[Televisionary]

And so The Mystery is solved. Those of you who read my advance review of this week's season premiere of Battlestar Galactica ("Sometimes a Great Notion") know that I was prohibited by the network from discussing any major plot points from the current installment, which kicks off the final batch of episodes of BSG before this gripping and intelligent series takes its final flight among the stars. But now that the episode has aired (likely to the sound of a collective gasp from fans around the country), we can get down to the business of discussing the head-trippy revelations that this week's episode of BSG , written by David Weddle and Bradley Thompson, unearthed. Ellen. I'm sure everyone here wants to talk about the fact that we finally learned that the Final Cylon was in fact Ellen Tigh, who was killed by her husband Saul back on New Caprica... for collaborating with the Cylons. Tigh, of course, later learned that he was a Cylon and he poisoned Ellen after she

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. I'm still recovering from the past week and a half of Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour and Friday night's Battlestar Galactica cast & crew screening, which featured a live rendition by Bear and Brendan McCreary performing the BSG arrangement of "All Along the Watchtower," and a kick-ass afterparty thrown by director Michael Nankin, where much of the cast--including the Fifth Cylon--turned up afterward. The Chicago Tribune 's Maureen Ryan has a fantastic interview with Battlestar Galactica co-creator/executive producer Ronald D. Moore, writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, and director David Nankin about "Sometimes a Great Notion," the season premiere for the final run of BSG . Moore dishes about the reasoning behind the Fifth Cylon, Duala's fate, and shooting this episode during the writers strike. ( Chicago Tribune 's The Watcher ) The Sunday Mirror claims that Mich

What defines us as individuals? Is it the terrible choices we've made and those made for us? The mistakes we've committed? The flaws in our characters? The people we've loved and lost? The horrors we've witnessed? What truly defines us when everything else--career, rank, nationality--is stripped away? Are our natures programmed for us from birth? In other words: what truly makes us, well, us ? It's these existential questions that the intellectually dazzling Battlestar Galactica has always played with, throughout its four season run on Sci Fi. For most of the series, the humans and Cylons have engaged in a battle that presented the stakes as very much Us against Them. Them being the unknowable Other, so different from us in matters of birth, life, and death that it's nearly impossible for each side to sympathize with the other. And yet over the course of the first half of the fourth season, a fragile alliance between the humans and Cylons has been forged in the

As it's nearly the end of the calendar year (only a few more days to go, in fact), I figured now was as good a time as any to look back at some of the shows that that have entertained and inspired me over the past year. It's been a crazy year, between the WGA strike affecting everything from truncated freshman seasons for Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money , and Chuck , delayed seasons for FX's Damages and HBO's Big Love (and a host of others), and a generally frantic development season that only saw two relative hits emerge this fall. So, what were the favorite series in the Televisionary household? Which left me wanting more... and which ones made me eager to change the channel? Find out after the jump. Best Reality Series: Top Chef The Amazing Race Flipping Out Top Chef remains my number one reality obsession. Bravo and Magical Elves have done themselves proud with this sleek, slick production that makes the art of cooking into a nail-biting competition in which eg

With the premiere of the final batch of episodes of Battlestar Galactica slated for next month, those of us addicted to BSG have been grasping at anything to fulfill our next fix. Luckily then, that Sci Fi have chosen now to release a new batch of Battlestar webisodes entitled "The Face of the Enemy," new installments of which will launch each Monday and Wednesday leading up to the January 21st premiere of Battlestar Galactica 's final episodes. The premise? A Raptor, carrying a morpha-addicted Felix Gaeta, a few members of the Galactica crew, and some Cylon Model Number Eights, makes an unexpected detour when it seemingly jumps away from the fleet. When one of them dies under mysterious circumstances, everyone aboard the ship is a suspect. And, oh, we get to see who Gaeta has been dating. Missed Part One? No worries as you can watch it in full after the jump. I thought it interesting that Tigh would be so merciful as to give Gaeta some time away from the CIC, giving h

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. I'm still smarting from the reveal in last night's episode of Gossip Girl just who was involved in that oh-so-predictable accident rather than the, uh, party I'd rather get axed from the series. Sigh. Better news then for fans of Sci-Fi's Battlestar Galactica . The cabler has given a series order to spin-off Caprica , which is set fifty years before the action of BSG . Sci-Fi had earlier this year shot a two-hour backdoor pilot for Caprica , which stars Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson, and Polly Walker, from director Jeffrey Reiner and plans to launch the series in early 2010. Production on twenty additional episodes is slated to begin in mid-2009 in Vancouver. "We want people to come to this who have never heard of Battlestar Galactica ," said Sci-Fi president Dave Howe. "I think, because [ Galactica 's] backdrop was space and spaceships, there was a barrier to entry for some viewers. Ca

