Roush Dispatch

I've been thinking a lot about Tom Snyder since his death from leukemia was made public, in part because my mind already had been preoccupied with the '70s, when this unforgettable talk-show icon was in his late-night NBC heyday.

My own late-'70s time warp was prompted by a 30-year high-school reunion over the weekend in which I referenced That '70s Show more than once. (Did we really look like that? Dress like that? Have hair like that? Only our senior class pictures know the truth, and I'm not sharing.) During my high school and college years, Snyder was a blazing, sometimes hair-raisingly pioneering presence in what had been a late-night wasteland following Johnny Carson's legendary Tonight Show.

Snyder's show, which aired from 1973 to 1982, was called Tomorrow, and to me, the title always underscored the fact that everything about it was a bit ahead of its time. The show's level of discourse, its idiosyncratic host with his brash intensity and eclectic range (historic interviews with everyone from John Lennon to Charlie Manson): nothing about Snyder or Tomorrow was ordinary. David Letterman, whose Late Night NBC show supplanted Snyder in 1982 and who resurrected Snyder's network career in the late '90s by giving him the post-Late Show slot on CBS for several years, describes him thusly: "Tom was the very thing that all broadcasters long to be: compelling."

Can't argue with that. His style was so distinctive and arresting that he became even more famous after Dan Aykroyd's indelible Saturday Night Live parody, complete with that explosively braying laugh, an ever-present halo of cigarette smoke and a fidgety restlessness that spoke volumes about Snyder's boundless intellectual curiosity.

He never spoke down to his audience even as his outsized personality often threatened to upstage his guests. Unlike today's late-night kings, from Letterman and Leno and Conan O'Brien to the Comedy Central combo of Stewart and Colbert and (way down the evolutionary scale) the frat-boy antics of Kimmel, Snyder had little regard or patience for irony. He was the real deal. Maybe too much so (especially for his bosses at NBC, who eventually grew weary of his pugnacious temperament).

Anyone seeking this level of conversation today is probably tuning in to Charlie Rose over on PBS — which at its best can be bracing and stimulating (when Charlie lets his guests get a word in edgewise, that is), but is almost never as much fun as when Tom Snyder let it rip on Tomorrow.

Could the third time be the charm? Being an eternal optimist when it comes to TV shows I love, I certainly hope so. For the third season in a row, the show I’ve picked as my favorite pilot of the fall season is on ABC, and once again, after two consecutive seasons of my pick failing to make the grade, this show’s projected success is far from a slam dunk. But let me tell you why I believe, despite all logical skepticism to the contrary, that the dazzling “forensic fairy tale” called Pushing Daisies has a shot at making it.

First, here’s why my earlier picks didn’t pan out. For one thing, both shows — Invasion in 2005, The Nine in 2006 — had the mixed fortune of being scheduled directly after Lost. (As we’ve learned, the Lost viewing experience is so intense and its fan base so obsessed that it’s pure folly to put any show, especially a demanding one, after Lost.) Both shows were also exceedingly dark in tone, whereas Pushing Daisies is bright, light and funny, despite a subtext of ever-present death.

In Invasion's case, many viewers found its subtle creepiness off-putting and even boring, and by the time the story kicked into full gear midway through the season, it was too late. With The Nine, the riveting pilot with its intense bank-hostage action sequences overshadowed the contemplative and unevenly portrayed aftermath story lines that followed. (The Nine returns to finish out its truncated run Aug. 1, and I’m hearing good things about these six episodes.)

Now to Pushing Daisies and its entirely different, thoroughly unique look and vibe. Diving into this enchanting show is like gorging on a delicious dessert with each bite giving off a new and unexpected pleasure. It’s charmingly written by Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Heroes) and stylishly directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black), who promises to stay involved with this show longer than he did in his earlier forays into distinctive TV (Karen Sisco, Maximum Bob, The Tick). They achieve a tone that is part storybook fantasy (narrated by Jim Dale, every bit as engaging as he is on the Harry Potter audiobooks), part unrequited love story, part wacky comedy, part whodunit procedural.

That’s a lot of parts, and a lot more fun than it sounds. The fable-like premise, originally conceived by Fuller as a spin-off to Dead Like Me, introduces us to Ned, who as a small boy discovered he has the gift to bring the dead to life with a mere touch. But if he touches them again, they go to the great beyond for good. Sounds macabre, but the clever way it’s played is anything but. Ned grows up into a sweet-souled but understandably awkward young man, adorably played by Wonderfalls’ Lee Pace in a star-making role.

Ned is living a low-key existence operating a pie shop — his fruit pies, filled with rejuvenated fruit, are especially tempting mdash; until his gift of life and death is discovered by an opportunistic private eye (the always-welcome Chi McBride), who turns the show into the most offbeat of procedurals. Ned and the PI team up to solve crimes by bringing the victims back to life just long enough to figure out who killed them. (If the dead stay alive too long, there’s a price to be paid as well.)

