Had you asked us just yesterday whether or not we were planning on watching HOW TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA — a little-hyped new offering from HBO that at first glance looked to us like nothing more than a desperate attempt to ensure we held onto our HBO subscription until TRUE BLOOD returns in the summer* — our answer would have unequivocally been “No!” Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for the pay-cabler, a somewhat uneventful Saturday evening** left us with a little more free time on our hands than originally planned and a reminder not to judge a book by its cover (or in the case of TV, a show by its buzz).

For what on the surface seemed like little more than an ENTOURAGE meets New York City hybrid, turned out to be anything but. So much so that after devouring four half-hour back-to-back episodes that follow underachieving best friends Ben (OCTOBER ROAD’s Bryan Greenberg) and Cam (Lord of Dogtown’s Victor Rasuk) as they struggle to — as the title suggests — make it in America. We’re completely hooked.

Hooked on the docudrama feel that gave us a front row seat to New York’s always exciting nightlife and art world. Hooked on the supporting players, including scene stealers Eddie Kaye Thomas (playing Ben’s old High School friend), Martha Plimpton (Rachel’s interior-designer boss) and Louis Guzman (Cam’s fresh-out-of-prison cousin Rene) who naturally has his own ideas of just how to make it (like investing in an energy drink franchise called Rasta Monsta). And hooked most of all on protagonist Ben, a Fashion Institute drop out who in the process of attempting to win back ex-girlfriend Rachel (Lake Bell) has decided to finally follow-through on his dream of creating his own denim line.

Thanks to a shortened freshman season, Ben and Cam will only have eight episode to find out if they have what it takes. Will the slightly-less-than-dynamic-duo do make it? No promises here, but having seen the show’s first four episodes, of this we are sure: You’ll certainly have fun if you decide to join them for the ride.

* While we’re sure the upcoming 100 million dollar history lesson by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg known as THE PACIFIC is going to be phenomenal, we rarely have the time to dedicate to such sprawling miniseries’ until much later on (Having only recently ‘caught up’ with Hanks’ FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON)

** Thank you very much to you know who for bailing on you know what!

HOW TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA premieres on Sunday February 14 at 10PM on HBO and HBO Canada.

Good News: Not only will DIRECTV subscribers get exclusive access to FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS starting October 1st, they’ll get to watch the episodes commercial-free and in HD. Bad News: This TV Addict can’t subscribe to DIRECTV [Source]

Good News: One of television’s finest brilliant-but-cancelled series, the Aaron Sorkin comedy/drama hybrid SPORTS NIGHT arrives on DVD just in time for it’s 10th anniversary. Bad News: None. I just wanted to give a plug to one of this TV Addict’s all-time favorites. [Click here to check it out on Amazon]

Good News: Canada is finally getting HBO Bad News: Obsessed fans of REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER [see: this TV Addict] will have to wait until October 30 for the network to bow.

4:26PM: T-Minus four, wait, now three minutes until HBO’s TRUE BLOOD panel. Or as I like to call it, the only way to guarantee our seats for the DEXTER panel that follows immediately thereafter.

4:32PM: Since theTVaddict.com doesn’t endorse illegal downloading, I finally got a first look at TRUE BLOOD courtesy of a trailer HBO produced exclusively for Comic Con. It’s pretty much X-MEN, but with really sexy Vampires. Oh, and fellow Canadian Anna Paquin.

4:44PM:Creator Alan Ball [SIX FEET UNDER] promises to avoid the big three Vampire clichés: Blue light, Contact lenses and Opera music. Which is all well and good, but if you ask me, the big thing Ball should concentrate on avoiding is cancellation! Moment of silence for MOONLIGHT…

4:49PM: Because Anna Paquin’s protagonist Sookie Stackhouse is telepathic, she has remained a virgin. Take that ABC Family’s SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER.

4:50PM: Warning for Bella and Edward fans. According to Alan Ball, human/vampire sex may not be such a great idea.

4:52PM: Today’s word of the day, women who lust after vampires are called ‘FangBangers.’

5:03PM: Cliché Alert: Just like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA isn’t about space, Alan Ball promises that TRUE BLOOD isn’t just a show about Vampires, “it’s a show about relationships.”

