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It’s not surprising that Wyatt Cenac has been added to the regular cast of The Daily Show. His first appearance on the show earlier this month, as a guy who was bored with the Democratic primary and found the plot twists on Lost much more entertaining, was really funny; he also did another spot a little later parodying Kanye West (with whom he worked in an HBO special). Those appearances were his “tryout” appearances, a test to see whether he would work as a regular correspondent; he did work, and he has the job. Cenac has been on most people’s young-comedians-to-watch list for years, and he also wrote several episodes of King of the Hill (remember the one Bill pretends to be gay so he can become a successful hairdresser? That was his). Sometimes the tryouts last longer than that; Aasif Mandvi was an occasional contributor for almost a year before he became a regular.

If Earl Pomerantz ever were to collect and expand his “Story of a Writer” posts into a book, I’d be the first one to buy it. (Well, maybe not literally the first, but I’d buy it on the first day.) He’s giving us a step-by-step guided tour of his own journey from Canada to L.A., of the history of sitcoms and sitcom writing from the ’70s onward, and some of the great shows he’s written for — and he’s written for many great shows.

So I watched the most recent episode of Zoey 101 over the weekend. Despite the whole Jamie Lynn factor, this is not as painful as it sounds. Nickelodeon’s half-hour comedies for kids and “tweens” have been somewhat eclipsed by the Disney Channel’s, but Nick probably still turns out a better product; they haven’t come up with anything as good as The Adventures of Pete & Pete or Clarissa Explains it All, but they’re well-produced, decently written, and don’t have screamy overacting like the Disney Channel shows. Zoey, whose current and final season was produced before Jamie Lynn Spears’ famous, er, announcement, may remind Canadians of a watered-down version of Gordon Korman’s “Bruno and Boots,” since it’s set at a boarding school (formerly an all-boys’ boarding school that has just gone co-ed, letting in Jamie Lynn and other girls including a genius science nerd who’s a cross between Elmer Drimsdale and Steve Urkel). It’s a typical production of Amanda Bynes mastermind Dan Schneider. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about; what I wanted to talk about was the fact that the episode I watched, one of the last episodes if not the last (I’m not sure if there are any others) was… a clip show. Does anybody do those any more?