[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. A few things to get through before I hit the road for San Diego and Comic-Con. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Olivia Munn (the newly minted Daily Show correspondent) will guest star on NBC's Chuck this fall when the series returns for its fourth season on September 20th. Munn, who is a series regular on NBC's midseason comedy Perfect Couples , will play "an impossibly cool, smart, and pretty CIA agent who intimidates and schools Chuck and Morgan" in the same installment that features Dolph Lundgren. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) In other scoop, Ausiello writes that former Friday Night Lights star Scott Porter will be joining the cast of CBS' The Good Wife this fall. Porter, whose CW pilot Nomads was not ordered to series, will play Blake, described as "Kalinda’s private-eye counterpart at the D.C. firm that’s merging with Lockhart & Gardner" w...

Breaking from TCA Winter Press Tour: Stephen McPherson, ABC Entertainment Group President, has announced the second season renewals for Modern Family, The Middle , and Cougar Town . McPherson also indicated that each of the series would air more than the traditional 22 episodes this season. The full press release from ABC announcing the pickups can be found below. ABC ANNOUNCES EARLY PICK-UPS OF HIT WEDNESDAY NIGHT COMEDIES “COUGAR TOWN,” “THE MIDDLE” AND “MODERN FAMILY” FOR THE 2010-2011 SEASON Stephen McPherson, president, ABC Entertainment Group, announced early pick-ups of hit Wednesday night comedies “Cougar Town,” “The Middle” and “Modern Family” for the 2010-2011 Season today at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour. “Cougar Town” (Wednesdays from 9:30-10:00 p.m., ET) Courteney Cox, who was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for her role on the show, stars as Jules, a newly divorced single mother exploring the honest truths about dating and aging in our beauty...

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Sons of Anarchy 's Drea de Matteo (best known as The Sopranos ' Adrianna) is joining the cast of ABC's Desperate Housewives next season as a series regular, reports Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello. De Matteo will play "the matriarch of a new Italian family," writes Ausiello. "Casting is underway for her landscape designer husband and their tightly wound son." ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Christopher Meloni and Mariska Hargitay WILL be coming back to NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit next season, after all. The duo have finally signed deals that will keep them in the lead roles on the NBC drama series for the next two seasons and will be paid just slightly less than $400,000 per episode. Neal Baer also closed a deal to remain on board the series as showrunner and Christine Lahti ( Jack & Bobby ) has signed on to guest star in the first four episodes of ...

My favorite thing about ABC's new comedy series The Middle might just be youngest son Brick, played with unapologetic realness by Atticus Shaffer. I had the opportunity a few weeks back to watch the full pilot episode of The Middle , which launches on ABC this fall on Wednesday evenings, and was instantly enchanted by Shaffer's adorably awkward Brick, a boy who continually refers to his mother as his "hero" (but not quite for the reasons you might think), who whispers to himself because it makes him feel good, and who embodies all the bizarre quirks and foibles that many of us carried around for a bit in childhood. Created by Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline of NBC's Lipstick Jungle , The Middle tells the story of the Hecks, a very average middle-class family living in Middle America... or the middle of Indiana to be precise. If I'm being honest I'll say that I've been more or less in love with this winsome script for the past few years; the project i...