[Televisionary]

Community has zombies, outer space, and Joel McHale: why not more viewers? Over at The Daily Beast, check out my latest feature, entitled " Community : The Best Show You're Not Watching," in which I visit the set of NBC's experimental comedy Community (while they were filming their Halloween episode) and learn about zombies, outer space, stop-motion animation, and more, as I spend two days on the set with creator Dan Harmon and cast members Joel McHale, Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Ken Jeong, Gillian Jacobs, and Danny Pudi. Plus, be sure to take a look at the gallery, where you can see what's coming up on Season Two for your favorite Greendale characters, including Jeff, Britta, Annie, Shirley, Abed, Troy, Chang, and Pierce. (And you can read my review of the season opener here .) Season Two of Community begins tomorrow night at 8 pm ET/PT on NBC.

J.J. Abrams and Josh Reims' new espionage drama Undercovers launches tonight on NBC, as the fall premiere week wears on. Will it perform better than FOX's Lone Star , which crashed and burned on Monday? We'll find out tomorrow. Here's what I had to say about the series over in my Fall TV Preview feature at The Daily Beast recently: WATCH: Undercovers (NBC; premieres September 22) While we can all agree that Alias went off the rails in the later seasons--thanks to the increasingly Byzantine Rambaldi plot--the early years were pitch perfect. Series creator J.J. Abrams--here teaming up with his Felicity cohort Josh Reims—has gone back to the feel of those early Sydney Bristow adventures but infused them with more romance and a hell of a lot more humor with their new show, Undercovers . Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw play the world's most gorgeous professional caterers, a married pair who just happen to have met while on their previous job: as two of the very best

As I said over on Twitter early this morning, "Six years ago today, Oceanic Flight 815 left Sydney for Los Angeles...and took our hearts with it. Happy birthday, Lost ." It's hard to believe that it's been six years since the passengers of the doomed Oceanic Flight crashed on that mythical, magical island and launched not only a television saga for the ages, but also a series of copycat programs that the original far outlived and an enduring legacy. While my feelings about the series finale are no secret (you can read my behemoth 4000-plus word post about the finale here and my shorter late-night take at The Daily Beast ), I still have a deep love for this series, which challenged the conventions of network drama series and introduced an overarching mythology whose spell many of us fell under in the years to come. My relationship with the series dates back more than six years to when I first viewed the feature-length pilot episode in a tiny office in May of 2004. I w

As premiere week slogs on, I'm curious to know what you thought of the two newest comedy entries to the network lineup, with last week's series premieres of FOX's Raising Hope and Running Wilde . Personally, I wasn't much taken by either of them, with the latter being truly depressing to me because it represented what will likely be the best shot at an Arrested Development reunion we can hope for, as it brought together creator Mitch Hurwitz, Will Arnett, and David Cross in one place. But the pilot--both versions of it that I saw--left me cold and, while the second episode is sitting right next to me as I type this--I don't really have much impetus to watch it. Especially as the numbers last night were less than stellar. I feel the same way about Greg Garcia's Raising Hope , which tries way too hard to be wacky and zany and instead overflows with poop and vomit jokes, none of which were all that funny. But now that both episodes have aired, I'm curious to

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Break open the moonshine! HBO has renewed period drama Boardwalk Empire for a second season, after airing just one episode of the Terence Winter/Martin Scorsese crime drama, which averaged 4.8 million viewers in its premiere broadcast. “All the ingredients aligned for this one, from Mark Wahlberg and Steve Levinson’s initial pitch, to Martin Scorsese’s enormous contributions as director and executive producer, to the genius of Terry Winter and the expertise of Tim Van Patten, to a stellar cast led by Steve Buscemi,” said Michael Lombardo, President of HBO Programming, in a statement. “The response from the media and our viewers has been nothing short of amazing.” (via press release) In other renewal news, USA has finally closed a deal to renew Law & Order: Criminal Intent for a tenth and final season of eight episodes, with original series lead Vincent D'Onofrio set to reprise his role as Detective Robert Goren, while pro

And that's how you kick off a brand new season. Last night brought the fourth season premiere of NBC's action-comedy Chuck ("Chuck Versus the Anniversary") and I hope that the episode delivered all of the espionage-tinged goodness that I promised in my advance review of the season opener last week. I had also teased readers via Twitter about the premiere (" Chuck premiere: sexting, skydiving, Seinfeld references, (Harry Dean) Stanton? Sensational. Very fun opener.") and the episode held up extremely well under a second viewing in the time between now and then. For me, anyway, "Chuck Versus the Anniversary" was perhaps the perfect way to begin a new chapter in the life of Chuck Bartowski, a character who has slowly evolved over the course of three seasons from reluctant hero to tragic hero to, well, just plain hero. His decision to take hold of his own destiny, to set out with Morgan on a personal quest to track down his mother may have not lea

Ding ding. That sound you hear was the official start of fall premiere week last night as the networks took the wraps off of their new lineups and brought the launches of several new shows to the public last night. In the battle of the 9 pm dramas, NBC's tepid The Event overtook FOX's more original Lone Star in an outcome that should surprise no one. While I wrote about both The Event and Lone Star yesterday (and have been talking about them since last May on Twitter), I'm curious to see what you thought of the new series that launched last night. Which of the handful of new dramas and comedy Mike & Molly did you tune in for? What did you think of the plot, the characters, the dialogue, and the inherent promise of each? And, most importantly, which of the series will you come back and watch again next week? Talk back here.