Also on Wednesday night, The Situation moves from Seaside to “Suburgatory” to make his acting debut. And after last week’s “Grey’s Anatomy”/”Private Practice” crossover episode, Fox gets in on the action Thursday evening with a “Bones”/”Finder” crossover of its own.

The winter finale of “Fringe” airs Friday night, kicking off a weekend that will culminate with Sunday night’s Oscars broadcast, as Billy Crystal returns to host for the ninth time.

Check out our slideshow to see what else is worth watching this week.

He was in the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on an October night in Costa Mesa, Calif., watching the high-stepping cast electrify the crowd once again despite more than a dozen years crisscrossing the nation.

“To be at the back of a hall with the audience jumping to their feet at the end of the show after all these years, it’s just so gratifying and just so pleasing,” says Erskine, the show’s senior executive producer, by phone from Dublin.

Even so, the end of the road is nearing. “Riverdance” is currently on an 82-city farewell North American tour that’s winding across the U.S. and Canada and ends in June. This month, the show left Texas, hit the Southeast and next goes to the Plains.

“It’s certainly emotional to be saying goodbye,” says Erskine.

The show has been touring continuously in North America since 1996, sometimes with two companies simultaneously. While organizers insist there’s still interest in the U.S., new markets beckon in South America, India and China.

The touring company includes six principal dancers, 18 troupe dancers, a live five-piece band, flamenco dancer and two American tap dancers, one of whom is also a baritone soloist.

Padraic Moyles, one of the principals, is dancing with a heavy heart. He joined “Riverdance” in 1997 and fell in love with his co-star and now wife Niamh O’Connor while in the show. While he has performed elsewhere, he says American audiences are special.

“Anybody who joins the show from here on out and doesn’t get the opportunity to perform it in America, will be missing something,” he says. “I hope that someday, whether its 10 years from now, it does come back so that people get to experience that reaction again.”

“Riverdance” opened at Dublin’s Point Theatre on Feb. 9, 1995, at a time of renewed Irish optimism and pride surrounding the onset of the booming “Celtic Tiger” economy. Years of relative poverty were disappearing and being Irish had a new cool, thanks to a new generation of athletes and musicians like U2 and The Cranberries.

“The timing couldn’t have been better. We just picked up on a vibe that was happening in this country and we suddenly felt, `Maybe it’s not so bad being Irish. Maybe we don’t have to be the butt of every joke,’” says Erskine. “It couldn’t have happened five years earlier. It just wouldn’t have happened. I don’t think we would have had the courage to have done it.”

It has since been seen by an estimated 22 million people in 40 countries, from Red Square to the Great Wall of China. It made its American debut in 1996 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and packed the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway for 18 months in 2000-2001. Not bad for a show that first premiered on the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest as a seven-minute segment.

The two-hour “Riverdance” show is loosely based on the story of Irish culture and mass immigration to America, the story woven through music and dance styles including flamenco and tap. Most of the dancing is drawn from traditional Irish step dancing, in which the arms and body move little while the feet create the sound and action.

Erskine attributes the show’s success to the fact that it isn’t a cookie-cutter experience. It wasn’t pulled together to make money, but to blow the dust off Irish folk music and dance, he says, and that purity of creation shines through. Plus, the sound seems to touch a very human part of us.

“That pounding out of rhythms I suppose is quite primal. That goes back into all our cores, no matter where we’ve come from. The beating of drums is how we first communicated,” he says.

The show has lasted despite losing original stars Jean Butler and Michael Flatley, who also was co-choreographer. Flatley went on to create his own shows, “Lord of the Dance” and “Feet of Flames.”

Moyles suspects that although “Riverdance” is pure Irish, Americans have embraced it so strongly in large part due to their own immigrant heritage. “Many of them have their own folk dances. They probably see their own heritage within `Riverdance,’” he says.

The final North American tour – at least for now – will take the show to such Irish-heavy cities as Chicago, Kansas City, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Boston, and will conclude at Wolf Trap National Park in Vienna, Va., which will represent the 14th time “Riverdance” has played there.

