from CBS that seemed like a not-so-gentle reminder that the comedy “The Class” was created by both “Friends” creator David Crane (left, beside Jason Ritter) and his writing/life partner Jeffrey Klarik (right, by Crane).

Noting that Klarik did not create “Friends,” I said that few papers would waste space including Klarik when Crane would do.

At this point, I’d like to also mention that I received a lot of silly stuff that day from people hyping their shows, including an Apollo chocolate bar offered for sale by the Apollo Candy Co., a “subsidiary” of the Hanso conglomerate.

Inside the package was this long-winded story of some guy who created the chocolate delights and the fact that he’d been lost in a plane crash.

Ring that bell. It’s another “Lost” promotion.

Like it needs any promotion from me.

Anyway, I ate the candy bar and dashed off two blog items about the chocolate and the Klarik.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that a short time after I consumed the candy during a 16-hour writing frenzy, I discovered I could have sold it on eBay for upwards of 60 bucks.

Not that I would, of course. But just knowing I’d chowed down on a $60 bar made me believe that karma was biting me in the backside.

Then, I watched the freakin’ hilarious three episodes sent out by CBS for “The Class” and realized that anyone who can create something this funny should have his name attached to it.

So, Klarik, from now on I’m going to make sure you get equal credit for creating “The Class.”

Now, can you please tell you friends to get rid of the voodoo dolls with my name attached to them?

All CBS wanted was to get viewers to take a taste of their evening news with Katie Couric and that’s what they got.

Tuesday night’s debut of “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” more than doubled the broadcast’s average rating for the last four weeks. And it became the highest rated “CBS Evening News” broadcast since Feb. 23, 1998, which occurred during CBS

I’m getting a little tired of Katie Couric having to defend herself for having a sharp fashion sense.

Guess what people? You can be a serious journalist and rock the runway.

Unlike ABC’s Charlie Gibson, who prides himself on wearing “whatever is on the left when I reach into the closet,” La Couric always looks chic. As a person who generally picks out what I’m going to wear based on if I did laundry the night before, I admire that.

When she debuted on Tuesday, Katie looked smashing in her little white jacket and black dress. She showed off the legs a bit too much, however, to ever win the respect of hard news junkies. When she went for the pre-taped interview with the New York Times guy, the camera kept going back for the gam-shot.

Even Charlie Gibson could be distracting if he put on a pair of shorts to do an interview.

Of course, that might make for a more interesting broadcast.

Anyone hoping to get a second look at those Vanity Fair pictures of TomKat’s little dumpling Suri Cruise shown on Katie Couric’s evening news show on Tuesday were disappointed.

The network had been hyping the fact that if you couldn’t get home by 5:30 p.m., which is when the broadcast airs in the Bay Area, you could just click on the ol’ www.cbs.com news site and see the broadcast in its entirety.

Apparently, that didn’t include little Suri.

We’re wondering if it had anything to do with people being able to grab it to put out on the Internet. But we don’t know enough about those things to know for sure.

All we know is, where was YouTube when we needed them???