It's official. The Rev. Al Sharpton will take a full-time gig on MSNBC, beginning Monday.

Sharpton will host the 6 p.m. hour, called PoliticsNation, weekdays on the network, joining the 7-to-10 p.m. lineup of Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow.

"I am very happy and honored to join the MSNBC team as we collectively try to get America to ’Lean Forward,’ " Sharpton said in a statement, echoing the network's official motto, which, executives swear up and down the flagpole, has absolutely nothing to do with the word progressive, or, heaven forfend, liberal. They swear up and down. You decide.

"It is a natural extension of my life work and growth," Sharpton said. "We all learn from our pain and stand up from our stumbling, and one must either learn to lean forward or fall backwards. I'm glad they have given me the opportunity to continue my forward lean."

MSNBC President Phil Griffin met Sharpton more than 20 years ago when Griffin was a Today Show producer and the reverend was a guest, and they've been buddies for years. Sharpton has been filling in in the time slot most of the summer.

Black journalists have complained that Sharpton himself is not a journalist, a profession they see as more appropriate for the 6 p.m. hour. Lots of people have complained that Sharpton helped lobby in favor of the deal that allowed Comcast to purchase NBC-Universal, which owns MSNBC, and many more are sure bring up the Tawana Brawley mess from days gone by in arguing that Sharpton shouldn't be a TV host. His reference to pain and stumbling may refer to that.

No matter. He's the new man in town. “I’m thrilled that he’s now reached a point in his career where he’s able to devote himself to hosting a nightly show,” Griffin said.

Riding into the 2011-12 fall season, with a big role on a CBS drama, Margo Martindale is enjoying a successful period in her career. The actress, who has appeared in more than 75 movies and TV shows, did a crackerjack job as Kentucky family crime boss Mags Bennett on FX's Justified. This fall she plays the assistant to a hotshot surgeon who gets advice from his dead wife about lightening up and paying more attention to his patients.

The show is called A Gifted Man, and will air Fridays at 8 p.m. on CBS, TV's top slot for well-meaning ghosts and the people they help. Martindale's a bit in the background in the pilot, but executive producer Neal Baer promised she'd have a bigger influence as the show progresses.

"I know how good she is," Baer told TV critics Wednesday, "because when I did SVU, she put Elle Fanning in a cage and told her to set Connie Nielsen on fire."

That's a little more demented that Bennett, whose homemade "apple pie" whiskey was famous throughout Harlan County, Ky., in Justified. She slipped some deadly nightshade into the moonshine to kill an associate who was talking to police. "It was in the glass, not in the jar," she told him as he gasped his list gasp while she kept on sipping. She repeated that line, her last in the show, after Timothy Olyphant's marshal Raylan Givens put her crime enterprise, and her family, into shambles, and she took a poison drink.

Martindale, Emmy-nominated for the role, is enjoying the ride.  "It just feels fantastic," she said. "I mean, I turned 60, and everything fell into place. It’s great. I’ve been working, honestly, as an actor professionally since I was ... 23, I think. And, you know: poor, some money, poor, counting pennies on the floor. It’s great to go from that fabulous, wonderful part where I had to die, to a luxurious, spa-like existence with another good looking man. What can I say?"

"When you go out now, are people afraid to take apple cider from you?," asked a critic who was confused about the nature of her homemade beverage.

"I sell it on my blog," she said.

The Television Critics Association gave out its annual awards Saturday night at a swell party at the Beverly Hills Hilton, not quite the celebrathon that is the Golden Globes, held in the same room, but with just about the same amount of cocktails.

Mad Men and Modern Family each got two awards, and Friday Night Lights was named program of the year, even though this was the show's last season and it ran on DirecTV. A parting gift, I suppose. 

I've never been a fan of these awards, figuring critics give out prizes every day, and a collective effort undermines the notion that we should make independent judgments. Mad Men, which was named best drama, and Jon Hamm, whose portrayal of Don Draper won for "individual achievement in drama," are both perfectly logical, but tired, choices. Justified and The Good Wife, the former with Timothy Olyphant and Margo Martindale, the latter with Julianna Margulies, would have been better choices, along with several other entries, in my humble opinion.

And that will be the end of the grousing, if not the end of my disagreement with some of the prizes.

Oprah Winfrey got the career achievement award. She didn't show, but made a nice speech via videotape. The Dick Van Dyke Show took the heritage award. Carl Reiner (89) and Rose Marie (88 next week) feisty and fine though confined to a wheelchair, were there. "I'm so happy you're here," I told her. "So am I," she responded.

Reiner told the story about how his first pitch for the show, starring him, was turned down, but that when he went back to legendary producer Sheldon Leonard for a second try, Leonard said, "You won't fail because we'll get a better actor to play you." And that was Dick Van Dyke, who, at that time, was basically unheard of.