In the most pivotal twist, one of the victims turns out to be Chuck (actually Charlotte), Ned’s boyhood sweetheart (the captivating Anna Friel), and when Ned uses his gift on her... suffice it to say the show takes off in yet another fascinating and heart-tugging direction.

Throw in a few more memorable characters played by theater pros — such as Broadway songbird Kristin Chenoweth (The West Wing) as Ned’s adoring pie-shop waitress, and Swoosie Kurtz (Sisters) and Ellen Greene (Little Shop of Horrors) as Chuck’s bizarre aunts — and you’ve got the makings of a first-rate, highly flamboyant ensemble.

There’s nothing on TV or elsewhere (perhaps in the Tim Burton canon) that remotely looks, sounds or magically enthralls the way Pushing Daisies does. Holding court to the press at a Wednesday TCA session, Fuller and Sonnenfeld and their sparkling cast convinced me all over again just how special this show is. And not merely special, but fun.

Here’s Fuller, an avowed Stephen King and Twilight Zone fan, on the show’s tone: “[It has] that tricky balance between the sweetness and a little bit of darkness, but darkness not in any way that is too morbid or depressing. The show is a fun show. I think we all set out to try to do a show that was fun. I personally don’t really like shows that are too serious. There’s always the exception — like Battlestar Galactica, I think, is fantastic. But I can’t watch 24. It’s just depressing. I don’t want to see terrorism. All of our procedurals on this show are going to have that fun infused with them.” For instance, in a case involving a whistle-blower, the plot will also deal with a car that runs on dandelions.

“So there’s always going to [lend] a magical quality to the case that gives it some levity, so when we do have murders, they skew a little bit more Beetlejuice than CSI.”

I’m sold, obviously. But can ABC, and the critics who’ve embraced Pushing Daisies, sell the audience? It may not be easy, but there were a lot of unbelievers a year ago who doubted the chances for the equally lovable Ugly Betty, and look how well that turned out.

Like Betty, Daisies will be airing at 8 pm/ET, and it’s being asked to launch an all-new night of ABC programming on Wednesday s(it’s followed by Grey’s Anatomy spin-off Private Practice and the sudsy Dirty Sexy Money). Daisies’ time-slot competition is a mixed bag of reality/game shows and only one scripted contender, which happens to be one of the fall’s other hot prospects: Fox’s Kelsey Grammer/Patricia Heaton sitcom Back to You.

There’s any number of ways to analyze its chances, but as foolhardy as it sounds, I’m going with my heart and my gut and predicting that Pushing Daisies will be more than a sleeper. It’s a keeper.

Get lost, ABC. That was the hostile undercurrent behind much of the questioning for ABC's entertainment president Stephen McPherson Wednesday morning. We critics can be a surly group, especially this late in the TCA press tour. (ABC has the bad luck to be up to bat on the final two days of the three-week hype-a-thon.) But give us something legitimate to gripe about — in this case, the decision by Lost's producers to skip the TCA and instead address the game-changing events behind Lost's cliff-hanger at the Comic-Con fan convention in San Diego on Thursday — and you'd better watch out.

One reporter even put it this way: “Are we not important enough for you?” At first, McPherson tried to shrug it off with a joke, saying that he has hired Don Imus — fired earlier this year from his radio and TV gigs for a racial slur — to join the show. (This was the closest he or anyone else came to addressing the Isaiah Washington/Grey’s Anatomy debacle during his official press conference.) The Lost hubbub ultimately led public relations VP Hope Hartman to come onstage and whisper in McPherson’s ear, prompting him to announce that Lost’s exec producer Damon Lindelof had OK’d him to release a nugget of news: the return of original cast member Harold Perrineau to the show. But on the essential issue of how Lost plans to tell its stories over the next two seasons, given that the game-changing cliff-hanger jumped to the future: nothing.

“[Damon and Carlton Cuse] have not released whether or not it will take place now with flash-forward or flashbacks. They obviously opened up a new world,” McPherson said. “They have pitched us where they’re going this year and where the next two years take us. What’s great about that is now that we know that we have this end date, it has allowed them to craft that end story exactly the way they want.” As for scheduling it from February to May, skipping a fall “pod” that proved so unsatisfying last season: “As much as we needed it from a scheduling standpoint, running these episodes straight through will be the best way to do that. Regardless of the storytelling technique that they use, I think it’s going to be a much better, fully enclosed installment.”

Among other hot topics:

MacPherson confirmed that the high-profile pilot adaptations of Footballers Wives and Mr. and Mrs. Smith are officially dead at the network.

