NBC's New Sked: There's Good News, and There's Bad News
Today in New York, NBC announced its new schedules for fall, winter and next summer. Here's the news you need to know:
UPDATES (1 p.m.)
- There will be 28 Office half-hours to be produced next season, and 19 hours of ER.
- Two awesome redheads are better than one: Donal Logue is joining Life as Reese and Crews' new police captain boss! Cool!
- Friday Night Lights episodes will premiere in the fall on DirecTV months before episodes re-air on NBC in the winter. Good news for DirecTV, bad news for fans who are stuck with cable?
- Per the official release, "Heroes will come back with a bang owing to a major event in the fall." Will this bang be a nuclear explosion in New York City, or something else?
RETURNING SERIES HIGHLIGHTS
- Good news: Just as I was told by one of the castmembers last month (still not pictured above), Friday Night Lights is renewed!! Whee! Look for a premiere in its usual Friday at 9 p.m. slot this winter, right after the real football season ends.
- Bad news: Scrubs is gone from the NBC schedule.
- Good news: So as we reported last week, Scrubs is going to ABC. Yay!
- ER is returning for a 15th season, as we reported back in February.
- Heroes and Chuck are back on Mondays, at 8 and 9 p.m. respectively.
- Life is moving to Fridays at 10.
- Lipstick Jungle has been renewed! Brooke Shields and the girls will be back this fall at 10 p.m. on Wednesdays.
- Law & Order: SVU returns fall for Tuesdays at 10 p.m.; original-recipe Law & Order returns this winter for Wednesdays at 10 p.m.
- Um, where is Medium? Can someone tell me how NBC seems to have misplaced Joe DuBois? He's extremely good-looking and funny, about 6-feet tall, shaggy hair, and missing from the NBC listings. Anyone seen him? Updated! That was close. CBS Paramount, which produces the show, assures me that NBC has picked up Medium for a fifth season (Sundays at 9 p.m.), but the exact midseason premiere date is still undetermined. Whew!
NEW SERIES HIGHLIGHTS
- One of the few newly developed scripted comedies is Kath & Kim, a remake of an Australian show. It's produced by Reveille, the company Ben Silverman founded but no longer profits from as part of his gig as NBC network boss. Kath & Kim stars Molly Shannon and Selma Blair as a mother and daughter with a dysfunctional relationship.
- The new Knight Rider, which NBC premiered as a movie of the week in February, is gonna be a continuing series! Awww, I'm having childhood TV flashbacks. Remember how they had the lab in the truck? Awesome!
- Fridays at 8 p.m., look for Crusoe, a castaway series based on Daniel Defoe's famous novel, now in the public domain and ripe for TV showification.
- The Philanthropist, premiering this winter on Mondays at 10 p.m., is about a rich guy whose money is the superpower he uses to fight crime and help the helpless. The Philanthropist comes from Tom Fontana (Homicide, Oz) and Barry Levinson, so it might just rock.
Yay?! Nay!?
Allison Mack will be in Smallville next season after all
Smallville fans, you can finally resume breathing. The last few weeks have been a roller coaster due to the fact the two creators left the show, because of the departure of Michael Rosenbaum and the announcement that two new regulars would join and because of contract negotiations for Kristin Kreuk and Allison Mack.
It was confirmed pretty early on that Kreuk would only be a part-timer next season. However, Mack’s future with the show was up in the air. Actually, it was even talked that she would not be returning because she couldn’t reach an agreement with The CW show. The latter news was supported by the fact her name was omitted earlier this week in the network’s Upfront press release.
TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello breaks the news today that Mack inked a deal with the show to be a series regular next season. According to his sources, the actress will appear in all episodes of Season 8. I’m relieved that Mack will stick around because she is my favorite character on the series. Are you happy she is sticking around or would you have preferred to have Chloe leave Smallville and Metropolis for good?
Show regulars for Season 8 of the series are expected to be Tom Welling, Laura Vandervoort, Erica Durance, Aaron Ashmore and Allison Mack as well as the two actors who’ll play Davis “Doomsday” Bloom and new female character Tess. Kristin Kreuk may be billed as a regular but, as I’ve said before, she will only appear in a few episodes.
Big Brother 9: Live feeds report - April 19
The hardest part of writing up these Big Brother 9 live feeds reports is what you see me doing right now. I can’t write spoilers here on the part which shows on the main page of TV. Nor can I just have a whole bunch of white space here. I’ve tried dancing and singing, but we probably don’t need to frighten people. But it’s bad when even Sharon rolls her eyes thinking what I might be doing here. It’s always a challenge!