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. I definitely felt the lack of Pushing Daisies last night (my Wednesday night cure for any rough week) but I was completely sucked in by the season premiere of Top Chef (airing next week), which had more tension, drama, and pitch-perfect casting in its one-hour running time than the entire last season of Project Runway did. ABC has yanked midseason comedy Single With Parents off of its schedule. The comedy, from ABC Studios and Kristin Newman, starred Alyssa Milano, Eric Winter, Annie Potts, Beau Bridges, and Amanda Detmer. Decision behind the cancellation (months before it was to launch on ABC) is said to stem from creative differences between the studio and the series' creator Kristin Newman. ( Variety ) In other ABC midseason news, the Alphabet has opted to reduce its initial order on two midseason drama series, Castle and The Unusuals . ABC has approached ABC Studios about reducing Castle from 13 episodes to ten and has

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Wondering where the frak BSG is? Battlestar Galactica will return with the back half of Season Four, the series' final installment, on January 16th at 10 pm. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) NBC has given a put pilot commitment to Jason and the Argonauts , a green-screen drama based on the Greek myth about the quest for the golden fleece from writer/executive producers Josh and Jonas Pate ( Surface ) and Media Rights Capital. (NBC previously aired a mini based on the myth in 2000.) I'm not quite sure that they should have done so until after they see the numbers from the premiere of Crusoe later this week but there you go. The Peacock landed the project after a fierce bidding war, apparently with FOX. (In other news, MRC received an order for seven additional scripts for its animated ABC comedy The Goode Family and three additional scripts for Lifetime comedy Rita Rocks .) ( Variety ) In other NBC news, M

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. I had a fantastically relaxing weekend, between the rain and some quality telly on Sunday night with Skins, Amazing Race , and Mad Men keeping me occupied all evening. Showtime is developing drama series The Booths , about the dysfunctional relationship between three actor-brothers Edwin, Junius Brutus Jr., and John Wilkes Booth in the years before the latter would assassinate Abraham Lincoln. The brothers were the sons of British actor Junius Brutus Booth and actress Mary Ann Holmes. While there is no writer or production company attached, Kevin Bacon has signed on to executive produce the project. ( Variety ) Jamie Bamber says that Battlestar Galactica could have become a mainstream hit like Doctor Who if it had aired on a bigger network platform. "[ Battlestar ] is only cult because it's been stuck on Sky One and not pushed. In America it's on the Sci Fi Channel, which has a stigma to it. If it was on a mainstream ch

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. I spent last night watching Fringe (more on that in a bit), catching up on Gossip Girl , and sitting through another dull installment of 90210 . At least it took the bad taste out of my mouth from Knight Rider . (Shudder.) The Season Three premiere of NBC's Heroes (9.9 million viewers, 4.9/12 in adults 18-49) was down 25 percent from its sophomore launch , landing it second in the hour behind ABC's Dancing with the Stars . The slide for Heroes was not unexpected, coming as it did after a season that many fans found creatively lacking and middling and a curtailed season due to the writers strike. ( Hollywood Reporter ) CBS will air the original pilot of new drama Eleventh Hour , starring Rufus Sewell and Marley Shelton, as its opening installment, after all. The Eye had previously announced that it would wait to air the original pilot of Eleventh Hour ("Resurrection")until later in the season but the network h

Good morning and welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. In her first television role since the end of Battlestar Galactica (hitting small screens in 2009), Katee Sackhoff has signed on to star in drama pilot Lost and Found for Dick Wolf at NBC. Project, from writer/executive producer Chris Levinson, revolves around NYPD detective Tessa Cooper (Sackhoff) who is forced to solve John and Jane Doe cases after she finds herself rubbing her bosses the wrong way. Sackhoff's attachment lifts the cast contingency on the project, which was ordered to pilot last month. ( Hollywood Reporter ) FOX has signed a new deal with Gordon Ramsay that will keep the chef at the network for several more years and includes an agreement to produce two more editions of Hell's Kitchen , another season of Kitchen Nightmares , and a third series (likely based on Ramsay's Channel 4 series Man Camp , about a boot camp for men worried by how feminine they're becoming) and a special in whi

Good morning and welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Production will shut down on 24 , whose seventh season has been delayed since last January due to the writers strike, for more than two weeks beginning September 15th. The reason behind the enforced break? 24 executive producer Howard Gordon was reportedly displeased with the direction of the last six episodes of the season. During their time off, scripts will be written in order to change the season's direction, with production set to resume by October 9th. ( Variety ) More on that 24 shut down: ""We had a couple of scripts that we weren't happy with," said Howard Gordon in an interview. "We just couldn't get this direction to work, and we found another one that we liked better, so we wound up retooling it [...] The only, only, only concern at all is getting it right. Our feeling was this: We're so happy with what we've done so far, and to the extent that we had that luxury [