1. 'Saturday Night Live': Zooey Deschanel, Jean Dujardin and Nic Cage get adorkable

Zooey Deschanel took the "Saturday Night Live" stage for the first time on Feb. 11, bringing her particular brand of quirky cuteness to the show.

And for the most part, she did pretty well. The show played to her comedy strengths (and poked a little bit of fun at her persona). Plus, "The Artist" star Jean Dujardin!

Here's how it played out.

Cold open

Jason Sudeikis as Mitt Romney tries to play off his losses in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado, but Baron the dog steals the show, barely letting Sudeikis get the "Live from New York ..." line out.

Monologue

Deschanel walks out in a red dress adorned with little white hearts. "Even though I do this a lot," she says, "it's for a special occasion." She then sings a pretty funny little song about guys who forget Valentine's Day: "I know I'm angry/But later I'll be fine/You're just a moron/But at least you're mine." It's one of the better moments of the show.


Clint Eastwood Chrysler ads

In a running bit throughout the first half of the show, Bill Hader trots out his high-waisted Clint Eastwood impression, getting crankier and crankier in a series of three ads following up the Chrysler Super Bowl commercial. "While you were b****ing about my commercial we lost to Mexico by 30 points," he growls in the last one. "Te gusta losing, numb nuts?" The first one is below (click the links the second and third ones).


"Piers Morgan Tonight"

Even in a wig, Taran Killam looks very little like Morgan, but his stammering portrayal of the CNN host isn't bad. A so-so sketch dissecting the controversy over the Super Bowl halftime show is saved by Kristen Wiig's dead-on mimicking of Madonna's quasi-British accent.


"Les Jeunes de Paris"

We're always kind of charmed by this sketch, even though there's very little dialogue and what there is is in French. But Killam, Deschanel and special guest Dujardin seem to be having an awful lot of fun at their little dance party/homage to "The Artist." Nothing wrong with that.


1930s newsroom

Sudeikis and Wiig go all "His Girl Friday" while a befuddled Deschanel fails to keep up with the rat-a-tat dialogue. It's blessedly short, and Deschanel gets the best line: "Straight up -- is everyone here on cocaine?"

Musical guest Karmin

Like Lana Del Rey, Karmin is making its "SNL" debut before its first full-length album is released. Unlike Lana Del Rey, they probably won't wake up to a hail of criticism Sunday morning. Their performances of the catchy "Brokenhearted" (which is below) and new song "I Told You So" are both pretty winning.


"Weekend Update"

Nicolas Cage shows he's a good sport (and pimps his new movie) by appearing with Andy Samberg for an "In the Cage" segment, which Samberg is clearly pretty excited about. Nasim Pedrad shows off a pretty strong impression of Arianna Huffington, and Seth Meyers is his usual solid self. Our favorite one-liners:

• On Rick Santorum pitching himself as an alternative to Mitt Romney: "I believe it's reflected in his new campaign slogan, 'The Other White Meat.'"
• On President Obama calling New York Giants Coach Tom Coughlin after the Super Bowl: "He tried to phone the Patriots too, but the call was dropped."
• On the premiere of "Smash": "'Smash' won its timeslot Monday night ... so get ready for two new NBC series, 'Smash: Criminal Intent' and 'Smash: SVU.' [Singing, with jazz hands] Bum-buum!"

Here's the "In the Cage" segment.


Post-"Update" sketches

The highlight of latter-show hodgepodge was easily "Bein' Quirky with Zooey Deschanel," with Abby Elliott as Zooey, Killam as Michael Cera, the real Zooey as Mary-Kate Olsen and Kristen Wiig doing Bjork for the first time in quite a while. Bjork knitting a sweater for an octopus -- "I made an extra hole for his dreams and ideas" -- kind of kills us.


We won't waste pixels on the crab sketch, the Victorian women writing letters that was really about gay marriage or "We're Gonna Make Technology Hump." After the crab sketch, though, the show paid a brief tribute to Whitney Houston by showing a still of her 1996 appearance on the show with Molly Shannon's Mary Katherine Gallagher.

