[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Former Friday Night Lights star Zach Gilford has joined the cast of ABC's midseason medical drama Off the Map , from executive producers Shonda Rhimes and Jenna Bans. TVGuide.com's Natalie Abrams reports that Gilford will play Tommy, a physician who travels to a remote medical clinic in South America along with fellow doctors Lily (Caroline Dhavernas) and Mina (Mamie Gummer). (The series' other stars include Martin Henderson, Jason George, and Valerie Cruz.) Gilford's casting comes on the heels of the hiring of Rachelle Lefevre as a regular and the departure of Enrique Murciano, though ABC was quick to point out that Gilford won't be playing the same role that Murciano did, a spoiled and uptight plastic surgeon. [Editor: I'm chuffed to see Gilford--who we all know best as Saracen--head back to primetime.] ( TVGuide.com ) Not a moment too soon: HBO's long-running comedy Entourage will end next year, accord

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Quite a fair amount of headlines and stories to get through today, so let's get cracking! E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos is reporting that Joshua Jackson is possibly contemplating making a trip to Mystic Falls next season. The Fringe star is said to be weighing a possible guest stint on the CW's Vampire Diaries . "We talked about it," said Jackson about a conversation he had with Kevin Williamson at Comic-Con. "It turns out that he's not making a comedy with Vampire Diaries and it might be too inside baseball comedy if I popped up. But who knows... They're all too handsome." Meanwhile, was Dos Santos able to get any clues about Season Three of Fringe out of Pacey-Con's Jackson? "It picks up literally where it left off last year," said Jackson, "and our show just continues to get greater and more bizarre and strange and disgusting and wonderful every time we put it on the ai

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Could it be almost a year before Breaking Bad heads back to AMC? According to a Deadline interview with series lead Bryan Cranston, Season Four of Breaking Bad may not launch until July 2011, over a year after the end of last season. "I think what AMC is thinking here is there will be less competition for us -- particularly from the broadcast networks -- if we launch our season during the summer than if we come back again like we did this time in March," said Cranston. However, AMC and Sony Pictures Television will produce 3-4 minute mini-episodes of Breaking Bad that will run on AMC's website during the break. "The idea is to keep people aware and interested in the show during the long time away,” Cranston told Deadline. “But I, for one, am eager to make these little interstitials important. I don’t want them to be simply filler or recap, but something that actually moves the storyline forward. If we’re going

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello caught up with Fringe star Jasika Nicole to get some information about Season Three of Fringe , kicking off this fall, and a "groundbreaking and mind-blowing" twist. "She is indeed," said Nicole when asked if Astrid would get more to do in Season Three. "And that's due to the fact that there are now two of her that I get to play, which is awesome. [For the first half] of the season, we're alternating episodes, so we've got one in the alternate universe and one in the present universe, so if you were to only [watch] every other episode, you would only see the story happening in one universe." Nicole told Ausiello that the two storylines will converge into a single stream where "everyone's world will be turned upside down." Wowsers. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Diablo Cody is heading to FOX. The network signed a put

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. SPOILER! TV Guide Magazine 's Will Keck talks to Bones creator Hart Hanson and series lead Emily Deschanel about Season Six's new recurring baddie, a serial killer that will torment the team and who just happens to be a sniper. Huh, just like David Boreanaz's Booth was before the series began. "You have to be incredibly cold and calculated to be a sniper," said Deschanel, who hinted that one of the interns will be felled by the sniper's bullets. "I don't want anyone to die." Meanwhile, look for the fourth episode of the season to take a weird turn. "It will appear to Brennan that she is solving her own murder," Hanson told Keck. "She is looking at a body and slowly realizes it's her, which leads her to rethink her entire life.... She'll try to keep it hidden from Booth for as long as she can, and will ultimately change how she approaches him." As for their relation

