Channel Surfing: Showtime Passes on "L Word" Spin-off, Peter Gallagher to Raise Eyebrows on "Californication," Anna Torv Talks "Fringe," and More

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing.

Showtime has apparently passed on The L Word spin-off entitled The Farm, starring Leisha Hailey, and the Matthew Perry-led comedy The End of Steve. Neither pilot will be picked up to series, though the pay cabler has indicated that it is currently weighing fellow pilots Possible Side Effects, about a family-run pharmaceutical company from writer/executive producer Tim Robbins, and comedy Ronna and Beverly, from Jessica Chaffin, Jamie Denbo, and Jenji Kohan (Weeds). It's worth noting that Showtime has a whole slew of returning series including Californication, Dexter, The Tudors, Tracey Ullman's State of the Union, United States of Tara, Weeds, and Secret Diary of a Call, the latter two of which have already been renewed for two additional seasons, and is about to launch Edie Falco comedy Nurse Jackie. (Hollywood Reporter)

Peter Gallagher (The O.C.) has been cast in a multiple-episode story arc in Season Three of Showtime's Californication, where he will play a university dean who fights with David Duchovny's Hank. He joins the previously announced Kathleen Turner and Diane Farr. (Variety)

SCI FI Wire talks to Fringe's Anna Torv about the FOX series, slated to return with new episodes beginning next week. "We discover some things that happened to her when she was really little that she doesn't really remember," said Torv about the upcoming installments. "You start to see the stories, or the lives of Peter and Walter [John Noble] and Olivia kind of begin to interlace a little bit. And you sort of see how their paths have crossed before." (SCI FI Wire)

Kevin Rankin (Friday Night Lights) has been cast as one of the leads in NBC medical drama pilot Trauma, where he will play a paramedic. (Variety)

Gale Harold will return to ABC's Desperate Housewives on May 3rd, six months after being badly injured in a motorcycle accident. Executive producer Marc Cherry hasn't yet indicated whether Harold will return for Desperate Housewives' sixth season this fall but said that Harold's Jackson will turn up in May with a "very important question for Susan -- one that she's kind of stunned by." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Richard Dean Anderson (Stargate SG-1) will reprise his role as Jack O'Neil on Sci Fi's upcoming Stargate franchise spin-off series Stargate Universe. "Rick is doing episodes of Universe," said series co-creator Brad Wright. "He was just here yesterday shooting an episode of Universe with us. So that relationship is always on-going, and it’s good to have him back." (Gateworld)

Sony Pictures Television has extended an overall deal with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, under which he will remain on board AMC's Breaking Bad, which was recently renewed for a third season, as showrunner/executive producer while also developing new series projects for the studio. (Variety)

Also at the studio, ER executive producer/showrunner David Zabel has signed a two-script deal with Sony Pictures Television, under which Zabel will write two pilot scripts for the studio whose concepts are as yet undetermined. (Hollywood Reporter)

Oxygen has renewed reality series Bad Girls Club for a fourth season. (Variety)

Food Network has ordered six additional episodes of Daisy Martinez's Latin culinary series Viva Daisy! The episodes, produced by Watch Entertainment, will launch in July. (Variety)

Stay tuned.

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

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What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

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In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj

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