Syndication beats sequel.

Back in April, I reported on the sheep-like repetition of the epithet "indie darling" whenever Greta Gerwig was mentioned in a review of the dreadful Arthur remake. I think I got 20,000 Google hits on the phrase. (It's now up to 114,000, although oddly you get even more if you mistype "darling.")

Well, it's happening again. The lovely Zooey Deschanel is in a new TV series in the fall line-up, and she seems to have taken over the label in a big way. Current score for "indie darling Zooey Deschanel": 986,000 hits.

Conclusion: Television reviewers have even less imagination than movie reviewers. But then somehow you expected that, huh?

Mind you, the phrase "Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry" scores over three million Google hits, which probably all link to posts that speculate whether they're the same person. Well, you can see why from the picture. (Zooey's on the left. Or is she . . ?)

So if there's ever a remake of the Bette Davis classic A Stolen Life, in which she played twin sisters*, think of the money you could save on the special effects by simply casting Z and K.

(Although one of the sisters in the movie was named Kate Bosworth, so perhaps that role should go to the actress, uh, Kate Bosworth. On the other hand, here's a picture of Kate and Zooey together. Not so much of a resemblance.)

*Bette Davis also played twin sisters in Dead Ringers, which was directed by Paul Heinreid, who starred with Davis in Now, Voyager, which gave us that supposedly sexy business of lighting two cigarettes at once and the classic line "Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." The film also starred (by-then) veteran actress Gladys Cooper, whose grandson, Sheridan Morley (son of Robert) was the official yet posthumous biographer of Sir John Gielgud, who starred in the original Arthur, in which the title character was played by Dudley Moore, and not Russell Brand, Katy Perry's husband, who was in the remake with indie darling Greta Gerwig. I could keep this up all night, you know. Sad, isn't it?