Ellen Burstyn has come a long way, baby. In 2000, she was popping pills in Requiem for a Dream, and now she’ll be pushing pills in Tim Robbins’ Possible Side Effects on Showtime.

According to Variety, Burstyn will play the matriarch of the Hunt family, a powerful but dysfunctional brood that runs a drug company that gets in a heap of trouble.

If this series is anything less than fantastic, I’ll be shocked. It’s possible that my expectations are high because the pharmaceutical industry is such an easy target or because Ellen Burstyn and Tim Robbins are incredibly gifted. As much as I hate to admit it, I can’t get enough of evil mothers — big screen and small. Save your two-bit psychoanalysis for someone who cares. Yes, yes, my relationship with my own mother is far from perfect. There, I’ve let you in. Can we move on?

This October, Lexus launches its branded, broadband entertainment channel, L Studio. Its aim is to create a destination site offering original, innovative content with familiar faces. A face both original and familiar is Lisa Kudrow, who wrote and produced the new series Web Therapy.

Web Therapy is a 15-part comedy series about Fiona Wallice, a psychotherapist who offers three-minute therapy sessions over the Web. Her character is another flavor of Kudrow Kooky, and the “therapy” that Wallice provides is humorously cringe-worthy. If you enjoy watching Ursula on Mad About You or Phoebe on Friends, you’ll find Web Therapy amusing enough.

We get a pretty good idea of what’s in store for unsuspecting patients when Fiona explains the three-minute concept to her new client and, it so happens, ex-fling Richard: “I have done the 50 minutes with people, but they end up going on and on about dreams and feelings and memories and past experiences that add up to a whole lot of nothin’ as far as I’m concerned.” Web Therapy is a funny look at psychotherapy in the wrong hands.

The first three installments are on the site now, and I look forward to the rest. I love that L Studio is providing a creative outlet for talent such as Kudrow. But the question remains as to whether the internet channel will become a destination site for me or anyone else — will it be the intended HBO of the Web? Most of the programming will contain no Lexus branding whatsoever. Will innovative entertainment inspire us to park our Subarus in the garage in favor of the Lexus?

I want to love True Blood. I really do. I want to see dark, misunderstood creatures of the night that look great in black and have a sexual magnetism that no man or woman can resist — much like myself.

But Sunday night's True Blood left me hanging. I couldn't get past the bad dialogue spoken with the faux Southern accents out of the middle school production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  Did Jason really start flossing his teeth after that energetic session with Dawn?  Was Sookie really going for a bit of self-love, or was she just trying to remember where she put her keys?

If I have to ask, not hot.

When you go to a diner, you order scrambled eggs because you know that it's a safe bet — you can't screw up scrambled eggs. You'd think that girls doing manual labor in short shorts on a blistering hot day would be the scrambled eggs of hot scenes. 

Not so much: Sookie doesn't even break a sweat pushing that lawnmower before Gran comes out in her house dress and a glass of lemonade.