Your nic-fix just got high-tech (Getty)

And it’s not just famous people—New Yorkers are struggling with their not-so-secret habits, too. The night before the United Nations General Assembly met last month, Maggie Norris, an Upper East Side clothing designer, was nervously tapping her feet inside the grand entrance to the Waldorf-Astoria. While the leaders of 90 different countries gathered for an awards ceremony, Ms. Norris fingered her contraband.

“Do you think I can use this in here?” she asked us, brandishing her electronic cigarette. She turned her back and discreetly inhaled, releasing a puff of water vapor. We stood guard: no one had noticed. Halfway through the ceremony, the designer got up and went outside for an actual smoke. “I occasionally lapse,” she explained as she bummed a Parliament.
Ms. Norris has been using e-cigarettes for three years; they helped her pivot from a decade-long pack-a-day habit. She liked the fact that she could “vape” inside New York restaurants, since the city’s authoritarian health czars have not yet decreed that blowing out nicotine-enhanced water vapor indoors poses the same threat as smoking in a public park.

“It’s a nice thing to do when you don’t want to hurt yourself or other people,” she said. “Most of the time, people don’t even notice that I’m doing it.”

Though countries including Singapore, Hong Kong, Brazil, Australia and Lebanon have banned e-cigs, an estimated 2.5 million were sold in the U.S. last year. Here, they are available in disposable and rechargeable form everywhere from bodegas to newspaper kiosks, and you can “vape” legally anywhere in the city, including indoors.

Because they’re not taxed as heavily, e-cigs are cheaper than the analog version. A recent Gizmodo.com comparison found that New Yorkers could save anywhere from $1,520 to $3,000 a year switching to e-cigs. Their relative value has helped a once-fringe trend become, if not ubiquitous, then at least an increasingly common sight in New York City. Still, it’s doubtful they’ll soon catch up to their cancer-causing cousins.

But why not? While there’s been no conclusive study as of yet, common sense dictates that e-cigarettes—which don’t bring smoke into your lungs—can at the very least claim to be a marginally healthier substitute for both smokers and those around them. There are at least 69 cancer-causing carcinogens in tobacco smoke, while the process of vaping with an e-cig involves only trace (if any, depending on your brand) amounts of tobacco, and no smoke. And since most people don’t just pick up an e-cigarette habit out of nowhere—they switch in an effort to quit or cut back—why aren’t any e-cigarette companies marketing themselves as a safer alternative to cancer sticks, or at least a way to quit, like nicotine gum or patches?

One reason: what little research has been done on e-cigarettes is all over the map and largely inconclusive. While the European Respiratory Society claimed that e-cigs cause respiratory blockage, it is unclear whether these effects are long-term. “We do not yet know whether unapproved nicotine delivery products, such as e-cigarettes, are safer than normal cigarettes,” said one of the study’s authors. Meanwhile, the European Society of Cardiology found that the product was not linked to heart disease, and an American study published this month in the peer-reviewed Inhalation Toxicology journal found that “the risks of secondhand vapor from electronic cigarette use are very small in comparison to those associated with secondhand tobacco smoke.” Health Canada has warned against e-cigs, saying that because it’s impossible to know the equivalent nicotine amounts that one is consuming with every “drag,” they could possibly cause nicotine poisoning. (There has yet to be a reported case.)

Dr. Kimberly P. Lindsey, a smoking researcher at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., will only tentatively speculate about the health effects of e-cigarettes, but she told The Observer, “I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to think that e-cigarettes are safer than smoking tobacco cigarettes.” She made sure to qualify this statement, saying that this was in no way a final analysis, and that more study was needed.

There is another reason e-cigarettes aren’t being marketed as the healthier alternative to smoking: manufacturers are not allowed to claim that their product helps people quit, unless they want to find themselves suddenly under the watchdog gaze of the Food and Drug Administration. The moment e-cigarettes are sold as a smoking-cessation aid, à la the patch or nicotine gum, they become classified as a drug-delivery system and can be regulated by the FDA.

So far, the manufacturers of e-cigs have wanted no part of that.
That may be why Kevin Davis, director of business development for the e-cigarette company Green Smoke, is careful to avoid any mention of quitters when describing his customer base. “The typical e-cigarette user is an adult smoker who, for one of many reasons, likes electronic cigarettes,” he said. “That’s who we’re targeting, and that’s primarily who is using our product.”

