Switching Sides Again: Lost Questions, More on "The Last Recruit"

Welcome to what's proving to be a twice-weekly feature now that Lost only has a handful of episodes remaining before it sets sail for the island in the sky.

I'll be taking a second look at this week's episode of Lost ("The Last Recruit"), which brought up so many reader questions and seemed to offer some tantalizing answers to the season's overarching mythology, I felt like it more than merited another post.

While I discussed "The Last Recruit" in full over here (along with theories about Christian, the Man in Black, Sayid, Sawyer, and more), I thought I'd answer some reader questions from the episode that arrived via comments, Twitter, or email.

So, without further ado, let's prepare to board the Elizabeth and head over to Hydra Island.

The War. Amanda from Michigan asked, "This war they were talking about, is it between Widmore and Smokey Locke?"

Good question. That's patently unclear. All season long, battle lines have been continually drawn, but it hasn't been entirely clear who represents either side. Was it a war between Jacob and his Nemesis and their followers? Between Sawyer and Jack? Between Widmore and the Smoke Monster currently using John Locke's form? Just what did Charles Widmore mean when he said, "war is coming to the island." Was he the one bringing it? Hmmm...

With all of the candidates and the recruits and the castaways, it seems as though the Final Battle is between Good and Evil with capital letters but I'm still not entirely sure just who will come to represent those two ideological positions in the end. Certainly, Jack seems tipped to be the Leader of the Good, even though he's currently in the Devil's clutches. But perhaps by not giving in, by not making a Faustian bargain with the Man in Black, Jack can escape his grip.

After all, it does seem to be as though Jack has already achieved his heart's desire: he's back on the island. If there's one person who might be able to succeed Jacob at this point, it's the good doctor himself. Could it be that he's the one destined to pick up the loom and start weaving a new tapestry?

As for the others, I dare say that we're going to see some of them coming back from the dark side, just as Hurley said Anakin did in Star Wars. Ben has already made a major step towards redemption this season. Sayid has already seemed to snap out of his darkness (at least a bit), having gained some knowledge that his master isn't infallible. Will Claire show her true colors? Is she too far gone, having snapped mentally long ago?

Christian Shephard. One of the major reveals this week was that the Man in Black claimed to have been the various manifestations of Christian that we've seen since the beginning of the series. But I had some doubts about the veracity of his story. As did some of you as well. Rockauteur wrote:

"I think MIB was lying about being Christian at the beginning of the series. You point out a lot of inconsistencies with this and I think you're right. Though if its not him, is it Jacob? Even though Jacob was alive the entire time in the foot of the statue? And who really was talking to Hurley both in Los Angeles at the insane asylum and on the island? Actually Michael? MIB as Michael? Jacob as Michael? Ditto with Charlie. Confusing. And who convinced Locke to turn the wheel? Because the wheel not only stabilized the island, but it allowed for passage of Locke from the island. Did MIB as Christian manipulate Locke as Jacob's best replacement and island protector to leave the island, hoping he would never return? Did he know he would die and thus be able to use his body as a loophole? Or was that Jacob as Christian (or some other force) that needed Locke to turn the wheel so that Ajira could land on the island, thus bringing back the candidates?"

Let's take that apart one point at a time. We've yet to see Jacob exhibit any ability to appear as another person, living or dead, so far on the series. While I believe that the boy in the jungle is an incarnation of Jacob himself, he was only seen after Jacob's corporeal form had died. Jacob has appeared to the castways off-island but only in the guise of himself. Hurley has seen dead people before, but they've proven to be the dead individuals themselves rather than any manifestation of the smoke monster. Which I take to mean that the Michael that's talking to Hurley (as well as those other individuals he's spoken to such as Charlie Pace) actually are the people in question and not the smoke monster.

If the Man in Black was telling the truth, then every appearance on Christian was really in Jacob's Nemesis, attempting to manipulate the castaways into doing something that would help produce the loophole he needed to escape the island.

The fact that Christian has appeared to Jack off-island is troubling to me because we've been told time and again that the smoke monster can't leave the island and thus this entire endgame has been manufactured as a means of egress for him from the island. I'd posit that the Christian who appears here and likely appeared to Jack at the start of the series (leading him to water) isn't the Man in Black but Christian Shephard himself (which would square away with the Christian/Vincent scene in the webisode "So It Begins"). Which means that Christian is alternately Christian Shephard and the Man in Black-as-Christian.

As for who told Locke to turn the wheel, I'd say that was definitely the Man in Black as Christian, who needed Locke to move the island and make his way back to the main island so that he could put his entire plan into effect. As a result, Locke is killed by Ben, Locke is brought back to the island with Ben, the Man in Black assumes Locke's form, and Ben kills Jacob... giving the Man in Black the loophole he needed.

As for Ajira landing on the island, we're told that they needed a proxy for Christian's corpse in order to approximate the conditions of the Oceanic Flight, but I believe that any corpse could have sufficed, not just Locke's. The fact that the coffin contains the dead John Locke is what sets up this entire sixth season. Had Locke never turned the wheel, none of this would have occurred and Locke never would have left the island. Therefore, I still say it's the Man in Black's doing.

On a similar note, Pan asked, "Wasn't it Christian who appeared to Michael on the freighter telling him that the island was done with him as the freighter blew up? Now he can't get to Hydra without a boat?"

Good point. I'd argue in that case that it was the actual Christian Shephard who appeared to Michael rather than Man in Black-as-Christian. Which would allow for the fact that the smoke monster can't cross water (a necessity for an island prison) and explain why Christian here seemed to be attuned to the island's rationale and will. Otherwise, there's a bit of a paradox about the fact that the smoke monster can appear across bodies of water (as in the above) but not just make himself travel to Hydra Island. To play devil's advocate, maybe there's something about the fact that he's locked into a corporeal form now? (Though I still think there are two separate entities when it comes to the Man in Black and Christian.)

And Kilmooni asked, "What do you think MiB reasoning would have been for killing Eko way back when? Something to fear there?"

No, I don't think so. After all, he killed the pilot and there was nothing to fear from Seth. And he's killed indiscriminately over centuries, slaughtering people for no real reason other than he can (remember: the candidates are protected). Besides, the smoke monster really killed Eko because Adawale wanted off the series. (I kid, I kid!)

Sawyer. FoosRckKona wrote, "When you pointed out how much Sawyer wanted off the island it clicked and I drew comparisons of MiB to Sawyer and then Jacob to Jack. Sawyer wants off the island as bad as MiB and Jack knows (to a certain extent) that it would be a bad thing if MiB got off the island. Maybe?"

I think it's a deliberate attempt to set up the same sort of dichotomy there: Sawyer wants nothing more than to leave the island and Jack won't let him. But I think that the difference is that Sawyer will eventually realize that he has to stay and thwart his own selfish desires. He hasn't seen what happens when you leave the island, having been trapped there this entire time (like Jin). Will Jack be able to convince the skeptic? After all, Jack seems to have assumed Locke's old role in preventing them from leaving at all costs. The skeptic has become the believer. So, who's to say that history won't repeat itself?

Oceanic Six Disparity. Rockauteur stated, "...we still need explanation on why some of the candidates ended up 1977 and why Sun et al didn't."

Yes, we do. I believed that some force--Jacob, perhaps?--was keeping Sun and Jin apart this whole time for a very specific reason but this week saw the two of them come together and finally reunite.

What should we make of the fact then that Sun didn't travel back to 1977? I'm not sure. Could it be because of her involvement with Charles Widmore? (Which seems but all forgotten about thus far this season. I'm hoping that we get a scene between Sun and Charles in the next episode that alludes to their deal from Season Five.)

Because Sun didn't travel back to 1977, she was the sole member of Oceanic Flight 815 stuck in the present, alongside John's corpse, Ben, and Frank Lapidus. I think that's a significant fact. And her presence in the past would have meant that Jin wouldn't have been so desperate to find her once the others traveled back (and forwards) in time. He wouldn't have ended up in Claire's trap, then the Man in Black's camp, and then in Widmore's makeshift HQ. So... causality?

Lost-X Locke. Jonah Blue said, "I'm seriously hoping that the real Locke in the Lost-X time-line will get to do something significant to make things right, because he was the original man of faith when it came to the island (and, ironically, was in opposition to Jack who once lacked this faith)."

I think he will. Jack's spinal surgery and his remarkable--some might say miraculous--ability to walk again will lead him to resume his position as the island's champion and true believer. While the Oceanic Flight 815 passengers are as unyet unaware of the island's existence, they will begin to figure out that the impossible memories they all seem to share revolve around the same locale: the island. Which means that they will begin to try to find this place and, as I've mentioned since the beginning of this season, have to raise the island up from the ground. But in this timeline, will John Locke be killed again? Or will he achieve his rightful destiny?

Alien space ship. HKL theorized, "Maybe Jacob is an alien and the island is his spaceship (would explain the electromagnetic anomalies nicely, would also explain how it can sink to the ground of the ocean, would also explain how it can suddenly disappear and travel in time, would also explain the donkey wheel as part of the ship controls). Either he is sent by his species to assess if and when humans are ready to make contact, or maybe he is an individual that somehow uses human emotion to survive. If he is sent by his species, maybe he is searching for a candidate to make contact with his people. Waw, this is just too much off, hehe."

Agreed, it's way off-base. I don't think that Team Darlton is going to go the whole alien route this late in the game. Just not going to happen. No way that Jacob is an alien, sorry!

Atlantis. Perry K, wrote, "I still believe the island is or was Atlantis. If I remember some of the legend, there could have been a war. Which could explain that statue and the paints on the walls under the statue."

Yes, the legends of Atlantis, at least those written about by Plato, indicate that Atlantis was involved in a failed military invasion of Athens and then sank into the ocean after "a single day and night of misfortune." But I'm not convinced that it is Atlantis, particularly given the Egyptian symbolism and hieroglyphs that cover the Temple walls and other areas. Yes, the island is at the bottom of the ocean in the Lost-X timeline and is impossible to find at various times, but that seems to be more the result of various electromagnetic properties and semi-mystical abilities that the island has rather than it being the famed lost kingdom of Atlantis.

Personally, I'd hate to see it end up being Atlantis. I'd almost rather, if it went the route of borrowing from mythology that it was the floating island of Chemmis, where the god Horus was raised by his mother and was protected from his uncle Seth. It fits more with the sort of iconography that Lindelof and Cuse have been using, pays homage to Egyptian mythology and explores some of the themes of good vs. evil that have embodied the series since the beginning.

Heart of Darkness. The promo for the next episode of Lost used a variation of a quote ("Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.") found in Joseph Conrad's seminal 1902 novel "Heart of Darkness," about the constant struggle for good and evil, sharing with Lost a similiar preoccupation with dissecting the duality of light and darkness in the soul of every man. Only fitting, really.

Come back Wednesday to discuss next week's episode and head to the comments section here to discuss any of the above thoughts, theories, or additional questions...

Lost returns with a new episode on May 4th.

Great Scott: Adam Scott Talks Party Down and Parks and Recreation

There's no danger that Adam Scott will ever be the guy known only for a catch phrase in a beer commercial.

The boyish-looking 37-year-old actor stars in Party Down, which returns tonight for its second season after receiving critical adoration for its first season, and he'll next be seen in NBC's Parks and Recreation beginning with the final two episodes of the season. (He then segues to a series regular role on the Universal Media Studios-produced comedy next season.)

I talked to Adam Scott last month for a feature that ran earlier this week on The Daily Beast about Party Down (which can be read here).

While that feature article focused entirely on Party Down (and also featured quotes from co-creator/showrunner John Enbom and ex-Starz executive Bill Hamm), I thought I'd bring you more details from my lengthy interview with Scott a few weeks back, during which we talked about Party Down and his role on Parks and Rec, and he extracted a piece of dried apple from his daughter's mouth. (Yes, seriously.) Those exchanges are presented as a Q&A-style transcript from our conversation.

Here, we talk about expectations, the power shift in Season Two of Party Down, the atmosphere on Parks and Recreation, and whether being a cater-waiter or working in local government would be the tougher gig.

Televisionary: Was there any pressure to live up to any expectations with the second season of Party Down?

Adam Scott: Yes, definitely. The fans are few, but they’re very passionate. We don’t want to let them down. It’s hard because we really love Season One, all of us. That’s why we all came back for season Two. They didn’t have any of the actors under contracts. None of us were required to come back. We all wanted to.

No one’s getting rich on this show. Everybody really wanted to come back. It’s hard work; even though it’s super fun, it’s hard work with limited time and budget, etc. We all really wanted to make it as good as possible and didn’t want to screw it up for the fans… they’re kind of ever-growing and ever-passionate. So, we really wanted to be as good as we could. We just hoped that they like it and we don’t let anyone down.

I know that the Ricky Sargulesh episode from Season One has been a particular Achilles heel for our head writer and showrunner John Enborn because everyone compares everything to that one. It’s one of the high points of Season One. We’re always trying to live up to that and Sweet 16 and some of the others that are everyone’s favorites.

Televisionary: In the second season, Henry takes on a leadership role within the group and there is a major power shift. Was it difficult to switch gears and play Henry as more the heavy rather than as sort of the prototypical slacker?

Adam Scott: Yes. It was interesting. I loved being able to make that shift and start the season with a bit of a game change, as it were. Sort of the cliff hanger of the season last year was would Henry actually do this. It was all kind of in disarray. So, not only did he decide to do it, but he’s kind changed his whole outlook on life. He’s trying to get his shit together and really taking this job seriously and dating Uda who’s a monster in her own right. So, yes, I think it was great.

Jace Lacob: What is John Enbom like as a show runner? What’s it like working with him?

Adam Scott: He’s a terrific showrunner. He’s a very low-key guy and a very collaborative guy. I know showrunners sometimes aren’t that way. Sometimes, they can be a little nuts because there is a lot of pressure. But I also think that the size of the show makes it somewhat manageable even though the guy, by the end of both seasons, can barely walk. He has four different viruses running through his body because he just hasn’t slept or eaten because he’s either on set, in his trailer writing, or editing an episode. He also has a family. How he does it, I have no idea. I love working with John. He’s a great guy and a brilliant, brilliant writer.

John and Rob Thomas and Dan Etheridge and I, we’ve all been friends for years. And Paul Rudd as well, who also created the show. We’ve all just been hanging out for years. And long before Veronica Mars we all were buddies. So, when they were making their homemade version of the Party Down pilot, we made it Rob’s backyard. They just called and asked if I wanted to do it; called Ken and Jane. We all just kind of jumped in and did just because we all knew each other. All of that is really fun because we’re friends. It kind of lends itself to the right kind of creativity and collaboration.

Televisionary: Is the atmosphere similar or different on Parks and Recreation?

Adam Scott: Atmosphere-wise it’s exactly the same. I mean the thing about Party Down that I love; it’s the reason I was so trepidatious to move on and do anything else is we all love it. We all built it together, you know? It’s something we made with our hands. It’s ours and we’re all enormously proud of it. We love going to work. Even on people’s days off, they swing by and hang out.

The surprising thing about Parks and Rec is it’s the same thing. People, on their days off, are coming by and just saying hi. It’s very collaborative. Everyone’s chiming in with their ideas. The craft service table is much nicer. There are these big fancy sets and everything, which we never had. We were driving around to different veteran’s homes in the Valley to shoot our episodes. Parks and Rec has a beautiful set on a lot in Studio City. So, it’s the same spirit and the same atmosphere. It’s very comforting and terrific. They make us a really hilarious show at Parks and Rec that to me feels homemade and built together much like Party Down does. So, it’s actually much less of a transition than I was expecting.

Televisionary: What can you tell us about Ben, your character on Parks and Recreation?

Adam Scott: What I can tell you is Rob and I come in together and we’re state auditors. We come in to oversee the budget and the budget crisis that may be happening in Pawnee.

Jace Lacob: Is it difficult coming into a series that’s already established? Is it difficult at all when it’s already been on the air for two seasons?

Adam Scott: No. I’m sure with some shows it may be. But with Parks everybody’s super cool and very welcoming. I couldn’t ask for a nicer group of people. So, not at all. It’s been really fun and very easy. Everybody’s super sweet. It’s a dream job.

Jace Lacob: Which job do you think is worse: being a cater-waiter or working in local government?

Adam Scott: That’s a good question. Boy, there are cons and cons to both of them. Probably being a cater-waiter. I think there’s a certain level of humiliation to both. But I think that with government, at the end of the day, if you get a drinking fountain installed in a playground that’s something you can look at and show people and say, “I did that.” Where as with cater-waitering, I don’t know. It’s a tough job. My hat’s off to anyone who can do it.

Season Two of Party Down premieres tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on Starz.

Channel Surfing: ABC to Reair Lost Pilot, No Two and a Half Men Sans Sheen, Hal Holbrook Gets Anarchy, Parks and Rec, and More

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing.

Looks like ABC is trying to make its Lost fans even happier. The Wrap's Josef Adalian is reporting that ABC has scheduled a repeat airing of its two-hour pilot for Lost, which will air Saturday, May 22nd (from 8-10 pm ET/PT), the night before the series finale of Lost, bumping the number of hours the network is devoting to lost to ten that week. The network will be airing the enhanced (read: pop-up) version of the pilot. (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

In other Lost-related news, tickets go on sale today at 10 am PT for Lost Live: The Final Celebration, being held May 13th at UCLA's Royce Hall. The event will feature Michael Giacchino conducting a full orchestral performance of original music from Lost, an advance screening of the penultimate episode of Lost and appearances from cast members Nestor Carbonell, Michael Emerson, and Jorge Garcia. Tickets can be purchased here or here. (via press release)

RadarOnline.com is reporting that Warner Bros. Television won't reconfigure Two and a Half Men without Charlie Sheen and should he not return to the series, it will mark the end of the highly rated CBS comedy. "There has been absolutely no discussion about reworking Two and a Half Men without Charlie. No one is even considering it,” an unnamed studio source told RadarOnline.com. "At this moment, if Charlie doesn’t come back, that’s the end of the series." (via Fancast)

Five-time Emmy winner Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild) has been cast in four episodes of Season Three of FX's Sons of Anarchy, where he will play Nate Madock, the father of Gemma Morrow Teller (Katey Sagal), currently on the lam after being framed for murder. Holbrook will make his first appearance on the third season premiere of Sons of Anarchy, slated to air in September. (via press release)

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Megan Mullally will be heading back to Pawnee next season. Mullally will reprise her role as Tammy, the malicious ex-wife of Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), in an episode that will air during the series' third season, currently shooting to accommodate Amy Poehler's pregnancy. (Entertainment Weekly)

Syfy has cast Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5) in original telepic 51 and A.J. Buckley (CSI: NY) in The Doomsday Scrolls. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Fame is Fleeting (But Comedy Isn't): An Advance Review of Season Two of Starz's Party Down

The employees of Party Down Catering seem to fall into two categories: those who continue to dream big and those whose dreams have gotten thrown on the ground, stomped on a few dozen times, and then set on fire for good measure.

Season Two of Starz's deliciously droll comedy Party Down, created by Rob Thomas, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge, and Paul Rudd, returns tomorrow for another season of scathing satire, trenchant observation, and dark comedy. (You can read my feature article on the series here.)

Despite its presence on an up-and-coming pay cable network that doesn't boast the reach of HBO or Showtime, cable's big guns would be lucky to have a comedy that's this hilarious, biting, and emotionally resonant, often all at the time same.

Set nine months after the events of Season One, Party Down finds its caterers heading once more into the breach as they cater the backstage after-party for rock metal god Jackal Onassis (guest star Jimmi Simpson). Changes are afoot: Henry Pollard (Adam Scott) is now team leader, replacing Ron (Ken Marino) who left to fulfill his dream of opening up a Soup'er Crackers franchise. Casey Klein (Lizzy Caplan) hasn't been heard from in months after she broke up with Henry and booked a stand-up comedy gig on a cruise. (Megan Mullally's Lydia Dunfree is a new face at the catering company, following Jane Lynch's departure during Season One.)

Life may have moved on but for the employees of Party Down, they're still stuck in the grind, catering one event after another and still not taking their jobs very seriously, even with Henry attempting to exert his authority over his team. An on-site firing leads Henry to ask boss Alan Duck to send a replacement... who just happens to be Casey, returned from her cruise.

Awkward much?

That awkwardness adds a nice layer of tension throughout these episodes as Henry and Casey must both adapt to working together again (though now in a boss-employee context) and the fact that they've both allegedly moved on. Henry and Casey's relationship--or lack thereof--is the central dynamic within Party Down, although it's not the only one. Each of the characters gets the chance to shine in an array of situations. Not unsurprisingly, Ken Marino's Ron winds up--SPOILER ALERT!--back in the group by the second episode and brings with him a whole host of baggage, not least of which are the reappearance of his diverse addictions.

While Lynch has departed the series for Glee, I have to say that it's hard to miss Constance as the chemistry among the actors is just so fantastic that they more than make up for the lack of Lynch. Mullally is a first-rate addition to the cast and manages to integrate herself quite quickly, offering a very different perspective on Hollywood as a wannabe stage mom to triple threat daughter Escapade, whom she believes will be a star.

There's an easy camaraderie between the cast members and a rhythm to their interactions that feels painfully real at times. Snippets of conversations about meaningless ephemera help to create the sensation that we're eavesdropping on real-life and the dynamic between frenemies Roman (Martin Starr), still trying to make it as a hard sci-fi writer, and Kyle (Ryan Hansen), the actor/model/musician on the cusp of stardom should his base-jumping movie take off, is lovingly crafted by these two polar opposites, casting a nice patina of wit and snark onto the already pitch-perfect humor.

I've seen the first five fantastic episodes of Party Down's second season and I don't want to give too much away about the plot of each of the five events that they cater, though the fifth episode ("Steve Guttenberg's Birthday") might just be my very favorite episode of the series to date, as the gang caters a party--for themselves--on The Gutte's fiftieth birthday, which leads to Casey discovering that Henry was once (and still could be) an amazing actor, Roman and his writing partner (guest star Christopher Mintz-Plasse) putting on a reading of their sci-fi feature script, and hot tub-related shenanigans. (It also features Steven Guttenberg as an extremely heightened and absurd version of himself. At least I hope so, anyway.)

As with the very best comedies (such as Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's The Office or Extras), Party Down challenges you not just to laugh but to feel, mining the uncomfortable silence between words, the painfulness of regret, and the sting of botched expectations for humor that's both squirm-inducing and riotous.

There's a real emotional core to the series, one that explores the soul-crushing world of Hollywood and the way that the entertainment industry spits people out without giving them their heart's desire. It's a series that asks a question about each of us: whether we're working towards a dream or just dreaming while we're working, slogging away in a thankless job that went from temporary to permanent. In a society that judges us on what we do rather than what we dream, it's the rare comedy that investigates the division between reality and our ideal selves, especially with as much charm, humor, and raunchy content as Party Down.

You'd do well to cancel your Friday night plans and spent it with the crew of Party Down. After all, with its razor-sharp insights and jaw-dropping comedy, this is one party you'll never want to end.



Season Two of Party Down launches Friday evening at 10 pm ET/PT on Starz.

Pub Grub: The Master Chefs Have to Remake Homey Classics on Top Chef Masters

Ah, pub food.

For all of its humble origins, British pub food is exactly what I crave on a long, cold night, conjuring up an image of a roaring fireplace and a nice pint of lager. It's earthy, homey, stick-to-your ribs sort of food and it's just as often terrible when it's made without care or love. But in the right hands and in the right kitchen, it's just the thing to banish the mid-winter blues.

On this week's episode of Top Chef Masters ("Pub Food"), six master chefs from Season One--Jonathan Waxman, Ludo Lefebvre, Mark Peel, Rick Moonen, Wylie Dufresne, and Graham Elliot Bowles--returned with a second shot at glory as they reunited in the Top Chef kitchen to compete for charity, a spot in the next round of competition, and a chance to redeem themselves.

But in order to do so they'd not only have to craft a dish best paired with a specific Stoli-based cocktail (and serve it to--of all people--cast members from Bravo's Real Housewives of Orange County) and then reinvent some humble pub grub and transform it into something they'd serve in their own restaurants.

So how did these master chefs cope with the pressure a second time around? Let's discuss.

I have to say that I like challenges where it pushes the chefs out of their comfort zones. After all, the producers of original-flavor Top Chef force their competitors to take on complex and often frustrating challenges, so why shouldn't these master chefs--who have considerably more experience than the other competitors--be put through the ringer just as much? Here, they were forced to pair food with cocktails and reinvent British pub food into something sophisticated and modern, food more along the lines of the high-end British gastropub concept: simple concepts that have been elevated and produced with high-quality ingredients.

For their Quickfire Challenge, the chefs were given a chance to sample some Stoli-based cocktails and then select one that they would then pair with a dish that they they felt embodied and complimented the cocktail they had chosen. It's far easier to pair food with wine than it is cocktails, which often have exotic and fruit-based ingredients that are far more challenging to match with the food on the plate.

So how did they fare? Let's take a look.

Quickfire Challenge:

• Bowles (coriander mule): crudo of black cod with an edamame and red onion salad
• Waxman (lemongrass mojito): pork tenderloin and poblano-stuffed shrimp with avocado butter
• Lefebvre (nutmeg apple mojito): roasted pork chop with rosemary, thyme, and garlic
• Peel (ginger figgle): mussels custard with lime and figs
• Moonen (forest fruits): cream biscuit berry shortcake
• Dufresne (Russian Tea Room): arctic char with lentils, bacon, crispy potatoes, and lemon yogurt

Proving that the simplest dish is often the best, Waxman finished a whole twenty minutes before everyone else and walked away the winner of the Quickfire Challenge, thanks to his elegant yet simple dish of pork tenderloin and poblano-stuffed shrimp. He wisely intuited that the judges--here the cast of Real Housewives of Orange County--didn't want huge plates of food but rather smaller bites that complimented the drink; the heat of his dish was balanced nicely by the lemongrass in his drink and Waxman proved that he was a force to be reckoned with for a reason.

As for the others, it's hard to say that anyone had a bad dish, per se, but the Housewives sure were picky about everything, with several of them expressing contradictory opinions or just outright dislike of certain ingredients (ginger being one of them).

But it was Waxman who clearly set the tone for the entire episode, with his dexterity manipulating simple ingredients in a complex way, allowing the flavors on the plate to stand out more than trickery or theatricality. Simple is often just better.

But for their elimination challenge, they'd have to take a simple dish and elevate it to a new level. In this case, British pub food. Having won the Quickfire, Waxman was able to get first pick from six standard classics, selecting shepherd's pie (always a favorite of mine) and leaving the others to squabble over the remainder. Particularly Moonen and Lefebvre, who nearly came to blows over fish and chips. (While Ludo was a little whiny about it, I do have to agree that seafood expert Moonen shouldn't have been able to cook to his strengths quite so blatantly.)

Here's what they prepared:

Elimination Challenge:

• Bowles (steak and kidney pie): free-form steak and kidney pie with roasted beef tenderloin, chanterelle puree and bacon-kidney vinaigrette
• Waxman (shepherd's pie): shepherd's pie with lamb, mashed potatoes, and parmesan cheese
• Lefebvre (Irish lamb stew): beef tenderloin with confit of potatoes and clarified butter, roasted peanut miso and caramel of Guinness
• Peel (toad in the hole): toad in the hole with seafood sausage, onion sauce, lobster broth, and mustard greens
• Moonen (fish and chips): chicken-fried sable with lemon confit tartar sauce, twice-fried potatoes, and fennel slaw
• Dufresne (bangers and mash): Merguez sausage, smoked mashed potatoes, onion jus, and julienned snow peas

I thought that Bowles' presentation was gorgeous. He really thought about the elements of the dish and applied some skill and vision to elevating the humble steak and kidney pie to a new level, though the judges did seem to think that he had a particular aversion to kidneys and tried to mask their flavor rather than let them shine. (Me, I'm also averse to them as well.) Kudos for his chanterelles and his vinaigrette.

Waxman once again stuck with the basics, preparing a simple dish with very few elements on the plate and made them shine. I wondered if his mash was a little too liquidy but it didn't matter as it seemed to approximate something akin to a bechamel in consistency: creamy, loose, and flavorful, it set atop perfectly cooked lamb, taking shepherd's pie to a new level of transcendence.

Lefebvre seemed to hate Irish lamb stew from the start, instead delivering a dish that seemed to have stopovers in every major city other than Dublin. Miso and peanuts? Caramel? Raw root vegetables? He couldn't stop denigrating the lamb stew and puffing himself up about the "work of art" that was his dish... But the judges and the diners didn't exactly see eye to eye on that.

Poor Mark Peel. I thought he had some really good ideas for translating toad in the hole to fine dining, making his own sausage but out of seafood, creating a lobster broth, and adding mustard greens to the mix. But, thanks to a cold oven (and therefore cold oil), his Yorkshire pudding--one of the key elements of the dish--turned into a doughy, undercooked abomination rather than the light and ethereal--and burnished--treat that Yorkshire pudding is. Very sad as I have a lot of respect for Peel and he was let down here.

I mentioned before that I thought that Moonen should have gotten something other than fish and chips to work with. A seafood guru, he offered a nice plate that offered some changes to pub standard fish and chips but I wasn't really all that impressed. Sure, it looked good and the judges raved about the sable and the slaw but they seemed very disappointed in the chips, which were far too big and got tough as they cooled. Still, give a seafood expert a fish...

I thought that Wylie Dufresne handled himself far better here than he did in his appearance on Season One of Top Chef Masters, where he seemed to almost have a meltdown in the kitchen and was unable to deal with the timecrunch and the pressure of competing. While he threw himself into a rivalry with Bowles, Dufresne concentrated much more on his own performance this time, delivering a knock-out dish that didn't have any molecular gastronomy tricks but rather just a beautiful plate that offered some tweaks to bangers and mash (smoked mashed potatoes, snow peas, onion jus). The only complaint was that the Merguez was slightly overcooked.

But ultimately, it was Waxman and Moonen who moved onto the next round. I could have called that from the start of the Elimination Challenge, but I was really hoping that Bowles could have been in there instead of Moonen.

What did you think of this week's episode? Agree with the critics' verdict? Who would you have sent on and who should have been sent packing? Discuss.

Next week on Top Chef Masters ("Cast and Crew Meal"), the master chefs take on craft services as they prepare meals for the cast and crew of ABC's Modern Family.

The Daily Beast: "Is the Party Over?"

Is Party Down over before it's even had a chance to grab a larger audience and cross over into the mainstream?

That's the question I ask in my latest feature for The Daily Beast, entitled "Is the Party Over?" I speak with co-creator John Enbom, star Adam Scott (who will soon be seen in his new gig on NBC's Parks and Recreation), and former Starz development executive Bill Hamm, who was let go from his position just days after speaking with me.

With the cast being snapped up by other networks and no Season Three renewal in sight, one can't help but wonder if Starz has squandered Party Down's significant potential. But the fact remains: if you want more Party Down, subscribe to Starz, buy the DVD, and get as many people to watch Season Two--beginning tomorrow--as possible.

Party Down returns for its second season tomorrow night at 10 pm ET/PT on Starz.

Channel Surfing: No Torchwood for FOX, Mireille Enos Gets Killing for AMC, Gervais and Merchant Find Life's Too Short, and More

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing.

Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd is reporting that FOX and BBC Worldwide Productions have mutually agreed not to proceed on the US version of Torchwood that was in development at the network. However, it still appears that the project is alive and will be shopped to other networks. "BBC Worldwide Productions and the FOX Broadcasting Company have mutually agreed not to progress together with a 13-episode serialized Torchwood format," said BBC Worldwide in a statement. "We are currently in discussion with several interested networks." Furthermore, BBC Worldwide's Jane Tranter said that they are forging ahead with the development of the project: "It's very much ongoing and very much alive," she told Hibberd, but reiterated that the company is not planning an American version of Doctor Who. [Editor: Whew, though I can't imagine Torchwood without John Barrowman, either.] (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)

Big Love's divine Mireille Enos has scored the lead role in AMC drama pilot The Killing, where she will star opposite Michelle Forbes and Billy Campbell in the project, which is based on Danish series Forbrydelsen. Enos will play Sarah, the lead homicide detective investigating the murder of a young girl as the story unfolds from multiple perspectives. Brent Sexton, Eric Ladin, Jamie Anne Allman, and Joel Kinnaman also star. Patty Jenkins (Monster) is set to direct from a script by Veena Sud. (Deadline.com)

The Office and Extras creators Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant have landed a pilot commitment from Auntie Beeb for a half-hour single camera comedy project entitled >Life's Too Short, which will star Warwick Davis (Harry Potter, Willow) as himself in "an observation comedy which follows Warwick's day-to-day life in a small world where big things happen." Gervais and Merchant will also appear in the project in supporting roles. "We're having so much fun working with Warwick," said Gervais. "Pound for pound, he is one of the funniest men I know." (Variety)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy is already in talks with Madonna about a sequel to this week's Material Girl-themed episode ("The Power of Madonna") for the fall, with Murphy telling Ausiello, "Madonna and her people are into it and want it to happen." The episode would feature six tracks that didn't appear in this week's episode. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Cartoon Network is developing a new version of Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes, featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and will be moving further into the live-action arena over the next year. The Looney Tunes Show "takes Bugs and Daffy out of the woods and puts them into the suburbs with 'colorful neighbors' including Yosemite Sam, Granny, Tweety and Sylvester," according to Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd. (Hollywood Reporter)

Julianne Moore has denied reports that she was ever attached to the US remake of Prime Suspect that NBC is developing, telling TV Guide Magazine's Will Keck, "That was never true. Rumor." (TV Guide Magazine)

HBO has ordered a second season of comedy How To Make It in America, with eight episodes on tap for summer 2011. (Entertainment Weekly's Hollywood Insider)

TLC has ordered six episodes of culinary reality series Best Food Ever, which offers a cross-country culinary overview of "popular dishes and restaurants." Series, narrated by John Goodman, will launch May 3rd at 10 pm ET/PT with an episode about the country's best sandwiches. (Variety)

Showtime will be bringing Lisa Kudrow's online series Web Therapy to television, announcing that it will thread together the series' 45 mini-sodes into half-hour episodes. Series will launch later in 2010. (Hollywood Reporter)

The Wrap's Josef Adalian (soon to be departing to take over as West Coast editor of New York Magazine's Vulture site) is reporting that TNT has slated the launch of Rizzoli & Isles on Monday, July 12th at 10 pm ET/PT, leading out of the sixth season of The Closer, which launches the same night. Elsewhere, TBS has slated the return of comedy My Boys for Sunday, July 25th at 10 pm ET/PT. (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

Universal Media Studios has signed a one-year overall deal with former It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia writes Sonny Lee and Patrick Walsh, under which they will develop new comedy projects for the studio. (Congrats, Sonny!) (Hollywood Reporter)

TruTV is developing an unofficial spinoff of MTV's Jersey Shore called Wicked Summah that will depict Boston locals who summer on Cape Cod. (Broadcasting & Cable)

Nikki Finke is reporting that the CW is said to be considering picking up two UK reality series and retransmitting them here in the US this summer. (Deadline.com)

Comedy Central has ordered seven additional episodes of animated comedy Ugly Americans, which will debut in October. (Hollywood Reporter)

BBC Worldwide has promoted Gareth Williams to SVP of content and production for South America. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

It's a New Dawn, A New Day: An Advance Review of Next Week's Chuck

Time to crank up the Nina Simone: Chuck returns on Monday and it's all about feeling good.

When we last saw Chuck Bartowski and Sarah Walker, they had finally gotten the chance to achieve the happiness they've been denied for so long, winding up in bed together and focusing on themselves and their burgeoning relationship rather than getting sucked back into the spy life by another mission from General Beckman.

That ending was meant to serve originally as the finale for Chuck's third season but, fortunately for us, that's not quite how things turned out as Chuck got another six episodes and we got six more weeks to spend with our favorite spies.

Monday night brings a brand-new Chuck episode ("Chuck Versus the Honeymooners"), written by Lauren LeFranc and Rafe Judkins (with a story by Ali Adler) and directed by Robert Duncan McNeill, which I had the chance to watch ahead of time and which I'll say is a thing of beauty.

So, what did I think of Monday's episode of Chuck? Let's discuss. (Though beware there are minor spoilers ahead. And, as always, please do not reproduce this post in full on message boards, forums, or other web sites.)

I don't want to give too much away about this utterly fun and magical episode. There's a winning sense of joy and lightness to this episode that has been missing from the series for a bit, given some of the darkness that crept in during the last few installments. "Chuck Versus the Honeymooners" provides just the right mix of comedy, romance, action, and intrigue as well as several new character dynamics to explore.

Given that the previous episode had finally brought together Chuck and Sarah in a real and meaningful way, I was curious to see just how their relationship would be handled here, whether they would be taking tentative first steps into the dating world or whether we'd find them as a full-blown couple.

Let's just say: the honeymoon isn't over. Not by a long shot.

Monday's installment finds Chuck and Sarah attempting to hold onto what they've fought to have for three seasons: an actual relationship that's uncomplicated by professional responsibilities, flashes, or espionage, to focus on each other in the most, uh, intimate way possible. (Or as Casey memorably puts it in this episode, Chuck "is going to need a walker when Walker is finished with him.")

But fate has a way of throwing a spanner into the most careful of plans and Chuck and Sarah find their romantic European interlude intruded into by some serious complications in the form of a Basque terrorist on their train. Just when you think you're out...

But, let's be honest, there never was any real possibility that Chuck and Sarah could be out of the spy game, at least not permanently. Despite their desire to start over with a normal life somewhere, regular jobs and housework, espionage is in their blood. They can't turn off those instincts or their abilities, no matter how much they might want to. Which forces Chuck and Sarah to make a monumental decision about their future together--and the either/or dynamic that has colored their romance--before the episode ends...

I don't want to spoil too much because this is one episode that will make Chuck fans very, very happy. There are hair-raising stunts, one of the very best fight sequences on the series to date (hint: it involves handcuffs and swing dancing), familiar faces, bittersweet departures, unlikely partnerships, Morgan doing what Morgan does best (which might just surprise you), and a shout-out to our neighbors to the North.

(Plus, did I mention a deliciously absurd performance by Jeffster?)

Ultimately, I have to say that I enjoyed this fantastic episode even more than "Chuck Versus the Other Guy", as it offered the perfect balance of tone, genre-busting action, and an emphasis on the core relationships, highlighting just what makes this series so unique and unforgettable. If Monday's blissful installment represents the quality of the next six episodes, I'd have to say that Chuck fans are in for quite a ride.

So buckle your seatbelt, order some room service, lock and load, and pucker up.



Chuck returns Monday evening at 8 pm ET/PT on NBC.

We're Done Going Back: Shifting Sides on Lost

Do our actions or our intentions define us? Once someone has given themselves over completely to the dark side, is it possible for them to cross back over? Do we each have the potential, inside ourselves, for redemption?

This are some of the questions raised by this week's episode of Lost ("The Last Recruit"), written by Paul Zbyszewski and Graham Roland and directed by Stephen Semel, which showed yet another restructuring of the tenuous alliances maintained by the castaways as the battle for the island--and possibly the world at large--begins once more.

Since the beginning of its run, Lost has always circled around the notion of belonging as various factions within the group sprung up over time, typically around the division between Jack and Locke, the ultimate man of science/man of faith dichotomy. In recent weeks, Jack has displayed a major departure from his scientific leanings, approaching the island and his purpose with the sort of singular grace and faith that marked John Locke--dead but far from forgotten--for so many seasons.

So what did I think of this week's episode? Draw yourself a map, sign in to reception for the fifteenth floor, take a dive in the ocean, and let's discuss "The Last Recruit."

I have to say that I liked "The Last Recruit," but I didn't love this week's episode. I was engaged the entire time but it didn't leave me with the sort of rampant excitement and awe that mark the very best episodes of Lost. Instead, it answered some questions in a very matter-of-fact way, featured a reunion several seasons in the making, and reshuffled the deck as to where the castaways are, who is controlling them, and whom they are loyal to. (The latter of which is typically: themselves, always.)

I had my doubts that Sun and Jin would ever reunite, given that it seemed as though some mystical force had contrived to keep them separated for the last few seasons. (And not just then either: the two spent a good deal of Season Two apart as well when Jin ended up with the tailies after the Others destroyed the raft and kidnapped Walt.) But despite the fact that it look thirty-odd episodes to bring these two back together again, I found their reunion to be almost entirely devoid of emotion.

Which is weird, as I like Sun and Jin a lot but I wasn't emotionally moved by their reunion scene and the fact that Sun finally regained her voice as a result. It should have been a bigger, more powerful sequence but I didn't really feel like it met up with other previous reunions. I can't quite put my finger on why this didn't do it for me, either. It just felt a little hollow, and not just because their tender scene together was cut short by Zoe.

Elsewhere, the group once again split off and reconfigured themselves. Sawyer hatched a plan to steal Desmond's sailboat, the Elizabeth, and use it to get to Hydra Island and away from the Man in Black. But, uh, philosophical differences between Sawyer and Jack lead to him being ousted from the group while crazy-haired Claire tagged along and Sayid may have switched sides, again.

New York Times' David Izkoff said earlier today on Twitter, "Lost is like watching a fist-fight in a foreign country's parliament - no idea how it got so factionalized and no clue who to root for," and I'd have to agree. I'm not sure who I am rooting for or why. Jack seemed to finally have a revelation about their purpose on the island, only to wind up back in the clutches of Jacob's Nemesis; Hurley's plan to go see Locke may have reunited the group but lost them the person who might be the ideal candidate to succeed Jacob. All of which is a little head-scratching, really.

While each of the castaways returned to the island for a specific reason--most of which haven't changed since the beginning of Season Five--there's a lot of back and forth here, which--while it ramps up the tension in the short-term--also begins to erode the drama a little bit. Answers are being given but they're often so matter-of-fact that it eliminates any sense of revelatory surprise. (I'm thinking specifically here of learning that the Man in Black was masquerading as Christian Shephard for several seasons.)

Christian Shephard/Man in Black. Speaking of which, yes, we learned this week that the ghostly appearances of Christian Shephard that have dotted the series' narrative since the beginning didn't reflect any resurrection of Jack's dead doctor daddy, but rather another manifestation of the smoke monster, given his ability to take on the shape of those who have died.

However, I'm still not entirely sure how this resolves the mystery of where Christian's corpse went to after the plane crash--or that Lost Moments webisode from Vincent's perspective that had Christian appearing to the dog and telling him to wake up his son ("He has work to do"). Nor does it explain Christian's appearance at the hospital to Jack in Season Four...

The Man in Black claims that he appeared to Jack as Christian because Jack and the castaways needed to find water and he wanted to help them. Whether this is true is unclear as the Nemesis is a master manipulator and often doesn't totally speak the truth. He further claims that he was always trying to help the castaways leave but that Jacob wouldn't allow it as they had been chosen and were therefore trapped on the island by their purpose.

All of which makes me very suspicious. While he might claim to be a sheep in wolves' clothing, I don't trust the Man in Black at all. After all, he's spent the last few centuries looking for a loophole to escape his island prison and, hell, he has killed several of the castaways so I hardly think that he's quite as helpful as he claims to be. He needs these people just as much as Jacob does. They're the rocks placed on the scales. In order to escape, he needs to tip the scales towards black and he needs these specific people--former and current candidates to replace Jacob--for his own devices. Is it possible that both Jacob and his Nemesis are selecting their replacements from the same candidate pool?

The Final Recruit. The titular character would therefore appear to be Jack Shephard, who could arguably be described as the central character within Lost's entire mythology. The Man in Black's expression at the end of last week's installment seemed to point towards some major tipping point when he saw Jack enter the camp. While the Nemesis claims that he needs all of the castaways in order to make his escape from the island, he seems to have an especial interest in Jack Shephard. It's Jack, and not Hurley or anyone else, that the Man in Black wants to catch up with and he immediately begins to spin him a web of (possible but likely) lies about dead fathers, water sources, and providing an unseen assistance to the castaways in their early days on the island.

Is it possible that Claire is correct and Jack became the Man in Black's catspaw as soon as he heard the first word from his mouth? Can his voice really have that much power over the castaways? After all, Sawyer has proven to have no such compunction about selling out his supposed lord and master, even after speaking with him multiple times. Can one word rob you of your free-will and destiny?

After all, Jack does opt to take a dive off of the Elizabeth and swim back to the island rather than attempt to leave. He knows just what fate will befall him once he returns to the "real world," a place of anguish for him where he ended up a drunken, broken man at the end of his tether. On the island, he has a purpose and, other than Hurley, he seems to be tipped towards being the ideal replacement for Jacob. But, in choosing to get off the boat, he places himself back int he path of the Nemesis... and Widmore's artillery shells. Thrown through the air when one explodes on the beach where he's just been found by the Nemesis, his life is saved by the Man in Black, who carries him off the beach and into the thicket.

While the Man in Black is allegedly forbidden from killing Jack, couldn't he have just let him get killed by the shelling of the beach? In theory perhaps, but that presupposes several things: that he doesn't need Jack and that he can stand by and watch as he dies. Both of which would appear to be wrong. After all, he could have let Sawyer die several episodes back when the rope ladder snapped but he saved his life, which makes me believe that both Jacob and his smoky counterpart need these individuals and need them alive. The island isn't done with them yet, after all...

So is Jack on the Man in Black's side now ("You're with me now") or is his loyalty still up for grabs? I'm leaning towards the latter as I don't see him siding with the darkness or the smoke monster in the upcoming battle. Jack knows that his purpose is to safe-guard the island and his lack of wanting to leave would point towards his willingness to take over for Jacob, now that John Locke is dead.

Sayid. Interestingly, Sayid appeared to change sides as well. He seemed quite prepared to murder Desmond, who was alive but stranded at the bottom of the well but Desmond managed to be quite convincing in his defense, awakening a realization in Sayid that, even if the Man in Black was able to follow through on his promise, that Nadia would still turn from him after seeing the blood on his hands. (It's also interesting that Desmond seems, while lacking fear, to have a Zen-like calm and precise reason about him. His arguments are not emotional but rational, and he seems to win over Sayid.)

So does Sayid shoot Desmond? It doesn't seem that way, especially as we'd be privy a scene in which the highly pivotal Desmond, you know, died. Instead, Sayid returns to the rendezvous point with the Nemesis and tells him that he followed through with his mission. Not only does Sayid issue a bare-faced lie but the Man in Black believes him. It's an important turning point for Sayid because it's proof positive that the Man in Black is not omnipotent or infallible. He fell for his lie quite easily in fact. The glimmer of a smile on Sayid's face points towards dawning realization as well as the knowledge that he can perhaps trick the master trickster.

In doing so, does Sayid take the first step on the long road to redemption? It does appear that way, especially if he didn't kill Desmond. Which means that there might still be another candidate out there, one that can bring together Jack and Desmond and reunite the entire group for the first time in what seems like a zillion seasons.

Claire. And then there's Claire. She too seems to be far too gone to even hope for any chance at happiness or redemption. Her suspicious nature and hatred of Kate allow her to get the drop on the escapees as they attempt to board the Elizabeth. Claire isn't quite as mentally unstable as she initially appeared (though I'd have to question the sanity of anyone owning a squirrel baby); she's aware of the fact that the Man in Black pretended to be her father and seems also aware that he isn't John Locke either (despite the fact that she calls him John), but instead follows him because he was the only one who didn't abandon her.

Which brings Claire to a crossroads. She can attempt to stop the castaways from taking the boat and thwarting "John's" plan or she can go with them. Ben lay the first brick of the road of redemption when he was forgiven by Ilana. Here too Claire's soul seems up for grabs as Kate holds out an olive branch and suggests that Claire come with them and be reunited with Aaron, her sole reason for coming back to the island in the first place.

It all comes down to a choice and it always does: the path of righteousness or destruction. In getting on the ship and seeing Kate not as an enemy, it's appears as though Claire has too switched sides. Now let's just hope that Desmond had a hairbrush and some face soap on that boat....

Sawyer. I found it interesting that Sawyer's argument to Kate about rescuing Jack after he jumped off the boat was that they're done going back, a clear reversal of Jack's battle cry of "We have to go back!" from the Season Three finale. Sawyer never escaped the island. He's been there for years at this point and doesn't have the benefit of Jack's experience of what happened when they left. He believes that he's done with the island but he's still thinking in terms of self-preservation. He's not ready to make the leap of faith that Jack has. While it seemed as though Jack was playing skeptic to Locke's believer, it now seems as though the ultimate skeptic is Sawyer himself. Convincing him that he may have to sacrifice himself in order to save the island--and the world--is not going to be easy. Especially when he's just as hell-bent as the Man in Black in getting the hell off the island.

Widmore. Never con a con man... but that's just what happened to Sawyer here. In attempting to play Widmore and the Man in Black against each other, Sawyer foolishly believes that Widmore will keep up his end of the bargain. But now that he has his hands on nearly all of the castaways--save Jack and Sayid--his plan has changed dramatically. Just what does Widmore want with them? Is he willing to kill all of them--as he was in the past--in order to prevent the Man in Black from having a means of escape? Or is Widmore after something else entirely? Is it power? Reclaiming the island and his destiny? Hmmm...

Lost-X. This week's flash-sideways showed the tightening of the web as the castaways found themselves being drawn closer and closer: Sawyer interrogates Kate before he and Miles pursue Sayid for the restaurant killings; Sun and Jin arrive at the hospital, just as Locke is being wheeled into the OR; Desmond brings Jack, Claire, and Ilana together before she's able to take her adoption meeting. (Could it be that in this reality, Claire does manage to raise Aaron after all?)

Intriguingly, there's a moment of frisson as Sun seems to recognize John Locke as they're both being taken inside the hospital. Recognize is putting it lightly; she's actually terrified of him, saying "It's him, it's him" to Jin. I'd posit that Sun has begun to become aware of her memories of the other timeline. Her recognition of John Locke isn't that he was a passenger on their flight from Sydney but something far worse. In that moment she sees not John Locke but his alternate reality doppelganger, the Man in Black. Sun is therefore tapped into a multi-dimensional awareness; the aphasia and bump on the head transferred her lack of English to mainstream Sun while that Sun sent something back: a memory of Jacob's Nemesis. (Though, please be aware, I'm not suggesting for a second that Lost-X Locke is the Man in Black because that's patently untrue.)

I'm interested to know just how Desmond knows Ilana Verdansky, here the Los Angeles attorney overseeing Christian Shephard's estate. Gathering Jack and his son David for the reading of Christian's will, it seems an act of fate that Ilana should come face to face with Claire Littleton, whom they had been looking for after she was bequeathed a portion of Christian's estate in his will.

Desmond seems particularly charming and silver-tongued here. Despite her reticence about seeing a lawyer, Claire is finally convinced by Desmond to see his friend, who owes him a favor... only to discover that she's been reunited with her family. As I said before, I can't help but wonder if this Claire decides not to give Aaron up for adoption after all. Desmond seems to indicate that she could be taken advantage of and her sudden introduction to her half-brother Jack might deter her from taking that meeting after all.

Jack, meanwhile, is called away to operate on none other than Locke, whose life was--rather ironically--saved by his wheelchair. Jack recognizes him as he begins his surgery, likely restoring Locke the ability to walk... as well as a belief in the miraculous power of destiny. Everything, as they say, comes back around...

All in all, an interesting if not show-stopping episode of Lost that offered some insights and solved a few mysteries while keeping the action humming along as the various gamesmen are moving their pieces into place. With only four episodes remaining until the series finale, I anticipate some major revelations ahead as the Final Battle gets underway.

What did you think of this week's episode? Wonder what Widmore is planning? Did Sayid turn good again? Will Claire betray the group? Agree with the above theories or disagree? Still have questions? Head to the comments section to discuss, ponder, probe, and more.

Next week brings a repeat of "Ab Aeterno," so we'll have to wait a fortnight for our next brand-new installment. In two weeks on Lost ("The Candidate"), Jack's suspicions about Locke make his decision more difficult after he is asked to complete a difficult task.

