[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Wondering what Joss Whedon has in store for Season Two of Dollhouse , which returns to FOX this fall? Entertainment Weekly 's Mandi Bierly caught up with the Dollhouse creator to find out what to expect. "About two hours after starting to talk to the writers about story, I was back with such a vengeance, and so energized and so pumped because we really understand the show now," said Whedon. "We understand what works, and what didn't work so well or what we weren't so thrilled about. We don't have the onus of trying to be a big hit sitting on our shoulders. We can just be ourselves. And so the stories we're breaking are pure, and exciting, and everybody's on-board in the room, and it's never flowed better." Look for Echo to use that final word of Season One as a springboard for her second season mission. ""Echo wants to find not just Caroline, but what's going on behind ever...

Welcome to your (very early) Tuesday morning television briefing. In a rather major casting coup, FOX's 24 has cast former Battlestar Galactica star Katee Sackhoff as a series regular in Day Eight, where she will play Dana Walsh, a "highly respected and down-to-earth data analyst at the new and improved New York branch of CTU" who is romantically involved with Freddie Prinze Jr.'s Davis Cole and has a "skeleton in her closet she's trying desperately to keep hidden." Sackhoff joins such Day Eight players as Prinze, Mykelti Williamson, Jennifer Westfeldt, Chris Diamantopoulous, John Boyd, and Anil Kapoor. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) It's now believed that Lost 's Dominic Monaghan will be joining the cast of ABC's Flash Forward this fall. IGN's Eric Goldman is reporting, citing reports from an undisclosed insider, that Monaghan will be joining Flash Forward and that the actor, who played Charlie Pace on Lost, will ...

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. CBS has opted to cancel dramas The Unit, Without a Trace , and Eleventh Hour and will renew dramas Cold Case and NUMB3RS and comedies The New Adventures of Old Christine and Gary Unmarried . ( Hollywood Reporter ) CW has ordered three new drama series for next season, giving the greenlight to Melrose Place, Vampire Diaries , and The Beautiful Life , while Privileged, Reaper, Everybody Hates Chris , and The Game have all been officially cancelled. Meanwhile, the CW has announced that it will not go ahead with the planned spin-off of Gossip Girl but has indicated that drama Life Unexpected remains in contention for a midseason order. The network will unveil its schedule to advertisers tomorrow. ( Variety , Hollywood Reporter ) After NBC's cancellation of comedy series My Name is Earl , producers on the 20th Century Fox Television-produced series are said to be shopping it elsewhere, including to FOX and ABC. Series co-star...

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. AMC has renewed drama Breaking Bad for a third season, only four episodes into the series' sophomore season, which launched with 1.7 million viewers, a 21 percent increase over the series premiere episode. Series, which stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, RJ Mitte, Dean Norris, and Betsy Brandt, will join the ranks of AMC drama Mad Men , also renewed for a third year. ( Hollywood Reporter ) The battle over Project Runway has finally ended and now that the dust has cleared, it's Lifetime who will air the sixth season of the reality series this summer. "I couldn’t be more excited that Lifetime will bring its viewers an amazing, all-new season of Project Runway this summer," said Lifetime president/CEO Andrea Wong in a statement. "As the highest-rated cable network for women, Lifetime is the perfect home for this outstanding program as well as its companion series Models of the Runway . All of us at L...

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. While not totally TV-related, you can see a sneak peek of the cover of the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly (which hits newsstands tomorrow) to the right, depicting Heroes ' Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine as Spock and Kirk in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek . The issue also features an in-depth interview with Abrams, in which he talks about Star Trek , his YouTube-fueled feud with William Shatner, and also features quotes from Leonard Nimoy and Quinto about the new film. Are you GOB Bluth? FOX is said to be in final negotiations for a talent/development deal with Will Arnett ( Arrested Development ); under the deal, FOX would develop a comedy vehicle for Arnett or cast him in a pre-existing project at the network. Arnett, who is currently recurring as Devon Banks on NBC's 30 Rock , also stars (or his voice does, anyway) in FOX's upcoming animated comedy series Sit Down, Shut Up . ( TV Week ) Not such good news, however, f...

