Katie Holmes is famous for trailing Tom Cruise and blinking out the words ‘help me’ in morse code, folornly hoping that someone will notice.

But all that’s going to change immediately, because Katie Holmes has just signed up for a job. An actual working job as an actor in something that doesn’t inexplicably co-star Queen Latifah. These are glorious days indeed.

So what hugely important piece of drama has Katie Holmes deemed worthy of her presence? What could be so earth-shakingly significant that it’s convinced Katie Holmes to return to the limelight? A movie? No, not quite. It’s a TV show. A TV show that hardly anyone watches. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo on a TV show that hardly anyone watches. Katie Holmes, you’re back in the big league!

Now is a particularly terrible time to be Katie Holmes. Most times are usually pretty shitty for her – because she’s either the quivering woman-slave of Tom Cruise, capitulating to every one of his evil desires in her Fritzl-style dungeon, or she’s putting up with all kinds of false reports about slaves and Fritzl-dungeons and the like. She literally can’t win.

But now? Now is a terrible time to be Katie Holmes, and it’s all Batman’s fault. With The Dark Knight only a heartbeat away, the world seems to be uniting around the idea that it’s a far far better movie than Batman Begins simply because Katie Holmes doesn’t blunder in and foul everything up halfway through.

It must be a bitter pill for Katie Holmes to swallow, but she’s nothing if not a fighter. She’ll show the haters that she’s a talented actress the old fashioned way – with a role in a Broadway play. But because she knows that Broadway plays are dull affairs that only attract elderly tourists who want to escape the rain, Katie Holmes has a Plan B, too – television!

It’s actually quite a smart move, because television is where Katie Holmes made her name, on the teen drama Dawson’s Creek. By returning to TV Katie Holmes is effectively reminding the world that she was an effervescent spark with miles of potential before she spunked it all away by marrying Tom Cruise.

So which TV show will Katie Holmes be acting on? Eli Stone, that’s what. Oh, don’t pretend that you’ve never heard of it – it’s Eli Stone! You know, the show that has the, um, stones in it?

OK, so we’ve never heard of Eli Stone. But it must be good because Katie Holmes is going to be on it and she only handpicks the best roles for herself, like whoever she played in Mad Money. We won’t pretend we’ve seen it. Anyway, Reuters reports:

Actress Katie Holmes will make a guest appearance on ABC’s critically acclaimed “Eli Stone” this season, returning to U.S. network television in a role that will feature her singing and dancing, network executives said on Wednesday.

A singing, dancing stunt-cast guest appearance on a TV show that nobody watches. Katie Holmes is definitely at the top of her game, isn’t she? Why, a few more years and a lot of hard work and Katie might even reach the dizzy heights of late-night cable infomercials for creepy ceramic dolls. Katie Holmes, we salute you!