The much-maligned decision to keep Men in Trees off the air for the rest of the season after its spring hiatus was directly due to the unexpectedly strong showing of October Road (which I’m happy to note was named “worst series” in the recent Televison Week critics’ poll). ABC is presenting a Trees panel on the show Thursday afternoon, right before a panel on Private Practice (that ought to be a lively two hours), so it’s not like they’re ashamed of Trees or anything. Better yet, the leftover episodes from last season will be tacked onto the start of this one (shades of when Boston Legal was bumped for Grey’s Anatomy a few mid-seasons ago), so the upside is fewer repeats.

Women’s Murder Club, based on the James Patterson book franchise, is ABC’s “stab at a procedural,” something the network sorely lacks and needs. If it clicks with viewers on Fridays, it could easily migrate to another night.

Most critics don’t seem to be buying the new Cavemen sitcom, based on the Geico ads, as a one-note racial allegory. The pilot episode is being retooled and recast and won’t air until several weeks into the season (if it even gets that far).

Several questions addressed the sameness of much of ABC’s drama development this year, which leans heavily on the travails of rich, glamorous, beautiful people, with shows like Dirty Sexy Money, starring Peter Krause as a lawyer for a celebrated family of Kennedy-esque brats; Big Shots, a sort of "Desperate CEOs" featuring Dylan McDermott, Michael Vartan, Christopher Titus and Joshua Malina; and Cashmere Mafia, a bald-faced Sex and the City/Lipstick Jungle rip-off about four high-powered Manhattan women. McPherson kept countering this criticism by holding up the Suarez family of Ugly Betty as a model of diversity. Whatever.

One show that definitely falls outside the norm is Pushing Daisies, a dazzling fable about a lovable guy (Lee Pace) who can bring the dead back to life by touching them — but if he touches them twice, they stay dead. Daisies, infused with a Tim Burton-like look of heightened fantasy, is a complete original, blending love story with crime drama. (The hero uses his gift to help a private eye solve murders.) It’s enjoying some of the fall’s best buzz despite skepticism that it’s too offbeat and thus defies categorization. McPherson insists that on a week-to-week basis it will unfold as a procedural, although its magical qualities mean “it’s never going to fall into a CSI vein.”

But Daisies faces another challenge: a tough time slot of Wednesdays at 8 pm/ET, where it launches a night of all-new series that includes Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money. McPherson credits its originality, “and the fact that it is different in the way that Lost was when it launched at 8 o'clock. It doesn’t fit neatly behind any show, either, because of its originality. So for us, we just feel like we’ve got to spend a lot of money and a lot of effort to launch it in that slot.”

Showers of critical acclaim probably won’t hurt, either.

With the Fox network, it's often all about the mid-season, the time when shows like American Idol and 24 come along to rescue the network from its fall doldrums. Not that it's impossible for any of Fox's September newcomers to catch on. The Kelsey Grammer/Patricia Heaton sitcom Back to You looks very commercial. The situation is admittedly tougher for the downbeat New Orleans crime drama K-Ville or the murky supernatural crime drama New Amsterdam (about an immortal detective) to buck the odds and be a factor come January. While it's possible one or both may hit its mark, you can't help but feel that they might as well be titled "Placeholder 1" and "Placeholder 2" (shades of last fall's Vanished, Justice and Standoff).

Once again, Fox is holding back one of its biggest guns (literally) for January. Easily the most anticipated show on the network's lineup is The Sarah Connor Chronicles (look for the word Terminator to be added to the title before it premieres): a high-octane, big-budget, special-effects-laden action thriller picking up roughly two years after Terminator 2 left off. It's a fugitive chase thriller pitting Sarah Connor (300's Lena Headey) and her adolescent son and future freedom fighter John (Heroes' Thomas Dekker) against those seemingly unstoppable Terminator robots from the future. (Possible spoiler alert: Helping them in their battle is an advanced-model female Terminator, played by Firefly's Summer Glau, who describes her character Cameron as "the most human Terminator so far.")

At a TCA session Monday morning, the audience was peppered with the usual sci-fi obsessives (how can I refrain from calling them geeks?), who tried desperately to figure out the show's new timeline. "As far as I'm concerned, this is T3," says executive producer/writer Josh Friedman (cowriter of the recent War of the Worlds movie). "This is the continuation of what I call, 'the Sarah Connor trilogy.' Anything that happens after T2 is fair game for us." Consulting producer James Middleton, who helped develop the T3: Rise of the Machine movie, adds: "We're taking a phrase that's very important in T2: ‘No fate but what we make.' This is a new fate for Sarah Connor, so we are creating an entirely new timeline."

OK, moving on.... What really matters here is that this series is going to be catnip for genre fans. Not only are stars from 300, Firefly, Heroes in the cast, but the behind-the-scenes crew also includes executive producer/director David Nutter (The X-Files), co-executive producer Toni Graphia (Battlestar Galactica), and BSG composer Bear McCreary doing the score. I'm sure there are more connections to be made, so have at it, Terminator fans.