5:05PM: Viral Marketing Alert: lovebitten.net

5:06PM: When asked by a fan if there’s really going to be an actual drink called ‘True Blood’, he answers, “V8, Valium, Vicodin and Viagra” Funny stuff, and not at all rehearsed!

5:08PM: Fans are asking questions with regards to future plot lines set in future books. Hello… SPOILER ALERT much!

5:14PM: Apparently Alan Ball doesn’t go online to read fan reaction. D’OH

5:17PM: Worst question of any Comic Con Panel. For the panel, “What drew you to the characters?” Ummm… I think it’s called a paycheck.

5:23PM: Inevitable comparison between TRUE BLOOD and TWILIGHT. Being Buddhist, Alan Ball believes that there is room for everything in the world and doesn’t feel any sense of competition.

5:30PM: Alan Ball ends the panel by revealing that “after SIX FEET UNDER, I was very tired with dealing with people talking about their problems and the fact that we all die… blah… blah… blah. I wanted to do something fun and so far I’ve had more fun working on this series than anything else in my career.”

Well, it’s Friday night, and you know what that means. A fresh episode of MOONLIGHT! Sorry, was that a bit too cruel? It would have been a reality if bone-headed CBS hadn’t cancelled the show, which was pretty damned fang-tastic. But I know, I’m preaching to the choir here.

HBO is hoping that they can fill the gap left by the stake of cancellation with their new Alan Ball series TRUE BLOOD. Ball is moving deftly from working with the dead in SIX FEET UNDER to the undead in this adaptation of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse / Southern Vampire novels. A psychic waitress, a 173 year-old vampire, lots of sex… what could go wrong?

Ball came across Harris’ books when he showed up early for a dental appointment and went to the Barnes & Noble to kill time. The tagline “Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend wasn’t such a good idea” caught his eye, and he couldn’t put the book down. Apparently when you’re Alan Ball and that happens, it means there’s a TV series in it.

Anna Paquin plays the psychic waitress with the unfortunate name, Sookie Stackhouse, and Stephen Moyer plays the vampire with the smoldering eyes, Bill Compton. Apparently Charlaine Harris doesn’t put a premium on really sexy-sounding names in her books. They meet in the bar where she sees vampires as “celebrities,” and when they hit it off she begs him to take her to a local underground vampire club called “Fangtasia.” Hijinx ensue.

Ball isn’t a vampire fan, having never even seen BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL, or having read anything by Anne Rice, so he’s trying to approach the vampire genre with new rules. For instance, his vampires have fangs that are “retracted like rattlesnake fangs, and then they click forward.” He also promises that what happens to vampires when they get staked or burn in a fire will be different than anything that’s been seen before.

Plus, he didn’t have kind words himself for MOONLIGHT, saying “I think it’s pretty lame when you let your vampire go out in the day just because you don’t want to shoot at night.” Ouch. Oh yeah? How lame is it that you ended SIX FEET UNDER? That’s right, I went there.

He does, however, think that vampires make better lovers. “Oh yeah, they’ve had hundreds of years to figures things out and to learn things,” to which Stephen Moyer added “That’s real staying power.” Zing. How about just making a vampire porno? There’s a whole demographic who would enjoy that, and just think about the numerous “suck” jokes you could work into it?

Anna Paquin has shed her brunette status, and that while lock in her hair from the X-MEN days, and gone blonde for this role. She’s also learned that “boys like to stare at blonde girls. Apparently it’s totally true. It’s amusing and quite lovely.” Maybe blondes do have more fun. While dating vampires and being able to read people’s minds.

TRUE BLOOD is a twelve part HBO series that begins airing September 7th, and is praying that viewers still have love for bloodsuckers in their souls by then.

One of the perks of running theTVaddict.com, aside from the millions thousands hundreds tens of fans and the occasional trip to Hollywood, are all the interesting things I get in the mail. For instance, yesterday I received the first six episodes of the recently cancelled HBO series 12 MILES OF BAD ROAD accompanied by a hand written note [see above photo].

