By LYNN ELBER
AP Television Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- John Lithgow was going to pass on the chance to play serial killer vs. serial killer on "Dexter," with an Italian vacation, cruise and his son's wedding awaiting him.

He made it to the ceremony but postponed the trip, and he credits his very understanding wife of 28 years, university professor Mary Yeager Lithgow, with pushing him into the plum job.

"She's the one who said, `No, you've got to take the role," he recalled.

Lithgow guest stars as Arthur Mitchell, the so-called Trinity Killer whose victims come in threes and who both repels and attracts Michael C. Hall's Dexter Morgan in the Showtime drama.

Mitchell fits the profile of those that forensics expert Dexter has judged deserve to die, but he's also a singular role model. Tempted to learn how the Trinity Killer has evaded capture, Dexter begins to make mistakes as he deviates from his protective "code," leading to a plot twist in Sunday's episode, "Slack Tide."

Lithgow, who has a nearly courtly manner and is deemed a sweetheart by colleagues, enjoys bringing the death-obsessed Mitchell to life.

"This man is very two-faced, like Dexter. A serial killer by definition is a man who presents himself in a very different way to the world," Lithgow said. "So it's an actor's field day figuring out what you reveal and what you don't."

It's difficult to push such a portrayal too far given the behavior of real-life murderers, he said.

"Every one of these stories that suddenly springs up in the news, you read it and think, `My God, how could this possibly happen? How could a human being behave this way?' - which in a way is really liberating," Lithgow said. "You can't outdo the truth."

While "3rd Rock from the Sun" viewers fondly remember Lithgow as the egotistical, foolish alien leader passing as an Earthling, he's played more than his share of bad guys in movies.

The actor helpfully ticks off some of the titles, including "Blow Out" and "Obsession" for Brian De Palma, and "Cliffhanger," in which Lithgow adopted a British accent and particularly chilling demeanor.

Lithgow's last TV series was the short-lived comedy "20 Good Years," about two men trying to make the most of the time left them, a venture Lithgow called "very sweet and disappointing, of course, as any failed series is."

"I had a fabulous time with (co-star) Jeffrey Tambor, one of my favorite character actors. But it was a show for middle-aged old folks in a young world, so it made us feel kind of autumnal and melancholy," he said.

Theater has been his main focus in since "3rd Rock" ended nearly a decade ago, including "Stories by Heart," a one-man show Lithgow developed and performed at Lincoln Center for two seasons and was bringing to England's National Theatre post-"Dexter."

The work combines short stories Lithgow recalls his father reading aloud to the family with anecdotes about the actor's own life. He calls it a "simple but heartfelt evening."

"Basically, I have a conversation with an audience that turns into a performance before their eyes. It's kind of a meditation on the whole nature of performance and why we performers do it, and why anybody would want to watch."

When told it sounds like an evening not to miss, Lithgow takes a good-natured dig at himself.

"I'll be dragging this one around after me for years and years. You just try to avoid it," he said, laughing.

By LYNN ELBER

AP Television Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Rue McClanahan, who played sexy Southern belle Blanche Devereaux on "The Golden Girls," was recovering Thursday from heart bypass surgery at a New York City hospital.

The surgery took place Wednesday and went "very, very well," said friend and colleague Del Shores. "She's going to be great and up and entertaining us all very shortly."

McClanahan, 75, said in a statement that she regretted missing a tribute to her set for this month at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco.

"Unfortunately, my doctor has laid down the law, and I'm currently in the hospital having some maintenance on the old ticker," she said. "Trust me, I'd much rather be in San Francisco having fun and being adored by all of you."

McClanahan's problem was discovered when she underwent tests before a knee operation, said Shores, who declined to identify the hospital where she was being treated.

In 2008, McClanahan appeared in the Logo comedy "Sordid Lives: The Series," playing the slightly addled, elderly mother of an institutionalized drag queen. Shores wrote and directed the show, which was based on his play and movie.

He was to perform with McClanahan and "Sordid Lives" star Leslie Jordan at the New York club Comix at the end of the month. The trio will reschedule, Shores said, although he and Jordan still plan to perform at the club.