Nutter took great pains to promise skeptics in the audience that the action and special-effects components, so prominent in the explosive pilot episode, will continue through the series. At the same time, the show is going to have to be sensitive to the concerns of critics (including government watchdogs, no doubt) and studio/network execs over the show's relentlessly violent intensity. Already, a scene in the pilot involving a Terminator's attack on John Connor at his high school is being modified, in light of the Virginia Tech horrors.

Friedman says he wrote that scene not so much for shock value but to underscore the series' themes "about this woman who is very much a control freak letting this child go out into the world. For all of us as parents, it's a very scary world.... [And school] is one of the last places you would like to feel is safe." Still, the scene's being changed, though no one would elaborate just how.

Nutter adds, "The most important part of this was really to add a sense of an action element to the show, that Terminator fans are expecting and want from the series, and to let the audience know that this Terminator is not going to be, in a sense, a ‘TV version.'" In other words, if there's no bang for the buck, why even do it?

Addressing the violence issue, Friedman says, "Because of the context of what the show is about, the apocalypse and the scary robots coming to try to end mankind, this gives us a great opportunity to explore human value and humankind. I think a lot of the show is about how you [wage] a war against a force that doesn't value you or value themselves at all. How do you do that and still maintain your own humanity?.... I take it very seriously, because that's thematically what it's about. How does Sarah raise a son to be the leader of the free world? You can't do it by just teaching him to shoot guns. You have to teach him how to be a man from a moral place."

Which is all fine and dandy, but you also have to teach him how to shoot, how to fight, how to run, how to survive. Because without that, where's the show?

At the moment, Fox still lists The Sarah Connor Chronicles as airing Sundays at 9 pm/ET (the old X-Files time period) on an undetermined mid-season date. As usual, though, let's see how the fall shakes out before we start worrying where the show will air and what it will displace. Suffice it to say that Fox will put all of its promotional and scheduling muscle behind this one.

“No one’s ever really fired in Hollywood, are they? No show’s ever really canceled.”

So says network survivor Kevin Reilly, looking back at the whirlwind of what he calls “an active month” or so of network-hopping. At the May upfronts, he was still NBC’s entertainment president, an embattled position that he left around Memorial Day when the network actively pursued Ben Silverman for Reilly’s job. Mere weeks later, he’s back in front of the TV press at TCA in his new job as Fox’s entertainment president. Looking back on the circumstances of leaving NBC, he quips, “Let’s just say you can pick whatever trade euphemism you want. I segued, I thought over the holidays that I wanted to explore other opportunities. I wanted to spend time with my family — which I did for a few days.”

Now he gets a “do-over,” performing basically the same job for a rival network. In moving to Fox, Reilly is reunited with his former FX colleague/boss/buddy Peter Liguori, who moves up the ladder to Fox entertainment chairman. The two men teamed up for a Sunday-morning press session at TCA, projecting a friendly demeanor as relaxed as the jeans both wore (“the Sunday Fox look, I’m told,” said Reilly — and it must be true, because even a big star like Kelsey Grammer was in denim when he pitched his new Fox sitcom).

The reporters in the room kept trying to get Reilly to bash his former network, or at least to get an “I told you so” rise out of him, considering how well many of the NBC shows he put on the schedule did in the Emmy nominations (The Office, 30 Rock, Heroes). Reilly squirmed and stammered at times, but generally took the high road, while noting, “I can’t be totally objective. I just played through an extreme down cycle at the previous place, which tends not to bring out the best in people.” Do tell. And I wish he had.

Liguori put his own spin on Fox-vs-NBC comparisons. “Our sights are not set on the No. 4 network. Our sights are set on [remaining] the No. 1 network, and creating a greater distance between us and the No. 2 network.” Ouch. Take that, Peacock.

Liguroi went a bit over the top reinforcing Reilly’s contention that theirs was a “genuine” friendship and collaboration. “We know who we are. We know how we complement each other,” he said. “I’ve never been happier in the offices within Fox.” And then he added, “It’s like an old love. We finish each other’s sentence.” To which Reilly joked, “Wow. Should we move the table out [that was separating their chairs]?”

Ah, press-tour theater. That’s how I usually regard those gatherings when the network executives take the stage at TCA, giving reporters and critics an opportunity to do a state-of-the-network analysis of where the network has been and where it hopes to go. There’s not always a lot of news coming out of these sessions, and such was the case Sunday morning with Fox. But who would want to miss the opportunity to see Reilly and Liguori back together again? They've jumped from the maverick “smaller pond” of FX to the big time at Fox, where they’re now struggling with the age-old questions of how to get through the fall when American Idol and 24 don’t return until January, and what to do about Friday nights.

Sessions like these have come under fire by some overly protective network-communications types who look at these press conferences as target practice for their bosses. A move is afoot, the TCA was informed this weekend, to scrap the individual executive press conferences at next January’s press tour, instead putting all five of the entertainment chiefs on a single panel. While it might make for some lively banter and cross-talk, it may also come at the expense of generating the sort of network-by-network context the TCA reporters come to expect and depend upon when they come twice-yearly for a full hour with each of these high-paid executives. Naturally, the TCA membership is less than pleased about this potential development. Stay tuned.

No awards system is perfect, and the TCA Awards is no exception. But arriving two days after the often-inexplicable results of the Emmy nominations, Saturday night's low-key, good-time TCA Awards ceremony at the Beverly Hilton was a welcome course correction to several especially egregious Emmy oversights. (And, lo and behold, nary a mention of Boston Legal anywhere.)

First up: Michael C. Hall, ignored by the Emmys but cited by the TCA for “Individual Achievement in Drama,” for his mesmerizing performance in Showtime's Dexter as a serial killer targeting Miami's lowest forms of criminal life. (Other contenders in this category included Friday Night Lights' Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, also shamefully snubbed at the Emmys.)

Friday Night Lights, a near shutout at the Emmys despite its status as a first-year critics’ darling (and recipient of Peabody and AFI awards), was later named Outstanding New Program. (The field also included 30 Rock, Dexter, Heroes and Ugly Betty). In accepting, executive producer Jason Katims said, “For the last few days, you guys have been writing a lot about how we were snubbed. I didn’t know we were snubbed. I just didn’t think we won anything.” So he thanked the TV press “for the experience of being so publicly snubbed.” On a more serious note, he added, “You’ve been writing about the show from the beginning, you didn’t stop writing about it, and I really in my heart feel that the reason why we started shooting the second season a few days ago is largely because of you.” About the award itself: “There’s a lot of shows that maybe deserved it as much or more than us, but nobody needed it as much as us.” Truer words.

Although guest host John Oliver from The Daily Show brought down the house during his opening monologue, the comic highlight of the night came from Alec Baldwin, a justifiably popular fave for his twisted work on 30 Rock as a devilishly manipulative network suit. In accepting his award for Individual Achievement in Comedy, he made no reference to his tabloid-scandal life or his declaration a while back to quit showbiz. Instead, he gave a friendly shout-out to the HBO table where The Sopranos’ creator David Chase sat.

“I have to share with you just how sad I am on a personal note that The Sopranos is over.” As the audience sighed, Baldwin added, “I’m really sad for selfish reasons, because I’m not going to be on The Sopranos now.” (He didn’t mention the fact that his brother Daniel was in the final season.) To raucous laughter, he told a side-splitting anecdote about his one previous encounter with David Chase, for whom he said he’d even changed agents in a futile quest to meet the man and get on the show. Soaking wet with sweat on a hot New York day after he arrived late for a lunch meeting at the Four Seasons restaurant, Baldwin was in the men’s room, shirtless, drying his shirt under the hand blower when in walked the now-legendary producer. Chase’s response: “Alec Baldwin?” Great story.

When Chase took the stage later to accept the first of two Sopranos awards, for Outstanding Achievement in Drama, he added to the story: “When I walked into that Four Seasons bathroom, all I thought was, ‘Holy [bleep], that was Alec Baldwin, the famous movie star.’ I didn’t notice he didn’t have a shirt on or anything.”

Puckishly, in a reference to the mystifying end of The Sopranos, Chase quipped, “Here’s another clue for you all: The Walrus was Paulie.” (Beatles fans will get it.)

Chase’s second trip to the stage was to accept the Heritage Award in honor of The Sopranos’ legacy. He acknowledged presenter Alan Sepinwall, critic of the Newark Star-Ledger, by saying, “You’re from New Jersey. I’m from New Jersey. Explain to these people: It is possible and very likely to be sitting in a restaurant in New Jersey and everything just stops.”

But seriously, or not: After thanking the TV journalists (“You helped make our show a success very early on in the early days and all the way along, and I’ll never forget it”), Chase noted, “Somebody said it would be a good idea to say something about that ending. And I really wasn’t going to go into it. But I’ll just say this to explain.” At which point he told of going to see Planet of the Apes with his wife at age 23 as a film-school grad student. “When the movie was over, I said, ‘Wow, so they had a Statue of Liberty, too?’ So that’s what you’re up against.”

Not much light shed, true, but what a good and funny sport.

Other winners: Discovery’s dazzling Planet Earth, a double winner in the categories of movies, miniseries and specials as well as news/information (unfortunately shutting out HBO’s searing When the Levees Broke in both lists); ABC Family’s Kyle XY for children’s programming (a stretch, I know); The Office, a repeat winner for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy; and Heroes named as Program of the Year over American Idol, Friday Night Lights, Planet Earth, The Wire and When the Levees Broke. (As I said, we didn’t get everything right.)

The only drag: Mary Tyler Moore was unable to attend to accept her Career Achievement Award. Instead, the ovation went to the presenter of that category, a living legend among TV critics: veteran Rocky Mountain News columnist Dusty Saunders, a beloved presence on the TCA press tour and a TCA founder. He’s officially retiring (though he’ll still be writing) after more than 50 years in the business, and I can honestly say there is no journalist in the room who commands more respect or who sets a higher example of self-effacing dignity and professional calm. What a pro.

It took a year, but the CW (the network cobbled together from the ashes of the WB and UPN) is finally starting to look like a real network, albeit one aggressively and obsessively focused on the 18-34 youth market. Which no doubt is causing more than a few existential crises among those longtime vets of the TCA press tour who said goodbye to that demo a while ago.

Dawn Ostroff, the network’s relentlessly perky entertainment president, took a “no regrets” approach to her upbeat presentation Friday morning. She’s serious about tapping into trends with her programming and with various online/digital offshoots (especially where the new teen soap Gossip Girl is concerned), but otherwise, there’s something kind of refreshing about a network that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

There was loud laughter in the room during clips of the CW’s various lightweight reality shows, including a first look at the new twist on guilty-pleasure fave Beauty and the Geek, in which for the first time there will be a team made up of a male “beauty” (whom one of the reporters spotted as a professional actor) teamed with a female “geek.” (“The experiment has evolved,” boomed the announcer.) Other titles include The Farmer Wants a Wife and Crowned, a campy mother-daughter beauty pageant in which each elimination involved a “de-sashing.”

There was also hooting when Ostroff revealed that Asia, the winner of last season’s Pussycat Dolls reality show, has chosen to embark on a solo career instead. This year’s follow-up Pussycat Dolls series will be about the forming of a new all-girl band: Girlicious. I can hardly wait.

Turn your nose up if you will, but a youth-oriented network like the CW can hardly afford not to dive into the reality marketplace. Dishy and glam, in the tradition of breakout hit America’s Next Top Model, appears to be the model for the CW’s future.

Still, the real buzz around the CW this fall is being generated by its new scripted shows, which was a big change from a year ago, when it looked like the network was relying too heavily on tired franchises from the WB and UPN's past. They tried to coast along with shows like 7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill and the notoriously hard-sell Veronica Mars, about whose ratings woes Ostroff admitted, “We were never able to crack.” Of Gilmore Girls, she repeated her contention that “it was time to move on,” a sentiment with which I agree.

Ostroff defended the modest development slate of a year ago, in which only the short-lived serialized thriller Runaway and the innocuous Girlfriends spin-off The Game (renewed for a second season) were presented to critics. “It would have been too much heavy lifting” to launch too many new shows while trying to rebrand and relaunch an entire network in nine months, Ostroff said.

Better late than never, I guess. The shows on the CW’s new fall schedule are not only brand-appropriate — for the most part, they’re good. Ostroff calls them “network-defining shows,” and she could be right.

The hottest prospects include Gossip Girl, from The O.C.’s Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, which is stirring the most critical controversy of any of the CW’s offerings because of its hedonistic look at privileged, self-absorbed prep-school urbanites. (As I wrote earlier this summer about the CW's failed Hidden Palms, these kids drink more than the Walkers of Brothers & Sisters, and that family owns a vineyard.) Ostroff rolled out the buzzwords “heightened reality” to shrug off any complaints, and said there would be consequences for the young characters’ more reckless behavior as the show goes on.

Gossip Girl feels like something from WB’s glory days: The kids are hyperarticulate and precociously caught up in sexual and social intrigues, but it remains to be seen if it can be critically embraced like Dawson’s Creek and Felicity (doubtful) or dismissed as trash like One Tree Hill.

Much more promising creatively are two terrifically entertaining new series. Reaper, airing Tuesdays after Geek, is a horror-comedy about a slacker named Sam (The Loop’s Bret Harrison) whose parents sold his soul to the devil (the wryly hilarious Ray Wise, whom we’ve loved since Twin Peaks). Fantastically wacky mayhem ensues when the devil puts Sam to work as a bounty hunter haplessly trying to send escaped evildoers back to Hell. Joining Monday’s lineup as a smart companion piece to Everybody Hates Chris is Aliens in America, a sweetly barbed satirical family comedy about a geeky high-schooler whose adolescent torment is magnified when his family brings in an exotic exchange student: a Pakistani Muslim (winningly played by Adhir Kalyan, a non-Muslim from South Africa). As comedies about prejudice goes, this is a huge step above ABC’s one-note Cavemen (inspired, if that’s the word, from the Geico ads).