While the show is leaving America, it has tours planned for Belgium, New Zealand and Australia. The show is also going to India in October and plans a 10-week tour of China. There are also dates set in Argentina and Brazil, which excites Erskine because “Riverdance” hasn’t been farther south in the Americas than Mexico before.

“As we are saying goodbye,” he says, “we are also saying hello.”

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Online:

http://www.riverdance.com

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Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Multiple sources tell PEOPLE that although the couple originally hoped to reconcile, a reunion might not be in their future after all.

“They had both been wearing their wedding rings and had mutually thought they might be able to work it out,” one source says. “But it doesn’t look like it’s going that way.”

So let’s talk about the issues plaguing the fifth season of this scandalous CW favorite. I want to put in my disclaimer here and note that I actually have loved and continue to love Gossip Girl a great deal. I went into the show in the first season entirely because my roommates were excited to watch it. By the end of that season I was the one obsessed with the show, buying headbands and referring to my friends only by their first initials. Needless to say, they really regretted getting me hooked on Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl, about a bunch of rich Upper East Siders and their insanely ridiculous lives, has never been a perfect show. Even when the plot holes were big enough to drive one of Chuck Bass’ limos through the show’s lovably psychotic characters and absurdist sense of humor remained intact.

This season, however, Gossip Girl feels like it has seriously lost its way. With more than half the season already past I worry that the show might not get back to what viewers loved best: the scheming characters, the juicy scandals and the tumultuous friendship between a blonde bombshell and a Queen B(ee).

I’ve narrowed my essential issues with this season of Gossip Girl down to four:

1. What is Gossip Girl without those three little letters: BFF?

Gossip Girl started not with a bang, but with a feud. The catty catfight in question was between recent boarding-school returnee Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and current high school drama queen Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester). Throughout the course of the show the girls have pushed each other into fountains and cakes, but they’ve also been there for each other when the chips were down. Their friendship has often been written with all the obstacles of any good love story. The relationship between Serena and Blair with all its ups, downs and field hockey fights is the central relationship of Gossip Girl.

This season Gossip Girl has almost wholly sidelined the dynamic between Serena and Blair and it’s hurt the show. Giving no narrative space to this core relationship is a mistake. At the end of the day, after all the schemes have been hatched, this is a show about two girls who could not be more similar or more different. This season, the girls have had scant screen time with each other and no narrative emphasis put on their relationship.

Both girls have been almost wholly wrapped up in their own separate storylines, barely touching base with each other. In previous seasons, Blair and Serena would turn to each other when times got tough. Now an episode might include a single scene of the girls having a post-game conversation after all the drama is over. While once a driving force for the show, this season Serena and Blair’s friendship has taken a backseat to the merry-go-round of love triangles and guest stars. While the girls’ current feud over Dan (Penn Badgley) is sure to put some attention back on their core dynamic, ignoring the central friendship of the series for nearly the entire season has made the show less enjoyable to watch.

2. The Magically Disappearing S

The series began with Serena’s return from boarding school and throughout Gossip Girl’s run the blonde and brunette society girls have traded off the narrative lead. While things were more equitable in the first season, there have been times when either Blair or Serena has stolen the plot limelight. I can’t remember any time, however, when Serena’s story has been so thin.

This year, Serena’s character has consistently been used as a prop to lend importance to the show’s guest star storyline of the moment. Besides stalking her fake cousin Charlie/Ivy (Kaylee DeFer) she’s done scant else of importance. She briefly worked in the film industry, although mostly this turn of events worked to forward Dan’s book storyline. After that Serena briefly dated Ivy’s ex-boyfriend, a chef/psychopath with a tendency towards blackmail. Making Serena once again an accessory to the ongoing Ivy plot. Then Serena decided to take down Gossip Girl with Nate’s (Chace Crawford) help, which lasted about the thirty seconds it took Serena to utter that declaration of war. Shortly after Serena began working at Nate’s gossip site, once again playing a minor role in Nate’s storyline while having no momentum of her own. In terms of her love life, which is one of the central devices of the series, Serena has spent most of the season pining for the emotionally unavailable Dan. This mostly just positions her as an obstacle to the burgeoning Blair and Dan romance.