Drops of Blood: HBO Launches True Blood Mini-Episodes in May

True Blood might not return until June but HBO is making sure that the hungry have more than a few drops of blood in the meantime.

The pay cabler yesterday announced that it will launch six True Blood mini-episodes beginning May 2nd. Furthermore, these short-run installments are not based on footage from last year's Season Two but are in fact brand-new and written by series creator/executive producer Alan Ball himself.

A trailer for the mini-episodes can be found below and, honestly, I can say that it's more than stirred my appetite.

If that's not enough, you can also sink your teeth intothe five teasers that HBO has so far released for the third season of True Blood, coming June 13th.



True Blood Teaser #1


True Blood Teaser #2


True Blood Teaser #3


True Blood Teaser #4


True Blood Teaser #5


Season Three of True Blood launches Sunday, June 13th at 9 pm ET/PT on HBO.

Los Angeles Times: "V: Electric Blue, or the Politics of Tragedy"

Looking to discuss last night's episode of ABC's V?

Head over to the Los Angeles Times/Show Tracker site, where you can read my take on last night's episode ("We Can't Win"), entitled "V: Electric Blue, or the Politics of Tragedy."

I'm curious to know what you thought of the episode. Head to the comments section to discuss.

Next week on V ("Heretic’s Fork"), Erica, Father Jack and Hobbes realize that the Vistors know the names and addresses of The Fifth Column members and must take drastic measures to protect them; Ryan finally reveals to Val that he is a Visitor; Chad, with the camera rolling for "Prime Focus," begins the process aboard the Mothership's Medical Bay to have his aneurysm removed.

Channel Surfing: HBO Returns to Curb, NBC Has Faith in Parenthood, Top Gear Heads to US, and More

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing.

HBO yesterday announced that it had renewed Larry David vehicle Curb Your Enthusiasm for an eighth season of ten episodes, slated to air in 2011. Production will begin this summer in New York and Los Angeles. "After much soul searching – and by the way, it was nowhere to be found – I have decided to do another season of Curb,” said Larry David in a statement. "I look forward to the end of shooting, when I can once again resume the hunt for my elusive soul. I know itʼs here somewhere or perhaps in the rugged mountainous regions of Pakistan." The renewal was announced by Michael Lombardo, president, Programming Group and West Coast Operations, HBO. "Larry always loves to paint himself into a corner, and after the incredibly wonderful seventh season of Curb, you have to ask, "How does he ever top this?' But he always finds a way," said Lombardo. "We canʼt wait to see what he does in season eight." Having said that... (via press release)

NBC has renewed its midseason drama series Parenthood for a second season. "We are so happy to welcome back this multi-layered and compelling series about an extended American family for another season," said Angela Bromstad, President, Primetime Entertainment, NBC and Universal Media Studios, in a statement. "It's gratifying that Parenthood continues to garner critical acclaim and is generating highly positive reaction from viewers, thanks to the fearless creativity of its producers and the extraordinary performances delivered by its ensemble cast." The series has averaged a 3.2 rating/9 share in the key demo and 7.8 million viewers overall since it launched on March 2nd. [Editor: still no news about Chuck's future, however...] (via press release)

BBC Worldwide Productions is bringing a US format of Top Gear to History Channel this fall, following a ten-episode order from the cable network for the automotive series. Top Gear, executive produced by Scott Messick, will be hosted by
Adam Ferrara (Rescue Me), stunt driver Tanner Foust, and racing analyst Rutledge Wood. "It will have a completely different landscape," BBC Worldwide's Jane Tranter told Hollywood Reporter. "There's a different relationship with cars in the U.S. and a fascination with customization that's much greater than in the U.K. There's the potential for the U.S. Top Gear to have even greater traction with an audience." (Hollywood Reporter)



Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that David Sutcliffe (Gilmore Girls) is set to guest star on Season Two of Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva, where he will play a man who is secretly married to two women (Vivica A. Fox and Bellamy Young) in a June episode. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

TVGuide.com's Adam Bryant is reporting that Monet Mazur will be returning to ABC's Castle for its second season finale, where she will reprise her role as Gina Cowell, Castle's ex-wife and book editor. "Cowell, who last appeared in the show's pilot, turns up because Castle (Nathan Fillion) has fallen behind on his latest book. Gina hopes to get Castle back on track — in more ways than one," writes Bryant. "The old flame will be rekindled, creating some interesting reactions from Beckett (Stana Katic). However, Gina's reappearance may just open both Beckett's and Castle's eyes." (TVGuide.com)

FX has announced that Rescue Me will kick off its penultimate season on June 29th at 10 pm ET/PT and will be followed by the series premiere of the 13-episode Louis C.K. comedy series Louie at 11 pm. "The pairing of Rescue Me and Louie this summer will create an hour and a half of the funniest and most ruthlessly honest comedy and drama about men ever seen on commercial television," said John Landgraf, President and General Manager, FX Networks, in a statement. "We're thrilled by the quality of both these shows." (via press release)

Elsewhere, A&E has renamed its upcoming crime drama Sugarloaf as The Glades and has announced a launch date of Tuesday, July 13th at 10 pm ET/PT. Series stars Matt Passmore, Kiele Sanchez, and Carlos Gomez. (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)

The Onion A.V. Club has a fantastic interview with Party Down star--and soon to be Parks and Recreation ensemble member--Adam Scott. (The Onion's A.V. Club)

ABC is said to be developing a daytime talk show for Tori Spelling, according to Los Angeles Times' Joe Flint. "The program, which is in the very early stages of development, would feature Spelling and a male co-host who would basically serve as Spelling's best friend forever," writes Flint. "The network is looking for a Will & Grace vibe between Spelling and her as-yet-undiscovered BFF. Who knows, maybe finding a co-host can be its own reality show for Spelling." (Los Angeles Times' Company Town)

More restructuring at Starz: Chris Albrecht has brought in John Penney as EVP of strategy and business development, following the appointment of Carmi Zlotnick earlier this week. Both have previously worked with Albrecht at HBO and IMG. (Variety)

Sony Pictures Television has signed a two-year overall deal with Smallville creators Al Gough and Miles Millar, under which they will develop series for broadcast and cable networks. (Hollywood Reporter)

CBS Television Studios has signed separate two-year overall deals with Medium showrunners Craig Sweeny and Robert Doherty. Under the terms of the deal, the two will remain aboard Medium, should CBS renew it for next season, and will develop projects for the studio. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

The Daily Beast: "Damages' Bloody Finale"

Have some answers about last night's season finale of Damages? Wondering just how likely it is that it will serve as the series finale?

Head over to The Daily Beast, where you can read my exclusive day-after interview with Damages creators Glenn Kessler, Daniel Zelman, and Todd A. Kessler, entitled "Damages' Bloody Finale."

In an exclusive Q&A, we discuss the season finale and the series' potential future, as well as get to the bottom of some of this week's extraordinary plot twists (which I won't spoil here).

Head to the comments section to share your thoughts about the finale, whether you think Damages should return, and reactions to the third season as a whole.

How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth: The Season Finale of FX's Damages

"I want my ashes scattered here." - Patty Hewes

In the end, it always circles back around to that dock, the scene for so many significant--and often fatal--encounters within the labyrinthine world of Damages. As it should be really, considering that their relationship is the central dynamic within the series, we're left once more with a conversation between Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) and Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) that signals the closing of one chapter in their lives as they square off on the dock of Patty's beach house.

But a house, after all, is not a home. Patty must contemplate the fact that she might truly be alone in this world after the events of the third season and particularly its finale ("The Next One Goes in Your Throat"), written by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman (whom I speak to exclusively here) and directed by Todd A. Kessler. Her conversation with Ellen is an intriguing one, revealing a rare vulnerability in Patty Hewes as well as the forging of a true connection between the two women.

It's uncertain whether Damages will continue past this season--studio Sony Pictures Television is said to be in talks with DirecTV about coming on to co-finance the series--though I am hoping that a deal can be reached and Ellen and Patty's story can continue. But if for some reason "The Next One Goes in Your Throat" does end up being a series ender for Damages, I'd be satisfied by the fact that we've seen their complex relationship evolve into some very unexpected territory over the last three seasons... and the tantalizing ambiguity with which we leave these ambitious and flawed women might just be the perfect cap to a such compelling and intelligent run.

So what did I think of this week's season finale? Let's discuss.

I thought that the third season of Damages offered a heady mix of a ripped-from-the-headlines case (with the Tobin family's Ponzi scheme) and deeply personal narratives that peeled away the layers of its central characters, revealing the rich, interior lives of Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons, delving deep into their pasts to explain just who they are today.

It's not an easy feat to pull off. Damages is already a complicated narrative, due to its nonlinear format, offering two timeframes--the "future" and the "present day"--to bounce between and typically slotting in some flashbacks as well. This season saw a returned focus to the dream sequences and visions that have populated the drama from the beginning, providing a gateway into the innermost psyches of our characters on both sides of the case.

It's all the more shocking when it occurs within the context of a legal thriller, but let's be honest, Damages has always been more than that, offering one of a nuanced character study of ambition, success, greed, and what it means to need to win at all costs.

Tom. It's the latter element that Patty has fostered within her two former proteges Tom Shayes and Ellen Parsons and which leads directly to Tom's very undignified death in the season finale. Throughout the third season, we've seen a Tom Shayes that's slowly becoming unhinged as he deals with the loss of his financial status, his reputation, and finally his marriage. That Patty's eagle-eyed frequent co-conspirator would be duped by a feeder fund and have his entire extended family's fortune stolen by Louis Tobin sets off a chain reaction that leads Tom to lie to Patty and Ellen and to engage in a deadly alliance that ends with him stabbed, beaten, and drowned.

The circumstances surrounding Tom's death have been vague all season long. The cause of death was drowning but he hadn't been submerged in water long enough to affect his body. And we knew that he didn't die from the stab wounds to his stomach (and one, we learn, to his leg) and learn that it was Zedeck's enforcer Ben who was wielding the knife in this case. It was only a matter of time before Zedeck tweaked to the fact that Leonard and Albert had carried off the theft of a portion of the hidden Tobin money as Leonard was the only other person, besides for Joe and Zedeck himself, who knew of the connection between the funds and the charity. (I still maintain that it would have been a slightly better twist to have those water bottles explained, not by Tom's messiness, but by a waterboarding attempt.)

Ben attacks Tom at the loft, desperate to find Leonard after he and Zedeck became aware of the deal that Tom made with the former Tobin family counsel, stabbing Tom repeatedly in an effort to get him to talk... before Ben is felled by a bullet from Leonard's gun... and then springs back to life to strangle Lenny before getting bludgeoned by Tom with a wrench. Ouch.

That Tom would manage to escape this ordeal, stagger to a pay phone, and call Deb (telling her to take the kids and go anywhere but home) but not go to a hospital or call 911 required a little suspension of disbelief, as he goes home and is then attacked by Joe Tobin, who drowns him in the toilet.

I thought that the scene between them displayed a nice symmetry between the two men: both struggling to uphold their ideals of family, to regain what they lost and what each of them blames the other for. I found it terribly sad that Tom's nobility and his dreams should end up at the receiving end of a fatal swirlie carried out by a mentally deranged Joe Tobin. For all of his plans and his schemes, it all came down to being felled by an intruder in his house, one who saw Tom as the ultimate symbol of everything that had been taken away from him.

As for why Tom ended up in the dumpster behind Lenny's building, that's an easy answer: knowing that Tom and Lenny had a deal, Joe wanted to cast suspicion on Lenny for Tom's murder as he (A) knew the truth about Lenny's identity and (B) knew that Lenny owned the building and that the police would go looking for him.

Louis. That Joe would blame Tom for what had befallen him is the true travesty, as we learn that everything that has happened this season, all of the lies, the murder, the bloodshed has all been, not because of Louis Tobin's greed, but because of a father's love for a son who drunkenly destroyed the family fortune and had no memory of it. The entire Ponzi scheme, as Marilyn tells Joe, was set up because he had messed up and promised investors returns that weren't there, a situation that quickly escalated into outright fraud as Louis and Leonard sought to cover up Joe's mistake by paying off the investors with other clients' money, which in turn lead to the entire Ponzi scheme scenario.

While Joe believes that Louis didn't love him, the reverse is wholly true. Louis' entire life was based around making Joe happy and making decisions that he thought would better his son's life. While Marilyn wants Danielle to terminate her pregnancy, Louis lies to her and allows Danielle to give birth to Tessa and supports them financially for the rest of his life. When he discovers that Joe has destroyed his business, he takes steps to ensure that Joe will never be held responsible for any wrongdoing and goes so far as to kill himself, not to avoid trial, but to avoid any inkling of Joe's malfeasance from ever coming to life.

It's another sacrifice made for an ungrateful child, one unaware of the decisions being made without his knowledge, and it completely reverses the image we've had this entire season of who Louis Tobin was and why he killed himself, willingly giving up his life in order to save his son's time and time again.