Even the CW’s attempt to keep the 7th Heaven family vibe alive is a little out of the norm. Life Is Wild (based on the British series Wild at Heart, which is continuing in production on the same South African sets), transplants an awkwardly blended New York family to an animal preserve in South Africa, where the dad works as a veterinarian. In a satellite press conference, the handsome actors (including newly cast D.W. Moffett and Everwood’s Stephanie Niznik as the parents) were upstaged by the wild animals on set, including a purring cougar prowling the room and an adorable feline cub nestled in Moffett’s lap.

The tone on the CW’s day at TCAs couldn’t be more different from a year ago, when the critics’ claws were definitely out. I wouldn’t say we’ve been tamed, exactly, but it’s funny how a few good shows can create a feeling of wait-and-see goodwill.

Remember how Charlie Brown used to end up on his back every time he went to kick the football after Lucy pulled it away? Well, that was me, in the pre-dawn of Thursday morning at the TV Academy building in North Hollywood, as the first Emmy category (for best drama series) was read aloud. Amid a gaggle of impatient media crews and anxious publicists, I once again felt sucker-punched by the cluelessly inexplicable whims of the Emmy nomination process. (Go here for a list of nominees.)

The football analogy applies because, once again, the Emmy system dropped the ball, failing to acknowledge NBC’s critically worshiped freshman underdog Friday Night Lights, instead finding room for ABC’s cartoonishly lurid freak show Boston Legal (on the basis, so I hear, of a rare detour into quality with a post-Katrina episode). A chagrined Academy source tells me that Friday Night Lights came close, but speculated that it may have flown too far under the radar in a way overcrowded field. Heartbreaking, because FNL is precisely the sort of low-rated, high-quality series that could most benefit from an Emmy spotlight. Also missing: the sensational Lost, which had the most talked-about season finale next to front-runner The Sopranos and ended up snubbed two years in a row. Instead, we get the uneven, overrated Heroes in the mix, which at least refreshingly defies the usual jinx against fantasy/sci-fi shows. Still, with Lost out of the running, the Emmys might as well take place on some remote desert island for all I now care.

So here we go again, surveying the usual mixed bag of nominees. I’ve said before that I would judge the Emmys by how the Emmys judged Friday Night Lights. So the Emmys should be dead to me now. And yet... there’s an awful lot of fresh blood in the various categories this year, so it’s not entirely a wasteland. Merely aggravating.

If I resent anything, it’s the industry’s embrace of the too-often-sophomoric guilty pleasure that is Boston Legal. James Spader’s lead-actor nomination as the cloyingly quirky Alan Shore denied a slot to two much more deserving stars: Dexter's riveting Michael C. Hall (whose absence was a major surprise) and FNL's Kyle Chandler in a career-high role as the coach. William Shatner’s supporting nomination for hamming it up as Denny Crane (a comedy performance if anything, and even that’s a stretch these days) edged out far more worthy dramatic performances by the likes of The Shield's Walton Goggins and any number of the young ensemble members of FNL (Zach Gilford, Scott Porter, etc).

But enough of the hand-wringing for now. What makes me happy about this year’s Emmy field?

Ugly Betty, for one. The most-nominated new series with 11 nods, and it couldn’t happen to a more delightful or sweeter show. It’s up for best comedy, best actress (the wonderful America Ferrera, probably a shoo-in to win), best supporting actress (Vanessa Williams) and best guest actresses (Judith Light and Salma Hayek). (That guest comedy actress category is a doozy, also including Elaine Stritch on 30 Rock and Dixie Carter and Laurie Metcalf on Desperate Housewives.)

Despite iffy ratings, 30 Rock broke through with 10 nominations, including nods to Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey. That’s good and somewhat surprising news, although this is the kind of humor you’d expect folks in the TV business to relish. (For the record: the failed Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip did manage to snag five nods, including for directing and the guest performances of Eli Wallach and John Goodman.)

Among the other breakthrough nominees that tickled my fancy: the adorable Masi Oka for Heroes; T.R. Knight (surviving the media storm) and Katherine Heigl among the Grey’s Anatomy ensemble (with the wonderful Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh also in the running); creepy Michael Emerson joining Terry O’Quinn as Lost supporting contenders; Sally Field and Rachel Griffiths emerging from the Brothers & Sisters cast; Ricky Gervais from Extras finally getting his due; Minnie Driver from The Riches (whatever the show’s faults, the acting was great); fresh faces in the supporting comedy race, including Neil Patrick Harris from How I Met Your Mother (he should have made the cut last year), Entourage’s Kevin Dillon and even The Office’s Rainn Wilson (though I would have preferred John Krasinski, I get that Dwight is a broader pure-comedy performance).

