[Televisionary]

Welcome to your (slightly delayed) Thursday morning television briefing. A few headlines to get through on Emmy nomination day... Score another genre hit for Mark Pellegrino. The former Lost and Supernatural co-star is heading to Syfy's US adaptation of supernatural drama Being Human , where he will play Bishop, described as the "charismatic and menacing mentor" to Sam Witwer's vampire Aidan. Pellegrino's casting nearly rounds out the cast for the American adaptation, though there's still one role outstanding (that would be Josh, the werewolf, though there have been rumblings about several actors auditioning for the role). Elsewhere, Patrick J. Adams ( Friends With Benefits ) has been cast as the lead in USA legal drama A Legal Mind , where he will play Mike Ross, described as "a brilliant but unmotivated college student who gets recruited by a top Manhattan corporate law firm despite not being a lawyer" and who must "use his book and street s

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. TV Guide Magazine 's Will Keck is reporting that former Lost co-star Henry Ian Cusick has signed on for a multiple-episode story arc on NBC's Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , where he will play Erik Weber, a graphic artist. Cusick is expected to appear in at least two episodes of the procedural drama and will cross paths with Mariska Hargitay's Detective Olivia Benson. "There might be some flirtation," executive producer Neal Baer told Keck. "Erik meets Olivia when he comes to someone's aid. And then we'll see how it goes. Olivia is devoted to her job and knows that comes first." ( TV Guide Magazine ) It's official: Academy Award nominee David Strathairn will star in Syfy's 90-minute action pilot Alphas , according to a network press release. In the pilot, written by Zak Penn and Michael Karnow and directed by Jack Bender, Strathairn will play the "unconventional, eccentr

The Television Critics Association today announced their short-list nominations for the 2010 TCA Awards, which will be handed out during TCA Summer Press Tour, which kicks off at the end of July. Among the nominees for Program of the Year, such series as Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights, Glee, Lost , and Modern Family . In the individual genre categories, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Lost, Sons of Anarchy , and The Good Wife will compete for the top drama prize, while Glee, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, Party Down , and The Big Bang Theory are up for comedy kudos and such talents as Eric Stonestreet, Jane Lynch, Aaron Paul, Katey Segal, Nick Offerman, and many others are up for individual honors. I'm glad to see so many broadcast network series competing side by side with their cable brethren. It almost gives one hope that the network model isn't completely cracked. Additionally, this year's TCA Awards is also the first time that I'll be voting, as a newly installed

Welcome to this week's second look at Lost , in what will be my final column on Lost for some time to come now that the series has wrapped, amid some controversy (those ABC-inserted final shots!) and viewer polarization over the reveal of just what the Sideways/ Lost -X storyline was really about. As I have throughout this season, I'll be taking a second look at this week's episode of Lost ("The End") by responding to reader questions and comments submitted via comments, Twitter, and email. While I discussed "The End" in full over here (as well as a shorter piece over at The Daily Beast ), it's time to dive deeper and get to some further theories, doubts, and questions. (You can also catch me on this week's Instant Dharma critics roundup as well.) So, without further ado, let's pull the cork from the bottle, lay down in the bamboo grove, and discuss "The End." As I stated in my 4500-word review of the Lost series finale (which

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. (Is it just me or does it feel like this week will never end?) E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos is reporting that there's still more Lost to come, including an epilogue that depicts the time that Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and Ben (Michael Emerson) spent on the island after the events of the series finale. Emerson spilled the dirt on the sequence on G4's Attack of the Show , where told Kevin Pereira about the bonus footage on the complete series DVD. "For those people that want to pony up and buy the complete Lost series, there is a bonus feature," said Emerson. "Which is um, you could call it an epilogue. A lost scene. It's a lot; it's 12 or 14 minutes that opens a window onto that gap of unknown time between Hurley (Jorge Garcia) becoming number one and the end of the series... It's self-contained. Although, it's a rich period in the show's mythology that‘s never been explored, so who know

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. The Los Angeles Times 's Maria Elena Fernandez is reporting that the final shots of the Oceanic Flight 815 wreckage that accompanied the closing credits of the series finale of Lost were not placed there by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, but rather by ABC executives who wanted to "soften the transition from the moving ending of the series to the 11 p.m. news and never considered that it would confuse viewers about the actual ending of the show," according to Fernandez. ABC went on to release a statement to confirm this fact. "The images shown during the end credits of the Lost finale, which included shots of Oceanic 815 on a deserted beach, were not part of the final story but were a visual aid to allow the viewer to decompress before heading into the news," said an ABC spokesperson in a statement. [Editor: I am hoping this finally puts an end to the misread of the series' ending, as some have taken

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Fancast's Matt Mitovich is reporting that former One Tree Hill star Hilarie Burton has signed on to appear in a six-episode story arc on Season Two of USA's White Collar , where she'll play Sarah Ellis, a new love interest for Matthew Bomer's Neal Caffrey, who is described as "an insurance investigator-slash-white collar bounty hunter who has a bit of a score to settle with Neal." Bomer's Neal will quickly find himself enmeshed in a game of cat and mouse with Sarah. Season Two of White Collar is set to launch Tuesday, July 13th at 9 pm ET/PT. ( Fancast ) Former Eli Stone star Natasha Henstridge is heading back to the courtroom, according to Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello, who reports that Henstridge has signed on to a multiple-episode story arc on Season Two of Lifetime's legal dramedy Drop Dead Diva , which returns June 6th. She'll play the "heretofore-unseen partner at Har

"No one can tell you why you're here." I'm of two minds (and two hearts) about the two-and-a-half hour series finale of Lost ("The End"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender, which brought a finality to the story of the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 and the characters with which we've spent six years. At its heart, Lost has been about the two bookends of the human existence, birth and death, and the choices we make in between. Do we choose to live together or die alone? Can we let go of our past traumas to become better people? When we have nothing else left to give, can we make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good? In that sense, the series finale of Lost brought to a close the stories of the crash survivors and those who joined them among the wreckage over the course of more than 100 days on the island (and their return), offering up a coda to their lives and their deaths, a sort of purgatory for found, r

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my broad thoughts about the divisive series finale of Lost ("The End") before I post my detailed thoughts here. Head over to The Daily Beast, to read my piece, "The Infuriating Lost Finale," where I talk about my issues with the narrative and thematic conclusion of the series after six years. Do you agree? Disagree? Head to the comments section to discuss your take on Lost and "The End." (And the end.)

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. FOX has given a major vote of confidence to musical-comedy Glee , which it renewed for a third season... before the first season has even wrapped. News of the pickup was broken by Entertainment Weekly 's Lynette Rice. "Everything about Glee – from the concept to the characters to the marketing – has been innovative and risky, but with [series creator] Ryan Murphy tapping into the zeitgeist, the risk has paid off with this truly remarkable series," said Kevin Reilly, FOX Entertainment President. " Glee has one of the most active, devoted fan bases I’ve ever seen, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to give Gleeks a third season of their favorite show." The upside for FOX and studio 20th Century Fox Television are obvious: "Not only does it help cut production costs over the long haul, it allows Murphy and his writers a chance to plan ahead (if not breathe a much-needed sigh of relief)," writes Rice. &qu