Man, vaping (Getty)

Even though e-cigarettes bear little resemblance to their Philip Morris brethren, Will doesn’t use them indoors, or even in parks, where cigarette smoking is illegal. “The last thing I want to do is explain to a cop what this is,” he said. “That would just be the most humiliating thing in the world.”

But to Will, e-cigs have an even bigger drawback: “They look totally lame.”
He’s not wrong. E-cigarettes are the neutered version of the real thing. Just try imagining Jean-Paul Belmondo vaping on a piece of plastic with a light-up tip in Breathless, or James Dean trying to flick a finished e-stick while leaning against the hood of his car. Add to that the silly names of some of the bigger brands: Blu cigs, Nebula, Yeti, Dura and 510 ... they have nothing on Marlboros or Camels in the badass department. At least not yet.

Celebrities who smoke them don’t even try to play up the cool factor: While Johnny Depp allegedly petitioned to have his character smoke electronic cigarettes (like he himself does) in The Tourist—the first mainstream film to feature e-cigs—his character was a nerd, a community college professor. By the end of the movie, the math teacher has hooked up with Angelina Jolie and revealed himself to be an international European outlaw who, in one of the final scenes, discards his dorky e-cig and brings out his old pack. The message is clear: outlaws don’t vape.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo may have inadvertently boosted the transgressive image of e-smokers when he passed a law in September barring minors from buying them and restricting their use near schools. There’s also the common complaint of those who worry about being exposed to e-cigarettes’ secondhand “smoke” in restaurants and confined spaces. When we called Manhattan’s prestigious Core Club to see if it would let in someone with an e-cigarette, we were told that “no smoking whatsoever” was allowed in the club.

“But what if its not smoking?” We pressed. The employee on the other side of the line hesitated.

“No, I’m sorry, it still wouldn’t be okay,” she said.

The confusion extends to airlines. In 2011 the U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood claimed that the in-flight smoking rule covered e-cigs as well, saying, “Airline passengers have rights, and this new rule would enhance passenger comfort and reduce any confusion surrounding the use of electronic cigarettes in flight.” This was the same year when a man on a Continental Airlines flight from Portland to Houston caused the plane to be grounded when he refused to quit puffing.

But it’s not a uniform decision. On a recent trip from Newark to Houston on American Airlines, we were told by a confused flight attendant that vaping in the cabin “should probably be okay.”

WHILE IT’S DOUBTFUL that e-cigs will ever be hip, a small-but-growing subculture of proud “vapers” is trying to change that.

Spike Babaian is the co-owner of VapeNY, which she bills as New York’s only e-cigarette store. It’s actually more of a kiosk, tucked away in the basement of a mini-mall in Jamaica, Queens.

“Don’t call it smoking; there’s no actual smoke,” she stressed, “What’s I’m doing is ‘vaping.’” Ms. Babaian, who previously worked in the adult entertainment sector, spent our conversation sucking on a vaping contraption that looked like a small walkie-talkie, which she wore on a lanyard around her neck.

While most e-cigarettes come pre-filled and are not designed to invite tampering with the liquid inside, Vape-NY peddles the e-cig equivalent of rolling your own.

In a booth frequently mistaken for a head shop, Ms. Babaian displays refillable light-up machines that look like anything from highlighters to small sex toys. Behind the counter she stocks e-cig refill cases containing liquid nicotine bottles from a Florida lab, with only the vaguest warnings and a barely legible ingredient panel. The whole endeavor looks like a smack kit, and the 1.1 percent label on the liquid ... well, that invites the question: 1.1 percent of what? These products are potentially more worrisome than regular e-cigarettes as well, since nicotine in liquid form—no matter what percentage—can be transmitted transdermally. Accidentally squirt some on your skin and you may be in for a nasty surprise.

“People are interested when they see us vaping,” Ms. Babaian said. VapeNY started holding conventions several years ago, and now a couple hundred people (according to their count) attend its functions. Ms. Babaian also has a podcast every Wednesday on which she talks to other “vapers.” If she had their way, everyone who vaped would be doing so proudly,
At least as proudly as Ms. Heigl, who even got Mr. Letterman—a legendary but now former cigar enthusiast—to take a puff of her device on his show.

“This is remarkable,” he said, blowing steam rings and predicting the product would “do the trick” in getting people to quit. But don’t expect Montecristo chewers to make the switch overnight. As they say: old habits die hard.

