After taking a week off so she could make puppy chow for her Oscar party, you'd think Tina Brown would come back to Topic A refreshed and revitalized. But you'd be wrong. It was hard to coax Henry the Intern into even writing a review of this week's show, which featured a whole lotta nothing (with a dash of discussion on female binge drinking — quite the hot topic these days, no?). After the jump, Henry braves the boring for his weekly report.

Watching television is not supposed to be a painful activity, but watching last night's particularly sour episode of "Topic [A]" careen into the dustbin of cable news history was so traumatic that one felt drained after a mere ten minutes.

Tina began by mostly reciting the highlights of her recent column about Martha Stewart: 1. "Oh, I give her credit" for serving time right away, then rattled off a list of celebrities who should be locked up. 2. "She's slimmed down; her stock's up." 3. "What is all this crazy hype?... It's as if Nelson Mandela's been released." 4. "America is fickle... Somehow the public has blessed her. The curse has changed." 5. "Could this be a bubble?... Surely this could go back in reverse."

Also, Tina asked if being an ex-con makes traveling difficult —attorney Ed Hayes said no— and checked-up on the imprisoned Peter Bacanovic. Christopher "the v. socially connected journalist" Mason said Bacanovic subscribes to every newspaper and magazine (thus, "all he reads about is Martha") and the cafeteria was stunned to silence when he first arrived in prison. Ed Hayes added that Lizzie Grubman "actually came out of jail a better person" and hired some of her comrades when they were released. Tina hopes Martha will do the same.

Next, Tina chatted with Samuel L. Jackson, star of "In My Country." Tina thinks "no one is cooler" than Mr. Jackson. She asked, are there "two Americas in terms of taste?" Jackson replied there are more than two and bet "Vera Drake" is not popular in the Heartland. Interestingly, Jackson turned down a role opposite 50 Cent because it would "invalidate everything I did to get here" and he has "a moral obligation to every actor who is getting into this business the right way."

Peter Arnett gave Tina an exclusive peak at his Playboy profile of Saddam Hussein's two sons. Arnett believes Saddam ordered a hit on Uday and Uday was "plotting a coup d'etat."

The surprising bright spot of the show came from Koren Zailckas, author of Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood. Zailckas began by saying "all teenage girls seem psychotic in a way," but recovered with a sharp analysis of the social effects of alcohol consumption on femininity and the explosion of liquor ads that featured female models "like you'd see in Vogue."

The editors' desk roundtable returned to discuss Michael Jackson's bedroom: "Should we be sick of it already or are we sick enough to care?" While I am sane enough to care about Tina, she's sick of Michael. She called the trial a cross between "Finding Neverland" and "The Woodsman" and asked, "What is the matter with me that I can't get into this trial?" Former prosecutor Wendy Murphy said "he is a walking embodiment of the stereotypical pedophile" and revelations will show him as "the bad guy that he is." Tina thinks the accuser's mother should be in jail.

Random Tina line: "Real men who like real books — v. sexy."

Hot picks
Murphy: Women's Lives, Men's Laws by Catharine MacKinnon
Hayes: The Vanished Hands by Robert Wilson
Mason: "Alter Boyz" play
Tina: "Downfall," about the last days of Hitler: "Riveting... it's really worth seeing."

Closing quote by Fred Allen: "A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized."