[Televisionary]

Probably not the best time to launch a medical drama based around a plucky and opinionated nurse. After all, Showtime just last week launched Nurse Jackie , its own series about, you got it, a plucky and opinionated nurse in a comedy series that's intelligent, gripping, and utterly unforgettable. The same, sadly, can't be said for TNT's Hawthorne (I flat out refuse to capitalize the RN--for registered nurse, natch--in the series' title), which launches tonight on the cabler. Created by John Masius ( St. Elsewhere, Dead Like Me ), Hawthorne pales in comparison to the similarly-themed Nurse Jackie . It also tries to take a more serious tack with its handling of professional nurses than the Edie Falco-led Showtime series and yet feels all the more tired and staid as a result. Jada Pinkett Smith ( The Matrix ) stars here as Christina Hawthorne, the widowed Chief Nursing Officer at Richmond Trinity hospital who has to contend with a headstrong daughter (Hannah Hodson), a b

I had a hard time reconciling the fact that reality series Wedding Day was airing on TNT... much less in primetime. If anything, the Mark Burnett-produced reality series, which throws elaborate "dream" weddings for deserving couples, feels more suited for a daytime slot on Lifetime or TLC. There's a softness that seems completely out of touch with the high-stakes drama that has become the network's bread and butter, with series like The Closer, Leverage , or Saving Grace . I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to watch the first three episodes of Wedding Day and was shocked to discover that it was executive produced by Mark Burnett; it's certainly a departure from the producer's fast-paced reality series like Survivor and The Apprentice . Granted, this isn't a reality competition series but a feel-good wedding-themed series but it could have used some of the polish and smoothness of Burnett's other series. I feel bad criticizing Wedding Day because

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. Neil Patrick Harris ( How I Met Your Mother ) won't be reprising his role from Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible but he will be singing in an upcoming episode of Cartoon Network's Batman: The Brave and the Bold slated to air this fall. In the episode, Harris will play villain The Music Meister who "has the power to create song wherever he goes, and he’s trying to dominate the world," according to series executive producer James Tucker. Fans looking to catch an animated glimpse at Harris as the Music Meister should attend the Batman: Brave and the Bold panel at Comic-Con next month, where the entire "Mayhem of the Music Meister!" episode will be screened. ( TV Guide ) Steven Spielberg is said to be wooing Noah Wyle ( ER ) to star in his untitled TNT sci-fi pilot, which, according to Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello, "takes place six months after evil extra terrestrials decimate mankind.&quo

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. Wondering what Joss Whedon has in store for Season Two of Dollhouse , which returns to FOX this fall? Entertainment Weekly 's Mandi Bierly caught up with the Dollhouse creator to find out what to expect. "About two hours after starting to talk to the writers about story, I was back with such a vengeance, and so energized and so pumped because we really understand the show now," said Whedon. "We understand what works, and what didn't work so well or what we weren't so thrilled about. We don't have the onus of trying to be a big hit sitting on our shoulders. We can just be ourselves. And so the stories we're breaking are pure, and exciting, and everybody's on-board in the room, and it's never flowed better." Look for Echo to use that final word of Season One as a springboard for her second season mission. ""Echo wants to find not just Caroline, but what's going on behind ever

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Wondering just what Season Three of NBC's Chuck will be like? For one thing the series' core trio isn't going anywhere. "Yes. Chuck, Sarah, and Casey are in all episodes," said Chuck co-creator/executive producer Josh Schwartz. Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello catches up with Schwartz to find out about Season Three, budget cuts, Subway, returning supporting cast members ("We have plans for Anna to return"), and about being off the air for ten months. "It was really a tough choice that the network faced: Put us on Friday or [hold us until] midseason," said Schwartz. "I really believe Chuck is the little show that could. Our fans are clearly passionate, clearly loyal, and hopefully all we'll do is get them more and more [excited] for our return. And we'll come up with fun ways of stoking the fans throughout the fall. We also have something very, very fun planned for

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Lost co-creator J.J. Abrams tells The Guardian that the writing staff on the ABC series, which airs its fifth season finale next week, approach the series a bit like Charles Dickens approached his own serialized storytelling. "It's a leap of faith doing any serialized storytelling," said Abrams in a new interview. "We had an idea early on, but certain things we thought would work well didn't. We couldn't have told you which characters would be in which seasons. We couldn't tell you who would even survive. You feel that electricity. It's almost like live TV. We don't quite know what might happen. I'm sure when Charles Dickens was writing, he had a sense of where he was going - but he would make adjustments as he went along. You jump into it, knowing there's something great out there to find." ( Guardian ) (SPOILER) Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello talks with Bones sta

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. Not unsurprisingly, NBC's Chuck has topped USA Today 's Save Our Show poll, scoring 54 percent of the 43,000 viewers who cast their votes in the ten-day online poll. The Warner Bros Television-produced series scored the top spot overall as well and was the most favored choice among men, teens and twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, forty-somethings, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Westerners, Southerners, Northeasterners, and Midwesterners and the fourth favored choice among women as well. (If that's not cross-cultural appeal, I don't know what is.) ( USA Today ) Adult Swim has acquired rights to the original UK series The Office , starring Ricky Gervais, from BBC Worldwide and will air both seasons as well as the Christmas special (which marked the series finale) this summer. Move marks the second deal between Adult Swim and BBC Worldwide, which previously sold rights to comedy The Mighty Boosh to the cabler, which

