But in between depressing responses from baristas--"I had a customer come down from Canada, and he visited Grumpy's because he saw the cafe on Girls"-- and obnoxious responses from hipster residents--"We don't think of it as this cool neighborhood...well, it is a cool neighborhood, but we don't think of it as like, this like, entity. It's just Brooklyn"-- there was a moment of pure, undiluted honesty. One man, just one, was brave enough to speak his real feelings about Lena Dunham's program. That man was Charlie Dugan.


Seriously, bless you Mr. Dugan. You have already surpassed most of the Internet in your ability to identify your true feelings about the show, without the pretense of pretending to hate it because it's too popular, or pretending to love it because it's so "brave." We stand by your decision, Mr. Dugan. God bless.

Here's the rest of the video, if you want to see people act like real jerks.

Michael J. Fox (Getty Images)

It is a laughing matter: When Michael J. Fox abruptly left his starring role on ABC's Spin City in  2000, the world was shocked to find out that the actor was suffering from a degenerative brain disorder.

So what better way to mark his return, over a decade later, than with a comedy about a family man with Parkinson's?

NBC announced today that it has ordered 22 episodes of Mr. Fox's new show, which stars  the actor as a family man who struggles with his wife, and three children to keep their heads above water in the sink-or-swim environment of New York City.

It's not a reality show, though Mr. Fox's character will be living with Parkinson's Disease. The yet-to-be-shot series, co-created and  executive produced by  Easy A director Will Gluck and Arrested Development writer Sam Laybourne, was the subject of a vicious bidding war last week, Vulture reported.

NBC's win can be seen as something of a triumph, since  Mr. Fox began his career on the network's Family Ties in 1982. NBC's Chairman of Entertainment Robert Greenblatt said he was thrilled to have Mr. Fox back in the fold:

To bring Michael J. Fox back to NBC is a supreme honor and we are thrilled that one of the great comedic television stars is coming home again. From the moment we met with Michael to hear his unique point of view about this new show, we were completely captivated and on board. He is utterly relatable, optimistic, and in a class by himself, and I have no doubt that the character he will create – and the vivid family characters surrounding him – will be both instantly recognizable and hilarious. Being in business with him is a supreme pleasure.

Mr. Fox also released a statement expressing his eagerness to get in front of the camera again, saying "I’m extremely pleased to be back at NBC with a great creative team and a great show. Bob Greenblatt and all the folks at the network have given me a warm welcome home, and I’m excited to get to work."

Not everyone has such a positive diagnosis for the show. Forbes' Dorothy Pomerantz notes that Mr. Fox fading star power might not be enough to attract the crucial 18-25 demo, who are too young to remember Family Ties.

What Ms. Pomerantz fails to take into account, of course, is the infinite nostalgia power of Back to the Future, as well as that particular demographic's attraction to dark comedy: it's hard to imagine that Mr. Fox's new program as saccharine-sweet...though without a script,  or actually anything besides a bare-bones outline for the untitled program, we wouldn't be placing bets quiet yet.

The first is Jessica Grose, the former Jezebel currently overseeing Slate's DoubleX. She will fill the  deputy editor position Willa Paskin recently left to become television critic at Salon. (We'll have Foster draw up another visual aid just as soon as he gets back from Jamaica.)

And don't forget that Ms. Grose's debut novel, Sad Desk Salad (about a blogger, naturally), is due out in September.

Gilbert Cruz has been made a Vulture.com senior editor. He now holds the same post at Time.com, which he joined from Entertainment Weekly.

"Grose and Cruz will be conceiving and editing more insightful news analysis, hilarious slideshows and unique takes on pop culture for the site, the entertainment destination from New York magazine, as well as building up Vulture's already robust collection of TV recaps," said the announcement.

Props to Vulture for not resting on the laurels of its robust recaps.

In_____ble.

Three things in this life are, it would seem, inevitable: death, taxes, and New York's Vulture blog (which covers pop culture) misusing the term "inevitable." Yesterday, the blog asked who would star in the "inevitable News of the World movie"--you know, because media scandals are always turned around, right away, into docudramas which lend themselves easily to SEO-enriched comment threads listing red-haired Hollywood actresses.

Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines "inevitable" as "incapable of being avoided or evaded." Given the general breakdown of language--specifically online language--into a string of "infamous"es, "random"s, and "pretty much amazing"s, we can call it, well, inevitable that a word which colloquially means the end result of a grinding chain of events (and which originated in Middle English!) now means "a funny confluence of cultural phenomena that, individually, get traffic."

Ranked from most inevitable to least inevitable (from inevitable to avoidable, that is), these are the things that Vulture headlines have called "inevitable" in 2011.

--The "backlash" (a word likely deserving its own listicle) against James O'Keefe's video "sting" against NPR. [This is actually a Daily Intel article, perhaps explaining why "inevitable" is used correctly!]

--A reality TV series about the rapper Ice-T and his wife, the glamour model Coco.

--A parody of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" by a group of people who evidently make a lot of music video parodies.

--A movie about the News of the World scandal.

--A YouTube video of Hitler (from the movie Downfall) reacting to Lars von Trier's Nazi jokes at Cannes.

--A parody of the Harry Potter series set to Rebecca Black's "Friday," or vice versa.

--A Snoop Dogg song about Charlie Sheen.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_