Holy crap, by now E should know enough to keep his hands off of Mrs. Ari! Might this be a plot point in season six of "Entourage?"

HBO hosted a screening and party on the Paramount lot Thursday night for its boys of summer. Our heroes/lovable losers are going through some growing pains this season, but they all had a perfectly pleasant time in the plaza outside Paramount Theater on a balmy night tailor-made for an intimate premiere party. The after-party chow was great -- a veggie dish that blended beets, tangerines and bell peppers was quite tasty -- and the desserts were even better. Simple (vanilla ice cream, cookies) but scrumptious.

"Entourage" creator/exec producer Doug Ellin spent some quality time with one of the o.g.'s of Paramount and Variety, Peter Bart. Wonder if the subject of a certain TV critic came up in their conversation? 

(Pictured above, "Entourage's" Kevin Connolly and Perrey Reeves. Pictured right, Peter Bart and Doug Ellin.)

Good news on the "Glee" front. The show is definitely building on the promise of its pilot, which Fox sneak-peeked back in May.

And that's good news for Fox, which is putting everything it has into the launch of the series in September (regional screenings, contests, Internet vid-sharing sites, etc.).

Studio 20th Century Fox TV is eager to show off "Glee." So much so they invited a few dozen TV scribes to the lot on Wednesday for a screening of two more episodes. The segs went by quickly, complemented by a generous spread of popcorn, cookies and fruit salad.

Without giving away any plot points, it's great to see that the key characters are settling into their skin nicely, and the nifty production touches that made the pilot feel so fresh are still working, at least for me. And "Glee" deftly balances the soapy elements with laugh-out-loud moments.

At times the show can be downright saccharine, but somehow in the context of the material it mostly works. By the past standards of series co-creator Ryan Murphy, it's light and not terribly edgy, though there are signs that things may take a darker turn down the road apiece. The skewering of the holier-than-thou hypocrisy of the teen abstinence movement continues apace, with devilishly funny results.

A criticism so far is that some key characters are still pretty two-dimensional and verging on caricature.

Perhaps the show's biggest asset is its fresh-faced cast (they're good enough to overcome the fact that few of them look remotely high school age). Jane Lynch is the most well-known of the bunch, and needless to say she nails it every time she's on screen. And they're finding plenty to do with her character, the maniacal cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester who has it in for Matthew Morrison's Will Schuester, the earnest English teacher who dedicates himself to reviving the school's glee club, the source of his greatest triumph during his own years as a student at McKinley High School. (Lynch and Morrison pictured above at a "Glee" screening in May at Santa Monica High School.)

Lea Michele (pictured in purple with co-star Dianna Agron), who plays the over-achieving and ultra-ambitious Rachel Berry, continues to impress -- that girl can sing, as anyone who saw her in "Spring Awakening" can attest. Chris Colfer, who plays the music-loving closeted gay teen Kurt, gets a good showcase in an early episode, with Mike O'Malley as his dad.

The music selections in the upcoming segs are bouncy and fun -- including Kanye West's "Gold Digger" and Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)." Which means that Fox is not scrimping on the show. The music rights budget on "Glee" must be almost as much as the entire budget of some cable series.

The "Glee" express begins Sept. 16.

Comedy Central execs are giddy at having nabbed the rerun rights to "30 Rock" starting in the fall of 2011.

How giddy? In a tribute to the Emmy-winning awesomeness of Alec Baldwin in his role as Jack Donaghy, Comedy Central program scout David Bernath has made a slight tweak to his title.* Why be a mere senior veep of programming when you can be senior veep of program strategy and microwave programming?

At this rate, David, you could be headed to the chairman's job at Viacom. Or back to the MTV Networks mail room. Only time (and the performance of those "30 Rock" reruns) will tell.

*At least for the purposes of the press release announcing the "30 Rock" deal.

Pros: All-around good cast. Strong pilot script from Jason Katims, very un-showy direction of pilot by Thomas Schlamme fits the material.

Cons: A little speechy here and there

I liked this one a lot. Katims has the very tough task of living up to his "Friday Night Lights" standard. "Parenthood" didn't quite hit me with the same thunderbolt as "FNL," but it's oozing with potential by the end of the pilot

I liked the distinctiveness of the setting (Berkeley/Bay Area), and the foundation of the sprawling Braverman family of four adult siblings dealing with their own children of various ages and emotional states. There was great detail and specificity that gave the characters immediate depth and, well, character right away.

