Mackey's back in town. / Prashant Gupta / FX

Lots of TV on television tonight beyond the on-again Republican National Convention. First, and least threatening to President Bush's demographic, is The CW's remake of 90210, which the network did not send to critics in advance, presumably for fear we would be blinded by its sheer awesomeness.

FX, meanwhile, premieres the final season of The Shield (left). The screeners came while I was on vacation, so I've got nothing for you yet, but I refer you to Maureen Ryan and Alan Sepinwall's writeups.

Time permitting, any interest out there in a Shield Watch?

Expectations for Sarah Palin's nomination speech before the media went nuts with the pregnancy story: How presidential is she? How well will she address [her foreign-policy experience, her real position on the Bridge to Nowhere, Troopergate...]?

Expectations for Sarah Palin's nomination speech after the media went nuts with the pregnancy story: How human is she? How well will she address how much she loves and supports her own daughter?

I'm not saying that the potential lemonade makes the truckload of lemons worth receiving. But which set of expectations would you rather have to beat?

The Sarah Palin story/ies blew up while I was on vacation, and it's so fascinating—from a media coverage angle as well as others—that I'll try to resist the urge to overpost. (By which I mean not just the pregnancy but her whole candidacy and rollout.) I may not be able to keep that promise, though.

But right now a quick hit on one topic: the role of blogs in the pregnancy rumors. Was it a legitimate story for the media? Aaron Barnhart at TV Barn says it was, and in the process makes the point:

And here's the other thing: How long was the Palin camp going to wait to tell us about Bristol's pregnancy? They only rushed the story to the media because of a hot rumor...

Well, hold up. Maybe they rushed it for that reason. Certainly that was the story: to combat scurrilous rumors about a pregnancy coverup, the Palin camp said it thus had to release the news of a real pregnancy.

But as Barnhart suggests, it's not as if they could have kept this under wraps until November anyway. Given that, when would you choose to spring the news? Maybe on a national holiday, while most news media were focused on a major hurricane? Might you pick that day to—and Palin's adviser Tucker Eskew said this, not me—"flush the toilet"?

It would just be nice if you could say that you were forced to flush by some reason other than a major hurricane on a national holiday, and blame someone else for making you do it...

I can't know what the McCain-Palin folks were actually thinking. But whether they were looking for an excuse to dump the news on Labor Day, or just happened to be given one, can you think of a better time to release the news? Should they be damning the scurrilous blogs or thanking them?

GIOVANNI RUFINO/THE CW

I'm back from vacation, and Gossip Girl has returned with me. I'm not sure what I'm more unsettled by: seeing Chuck as a quasi-sympathetic figure ("Damn that motherChucker!"), or seeing Jay McInerney as an actor. (Me: "Guy who wrote Bright Lights, Big City! Distracting!" Most of GG audience: "Ew, old guy! Distracting!")

I didn't get around, by the way, to properly reviewing TNT's Raising the Bar, which debuted last night, but I figure that if Steven Bochco can't be bothered to update 20-year-old cliches of lawyer dramas, I can't be bothered to interrupt my vacation to point that out. Your own thoughts welcomed.

And/or: Anyone catch the Jerry Lewis telethon? Or the Republican National Committee one?

A quick thank-you, by the way, to all of Tuned In's commenters. Robo-James gets a lot of credit for running the blog while I'm away, but now that I've unplugged him, I can say this: the dirty not-so-secret is that you really run this blog while I'm on vacation, by keeping things lively in the comments sections. (The epic Simpsons-quote post, in particular, had me rolling.) I, and Time Warner's corporate accountants, greatly appreciate your free labor.

Now to open my giant pile of mail.

You must be wondering by now what I think about the question: has the media coverage of Sarah Palin been sexist? Well, for starters, I—

What's that you say? You didn't ask? Because no one's asking? Because it's not actually a controversy yet?

Maybe not. But as night follows day, it will be.

Here is how it will happen.

(more...)