The National Geographic Channel's Restrepo, about the war in Afghanistan, whose co-director Tim Hetherington was subsequently killed covering the uprising in Libya, was an inspired choice, even if the tie for comedy acting between Modern Family's Ty Burrell and Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation (who also happened to be host of the festivities) was not. Family also took the best-comedy prize.

The Amazing Race was named best reality program, and Sesame Street best youth programming. Yawn. (OK. so it wasn't the end of the grousing.) A plurality of the critics thought HBO's Game of Thrones was the best new show, and Masterpiece: Sherlock the best movie, mini or special.

Zooey Deschanel stars as an adorable dork in Fox's New Girl this fall. Without her, the show would be routine. With her, it's one of the best new fall series.

"What I like about the character is she’s not one thing," said creator Liz Meriwether, somewhat of an adorable dork herself. "I feel it’s common in TV, especially with female characters, to kind of put them in a box and be like,  they’re a dork, so they can’t be attractive. They’re attractive, so they can’t be smart. I have definitely come across that before, and I think Zooey is everything."

"This show advocates the attractive dork," director Jake Kasdan chimed in.

Zooey and friends entertained the critics Friday, as the star tried to deal with the obvious love in the room. Saying the word adorable has gone out over Twitter more than at any other time in history, one critic asked her,  "How do you feel about that?"

"Twitter?" she replied. "I love Twitter."

The guy wouldn't stop. "When did you first know you were adorable?"

So she put her hands to her head and said, "My mom told me when I get compliments to cover my ears. I mean I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed now. Thank you for saying that."

Zooey's older sister, Emily, has been investigating cases on Fox's Bones for seven years. The new Fox star said she'd gotten tips on the mechanics of press conferences and personal appearances from her sis. "She’s been amazing and has been so supportive, and I’m excited she’s pregnant. She’s going to have a baby soon, so she’s going to have this baby around and stuff. It’s going to be awesome."

Adorable? Dorky? What do you think?

No surprise: Alec Baldwin will kick off the 37th season of Saturday Night Live Sept. 24, surging into the lead as the host with the most on the show -- 16 times, passing Steve Martin at 15, whom I'll bet every dollar I have will turn up to do a bit about the rivalry.

Big surprise: Melissa McCarthy, from CBS's Mike & Molly will host week two. McCarthy's kind of surprised herself, or at least she was when the topic came up last summer when she met with SNL boss Lorne Michaels. McCarthy was writing for Michaels' company.

"I went to meet him," she told me Wednesday at CBS's big party in a parking lot transformed into a Japanese garden next door to the Beverly Hills Hilton. (It's amazing what the party gods can do out here in the Land of La.) "And he said something about hosting, and I just quietly sat there and thought, 'I can't believe I'm in his office.' I was just trying not say anything weird. And then he said that.

"So I said, 'You said something that made it sound ... can you just repeat yourself? He just threw it out casually. And I was leaving the office, and he said, 'We thought you could host this year, but it's probably better that you're doing it next year.'

"And I got kind of light-headed, and then when I left I thought, 'You know, that was just like, maybe he just says that to people, or even if he's just thinking it, it's too big for me to seem real.'

"And I literally didn't want to talk about it, and I told my agent not to say anything about it. And then when I finally got the call that it was official, I just bawled like a lunatic."

McCarthy says she'll be doing a lot of writing in the next couple of years, "which I love. I love. I love. I love. I like all sides of the business. I've always written. I was at the Groundlings for 300 years, and we had to write our own stuff there."

Some people say she stole the feature Bridesmaids from SNL vet Kristen Wiig, and TV heads remember her as Sookie on the glorious Gilmore Girls. "That was my first long-time job, and that was the one to have," she said.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, who appeared early in her career for three years as Kendall Hart Lang on the long-running soap All My Children, confirmed Thursday she would return to the show -- if only for one day -- before it's canceled this fall.

"It doesn't make sense to me" that the show was killed, she said. She said she called the producers, and they were up for it. "I won't be playing Kendall," Gellar said. (Of course she's still alive and kicking -- and has been since 1970 -- currently played by Alicia Minishew with the new last name of Slater.) "I don't know what I'll do."

Gellar, now all of 34, has a new show this fall, Ringer, on the CW, in which she plays twins, both apparently on the run from people who want to kill them. It's one of the better fall series. Gellar says she took the role in part because she was tired of her nomadic life as a movie actor, and wanted to spend time with her daughter, Charlotte, who will be 2 next month. "I want to put her to bed, get up with her in the morning, see her first day of school."

She also returned for the juicy role, or roles. She plays present-day Bridget, a down-and-outer, and her socialite sister, Siobhan. And she plays them in flashbacks. "While I was traveling, I watched a lot of TV on DVDs," she said, "and I started to realize all the amazing roles for women were on TV."