What did you think of "SNL" this week?

The midseason premiere of "The Walking Dead" is only two days away, and this afternoon we'll be picking three lucky readers to receive a prize pack: Three Valentine's Day themed TWD t-shirts and a copy of "The Walking Dead Chronicles: The Official Companion Book."

We've been posting puzzle pieces that are slowly coming together to reveal a still from an earlier episode from season 2 of "The Walking Dead," and he final clue is below. Tell us which episode and scene is pictured by sending us a tweet.

To be eligible to win, please follow @Zap2it on Twitter and send us your answer using the hashtag #Zap2TWD.

We'll be closing the contest and randomly picking three winners at 2pm PT today, so hurry up and enter now!

Well, "Supernatural" fans, seven seasons into our favorite show, we've finally reached the unicorns-and-clowns episode. This week we'll see the Winchester boys return to Kansas to investigate Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie, a Chuck E. Cheese type of children's establishment where kids' worst fears are coming to life.

For Sam, that means getting his butt kicked by some violent clowns. We sat down with Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles last week on set to get the scoop on this episode. "It's not just like oh, it's a cute beating," Jared tells us. "It's a whoopin'. It took over a day to film us fighting through all different parts, myself and two clowns. It was a lot of fun, but I couldn't walk for like two days [after], because it was so labor intensive, getting up, getting down, jumping on this... I think I'm tougher than I am, so I like to pretend I'm doing the hard stuff. I think it's going to be funny and scary in a really 'Supernatural'-only way."

Jensen admits that he never thought they'd quite reach the unicorn phase of the Winchesters' adventure.

"The fact that we've come this far and we're still going and these guys are still motoring along, in a way it's really cool, because it's such a rarity these days," he says. "I mean, people get the plug pulled after two episodes of airing, so to have carved out a little spot for us, even though it's on Friday nights, it works. Thank God for the people who watch us, for our fans, because they've stayed committed to the show. It's very rewarding."

Though this episode could definitely be classified as one of the more comedic hours of the season, there's no shortage of tragedy in the Winchesters' life right now. After losing Bobby, Dean is dangerously close to losing Sam as well -- and he doesn't even know it yet.

The CW recently released photos from Sam's Lucifer-driven hallucination scenes in upcoming episodes, so it's no secret that his mental state is in serious peril -- which puts Dean's world into a tailspin later in the season.

"He's lost Cas, he's lost Bobby, and what little part of Sam he does have left, that's all he's got," Jensen says. "I think if that were to up and go, too, it'd be the end of Dean. He wouldn't have a reason to get going. He'd get very self-destructive; he might kamikaze for Dick Roman. Who knows."

"I think we're going to see me probably in a straight jacket. I go totally berserk, totally nuts. I completely lose it. We've all been scared of it, and we'll see it in action."

Judging from a recent photo tweeted by Misha Collins, Castiel -- or at least, a guy who looks like Castiel -- will come into play as Sam spirals. "It's not Castiel," Jensen says. "It is, but it isn't. First, Dean's just gobsmacked. It even says 'jaw to the floor,' I think, when he sees him. I think there's a lot of mixed emotions about it. He's probably elated to have his friend back, and somebody who he knows that he can count on, even though he doesn't know who he is -- meaning Cas doesn't know that he's Cas. Personally, from an actor's standpoint, I'm just glad to have the gang back together, so to speak."

We're hoping that Castiel's return gives Dean a little bit of inspiration to move forward. "There's an excitement there because I think he'd lost a lot of hope when Cas went away. That was a really big blow, I think, to his motivation in this fight, and then again when Bobby left. He feels like he doesn't really have -- he obviously has his brother, but he's... a mental case right now, so even though he has his brother, part of his brother, it's a tough time for Dean right now."

Don't forget to tune in, tonight at 9 p.m. EST on The CW. In the meantime, catch our video interview below for more from Jared and Jensen.

