By Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist Published Mar 09, 2010 at 11:00 AM
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Channel 12 was still calling her "Milwaukee's Molly" in its promos, but she's been Seattle's Molly Malaney since last fall. And other than the several years she spent here as a buyer for Kohl's, she was actually Grand Rapids, Michigan's Molly.

ABC devoted two hours Monday night to her Feb. 27 wedding last month to Jason Mesnick, who dumped her, and then changed his mind on "The Bachelor."

After 14 installments of the "reality" show, this was the first to result in an actual wedding. (The closest ABC has come was the 2003 wedding of Trista Ryan and the guy she picked on "The Bachelorette," Ryan Sutter.) 

The wedding was almost TV-perfect -- only a steady rain (and some paparazzi) intruded. But both gave the sense that there was some spice to a story that appears to have moved beyond its initial drama.

If you're not familiar with the Molly-Jason soap opera to this point, she was initially dismissed by Mesnick, who chose Melissa Rycroft at what seemed the conclusion of the 13th edition of "The Bachelor."

Then in a shocker that aired a year ago, Mesnick dumped Rycroft and decided he really did want Molly Malaney after all.

After that shocker aired, Malaney told me, "I was like, 'Am I getting punked right now? It's not funny,' I was very shocked, I had no idea." She told me then that she would take it slow, and on Monday night's two-hour wedding extravaganza, she explained how things moved along.

"Once Jason and I started fully into our relationship, you know,  putting the past behind us and finally being out in the public, we decided to really take our time and get to know each other all over again.

"We had to do the distance thing, which was really, really hard. Every other weekend we would see each other, he would either  come to Milwaukee, or I would go to Seattle. But the goodbyes were very tough. After 10 months, I had had it.

"I called him and said, 'That's it. I'm packing my stuff and moving.'"

That's when she stopped being "Milwaukee's Molly."

On TV: An average of 41.3 million people watched Sunday night's Oscarcast on on ABC, according to Nielsen Media Research numbers. That's the biggest crowd since 2005 and 5 million more than last year. An estimated 70 million people sampled at least six minutes of the long, long show.

  • Betty White tells People Magazine that she's definitely appearing on NBC's "Saturday Night Live," thanks to a public clamor on behalf of the 88-year-old TV veteran. There's no confirmation from NBC and she didn't offer any date for her appearance.
  • Fox has ordered a third season of "Fringe," according to the Hollywood Reporter.
  • ABC has picked up "Brothers & Sisters" for a fifth season.
  • ESPN's Erin Andrews has signed on with a Twitter account, now that she's in training for ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."
  • NBC has signed on to air the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants for the next three years. Miss America, on the other hand, is still looking for a TV home for next year's pageant. TLC has declined to renew its contract with Miss America.

Something we didn't see on SNL: The very funny Zach Galifianakis tried his best to make the weekend's "Saturday Night Live" funny -- and he decided to shave off his trademark beard during the 90-minute live show.

NBC posted a video of the shaving between scenes. And it explains how he ended the show still bearded -- or re-bearded.

 

Tim Cuprisin Media Columnist

Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.

A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.

In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.

When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.