McClanahan had an active career in off-Broadway and regional stages in the 1960s before she was tapped for TV in the 1970s for the key best-friend character on the hit series "Maude."

Her best-known role came in 1985 when she costarred with "Maude" colleague Beatrice Arthur, Betty White and Estelle Getty in "The Golden Girls." The sitcom about four older women living together in Miami was a success that aired until 1992 on NBC.

McClanahan underwent treatment for breast cancer in 1997.

During Wanda Sykes' recent stand-up comedy tour, she appeared with a partner -- Esther.
    
Esther, it turns out, is Wanda's gut.
     
But her protruding, uncontrollable tummy isn't the only target of Sykes' tart tongue. Known for launching verbal hand grenades at Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin during a White House Correspondents' Dinner, Sykes has other targets in her new HBO special, "I'ma Be Me." Among those targets: the media's fascination with bad news, the irony of electing a black president just as the country went broke, and those TV ads for, er, male sex problems.
     
"I'ma Be Me" airs at 11:35 p.m. Oct. 30 on HBO Comedy East. It's a prelude of sorts for even more Wanda. "The Wanda Sykes Show," the comedian's new talk/comedy show, debuts at 11 p.m. Nov. 7 on Fox.
 

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Weather Channel plans to show movies for the first time in its 27-year history and it's easy to guess which one is leading off.

"The Perfect Storm," of course.

The George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg movie about a horrific storm off the New England coast will air on Oct. 30, the 18th anniversary of the actual storm. Network executives had been thinking about adding movies, and the timing proved too good to pass up, said Geoffrey Darby, the network's chief programmer.

The network in recent years gradually slipped in longer programming, including a morning show hosted by Al Roker, to complement its constantly rotating forecasts.

"The Perfect Storm" begins a four-week period in which The Weather Channel will try some Friday night movies.

The films are either weather-themed or have plots in which weather plays a key role, Darby said. Meteorologist Jennifer Carfagno will host movie night and offer commentary.

Other movies include the documentary "March of the Penguins," the thriller "Deep Blue Sea" and "Misery," for which Kathy Bates won an Academy Award.

The weather angle is pretty clear in "The Perfect Storm," but "Misery"? Darby noted the nightmare endured by James Caan's character begins with a blinding snowstorm.

For The Weather Channel, the risk lies in alienating its regular weather-obsessed viewers, who tune in for news of high pressure systems rather than high drama. The potential reward is that new fans will tune in, and they'll stay on the station for a longer period, pleasing advertisers.

Darby said most viewers on Friday night aren't interested in much more than the weekend forecast, and that will be updated on the screen six times an hour.

"It's a way to respond to at least a significant portion of our audience that says, `Let's expand the definition of weather,'" he said.

The idea predates NBC Universal's purchase of The Weather Channel, Darby said. None of the first four movies are distributed by NBC Universal.

By LINDA DEUTSCH
AP Special Correspondent

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A psychiatrist who treated Anna Nicole Smith for drug dependency says the former Playmate fits the legal definition of an addict.

Dr. Nathalie Maullin continued her testimony Tuesday in Los Angeles as prosecutors sought to show that Smith was addicted to painkillers supplied by defendants in the drug case.

Maullin previously described her contact with Smith when she checked into a hospital in 2006, pregnant and in apparent withdrawal from pain and anti-anxiety medications.

She said Smith had decided to stop all drugs when she became pregnant, resulting in withdrawal.

The testimony is part of a preliminary hearing that will decide whether Smith's former boyfriend Howard K. Stern and two doctors should stand trial for conspiring to provide Smith with controlled substances.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A psychiatrist who treated Anna Nicole Smith for drug dependency during her pregnancy said she tried to set up a program to wean her off prescription painkillers but found the celebrity model uncooperative and hostile during her stay in the hospital.

Dr. Nathalie Maullin was to continue her testimony Tuesday as prosecutors sought to show that the celebrity model was addicted to painkillers supplied by defendants in a drug case.

Maullin took the stand Monday after a disruption in the testimony of star witness Larry Birkhead resulted in the disappearance from the courtroom of a member of the prosecution team.

