So I've done it: I've officially given up on "American Idol" this season. This is the first time in four years that I haven't watched the show religiously; I even suffered through the horrors of Taylor Hicks and Sanjaya, but I cannot get through this season. It's been two weeks now and I haven't watched a single second of the show. That's at least two hours per week I have back. I can read, write, whatever. It feels good. I feel...clean.But I'll admit, this week was a test to my "Idol" sobriety. Dolly Parton - DOLLY PARTON! - was the

"The Office" returned last night after six looooong months off the air due to the writers' strike. Maybe my expectations were too high, but honestly, I didn't love it. There were very funny moments (courtesy mostly of Angela and Dwight, even better now as exes than they were as were as undercover lovers), but the show seems to have lost its focus and tone.To be fair, that's been a problem for the show all season. Nearly half of the Season 4 episodes have taken place outside of the actual office, between the trip to the Utica branch, the episode about

TV is in a weird place right now. Most of the big shows are finally coming back after that damnable strike, but it's been a rocky return for many of them. (Both "30 Rock" and "The Office" have seriously regressed, in my opinion, and I'm curious to see what happens when most of the ABC drams return next week.) So with the tried-and-true shows trying to rediscover their grooves, and few new shows on the air, it could have been a rough couple weeks.Thankfully, we have VH1. The network was just about to lose me-again-since its "Celebreality" programming block has

Was at the Hanson concert Monday, so I had to wait until last night to catch up on the return episode of CW's fab new teen soaper, "Gossip Girl." (Yes, apparently I am a 13-year-old girl.) I gave up on the show in the fall after being initially unimpressed by the first two episodes, but my friends recently forced me to watch the entire first half of season 1 through totally legal electronic downloads *cough cough*. I discovered that this show is like impossibly well-dressed crack. So I was desperate to get my fix of B, S, N, C, V, Lonely Boy, and Little