New receptionist Erin (played by Ellie Kemper) on The Office has become quite the partner in crime for Mindy Kaling's pop culture-obsessed Kelly, and now the two have put together a pop group called Subtle Sexuality, whose music video "Male Prima Donna," along with two short webisodes about its creation, can be watched on the NBC website. It has nothing to do with any particular Office episode, but it's amusing on its own, and features more of Kelly and Ryan's depressingly codependent relationship.

This past week's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia featured Mac and Dennis devising the brilliant novelty item known as the Dick Towel, and now those curious about this useless, crass bathroom accessory can go to its official website for a hilariously pathetic commercial (warning: kind of explicit) and, apparently, the chance to order your very own Dick Towel. If anyone buys one, please illuminate us in the comments.

Photo courtesy of NBC

Things are going pretty well for NBC's acclaimed sitcom 30 Rock (although honestly I've found the current fourth season a little disappointing): This week, 30 Rock star Alec Baldwin and onetime 30 Rock guest star Steve Martin were named as the hosts for this year's Academy Awards (airing March 7, 2010), which is a somewhat odd but intriguing pairing. Oscars producers have been trying to shake things up with their hosting choices, and pairing two actors together who aren't known as a team is certainly an unexpected way to go. Martin has hosted solo before, but will his deadpan style mesh with Baldwin's more over-the-top personality? Will they do comedy bits together, or alternate the spotlight? It'll certainly be interesting to watch (and probably give a big boost in visibility to 30 Rock).

The show could probably use the help in Germany, where it debuted as the flagship show on a new cable network with a 0.0 rating, meaning it pulled in fewer than 5,000 viewers. Granted, the show is already available on DVD and online in Germany, and aired on a fledgling channel still struggling to find an audience, but that still isn't good news for potential worldwide success for the show, which does have a lot of U.S.-specific cultural references and humor.

If Germans like James Franco, maybe they'll be pleased that the increasingly odd actor (who just signed on to a two-month stint on daytime soap General Hospital apparently as part of some performance-art project) will be guest-starring on 30 Rock, playing himself, getting into a publicity-generating manufactured romance with Jane Krakowski's Jenna Maroney. Sounds like just the sort of weird project Franco himself would pursue these days.

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In continuing with its tradition of giving every popular stand-up comedian his or her own showcase series for at least one season, Comedy Central has announced that Nick Swardson, perhaps best known to Comedy Central viewers as rollerskating gay prostitute Terry on Reno 911! (he's also a frequent Adam Sandler sidekick), will have his own six-episode sketch series sometime next year. Swardson's stand-up special, Seriously, Who Farted?, premiered on Comedy Central last month, and you can get an idea of his comedy style from that title. The show doesn't really sound like it will have a new approach other than to let Swardson do his thing; whatever happened to building a sketch-comedy show around a group of people? I don't think Comedy Central has had a troupe-based show since the end of Upright Citizens Brigade, and I kind of doubt Swardson will be able to carry a whole series on his own.

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It's silly anymore to complain that TV Land has strayed from its original mission of reairing classic TV programming. Over the years, the network has switched from playing vintage shows to playing recent repeats, and has started filling its schedule with crass reality shows and pointless awards. So if we're stuck with the TV Land of today, at least we may be getting some original sitcoms rather than shows about rich people hosted by Joan Rivers. The network has given the green light to two comedy pilots, which stand a good chance of ending up on the TV Land schedule.

Hot in Cleveland is about three middle-aged Los Angeles women who end up unexpectedly living in Cleveland and discover they love it there. Retired at 35 is about a New York City businessman who leaves the fast-paced life behind to move back in with his parents in their Florida retirement community. Granted, these sound like totally hacky, cliched premises, and both rely on the "big city types clash with laid-back small-town life" trope that has fueled countless sitcoms (including ABC's currently failing Hank), but it's nice to see shows that are focused on the lives of people over 35 (especially women), and even if this is a shaky start, it's also good to see another network giving original comedy a chance. If ABC Family can turn in surprisingly decent original programming, there's no reason to think TV Land couldn't as well.

Courtesy of TV Land

FX's new comedy The League, the network's latest attempt to build a companion to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, premieres October 29 at 10:30 p.m. EST. Read on for my review.

The League tries to capture a certain Judd Apatow-ian feel in its portrait of immature man-children fixated on sports and sex, but instead just ends up feeling juvenile and repetitive. Despite some strong comedic players, the characters are one-note, and the concept is quickly played out. Read the rest of the review ...