There's a lot of plot and character development going on in the script, perhaps a hair too much at times. But in the main it delivers a lot of info without getting terribly bogged down in exposition. Some of roughest patches seemed to be out of the mouths of the teenage characters, which is a little surprising since "FNL" has excelled at portraying high schoolers in a credible way. But this is a minor quibble.

Among a uniformly good cast, Maura Tierney stands out in the pilot as Sarah Braverman, the daughter who instigates much of the basic plot by moving back with her parents in Berkeley after hitting hard times with her teenage kids in Fresno.

Craig T. Nelson is very good as patriarch Zeek. Bonnie Bedelia doesn't have a whole lot to do in the pilot as matriarch Camille, but there's clearly more coming for her. Dax Shepard makes a good impression as bohemian brother Crosby. Of the younger thesps, Mae Whitman impresses in the pilot as Sarah's feisty, growing-up-in-a-hurry daughter, Amber.

Can't help but wonder how an family ensembler without a built-in marketing hook will fare on NBC. Let's hope viewers are drawn in by the familiarity of the 1989 movie (though there are few similarities, as I recall) and then suitably dazzled by the solid thesp roster.

Sad, sad news arrived this evening. Steve Brennan, longtime reporter and editor for The Hollywood Reporter, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center today at 57 after a yearlong struggle with cancer. He was my friend, and I will miss him so much. (Click here for THR's obituary.)

Steve was an incredibly colorful character, a sharp wit, a fantastic and accomplished writer. He realized a longtime dream in 2007 with the release of his book, "Emeralds in Tinseltown: The Irish in Hollywood."

Steve worked for THR, in his last years as international editor, for two decades. He started out as freelancer (he liked to tell of how he managed to sell stories on every permutation of the Irish entertainment biz) and then after he moved to L.A., he charmed his way into a full-time gig covering syndication and international TV.

He was a great reporter and an even better raconteur. He added to the joviality of many a NATPE convention, that's for sure. (Let's just say there are some waiters at famed New Orleans establishments who will never forget him.)

Twelve years after he left the general counsel's post at the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski is back, and this time he's running the place.

President Obama's hand-picked FCC chairman -- the two are old pals from their Harvard Law School days -- is settling in to his new gig this week. Genachowski gave a lengthy pep talk to FCC staffers on Tuesday, his first full day on the job, that gave some insights into his policy priorities. It's also interesting to note what he didn't say -- no culture-vulture talk of policing the airwaves for the sake of children, just a mild reference to "protecting and empowering consumers and families."

He's clearly a tech-savvy guy with lofty ambitions. His resume by now is well known -- he chief counsel to FCC chairman Reed Hundt from 1994-97, then moved on to working for Barry Diller at InterActiveCorp and its predecessors. He clerked for Supreme Court justices David Souter and William Brennan, and way back when he worked for Sen. Charles Schumer (Rep. Schumer at the time) on the staff of the House committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal. So he's got a few good Oliver North stories, no doubt.

Although he obviously wasn't making a big policy speech, the goals he outlined to the FCC staff are still telling. Job one is helping Obama fulfill a campaign promise to dramatically improve the nation's broadband infrastructure.

Or as Genachowski put it in bullet-point style in his address:

We've all had those moments of watching TV when a commercial pops up that is far more entertaining than the program.

Producer Robert Dalrymple's job is to hunt down blurb gem from around the world and make them the program. His latest "World's Funniest Commercials" spesh, hosted by Kevin Nealon, airs tonight at 9 p.m. on TBS.

What started for Dalrymple as a clip special of Super Bowl ads for CBS seven years ago has evolved since 2004 into a franchise for TBS and the web that will likely never run out of steam -- not as long as somebody somewhere needs to launch a new brand of beer, or a car, or a suntan lotion, etc., etc.

Dalrymple has a team of researchers who scour the world for the best spots they can find -- and then there are Herculean efforts to get them cleared for broadcast. It takes five to seven months to compile the material for one hourlong special, which usually features about 50-55 spots. Dalrymple works closely with Phil Oppenheim, TBS' senior veep of program planning and scheduling, in deciding which spots make the cut.

"There's so much material," Dalrymple says. "This really is mini-moviemaking, from all over the world."

In addition to the speshes, Dalrymple's treasure trove is nicely displayed in the www.veryfunnyads.com/ site that he runs with TBS. It's one of the largest web archive of blurbs in the world, searchable by brands, categories, country and popularity. It even has a bustling blog for people who can't say enough about their favorite commercials. And of course, it has plenty of (paid) advertising on it too.

In his years of research, he's come to the conclusion that pound for pound, blurb for blurb, there is no more bizarro advertising than the spots that come out of Thailand ("totally stream of consciousness and non-linear," says Oppenheim), with Canada a close runner-up.

