Though others might have sensed madness, a naive Conan O'Brien put his trust in Lipton and agreed to be the subject of an Actors Studio episode that slowly morphed into an interminable audience hostage situation, says a TV Squad member in attendance. Apparently, Lipton's interviewing skills employed both zero preparation and an absolute, comprehensive interrogation technique that would rival a Scientology audit:

"What is your mother's name?" "What is the name of the primary school you attended?" "What did your father do for a living?" These are only a few of the questions that led Conan to crack, "I feel like I'm applying for a credit card." [...]

Maybe it was the fact that Lipton totally has a mancrush on O'Brien that made this interview the longest thing ever. After the first hour, we were just getting to Conan's experiences at Harvard. Around hour two, O'Brien started making desperate jokes about hiding the rest of Lipton's cards. Around hour three, he finished his pitcher of water and downed an entire glass from Lipton's.

It was nearly midnight when Lipton got to his last blue card, and it was actually a little disappointing for me. After spending a good chunk of time talking about and showing clips from Lipton's appearances on Late Night, get got to the juicy stuff: namely Conan's planned takeover of The Tonight Show next year. Conan has been noticeably quiet about the subject, and I was hoping for some dirt. Unfortunately, we didn't get anything more than him saying he was excited and nervous—and that they'd fly Lipton out to L.A. so he could still be on the show.

All in all, when the nearly 4 hour interview was finished, everyone felt drained. Even Conan seemed to be glad it was over.

Sadly, things soon turned grim when Lipton pushed his luck and advanced a Proust questionnaire in overtime. A desperate O'Brien turned the tables by flinging himself on the man, choking him around the neck, and screaming, "If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? Because you're almost there, you obsequious pimp!"

• James Lipton holds Conan O'Brien and hundreds of others hostage [TV Squad]

Quite the opposite, said Radcliffe, who explained that it would at least add some inches to his much-scrutinized manhood. Take heart, Dan — at least that shrinkage brings you ever closer to your long-held dream of playing Hermione!

• Inside the Actors Studio [Bravo]

Today we got a glimpse of the comic delivering the episode's customary windy introduction, which comes as close as we've been to a Chappelle performance in years — properly reverential of Lipton's mile-long resume (even the "literary perennial An Exaltation of Larks," a title no one can read with a straight face) while dropping random bursts of profanity and invective when necessary. The only thing that likely would have improved this would have been a Chappelle-esque three-hour wait for Lipton's arrival, followed by a chain-smoking binge of payback from their last tilt in 2005. Or maybe that comes later in the episode. Either way, congrats, Jim! [Bravo]

The Love Guru is so relentlessly juvenile as to merit a new twist on the PG-13 rating — one that strongly cautions not only those under 13 but anyone much above it, too. ... Opening opposite Get Smart isn't ideal, but coupled with lingering affection for the Austin Powers series, this might just be dumb enough to at least hold its own.

After the jump, a reflective Mike Myers redoubts to Inside the Actors Studio to answer every question on Earth except the one about what went wrong.

That's not entirely true; he also spent more than two minutes eluding the simple query, "How do you productively wear so many hats?" The rambling, New Age-y reply could function as its own performance art if it wasn't so mortifying, which actually got us thinking: If we find out later that this whole Love Guru episode thing was just some post-ironic celebrity reinvention, we're going to be pissed.

• 'The Love Guru' [Variety]
• 'Inside the Actors Studio' [Bravo]

What happened to Ari? What's his secret pain? Piven: That's something I keep pitching to our writers. I came onto this show late in the game as a hired gun. So I would love to be more a part of ... Oh, I'm saying all the wrong things now.

Keep going, Jeremy. [Laughter] Piven: I don't care about titles or whatever, how you're billed on the back of your chair, any of that stuff. I just like to be in the mix, you know? So you asked: what is Ari's secret pain? I think this show can keep exploring these characters. Like, for instance, what is Passover like at Ari's house? Why does he desperately need to prove himself? It's kind of tragic. I mean, when people meet me, they're usually surprised that I'm so calm. They're disappointed that I don't bark at them.

We're sure it will come as a relief to his Entourage bosses that Piven isn't making a public appeal for a producer title, just taking the opportunity to humbly let the show's writers know that as an artist, he could make Ari's threats to "stab my sword-swallowing assistant to death with his own dismembered cock" if he fails to promptly roll an important call seem more validly motivated if the audience gets to see the volatile agent bickering with his family over their Passover plans in the preceding scene.

• The Emmy Entourage [Newsweek]