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It's always weird to read about early versions of beloved shows that featured different actors in famous roles. Can you imagine Frasier with Lisa Kudrow as Frasier Crane's producer Roz? Or Gilligan's Island with different versions of the Professor, Ginger and Mary Ann? Add to that list It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which started life as an extremely low-budget pilot shot by friends Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and ... Jordan Reid? Yep, current Sunny star Kaitlin Olson wasn't the original Dee; Reid, who was dating McElhenney at the time, created the show with the other cast members and was involved in the development process at FX before, as she now tells it, being let go when her relationship with McElhenney fell apart.

Olson does a great job as Dee (and is now herself married to McElhenney), and Reid seems to be at peace with the whole situation now. But it does sort of put a sour note on the great up-from-nothing story of Sunny's original conception, and it's a shame to think of the creators as somewhat unscrupulous. Hopefully those original self-produced episodes will end up on DVD someday as well.

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Although they haven't exactly been achieving stellar ratings, Thursday-night NBC comedies Community and Parks and Recreation have both been picked up for full seasons (Community's first, P&R's second). NBC is struggling in pretty much every way, so these well-reviewed shows with dedicated fanbases are worth holding on to, even if they don't bring in huge numbers. I've been enjoying Community, and Parks and Recreation seems to have picked up since its somewhat shaky start, so this news really solidifies NBC Thursday as the strongest night of comedy on TV. Now all they need to do is bring in a few more viewers.

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What is the deal with Fox and little-loved sitcom 'Til Death? By all measures, this show should have been canceled years ago: It's low-rated and poorly reviewed; it's had major cast overhauls numerous times; it's switched behind-the-scenes teams just as often; it's been bounced around all over the schedule and pulled for months at a time. None of these measures has brought any degree of success, but Fox just keeps on ordering more episodes. Last season the network was in the strange position of pulling the show off the air while ordering more episodes. It stayed off the schedule so long that many of those third-season episodes never aired and probably never will.

Now only a few episodes into the once-again-retooled fourth season, 'Til Death has been benched yet again, its Friday time slot taken over by repeats of House, with no plans for it to return. Maybe this time Fox will finally let things go. Death's Friday-night companion, the new sitcom Brothers, has also been yanked to make way for more House, but Brothers at least will get a burn-off on Sundays at 7 p.m. EST starting November 8, with back-to-back episodes airing some weeks. That time slot, and the doubling up, probably indicates that the show will end after its original set of episodes, but at least they'll make it on the air.

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The Pitch: Mega-popular stand-up comedian and ventriloquist Jeff Dunham gets his own series, featuring scripted and semi-scripted bits with Dunham and his crew of puppets interacting with "real" people (and Brooke Hogan), which Dunham introduces in front of a studio audience.

Verdict: Look, I don't care how disturbingly popular Dunham is, he's a terrible comedian. His humor is based entirely on lazy, often offensive ethnic stereotypes, it's full of casual homophobia, and it is entirely lacking in imagination. Even the accents he uses for his puppets aren't very good. This show highlights exactly how lame Dunham's shtick is, and relies increasingly on familiar catch phrases in place of actual jokes. Maybe Comedy Central made a smart investment in signing a deal with Dunham, but exposing his work to a wider audience does a disservice to comedy.

Airs: Thursdays at 9 p.m. EST on Comedy Central

Premieres: Tonight

Photo courtesy of Comedy Central

Two of the most beloved and obsessed-over TV comedies of the decade are about to find new homes on cable for their reruns: IFC, which has been slowly building itself up as a comedy destination (with original shows, British imports and the recent Monty Python extravaganza), will be showing all 53 episodes of the revered Fox comedy Arrested Development beginning October 25, with two episodes airing each Sunday night at 10 p.m. EST and Tuesday night at 9 p.m. EST. Given that the second and third seasons were recently taken down from Hulu, this is probably the best way to catch the whole series now, aside from getting the DVDs.

And in a somewhat strange development, Comedy Central has picked up the syndication rights to FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which means that starting next summer, reruns of Sunny will air on Comedy Central even while the show is still producing new episodes for FX. Given FX's strong commitment to Sunny, it seems likely that the show will air on both networks simultaneously for at least a little while. It's odd for two basic cable networks to share a show like that, but I guess more Sunny is always a good thing.

Photo courtesy of FX