[Televisionary]

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello is reporting that multiple sources have confirmed to him that NBC will be renewing action-comedy Chuck for a fourth season and that "the show has thus far figured into all of the network’s preliminary plans for its May 17 upfront presentation," with Chuck likely to get a thirteen-episode initial order with the possibility of a full season order still in the cards as well. However, co-creator Josh Schwartz hadn't heard anything regarding a renewal as of yet. "That’s news to me," said Schwartz. "I would urge fans to take nothing for granted..." ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) NBC's Angela Bromstad also cautioned fans about reading too much into rumors about Chuck 's future and wouldn't confirm that it had been picked up when speaking with The Hollywood Reporter 's James Hibberd. "It's our highest performing Monday ni

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Don't expect Mr. Eko to turn up among the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 this season on Lost . Entertainment Weekly 's Lynette Rice is reporting that Adewale Akinnoye-Agbaje will not be returning to ABC's drama series Lost before it wraps up its epic run on May 23rd. "Though the producers wanted to find a reason to bring back the former tailie, EW has learned that a deal could not be reached in time," writes Rice. Akinnoye-Agbaje, who played Nigerian warlord-turned-pious-fake-priest Mr. Eko, had previously made it clear that he would be more than happy to return to Lost , which he departed during the series' third season. "I’m here for [the producers]," Akinnuoye-Agbaje said in an August 2009 interview. "Adewale is open for business. We have had talks about some things they might do for the final season and there are other dead folks coming back allegedly but at the moment it is still a mayb

Welcome to this week's second look at Lost , which only has four and a half hours left before it fades to black. (Or white.) Once again this week, I'll be taking a second look at this week's episode of Lost ("The Candidate") by answering reader questions submitted via comments, Twitter, and email. While I discussed "The Candidate" in full over here (along with theories about the Man in Black, Sayid, Claire, Widmore, and more) and dropped by this week's episode of Instant Dharma , it's time to dive deeper and get to some further theories, doubts, and questions that we're all thinking about. So, without further ado, let's prepare to board the submarine and head down to Davy Jones' locker. I don't know about you but I'm still getting choked up just thinking about "The Candidate" and the number of major deaths that the episode contained. While I'm somewhat sad to see Sayid and (possibly) Lapidus go, it's the fi

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello has the scoop on why Katee Sackhoff ( Battlestar Galactica, 24 ) turned down the role of Debbie Pelt on Season Three of HBO's vampire drama True Blood , a role that was later filled by The Middleman 's Brit Morgan when Sackhoff decided instead to join the cast of ABC drama pilot Boston's Finest . "I am a huge fan of True Blood ,” Sackhoff told Ausiello. "It’s a phenomenal show and [executive producer] Alan Ball is a f—ing genius. But I wanted more security than one season of something, so I rolled the dice with [ Boston's Finest ]. This entire business is about rolling the dice and hoping you made the right decision. I almost didn’t take 24 to do my own series on USA Network, and that worked out. I’m sure [Brit] is going to be fantastic [as Debbie]." ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) The Wrap's Josef Adalian takes a look at just which cast me

It's time for some more Instant Dharma. Last night, I had the extreme pleasure of being invited back to AOL's weekly Lost -centric show Instant Dharma , where I joined host Maggie Furlong and Kate Aurthur, my editor at The Daily Beast, to discuss this week's episode of Lost ("The Candidate"), where we talked about--SPOILERS!--this week's tragic deaths, another failed getaway attempt, why the castaways are now family, and much more. You can catch my appearance on this week's episode of Instant Dharma below and read my further take on "The Candidate" here . The final season of Lost airs Tuesdays at 9 pm ET/PT on ABC.

"We're not strangers; we're family." - Jack Last night's episode of Lost ("The Candidate"), written by Elizabeth Sarnoff and Jim Galasso and directed by Jack Bender, may have started off a little wobbly with yet another switch-up among the alliances and another about-face with their destination but, by George, the last twenty minutes of that episode still has me in tears the morning after. We can cross a few more names off the cave wall now, thanks to an episode that definitely brought the emotional painfulness back to Lost as well as brought things full circle to the notion of family and the bonds between these characters. When Lost first began, it was essentially a story of survival as a group of strangers--united by tragedy--had to discover a way to stay alive, deciding whether to live together or die alone. Over the course of six seasons and countless threats to their survival, these disparate characters have grown into something akin to a family.

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. Looks like there's more Lost than we thought. The Hollywood Reporter 's James Hibberd is reporting that ABC has expanded the series finale of Lost by a half an hour, bringing the finale's running time to two and a half hours on May 23rd, after the two-hour recap special, Lost: The Final Journey , and before a special edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live featuring the cast at 12:05 am that night. The decision to expand the series finale was made after executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse completed post-production on the final episode. "The producers of ABC's hit drama have shot so much crucial material for the show's hugely anticipated series finale that the network has agreed to extend the last episode by an extra half hour," writes Hibberd. Which means that we get another half an episode of the series. Lucky, lucky us. ( Hollywood Reporter 's The Live Feed ) STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. NBC has given a series order to spy dramedy Undercovers , from executive producers J.J. Abrams and Josh Reims, the first series pickup for the 2010-11 season. Series, which revolves around the exploits of a married couple who both work in espionage, stars Boris Kodjoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Carter MacIntyre, Gerald McRaney, and Ben Schwartz. “Having J.J. on our creative team is a great reason for celebration,” said Angela Bromstad, President, Primetime Entertainment, NBC and Universal Media Studios, in a statement. “In Undercovers , J.J. and Josh have found a breakout couple that is rich in character and brimming with romance and action. We feel he’s found the perfect cast.” ( Televisionary ) MEGA-SPOILER! I won't be clicking over to read these (and would ask that you not discuss them in any specific detail here ) but Italian blog Macchianera has obtained six script pages from the Lost series finale, schedule

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. SPOILER! "Presence," huh? TV Guide Magazine 's Will Keck attempts to get to the bottom of just who Allison Janney ( The West Wing ) will be playing on the May 11th episode of Lost by going right to the source: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who are being rather cagey about Janney's mystery role. "We were so happy that she was able to do this," said Cuse. "It was really hard for her because she was getting ready to shoot a pilot, but she squeezed us in. Then once we saw her in this part we were like, 'How could anyone else have done this but Allison Janney?'" Lindelof wasn't giving Keck anything either: "We’ve been talking about this character for awhile and how nervous we were that we wouldn’t find the right actress," he said. "When we first started talking about this character in the writers room we called her 'Allison Janney' under the assumption that we wo