Monday: How I Met Your Mother
Is Monday night the new Thursday night? Tonight brings the season premiere of House, a new Gossip Girl, a two-hour Heroes (yep, that show is still on the air) and the launching of the CBS Monday night comedy block, which includes the series premiere of Jenna Elfman’s Accidentally on Purpose. Phew! Us? We’ll be watching Gossip Girl at 9 p.m., natch [Ed note: But some of us will be watching House]. But before that, we’ll definitely tune in to the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother. We aren’t even sure whether to call the comedy a cult hit anymore—after all, tonight marks the start of season five—but it still feels like less people watch this than they should (this despite the fact that every person we know counts it as one of their favorites.) Come on, folks! What are you waiting for? [CBS, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday: North by Northwest
Our favorite Alfred Hitchcock film manages to be his most accessible. You know the story, but in brief: Everyman extraordinaire Cary Grant gets mistaken for a spy and away we go; cue a cross country chase that culminates on Mount Rushmore. What we’re always amazed by whenever we watch North by Northwest is how it manages to be so thoroughly modern. Whereas some old movies don’t hold up, this one feels like it could be released today and become a huge hit. [TCM, 8 p.m.]

Wednesday: Mercy
Apparently 2009 is the Year of the Nurse. Who knew? We have yet to see Mercy, but from the promos it feels like the new series will to slot itself somewhere in between the darkness of Nurse Jackie and the treacle of HawthoRNe. Nurse Veronica Callahan (Taylor Schilling) has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq and—wouldn’t you know it—she’s the only person at Mercy Hospital that actually knows what they’re doing! We can’t say we’re all that interested in Mercy, but that it features Michelle Trachtenberg—as the naïve young nurse—makes us take notice. Still, truth be told, we hope Mercy gets canceled, just so Ms. Trachtenberg can become a full-time cast member on Gossip Girl before the year is out. Georgina Sparks forever! [NBC, 8 p.m.]

Thursday: Grey’s Anatomy
Speaking of bad doctor soap operas: Grey’s Anatomy is back! The show you love to hate returns with a two-hour season premiere that will feature the official death of George O’Malley (T.R. Knight, probably happy for the first time in three years) and the recovery of Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl, probably still hating every second she has to spend working on Grey’s). With Ellen Pompeo pregnant, and, Ms. Heigl and Patrick Dempsey taking off for episodes at a time to star in movies, expect this season to be a transitional one. Whether Grey’s can become the next ER—forever regenerating its sprawling cast—rests solely on what happens this year. [ABC, 9 p.m.]

Friday: Gangs of New York
The most disappointing news of the fall? That Paramount shifted the Martin Scorsese-Leonardo DiCaprio thriller Shutter Island from its October release date to February. Boo! Now where are we supposed to get our Scorsese/DiCaprio fix? We’ll just have to settle for Gangs of New York instead, which isn’t as good as The Departed and isn’t as bad as The Aviator in the Scorsese/DiCaprio oeuvre. Them aside, the real star here is Daniel Day-Lewis (would you expect anything less?). As the villain, aptly named Bill the Butcher, Mr. Day-Lewis does Daniel Plainview-before-Daniel Plainview, stomping and chomping scenery like a Method Godzilla; he’s brilliant, even if the movie never actually reaches that height. [IFC, 2:45 a.m.]

Perhaps Judd Apatow is smirking all the way to the bank. Funny People, the hirsute director’s third film, opened in the No. 1 position at the box office this weekend, scoring an estimated $23.4 million in ticket sales. Unfortunately, that makes Funny People the lowest-grossing film to reach No. 1 this summer, an honor we’re not quite sure everyone at Universal was hoping for back when the season started. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. Funny People: $23.4 million ($23.4 million total)

Like the marketing campaign, which could never find footing between the comedy and drama that Funny People employs fairly equally throughout its two-and-a-half-hour running time, we’re not entirely sure what to make of this opening gross. For an Adam Sandler movie, it’s on the low end—not counting Reign Over Me, which opened on just under 1,700 screens, this is his worst opening since Spanglish started with $8.8 million in 2004. For Mr. Apatow, Funny People checks in well below the $30.7 million that Knocked Up pulled down two summers ago, but slightly ahead of The 40-Year-Old Virgin (though not in tickets sold). You’ll read today how this is yet another disappointment for Universal, but since Funny People is an R-rated dramedy with a prohibitive length, we’re not quite sure what everyone expected; it was never going to be The Hangover. As usual, word of mouth will be the deciding factor in how this does moving forward.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $17.7 million ($255.4 million total)

As The Half-Blood Prince steamrolls towards $300 million at the domestic box office, it’s a good time to look at how things are going internationally. Globally the boy wizard has accrued an astonishing $747.8 million, making it the second biggest hit of the year, behind only Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The moral of the story: Buy Warner Brothers stock!