District attorney's spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said the future role of Deputy District Attorney Sarah Slice was under discussion after Birkhead, the father of Smith's daughter, testified that she tried to influence his testimony. He said the young prosecutor suggested he was "taking the side" of Smith's former boyfriend, lawyer Howard K. Stern.

Birkhead said Slice also warned him his daughter might have future problems because of her mother's drug use.

"I felt I personally did my best and I was being chastised," Birkhead said under questioning by defense attorney Ellyn Garofalo.

Birkhead said Slice told him prosecutors were "frustrated" with his testimony in the preliminary hearing, which will decide whether Stern and two doctors stand trial. They are charged with conspiracy to illegally give controlled substances to the former Playboy Playmate, who died of an accidental overdose in 2007.

When court resumed after lunch, Slice was absent. An after-hours call to her office was not answered.

After the upheaval, Deputy District attorney Renee Rose kept Birkhead on the stand talking about Smith's drug use and tried to get him to say she was an addict.

He said he thought she took too many medications but that she told him: "I'm not a drug addict."

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry asked if he ever had a conversation with Stern in which he used the word "addiction."

"No," said the witness.

Rose continued to press Birkhead on multiple issues, including the fact that he made $2 million from TV interviews after Smith's death, until the judge told her he had heard enough.

"I think you're done," he said as she continued to raise new issues.

In her testimony Monday, Maullin described her contact with Smith when she checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in April 2006, pregnant and in apparent withdrawal from pain and anti-anxiety medications. She said Smith had decided to "go cold turkey" and stop all drugs when she became pregnant, resulting in withdrawal.

She said Smith came to the hospital in distress, sweating, having spasms in her arms and legs and with her eyes dilated.

Maullin said she contacted Smith's physician, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, one of those now charged in the case, and learned he had prescribed seven different drugs to Smith during the time she was seeking relief from pain.

Maullin said she suggested a new regimen including hypnosis and acupuncture but Smith wasn't interested.

"She wouldn't engage. She didn't make eye contact. She was very hostile," Maullin recalled. "It was, 'Give me my medication and leave me alone.'"

Maullin said that when Smith was asked questions, she would reply: "Ask Howard."

She said she told Stern that Smith should be in a structured rehab program and discussed with him and Kapoor her belief that Smith was addicted. Maullin said that during Smith's hospital stay, she tried to regulate the former model's use of methadone for pain and remove her from a number of drugs known as benzodiazepans.

Rose suggested that after Smith's release, Kapoor continued to prescribe one of those medications.

Kapoor's attorney, Ellyn Garofalo, has said the doctor gave Smith "sound and appropriate" treatment. Attorney Steve Sadow, representing Stern, has said his client shouldn't be blamed for Smith's death because he was relying on the doctors to treat her.

By CHARLES McGRATH
NEW YORK TIMES

Astonishingly, "Monty Python's Flying Circus," the groundbreaking BBC comedy series, is 40 years old this year, almost as ancient as the Beatles. As Terry Jones, one of the six-member troupe who created and acted in the show, said recently: "Time just seems to get quicker. You look in the mirror in the morning and you think, 'I'm already shaving again!' "
    
The principals are all in late middle age now, jowly and graying, and have in some ways become the very sorts of people they used to poke fun at. Michael Palin makes travel documentaries. Jones makes documentaries and writes scholarly books about the Middle Ages, the period the Pythons so memorably sent up in their film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Terry Gilliam, animator turned filmmaker, is still quixotically obsessed with making a movie about Don Quixote. Eric Idle, who's mostly responsible for the long-running Broadway production of "Spamalot," writes musical shows, many of them recycling Python material. And John Cleese, who at 70 is the oldest of the group, in addition to appearing in movies and sitcoms and making golf-ball commercials, sometimes turns into a cranky old buffer complaining about cultural decline and Britain's tabloids. He doesn't watch much comedy anymore. "As you get older you laugh less," he says, "because you've heard most of the jokes before."
     
