When she announced last Friday her imminent retirement as the matriarch of daytime talk-shows, Oprah Winfrey got everyone gabbing about who might replace her. Tyra, Martha and Ellen were all bandied about as possible solutions. But who's going to consider literary suggestions from the host of America's Next Top Model? Who's going to address body image with M. Diddy, the woman who built an empire on binging? And who's going to sit through hard-hitting interviews from the woman who opens each show with a dance number? Exactly. This is why Gabourey Sidibe, the star of Precious, could be TV's next best thing.

So amid all the noise about the 2011 end-date for her iconic talk show comes this little news gem: Her involvement in an HBO pilot. This project will pair Oprah's Harpo Films with Secretary screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson. The premise of the allegedly sexually-charged serial is simple. A woman leaves her husband and kids in Santa Monica suddenly to pursue a lifestyle flush with hedonism and scandal in Los Angeles. This nestles it neatly in the pay-cable land of less-than-ideal mothers as popularized by Weeds and United States of Tara.

Are you sitting at home tonight with an ice pack to your head, trying to piece together shards of last night? Why not keep company with the American Music Awards? I mean yes, Jennifer Lopez is going to perform, but if anything can inspire you to spew up memories from last night, it'll be J.Lo trying to make the phrase "Fresh Out of the Oven" sound like some weird sexual euphemism. There's no warm glow more reassuring than the bland predictability of the AMAs. These award shows are not only uninspired in their pick of nominees, but they're even less inspired with who they choose to award. Basically, the same seven performers appear as nominees throughout five make-believe classifications of popular music. Also, Lady Gaga, currently enjoying a boom of critical and commercial fervor, is going to win everything. Favorite Male Country Performer? Lady Gaga. Favorite Latin Album? Lady Gaga. Favorite Rock Duo, Band, or Group? Lady Gaga. Duh. More importantly, within every category, there's always one nominee who's obviously kind of a red herring. That performer never stands a chance of winning but is placed there to demonstrate the AMAs' rebellious streak. A highlight of such obvious losers after the break. Though with Mercury in retrograde, upsets are always possible.

• Good morning! People who are responsible with money have purchased some rhinestone-studded glove that Michael Jackson wore once for about $350,000. [BBC]
• John Mayer has made the claim that celebrity musicians typically make bad records. Stones and a glass house, honey. [DigitalSpy]
• Along those lines: Jennifer Lopez has a new music video out. It is about the thrills of preparing lattice pie crusts, but features close-ups of her lips for no particular reason. [D-Listed]

Unless you're one of the seven people in this country currently employed full-time and therefore far away from a television set, you've probably been lounging around your apartment during the day, desultory and shiftless. Busying about in your housecoat with curlers in your hair, day-drinking lukewarm zinfandel, smoking clove cigarettes, and peripherally watching your stories, you've got the makings of a 21st century Edie Beale. You may even take a little time out to periodically prod the cat with a yard stick to get her to stop mewling. That is until yesterday. Yesterday presented a glimpse of Franco on General Hospital. That's when you busted out the catnip. So you could have a 60-minute slice of you-and-James Franco special alone time. Perhaps you even opted to heckle your TV when the camera panned away to the blonde. After a bombastic debut, the actor's reasoning for coming onto the soap suddenly seems unimportant. His arc on the soap means that you can stop feeling bad about being a shut-in and can stop seeking out more enriching pursuits. Sometimes, it's enriching enough to simply support the arts. Franco's first few moments on GH after the break.

For the last few years Katherine Heigl has been the TV star you go to if you’re looking for someone to say some wackadoo shit on the record: The first respectable movie she every appeared in? It was sexist. The TV show that got her the movie in the first place? Really badly written. That Emmy she won? Don’t you dare give her another one. That day she had to work? Way too long. But, in her defense, here’s one thing Heigl’s never done: tell a rape joke on national television. But that's exactly what Modern Family's Sofia Vergara did yesterday on The View. Move over Heigl, there’s a new loose-lipped loony in town, and she likes to say insane, self-defeating things even more than you do.

At Cambridge, he wasn’t as funny as John Cleese (born Cheese) or Graham Chapman, who were in the comedy footlights, and -- while deciding on a career as either a journalist or a chef -- he took up amateur drama. Since University, Sir Ian McKellen has become the consummate professional.

Once upon a time, well just months ago really, a small show premiered on Fox called Glee and it was just so darn promising. Fast forward about seven episodes and the once-promising musical dramedy has crumbled into a soppy morality play punctuated by embarrassing musical breaks (that you can fast forward through if you're the type who watches it online). Thankfully, there's Jane Lynch, who has been on every single television show, from Party of Five to Weeds, since time immemorial. Jane Lynch, who's really the only reason why any of us continue watching Glee. She's the only one on Glee who has yet to break into song, but as demonstrated on last night's chat with Conan O'Brien (and here, too!), she'd handle that with aplomb.

It’s finale week on Project Runway. I’ve watched all six seasons, and the theme that jumps out at me this year is copycatting. Logan copied Althea’s zipper collar. Althea copied Irina’s slouchy sweater sleeves. Irina copied some Coney Island artwork. (Carol Hannah hasn’t copied, but she just makes boring dress-dresses anyway.) I understand when you spend all day every day in the same room with people they’re going to rub off on you, but you have to do a little self-editing. If you repeat what the person next to you did last week, you have to expect to be called on it. Personally, I was rooting hard for Gordana. She may not have had that “wow” edge, but her clothes were all so beautifully constructed. She never sent anyone down the runway not looking their best. I thought her final piece looked like a Georgia O’Keeffe.

Music star Adam Lambert poses for the most recent cover of Out, along with four other personalities, as part of the Gay 100, the magazine’s annual celebration of icons, activists and mouthpieces. But Lambert’s inclusion has been marred by his record label and management, who, according to editor Aaron Hicklin, insisted that the American Idol runner-up not look “too gay.” Hicklin writes in an open letter to Lambert, “We’re curious whether you know that we made cover offers for you before American Idol was even halfway through its run. Apparently, Out was too gay, even for you. There was the issue of what it would do to your record sales, we were told. Imagine! A gay musician on the cover of a gay magazine. What might the parents think! It’s only because this cover is a group shot that includes a straight woman [Cyndi Lauper] that your team would allow you to be photographed at all.” It’s all eerily reminiscent of 1997, when Ellen DeGeneres came out on her eponymous sitcom.