File this under Bizarre Coincidence: In the same week, two sitcoms - Hope & Faith and The King of Queens - used plots revolving around a Huey Lewis concert.

Just as Huey wanted a new drug, TV producers obviously need new musical references. Preferably something from the last two decades.

In Hope & Faith’s defense, it was the series finale (however feeble) as well as a flashback episode, and we did get to see Faith Ford flash her breasts at the stage. Well, Huey did, anyway. Our view was obstructed.

Text me; we’ll talk. File this under No Coincidence: Didn’t you love how on Wednesday’s American Idol, Rebecca Romijn, who appears in a new film for Fox, happened to be seated on the aisle for Ryan to interview? Then came the charade where Romijn "spontaneously" asked Taylor Hicks to reprise his flip, flop and flounder version of Elvis’ "Jailhouse Rock." And Ryan ingenuously asked the producer: "Can we do that, Nigel?" As if every second of a live half-hour show is not laboriously planned.

But I think the real reason Romijn and her fiance, Jerry O’Connell, were planted in the audience is so that Seacrest could brag: "They call me all the time." Are you listening, America? Ryan actually has friends.

We’ll see how often Romijn calls after the season is over, Ry.

It takes a strong man.Saw Mission: Impossible III. It’s a big, razzle-dazzle version of an Alias episode, which, it turns out, is not a bad thing. And Tom Cruise is a considerable upgrade on Jennifer Garner as far as action heroes go.

But apart from that awesome theme song, the film has nothing whatsoever to do with the original TV show. In fact, Ocean’s Eleven and its sequel bear a greater resemblance to the classic CBS series in the way they assembled a team of specialists and held back a key plot twist from the audience.

Where Mission: Impossible III fails is that it lacks muscle. Now it can be told: The TV show’s secret weapon was always Willy, a man so strong he could bend prison bars and cart around suitcases full of the heaviest substances on Earth as if they were marshmallows.

Peter Lupus ruled!

Drowning again.I was going to observe that David Blaine holding his breath for seven minutes in a giant fishbowl was the most boring event in the history of television. Then I heard that Blaine wants to take another crack at it. And, like Paula Abdul, I reserve the right to change my mind. Watching Blaine a second time? Now that would be the most boring TV event ever.

If you’ve followed this guy’s televised endurance stunts, you know he’s really not a magician. He’s more of an existentialist. Blaine forces us to confront the big questions. For instance, why would anyone do such stupid, pointless things? And even more important, why would we possibly watch?

I’m not a doctor; I just play one on TV. TV Land has announced an intriguing new series for next fall: Back to the Grind. In the show, TV actors will try to really work at the professions they played on the small screen. So we’ll see Erik Estrada patrolling the highways as a motorcycle cop, as he did on CHiPs, and Loni Anderson working as a secretary at a radio station, as she did on WKRP in Cincinnati.

This is a great concept. We can’t wait for the episode in which Josh Taylor (The Hogan Family) pilots jetliners into O’Hare, or Adam Arkin (Chicago Hope) tries his hand at neurosurgery, or Allison Janney (The West Wing) faces down a rabid White House press corps, or Paula Abdul (American Idol) acts as an informed, discriminating arbiter of vocal talent.

Strange sightings. You can’t keep those Hill Street Blues boys down. That creepy serial killer who was toying with the FBI profiling squad on this week’s ingenious season finale of Criminal Minds was none other than Charles Haid, who once played that most regular of officers, Andy Renko. How could you not like a guy who sends his pursuer a Nellie Fox baseball card?

And on this week’s intense season finale of Smallville, James Marsters returned as the nefarious Brainiac. I always knew Marsters was smart, even when he was playing Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I can’t believe how much I miss that show. Was I the only one who thought, when the cable channel Spike was announced, that it was going to be devoted to nonstop episodes of Buffy featuring the peroxide vampire?

The end is near. Producer Harvey Weinstein has just announced that he has commissioned a big-screen remake of Knight Rider, the flabulous series from the ’80s.

That means that all across Hollywood, casting agents are screaming the scariest words ever uttered into their intercoms: "Find me a young David Hasselhoff!"