The show, on the other hand, hasn't aged a bit. In the United States, "Flying Circus" didn't catch on until 1974, when it was pretty much off the air in Britain and the members had started to go their separate ways. Hugh Hefner was an early fan. Go figure.
     
But the show has had a surprisingly durable afterlife in this country, giving rise to second and third generations of fans who watch it on DVD and on YouTube, where it's so popular it now has its own dedicated channel. Cleese said recently that in England he is far better known these days as Basil Fawlty, the title character in his post-Python series "Fawlty Towers," than for his role in "Flying Circus." But even in American middle schools now, there's often a smart aleck or two who can do Cleese's Silly Walk and knows the Dead Parrot sketch by heart. When they get to high school in a few years they will also have mastered the sketch about the man with three buttocks and know all the words to the gay lumberjack song.
     
Tonight all five surviving Pythons are appearing in a rare reunion at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York. (Graham Chapman, the sixth member of the troupe, died of throat cancer in 1989.) And starting Sunday the Independent Film Channel is devoting a whole week to Pythoniana and will broadcast one episode a day of "Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)," a new six-hour documentary about the troupe, along with some of the "Python" films and episodes from the first season of "Flying Circus."

There will almost certainly be squabbling at the reunion. "They love getting angry and shouting at each other," Ben Timlett, a director and producer of the documentary, said recently. There were (and are) genuine differences among the Pythons, which they sometimes exaggerate for comic effect now, and there have been so many books, articles and previous documentaries that there is no truly reliable account of practically anything associated with the group. Partly for this reason, a number of the Pythons were initially reluctant to take part in the documentary.
     
"I was very dubious about it," Cleese said. "I thought we had flogged this horse to death -- way past death, in fact."
     
Referring to the fact that Jones is separated from his wife and is now expecting a baby with his much younger girlfriend, he added, laughing: "We did it because Jones needed money. He's about to have a baby, and we felt for the guy. Anyone entering on fatherhood at age 67 needs all the help he can get."
     
What really helped win the group over was that another of the director-producers is Jones' son Bill, who practically grew up with the Pythons. He remembers answering the phone as a child and hearing Cleese ask to speak with Little Plum. "That's what John called my father, Little Plum," he said. "It used to really annoy him."
     


And to the surprise of even Jones, the documentary managed to turn up a lot of new insights and information about the group, especially in the first hour, where with the help of newsreels, family photos and interviews with classmates it chronicles the early lives of the members. With the exception of Gilliam, the sole American, the Pythons all grew up in middle-class families in provincial towns and were very much a product of postwar British culture: cautious, decorous, respectable, nice. They wanted to blow it up.
     
"That culture wasn't hard enough to be rigid," Cleese recalled in a telephone interview from California, where he lives now. "It was more stuffy -- it was like wrestling with a sponge. I remember going to see 'Beyond the Fringe' in 1962 and hearing screams of laughter. They were screams of liberation."
     
"Beyond the Fringe" -- a stage revue starring Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller that frequently made fun of the royal family, the Church of England, even Shakespeare -- was a huge influence on all the British Pythons, it turns out, and so was the earlier "Goon Show" on radio, one of the first to satirize government figures. But the Pythons' comedy was in its way more subversive than those models, lampooning the very idea of authority, even as it was more absurdist.
     
Oddly, for a show so popular in America, a lot of Python humor takes on the British class system, poking fun at upper-class twits and handbag-toting matrons, invariably played by Pythons in drag and speaking falsetto. (The show, so revolutionary in other respects, clung resolutely to the old British tradition of cross-dressing comedy.) Another frequent target is the BBC itself, which comes to stand for all that is stiff, stuffy and pretentious.
     
The third hour of the documentary, called "And Now the Sordid Personal Bits," explores some of the rifts and fissures within the group. Idle says now, "We didn't have the slightest interest in each other as people," and it does seem that their relationships were more professional than personal.
     
There was, to begin with, the Oxford-Cambridge split, with Jones, Palin and Gilliam (whom they made a sort of honorary Oxford man) on one side and Cleese, Chapman and Idle, all of whom belonged to the Cambridge Footlights troupe, on the other. And then there were the subgroups: Palin and Jones were a writing pair, as were Cleese and Chapman, even as Cleese (and everyone else) grew increasingly exasperated with Chapman's unreliability.
     