Serena has been present to service everyone else’s storylines this season without having any kind of character arc herself. “What is Serena up to this week?” You might ask yourself before watching an episode. The answer is that she’s usually acting as a plot device in whatever storyline the writers need moved forward. As one of arguably the two main characters of the show (see above) Serena should have her own character arc. Her character shouldn’t be used to prop up guest stars or make already crowded love triangles more dramatic. It’s time to give Serena a real storyline that starts and ends with her.

3. The Deconstruction of Blair Waldorf

Serena’s not the only Gossip Girl suffering from narrative whiplash. The writing for Blair has been possibly even more troubling than the lack of any kind of story for Serena. Unlike Serena, Blair has received a lion’s share of the plot this season. Unfortunately, this narrative prominence has done her character no favors. Throughout the run of the show, Blair has been an underdog, a striver and above all a schemer. “I’m the crazy bitch around here,” she once told Georgina after a particularly satisfying take-down.

Not anymore. This season, Blair has put away her Queen B crown in favor of a pretty princess tiara. In her quest to become the princess of Monaco, she has barely schemed once all season. When Prince Louis’ (Hugo Becker) sister Beatrice was obviously gunning for her, she didn’t even notice. Even Serena, one of the more trusting and naive people on the show currently being convinced a complete stranger is her cousin, could see Beatrice was bad news. Did Blair find out her plan or scheme to take her down? Nope, she just sat passively by and did nothing.

In fact, sitting passively by and doing nothing appears to be Blair’s lot in life now. The issues with Blair’s characterization might be the most troubling of the season. Blair has gone from an active character, constantly engaged in a fight with the world around her, to a passive victim. When things used to go wrong for Blair Waldorf she would wipe her tears and plot revenge. This season, when times get tough Blair literally runs away from her problems. Whether that’s to cry on Dan’s shoulder in Brooklyn or run away to the Dominican Republic, Blair has become a classic damsel-in-distress.

It’s hard to imagine Blair reacting to threats with anything other than a good take-down, but this season she has barely schemed at all. She doesn’t fight for herself. She used to routinely try to destroy people for sometimes no apparent reason at all. This season she has become the perpetual victim of other people’s plots. I miss the strong, tough Blair Waldorf who always had a backup plan, even if they often (or always) went awry. I find this new iteration of Blair much less interesting to watch.

I found myself sighing with relief when Georgina Sparks (the great Michelle Trachtenberg) reappeared because it meant that finally someone would be actively moving the plot forward. Blair used to be an active character that fought for her place in the world, now she’s a reactive character always ten steps behind everyone else.

4. Holy Plot Twist!

I’d venture to say Gossip Girl isn’t well known for its exceedingly realistic plotlines. The show operates in a heightened reality where 20-year-olds own hotels and the travel time between Brooklyn and Manhattan is the blink of an eye. Blair and Chuck (Ed Westwick) could be getting breakfast in one scene and going to a fancy dinner party in the next scene with no explanation. Time and space apparently just move differently on the Upper East Side.

In the pantheon of crazy Gossip Girl storylines, however, the ones from this season are so absurd they still manage to stick out. The worst offender? Blair, a formerly non-religious character, making a pact with God to save Chuck’s life. Gossip Girl loves its film homages; you’d only need to take a gander at the hilarious episode titles to see that. There is, however, a line between homage and just ripping a storyline out of a movie and plopping it wholesale into your show. You cannot just take the plot of the movie End of the Affair and use it for your modern day show about rich New York socialites. It just doesn’t work. Besides a few instances of Blair using God like her personal Pez dispenser of favors, she’s never shown an avid interest in religion. Why would she suddenly feel like if she didn’t hold up her end of the bargain to marry Louis God would Final Destination Chuck? Why does God care whether or not she marries a boring French dude?

I wish I could say that the God pact was the worst offender from this season, but the whole business with Blair’s dowry is equally as bad. And yes, the word I just typed was dowry and no, they haven’t jumped into any DeLoreans and gone back in time. Why would Blair have signed a pre-nuptial agreement with Louis that included a dowry clause that would bankrupt her family if she left the marriage? Why is it better for Blair to stay married to Louis for a year and then divorce him? Doesn’t that look equally as bad? A year is not that long. When Louis threatens her at the wedding why doesn’t she just immediately go to one of her two lawyer fathers for legal advice instead of trying to jet off to the Dominican Republic? None of these are questions the show is interested in answering. And that’s not even touching the half-season long pregnancy storyline that ended in convenient miscarriage and went nowhere. Stop looking at the plot holes, the show says, just enjoy the ride.

It would be much easier to do that if any of these storylines were fun enough to turn your brain off while watching. None of them, however, are a particularly good time to watch. This isn’t like the time that Serena declared she’d killed a guy or when she was nearly killed by wolves in a car crash. Both of those were hilarious. I can overlook plot holes if there are wolves involved. In fact if wolves had come and eaten everyone at Blair’s royal wedding I would give the whole thing a huge pass.

Gossip Girl has sported some pretty unrealistic stories but because they have had high entertainment value it’s never bothered me before. Remember that one time Jenny (Taylor Momsen) decided to become a teenage drug mule because she was bored? I do too and it was amazing. Gossip Girl often stumbles when it’s unrealistic plot twists don’t match their inherent entertainment value. Georgina running from the Russian mob and convincing Dan he’s the father of her baby? Love it. Blair making a pact with God and refusing to believe in the existence of modern medicine? Not a fan.

With all this ranting aside, Gossip Girl is still a highly enjoyable show. It’s got a good set of talent both behind and in front of the cameras. All of the problems listed can be fixed. And the fifth season has sported some fun stories like Chuck’s new leaf (complete with lovable canine companion) and Dan’s book. I wouldn’t be writing unless I really did love the show and all its characters. With most of the cast’s contracts up at the end of next year, the show’s sixth season, my guess is that the show is winding down. I want to see Gossip Girl go out with a bang, in a way that respects the essence of all the characters.

It’s not too late to fix the problems with Gossip Girl; none are insurmountable. Whenever Blair and Serena ride off into the sunset, I’d like to look back at the flaws of season five as a blip in the road on an otherwise enjoyable journey. I hope I can.

The Los Angeles Times found that 94 percent of the 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are white and 77 percent are men. Blacks and Hispanics account for only 2 percent each of academy members.

The newspaper’s findings were reported Sunday, a week before the Oscars. The Times reported that through interviews with members and their representatives, it confirmed the identities of about 5,100 voters – 89 percent of academy membership.

The findings are in line with industry employment overall, in which whites and males dominate. But academy President Tom Sherak says the group is trying to diversify its membership rolls.

The Los Angeles Times found that 94 percent of the 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are white and 77 percent are men. Blacks and Hispanics account for only 2 percent each of academy members.

The newspaper’s findings were reported Sunday, a week before the Oscars. The Times reported that through interviews with members and their representatives, it confirmed the identities of about 5,100 voters – 89 percent of academy membership.

The findings are in line with industry employment overall, in which whites and males dominate. But academy President Tom Sherak says the group is trying to diversify its membership rolls.

Credit: Frederick M. Brown/Get(…)

Credit: Frederick M. Brown/Get(…)

Today, February 19, she is being laid to rest for eternity in my home, Westfield, NJ, where I grew up, and in the same cemetery where my parents and many friends are buried. Houston is being interred in the same plot with her father, John. Though I doubt Ms. Houston spent much time in Westfield, other than to visit her father’s grave, I will imagine she asked to rest next to him because he was the only man she really trusted, despite his three marriages, and who provided a home for her with all the emotional trappings that “home” represents.

