Mel's Deal With The ABC Devil?

When Mel Gibson isn't getting propositioned by mysterious European backers to take over Disney [Ed.note—The Vatican!] or counting the piles of cash from his Jesus snuff film, he's quietly getting TV shows onto networks' Fall schedules. He's got Clubhouse on CBS, the story of a batboy for a major-league baseball team, and Savages on ABC, a sitcom about a single dad raising five boys. Page Six asks if ABC's pick-up of Savages is a kickback (we're resisting the "payback" joke) for his Diane Sawyer interview at the height of the The Passion of the Christ controversy. There might be something to this—we don't know if these shows have enough torture opportunites for the vaunted "Gibson touch" to make them hits.