Revolving around a wealthy Texas matriarch who must balance her booming real estate business and immense wealth alongside her [surprise!] dysfunctional family, 12 MILES OF BAD ROAD, at least on paper, seems like the perfect fit for the cable network that brought us THE SOPRANOS, SIX FEET UNDER and BIG LOVE. Unfortunately, HBO didn’t think so and decided to shut down production following the recent WGA strike. But not before six episodes were already in the can [which is TV speak for completed].

To their credit, executive producers Linda Bloodworth-Thomason [DESIGNING WOMEN, EVENING SHADE] and Harry Thomason are not about to give up so easily and have sent out the six completed episodes to critics across the country with the hopes of generating positive buzz and finding a new home for their fictional family.

The strategy may be paying off, with The Toronto Star’s Television Critic Rob Salem calling the show, “…beyond hilarious, cleverly written and flawlessly cast.” While Texas Monthly claims that BAD ROAD qualifies, “…as the most underrated show of the decade that almost no one has had the chance to see.”

Not having had the chance to watch the show in its entirety, I’m not about to weigh in just yet. But I will say this. In what is shaping up to be one helluva dreary summer in the TV department, would it have not made sense for HBO to fill the void left by the untimely delays of ENTOURAGE and BIG LOVE courtesy of the WGA strike by giving us a few hours to spend with the likes of 12 MILE’s Lily Tomlin, Mary Kay Place, Leslie Jordan and Gary Cole?

I mean at the very least, you know it’s going to be better than the train—wreck that was JOHN FRON CINCINNATI.

As exciting as it is that HBO has finally stopped pretending the internet is a just ‘passing fad’ by making available some of their most popular shows for download on iTunes. At first glance, this TV Addict can’t help but be a tad underwhelmed.

Where is CARNIVALE, SIX FEET UNDER, THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW and JOHN FROM CINCINNATI? Sure I’m kidding about that last one. But I really was looking forward to finally getting the opportunity to appreciate [read: start watching] some of HBO’s most fascinating dramas that I may have missed in my youth.

Here’s hoping that HBO’s limited offerings are just the start a bold new [read: existent] digital strategy.

Speaking of BIG LOVE, which by the way I’ve absolutely loved this season — who creeps you out more — Alby Grant, Roman Grant or Rhonda Volmer?

Tonight’s TEEN CHOICE AWARDS are being hosted by self-proclaimed ‘Teen Queen’ Hillary Duff and Nick [why am I still famous] Cannon. Two actor-musician hyphenates who in this TV Addict’s humble opinion, are far too old to be hosting the TEEN CHOICE AWARDS. Anyone else think Duff and Canon were simply the last resort — after the entire cast of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 2 turned FOX down?

And finally, while the TV Addict in general doesn’t enjoy watching people humiliate themselves on TV — Miss South Carolina wins this weekend’s award for perpetuating the ‘dumb blonde’ stereotype. Take a look at this soon to be classic YouTube clip.

One of the TV Addict’s absolute favorites returns to the airwaves tonight, proving that contrary to popular belief, HBO is not “HB-Over.”

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER kicks off yet another fantastic season with actor Tim Robbins, journalist Michel Martin and writer Stephen Hayes. Click here to check out a conversation with Bill Maher, and be sure to tune in tonight at 11PM.

Sidenote: When will a Canadian Network get their act together and start carrying REAL TIME?

On a related note, this TV Addict will now wait with bated breath to discover which way NBC’s inevitable ‘Americanization’ of EXTRAS goes. Will fans get another success like THE OFFICE, or be subjected to the horror that was COUPLING? Stay Tuned.

DEADWOOD
Speaking of waiting, we’ve got some bad news for DEADWOOD fans. The pair of two-hour DEADWOOD TV movies that you were promised last year, well, don’t hold your breath. Word from the TCA’s is that creator David Milch is exhausted, having just finished up season one of JOHN FROM CINCINNATI. Apparently, Milch has had just as hard a time running the show as we’ve had figuring out what the frak is going on.

NIP/TUCK
Korbi and Jen [who are filling in for Kristin while she's on her honeymoon] did such a fantastic job covering yesterday’s NIP/TUCK panel that we thought it best to simply link to their report. It goes without saying, that after devouring Bradley Cooper’s brilliant-but-cancelled series KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, we’re counting down the days until NIP/TUCK’s October premiere.