Marilyn. Louis always put his family above all else, managing to find a way to secret a fortune for them and still find a way to take the fall for Joe's mistakes, even in death. Yet it's Marilyn who makes the wrong decision, who is unwilling to bend for her child, who becomes far too enamored of her lifestyle and the lure of the money that her husband has hidden away. She argued that Danielle should abort Joe's child and never told him that Danielle had gotten pregnant. Learning about Tessa's existence on Thanksgiving, she was furious that Louis had gone behind her back and had allowed Danielle to give birth to Tessa and supported them. And when the time came when Tessa became a threat to their financial status, Marilyn stood by and let Joe slaughter his own daughter.

Joe doesn't see Marilyn's decisions as being in his own best interests, at concealing his own wrongdoing for so long. He tells her that she is dead to him and will never see her grandson again. And she doesn't: after watching old home movies of her, Louis, and Joe during simpler, happier times, she throws herself into the East River. (Mystery solved!)

The Bag. Likewise, we learned that Leonard stole Ellen's Chanel handbag from her car in order to place the agreement and evidence in her bag (placing it in the beater car), rather than leave it with Tom and Patty, whom he did not trust entirely. But while Leonard looks to double-cross Tom, fate intervenes when homeless man Barry steals the bag (and it's contents) from the car. Tom, after being stabbed, later sees that Barry has the handbag and touches it with his bloody hand (leaving behind Ben's blood), making him promise that he'll get it back to Ellen.

Circling back around once Ellen learns that the handbag was found in Barry's possession, she's able to get that envelope that Louis had initially intended Patty Hewes to have (it now has Patty's name crossed out and Ellen's written in). Which is rather ironic, as all of this could have been avoided had (A) Joe gone to see Louis when he asked him to and (B) not taken the envelope from beside Louis' body in the first place.

The Car Accident. As I predicted last week, you can never get away with pulling one over on Patty Hewes. Jill's naivete was staggering; she rooked Patty out of half a million dollars, which she then spent on Michael with no intention of leaving him. If she thought that she could get away with it or that Patty would just let it slide, she was out of her mind. I knew that the writers would do something with the chromosome test that Michael gave Patty last week but didn't think that it would have the date of conception on it... a fact that Patty was able to use to her advantage, having Jill arrested for statutory rape right out of the very car that she had given Michael.

Patty, like Louis Tobin, made a decision that she believed was for the best interests of her child. She saw Jill as a failed mother, a criminal, and a lowlife who would drag Michael down with her, who had derailed his eduction and stolen his future. And, sitting across from her in the police station, she tells Jill that she will give birth in prison, that Michael will get full custody, and that she will make sure that he has help raising his child.

And, in an act of hubris, Patty seizes ownership of their apartment and the cherry red Jaguar that Jill bought for Michael. It is, after all, the very car that Patty is driving when she's struck by the hit-and-run driver.

As soon as Ellen encountered Michael at Patty's apartment (after driving there in the beater car that Tom purchased), I knew that the driver had to be Michael. Leaving the keys in the car, Ellen takes a phone call after discovering that the money that Leonard gave them as proof of the Tobin's fraud was in fact, well, fraudulent, and the car is driven off by someone unseen, someone who floors it and crashes it right into Patty Hewes.

But it's not a mystery to Patty who is driving the car, despite her testimony to the police. She sees Michael fleeing the scene and she knows just how much he sought to do her grievous harm, perhaps even kill her. Her decisions may have been with Michael's best interests at heart but they were just that: her decisions. She has, in a single day, destroyed his happiness and thrown his life once more into chaos.

And he is his mother's son, after all. He knows a thing or two about payback. Their collision is the ultimate dust-up, the row to end all rows, a permanent fracture in their already tenuous relationship.

The Horse. Patty is the first to admit that she hasn't been the perfect wife or the perfect mother. But she has been defined not by her maternal instincts but by her drive and ambition, her need to win, to knock down the bullies, and achieve victory and justice, using whatever means necessary. But her defining moment came in 1972 as a pregnant woman about to become a mother. Told by her doctor that her pregnancy was at risk and would have to remain in bed, Patty deliberately sought to terminate her own pregnancy so she could get out of her small town and claim her fortune in New York as a lawyer.

Julia's stillbirth wasn't an accident or a cruel twist of fate at all, but a deliberate escape plan for Patty Hewes. Walking far into the country, she happens upon a horse farm, where she encounters not only the horse (the one seen in her visions) but Julian Decker himself, here not a musician or an architect but a handyman who asks her if she is ready for motherhood, saying it's a huge responsibility. That Julian isn't her true love but rather someone she encounters at a formative moment is critical: her visions in the present day of him are echoes of a heinous act that she would rather forget. His constant reappearances, the ghostly visitations, and his promises to tear down the walls are manifestations of her guilt, her horror, the (literal) blood on her hands.

It's the thing she can't escape: she murdered her own daughter, just as Joe did his. And then she nearly repeated history by having Ellen killed. While Ellen isn't a replacement for Julia, her hysteria over arranging the hit on Ellen lead to Julia's grave at the end of Season One, a place that she hadn't returned since she left her stillborn baby behind. It's a return to the metaphoric crossroads, a reminder of the price she paid for her success, the bodies that lay in her wake.

Arthur Frobisher. Frobisher is one again undone by his vanity. After spilling his secrets to Terry (who went and told Patty), Frobisher is "visited" by Ray Fiske in the nightclub. It's his last chance to confess but he fails to take it. Ellen finally gets to see Wes, who fills her in on everything: that Rick Messer murdered David under orders from Frobisher and that he sought to protect Ellen and killed Messer to do so. Despite the fact that Ellen says that she's let go of all of it, Wes wants to see justice done for Ellen. He confronts Frobisher in his car and, at gunpoint, forces him to confess that he killed David. Wes then turns them both in, sacrificing his freedom in order to obtain justice for Ellen. It's a noble gesture that's wholly surprising, given Wes' propensity for violence. I thought he was going to shoot Frobisher but instead he looks towards the justice of the law, rather than man.

Confession. Confession is also on the minds of Patty and Joe. Patty turns off the intercom while sitting down with Joe at the police station and tells Ellen that they talked about confession. But what does she confess? The truth about Julia's death? Her attempt to kill Ellen? Or something else entirely? It's left deliberately unclear just what they talk about but, whatever it is, it's enough to get Joe to confess to killing Tom. Patty, Tom, and Ellen managed to take down the Tobin family in the end, but at a particularly high price: the life of one of their own.

Patty and Ellen. Ultimately, Patty and Ellen find themselves once more on the dock by Patty's beach house, having buried Tom Shayes. Patty mentions that she wants to be cremated and her ashes scattered there. It's a surprising conversation that's rooted in the intimacy that these two have formed over the last three seasons. After all, it's a conversation that one might typically have with a child. But Patty doesn't have children, not anymore. Julia is dead and her relationship with her son is forever tainted. She has lost Uncle Pete and Tom, her entire family. Ellen is, really, all that she has left now: the promise of the future, an emotional connection but one that's already been tested in unusual ways.

And Ellen wants to know if all of that has been worth it. If Patty's success was worth the blood, sweat, and tears that paved the way to this very moment in time. For Ellen, like Patty before her, is at a crossroads. She wants a family, she wants some semblance of normalcy in her life. She has three options: she can find work at another law firm, she can return and work for Patty, or she can quit the law altogether.

But it's that question of the price of all of this that hangs in the air between them. The long silence that follows is sharp and brutal as Patty can't bring herself to answer the question, denying the audience any sort of rubric for understanding her. There is no right reply but at the same time Patty's answer isn't vital to Ellen, not anymore. She walks away, determined to find her own answer to that question, choosing her own path, not Patty's, as she chooses a direction to leave from that crossroads.

One can only hope that these two find a way back to each other and that Damages continues for us to see just what path each of them chooses.

What did you think of the season finale? Does it work as a series finale, if Damages doesn't return? Would you be heartbroken if this is truly the end for Damages? Hoping that DirecTV coughs up some cash to keep it alive? Confused by anything? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Channel Surfing: AMC Sets Mad Men Return Date, Scott Porter Returns to FNL, Laurence Fishburne Staying Put at CSI, Lost, and More

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing.

Mark your calendars, Mad Men fans: Season Four of the period drama is set to launch on Sunday, July 25th at 10 pm ET/PT while new drama Rubicon will launch with two back-to-back episodes on Sunday, August 1st at 8 pm before it moves into its regular 9 pm timeslot the following week. "Sunday nights are where you find the best of premium television so it should be no surprise that AMC -- the home of premium television on basic cable -- is stacking our original dramas there as well," said Charlie Collier, president of AMC, in a statement. "We welcome back Mad Men and look forward to introducing Rubicon all on Sunday nights this summer." Rubicon stars James Badge Dale (The Pacific), Dallas Roberts (Walk the Line), Jessica Collins (The Nine), Christopher Evan Welch (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Lauren Hodges (Law & Order) with Arliss Howard (The Sandlot) and Miranda Richardson (Sleepy Hollow). (via press release)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Scott Porter will be reprising his role as Jason Street in Season Five of NBC/DirecTV's Friday Night Lights. Porter, who will appear in the seventh episode of the season, was last seen during Season Three of the drama series. He'll be joined by fellow former stars Taylor Kitsch and Jesse Plemons and possibly other ex-Friday Night Lights cast members for what is likely the series' last season. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd is reporting that Laurence Fishburne has renewed his deal and will remain as the lead of CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation through the 2010-11 season. "In the upcoming Season 10 finale, Fishburne will face off against two serial killers in a battle of wits that will conclude in a life-and-death cliffhanger," writes Hibberd. "One villain is played by Matt Ross (Big Love) in a guest-starring role. The other is Bill Irwin, who reprises his role as Nate Haskell, the Dick and Jane Killer. Also in talks to guest star in the finale, veteran actor Marty Ingels." (Hollywood Reporter)

SPOILER! TV Guide Magazine talks to Lost and Supernatural star Mark Pellegrino, whose enigmatic character on Lost, Jacob, is set to get some major reveals in the May 11th episode ("Across the Sea"). "Jacob has a lot of darkness and corners we haven’t explored yet, so the differences between him and Lucifer are not as much as you would think,” Pellegrino told Keck. "With these archetypal characters, the boundary between good and evil becomes blurry. Jacob’s on a mission. It’s your judgment as to whether he’s good or bad." (TV Guide Magazine)

BBC America has announced the launch of Season Three of comedy Gavin and Stacey, set for Friday, May 14th at 9 pm ET/PT, the much-delayed premiere of Season Two of Ashes to Ashes on Tuesday, May 1st at 10 pm ET/PT, and the third season premiere of comedy Not Going Out on Friday, May 14th at 9:40 pm ET/PT. (via press release)

Brannon Braga (24) has come aboard the Steven Spielberg and Peter Chernin-executive produced FOX drama Terra Nova as showrunner/executive producer, according to Deadline's Nellie Andreeva, who reports that the project--revolving around a family from 100 years in the future who return to a pre-historic Earth overrun with dinosaurs--has been given an unofficial pickup, with 13 episodes ordered. (Deadline.com)

Meanwhile, Michael Ausiello is reporting that Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler has been made a "very lucrative offer" to star in Terra Nova. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Gil McKinney (ER) has been cast in a recurring role on Friday Night Lights, where he is set to appear in at least six episodes as a married graduate teaching assistant in the college history department who falls into a relationship with Aimee Teegarden's Julie. In other casting news, Aisha Tyler and Scott Foley (The Unit) have been cast in CBS comedy pilot Open Books; Foley--who is a regular on ABC drama pilot True Blue--will guest star. (Deadline.com)

TVGuide.com's Natalie Abrams has an interview with V star Logan Huffman about why his character, Tyler Evans, is about to change and why he's the real hero of the series. "There is something special going on with him," said Huffman of Tyler. "To be honest, people don't realize it because it's right in front of their face, but Tyler is a hero. Have you read The Hero with a Thousand Faces? He's the only character that fits every criteria. Almost every famous character does not know who his father is. Luke Skywalker! Those characters have huge hearts, but not much of a brain, and through pain they gain a real soul." (TVGuide.com)

David Hasselhoff is returning to CBS' daytime soap The Young and The Restless after an almost three decades-long absence beginning in June. (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Donnie Wahlberg (Boomtown) has been cast in a two-episode story arc on TNT's upcoming drama series Rizzoli & Isles, opposite Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander. He'll play Sgt. Joey Grant, Rizzoli's childhood friend who now serves as her boss. Series premieres in July. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

FOX has given a pilot presentation order to animated comedy Heel about "a man and his sociopathic dog who is jealous of his owner's family," from writer/executive producer Chris Cluess, Reveille, and Machinima. (Variety)

Elsewhere, FOX renewed Cops for a 23rd season. (Hollywood Reporter)

The premiere of Matt Smith-led Doctor Who on BBC America scored an average of 1.2 million total viewers, a record-setting telecast for the digital cabler, as well as a record for adults 25-54 (0.9). (Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)

TNT has shot a pilot for reality adventure project The Great Escape from executive producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, according to Deadline's Nellie Andreeva. "The show, which has a MacGyver-flavor to it, puts ordinary people in extraordinary movie-like situations challenging them to escape using only their everyday skills, team work and what they can find around them," writes Andreeva. Project shouldn't be confused with Michael Bay and Magical Elves' own adventure project, One Way Out, which is being shopped to networks. (Deadline.com)

Starz has begun to reorganize its management under recently installed president/CEO Chris Albrecht, with EVP of development Bill Hamm now out at the network and several others expected to receive pink slips. Former HBO executive Carmi Zlotnik is expected to join the pay cabler. (Variety)

Elsewhere, The Wrap's Josef Adalian takes a look at why Albrecht is shaking up the management structure at Starz and offers some rationale as to why Hamm may have been axed. (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

Warner Bros. Television has signed a two-year overall deal with Fringe executive producer Jeff Pinkner, under which he will remain on board the FOX sci-fi drama as co-showrunner and will develop new projects for the studio. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Stars in Their Eyes: The Darkness Closes In on Ashes to Ashes

Looks like Ray finally got his heart.

In the shared stories of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, DI Ray Carling (Dean Andrews) has been a stalwart member of Gene Hunt's team but never the focus of any particular storyline. That decision has granted Ray the illusion of being what he appears on the surface: a misogynistic lackey who is all too willing to follow Gene's instructions and make trouble for Sam Tyler or Alex Drake.

But this week's fantastic episode of BBC One's Ashes to Ashes, written by Julie Rutterford and directed by Alrick Riley, shaded in Ray's backstory, rendering a tragic air to his character that was both emotionally wrenching and wholly unexpected.

Thoughout the five seasons that comprise Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, Ray hasn't been the type of character who openly discusses his feelings or his past, yet this week's installment featured a major moment of catharsis for Ray as well as a scene that offered a surprising act of tenderness towards Alex.

Ray's backstory played out against a series of arson cases on the days leading up to the 1983 General Election. Just as last week's case of the week offered a rubric by which to better understand Montserrat Lombard's Shaz, this week's episode did the same for Ray Carling, granting the audience a prism through which to look at Ray's actions over the last few seasons.

Warning: spoilers abound for US viewers who haven't seen Season Two of Ashes to Ashes.

Ray's dogged quest for the approval of Gene Hunt has been at the heart of his character since he was first introduced on Life on Mars, and it's why Sam and Alex both served as such a thorn in his side, freely receiving the praise from the guv that he believed was rightfully his as he toiled away in semi-obscurity, only really receiving Gene's attention when he did something wrong.

Of course, this week's episode found Ray going to some great lengths to earn the praise of Gene Hunt, entering a burning building to place his own life at risk to rescue someone inside... and then leading him too to become trapped. Fortunately, he's rescued by fireman Andy Smith (Joe Absolom), a shell-shocked Falklands vet who quickly becomes the prime suspect in the serial arson investigation, as the fires seem to have one common link, a military-grade explosive trigger of which only a former soldier would have been aware.

While the case focuses on the team's efforts to prove Andy's guilt, the case uncovers a series of uncomfortable truths about Ray's life and the shame he's carried around for years. Finally catching Andy as he attempts to set himself and his adulterous wife ablaze, Ray manages to talk Andy down and hand over his lighter.

Yes, you read that correctly: Ray.

In previous circumstances, the one doing the talking would likely have been Alex Drake herself, but her earlier talk with Ray awakens something within him and he manages to get Andy to connect with him by finally unleashing the guilt and shame that he has kept pent up inside of him for years, talking about how he was so terrified of following in his father and grandfather's footsteps and entering the army, so scared of getting shot and killed, that he threw away his interview by drinking himself into a stupor the night before the interview and missed it.

Ray talks about his father's gutting disappointment in him, and his own shame, a feeling that he's been carrying around for so many years and which explains his own desperate need to gain Gene's approval, to replace that which he never got from his own father. He's successful and gaining Andy's trust, getting him to hand over the Union Jack cigarette lighter (nice payoff with the pink lighter) and end the standoff.

And just when we thought Ray couldn't get any more in touch with his feelings, he plants a sweet kiss on Alex's cheek, the first really emotional connection between the two Detective Inspectors.

It's a tender moment that follows up his emotional outpouring in front of Andy and the team. Andrews manages to pull off Ray's vulnerability without eliminating his masculine machismo, summing up the way that most sons spend their entire lives searching in vain for approval from their fathers, literal or figurative. It's a moment of precise clarity for Ray Carling and his actions these past few seasons, beautifully played by Andrews with grace and humility.

Ray finally gets the three little words he's been aching for these many years from Gene Hunt himself, who pats Ray on the back and then says, "Well done, Ray." It's the approval he's been so desperate for and he's pulled back once more into Gene's orbit, his claws firmly sunk in Ray. Just as Gene offered Shaz precisely what she needed--a shot at the future, at belonging, and fulfilling her dreams--he does the same for Ray... just as, rather hauntingly, the darkness closes in around Ray and the familiar refrain of Bowie's "Life on Mars" plays. Hmmm, another sign that Jim Keats has failed to lure someone away from Gene's side, perhaps? A testament of their solidarity?

(Looks like we'll get a chance to see if Chris chooses to follow the same path on the next episode, if it follows the same pattern.)

Then there's the matter of 6-6-20, the numbers that seem to be following Alex as closely as the specter of the murdered young copper. At the end of last week's episode, we caught a close-up glimpse of the copper's epaulet, which contained the numbers 6-6-20... and, this week, Andy kept repeating his identification number over and over again, a sign to Alex.

The 6-6-20, of course, refers to the officer's badge number and is a means of Alex tracking him down in the old personnel files. Just who is he, though, and why does he keep appearing to Alex? Why was he murdered and his body dumped into a shallow grave that lay undiscovered for many years? And how is he connected to Gene Hunt?

Is he, as I believe, another Visitor from the other world? (Perhaps the first?) Here's what we known: He, like Sam and Alex, is a cop. He's appears to be connected to Gene Hunt in some fashion, just as Sam and Alex were. Through some means, he ended up dead, and half his face blown off and disfigured. Jim Keats indicated that Gene has some skeletons in his closet and seemed to indicate that people near Gene ended up dead. So did Gene kill Officer 6-6-20? Or is someone else eliminating the Visitors?

And why does the officer's corpse end up dumped near that house with that most peculiar weathervane? (The one that I discussed last week, which seems to contain a symbolic reference towards the Wicked Witch of the West.) Is a clue to his death? Or to the killer?

This week's episode seemed to offer a hell of a lot of fire imagery, particularly swirling around Jim Keats himself. There was a gorgeous shot of Jim enveloped by the smoke from the polling station fire that seemed to set him up as some sort of malevolently evil figure. And there were two nice Oz shoutouts this week with the appearance of the bicycle (Miss Gulch's perhaps) and the stacked case files that Keats assembled in his little office, little shoeboxes that looked a hell of a lot like the Yellow Brick Road.

Coincidence? Or subtle shout-outs to that great story of the imaginary lands that we all contain inside of us? Lands that, once accessed, are just as real as our own universes, comprised of our fears and dreams, allegories of hope and death, of magic and darkness.

Lastly, there's the recurring pattern of the night sky, which seems to be winding its way through this season. Last week, Alex followed Shaz from the office and, exiting a narrow alley, was suddenly cast up in an all-consuming vision of the stars in the sky. This week, Shaz shared with Alex that she too witnessed the same phenomena: looking outside for a split-second, she suddenly saw the stars, a creepy shared hallucination. But what does it mean? It's not the first time that Alex's imagery has ended up inside Shaz's mind. Back in Season One, as she lay dying, Shaz witnessed the Pierrot Clown, seeing it as a personification of Death itself.

So why do these two continue to share the same vision of darkness? How is it connected to the mystery of Officer 6-6-20? Taking a cue from Shaz (who had scribbled the stars), Alex draws some random patterns of stars on a piece of paper and then is able to connect them into a pattern representing 6-6-20 just as the disfigured copper appears before her.

I'm still trying to connect the dots myself but I cannot wait to see just what new clues turn up in Friday's episode...

What did you think of this week's installment? Did you think that Dean Andrews did a smashing job? Curious about the link between the stars, the darkness, the dead copper, Keats, and Gene? Got any theories about just what is going on? Head to the comments section to discuss.

On the next episode of Ashes to Ashes, Gene is determined to bring a drug-dealer to book, and his actions compromise the life of Louise Gardner (Zoe Telford), a detective who has been working deep undercover.

The Girl Who Waited: "The Eleventh Hour" on Doctor Who

The Doctor might travel through time and space in his trademark TARDIS, a little blue police call box, but the true time machine is Doctor Who itself.

When the series truly clicks, it functions as a way to travel back to our own childhoods, to recapture that feeling of awe and surprise that are unfortunately usually lost on the long road to adulthood. What Doctor Who can do is transport us back to our younger selves, to a time where we saw a very different world: one that's full of possibility and magic.

I thought that the opening sequence of this weekend's season premiere of Doctor Who ("The Eleventh Hour"), written by Steven Moffat and gorgeously directed by Adam Smith, managed to achieve just that as it introduced both the Eleventh incarnation of the Time Lord known only as the Doctor (Matt Smith, taking over for David Tennant) and his latest companion, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), the girl who waited.

Arriving to seemingly rescue Amy, the only Scottish girl in a small English village ("rubbish," she calls it) from her mundane existence, the Doctor discovers a crack in Amy's wall, the escape of an alien known as Prisoner Zero, and the fact that, even for an experienced traveler such as he, Time itself has a mind of its own.

What did I think of "The Eleventh Hour"? Let's discuss.

(You can read my spoiler-light advance review of the first two episodes here and find a post collecting all of my cast and crew interviews and features here.)

Amy Pond is truly The Girl Who Waited. Little Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood) has her heart broken when the Doctor promises to return in five minutes and waits in vain for him to return from his brief jaunt. I loved the whimsy of their early scenes together as Amelia looks to find some food that the Doctor can stomach, from bacon and beans to apples and bread and butter, before the Doctor settles on fish fingers and custard. The appearance of the TARDIS in Amelia's back garden, the seeming answers to her prayers, gives the entire sequence an aura of fairy tale, with the shot of Amelia making her way through the "woods" of her garden heightening this sensation.

But, despite the Doctor's promise (one that clearly echoes of that of her dead parents), he doesn't turn up in five minutes and Amelia gets her heart broken as she sits waiting for him until morning. When the Doctor does return, he discovers that twelve years have gone by and Amelia has grown into an adult, Amy, who works as a kissogram and doesn't have time for the raggedy Doctor that she dreamed about as a child.

I thought that Smith and Gillan had the sort of natural chemistry that is impossible to manufacture for the screen. Gillan's Amy seems to be the perfect combination of awe-struck wonder, modern moxie, and adult sensuality, representing perhaps the best possible combination of aspects of Rose, Martha, and Donna. Their own newness--Amy as a traveler and Eleven in his new body--creates a feeling of instant kinship, as those each is someone uncertain of their first steps.

Together, they solve the mystery of Prisoner Zero, a pan-dimensional entity that has taken up residence in Amy's house these past twelve years, hiding in a room that's hidden by a perception filter. I thought that Zero was a hell of a lot more terrifying when he couldn't be seen. I did like the idea of him transforming himself into the coma patient and his dog, but I thought that the actual physical and serpentine appearance of Prisoner Zero wasn't particularly fearsome at all. (In fact, the CGI was pretty shoddy, rendering his snakelike form a little humorous in the end.)

But the central thrust of the episode--will the Doctor and Amy, with the help of Amy's boyfriend Rory (Arthur Darvill), be able to capture Prisoner Zero and stop the Atraxi from incinerating the planet--wasn't really the important bit. Instead, it's an introduction to the Doctor, the set-up of Amy's twee universe and her friends and family, and an opportunity for the Doctor (and Matt Smith) to step up and claim the mantle of Time Lord.

It's this last bit that gives "The Eleventh Hour" some heft and grit. Determining just what this persona will look like (at least in terms of wardrobe), the Doctor demands that the Atraxi return to confront him and never return to Earth again. Scanning the Doctor, the Atraxi see all ten incarnations of the Doctor before Matt Smith steps through the blue-hued image to announce himself as Eleven. It pays homage to the actors that have come before while establishing Smith as the latest in a long line of Doctors, bow-tie and all.

Likewise, the episode is also about change: as Smith completes his regeneration, so too does the TARDIS itself, which rebuilds itself in a new and whimsically loopy style (while on the outside we get the nifty St. John Ambulance logo), while it creates a new sonic screwdriver for the Doctor, one with a green light that's symbolically different to his destroyed silver-and-blue model. It's the little touches such as those that display that there's a new Doctor and his accoutrements have been updated similarly.

I'm not one who believes that it's an either/or proposition when it comes to the Doctor. You can both love David Tennant and Matt Smith; they're not mutually exclusive. I was terrified initially by the thought of someone else stepping into Tennant's shoes and taking over as the Doctor but this episode quieted my concerns altogether. Smith is a deliciously quirky Doctor, all gangly arms and squinting eyes, fire and passion, ice and logic, all at the time time.

He gets one last chance to reward Amy for her waiting and blows it once again: a quick trip to the Moon to break in the TARDIS results in another two years gone by for poor Amy Pond. But this time, she gets the chance to claim her reward, an opportunity to see the stars with the Doctor, to experience the impossible and the unimaginable. It might be a change of pace from her "boring" life in a sleepy little English village but it's also an escape route: Amy, you see, is about to be married in the morning.