"The Walking Dead" returns to AMC on Sunday (Feb. 12) to complete it's second season. We left off outside the barn where a massive zombie massacre just went down that included the death of a zombified Sophia (Madison Lintz), who was MIA for most of the first seven episodes.

Zap2it talked to executive producer and showrunner Glen Mazzara and Robert Kirkman ("The Walking Dead" comic book creator and also and EP on the show) about what to expect from the second half of the zombie fest's second season.

"We hurtle to the finale here," says Mazzara, suggesting that the second half of the season is going to unfold at a much faster clip than the first seven episodes. Which, by the way, they're quick to defend as setting a calming tone to contrast with what's ahead.

Here are a few more insights about what lies ahead:

We probably won't find out how Sophia turned into a zombie.

Glen Mazzara: "I would say that as showrunner, I am hesitant to go back in time and do flashbacks and I know people might not like that, but I'm hesitant to do that because I feel it slows up the narrative.

"We hurtle to the finale here, I'm very excited about the material that's in the pipeline, so the idea of going back in flashbacks is a great idea, but it's not something I want to do unless there's a real puprose in that it also pushes the story forward in some way"

It looks like we'll be on the farm -- or near it -- for the rest of the season.

Robert Kirkman: "The farm is a big part of our story and the fact that they thought it was a safe haven they could live in for a while and hunker down there for a while is really what our second season deals with to a certain extent, but starting with episode 7 and the barn massacre they're starting to find out that it isn't a very safe place. And so over the life of these episodes they're going to be encountering more and more danger and I don't think people will be concerned with 'are they on the farm' -- it'll be much more about the events."

Glen Mazzara: "It may have felt that some of the episodes on the farm felt like a stall, or slower than people expected. That changes because the outside world comes crashing in. The farm is not as safe as people expected. They're getting painted into a corner."

Expect more "scare" factor.

Glen Mazzara: "I feel that [flashbacks] break the timeframe and it's not something that's usually done in horror movies ... we want to keep the show scary and driving forward.

Robert Kirkman: "One of the things that appeals to the fans of the comic book series is that you never know what's going to happen. Any character can die at any moment. When it came time to do this TV show one of the things I wanted to maintain was that element of shock that you get from this kind of story."

Hershel (Scott Wilson) becomes a bad***?

Glen Mazzara: "There's more than enough danger to go around in the second half of the season. Actually, Hershel becomes a bad***, I love that."

So do we.

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There's still time to win our "Walking Dead" prize pack -- click here to compete.

Fast national ratings for Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012

"American Idol" managed to topple "The Big Bang Theory's" mighty reign Thursday night, pulling in more viewers during the 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. time period than the ratings favorite sitcom. "Idol" nabbed 16.6 million viewers during its first half hour, while "Big Bang" scored 16.0 million. A small difference, sure, but a big victory for "Idol."

When last we left the Upper East Side, Blair (Leighton Meester) and Louis (Hugo Becker) were heading off for their honeymoon while Dan (Penn Badgley) and Serena (Blake Lively) were busy not getting anywhere. But in a sneak preview of Monday's (Jan. 13) episode of "Gossip Girl," it looks there's change in the air.

In the cleverly-titled show "Crazy, Cupid, Love," Blair has returned to NYC and is ready to find love again...for someone else. She looks to match make for the former item of Dan and Blair. This should be an interesting effort because, believe it or not, Lonely Boy still has feelings for Queen B.

Perhaps the most interesting preview is it appears that Dan was the one responsible for sending the Chuck (Ed Westwick) and Blair video to Gossip Girl. Yes, the same video that basically ruined Blair's marriage before it even began. This was hinted last week as Dan skulked while Blair and Louis got into their limo.

Uh oh. Uh oh.

Here's the video...

It's Group Day on "American Idol," but before we get to all the screaming and tears, we check in with Symone Black from last night. That was straight-up scary when she fell off the stage - it kinda looked like she had a stroke or a seizure or something. And we love how the judges just kind of sat and stared at her. Don't all rush to help at once, guys.

