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Channel Surfing: ABC Picks Up Tab for "Private Practice," Showtime Keeps "Dexter" Killing, Bomer and DeKay Try On "White Collar," Tony Hale, and More

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. I'm still on cloud nine after last night's perfect combination of sweet and tart on BBC America's Gavin & Stacey . Could that series be any funnier or any more genuinely emotional? It's well lush. Looks like Kate Walsh won't be returning to Seattle Grace any time soon. ABC has picked up Grey's Anatomy spinoff Private Practice for a full season of 22 episodes. Series, which had its freshman season truncated due to the writers strike, has averaged 3.2/8 in adults 18-49 and 8.3 million viewers across two original episodes this fall. ( Variety ) Showtime wants more Dexter : the pay cabler announced that it had renewed the serial killer drama for two additional seasons (that would be Season Four and Season Five) of twelve episodes each. Production on Season Four will begin in Los Angeles next spring. ( Hollywood Reporter ) CBS has ordered two additional scripts for freshman comedy Worst Week , which--after

Go Cougars: Sarah's High School Reunion Turns Vicious on "Chuck"

I know that I've been waxing ecstatic about the first few episodes of Season Two of Chuck for quite a while now but this week's installment ("Chuck Versus the Cougars") completely blew me away and should be a permanent fixture in the writers' room about how exactly to make this series work on a self-contained basis while still furthering the characters and creating a funny storyline for the Buy More crew. And the fact that there was a catfight between Nicole Ritchie's Heather Chandler (got to love the Heathers shout-out) and Sarah (a.k.a. Jenny Burton) in the high school showers didn't hurt matters, either. After nearly twenty episodes of Chuck (very nearly, anyway), it's about time that we managed to gather some intelligence on Chuck's very sexy handler, Sarah Walker. While we knew that Sarah wasn't her real name, she was romantically involved with Bryce Larson, and our girl had some killer knife skills, that was about as far as our knowled

Channel Surfing: NBC Orders More "Knight Rider," Brody and Tudyk Find "Good Vibes" at FOX, "Fringe," and More

Welcome to your Tuesday morning television briefing. NBC has given a full season pickup to Knight Rider , bringing this season's total to 22 episodes despite sagging ratings . And that's all I want to say on the subject. ( E! Online ) CW has ordered a few additional scripts for freshman drama series Privileged , which has struggled to find ratings though has shown significant improvement in recent weeks (it's up 22 percent) despite softening numbers for its lead-in, 90210 . Should the trend continue, it seems fairly certain that Privileged will get a full season order. ( Hollywood Reporter ) One of my main suggestions for improving FOX's Fringe involved giving its supporting cast some real dimension , especially Jasika Nicole's Astrid Farnsworth. Nicole speaks with TV Guide and reveals in this interview that she doesn't know Astrid's backstory either, other than "Astrid majored in music" and is "really, really smart." Not quite the thr

Power Plays, Both Corporate and Domestic, on "Mad Men"

I'm still reeling from last night's awe-inspiring episode of Mad Men ("The Mountain King"), in which we finally got some answers to some long-burning questions while pushing some characters past their boiling points. (If you haven't yet seen last night's episode, stop reading now as I am about to dive sharply into the plot twists and shocking developments that we received last night.) First I want to say just how brutal and shocking the scene with Joan and her fiancé Greg was in Don's office, especially as it seemed to come out of nowhere. Up until now, we've seen Greg as pretty harmless, a catch even: a handsome doctor who seems to adore Joan, even if he has some rather outdated ideas of what a woman should be doing at the office. (He did not like it at all when Joan took it upon herself to read those scripts for the television department.) But he seemed to love Joan and I think she needed that comfort and safety after everything that happened in Sea

Single White Female: Sketch Paints a Convincing Portrait of a Serial Killer in the Making on "Skins"

Once again, Skins has managed to completely surprise me. Revealing just who has been stalking Maxxie in this week's episode ("Sketch"), Skins took what could have been a humdrum plot about a girl having a crush on gay Maxxie and transformed it into a full-on psychotic episode in which said girl, Lucy (a.k.a. Sketch) not only binds her breasts to be more like a boy (and decorates her bedroom with spy shots of Maxxie) but constructs an elaborate fantasy world for her handicapped, reclusive mother in which she and Maxxie are dating. If that weren't enough, Sketch embarks on a series of plots to engineer her way into the school play ( Osama!: The Musical , no less) so that she can star opposite Maxxie and kiss him on stage. Her idea is that Maxxie will realize that he does love her as soon as their lips meet. Um, not quite. In order to get her way, Sketch tries to convince lecherous drama teacher Bruce to cast her as the female lead and boot Michelle from the role. When

Channel Surfing: FOX Issues Reprieve for "Sarah Connor," "Lost" Movie Unlikely, "Chuck," and More

Welcome to your Monday morning television briefing. Quite a lot of good telly on last night, including new episodes of Skins, Mad Men, Amazing Race , and Little Britain USA , not to mention another installment of Masterpiece Contemporary's The Last Enemy . Whew. FOX has issued a reprieve for ratings-starved sci-fi action drama Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles . The series has been given a full season order for its second season, which averaged a 2.3/6 in adults 18-49 in its last original airing. Many insiders had pegged the series as a goner, proving that there's obviously still some life in the Terminator franchise yet. ( Variety ) Zeljko Ivanek ( Damages ) has been cast in Season Three of Heroes , where he'll appear in a multiple-episode story arc playing a character known as the Hunter in Volume Four of the series, which is subtitled "Fugitives" and is set to kick off in January or February of 2009. ( E! Online's Watch with Kristin ) Entertainment W

Link Tank: TV Blog Coalition Roundup for Oct. 17-19

Televisionary is proud to be a member of the TV Blog Coalition. At the end of each week, we'll feature a roundup of content from our sister sites for your delectation. This week, I took an advance look at the first two episodes of 30 Rock 's upcoming third season (including the Oprah-centric second episode) and offered five suggestions on how to improve Fringe . Elsewhere in the sophisticated TV-obsessed section of the blogosphere, members of the TV Blog Coalition were discussing the following items... In light of David E. Kelley's new NBC project, Buzz is taking votes for the best Kelley series of all time. ( BuzzSugar ) GMMR readers chime in on their favorite episodes of The West Wing for our new segment - Take 5 - which takes a look back at our favorite shows of yesteryear. ( Give Me My Remote ) Marcia considered some of the most successful TV-to-film transitions. Not on the list: David Caruso. ( Pop Vultures ) She might be the only person still watching ER but, after