[Televisionary]

Well, Pushing Daisies fans, there's the good news and then there's the bad news. The good news is that ABC hasn't quite decided what to do about the fate of Pushing Daisies . Daisies and fellow sophomore drama series Dirty Sexy Money are both said to be in contention for renewal for the 2009-10 season. However, then there's the bad news: Pushing Daisies isn't anywhere on ABC's midseason schedule. (Its Wednesday night timeslot, according to the schedule obtained by Futon Critic from ABCStagePass.com, has been taken over by Scrubs and The Goode Family .) The decision to take Daisies off the schedule could mean that ABC merely decided to cut costs and truncate the second season and could later decide to magnanimously renew the series for a third season despite low ratings. (Production wrapped on the series' initial thirteen episodes last week so it's now a given that it won't shoot any additional episodes for this season.) I'm hoping that ABC

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I am still laughing after last night's episode of 30 Rock and, while I did love the interaction between Andy and Oscar in Canada, was less than impressed once again with The Office . (Sorry, Brent!) The TV-related headlines are pretty sparse today, so I'll be brief. Everyone is, of course, talking about whether or not Pushing Daisies will get canceled today. I've heard from numerous sources that ABC is going to opt not to renew the series past its initial 13-episode commitment. Having the Sword of Damocles hanging over Daisies ' head like this for so long is making me a bit woozy, if I'm honest. I also wish that ABC had decided to air Pushing Daisies during the first two weeks of sweeps before making a decision about its fate, but that's just me. Production wrapped last night on the thirteen episodes currently slated for Daisies ' second season and THR reports that no decision has yet been made (or for

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I'm still getting mail from readers about yesterday's announcement that FOX would stick Joss Whedon's Dollhouse on Fridays, as many are extremely upset by what they perceive to be the final nail in the coffin for Whedon's latest work. As one door opens, another one opens. Or so the aphorism goes. In any event, should ABC opt not to order additional episodes of Pushing Daisies past their initial 13-episode commitment this season, creator Bryan Fuller will be heading back to NBC's Heroes , where he was on staff during the beleaguered series' freshman season. "I am exclusive to Daisies through the delivery of the 13th episode of our 13-episode order, which will be mid-January," Fuller told EW.com. "If Daisies isn't picked up by then, I will definitely be going back to play with my friends at Heroes ." Sadly, it's now looking more and more likely that ABC won't be ordering more i

Happy Halloween and welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I'm still catching up on television from this week, thanks to a busy social calendar and some LA-based preemptions of CW's Wednesday night series, so look for me to spend much time this weekend catching up. I got many a worried email from readers last night about Kristin Dos Santos' report about the possibility that ABC had not extended Pushing Daisies beyond its initial 13-episode order. While ABC has yet to make a decision about the fate of the series, producers were told to change their original plan for the second season's thirteenth episode (intended as the first of a two-parter) and make said episode a stand-alone installment to "cover all bases," whether the episode be just the thirteenth episode... or Pushing Daisies ' series finale. (And be sure to read this item about what you can do to help the Daisies cause.) ( E! Online's Watch with Kristin ) Don Draper has found so

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Hope you weren't too attached to CBS' The Ex List . The Eye has pulled the low-performing drama off of its schedule, effective immediately, and will fill the Friday night timeslot with repeats of NCIS for now. Decision comes on the heels of yet another batch of low ratings for the drama (5.3 million viewers and 1.5/5) and the departure of showrunner Diane Ruggiero. No word on whether production will continue (series is currently shooting its eleventh episode) or whether CBS will air the produced episodes later down the line. My thought is that they won't be going to prom any time soon. ( Variety ) Barack Obama's presidential campaign has decided not to enlist a full broadcast regime on Wednesday night, opting not to purchase the 8 pm air time on ABC, which will instead air an original episode of Pushing Daisies instead. I'm hoping that the fact that Daisies is one of the few series that will air original episod

Another fantastic installment of Pushing Daisies , but have we come to expect any less of this gorgeously crafted series? My only complaint about the series is, of course, that not enough people are watching and the clock is ticking away for the fate of Pushing Daisies as ABC has yet to order any additional scripts. Sigh. On this week's episode of Pushing Daisies ("Frescorts")--written by Lisa Joy, Gretchen Berg, and Aaron Harberts--the gang investigates the murder of a professional best friend as new BFFs Chuck and Olive go undercover (as Kitty Pimms and Patty Boots respectively) as potential Frescort trainees, Emerson attempts to negotiate a new relationship with his best friend/mother Calista ( Everwood 's Debra Mooney) and finally comes clean about a secret, and Chuck and Ned try to find new footing in their relationship now that she's living with Olive. And, of course, there was that jaw-dropping last scene in which Chuck surprised Ned (who earlier offered

