Brian Bonsall, the cute little kid from the sitcom "Family Ties", was arrested for investigation of assault. According to police, he hit a friend with a broken stool during an altercation at an apartment complex outside Boulder, Colorado. Allegedly, he claims he was drinking and doesn't remember what happened.

Bonsall has a prior assault conviction from a 2007 assault on his girlfriend that resulted in probation.

Here's a picture of him as a cute little tyke (a highlight from the Family Ties: The Fifth Season DVD set):

And here's a copy of the booking photo from his recent arrest:

The wife and I finally tried "Friday Night With Johnathan Ross" on BBC America and really couldn't stand it. The guy pronounces his Rs like a three-year-old or like the vicar in The Princess Bride: "Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethaw today.... Wuv, twoo wuv." We were wondering if it was maybe a speech impediment, but in one part when Shakira (or "Shakiwa") didn't understand his pronunciation of "choweogwaphy," he repeated it with the Rs intact and we weren't sure.

We thought that maybe with Peter Cook doing it in The Princess Bride and Johnathan Ross doing it while he interviewed "Vun Twoyah" and "Gwaham Nowton", perhaps it's a regional accent, sort of like certain accents in the northeastern United States where they drop any R that comes at the end of a word and save it for a word that has no R, so "Shiela, I'm going to get the paper" becomes "Shieler, I'm gonna go get the papah." Or perhaps like Emeril Lagasse insists on pronouncing the name of the famed Thai hot sauce Sriracha as "Sirrachee."

In the U.S., no one over the age of six pronounces their Rs as Ws unless they have some sort of impairment, such as being in "wuv."

Regardless, the constant mispronunciation of Rs just "gwated" on our nerves and we won't be watching Jonathan Ross again. It was a good enough talk show, but just merely good enough. And just being good enough isn't enough to make my wife and I keep watching.

I figured we might as well give ABC's new Courtney Cox vehicle, "Cougar Town", a shot. Lisa said she read bad review of it and was apprehensive. She should have looked at the review again, because the reviewer started it by lavishing praise on "Community", which we also gave a chance and turned off after 10 minutes.

Usually we'll give a show one or two whole episodes before we give it a thumbs up or thumbs down, but "Community" sucked so bad, we had to turn it off after 10 minutes. So if she'd remembered that the reviewer, Troy Patterson, started his review by demonstrating his taste circles somewhere southeast of his tain't, we might have sat down to "Cougar Town" with high expectations.

Luckily I was able to convince my wife to give it a try, and we followed up "Glee" with another half hour of gasps and laughs. It's going on our series list on the DVR, and we now have an embarrassment of Wednesday night riches... Top chefs, gleeful teens, and mortified teenage sons with single mothers (I was 16 when my mom was 40 and single too).

On a final note, is Brian Van Holt the new go-to for the loser dad? First his role on "John From Cincinnatti" as Butchie, the burned-out smack addict with the miracle son, and now as Bobby on "Cougar Town". Is this going to be Van Holt's pigeonhole?

UPDATE: Slate reviewer Troy Patterson got wind of my review of his review and decided to drop me a line. Since he did not request confidentiality nor claim his e-mail was protected by copyright, I'm reprinting it in whole (to ensure nothing is taken out of context or presented in an unflattering light... I'm not Fox News):

Hi. Thanks very much for reading my review of this show. I'm sorry that you didn't find it more persuasive.

It would silly of me to try to defend my point of view, but I do want to point out that my relative opinion of Cougar Town and Community is not out of the ordinary: On Metacritic, Cougar Town averages 50 out of 100 while Community gets a 69 out of 100.

I don't at all mean to suggest that I'm "right" because I'm in sync with a pseudo-scientific survey of mainstream critics. I am totally willing to concede that your judgment might be better than mine, and I'm glad that somebody took some pleasure from Cougar Town. But for some reaso--I almost never write to people who blog about me--I feel moved to say that I'm not the only guy whose taste might circle southeast of his tain't.

Keep up the good work with your blog,
Cheerfully,
Troy

Guess I got under his skin.

Okay, quick plot synopsis: Disgraced-but-talented doctor, on the skids, saves someone's life in an emergency, attracting the attention and patronage of a clientele that has need for private and discrete medical attention.

Which is it, "Royal Pains" with Mark Feuerstein or the 1997 David Duchovny film Playing God?

"Royal Pains" seems like someone tried to put a "feel-good" twist on Playing God, as well as building a cast of loveable and quirky characters who could stand up to weeks of medical crises, emotional sturm und drang, and various schemes by that irrepressible Paulo Costanzo (last seen on "Friends" spin-off "Joey").

I'm not going to say I didn't like it. It had some promise for a diverting summer series. It also has some promise to be a carnival of cliché that batters our heads around like a frozen wiffle bat. It walked this fine line between bad camp and good dramedy, and I really have to credit that to the writers, because just about everyone in it except Feuerstein was playing it a bit over the top. But Feuerstein's generally subdued tones just made the scenery chewing by his co-stars all that much more obvious.

Sadly, my DVR cut off the last 15 minutes of the 90-minute pilot (thanks Verizon!), but even if there is some amazing saving grace in that last 15 minutes (which I'll catch on Saturday if the DVR behaves itself), I don't think it's going to be enough to save the show. I'm going to give it one more episode next week, but if it doesn't impress me, I'll likely abandon it.

On a separate note, though I never watched "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (mostly because it was on Fox and I grow ever more philosophically opposed to patronizing anything owned by Rupert Murdoch), I really enjoyed show-runner Josh Friedman's blog post about being on a cancellation bubble when it pops.