Just who Amy is meant to be marrying is a mystery. Is it her boyfriend Rory, whom she was dating two years ago? Or is it her friend Jeff (Tom Hopper), whom Rory had expressed some jealousy toward? Or someone entirely different? Hmmm... (FYI, Steven Moffat wouldn't say who Amy is marrying when asked at the BAFTA/LA event I was at on Thursday night, saying that the first season would answer that question.)

And then there's the beginning of the season-long arc. Just what are the cracks in the skin of time of space? When did they begin to form and what is causing them? What does Prisoner Zero mean when he says, "the Pandorica will open [and] silence will fall"? Looks like Moffat has already engineered this season's overarching mystery and I, for one, can't wait to see what happens next.

All in all, I thought that the first episode set up the dynamic between the Doctor and Amy and introduced the Doctor in a compelling and tragic way that shaped Amy's life from a formative age. It's an intriguing origin story for the Doctor's companion, one who hasn't bumped into him but rather one who has spend the days and nights of her childhood dreaming of the man who will rescue her. Little does she know that he'll be placing her in danger right from the start...

I'm curious to hear what you thought of Number Eleven, new companion Amy Pond, and the first episode under the reins of new executive producer/head writer Steven Moffat.

Did Smith's performance win you over? Are you still missing David Tennant's Tenth Doctor? What did you think of Amy Pond? And her, er, predicament, as revealed by the final shot of the episode?

And, most importantly, will you tune in again next week?

Talk back here.

Next week on Doctor Who ("The Beast Below"), The Doctor and Amy travel to Britain of the future, where people live in a giant spaceship; Amy comes across the terrifying Smilers.

The White Tulip: Forgiveness on Fringe

I'm looking for a sign of forgiveness, a specific one, a white tulip." - Walter Bishop

I've gotten more than a few emails, comments, and questions on Twitter asking what happened to my write-up of Thursday evening's transcendent episode of Fringe ("White Tulip"). Due to circumstances beyond my control (namely being out both Thursday and Friday evenings), I didn't get a chance to watch this week's episode until the weekend, a real rarity in the Televisionary household.

But now that I've seen the episode, written by J.H. Wyman and Jeff Vlaming and directed by Jeffrey G. Hunt, I thought I'd weigh in on what was a remarkable installment of a season of Fringe that has found its true format: intense mysteries of the week that are grounded by searing and powerful emotional arcs involving the central characters.

I've been shouting at the rooftops that John Noble deserves an Emmy nomination for his amazing work this season as Walter Bishop, who has deepened and grown in some very expected ways over the last few episodes. While we had believed that Walter had stolen another world's Peter to erase his grief, the truth behind his actions were far more complicated, proving once again that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It's a similar trap that enmeshes MIT professor Alastair Peck (Peter Weller): a man so determined to save the life of his dead fiancee Arlette (Kristen Ross) that he's willing to do the unthinkable: sacrifice his humanity and his body in order to recreate a temporal pocket that will allow him to travel back in time and prevent the car accident that took her life.

It's a noble gesture and speaks volumes about the way that guilt and grief, those twin specters, can make us step over lines that we should never cross. While the mystery of the week deals with the Fringe team attempting to stop Peck time and time again (while beginning to experience deja vu as they repeat the same actions, each time with slightly different results), it's really the story of Walter Bishop's guilt. He's torn between telling Peter the truth about his identity and risk losing him or continuing to lie for the rest of his life.

It's that loss that propels both Peck to risk the lives of numerous people to travel back in time and Walter to rip open the fabric separating the two worlds. Both desperately want to find a way to save the lives of the people they loved and they are willing to sacrifice everything--even sanity--in order to bring them back.

But actions have consequences. Thanks to help from Walter, Peck is able to travel to that empty field with the red balloon (a gorgeous visual that's all the more creepy when he kills every crop within a specific radius) and apologize to Arlette, telling her that he loves her, just as a truck careens right into her car. Arlette is still killed but this time Peck dies with her. Does Walter's warning to him prevent him from saving Arlette? Or does he realize that he can't without altering the universe? Is it better just to have one last moment together, even if it means his own death?

Walter may have saved Peter from death but he still ended up losing him all the same. After getting a second chance with his son, is the truth worth the risk of losing him all over again? He writes Peter a letter confessing all, a letter that twice ends up nearly discovered by Peter aboard the Mass Transit train as they investigate the mysterious deaths of the passengers.

Deep inside Walter knows that he has to tell Peter the truth. Freud would say that there is no such think as a mistake: that subconsciously Walter wanted Peter to find the letter yet couldn't bring himself to give it to him. But Peter doesn't find the letter each time, narrowly escaping the truth about himself.

But after one last time around the timeloop, Walter decides to burn the letter in the fireplace. Is it enough that he wrote out those painful words? Or is it that he knows that if he's going to confess to Peter it needs to be face to face instead of via a letter? Will the truth set him free or just make things even worse?

His brief encounter with Peck sets in motion a moment of profound transcendence for Walter Bishop. Telling Peck that his experiences have reawakened a belief in the divine, he is looking for a sign that will prove that God has forgiven him for his actions: a specific sign that is so unlikely that it will prove beyond a doubt that he is worthy of grace: a white tulip.

Tormented by his own fate, Peck offers Walter something that no one else can: forgiveness. Acting as Walter's confessor, he arranges to have Walter receive an anonymous letter on the very day that he writes that letter to Peter. With no return address and no message, it contains a single card with a drawing of a white tulip.

It's a small moment but a gut-wrenchingly powerful one. Noble perfectly captures the mixture of sadness, relief, and shock running concurrently within Walter upon seeing that image.

It's additionally a sign that Fringe is becoming aware of just how to structure these episodes. I don't mind that the series isn't inherently hyper-serialized by nature if these types of installments--ones that deal with the procedural and the emotional--continue to define this season and the next. While the plots may be designed to shock, surprise, or scare, it's the characters--and their inherent imperfections--that keep us all coming back week after week.

This week on Fringe ("The Man From the Other Side"), the team investigates the murder of two teenagers found at an abandoned warehouse with three puncture wounds to the soft palate, a trademark of the shape-shifters; discovering a shape-shifting embryo, Walter returns to the lab to conduct further analysis; Olivia and Peter head to Massive Dynamic for answers; Peter reveals a family secret to Olivia as Walter struggles to recall what Newton knows about "building a door."

Channel Surfing: Matthew Weiner Wants Six Seasons of Mad Men, More Breaking Bad (?), Lost, Doctor Who, and More

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing.

Looks like we're at the halfway point for AMC's Mad Men, at least according to creator Matthew Weiner. Speaking at last week's National Association of Broadcasters, Weiner stated that he would like to wrap up the period drama after six seasons as he couldn't see the series, produced by Lionsgate Television, going past that point. [Editor: Personally, I think that this is a good thing as an end date would allow Weiner to not only go out on a high note but begin planning the back half of the series' run while knowing just when it will end, much like Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had requested an end date for Lost/] (The Weekly Blend via The Wrap's Weekly Blend)

Elsewhere at AMC, The Wrap's Josef Adalian is reporting that Breaking Bad is likely to be back on the cabler for a fourth season, following news that executive producers were told that the series is ready for a renewal. However, there is currently no deal in place between studio Sony Pictures Television and AMC. While neither side would comment, Adalian writes that "all parties are hopeful [a deal] will happen." (The Wrap's TVMoJoe)

Looks like some lucky fans will be able to say goodbye to Lost in style, with ABC preparing several official Lost-related events next month in Los Angeles and New York. Carlton Cuse spilled the info on the May 13th Lost Live: The Final Celebration event at UCLA's Royce Hall last week on Twitter, which is believed to be a fundraiser that will feature an advance screening of the series' penultimate episode and a live orchestra performance, conducted by Michael Giacchino, of music from the series. ABC has yet to announce this or several other events that are being planned for Los Angeles and New York in May, including two overseen by Paul Scheer and Upright Citizens Brigade for May 22nd. (Variety)

TV Guide Magazine, meanwhile, has the "final Lost cast photo," which depicts the cast of Lost among the wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815 as the actors are asked where they would like to see their characters end up once Lost wraps its run next month. (via Hollywood Reporter's The Live Feed)

Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor will be appearing in two episodes of Doctor Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures, both of which will be written by former Doctor Who head writer/executive producer Russell T Davies. The move marks the first time that Davies will have written for Smith's Doctor. The two-parter, part of the series' fourth season which is set to air this fall on CBBC, finds the Doctor reunited with former companion Jo Grant (Katy Manning)--last seen in 1973--and Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) herself, as well. "It's a fantastic script and I can't wait to work with another Doctor and hope Matt has fun with us," said Sladen. "I've known Katy for ages and I am delighted to be working with her. I last met her in LA but this time we will be in Cardiff. LA was good but Cardiff is better."

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Aaron Ashmore (Smallville) has been cast in a recurring role on USA drama series In Plain Sight this season. Ashmore will play "the smart yet rough-around-the-edges long-lost half brother to Mary (Mary McCormack) and Brandi (Nichole Hiltz)" who looks to reconcile with his siblings. He's slated to first appear in the back half of Season Three. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Hollywood Reporter's James Hibberd is reporting that CBS is has shot a pilot presentation for a hidden camera comedy series WTF! (that would be, ahem, Wow That's Funny!) with Drew Carey. According to Hibberd, "the project combines a hidden-camera show with flash-mob tactics as the group pulls benevolent pranks on deserving citizens." Project is produced by Raquel Prods and RelativityReal, with Jay Blumenfeld, Tony Marsh, Charlie Todd, Drew Carey, and Tom Forman serving as executive producers. (Hollywood Reporter)

TVGuide.com's Adam Bryant talks to Stana Katic about tonight's episode of ABC's Castle, in which Katic's Kate Beckett gets a love interest, who just happens to be played by Battlestar Galactica's Michael Trucco. "It's really wonderful to have the opportunity to show a more sensual, romantic side to Beckett," Katic told Bryant. "I think it's great having someone like Tom Denning who is genuinely interested in Kate and is formidable enough to become a bit of a competitor for Castle... It forces Castle to have some introspection as to why he hasn't approached her yet in that way and what's going on with his relationships and past romantic experiences. He's had a number of girls swing in and swing out. So, this is an opportunity for us as an audience to delve deeper into something he may not realize he's missing." (TVGuide.com)

Casting tidbits: Henry Zebrowski (Michael & Michael Have Issues) has been cast in NBC comedy pilot Beach Lane. Elsewhere, James Carpinello (The Punisher) will recur on CBS drama series The Good Wife. (Hollywood Reporter)

TV Land has ordered nine episodes of comedy Retired at 35, starring Johnathan McClain and George Segal. Series, from executive producers Chris Case, Michael Hanel, and Mindy Schultheis, will premiere in first quarter 2011. (Variety)

Warner Bros. Television has signed a blind pilot script deal with Canadian writer Rob Sheridan (Corner Gas), under which he will move to Los Angeles this summer to develop a half-hour comedy for the studio. (Hollywood Reporter)

HBO Documentary Films has picked up US television rights to Alex Gibney's documentary My Trip to Al-Qaeda, which it will air this fall. (Variety)

Cybill Shepherd has been cast opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt in an untitled Lifetime original telepic, where she will play Hewitt's mother, a waxer at a women's beauty salon who discovers that her daughter has become a prostitute in order to pay her bills and keep her family in their home. (Hollywood Reporter)

VH1 is set to launch a staggering 44 series, each of which will fall into the cabler's newly devised programming hubs: music, celebrity and "real life stories." (Hollywood Reporter)

Marjorie Cohn has been promoted to president, original programming and development, of Nickelodeon/MTV Networks Kids and Family Group. She continues to report to Cyma Zarghami. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Countdown to Doctor Who: Eleventh Hour is Upon Us!

"Trust me. I'm the Doctor."

With just a few hours to go before the US premiere of Doctor Who, now starring Matt Smith and Karen Gillan and written by Steven Moffat, I thought I'd remind you one last time to tune in tonight to BBC America when the Doctor regenerates and sets out for a whole new series of adventures among the stars and the sands of the hourglass.

You can read my spoiler-light review of the first two episodes of Doctor Who here, as well as my feature article for The Daily Beast about the Eleventh Doctor, as I interview Matt Smith and Steven Moffat about what's coming up for the Doctor, the challenges and joys of working with a character that continues to endure, romance, wardrobe choices, and much more.

And, if that weren't enough Who goodness, I've got the outtakes from my feature piece, presented on this site as two Q&A-style interviews, one with Matt Smith and the other with executive producer/head writer Steven Moffat.

I'll be curious to see what you think of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor and Karen Gillan as new companion Amy Pond. I had the chance to spend some time with both the other night over cocktails and can say that they're both as wonderfully kind and magical as you'd expect them to be.

Only one last thing to say and that's: Geronimo!





Doctor Who premieres tonight at 9 pm ET/PT on BBC America, following a one-hour special about the Doctor and his universe at 8 pm ET/PT.