3. G-Force: $17 million ($66.4 million total)

Dipping a reasonable 46 percent in weekend two, G-Force held its own, finishing just behind Harry Potter, and now seems poised to crack $100 million at the box office this summer. If we would have told you in early July that G-Force would handily out-gross Brüno, we don’t necessarily think you would have believed us.

4. The Ugly Truth: $13 million ($54.4 million total)

Everyone might hate Katherine Heigl, but they certainly keep going to see her movies. The Ugly Truth dropped a to-be-expected 53 percent and managed to up its cume to over $50 million, putting it well on course for nearly $80 million in ticket receipts. With a budget under $38 million and an R-rating, we can’t imagine anyone at Sony being upset with this performance.

5. Aliens in the Attic: $7.8 million ($7.8 million total)

Aliens in the Attic edged out the second weekend of Orphan ($7.2 million/$26.7 million total) to finish in fifth place. If you ever found yourself wondering what a movie dumped on 3,106 screens would look like, you now have an answer.

We weren’t planning on becoming a big Katherine Heigl defender. After all, our hatred for her character Izzie Stevens on Grey’s Anatomy reaches such apoplectic proportions that we’re surprised we haven’t thrown a glass through our television screen by now. (Oh the horror of seeing Heigl-as-Izzie in cancer patient makeup and a bald cap last season!) But the abuse the outspoken starlet has gotten in recent weeks is just too much for us to bear. Simply, we’re tired of the haters!

What really pushed us over the top was an interview that Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow did with Howard Stern (yes, he does still exist!), where the two men commented on the now-18-month-old Vanity Fair cover story where Ms. Heigl called Knocked Up a “little sexist” and said that it “paint[ed] the women as shrews.” Mr. Apatow is apparently still holding a grudge, saying, “[You think] at some point I’ll get a call saying, ‘Sorry, I was tired,’ and then the call never comes.” Meanwhile Mr. Rogen commented that Ms. Heigl is prone to saying some “batshit things” about her various acting jobs. Not to rehash an old story—like Mr. Stern happily did—but are we really still under the impression that what Ms. Heigl said about Knocked Up was inaccurate? From the perma-bitchface that Leslie Mann affects for the entire film to, oh, the entire premise, everything in that movie feels a little too boys clubby, it’s hilarious nature notwithstanding. Perhaps Messrs. Apatow and Rogen should pull an Entourage and pop the Blu-ray in at some point in the next month.

Of course, the “batshit things” that Mr. Rogen was referring to also had to do with Grey’s Anatomy, which Ms. Heigl has done nothing but bury in the press for the better part of a year. And again, isn’t the star saying what everyone has thought about that show for a long time: It sucks! The longer Ms. Heigl stays on Grey’s, the more apparent it is that she’s only doing so for the ridiculous paycheck she cashes. Yet, something tells us she isn’t the only person in America doing a job they hate for money. If anything, we should praise Ms. Heigl for her honesty. And obviously, that's her problem: People simply hate honesty. So Ms. Heigl is painted as a shrew or a bitch and someone who is prone to saying “batshit” things—y’know, like the truth—just because she speaks her mind. In reality, though, she’s more like the rest of us then we care to admit: Opinionated, judging and vindictive. Ms. Heigl might not be the America’s Sweetheart we want, but she’s the America’s Sweetheart we deserve.

Upset alert! In a somewhat shocking turn of events, G-Force—heretofore known to adults-with-children as “that movie we were dragged to with the talking guinea pigs”—topped the charts this weekend with an estimated $32.1 million in ticket sales, which was enough to knock boy wizard Harry Potter into second place. With Up and The Proposal already having huge runs, G-Force is just another feather in the hat for Disney. Meanwhile, it was a tale of have and have-not for the other new releases: The Ugly Truth danced its way into third, with a decidedly not-ugly $27 million, while Orphan haunted fourth, but with just $12.7 million. As we do each Monday, here’s a breakdown of the top five at the box office.

