Scott Baio to exec produce VH1 reality series featuring former male teen idols

Cue the high-pitched squeals: VH1 is greenlighting a reality series in which eight male teen idols from the 1980s and '90s shack up together and reflect on the highs and lows of heartthrobbery. After receiving mentoring from a life coach and industry experts, each one decides whether to attempt a career comeback or to swear off Hollywood for good. Executive producers on the still-untitled show — which is slated to debut early next year — include Scott Baio and Jason Hervey, who know a thing or two about teen fame (Baio with Happy Days, Hervey with The Wonder Years) and VH1 (Scott Baio is 45…and Single, Scott Baio is 46…and Pregnant).

'90210' spinoff casts Tristan Wilds of 'The Wire'

The CW's spinoff of Beverly Hills, 90210 welcomes another resident: Tristan Wilds, a.k.a. Michael Lee on HBO's The Wire. Wilds will play the role of Dixon Mills, the adopted brother of Annie Mills (Degrassi: The Next Generation's Shenae Grimes), who moves with his family from Kansas to the famously tony zip code. The pilot also stars Lori Loughlin (Summerland), Jessica Walter (Arrested Development), AnnaLynne McCord (Nip/Tuck), and Dustin Milligan (The Messengers).

Three 6 Mafia to appear on 'Numb3rs'

Could it be? A couple of Oscar winners on Numb3rs? Juicy J and DJ Paul of Three 6 Mafia — the rap group who snagged an Academy Award in 2006 for the Hustle & Flow song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" — will guest-star on the May 9 episode of the equation-obsessed CBS drama. (Sounds like a match made in alphanumeric heaven.) Juicy J (pictured, left) plays a hip-hop artist named Hunter who gets killed in a drive-by shooting after a gig at a record mogul's birthday party; Don (Rob Morrow) and his FBI team are called in to crack the case. In case you're wondering, Hunter and his partner-in-rhyme, Roland (DJ Paul), will be performing "Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)," the first single from Three 6 Mafia's new album, Last 2 Walk, which drops in June.

'Boston Legal' promotes its time slot move... during an episode

Didn’t get the memo that Boston Legal is moving from Tuesdays at 10 p.m. to Wednesdays at 10 p.m. starting on April 30? No worries. David E. Kelley’s ABC drama is including a jokey nod to the schedule change in the final moment of the April 22 episode, and will follow it up with a 30-second scene that kicks off the April 30 episode, in which Denny Crane (William Shatner) and partners are startled to learn that the weekly firm meeting is shifting from… Tuesdays at 10 to Wednesdays at 10. (Check out a video of the scene after the jump.) “The network will let people know we’re moving, but we couldn’t help but also deal with it the way Boston Legal deals with things — by turning it into a little scene,” says Legal exec producer Bill D’Elia. “It’s irreverent, fun, and inside baseball... We stay in character and treat it like, ‘If you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, you don’t.’”

Of course the series has dabbled in meta-gags before, whether it’s a character humming the Boston Legal theme song or musing, “These past few years I've felt this inexplicable compulsion to be someone redeeming, as if I were some regular on a TV show." (“We’ve broken the fourth wall so many times that we have to go find the fourth wall in storage to even use it any more,” quips D’Elia.) Creative do-it-yourself promotion can’t hurt, considering that the move means the series loses its mammoth Dancing With The Stars lead-in. “If we had our druthers, I think we’d rather stay where we were on Tuesday night,” he says, “but the network game is the network game.”

Right now, the Legal team is more focused on earning a renewal for the fall: The drama, which averages 9.9 million viewers per episode, remains on the bubble. “We expect a decision by the first week in May,” D'Elia notes, “and we feel pretty good about what we’ve done to prove our case.” Pun intended, we presume.