A bizarre discovery turned up outside America Idol tastemaker Paula Abdul's home last night: a dead body propped over in a car. Even more confusing was that the body belonged not to the klonopin chip brownie-loving singer/choreographer/karoake-feedback-deliverer herself, but rather a rabid Abdul fan, whose car bore a vanity licence plate reading "ABL LV," ("4VR URGL" had already been taken) and Paula-scented air-fresheners dangling from the rear-view mirror. More details follow after the jump:

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Not Your Average Bear. Family Guy spinoff The Cleveland Show has received a full-season order from Fox, but has been pushed all the way to Fall. In another announcement we totally saw coming, THR reports that "Arianna Huffington will join the cast in a recurring role as the [talking] matriarch of a bear family," who says things like, "Da eeconomeec game is not supposed to be rrrigged like some shaydee ring toss on a carneeval midway. Now who vould like another helping of flopping sah-mon?" [THR]

Hope For The Hill? The recently canceled King of the Hill may yet live on, as a Fox rep has confirmed that "another network is interested" in the long-running and consistently solid (but terminally unbuzzworthy) series. The show is still averaging at about a 3.4 rating—the same numbers CBS's "breakout hit" The Mentalist is getting—and reached as high as a 4.3 after last Sunday's Simpsons Halloween special. Fun fact: Did you know Bobby is voiced by Pamela Adlon, aka Mrs. Louie from short-lived Louis C.K. sitcom Lucky Louie? [THR]

The Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, shown in the US last night, featured a direct homage to Mad Men—the familiar strings accompanying a silhouette of Homer tumbling down the side of a building on whatever Springfield's answer to Madison Avenue is.

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Amber waves of grain, arthritis ointment application, an emotionally distant Sarah Silverman the morning after—The Barack Obama Show really offered something for everyone. And by "everyone" we'd include network heads, as preliminary Nielsen numbers show the 30-minute hope-infusion juiced ratings across the board. Even ABC's struggling Pushing Daisies benefited from a small counter-programming bump, though still only managed to squeak out a meager 2.2. From THR:

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On the heels of the Tyler Perry's House of Payne labour controversy—in which WGA heads Patric Verrone and Michael Winship filed an angry grievance with the National Labour Relations Board, demanding restitution for "an abused writing staff forced to churn out sitcom dialogue with a pistol pressed to their temples by the world's wealthiest, union-busting grandma-with-a-dick,"—comes yet another fiery piece of rhetoric from the militant duo. This time, they target Fox's planned Osbourne family variety show, for which producer FremantleMedia is hoping they can get their snappy repartee wholesale. An excerpt from their letter:

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The prospect of someday appearing on the World's Greatest Awards Show has proven quite the lure to big-screen stars in recent years, who've increasingly forgone the fool's errand of mainstream cinema for the more temperate waters of episodic television. A pair of stories making the rounds today, however, suggests the threshold between the two as a point of no return for those who dare to cross, starting with George Clooney, who yesterday turned down the prospect of a guest stint during ER's final season: "[H]e is not coming back," his publicist said. "It is something he has already done. He is busy making movies." Indeed, Men Who Stare at Goats just ruined your ER series finale. We apologise on his behalf.

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Shutdown Fever! Hot on the heels of 24 stopping production to work out script issues, Joss Whedon's upcoming Eliza Dushku vehicle Dollhouse is grinding to its own quality-mandated halt. Already, Whedon was instructed by a tinkering Fox to shoot a second pilot (the original will air as Dollhouse's second episode), and the additional order left him too busy to bring future scripts up to snuff. Currently on its third completed episode, Dollhouse sets will go dark for two weeks while Whedon works out the kinks, though Fox claims its midseason debut won't be affected. Firefly fans, commence your worrying. [Zap2It]

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Can't a network game show gather muscular, waxed contestants together anymore without one of them having a notorious gay porn past? Hot on the heels of the American Gladiator who was revealed to be more familiar with the joust than originally thought, Fox's bizarre new game show Hole in the Wall premiered on Sunday with a face that should be familiar to customers of the gay porn website Sean Cody. Dubbed "Ajay" during his stint in the skin trade, Hole introduced him as Aaron Savvy, member of the Six Pack team. Then, after being asked, "Are you ready to face the hole?" Savvy and his personal trainer teammate had to navigate advancing walls with perilous shapes cut in them, forcing the duo to assume positions not put into use since "Ajay & Spence Flip-Flop." Does Savvy make it into the holes intact? Let's just say he has better luck at his day job. [After Elton]

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At this point, 24's seventh season has been hit with more obstacles than the beleaguered Jack Bauer — so what's one more? After suffering through a WGA strike, a one-year delay, and a stint in jail for lead Kiefer Sutherland, the Fox drama is once again shutting down production, says EW. Producer Howard Gordon tells the mag that he was unhappy with the scripts for hours 19-24, so the show will power down until writers can start from scratch. Still, thanks to the eight episodes banked before the strike, producers don't expect the season premiere to be delayed any further — which is more than can be said for the Lifetime debut of Project Runway, now pushed back to January 2009. Originally slotted for this fall, where it would have followed quickly on the heels of its Bravo swan song, producers couldn't make the abbreviated schedule work. The delay lends Lifetime the extra time it will need to craft an all-important needlepoint challenge and secure the participation of "fashion legend" Meredith Baxter Birney as final judge at NY Fashion Week. [EW]

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