The two Terrys -- Gilliam and Jones -- were natural allies until the troupe started making movies, and then they squabbled because each wanted to direct. Idle always preferred to work alone. Palin seems to have been the group conciliator, while Cleese and Jones were chalk and cheese to each other, temperamental and artistic opposites. Cleese, who had by then achieved the most personal fame and success, left the group at the end of the third TV season, while Jones vainly tried to keep it together.
     
The movies -- "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," an Arthurian parody; "Monty Python's Life of Brian," a spoof of the Gospels, which in New York was picketed by both rabbis and nuns; and "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life," a collection of sketches that deal with everything from contraception to death by overeating -- gave the group a brief but very profitable second life until, with "The Meaning of Life," the members reached a kind of creative impasse, spinning off in too many different directions.
     
"The one thing we all agreed on, our chief aim, was to be totally unpredictable and never to repeat ourselves," Jones said. "We wanted to be unquantifiable. That 'pythonesque' is now an adjective in the OED means we failed utterly."

     
Hardly. The documentary includes several interviews with younger comics like Steve Coogan, Jimmy Fallon and Russell Brand, talking about how much the Pythons meant to the them. And yet the Python example is so hard to imitate that the group's influence on contemporary comedy is less than one might imagine. Traces of Pythonist absurdity manifest themselves on "The Simpsons" and "South Park," whose creators are avowed "Flying Circus" fans, and Stephen Colbert's posture of clueless authority may owe something to the Cleese and Chapman model, yet a show like "Saturday Night Live," which owes its existence in part to the success of "Flying Circus," is still locked into the traditional self-contained sketch. To find the equivalent of the Pythons' kind of wordplay and punning (verbal and visual) you have to turn to written humor, which may be where some of the Pythons' inspiration came from in the first place. You could make a case, for example, that "Tristram Shandy" is the most pythonesque book in all of English literature.
     
"A lot of contemporary comedy seems self-conscious," Palin said. "It's almost documentary, like 'The Office.' That's a very funny show, but you're looking at the human condition under stress. The Pythons made the human condition seem like fun."
     
He added: "I'm proud to be a Python. It's a badge of silliness, which is quite important. I was the gay lumberjack, I was the Spanish Inquisition, I was one-half of the fish-slapping dance. I look at myself and think that may be the most important thing I've ever done."
 
Cleese and Jones, in rare agreement, both suggested that one reason the Pythons have never been successfully imitated is that television executives nowadays would never let anyone get away with putting together a show like theirs. When they began, they didn't have an idea what the show should be about or even a title for it. The BBC gave them some money, and then, Cleese joked, the executives hurried off to the bar.
     
"The great thing was that in the beginning we had such a low profile," he said. "We went on at different times, and some weeks we didn't go on at all, because there might be a show-jumping competition. But that was the key to our feeling of freedom. We didn't know what the viewing figures were, and we didn't care. What has happened now is the complete reverse. Even the BBC is obsessed with the numbers."
     
So obsessed, Bill Jones pointed out, that in the case of "Monty Python: Almost the Truth" some people encouraged the documentarians to see if they couldn't squeeze the six hours down to one.

By DON BABWIN
Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO (AP) -- Aye Carumba!

Marge Simpson has done something that Homer might not like but will make Bart the proudest kid in his school: She's posed for Playboy magazine.

After more than a half century featuring women like Marilyn Monroe, Cindy Crawford and the Girls of Hooters on its cover, Playboy has for the first time given the spot to a cartoon character.

And the magazine is giving the star of "The Simpsons" the star treatment, complete with a data sheet, an interview and a 2-page centerfold.

The magazine's editorial director, James Jellinek, won't say exactly how much of Marge will show in the November edition that hits newsstands on Oct. 16 - or whether she lets that big pile of blue hair down. But, he said, "It's very, very racy."

But he stressed that the mother of three - the youngest a baby, by the way - has a lot to be proud of.