See for yourself by clicking here for a sampling of Thailand's best marketing minds at work.

And for a cheap laugh, check out this spot from a French condom manufacturer.

"Harold and Maude." What a movie. A feel-good picture if there ever was one.

Tonight's tribute to director Hal Ashby at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, co-hosted by Variety's Peter Bart and Cameron Crowe, was a treat from start to finish. And the bar was pretty high, given that the evening started with a three-song set by Yusuf Islam (known in the "Harold and Maude" era as Cat Stevens).

There was panelizing with hot contempo talents (Judd Apatow, Diablo Cody, Seth Rogen) from the generation that grew up watching the movie 200 times on cable, and there was panelizing from those who worked with Ashby (Jon Voight, Haskell Wexler and Yusuf). And Bart of course in his previous life was the Paramount exec who said "yes" all those years ago to a decidedly offbeat script, and then snuck it past the bosses at Gulf + Western.

(Apatow seemed tamer than he usually is when pressed into panel service. It seemed like he was trying to mind his manners, though he did note that he has a daughter named Maude and was hoping to impregnate wife Leslie Mann with a son to complete his own tribute to the pic.)

Bud Cort came out after the screening and charmed the packed house with about 15 minutes of memories. But as entertaining as all of the live yakking was, the real star of the evening was the movie. They just don't make 'em that good anymore. Apatow said so himself. We can all be thankful for Ruth Gordon, and to Ashby (who died in 1988) and screenwriter Colin Higgins for giving her the role of anyone's lifetime.

I picked up so many details in the moving this time around, thanks to the luxury of seeing "Harold and Maude" on the beautiful bigscreen and for the first time in many years.

If you want to, sing out! Play the banjo. Drive fast. Steal cars. Steal a cop's motorcycle. Crash funerals. And go watch "Harold and Maude"!

(Pictured: Cameron Crowe, Yusuf and Judd Apatow)

"Entourage" is back in fine form, just in time to be a guilty summer pleasure.

As season six dawns, Vincent Chase's career fortunes have taken a turn for the better, which brings its own set of problems. The boys in general appear to be going through serious growing pains, making the show feel more like "Sex and the City" for guys than ever. Not that that's a bad thing.

There's great stuff going on with Rex Lee's Lloyd, the long-suffering assistant to Jeremy Piven's alpha-agent Ari Gold. And there's some intrigue in store for Gary Cole's character, Andrew, the old friend that Ari brought in as a partner to the Miller Gold Agency last season. Jami Gertz is a nice addition to the ensemble as Andrew's wife, Marlo.

Of the insider-y stuff, early on in the season opener there's a reference to Andrew having just signed Greg Garcia of "My Name is Earl" fame (no mention of the show's demise), and Andrew and Ari put the hard sell on two "UTA showrunners" (they don't have names, just agency affiliations in Andrew's mind). And ICM's Ted Chervin gets a name-check, as "Chervin," who Ari frets about beating on the golf course.

"Entourage" bows July 12 at 10:30 p.m., running in tandem with newbie "Hung," which preems on Sunday. I intended to watch the "Hung" pilot last night but I couldn't resist taking in the second "Entourage" episode on HBO's screener. I've got a date with "Hung" tonight fer sure. 

Pros: Ty Burrell, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Ed O'Neill, Ty Burrell, Sofia Vergara, Ty Burrell, Eric Stonestreet and Ty Burrell

Cons:

After screening  bad-to-not-too-bad half-hour pilots so far, "Modern Family" restored my faith in comedy writers.

This ABC pilot is really, really funny. The cast is great, and the premise is fraught with potential. The banter is witty without being too clever, and it delivers laughs. Serious out-loud yuks that hold up even on a second viewing.

It's a little un-PC in parts, in service of its finely drawn characters. It took me a little bit to warm up to Julie Bowen in a mom role, but once she started doing the kind of pratfalls with a refrigerator door that seem to happen to me first thing in the morning, I was with her.

"Modern Family" looks to be the show that will finally do justice to Ty Burrell's considerable charms. I liked him in CBS' "Out of Practice," and in Fox's "Back to You" (from the same creative stewards as "Modern Family") and I'm now preparing to love Burrell (pictured top right) as the self-described "cool dad" in "Modern Family." Ed O'Neill is also very smartly deployed here.

The show manages to offer sly and subtle insights into the state of familial relations without ever once getting preachy or "very special episode"-y. Co-creators Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd have set the bar high for the series with the pilot.