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Things got a little tense at a TCA panel for The CW's fall schedule yesterday afternoon when a reporter, obviously still disoriented by the network's media-distracting visual assault, violated a sacrosanct rule of the press tour: While a show's star is politely dodging questions about her issues with how her character had been written recently, you do not ask her new showrunner about the time he left his wife to write a play about how badly he wanted to copulate with Heidi Klum. Reports the LAT:

But the high—or rather low point—came when one scribe asked [showrunner David] Rosenthal about his reported "obsession" with supermodel Heidi Klum. A New York Observer piece in 2001 reported that Rosenthal the previous year had left his wife, became estranged from his colleagues, gave money to strangers and wrote a play that indicated his fixation on Klum. The reporter asked Rosenthal if he was really the appropriate person to run the lighthearted family-oriented "Gilmore Girls."

"My personal life is not an issue here," Rosenthal replied with a shaken voice. "I'm here to talk about 'The Gilmore Girls,' "

When the reporter pressed, [Lauren] Graham snapped "That has nothing to do with anything. Next question."

It seems Graham's protective admonishment shamed the assembled press into falling back into their polite roles, leaving completely valid follow-up questions about Rosenthal's opinions on the new season of Project Runway, or about the possibility of a three-episode arc featuring Klum as Graham's troubled, nymphomaniac sister who's obsessed with bedding sitcom writers, unasked. We suppose we'll have to wait for the next Gilmore Girls media event to have these important queries answered to our satisfaction.