Fairview cemetery in “Colonial Westfield,” is only about 14 miles southwest of Houston’s real childhood home of Newark, but the real distance is far greater.

The Newark of Houston’s youth, and its present, is one of America’s poster cities for urban decay and economic challenges. The city has never recovered from the 1967 riots that destroyed buildings and chased out most of the last upwardly mobile middle-class families who lived there. The Houston’s were among the exodus, moving to nearby East Orange when Houston was just four years old. It’s poor schools, high crime rate and generally gray, desolate interiors, salted with a few green-shoot gentrified neighborhoods and solid ethnic enclaves, remains stubbornly grim despite being just a tantalizing 15 to 20 minute NJ Transit ride from Manhattan’s Penn Station.

Westfield, on the other hand, has often been cited as one of the best towns in America to live, and grow up in. I can attest to the latter. The independent corner stores, ice cream parlors, men’s clothing stores and drug stores that were my youth have been almost entirely replaced by chain stores. My old barber, Figaro’s, recently had a fire. But when I had my 30th High School reunion last November, we had near 200 baby boomers turn out, reflecting on the good-ol’ town that shaped us.

The town was long known for the “Three Ps,” — Presbyterian, Prudential and Princeton. It was in those three institutions that you could find most of the economic, social and political power in Westfield for decades. Today, the town is somewhat more tolerant of Democrats than in the Eisenhower-Nixon-Reagan eras, but not much.

It is not, nor has it ever been, a multi-cultural town. The last census shows it to be 90% white, less than 4% black. And 4% Asian. It is definitely more tolerant, despite its still very white population, of people of color. Old prejudices have mostly been buried in Fairview. Both President Bushes made Westfield stops in their campaigns in one of the strongest, and most reliably Republican strongholds in the state.

It’s unclear to me why John Houston is buried there. His obituary shows no ties to Westfield. But maybe, like my Aunt Eleanor, he attended a burial there and liked it for his last resting place, despite having never lived in the town.

There is one black Baptist church in town, Bethel Baptist Church, where the ladies still wear fabulous Sunday hats and spirituals are sung.

Fairview cemetery is the only place in Westfield to be buried these days. There is only one other graveyard in town, a tiny, forlorn patch of relics from Colonial times, across the street from the majestic white steepled Westfield Presbyterian Church.

Westfield is almost always a calm, steady, consistent, predictable small town. But Westfield, and thus Fairview, also has its share of notables and notorious who call it their last address: Kool and The Gang co-founder Claydes Charles Smith; the family of murderer John List, Westfield residents when the horrible tragedy took place in 1971; Bob Wunderle, the Path Mark grocery store executive killed by organized crime members; Jeffrey Bauer, publisher of the Westfield Leader whose estranged wife shot him in his downtown office in 1996 and then turned the gun herself.

But that list sells Fairview, and Westfield, well short. There are veterans from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War 2, Vietnam and both Iraq wars resting there. There are teachers, students, ministers, druggists, barbers, waiters, city-council members, librarians, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, babies, drunk-driving victims: the spine, hopes, pride and regrets of a town that has shaped many lives for both good and bad.

To be sure, too, there are hundreds buried across its 105 acres who shared Houston’s tragic addictions. A former neighbor of mine is one, a grand old-school gentleman who paid me to cut his grass and shovel his snow, and gave my pals and I ice-box cookies from his back stoop, but also had a weakness for Jack Daniels that chewed him up from the inside out. A couple of classmates of mine are there too, along with the dashed hopes and melancholy of parents who still regularly visit their graves. And there is a lady I knew well, now in Fairview, who checked herself into rehab at age 83 to beat the alcoholism that she managed to keep caged up the last four years of her life, proving that it’s never too late to slay the dragon.

No, I don’t know why the Houstons are buried in my home town not far from my parents. But if they want to call it home, as I do, despite now living out of state, then I can understand why. The town is lovely. The people are imperfect. But the company there is very good.