“Legacy”

Lana (Haylie Duff, 7th Heaven) is the alpha female in her sorority. Renowned for having the hottest girls on campus, Omega Kappa screens out its pledges based primarily on their looks. Lana wants to admit sexy, lithe Emily (Laura Ashley Innes, Malcolm in the Middle), but there’s a catch. She can only join if there’re no legacies–daughters of previous sorority sisters–who want to join.

“Family That Preys”

Alfre Woodard is Alice Pratt, a modest woman who owns a small, homey diner. Kathy Bates is Charlotte Cartwright, the much-divorced board member of a top corporation founded by one of her husbands. Viewers are asked to suspend their beliefs in reality that this mismatched pair from different socioeconomic, moral, and ethnic backgrounds could have enough in common to put up with each other, much less be best friends. And yet in his homespun way, writer-director Perry–who also has a small role in the film–makes it work.

“Dirty Sexy Money”

Filled with intriguing story lines and a smoking hot cast, Dirty Sexy Money focuses on a idealistic attorney wrestling with his father’s death and the family that may be responsible for it. Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) stars as Nick George, whose father was the legal counsel for the Darling family and good friends with patriarch Tripp (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Letitia (Jill Clayburgh).

“Ugly Betty” — Season Two

The second season of Ugly Betty finds the titular heroine juggling the affections of two men, embroiled in ongoing chaos at work, and dealing with some serious drama on the home front. And yes, this truly is a comedy. First there’s the aftermath of Santos’ death at the end of last season just as he and Betty’s sister Hilda (Ana Ortiz) were reconciling. Hilda deals with her grief by befriending a group of senior citizens, while her son (Mark Indelicato) turns from Broadway-loving good boy to leather-wearing bad boy almost overnight.

Go Away With … Grace Park

Born in the United States to Korean parents and raised in Canada — where she calls Vancouver home — Grace Park got the travel bug early. Though concurrent roles on “The Cleaner” and “Battlestar Galactica” — as well as the Canadian series “The Border” — preclude her from taking as many vacations as she’d like, Park says visiting new countries is one of the joys in life she shares with her husband, Phil Kim. India and Brazil hold special places in Park’s heart, but her favorite destination thus far is Italy’s quaint Vernazza.

“My Sassy Girl”

Loosely based on the 2001 Korean romantic comedy of the same name, My Sassy Girl follows a young couple that was brought together by unusual circumstances. Charlie (Jesse Bradford, Flags of Our Fathers) finds Jordan (Elisha Cuthbert, 24) drunk and passed out in a subway station. Worried that she’ll be harmed, he makes sure she gets home safely.

“House, M.D.” — Season Four

For Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), there’s nothing like a good, tension-filled competition to pick his new team of doctors when his old trio of Chase (Jesse Spencer), Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) and Foreman (Omar Epps) leave his fold. Among the 40 newbies vying to earn the coveted spots in the fourth season of House, M.D. are Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn, the Harold & Kumar films), Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson, Transformers) and Dr., uh, Thirteen (Olivia Wilde, The O.C.). Taking a cue from Flavor Flav, House dubs the latter with that nickname simply because he can.

Janis Ian has learned the truth: At 57, she tells fans what it was like to be a teenage pop star

Four decades before 15-year-old Miley Cyrus caused a media uproar for posing for photographs that implied she was nude, Janis Ian — then also 15 — wrote the critically acclaimed song “Society’s Child.” A thoughtful look at interracial dating, the song was deemed too controversial to play on many radio stations across the country. A few years later, Ian would become a pop star, thanks to her best-known song, “At Seventeen,” which told the universal tale, “Dreams were all they gave for free, to ugly duckling girls like me.”

“The Hills” — Season 3

The third season of “The Hills” is alive with the sound of arguing, crying, and making up (sort of) by the telegenic quartet known as Lauren, Heidi, Whitney and Audrina. Glitzy, fabulous and completely unrealistic, this top-rated MTV reality series thrives on the conceit that pretty girls are jealous of each other when one of them has a boyfriend. But if that boyfriend is Spencer (Heidi’s big-toothed Svengali-in-training), it’s not necessarily jealousy the girls are feeling so much as revulsion.

“The Closer” — Third Season

Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) is back in season three of TNT’s crime procedural The Closer. With a couple years at the Los Angeles police department already under her belt, Brenda has proven that her eccentric method works at getting confessions from even the most hardened criminals. But even she’s not quite sure how to handle the season opener, where a slaughtered family’s sole survivor is the stunned, stoned teenage son. Bleak, dark and wonderfully scripted, the opener sets the tone for the 14 episodes that follow it.

“Lipstick Jungle”

Based on the Candace Bushnell novel of the same name, Lipstick Jungle is what the ladies on Sex and the City might have been like, had they been married characters rather than New York singletons. Brooke Shields stars as Wendy Healy, a high-powered movie mogul who can’t get through a day without talking to (or lunching with) her best friends Nico Reilly (Kim Raver, 24) and Victory Ford (Lindsay Price, Beverly Hills, 90210).