Attention fans of Megan Fox (and you know who you are): Tonight's the night your dream girl becomes the new girl on New Girl. It'll be foxy Fox on Fox.
Fox's New Girl debut airs at 7 p.m. today on Fox.
Don't worry, Zooey Deschanel aficionados, it's not permanent. Last year the episode was being filmed while Deschanel was off for maternity leave.
That six-episode absence had to be explained somehow, because Deschanel's Jess is not pregnant on the series. There have been plenty of scenes in the last few episodes where Jess (in time-honored TV cover-up) is carrying bags or sitting behind a big table.
And when she's up and walking around, she's wearing the most billowing of billowy summer dresses to disguise her increasingly gravid circumstances.
Time-honored tradition? You bet.
Kerry Washington hid her pregnancy on Season 3 of Scandal by having Olivia Pope sitting a lot at a desk. That got too difficult and the season eventually had to be cut short. Scandal's fifth season returns to the ABC lineup at 8 p.m. Thursday.
When she shot the pilot of Modern Family, Julie Bowen was pregnant with twins. There were lots of scenes standing behind tubs of laundry.
When January Jones got pregnant during Season 5 of Mad Men, the producers put her in a fat suit as a disguise.
Cobie Smulders (Robin) and Alyson Hannigan (Lily) were both pregnant in Season 5 of How I Met Your Mother. They held a lot of strategically placed items in their laps all season long.
Ellen Pompeo spent all of Season 6 of Grey's Anatomy being filmed from the chest up or in bed because her character, Meredith, was recovering from donating a piece of her liver.
The list goes on.
On New Girl, Deschanel's absence is explained by having Jess off on a sequestered jury. That leaves her room vacant and available to be sublet.
Nick (Jake Johnson) tried renting out the loft to pay for Schmidt's (Max Greenfield) bachelor party in Tokyo, but that didn't pan out. It seems a fetching Japanese guest assumed Nick was a male prostitute after, well, let's just say Nick couldn't resist her charms and towel-wrapped apres-shower proximity.
In tonight's episode, a drop-dead-gorgeous pharmaceutical rep named Reagan (Fox) agrees to sublet Jess' room. Hilarity ensues.
For some reason, the episode is rated TV-14 D, L, V for dialogue, language and violence. I can understand D and L (the witty repartee and comedy is for grownups), but I can't recall any V on New Girl.
The 29-year-old Fox (Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) plays an old friend of Cece's (Hannah Simone). A very close old friend. No spoiler here -- Fox's teaser ad for the episode has the ladies admitting "we hooked up" years before.
Schmidt has trouble processing this new information about his fiancee's past.
Series creator Liz Meriwether tells TV Guide that Reagan is "tough and not into the weirdness and feelings and neuroses that all of the core characters have."
Jess gets un-sequestered at the end of Fox's four-episode story arc and Deschanel returns.
For the record, Deschanel, 36, and producer husband Jacob Pechenik, 42, welcomed daughter Elsie Otter in July. Otter? Is that a family name?
"We both just really like the name Elsie," Deschanel told the Today show, "and we both love otters. They're very sweet and they're also smart. They hold hands while they sleep. There's so many amazing things about otters. They're wonderful animals."
Makes sense to me.
Finding Your Roots. An especially fascinating episode of the PBS series airs at 7 p.m. today on AETN. "War Stories" examines the military service in the families of Oscar winners Patricia Arquette and Julianne Moore, and Sen. John McCain.
• American Idol. At 7 p.m. Wednesday, it's time for the first Showcase Round as 12 of the Top 24 contestants perform in hopes of making it to the next round. Fan-favorite singers return to mentor the hopefuls.
Tune in at the same time Thursday for the second round of 12, along with the judges' decisions on who stays and who goes.
• New deal. NBC has signed a new deal with super producer Dick Wolf. What does that mean for you? It means a guaranteed 18th (!) season for Law & Order: SVU and the continuation of Wolf's Chicago dramas -- Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D.
Note: Wolf has a new series, Chicago Law, in the works, possibly for midseason a year from now.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 02/09/2016