Jennifer decides she can compliment her back to life - "I was just gonna say, that was one of the prettiest sounds I've heard all day." What does that even mean? Like, you can't say it anymore? She's not dead. And Randy offers some medical advice about it probably being low blood sugar. And Steven just stays at the table, presiding over the incident like Death himself.

Sorry. This is a very serious situation and the judges probably don't know what to do, but it's still funny to make fun of them.

We get back to Symone's group and they replay a snippet of Lauren Mink's audition of "Alone," but they put this weird echo on it so that it now sounds like something that should be playing in a trailer for a movie about a house haunted by a vengeful spirit - "How do I get you alone," indeed.

The judges put through most of Symone's group, but Ethan James is cut, which is a shame. I remember liking him in auditions. Anyway, there are 185 people being lined up for the slaughter that is Group Day. Bring it on.

Seacrest voice-overs us in by talking about how this day is so critical to everything, when in reality it's just good TV. Being able to sing in a group has absolutely no bearing on being successful on this show. Doesn't mean we don't love Group Day, we're just sayin.'

In the montage of past seasons, there are of course people crying and yelling (hey there, Tatiana and one of those giant chubby twin brothers!), but the absolutely best is this young, thin girl in a white shirt huddled against the wall and a chair, mouth agape as if she's some kind of feral child who was just found in a cave. WTF? That made us cry with laughter, y'all. We rewound to watch it again.

There is still that silly (for them) awesome (for us) rule about having to have a mixture of Day 1 and Day 2 singers in each group. Everyone is acting surprised - um, have you watched this show? Not only is this the exact manipulative crap this show would pull, but also - they've done it on past seasons! Pay attention, people.

There's a rather abrasive police officer named Alicia who can't find a group. I'm not sure the best tactic is getting on the microphone and brow-beating people into being in your group. There's a reason you don't have a group, lady. She ends up snagging girl-from-the-woods Amy Brumfield, who has the plague, and some kid, but then she is so obnoxious that these other two people without a group steal her group members.

Hilariously, all these people think "Joy to the World" is the Christmas song. People are stupid.

Back from break, stupid Alicia is still running around and now she's getting in people's faces about liking cops. She should really work for the California Highway Patrol, because she clearly has a massive chip on her shoulder. BOOM, roasted. I'll be here all week.

We join a group with Brielle Von Hugel, Shannon Magrane and some other people. Brielle has a crazy stage mom who thinks she knows everything. I swear to god, if I was there and my mom was hanging around, I'd tell her to hit the bricks. Actually, my mom's awesome, so that wouldn't be a problem. But for these people, that's what I'd do.

Symone Black is back and has to find a group, while her creepy stage dad follows her around like a drunk hobo. Seriously, he's like the dad from the Jackson family. She finds a group and creepy dad makes them huddle up. I'm with Symone - just get outta here, dad.

Hilariously, we now have a montage like something out of "The Stand" - everyone girl-from-the-woods Amy has come into contact with is getting sick with her crazy Tennessee flu that probably is only cured with moonshine or something. But Amy will be OK, because she's got Jesus helping her out.

Meanwhile, in the MIT group, pasty cowboy Richie fancies himself quite the harmonizer and choreographer. It's rather awkward to watch. There's also a whole kidney stone issue, it's kinda weird. Poor guys - this bossy cowboy needs to go. Who died and made him king? He's so smarmy, I just want to smack him.

Alicia the Cop's group has a plague-stricken member named Christian, and are also having some problems on "Stuck Like Glue."

A group called The Betties is arguing over the classic Go to Sleep vs. Stay Up and Practice conundrum. I'm always on the side of going to sleep. You'll work so much better when you're rested, there is no reason to work yourselves into utter exhaustion.

Two of the girls, Jennifer and Rhianna, stay up and keep working until after 5 a.m. Rhianna doesn't know the words to "Hit 'Em Up Style," which kinda surprises me. But she is like 12, so I guess that explains it.

We leave the episode with a montage of the groups doing last minute preparations. The Betties are first, but that will have to wait 'til next week.