Come Back, Mark Harmon, All Is Forgiven!

I hate to even pretend that I have a dog in this race, but... seriously? You know who Bradley Cooper is to me? Bradley Cooper is the guy who used to play the investigative reporter on Alias. You know what that character was? That was one of the first instances I know of where an actor on a TV series had the rug pulled out from under him thanks to the instant feedback that the Internet had made possible. Cooper's character was this friend of Sydney Bristow who had no idea what she was up to but sort of knew there was this secret-spy stuff going on somewhere and was determined to get to the bottom of it, dammit! I've read that the producers thought he'd be a fan-favorite character, and that it was only after discovering, from sampling Internet buzz, that everyone who watched the show thought he was a lame-ass, clueless joke of a human being that they started reveling in how out of the loop his character was and started using him as the show's punching bag. After two seasons and change, they wrote him out of the show by putting his character into witness protection, just because it had gotten more sad than funny. I know women who still lament the fact that Lena Olin wasn't permitted to paint a wall with his brains.

George Clooney used to have bad parts on TV shows before getting dropped down the chute that deposited him back on the unemployment line. It's kind of funny now, because you come across those shows while channel surfing and go, "Whoa, that guy went on to become George Clooney!" You see Bradley Cooper in the trailer for Limitless or The A-Team and go, "Whoa, that guy from Alias who couldn't investigative report his ass out of a paper bag got hired to be in a movie! That's gonna suck." As far as I know, his big success was The Hangover, where he was the guy pictured at the back of the poster who got to feed straight lines to Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, and maybe People decided he's a really sexy movie star because hit movies have sexy movie stars in them, and a lot of people would hesitate to hang that designation on Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis. Whatever, I don't get it, but maybe getting things like this isn't in my job description. I do know that with this to throw up over, Kissinger is finally going to get some heat taken off him over winning the Nobel Peace Prize.