What? You want me to stop rambling and give you the goods on the spoilers? Read on past the jump!
Gee, there hasn’t been a heck of a lot of new news today. Tomorrow is the power of veto meeting, so we’ll surely see some action then. Oh, we’re blocked from seeing the actual meeting, but the aftermath is always entertaining. As it stands now, Ryan has nominated Sheila and Sharon for eviction. Ryan has also won the power of veto. He’s been trying to convince Adam that he must vote out Sheila this week.
How’s he doing that? Well, he told Adam that if he wins HOH and POV, he won’t take Adam to the final two. Adam is a sucker for tears and tends to follow his heart. Despite their fighting, he does have a soft spot for Sheila. He wants to vote to evict Sharon. But he went and promised Ryan on his mother’s life that he’ll do his bidding and vote out Sheila. Hmmm … not sure if he can do that. Sheila would be crushed and he’d be crushed to have crushed Sheila if you can follow that.
On the other hand, Sharon really wants Adam out. She wants a final three of Sheila, Ryan, and herself. She wants to be up with Ryan in the final two. Ryan told her he wants the final three to be himself, her (Sharon), and Adam. She’s really not too flexible.
In house crumbs:
- After the POV comp last night, Sheila and Adam were unshackled. The shackles of love weren’t permanently binding.
- Adam will be 30 years old on April 30. He said birthdays disappoint him, so he’s not all that into it.
- Ryan told Sharon she had no worries, he’ll probably keep the nominations the same. He said Adam will do what he wants, which is to keep her.
- Sheila and Adam wonder how they’re being portrayed. It might be best that they not know, right?
- Sheila told Adam that Sharon is acting snotty, quiet, and weird to her now.
- She also said that she has to put her trust in Adam and Ryan. She doesn’t think Ryan will change the noms. So it’s up to her boys.
- Once again she told Adam she wants the final two to be them.
- Sheila told Adam that she knows Sharon won’t want him to stay, that she wants to go to the final two with Ryan.
- Sheila, still talking (of course), told Adam that Sharon is so sure of winning that she’s already planning how to spend the money — some for her parents, 50 grand to the church she says saved her life, and such. Sheila said she herself won’t plan how to spend the money because it will be a letdown if she doesn’t win it.
- They have all discussed what they would do with the winnings. I’ve heard them. Yeah, Sheila, too!
- Why doesn’t Sheila ever stop rambling on?
- She also told Adam she doesn’t think it would do any good to campaign to Ryan.
- Adam told her he doesn’t want to make promises he can’t keep to either her or Ryan.
- But, what about his promise to Ryan? He’ll really vote to evict Sheila? That’s going to be rough!
- Sheila got upset. I think she thinks Adam was a sure vote to keep her and he’s not committing to anything with her. She told him that he’ll see she has had his back throughout the game when he sees the tapes.
- Ryan and Adam compared what they each heard from the girls.
- Adam told Ryan it’s probably better to get Sheila out this week so she can cool off in sequester. He said he has no problem voting her out.
- Adam seems to be trying to convince himself that Sheila must go. After all, according to him, her behavior on the first day was a call for eviction.
- Right now the feeds are ultra-boring. Adam is asleep on the couch. Sheila was on a cleaning spree earlier, big yellow gloves and all. I haven’t seen Ryan since dinner. Sharon’s napping.
- Unless things change drastically, the nominations should remain the same and it’s likely to be a final three of Adam, Sharon, and Ryan going in for the three part HOH comp.
Hey, you’re still with me to go to the final two, right?
Kitchen Nightmares restaurants close; Gordon Ramsay attacked
If you’ve ever watched the US version of Kitchen Nightmares, the show where chef Gordon Ramsay goes around to different failing restaurants and tries to fix them, you’ve probably wondered what happens 3 or 6 months or a year down the road. Do the restaurants stay on track and continue to be a success?
Well, not always.
Sebastian’s, a Burbank, CA restaurant featured on the show, closed over the weekend, according to WhatWouldRamsayDo.com. In a message, the owners said that they are moving back to the Boston area for family reasons. LAist says that the owner hinted that a network was interested in him having his own food/reality show.
Interestingly, that’s not the only Kitchen Nightmares place to close. Lela’s in Pomona has also gone out of business, which would make it the third restaurant featured on the show to close (though one of them reopened under new management).
Restaurant closings aren’t the only Ramsay news today. The Sun reports that at another restaurant featured on the show, a chef actually chased Ramsay down the street with a knife! Apparently he didn’t like Ramsay telling him that he “disliked him more than anyone in the world.” Security guards got to the chef before he could reach Ramsay.