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I spent last night in front of the telly, watching The Office (meh), SNL Weekend Update Thursday (hilarious), Crusoe (mind-numbingly boring), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (funny), and Life on Mars (humdrum). I still have to watch last night's Ugly Betty , however. AMC has renewed Mad Men for a third season mere weeks before the series' current series wraps up. However, talks continue apace between the cabler, studio Lionsgate Television, and creator Matthew Weiner. Lionsgate does not have a deal in place with Weiner to stay on as showrunner/executive producer for Season Three and he is seeking a raise "commensurate with the white-hot level of acclaim (including the Emmy for drama series last month) and pop-culture buzz the show has generated." Studio hopes to reach a deal with Weiner for both the third and fourth season, which it would then use to leverage an early pickup for Season Four from AMC. Fing

I watched last night's episode of Pushing Daisies ("Bad Habits") a few weeks ago but I couldn't resist saying a few things about this fantastic installment that ranks up there with some of the series' very best episodes. Written by Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts (who created the WB's short-lived series Pepper Dennis ), "Bad Habits" not only continues the storylines elegantly established in the previous two episodes--Olive running away from the Pie Hole, Lily covering up her tracks, Chuck attempting to be independent--but also puts a nice little bow on them as well. We know that Olive won't stay metaphorically cloistered now that Chuck knows the truth about her birth mother but I can't wait to see whether she moves in with Chuck (who is now residing in her old apartment)... or is forced to move in with Ned in the meantime. Strange bedfellows, people. I loved Ned, Chuck, and Emerson going undercover as Vatican investigators (a better inspir

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Details are slowly emerging about the next season of British import Torchwood . Producers have cast four actors for the series' condensed third season, entitled Torchwood: Children of Earth . Lucy Cohu ( Meadowlands ) will play Alice, "a woman keeping many secrets from the past," according to producer Peter Bennett. Susan Brown ( The Riff Raff Element ) will play Bridget Spears, "a character vitally connected to the government, which plays an important part in this story." Cush Jumbo will play Lois Habiba, a secretary who "hacks into some vital information," and Rik Makarem will play Doctor Rupesh Patanjali, a "junior doctor at St Helen's hospital who gets drawn into Torchwood's investigations." I can't wait! ( Digital Spy ) ABC is developing an adaptation of classic 1980s mini-series V , about reptilian aliens who enslave Earth, with The 4400 co-creator/executive producer Scott

While I saw the second episode of Pushing Daisies ("Circus Circus") a few weeks back , I can't help but want to discuss it some more now that everyone has seen the episode. After all, there are few series as sweetly infectious as Pushing Daisies and I find, once I've watched an episode, that I can't get it out of my mind for days... or often weeks. So just a few more thoughts about "Circus Circus" that didn't make it into the original three-episode review I did . Last night's episode, written by Peter Ocko (who wrote last season's "Dummy"), furthered some of the plots established in the season opener (Olive at the nunnery, Vivian reentering the world, Chuck moving into her own apartment, etc.) while also offering up a bizarro mystery of the week about a teenage runway named Sweet Nickie Heaps who literally ran off to join the circus... only to encounter murder and mayhem in the most unlikely of places. Hell, what other series coul

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. While everyone is buzzing about last night's presidential debate, there are more than a few television-related news tidbits to discuss as well. Following several months of discussions, FX has confirmed that it will not be renewing drama series The Riches for a third season, due to falling ratings for the drama. In its second season, which was shortened to seven episodes due to the writers strike, viewers dropped 44 percent in the key 18-49 demo. The move is hardly a surprise: showrunner Dmitry Lipkin is currently working on his HBO pilot project Hung and I had assumed for a while now that The Riches would sadly not be returning to the cabler. ( Variety ) TV Guide talks to Pushing Daisies star Lee Pace about what to expect for Season Two, a certain game of "slap jack" between Ned and Chuck that never made it to the screen, and the Pie Maker's family. ( TV Guide ) Sadly, there might not have been a new episode

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I will admit that I felt the loss not having a new installment of The Office to watch last night and I still have Episodes Two and Three (next week's episode) to watch of Ugly Betty , but I did laugh my butt off watching the one-hour It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia last night, which not only gave us Mac and Charlie faking their own deaths but the very odd sight of Mac in a pawn shop wedding dress. (Congrats, BTW, to Rob McElhenny, who wed his Sunny co-star Kaitlin Olson this week.) While the ratings for the launch of Pushing Daisies , were not exactly as sweet as honey for ABC, fans of the brilliant series can look forward to, among other things, a cross-over with Bryan Fuller's tragically-missed Wonderfalls in the eighth episode of the current season, according to Fuller in an interview. Just what this means and which Wonderfalls characters have been cast (an interesting dilemma as Lee Pace starred on that series a