"She is a stunning example of the cartoon form," he said on Friday at the magazine's headquarters in Chicago, appearing both pleased and surprised at the words coming out of his mouth.

For Playboy, which has seen its circulation slip from 3.15 million to 2.6 million since 2006, putting Marge on the cover was designed to attract younger readers to a magazine where the median age of readers is 35, while not alienating older readers.

"We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd," said Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey.

The magazine also hopes to turn the November issue into a collectors' item by featuring Marge, sitting on a chair in the shape of the iconic Playboy bunny, on the cover of only the magazines sold in newsstands. Subscribers get a more traditional model on the cover.

"It's so rare in today's digital age where you have the opportunity to send people to the newsstand to pick something up," Jellinek said.

Playboy even convinced 7-Eleven to carry the magazine in its 1,200 corporate-owned stores, something the company has only done once before in more than 20 years.

"We love Marge," said 7-Eleven spokesman Margaret Chabris.

For those who do collect the magazine - and they're out there - the cover will bring to mind another first for the magazine that occurred in 1971 when a black woman appeared on the cover in exactly the same pose and, like Marge, smiling under an impressive head of hair.

"We knew it was something all of our readers would get a kick out of," said Hennessey.

Jellinek said putting Marge on the cover, while unusual, made perfect sense. For one thing, the cover celebrates the 20th anniversary of the TV show. Further, he said there was an episode in which "Marge bears all," which suggested the at she, or at least the people who drew her, would be comfortable with the Playboy treatment.

Perhaps most important, the idea seemed like a good one to the magazine's founder, Hugh Hefner.

"He's a huge 'Simpsons' fan,' said Jellinek. "He's been on 'The Simpsons.'"

Jon Heder made a name for himself as a nerdy high schooler named Napoleon in the cult favorite, "Napoleon Dynamite." And where Napoleon loved his tater tots, Heder has a new favorite food in his latest role ... brains.
    
Heder will play Drex, "a college student who finds himself undergoing an inexplicable transformation that begins when he wakes up at the bottom of a water-filled bathtub," in "Woke Up Dead," an online series from Sony's Crackle.com.
     
The series, which premiered on Oct. 5, will consist of 23 four-minute episodes and can be viewed at the Crackle Web site or at wokeupdead.tv. "Dead" also stars Jean Smart of "Designing Women" and Wayne Knight who is most remembered as Newman on "Seinfeld."
 

By WILLIAM KATES
ASSOCIATED PRESS

On a Friday night in October 1959, Americans began slipping into a dimension of imagination as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. They've really never returned.
    
"The Twilight Zone," first submitted for the public's approval by a reluctant CBS, has resonated with viewers from generation to generation with memorable stories carrying universal messages about society's ills and the human condition.
     
Like the time-space warps that anchored so many of the show's plots, Rod Serling's veiled commentary remains as soul-baring today as it did a half-century ago, and the show's popularity endures in multiple facets of American pop culture.
     
"I'm interested in the escapist ideas, the psychological nature of the stories," said Lauren Chizinski of Houston, a first-year graduate student in sculpting at Syracuse University who is among two dozen students taking a class on show and its 50th anniversary.
     
"The Twilight Zone" has been exulted in mediums such as pinball and video games and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disney theme parks.
 
The original show -- which ran just five seasons, 1959-1964 -- led to a feature film by Steven Spielberg and John Landis in 1983, and is reportedly soon to appear again on the silver screen from Leonardo DiCaprio's production company.

OK, if you're into the whole Jam angle of The Office, I stumbled across this video and thought you guys might want to check it out.

This week's episode deals (at least partially) with Dwight's reaction to Jim's promotion. But the following week is the one-hour episode of Jim and Pam's wedding.

Here's a behind-the-scenes clip from the wedding episode. If this video is any indication, this could be one of the series' top episodes. In particular, there's great lines from Creed and Michael in this clip.

Oh, but before the video, here's the quick scoop. I'm not on Twitter, but The Office site has the feed from some of the cast members who tweet. Well, Melora Hardin (Jan) is on Twitter and said the she'll be back for a few episodes. Her episodes have typically been pretty strong.

Anyway, here's the video from the wedding.