[Televisionary]

Televisionary is proud to be a member of the TV Blog Coalition. At the end of each week, we'll feature a roundup of content from our sister sites for your delectation. This week here at Televisionary, I ecstatically celebrated the return (albeit brief) of Bravo's Top Chef , bid a sad farewell to NBC's Chuck for the time being, and laughed my butt off while watching this week's typically hysterical episode of 30 Rock , among other television-related matters. Elsewhere in the sophisticated TV-obsessed section of the blogosphere, members of the TV Blog Coalition were discussing the following items... BuzzSugar : We got all pumped over these prequels to The Wire , debated whether Showtime shows could work on CBS , and asked for votes on the best new TV character of '07. Glowy Box : Liz celebrated a new season of crazy bitchitude with Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency , reveled in a fantastic episode of Scrubs , and tried to keep up with all the action on this week’s s

Oh, 30 Rock , I can always depend on you to lighten the mood any day and you didn't disappoint last night, with another delightfully over the top installment ("Secrets and Lies") that deftly juggled half a dozen or so plotlines while advancing the subplot about Jack and C.C.'s illicit affair. With everything going on right now in Hollywood, it's easy to fall into a bit of a doom and gloom (albeit with some cautious optimism as talks between the WGA and AMPTP continue) but 30 Rock is always a beacon of hope in a schedule slowly being filled with more and more reality television. (Um, Baby Borrowers anyone? Didn't think so.) What did I love about last night's episode? Liz catching Jack and C.C. passionately kissing in his office only to have him introduce to Liz as a business colleague named "Lakisha Gutierrez-Arafat," a moniker that will live on forever in infamy; Jack sending Jonathan to a "non-existent Italian bakery in Queens" as a

I can't tell you how much I've missed Bravo's culinary competition series, Top Chef . It's become the television equivalent of a phantom limb; I keep reaching out for the remote to put it on but then realize it's not there anymore. Thankfully, the good folks at Bravo realized my Top Chef withdrawal had reached critical mass and offered up a Holiday Special that pitted contestants from the first three seasons of Top Chef against each other for a holiday showdown with $20K at stake. Sadly, there was no sign of Sam, who really does deserve another shot at Top Chef gold, but if we're talking about what we're thankful for this season, the tiresome Ilan wasn't there, so that's got to count for something. I did think that some of the choices were a bit baffling. Yes, it makes sense to have Season One's Stephen and runner-up Tiffani, along with Season Two's Marcel, and Season Three's Tre and CJ there, but Sandee Birdsong? Really? As much as I

Ugh. If you were hoping for news that Bravo had picked up another six editions of perennial reality faves Project Runway or Top Chef , look away. Instead, the cabler ordered second seasons of subpar reality competition series Shear Genius and Top Design . On Shear Genius , host Jaclyn Smith will return for a second season of forced drama, hellish hairstyles, and awkward editing as hairstylists compete for a $100,000 prize. (Yawn.) However, Bravo has wisely booted Stone & Co. as the producers on the second season of interior design-themed competition Top Design , instead turning to Top Chef and Project Runway producers Magical Elves to produce the sophomore iteration of the design challenge. However, as Reality Blurred noticed, "Bravo does also not mention first-season host Todd Oldham nor head judge Jonathan Adler, the assclown responsible for the show’s terrible send-off line, so perhaps they’ve both been dropped, too." Hmmm. Stay tuned. What's On Tonight 8 pm:

Conflict, conflict, conflict. That's the name of the game on Bravo's sartorial showdown Project Runway . After all, these are big personalities who typically can't agree to get along for the duration of an elevator ride, much less design an outfit or collection together. So it was interesting then to see on last night's episode that several of the teams actually did work surprisingly well together. Their task: to select fashion faux-pas from previous decades and then, in teams of three, weave these heinous stylistic sins into a cohesive collection that reinvented the fashion no-nos into something modern. A Herculean task, to be fair. Making matters all the more interesting was the fact that Tim allowed the teams to select themselves into groups and they'd have to nominate a de facto leader for each team. I always find these sort of social interactions exciting to watch as it typically forces people's true colors to come out. Would Ricky prove an effective leader

Welcome to Day 32 of the WGA Strike. Cautious optimism are the words du jour as talks between the WGA and the AMPTP continue. Negotiations are set to resume this morning at 10 am PT after yesterday's encouraging talks that had both sides nearing some sort of common ground on several looming issues. The WGA released its end-of-day statement, which contained language far more encouraging than anything thus far: "The Writers Guilds met today with the AMPTP and discussed issues of jurisdiction for original content for the Internet, Reality TV, Animation, and Basic Cable. The talks also were focused on contract enforcement. For the last two days, we have had substantive discussions of the issues important to writers, the first time this has occurred in this negotiation. However, we are still waiting for the AMPTP to respond to all of our proposals, including Internet streaming of theatrical and television product and digital downloads." And the AMPTP released their own stat

I'm thrilled with the results of this season's Beauty and the Geek . If last week's blunt post about my support for Dave and Jasmine wasn't strongly worded enough, let me make it absolutely clear: I've been rooting for these two for a while now. And while their victory wasn't much of a surprise last night (call me crazy but was the opening of those two envelopes completely anticlimactic?), the reunion/reveal episode of Beauty and the Geek was just kooky and, well, creepy enough to keep things a little interesting. It was nice for a change to see if the geeks were keeping up with their physical transformations and I do have to say that I was surprised to see that they all had clearly taken on board the lessons and skills they learned from their participation and had applied them to their everyday lives. (Yes, I too was happy to see that Jesse smartly lost the Billy Idol platinum 'do and went back to brown.) As for the beauties, it does seem that their learn