1. G-Force: $32.1 million ($32.1 million total)

Never forget: Kids love talking animals. When placed within that rubric, the surprise success of G-Force isn’t actually all that surprising; lest we forget, it was just last year when the similarly themed Beverly Hills Chihuahua managed to gross nearly $95 million. Still, we doubt many people at Warner Brothers thought they’d be waking up this morning to find that their unstoppable boy wizard was taken down by a movie directed by the guy who did visual effects on Kangaroo Jack.

2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $30 million ($221.8 million total)

There will be plenty of hysterics today proclaiming that The Half-Blood Prince is in trouble after crumbling 61 percent in weekend two. Do us a favor, though, and don’t necessarily believe them. While losing the top spot to G-Force is certainly embarrassing, it doesn’t actually matter. After only 12 days, The Half-Blood Prince is already the fifth-highest-grossing movie of the year and the fastest Potter in the history of the franchise to reach $400 million overseas. We have a hard time considering a film with over $620 million in worldwide ticket sales to be anything other than a runaway smash.

3. The Ugly Truth: $27 million ($27 million total)

Katherine Heigl was right all along: She is a movie star! The polarizing actress further cemented her A-list bona fides thanks to the successful launch of The Ugly Truth. Think of it this way: With a prohibitive R-rating and terrible reviews, the film managed to debut with $27 million, which is only $6 million less than The Proposal did with a PG-13-rating and great reviews. We doubt that The Ugly Truth will have the staying power of The Proposal, but the point remains: Ms. Heigl is poised to have a very long and lucrative career making the romantic comedies that Sandy and Julia outgrow.

4. Orphan: $12.7 million ($12.7 million total)

Where are the successful horror movies this summer? In May, Drag Me to Hell came and went without much of a whimper; now, here in July, Orphan is set to do even worse. With such a glaring hole in the marketplace for what is usually such a lucrative genre, we’re wondering if 20th Century Fox is upset they didn’t slot their September horror flick Jennifer’s Body into early August. We have a feeling it could have cleaned up.

5. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: $8.2 million ($171.2 million total)

For the third week in a row, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs barely held off Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (which, with $379 million domestically, has become the tenth-highest-grossing picture of all time) to finish in fifth place. The story here lies internationally: Though it might not top crack $200 million domestically, Dawn of the Dinosaurs has pulled down over $500 million in foreign sales—roughly $100 million more than Revenge of the Fallen. Who knew Ray Romano had such worldwide appeal?

Sometimes it’s hard to hate Katherine Heigl. Of course, it should be easy—the Grey’s Anatomy actress has made a practice out of doing things that almost seemed designed to make her fans turn against her (withdrawing her name from Emmy competition because she felt she was not given awards-worthy material from the writers of the show that made her famous, or criticizing Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up—a.k.a. the film that made her a movie star—for painting women as humorless and uptight shrews, etc). But then you see a lightweight summer romantic comedy like The Ugly Truth and one is forced to admit that Ms. Heigl is actually pretty good in such fizzy fare, elevating predictable material into something almost worth watching. Almost.

Ms. Heigl plays Abby, a highly competent television producer that—surprise!—has problems producing much in the way of a love life. This, we are shown, through various scenes of Abby being uptight and controlling (she prints out the profile of her Internet date—hi, Kevin Connolly!—and provides him talking points to get through dinner) and hopelessly sad-sack Cathy-like singlehood existence with every cliché you can think of. (That’s right, she has a cat and likes to knit. Come on, Hollywood. Sigh.) Enter Gerard Butler as Mike, an unapologetic misogynist late-night TV personality who likes to say ridiculous things about men and women (the “ugly truth,” natch), only to get hired on to Abby’s show to improve the ratings. Can anyone guess yet what will happen? So, yes, the two spar and then Mike agrees to help Abby try to date her hot neighbor by getting extensions and dressing sluttier and giving such sage advice as to masturbate more. (I am not making this stuff up—he refers to it as “flicking the bean”!) In fact, if there’s any surprises to be found within The Ugly Truth, it is how filthy and raunchy it gets. But once you get over the pleasant surprise of watching Katherine Heigl say “cock,” it does little to take away from how paint-by-numbers this thing is. It becomes not if these two opposites will get together, but when ... and if there will be rain or a dramatic airport scene involved.