My Name is Earl 's third season might not premiere until September 27th, but in the meantime, I thought you might enjoy seeing this promo, featuring Randy, a gum-chomping Joy, Catalina and Crab Man putting on a music video in an attempt to shine the light of justice on poor, incarcerated Earl Hickey. And, um, starving African babies, suburban megastores, and the hot-button illegal immigration situation. Free Earl Music Video Add to My Profile | More Videos Aw, doesn't it just make you want to link hands across America right now?

A quick post today as I am off in a few minutes (yes, bright and early!) for a Producers Guild breakfast for The Office , with executive producer Greg Daniels and producer Kent Zbornak talking about how they transformed this unlikely hit into a network defining comedy. (I can't wait, though I do have to get packed for Comic-Con before long!) Putting that aside for now, let's turn our attention to some casting notices buzzing about town. Saffron Burrows has been upgraded to series regular on ABC's legal drama Boston Legal . She'll play Lorraine Weller, a sexy litigator (is there any other kind on television?) and former lover of Alan Shore (James Spader). Suffice it to say that things are more or less unresolved between them. Burrows, who was originally hired to do a multi-episode arc on the series, was upped to regular status three weeks into production on Boston Legal 's fourth season. She is best known for her feature work in such films as Circle of Friends , Wing...

My Name is... Fugly ? Well, maybe not. But CBS has just ordered a pilot of an old script called Fugly from Greg Garcia, creator of NBC's My Name is Earl . Said project was originally written by Garcia for Fox way back in the 2004-05 season as a potential star vehicle for Pamela Anderson (who had a talent deal at Fox during that time and ended up on comedy series Stacked instead). The comedy will center on three rather ugly sisters in North Carolina who decide to pool their inheritance money to purchase an extreme makeover for one of the sisters (I assume that originally this would have been Pam Anderson's role). Afterwards, they move to Los Angeles with stars in their eyes, hoping to start a new life (and earn back that cash) from the beautiful sister's new looks. Garcia will exec produce Fugly 's pilot in March, after the second season of My Name is Earl wraps production, in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Unlike Earl , Fugly will be a multi-camera co...

I can't even tell you how thrilled I was yesterday to learn that NBC was going to revamp its Thursday night lineup, mere days after the Peacock announced that it was effectively going to destroy its 8 pm timeslot by filling it with cheap-to-produce reality fare like Deal or No Deal . Fortunately, Kevin Reilly didn't budge on keeping single-cam comedies My Name is Earl and The Office right where they are and shifting Tina Fey's 30 Rock to Thursdays and (finally!) bringing Scrubs back the schedule. Combined, these four series display the possibilities of the single camera format and I've been pleading with the networks to combine them into one single night of fantastic comedic TV. While CBS has its Monday night comedy lineup and CW its urban-themed laughers on the same night, there hasn't been one-stop shopping for single cam mirth until now. Sadly, I've been calling for this arrangement since the days of the dearly departed Arrested Development , but I'll...

You know those amusing vanity cards at the end of each episode of My Name is Earl ? The ones that depict friends of the series' creator Greg Garcia? Well, that could very well be you looking ridiculous in that sombrero. According to Variety , NBC and 20 Century Fox Television have pacted with MySpace to select photos of the social networking site's uses to appear in the vanity cards at the end of the first three episodes of Earl next season. MySpace users can get into the competition by submitting their pics to a special My Name is Earl profile page until September 5th. Five specially selected photos will run each week on the page before the show's creators randomly select three winners' pics to appear under a banner reading, "Friends of Earl," on the episodes slated to air September 21st, September 28th, and October 5th. So, if you're into this kind of thing or want your mug plastered on a production vanity card, enter now...

