Hey,remember all the controversy caused when Carly Hennessy--an Irish pop singer who'd been signed to MCA and whose one album had been sucha colossal multimillion-dollar failure, she'dmade #15 on Blender magazine's "20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups Of AllTime" list--resurfaced as Carly Smithson on season 7 of American Idol?

Viewers (myself amongthem) were understandably outraged that this show, a show presumably focused on giving undiscovered talent a chance, was beingused as a relaunching pad to revive the fizzled career of this has-been (or never-was). Sure, there was minor public outrage surrounding Idol finalists like former MaverickRecords rocker Michael Johns and ex-Arista Nashville signing Kristy Lee Cook,too, but since those singers' albumsnever actually came out, Carly caught most of the flak. And rightfully so.

Click HERE for more details on the Carly Smithson American Idol scandal.

Anyway, I honestly can NOT believe the AmIdol producers are upto their old sneaky tricks

America's Best Dance Crew 3 premiered this week, and much to my delight, almost all of the crews this season are super-fantastic and funky-fresh, especially the posse of fly girls known as Beat Freaks and the literally freaky quadruple-jointed sideshow crew Ringmasters. However, I have mixed feelings about season 3, because my favorite contestants, Quest Crew, seem to have an unfair disadvantage.

Quest Crew have definitely got it going on, but they also have a few familiar faces in their midst: specifically, three much-loved alumni from another equally awesome competitive dance show, So You Think You Can Dance. Now, MTV has no rules (to my knowledge) that contestants from SYTYCD should be barred from appearing on ABDC, and these Quest Crew members certainly have the talent to compete. But I do think that it's odd that on this week's ABDC3 season premiere the Quest Crew dancers' backgrounds were NEVER mentioned once (particularly suspect considering that ABDC show judge Shane Sparks

Mixi (the single-monikered winner of Fuse's anti-Idol-style talent competition Redemption Song, and possibly the coolest reality TV champ ever) recently came by the Yahoo! Music office to charm the staff with her off-the-record/behind-the-scenes Redemption Song anecdotes (damn, I wish I could print them here), impromptu acoustic singalongs, and totally awesome Smurfette hair streaks.

By the end of Mixi's visit (which even included her whipping out the Magic Markers and creating a little piece of suitable-for-framing wall art), I'd developed a serious girl-crush. And I was of course thanking gawd (or Fuse, or Geffen's Ron Fair, whoever) that bratty blowhard Angelica Rose didn't win Redemption Song instead.

Here's a little snippet of Mixi performing a promising work-in-progress song from her upcoming debut album for Geffen. I can't wait to hear the finished product, although I am a little bummed that all the F-words will apparently be excised from the final version:

And here Mixi

There are many ways in which a show can jump the shark. In the case of Happy Days, it's by having a main character actually water-ski over Jaws. In other cases, it can mean the addition of a cute kid (Oliver on The Brady Bunch), the exit or death of a major character (Seven Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter continuing without John Ritter), the consummation of two characters' long-simmering attraction (Sam and Diane on Cheers), the old actor switcharoo (Dick Sargent replacing Dick York on Bewitched), or the addition of professional shark-jumper/show-destroyer Ted McGinley (Happy Days, Married With Children, The Love Boat, even Dancing With The Stars).

Really, pretty much all TV shows make the shark-jump eventually, if they're allowed to remain on the air for enough seasons.

However, one show I never thought would jump the shark is the seemingly infallible American Idol. And granted, the program is still a ratings titan, but as it enters it eighth (yes, EIGHTH!) season, and its