Gellar developed the show for CBS, but the company that owns the network is also part-owner of the CW, and when the CBS schedule filled up with other pilots, executives shifted Ringers to the younger, less police-populated CW. "It just made sense," said Gellar, whose legendary Buffy the Vampire Slayer appeared on one of the networks that eventually merged into the CW. "It was a relief for us," said Gellar. "Nobody has better advertising and marketing than the CW, and they really respect what we do."

Kat Dennings brings her alt vibe to CBS's 2 Broke Girls, the best new fall sitcom, where she plays a perennially penniless waitress opposite Beth Behrs' newly bankrupted socialite. Her first paid acting gig outside of commercials, at age 14, was for executive producer Michael Patrick King in a episode, "Hot Child in the City," on Sex and the City. She played a girl at a bar mitzvah who got involved in a little oral sex. (Ain't premium cable grand?)

"It changed my life," Dennings told the critics Wednesday. "Really it did. I was a home-schooled kid living in the forest, and I didn't even have cable."

It was a civilized forest, in Bryn Mawr, but Dennings has a wonderful way with words.

"I'm serious. We had to get cable to watch that episode. So all my little home-schooled friends and their moms saw Kyle MacLachlan's ass. ..."

"Part of the reason why I relate to [2 Broke Girls] so much is because we didn't have any money when I was growing up, and I used to get all my films from the library. My mom would get me classic movies and stuff. And I actually wasn't allowed to watch TV as a kid growing up except for, like, PBS, Sesame Street.

So sheltered was she, she said, that she had to ask S&TC's Kim Cattrall what oral sex (or at least a more vulgar term for same) was.

"She was an innocent woodland creature," King said, "magical and mysterious, like a sexy hobbit, when we discovered her."

"It kind of came out of nowhere," Denning said. "I would watch these films, and ... I guess I just took that little-kid-wanting-to-be-a-movie-star thing way too far and actually ended up doing it. My brother's friend, weirdly, from karate was on Pete & Pete [a Nickelodeon show] sometimes. And I met his manager, and she sent me on auditions in Philly and then in New York. And then I would just start getting commercials, and then when I got the Sex and the City, it just changed the things I was able to get.

She was home-schooled, she said, because her parents were disenchanted with the public schools. "I was also kind of a weirdo. ... So I'm an actor now. And all that weirdness, growing up, just somehow worked."

John Goodman likes to keep the ball rolling.

"People were devastated when you died in Treme," I told him at NBC's lavish party Monday night in Beverly Hills.

"I was too," he replied. "I knew I was going to die going in, but I tried to put it off." Goodman played a Tulane University professor so depressed after Hurricane Katrina that he jumped off a ferry. Treme producer David Simon said his death was important to the show, which deals with post-Katrina New Orleans, where the suicide rate was four times the national average.

Now Goodman is scheduled for a six-episode run on NBC's Community, the hilarious sitcom set at a junior college, and he wants more. "I'm having a great time," he told me, "and I'm going to talk to the producers to see if we can extend my stay."

Goodman is boss at the college's air conditioning and refrigeration trade school, which, it turns out, brings in so much dough, it basically finances the rest of the college's operations. But he's a shady guy, and things heat up when his sub-rosa deals are revealed.

Goodman is a favorite of the critics, and many were concerned about his health after he finished Roseanne and  ballooned to more than 400 pounds, showing up at Television Critics Association meetings looking like a walking heart attack. He's lost well more than 150 pounds and looked great Monday.

CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler did a verbal tapdance for the nation's TV critics Wednesday, refusing to recap the network's machinations dealing with the meltdown of Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen, and praising his replacement, Ashton Kutcher, to the skies.

"Our focus is moving forward," she said, with "an extraordinary actor committed to doing his job ... an incredible professional."

Tassler said Kutcher would play an Internet billionaire with a broken heart named Walden Schmidt, who will be introduced to viewers in a two-part story over two weeks beginning Sept. 19. Tassler refused to confirm or deny that Sheen's character will be buried as part of the show's season nine opening. "Mystery is a part of the marketing," she said.

Production began Monday. "When everybody walked on set," Tassler said, "you could cut the air with the knife."

Tassler said the network was confident replacing Sheen with Kutcher and CSI's Laurence Fishburne with Ted Danson. "Both actors have huge fan bases [and] bring tremendous amounts of goodwill. It's a wonderful opportunity to reveal those shows to a whole a new audience." She would make no ratings predictions, but said both shows should "do very well."

CBS is the only network without an entertainment competition show, the genre that has become the most popular on television. Tassler said it was "still actively looking" for one that's a little different from the others, but she would not say if she thought scripted shows would ever regain their formerly dominant ratings position.

In light of the Sheen debacle, one critic asked if CBS had changed its policies in casting actors who might be susceptible to erratic behavior. "That would probably be every actor in Hollywood," she said.