A funny thing happened to "Early Show" co-anchor Rene Syler after turning in the final manuscript for her new book, "Good-Enough Mother."

	Rene Syler Click photo for larger image.

She was fired by CBS, underwent a double mastectomy, and had her house renovated.

Ever the reporter, Syler quickly added a final chapter: "Double Whammy, or How to Lose Your Breasts and Your Job in Five Short Weeks." "Mother" (Simon & Schuster) hits the stands Tuesday.

"Any one of those events could have you curled up in a corner in the fetal position," says Syler, 44, now back in Dallas. "It was tough, but that old cliche about turning lemons into lemonade is true."

Syler got the boot Dec. 1. Her CBS finale was Dec. 22. On Jan. 9, she underwent a bilateral mastectomy, followed by reconstructive breast surgery. Her final operation was March 8.

At high risk for the disease, Syler chose to have the mastectomy as a preventive move. Her mother and father both had breast cancer, and Syler had endured several breast cancer scares and painful biopsies.

Looking back, she has no regrets.

"The surgery was totally worth it. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner. I feel like a great weight has been lifted, like I'm not playing defense anymore."

Along with the support of her family -- husband Buff Parham, 56; their daughter, Casey, 10, and son, Cole, 8 -- Syler says humor gets her through the day.

One example: In "Mother," she describes how hard it was to focus on the trauma of her unexpected firing, because she was also dealing with anxiety about another huge event. "I'm about to have my breasts chopped off."

Humor "is the only way I could get through something of that magnitude," Syler says. "I had spent a lot of time crying about it, mourning the loss of my breasts. It was easier to look at it in a cavalier manner."

Emotionally, she feels anything but cavalier. In fact, she's become a veritable faucet, sending out mushy e-mails to everybody in her life about how important they are to her.

"The old Rene would have said, 'That's ridiculous.' "

Syler bears no grudge against CBS and her four years there. She wants to get back in the network game, but this time, she says, she'd relocate the whole family rather than endure another Dallas-New York commute.

"I'm talking to a couple of folks, but nothing's concrete now," she says. "I'm open to anything."

(Gail Shister, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

'Lost' losing sway

It wasn't so long ago that every network wanted its own "Lost" and every new show wanted to mimic ABC's hit drama.

Those days are in the past.

For a variety of reasons, ratings for "Lost" are at an all-time low. Rightly or wrongly, there's a perception in the industry that Damon Lindelof and company have squandered both audience good faith and narrative momentum on three seasons of complicated mythology with nary a satisfying answer in sight.

With "Lost" in danger of becoming another cautionary tale and networks canceling serialized dramas, the race is on to establish a new paradigm, to be the show that actually supplies answers, that stands out as the anti-"Lost."

Speaking to still-enthusiastic crowds at the recent San Francisco WonderCon, producers on freshman genre efforts "Jericho" and "Heroes" made repeated promises about resolutions and closure and giving audiences what they want. Nobody mentioned the "L"-show, but how can you not think of Jack, Sawyer, Kate and company when reading the following quotes?

"One thing we knew from the beginning is we didn't want to frustrate the audience by not paying off mysteries, by not answering questions, because we know."

Those words were offered by "Jericho" executive producer Stephen Chbosky, a Pittsburgh native whose colleague, Carol Barbee, was able to give a specific timetable for certain revelations, including whatever happened to those pesky missiles that were launched into the sky many episodes ago.

Barbee also promised that viewers are on the verge of discovering who exactly began the nuclear conflict that left our Kansas-based heroes in prairie isolation.

"I think you'll be surprised by who did it," Barbee said.(Daniel Fienberg, Zap2it.com)

'TRL' fades away

MTV's "Total Request Live" is no longer totally live.

It's another sign of how both the audience and cultural juice have faded for "TRL," once the most influential program on television for music superstars from the Backstreet Boys to Beyonce -- even if they just dropped by to push an ice cream cart.

Two weeks ago, MTV began taping "Total Request Live" two days a week in an effort to save money. After live shows air Monday and Wednesday afternoons, shows are then taped for the following day.

(David Bauder, Associated Press)