Top Moments: Speidi's Web, Conan's Run, and the Fall of Brüno

• Jun 5, 2009 02:03 PM ET
• by Tim Molloy

Sacha Baron Cohen, Conan O'Brien, Barack Obama

Even serious people got a little silly this week. Will Ferrell showed up on Man vs. Wild. Brian Williams asked the president of the United States about Conan O'Brien. One of the few places for captivating drama was the MTV Music Awards, where a terrifying accident led to a heated confrontation between Eminem and — wait, what? That was a joke, too? Welcome to Top Moments, we-don't-know-what-to-believe edition.

8. Best String-Along: NBC masterfully extends Spencer and Heidi Pratt's run on I'm a Celebrity...  Get Me Out of Here! by allowing them to stay on the show — if they sleep in a tent filled with snakes, rats, and insects. (Some would say their fellow snakes, rats, and insects.) We'd love to tell you if they last the night, but we won't know until — you guessed it — next week.

7. Worst Defiance of New Jersey Stereotypes: The Garden State is a charming place, but you'd never know it from The Real Housewives of New Jersey. The show went all Sopranos this week as the Manzo family unveiled an out-of-print book that supposedly proves housewife Danielle Staub has some kind of criminal past. She denies it, sort of, by saying she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We gave up trying to determine the truthiness of this one when we realized the Danielle in the book has a different last name than Staub. For a more thorough investigation (yes, someone investigated), click here.

6. Least Notable Breakthrough: Though Jonathan went in as the favorite to win Season 2 of Make Me a Supermodel, 18-year-old Branden — who's age and inexperience made him a dark horse — ends up going home with $100,000, a contract and a spread in Cosmopolitan. Finally: A skinny teenager prone to surly faces makes it in modeling.

5. Worst Will Power: Will Ferrell joins Man Vs. Wild's Bear Grylls for a trip to the Arctic Circle, where they have to survive 48 hours in temperatures 20 degrees below zero. Ferrell is on the ground for less than 10 minutes before he devours a Twinkie that Grylls has packed for an emergency. (Ferrell: "Take this, Bear Grylls! While you're looking for lingonberries I've got a belly full of Twinkie." Grylls: "I can't believe you've eaten the Twinkie! Half of that was for me." Ferrell: "I panicked.") Grylls later gets revenge by making Ferrell eat a reindeer eyeball, plucked from a carcass.

4. Best Writing: A mid-air collision on Breaking Bad finally explains the first image of this season: a pink stuffed bear floating in a swimming pool. The conclusion caps a season of disasters, and shows us the vast and intricate consequences of Walt's transition from teacher to drug kingpin — and how much carnage one person can cause.

3. Goofiest Question: There's nothing wrong with asking a president silly, irrelevant questions that let him loosen up and remind people he's human. But it felt a little unseemly when NBC's Brian Williams asked a question that also promoted his network's late-night lineup. (Obama handled the query about Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show debut gracefully, joking that he shouldn't expect a bailout if he fails.) Come on, NBC. You could have used that limited interview time to ask about the White House dog.

2. Best Opening: Conan O'Brien opens his first Tonight Show with a run from New York City to Los Angeles to the tune of Cheap Trick's "Surrender," a song we didn't know we loved until this montage. Racing past the St. Louis Arch and through Wrigley Field, he stops for nothing — except to admire the corn silk at a Victorian Doll Museum. This is O'Brien at his most silly-stupid genius, and we surrender completely.

1. Best Stunt: There's nothing left to say about Bruno's butt-plant onto Eminem at the MTV Movie Awards, so let's focus on the brilliant little touches that haven't been exhaustively dissected: the pretentious music that marked Sacha Baron Cohen's winged entry; his Roman-warrior golden skirt; Eminem's bodyguards sending Cohen swinging like a tetherball after his landing; and finally, the fact that Eminem is a really good actor. In a time when it's impossible to tell trick from reality, we know this much: These guys killed.