Ox Notes: June 23, 2009

Tonight, ABC unleashes its latest celebrity competition show, The Superstars, at 8 ET. One of the contestants, Dancing with the Stars pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy, spoke with TV Guide about being the celebrity in a celebrity-professional athlete pair for a change.

In other DwtS news, Julianne Hough is up for a lead role in the Footloose remake, provided she gets her acting skills up to speed.

Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane landed an acting role on ABC's new fall drama Flash Forward.

So You Think You Can Dance fans will want to check out host Cat Deeley's blog at EW.

Jessica Simpson will travel the world for VH1 in 2010 for a new series called The Price of Beauty. I admit that I'm intrigued by the show's premise: "Jessica will study the local fashions, dietary fads and beauty regimes and even participate in some of the extreme practices she discovers."

Apparently, I wasn't the only one unimpressed by NBC's Merlin, which premiered on Sunday night. Over two hours, it was only watched by 5.3 million people. The reimagining of the legend -- including Merlin's relationship with Arthur and the fact that Arthur has a relationship with his dad at all -- didn't work for me, and I thought the acting was lame, particularly Merlin's wide-eyed staring at a CGI of Camelot (the 0:15 mark in the video):