That said, the lead actors deal with what they’ve been given with aplomb. Ms. Heigl has a knack for letting herself look silly, and it actually works to the point where you’ll be embarrassedly laughing at her antics (Legally Blonde director Robert Luketic and screenwriters Nicole Eastman, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith take the When Harry Met Sally faux orgasm scene to its next step: real orgasm in a public restaurant). Gerard Butler certainly is making some interesting choices these days, from boy-favorite 300 to last year’s P.S. I Love You to Nim’s Island. He’s charismatic enough to make wanting to looking past his tough-guy antics (an ugly fat guy would never get away with it) believable, and when the two finally do make out in an elevator, you truly believe that they desperately want to do it. However, with films like (500) Days of Summer out there, it’s hard to see any new ground being broken. It’s a fluffy enough trifle that if seen under the right circumstance could be fun. Just maybe not if you have a cat and like to knit.

With a whopping six movies hitting theaters today, the fourth weekend of July feels like an ad for the local general store: In the mood for horror, romance, or even talking guinea pigs? Then have we got a movie for you! As we do every Friday, here’s a handy guide to the new releases.

G-Force

What’s the story: The cast of G-Force is wildly impressive—including Zack Galifianakis, Will Arnett, Bill Nighy and the voices of Nicolas Cage, Jon Favreau, Penelope Cruz and Tracy Morgan—but all you need to know about this live action/animation hybrid comes from the tag line on the movie poster: “Gadgets. Gizmos. Guinea Pigs. In 3-D.” And they say there’s no truth in advertising!

Who should see it: The dogs from Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

The Ugly Truth

What’s the story: Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler star as a pair of mismatched mates (a television news producer and her boorish host, respectively) who meet-hate and gradually come to realize that they’re made for each other. Along the way, expect to see Ms. Heigl scowl, frown and wear a pair of vibrating underwear to a fancy restaurant. Yep, it’s that kind of movie. The reviews for The Ugly Truth are pitched just above scathing, but, sadly, we actually think this thing looks moderately entertaining. Talk about an ugly truth! It must be that Flo Rida music cue in the trailer.

Who should see it: Denny Duquette.

Orphan

What’s the story: Go ahead and file Orphan under the list of movies we’ll never see. Everything about this film, from the poster to that ubiquitous trailer, has made us want to burst into tears. (It’s just too scary!) For braver souls than us: Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard play parents who adopt a little girl from an orphanage, only to have buyers remorse once she starts killing people and haunting their dreams. Think The Good Son, but with a daughter.

Who should see it: Macaulay Culkin.

And! For some indie-fun, check out: In the Loop (with James Gandolfini), Shrink (staring Kevin Spacey) or The Answer Man (with Jeff Daniels and Lauren Graham).

If a slightly disappointing opening weekend wasn’t bad enough for Brüno, now it looks like even the controversy about Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest prank is smaller than anticipated. As The Hollywood Reporter noted yesterday, the only lawsuit pending against Mr. Cohen—a ridiculous one involving charity bingo and brain bleeds—has been dropped. And while GLAAD is still up in arms about the homophobic messages that the film is sending, their main beef seems to be with the audiences who won’t get such cutting satire. Boring! We want some more ire raised! If Brüno isn’t the controversy magnet of summer ’09, then what will be? Naturally, we’ve got some ideas…

The Ugly Truth

Possible controversy: Meg Ryan sues Katherine Heigl for stealing her signature bit: The restaurant orgasm.

Chances of this happening: 21%. Besides the fact that Ms. Ryan doesn’t really have a case (her's was fake, Ms. Heigl’s is, embarrassingly enough, “real”), we actually don’t think this kind of lawsuit would even be allowed. If it were, every romantic comedy ever would probably be trying to take a piece out of The Ugly Truth.

G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra

Possible controversy: Director Stephen Sommers demands that his name be removed from the credits.

Chances of this happening: 67%. How do you know G.I. Joe is one of the worst movies ever, sight unseen? Well, there is that trailer, which is laughable in all the wrong ways; but more pointedly, there was the whole rumor about how Mr. Sommers was fired from the film because it wasn’t good. Think about that for a second: Paramount hired Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Van Helsing) and then got upset when he gave them a bad movie. Also, water is wet. If we were Mr. Sommers, we’d demand our name removed out of spite. There can be no doubt that he delivered what he was paid for.

Inglourious Basterds

Possible controversy: Irate UFC fans challenge director Quentin Tarantino to a cage fight because of misleading ads.