With Comic Con just around the corner, expect a lot of announcements surrounding some familiar television, feature, and comic book properties. (I'll be there on Saturday, so if you see someone wandering around aimlessly, with a press pass, that's me.) One such announcement is that the adventures of Earl Hickey and the entire Camden County gang will be translated from the small screen to a new licensed comic book property, to be published this winter by Oni Press. Like the NBC series, My Name is Earl (the comic) will follow the story of Earl Hickey, a reformed criminal who sets out to right the wrongs he committed in his life of petty crime in order to gain karmic redemption, after hearing Carlson Daly mention the term. Along for the ride is My Name is Earl staffer Hunter Covington. According to Oni publisher Joe Nozemack, “When we first started talking to Fox about doing EARL comics, Hunter is one of the first names that came up. Hunter is the script coordinator for the show...

You can call off the search party, Michael. Missing Lost castaway Walt ( Malcolm David Kelley ) has been found... in Camden County. Well, not quite. But phenom Malcolm David Kelley did show up last night on a new episode of Thursday night favorite My Name is Earl , in an inspired bit of guest casting. (Whoever does the casting for Earl deserves a medal... or at the very least a commendation from the viewing public; the guest shots never seem gratuitous--cough, cough, Will & Grace , cough, cough--or forced.) In last night's episode ("Boogeyman"), Kelley played Alvie, a rich kid terrified of the dark. Back in his thieving days, Earl traumatized him by hiding under his bed while trying to rob his house, an act Alvie has never recovered from. And this being Earl , there's a twist: Earl first makes it up to Alvie by being his personal slave for a day but ends up liking the kid and talks with him each night. Slowly, Alvie begins to be afraid less and less as they keep...

It's been said that great comedy comes from tragedy... or if not tragedy, then genuine emotion. I just had to write a few words about last night's super-duo of comedy goodness, My Name is Earl and The Office . As readers will remember, my thoughts on the respective series' previous episodes were overwhelmingly negative , but last night's episodes--both jam-packed with heart--restored my love for both shows. On last night's episode of My Name is Earl ("Dad's Car"), Earl tries to repair his factured relationship with his estranged father (Beau Bridges) by returning the old Mustang that he had claimed to have driven into a lake at age eleven (he actually lost it in a drag race), but learns that the car was intended for him on his sixteenth birthday. Meanwhile, Joy sends Darnell and the kids away for a week so she can get drunk (it's her Mother's Day present to herself) but discovers that she misses them and the feelings she gets from being a mom...

As my co-workers and friends know, there are very few things that usually bring me more joy (and yes, er, Joy too) than the one-hour single camera comedy block on NBC on Thursday nights at 9 pm. I look forward to Thursday nights with a newfound appreciation whereas before it was yet another day before Friday. But since NBC wisely shifted My Name is Earl and companion The Office to Thursday nights, it's the television highlight of my week. Earl could have been truly a one-note joke. Meet Earl Hickey (Jason Lee): a career criminal, no-good thief, and lifelong loser. Whenever Earl does bad things, bad things happen to him. Like in the show's pilot, when he winds $100,000 on the lottery, only to get run over in a car the next moment. Recuperating in the hospital, he learns that his wife Joy (Jaime Pressly, in a career-defining role) has been having an affair with Darnell (a.k.a "Crab Man," played by Eddie Steeples, whom you might remember from those Office Max commerci...

Speaking of hit NBC comedies like The Office , I was reading the Sunday New York Times Arts Section today when I came across this article about My Name is Earl creator Greg Garcia and the battle he fought to get his show on the air. Simply put: dude would not give up. There's something to be said for determination in this crazy business of show... There's also something to be said for a last-place network, desperate for a hit, and a newly appointed network prez willing to take a chance on a show that everyone has passed on. Those two things go together like chocolate and peanut butter. And thank god, because otherwise, we wouldn't have the boffo brilliance of My Name is Earl to watch each week. Karma. I'd have to agree with Earl and paraphrase a bit: Fight hard enough for something you believe in and maybe, just maybe, you'll find someone who's willing to fight for it alongside you too.