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. First up: the swirling rumors, news, and confirmations emanating from FOX about the changes at American Idol ... The big news from last night of course is the departure of Ellen DeGeneres from FOX's American Idol after just one season. DeGeneres released a statement yesterday evening that confirmed her departure from the musical competition series. "A couple months ago, I let FOX and the American Idol producers know that this didn't feel like the right fit for me," said DeGeneres via a network press release. "I told them I wouldn't leave them in a bind and that I would hold off on doing anything until they were able to figure out where they wanted to take the panel next. It was a difficult decision to make, but my work schedule became more than I bargained for. I also realized this season that while I love discovering, supporting and nurturing young talent, it was hard for me to judge people and sometimes

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello talks to CSI: NY executive producers Pam Veasey and Zachary Reiter about the departure of Melina Kanakaredes from the crime procedural and how they'll handle Stella's exit, given that Kanakaredes will not be reprising her role this fall. "We’re giving her a noble exit,” said Reiter. "We chose not to go the route of killing her off or having her go missing. We felt that would weigh too heavily on the team." However, the action will instead pick up a few months after the events of the season finale and reveal that Stella moved to New Orleans. "She left to run a lab there," Veasey told Ausiello. "And she picked that city because it’s the city of Katrina, the city of BP oil, the city where people are looking for someone to lend a hand. She’ll essentially be Mac in New Orleans. We wanted to do something that was respectful and made a lot of sense." (

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. The Chicago Tribune 's Maureen Ryan is reporting that Syfy is developing an online prequel to Battlestar Galactica entitled Blood & Chrome , which would focus on the life of William Adama during the first Cylon War and will be written by Caprica 's Michael Taylor. Project, which would consist of nine to ten episodes of roughly ten minutes each, would focus "about a young man's initiation into war: both the realities of war as fought by soldiers on the ground (and in Battlestars and Vipers), and the somewhat less real version portrayed in the media," according to Taylor. Interestingly, should the online series be a hit, it could serve as the basis for a backdoor pilot or a full-blown series set during the first Cylon War. And, given the fact that it's running online, don't look for any content restrictions. "We're not going to be shying away from R-rated blood and guts and sex," Taylo

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Now that the ink has dried on Damages 's DirecTV deal, Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello talks to executive producers Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler, and Daniel Zelman about whether the format for the serpentine legal drama will be altered for its fourth and fifth seasons, whether the budget will be affected, why Ellen has gotten past the fact that Patty tried to have her killed, who will be returning, and a host of other issues. "DirecTV wants us to do the show that we’ve been doing," said Zelman. "If anything, they want us to push what we’ve been doing even further . They’re encouraging us to be as bold as possible, which is something we strive for anyway. There have been no discussions about altering the show in any fundamental way." Except for the fact that the episodes will be longer, that is. "What’s exciting for us as creators is that on the 101 Network there are no commercials, so it’ll

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. It's the brief calm between the dual storms of Comic-Con and the TCA Summer Press Tour and there oh so much to do. Let's hit the headlines. Chuck 's executive producers Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak stunned audiences at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend by announcing that Linda Hamilton ( Terminator 2: Judgment Day ) would be playing Chuck's mama Mary Bartowski, the oft-mentioned missing mother of the Bartowski siblings who was briefly glimpsed in the season finale. Hamilton will recur throughout Season Four of Chuck , though producers are being cagey about saying just what Mary has been up to since she walked out on her family, though they do admit that espionage runs in the family. "Hamilton will appear throughout the season, leading Chuck to discover that her life was shrouded in secrets," said Warner Bros. Television in an official press release about the casting. "She was a spy, a CIA agent ... and t

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. A few things to get through before I hit the road for San Diego and Comic-Con. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Olivia Munn (the newly minted Daily Show correspondent) will guest star on NBC's Chuck this fall when the series returns for its fourth season on September 20th. Munn, who is a series regular on NBC's midseason comedy Perfect Couples , will play "an impossibly cool, smart, and pretty CIA agent who intimidates and schools Chuck and Morgan" in the same installment that features Dolph Lundgren. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) In other scoop, Ausiello writes that former Friday Night Lights star Scott Porter will be joining the cast of CBS' The Good Wife this fall. Porter, whose CW pilot Nomads was not ordered to series, will play Blake, described as "Kalinda’s private-eye counterpart at the D.C. firm that’s merging with Lockhart & Gardner" w