OK, you’ve read my review, you’ve read my colleague (Not) Timorous Tim Stack’s numerous postings on Fox’s novel musical-comedy-something-new show, so I’d like to know:

Did you watch Glee last night? (If you missed it, you can watch it now on Hulu.)

Did you watch Idol and then watch Glee, or tune in just for Glee?

Did you like its mixture of music and plot — its attempt to be an authentic musical for television — or did you find it contrived?

And finally: Will you watch Glee again when it returns again, in the fall?

All opinions most welcome; thanks.

So there I was last night, watching the season finale of 24, and I kept thinking about that long-haired creepy guy in the airport menacing Kim. You know the guy I’m talking about, right? I knew he was one of those character actors who’s been in a thousand TV shows, but there was one role in particular I knew from… but what was it?

Then, by one of those weird coincidences that can happen watching TV, later that night, I’m looking at an old episode of Seinfeld shown at 11 p.m. in New York, and sudenly there he was! He’s “Duncan Meyer,” the guy who accused Jerry of cheating in a race they had in college. Watch him talking about 3 minutes into this clip:

So in effect, Duncan Meyer, bitter at being beaten by Jerry Seinfeld (twice!), lived to migrate over to 24 and become a very bad guy.

Do you remember this actor, Don McManus, from both 24 and Seinfeld? And maybe other shows?

I’ll ask something else: When you watch TV, do you sometimes spot a supporting actor and recall some of the other shows you’ve seen him or her in?

All examples most welcome. Thanks.

1. Remember my post over the weekend suggesting that perhaps fan support helped save Dollhouse and Better Off Ted? I think I was proven at least partially correct by a comment made this morning by Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly: “We made the bet on Dollhouse. That’s it for Terminator. If we canceled Joss Whedon’s show I would have got 110 million emails from his fans today.”

Translation: Who needs that headache — we may as well give the people what they want.

Now if only 3 million of those 110 million e-mailers Reilly envisioned actually watch Dollhouse season-two, it’ll become a success…

2. This morning on The View, Elizabeth Hasselbeck went mano a mano with Jesse Ventura, who besides being a former wrestler, former governor, and now would-be first-class surfer, also served in Vietnam. When the subject of waterboarding came up and Hasselbeck defended the practice, Ventura, an Independent, said he experienced water-boarding as part of his Navy SEAL training, and had no doubt that it is torture. One sentence in particular garnered much audience laughter and applause: “Give me a waterboard, one hour, and Dick Cheney, and I’ll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.”

Write in if you don’t know who Sharon Tate was.

Or have an opinion about Dollhouse-saved-from-death. Thanks.

Will Ferrell’s return to Saturday Night Live last night may not have contained the comic high points of last week’s Justin Timberlake edition, but it was a lot of fun to see Ferrell and a number of guest stars roll out familiar SNL signature characters, starting in the cold-opening reunion of Ferrell as George W. Bush with Darrell Hammond as Dick Cheney.

Ferrell later summoned the late Harry Caray from heaven for a “Weekend Update” segment, which also returned Amy Poehler to the co-anchor chair. Not all the jokes were great, but her enthusiasm with Seth Meyers was.

An otherwise-deadly funeral sketch was saved by a Maya Rudolph cameo. Similarly, the inevitable Jeopardy! parody, with Ferrell as a long-suffering Alex Trebek, was helped as much by Norm Macdonald playing Burt Reynolds as it was by Hammond as the always-abusive Sean Connery (“Take that, ya poltroon!”) and Tom Hanks as a dumb version of Tom Hanks. (BTW, did you see Norm on Letterman recently? He killed.)

This was one of those SNLs in which the odder sketches were the most interesting. The Lawrence Welk Show parody, Fred Armisen’s ongoing nod to the baby boomers in the audience, was nicely surreal, with Kristen Wiig as the singer with doll-hands that creeped out Ferrell playing a singer. Ferrell specializes in the comedy of awkwardness and oddity, something few other current cast members aim for. Thus his opening monologue, which morphed into a dramatic reading in which he repeated asked the audience not to laugh, was both strange and compelling.

So was the late-in-the-show sketch that turned into a muscial production number. Ferrell sang Billy Joel’s bombastic “Goodnight Saigon” and showcased a slowly-increasing back-up band that eventually included not just the comedy guest stars and the regular cast, but also actors such as Mad Men‘s Elizabeth Moss, Paul Rudd on violin, and Anne Hathaway on guitar.

Like I said, not roll around on the floor funny, but always worth watching. It was a nostalgic, eccentric way to end Saturday Night Live‘s season.

Dollhouse, renewed? Better Off Ted, renewed? Whaa? Are we living in a new alternate world, where intelligent but low-rated shows with potential for increased audience size can now thrive? No. This news, as reported by the Caesar of scoop, Michael Ausiello, is simply a great display of power: passionate fans finally making networks understand that, at a scary economic time to be a network, they’d better start listening to the fans.

There’s no doubt in my mind that these two shows — overseen by distinctive, original creators (Joss Whedon for Dollhouse; Victor Fresco for Better Off Ted — will receive the renewal notices because of all the internet support that bombarded Fox and ABC. They would doubtless deny it, but I would guess that both networks were mindful of past mistakes: Fox in having cancelled Whedon’s Firefly and ABC for cancelling Pushing Daisies, or name your own 100 times these networks, and CBS and NBC have killed creativity prematurely.

Yes, I lament that there wasn’t yet this kind of massive rallying in cyberspace to save older shows some of us loved, such as Andy Richter Controls The Universe.

But, hey, doesn’t it give you Chuck fans hope?

More on Dollhouse and Better Off Ted renewals:

Random scooplets! Dollhouse renewed!

Breaking: ABC renews Castle, Better Off Ted