Fan Fare

My Name is …Twitition?? “Earl” fans launch Twitter rescue campaign

NBC wouldn’t save it, but could Twitter rescue the axed TV comedy “My Name is Earl”?

Actor Ethan Suplee, who plays Earl’s buffoonish brother Randy Hickey on the four year-old American comedy show, has a Twitter campaign aimed at trying to persuade another U.S. television network to pick up the series, which NBC said  this week it was dropping from its fall schedule.

“If it’s just a matter of some people saying, ‘We want to watch the show,’ let’s see if some people want to say that,” Suplee told Web site PopEater.com.

“Ultimately there are just a couple more episodes that I’d like to see done. It doesn’t have to be the show that runs infinitely, but there are a few episodes that ['Earl''s creator Greg Garcia] wanted to make, that I was excited about making. Just to close it out – is this guy stuck making amends for the rest of his life?” Suplee said of the cliffhanger that ended the fourth season.

As of Friday the campaign on behalf of the Emmy-award winning comedy had attracted just over one million followers on Twitter.

And whether it succeeds or not in bringing the show back to a TV screen somewhere, the petition has notched up a new entry into the English language –  the first known use of the word “Twitition.”

“Beverly Hills 90210″ — where was the love 15 years ago?

With new teen TV drama “90210” getting so much attention these days on the CW network, its predecessor, ”Beverly Hills 90210” seems to have now gained iconic status on the U.S. television landscape. But it wasn’t always that way, remembered Jason Priestley (Brandon Walsh), when looking back at the early days of the original show in the 1990s.

Priestley,  39,  who turned down a chance to appear in  the new “90210″, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday  that he felt neither the original show nor the actors got any respect in the industry 15 years ago – before the Teen Choice Awards and the era of programs directed specifically at teens.

“Looking back, people talk about the show with much higher reverence than we got at the time. The show didn’t get any credit back then… Fox (television) didn’t get any respect… and we as actors didn’t get any respect then,” Priestley mused, without bitterness.

“We were never bestowed any awards… there was never any praise heaped on us. We were just sort of left alone and relegated as actors to the teen magazine pile, and that’s where we ended up for a time and we all had to re-prove ourselves. 

“But that’s just the way it was. It’s not like that any more. It was just a different time,” said Priestley.

Priestley is returning to TV to direct an episode of the new “90210″ in January, and is making a guest appearance on comedy “My Name is Earl”.

But Priestley said that unlike fellow cast members Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty, who returned to acting on the new “90210″ this initial season, he decided against reprising his role as the Mr. Nice Guy of  West Beverly Hills High.  “There wasn’t anything interesting for me to do as Brandon” in the new show, he said.