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. TNT has officially canceled freshman drama Trust Me , starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh. The Warner Horizon-produced series, which launched with 3.4 million viewers and quickly lost much of that viewership, will not be returning for a second season. McCormack himself has already signed on to another project, ABC's untitled Tad Quill comedy pilot. The cabler, meanwhile, has three new series in the works: Ray Romano dramedy Men of a Certain Age , medical drama Hawthorne (formerly known as Time Heals ), and Deep Blue (formerly known as The Line ). ( Hollywood Reporter ) Showtime is now zero for four. The pay cabler has now opted not to order any of its four pilots to series in the last month, deciding over the weekend not to hand out a series order to Tim Robbins-created drama Possible Side Effects , staring Josh Lucas as a pharmaceuticals family scion. Previously, the network had shelved pilots Ronna and Beverly , The L Wo

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Elizabeth Mitchell ( Lost ) has been cast in ABC drama pilot V , a retelling of the cult 1980s sci-fi series. But before we start to mourn the passing of Juliet, it's worth noting that Mitchell will guest star in the sci fi pilot, from Warner Bros. Television, and not star in it, according to Entertainment Weekly 's Michael Ausiello. ( Entertainment Weekly 's Ausiello Files ) Meanwhile, Visitorsite.net has confirmed that Mitchell will play Erica Evans, a single mother and an FBI Counter-Terrorism agent. ( Visitorsite ) Editor's note: Having read the script, I can say with all authority that Erica is far from being a "guest star" in the pilot; in fact she's one of the lead roles and as intrinsic to the plot of the pilot episode as Jacqueline McKenzie's Diana Skouris was to The 4400 . In fact, she's the very first character we meet in the draft of the script I read... What this truly means for Eliz

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. I hope everyone had a very happy three-day weekend. (I know I did.) A few headlines on yet another rain-soaked day in Los Angeles... Former Alias star Michael Vartan has joined the cast of TNT drama series Time Heals , where he will replace Jeffrey Nordling in the role of Tom Wakefield, the director of medicine at the hospital where Christina Hawthorne (Jada Pinkett Smith) is the director of nursing. Nordling played the part in the series' original pilot. Move marks Vartan's return to series television since he last starred in ABC's short-lived drama Big Shots . ( Hollywood Reporter ) TV Guide 's Mickey O'Connor offers up some solutions to save CW's Gossip Girl , which he believes is creatively "starting to stink like so much day-old smoked salmon." Among the series' problems that O'Connor points out needs addressing: Serena and Dan's on-again-off-again relationship, the under-utilizatio

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. The Los Angeles Times has an interesting and revealing Q&A with Dollhouse 's Fran Kranz, who plays techie Topher on the FOX drama, which launches next Friday. Kranz reveals, "There is a place in the Dollhouse called the Attic that stores failed Dolls and personalities. There’s like a whole warehouse where actual bodies are kept." As for the, uh, unconvention post-order redevelopment surrounding Dollhouse , Kranz is forthcoming. "I’ve read things where Joss has said that... Fox wanted to cut to the chase," he said. "They thought there was too much on the characters within the Dollhouse and the conflict and mythology of the Dollhouse, as opposed to seeing what the Dollhouse does on a day-to-day basis. In one sense, I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s important for the audience to define the Dollhouse before they’re introduced to the rest of the conflicts and stories." ( Los Angeles Times ) S

TNT has renewed freshman drama Leverage for a second season. The cabler announced today that it will launch Season Two of action drama Leverage , which stars Timothy Hutton ( Nero Wolfe ), Gina Bellman ( Coupling ), Christian Kane ( Into the West ), Beth Riesgraf ( Without a Trace ), and Aldis Hodge ( Friday Night Lights ), later this year. TNT has ordered fifteen new installments of the series for its sophomore season. “We’re thrilled that audiences and critics have responded so positively to Leverage and made the show a solid hit,” said Michael Wright, executive vice president of TNT, in a statement. “We look forward to another great season of fun and exciting storylines brought to life by the outstanding cast, led by Timothy Hutton, and the incredible production team, headed up by executive producers Dean Devlin and John Rogers.” “We had an amazing experience shooting the first season of Leverage with such a talented cast and crew and with the full support of TNT behind us,” sai

Welcome to your Friday morning television briefing. I'm currently drowning in pilot scripts and hoping to use this weekend to get through a bunch of must-read scripts. Fingers crossed. ABC handed out a pilot order to comedy Let It Go , starring Lauren Graham ( Gilmore Girls ), about a self-help guru whose teaching mantra to women is to let it go, but she can't quite follow her own advice when her seemingly perfect boyfriend dumps her. Project, written by Alex Herschlag ( Will & Grace ) and executive produced by Hersclag, Mitch Hurwitz, Eric Tannenbaum, and Kim Tannenbaum, will be produced by Sony Pictures Television and Tantamount. Also on order at the Alphabet: an untitled multi-camera comedy from writer/executive producer Tad Quiller ( Scrubs ) about two forty-something friends who face different challenges when one has a baby and the other deals with a suddenly empty nest. ( Hollywood Reporter ) CBS finally announced some pilot orders, handing out pilot pickups to three