I don't know about you but I was just buzzing with delight at having ABC's Pushing Daisies back on the air. While you can read my advance review of the first three episodes of Pushing Daisies ' second season , now that you've all gotten to see the buzzworthy season opener, I thought we could chat a little bit more about this delicious series. I absolutely loved last night's episode ("Bzzzzzzzzz"), which saw Chuck going undercover at a honey-based cosmetics company following the death of the company's latest spokesmodel Kentucky Fizz (Autumn Reeser) and dealing with fallout from the Season One finale in which she asked Ned to resurrect her late father (who died as a result of Young Ned bringing his mother back to life). And how heartbroken was the Pie Maker when Chuck said that she wanted to move out of their apartment (how adorable were their little bell-adorned slippers) and into Olive's vacant one? You could literally see Lee Pace's heart br

Everyone who knows me knows that I love television but I can often be a harsh critic of the beast, having worked on both sides of the medium for many years. So when I first saw Pushing Daisies early last year, I knew a series had come along that was strikingly different, wholly original, and definitely danced to the beat of its own drum. And then the writers strike happened last fall, curtailing production on Pushing Daisies and giving its fans only nine superlative episodes filled to the brim with resurrection, pie, monkeys, and a whole host of ephemera from the furtive mind of series creator Bryan Fuller. Forced to wait ten months since the end of the truncated first season, I've been in severe withdrawal from the candy-colored Pushing Daisies . So imagine my absolute glee when I received the first three episodes of Season Two of Pushing Daisies a few weeks back. No power in heaven or hell could have prevented me from hungrily devouring these morsels after such a long fasting

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Hopefully all of you managed to catch a superlative season opener to NBC's Chuck and a slightly-less-than-stellar episode of CW's Gossip Girl . Orlando Jones ( Drumline ), Michael Weaver ( Notes from the Underbelly ), and Ivana Milicevic ( Casino Royale ) have been cast in guest roles for a November episodes of ABC's Pushing Daisies entitled "The Norwegians," where they will play Norwegian detectives resembling our favorite troika of gumshoes Emerson, Ned, and Chuck, who leave Scandinavia in search of bigger and better mysteries to solve. Let's just hope these dopplegangers don't try to solve the mystery of how Emerson and Ned, er, solve their mysteries. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Don't hold your breath waiting for an Arrested Development feature film, fans of the Bluth clan. Michael Cera says that he's heard nothing about plans for a feature film based on the short-lived F

Once again, the Paley Center for Media is offering a week-long series of screenings of new and returning series this year. The premiere episode screening series, kicking off in Los Angeles on September 5th (and in New York on September 4th), will feature network-oriented screening nights and small panel discussions. The schedule for the Beverly Hills-based location of the Paley Center is as follows: Friday, Sept. 5th: Fringe, Do Not Disturb (FOX) Saturday, Sept. 6th: Privileged, 90210 (CW) Monday, Sept. 8th: My Own Worst Enemy, Kath & Kim, Crusoe, Knight Rider (NBC) Tuesday, Sept. 9th: Gary Unmarried, The Ex List, Worst Week, The Mentalist (CBS) Wednesday, Sept. 10th: Pushing Daisies, Private Practice, Eli Stone, Life on Mars preview (ABC) While I've already seen nearly all of those above (though I'd be kidding if I said I wasn't salivating over the Pushing Daisies premiere), I probably won't be rushing to the Paley more than once for what promises to be a SRO

Good morning and welcome to your morning television briefing. Universal Media Studios has signed The Office writer/producer Michael Schur to a hefty seven-figure overall deal, under which he will create, develop, and executive produce comedy series for the studio. The newly minted deal includes Schur's writing/producing services on the untitled comedy that he and Greg Daniels are developing for Amy Poehler; he'll serve as co-creator/executive producer on the pilot, set to shoot in January (after the birth of Poehler's baby in October), alongside Daniels. Four writers so far have been hired on the untitled Poehler comedy (which will also star Aziz Ansari), which seems to have neither a title nor an available concept. Schur, meanwhile, will continue to write occasionally on The Office and could appear on-screen again as Dwight's cousin Mose. ( Variety ) CBS has revealed its lineup of sixteen contestants for the thirteenth edition of reality series The Amazing Race , whi