Chances of this happening: 78%. Having read the script for Mr. Tarantino’s blood-soaked World War II revenge film, we can attest that it’s much more talky than the (admittedly) kick ass new trailer would lead viewers to believe. Of course, don’t tell The Weinstein Company’s marketing department that, as they gave a full push to Inglourious Basterds during the UFC 100 over the weekend. The testosterone heavy crowd might love a two-minute trailer showcasing the film’s violence, but what happens when they go buy a ticket and spend the first twenty-two minutes reading subtitles? Brock Lesnar is not going to be happy with that.

It wouldn’t be Grey’s Anatomy without a little Emmy controversy. So when it was announced this week that McDreamy—err, Patrick Dempsey—ostensibly the lead actor on the show, would be entering the less crowded supporting actor category, where he’d battle for a nomination against the likes of Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser and the cast of Lost, we weren’t all that surprised. Next thing you know, Katherine Heigl will be hoping for another nomination after being given a story line that was purely done as Emmy catnip. (Oh, wait.) Still, nomination shenanigans aside—Mr. Dempsey isn’t doing anything different than Academy Award Best Actress winner Kate Winslet, who was in The Reader for about 35 minutes—what we’re wondering is why Grey’s Anatomy is competing with Mad Men in the first place.

With television shows now more diffuse than ever, the Emmys seem loath to change their rigid structure; like the medium they celebrate, they’re caught in the middle of an unstable landscape without any sense of how to update themselves. For awards consideration, programs are either called “comedies” or “dramas,” and the actors who work on them get placed inside one of those two bubbles. Obviously, most of the time, this works: 30 Rock is clearly a comedy and Tina Fey will, in theory, get a chance to defend her Emmy win from last year in the Best Actress in a Comedy category; similarly Mad Men will be among the five dramas selected for Best Drama. But for shows like Grey’s Anatomy the genre classing isn’t as clear-cut. There are serious elements to Grey’s, sure (read: we cry a lot while watching), but, more often than not, the show eschews preconceived dramatic conventions—it’s basically like an American Telenovela.

Which brings us to a solution: Create a new category for dramedies! That way the serious funnies can meet on a level playing field without infringing on everyone else. The Academy of Television Arts & Science has already given reality television its own separate plot of land, so why not these ’tween hybrids? The time has come. We can’t be the only ones excited at the possibility of a Blair Waldorf–Izzie Stevens bitch-off showdown come Emmy night.

While thousands of articles have been written about the coming demise of network television and the simultaneous fracturing of the viewing audience, one of the worst epidemics facing television shows in 2009 is a total lack of surprise. Anyone who has visited E! Online or Entertainment Weekly in the last six months knew that Mr. Knight and Ms. Heigl were most likely on their way out of Grey’s. As television audiences become more attuned to searching out entertainment news, the conventional ways that stories are told seem more and more obsolete.

To wit: No matter how many cones of silence are erected around the Grey’s Anatomy writers room this summer, we’ll all know what happens to Izzie and George based on what happens to Ms. Heigl and Mr. Knight—if they return as series regulars for season seven, they’ll live; if they don’t, they’ll die. Talk about letting the air out of the balloon. After J.R. got shot on Dallas, we doubt anyone was scouring websites to see if Larry Hagman was going to hold to his contract for another year.

It’s not just Grey’s Anatomy either. When Elizabeth Mitchell signed on to the pilot of ABC’s sci-fi series V, every Lost fan assumed her character, Juliet, would be the one to die in the season finale. And, lo and behold, as the episode drew to a close, there was Juliet dangling above a deep chasm and falling to her supposed death … only to wake up and heroically detonate a hydrogen bomb, presumably killing her for good. Was this shocking to anyone?

Even on The Office, this problem arises: Amy Ryan, who starred this season in seven episodes as Michael Scott’s true love, Holly, made a “surprise” return to Dunder Mifflin last night. But since Ms. Ryan is busy being a working actress, the episode ended without their blissful reunion. Despite having a truly great season finale, any tension that The Office might have been able to build with regards to Michael and Holly was totally dismissed out-of-hand: Ms. Ryan is never going to be a full-time cast member, so her character’s love affair with Michael could never last.

We realize that maybe everyone isn’t as fluent in these comings and goings as we are, but the fact remains that it has become harder and harder to legitimately surprise the audience. At this point, with Spoiler Culture out of the barn, the question needs to be asked: Should television series’ even attempt to end their seasons on cliffhangers anymore? We guess you’ll just have to tune in next fall to find out. …