[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. NBC has announced that it has decided to slash the episodic order for its midseason sci-fi drama Day One to just four episodes, scheduling the series as a four-hour event mini-series rather than a thirteen-episode season. It's believed to be a cost-cutting measure as the decision will allow NBC to evaluate the mini-series' performance and ratings before committing to an ongoing series. News comes as Day One , which is slated to launch after the Olympics, has already shot two episodes and creator Jesse Alexander is said to be prepping the final two installments, which will wrap up storylines as well as leave some plot points intentionally dangling for a potential series order the following season. ( Variety ) E! Online's Watch with Kristin is reporting that James Franco is set to the join the cast of ABC daytime soap General Hospital for two months. (Yes, seriously.) He'll appear in a multiple-episode story arc beginn...

Confession: I've never watched Stargate SG-1 or Stargate Atlantis , other than a few episodes here or there. So it wasn't with any real familiarity with the Stargate , er, universe (other than vague reminiscences of the Kurt Russell/James Spader feature film) that I watched the gloomy three-hour series premiere of Stargate Universe , the newest iteration in the fifteen-year-old franchise which seems hell-bent on being as broadly accessible to the mainstream population as possible. Taking some visual clues from the darker Battlestar Galactica , Stargate Universe tells the story of a disparate band of survivors who are thrust through one of the titular gateways and discover themselves trapped on an ancient spaceship on a course to some distant location among the stars. While searching for a way home (said ship is on a one-way course that can't be changed), they must band together to find a way to survive and create a new home for themselves under some remarkable and unexpec...

Second episodes of new series are always tricky. While the pilot gives both the network and viewers an idea of what the series will be encapsulated into a single episode, second installments are often hit-or-miss as they represent the everyday norm of the series: they're produced on smaller budgets with less time to write scripts, rehearse, and shoot. So when they work just as well as the pilot, there's a sense of relief for all parties involved. Last night's episode of ABC's hilarious and heartfelt comedy Modern Family ("The Bicycle Thief"), written by Bill Wrubel and directed by Jason Winer, didn't stray into the pitfalls of the second episode curse, instead delivering an episode that was overflowing with humor and heart and serviced the characters in beautifully touching ways. Given my feverish love for this series, I was curious to see just how the second episode would affect me and I'm happy to report that I am just as completely enamored of Mode...

Can Kristin Chenoweth be on Glee every week? Pretty please? Last night's episode of Glee ("The Rhodes Not Taken"), written by Ian Brennan and directed by John Scott, saw the diminutive former Pushing Daisies star guest star as former high school singing sensation April Rhodes, a woman now reduced to squatting in a bank-owned home and working her way through a box of wine on her lonesome. Three credits shy of graduating high school, the boozy and flirtatious April is lured back into the spotlight of McKinley High glee club by a desperate Will, who needs to replace Rachel now that she's skipped out on the club to focus on stardom with a leading role in a Cabaret production. But Finn has his own plot to get Rachel back in glee, though he has some less than altruistic motivations for doing so. Still with me? I thought that Chenoweth knocked it out of the park last night and fit in beautifully with the quirkiness of Glee . Was it a little unbelievable that the, uh, sli...

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. The Wrap's Josef Adalian is reporting that J.J. Abrams is returning to the spy business with a new potential series project with writer/executive producer Josh Reims ( Felicity, Dirty Sexy Money ) and executive producer Bryan Burk that is the subject of a heated bidding war with several broadcast networks including ABC, NBC, and CBS. The untitled project, from Warner Bros. Television and Bad Robot, follows a husband and wife who work as spies. According to Adalian, the script is described as a "fun romp" in the style of classic television spy adventures. ( The Wrap ) Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Reiko Aylesworth ( 24, Lost ) has been cast in Season Three of FX's legal drama Damages in a recurring role. Details about who Aylesworth--who starred in the original pilot for ABC drama series The Forgotten--will be playing are being kept firmly under wraps. ( Entertainment Weekly 's A...