The Quick Green Fox

I guess by now you've all heard that first-Fox Justin Hartley has traded one DC comics hero for another and will be playing a young version on the Green Arrow on "Smallville" this season. His first episode is tonight, in fact. Some new pics of him in the costume just surfaced, so I wanted to share them. Click here for more.

Looks like someone's been working on his arms. (The legs look a little puny in those green leather pants, though.)

Corporate Dunces

I'd always thought the Crane Corporation was a huge, multinational concern, one with its fingers in many pies, one that worked in several different industries and had influence all over the world. It must have fallen badly after Alistair left it. I was shocked to learn that the fate of the whole company rests on one patent infringement case.

Anyone who's ever read the Business section of a newspaper knows that companies lose such cases all the time. While the payouts can be sizable, I've never heard of a company folding afterwards. Even much smaller companies simply restructure their debt and move on.

Clearly the Crane Corp. has made some bad judgments lately. If you need evidence, just look at the new security codes on the offices and conference rooms. They take 20 minutes to enter. You gotta think that five digits would have been enough.

Noah, Come Back (Just Kidding)

Where has Noah been for the past couple months? Is he off the show? I checked Dustin's excellent site, but couldn't find anything about Noah leaving. He's still listed on the official NBC site and the actor's own site says he's still on the show.

I suspect we're not seeing him because there's no one for him to date. The Noah-Fancy thing completely fizzled with the fans, so Fancy and Luis became and item. But there's no one around for poor Noah. Darn, if only Simone was straight.

Truth be told, I'm not choked up about this. While he's certainly a hunk, Noah's rubber face always creeped me out a little. And I never cared for how smug he was. I'm curious where he's gone, but I'm not anxious to see him come back.

Yes, this Is Good. Yes.

Fox in a Cupid outfit. Yes, this is good. This is what we want. More please. Going forward, I'd like to see Fox, and Miguel, too, in lots of other costumes...

* A Tarzan loincloth
* A Tooth Fairy costume
* A superhero suit
* Ballet tights
* Running tights
* A wrestling singlet
* A speed-skating suit
* A leather biker outfit

Have fun with it, writers. Now that you're on the right track, I'm sure you'll come up with lots of other sexy costumes. Don't worry about having the plot make sense. There's no reason to start now, and we'll all be too busy drooling to worry about it.

Evil Julian is Back!

With the giant resetting of the "Passions" storylines comes a wonderful and unexpected surprise: evil Julian is back! Spurned by the true love of his life, Eve, who has chosen to stay with her needy husband, his passion has twisted to cruelty.

I'm loving it.

Sure, I kind of liked nice-guy Julian. He had a real warmth and Ben Masters played him beautifully. But now that he's nasty again, I'm remembering why I'd always loved him as a villain. He was always much more threatening than Alistair; there's a seething cruelty with Julian that really works.

I suppose the change was probably simply opportunistic: the show needed a villain to take over for the presumed dead Alistair. But whatever the case, I'm glad it happened. You know what I'd love to see? Nasty Julian make a power move and grab the company away from Theresa. If it's a public company, which it almost certainly is, he'd only need to get a majority of the board on his side. Now that could be a great storyline.

Holy Cow! "Passions" on iTunes!

It's good to be a "Passions" fan lately. Not only has the show found its footing again after several months of poor stories, but now you can download "Passions" on iTunes.

If you have iTunes on your computer, click here to go to the "Passions" page. This has just started, so there's only one episode up at the moment. It looks like we'll be able to download episodes one day after they air. This is great for screen cappers, or for those times when you miss an especially crucial day.

I think that iTunes will offer the first week for free, and after that they'll be the standard $1.99 each. You can view the show on your screen or transfer it to a video iPod.

I love that the graphic on iTunes, shown here, presents five "Passions" hotties (four if you don't count Chad). Yep, that's our show: hot guys, witchcraft, and deep dark secrets. But the hot guys come first.

Best Chest Ever

On this week's "Best Week Ever," on VH1, Gwen and Ethan do a brief skit congratulating the show on its 100th episode. Ethan's chest is bared and, oddly, Ethan shows more force of personality than he ever does on the show itself. Check it out.

Thanks to Dreamcaps for the tip.