And finally, the one no-surprise no-brainer dominating the drama field is The Sopranos, leading the series pack with 15 nominations. As polarizing as the show’s self-consciously jarring go-to-black final moment was, there’s no denying the landmark nature of this one-of-a-kind psychological family drama, which hit a number of home runs in its final season. It filled three of the writing category’s slots, including for the episode in which Tony killed Christopher and for David Chase’s controversial series finale. (Other writing contenders notably include the shamefully underappreciated Battlestar Galactica for its tense season-opener and Lost for its terrific season finale.)

Going category by category, and reserving the right to change my opinion as I take more time to reflect and analyze, here’s a quick guesstimate of who and what I think is most likely to take home the gold on Sept. 16.

Drama: The Sopranos. Comedy: Ugly Betty or 30 Rock (that one’s tougher, and The Office could easily repeat). Drama actor: Hugh Laurie (he’s overdue). Drama actress: Sally Field. Comedy actor: Alec Baldwin. Comedy actress: America Ferrera. Drama supporting actor: T.R. Knight. Drama supporting actress: Lorraine Bracco (the first time she’s put herself in the supporting category, which could help her chances), though I’m crushed that Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell isn’t in the running (I’m told she didn’t even crack the top 10). Comedy supporting actor: a toss-up between Neil Patrick Harris and Rainn Wilson. Comedy supporting actress: Vanessa Williams. Reality competition: no doubt The Amazing Race over American Idol again, but I’m jazzed that Top Chef joined Project Runway in the category this year. Sorry, Survivor.

I can't remember the last time the most buzzed-about show at a summer critics' press tour had nothing to do with the broadcast network's fall offerings. But this week, the show we can't stop talking and thinking about, and wishing we had more episodes to watch, is AMC's Mad Men, a period drama about advertising men and their professional and sexual exploits at the dawn of the '60s. (It premieres Thursday at 10 pm/ET.) Here's how I logged my first impression of the show in the pages of TV Guide recently, where I gave it a score of 9 out of 10: "Wow. The period look is dazzling: the women's tight skirts, the men's slicked hair. If iconic director Douglas Sirk (Written on the Wind) had made TV, it would have looked like this. But this sleek, sexy, smartly cynical drama about selling everything from cigarettes to Nixon also nails the era's attitudes of casual prejudice and sexual manipulation."

In this show, men are wolves and women are pawns, Jews are invisible or patronized, and gays are closeted. The writing is sharp ("Freud, you say? What agency is he with?"), funny, biting, and if the show becomes the hit it deserves to be, the backstory will become part of TV legend. Matthew Weiner, best known before now as a writer-producer of The Sopranos, landed his gig on the HBO classic by submitting Mad Men's pilot episode as a spec script to David Chase. Weiner went on to great success with Tony and the gang, and is now poised to make a name for himself on this stylish, thoroughly absorbing show.

Critics' ardor for the show may also have been fueled by a swank party hosted by AMC Sunday night for the Television Critics Association at the revered Friars Club in Beverly Hills, with cocktail waitresses in bouffanted wigs looking as if they'd stepped out of a vintage '60s AMC movie. Jeff Goldblum, at the piano, entertained the gathering with his swinging band, and Mad Men cast member Bryan Batt (a Broadway-musical veteran) wowed everyone with a soaring rendition of Cole Porter's Night and Day.

Regardless of the festivities, most of us were already sold on this one. (The only network show I'm hearing greeted with this much enthusiasm is the pilot for ABC's whimsical fable Pushing Daisies.) Mad Men is one of the sharpest, most entertaining new series of an incredibly crowded summer TV season. I didn't want the Emmy announcement, or the rest of the network news issuing from the press tour this week, to get in the way of touting this show. You really don't want to miss it.

I spoke too soon. After having made a bad joke earlier today about CBS not putting out nuts in homage to Jericho, I was chastened to see bags of salted Planters laid out during an afternoon snack break. But those aren't the real deal. Awaiting reporters who attend Thursday morning's official Jericho session will be official peanuts from the website used by countless numbers of rabid Jericho fans to let CBS know how they felt. So nuts to me.

Frankly, I was surprised and a bit dismayed that CBS didn’t have symbolic bowls of nuts in the room as the network launched its portion of the TCA press tour Wednesday morning. Which didn’t stop Jericho from dominating much of the conversation when CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler took the stage to introduce one of the more ambitious and controversial new lineups in CBS’ recent history.

Tassler said she couldn’t go to a neighborhood camera store, or even a doctor’s office (where the doctor pulled a bag of peanuts out of his coat in reference to the fan campaign) without being reminded of the furor over Jericho's cancellation and subsequent renewal for seven episodes at mid-season. She says she went on message boards, read the e-mails, “and what you saw was a huge segment of the population that really felt they were not being counted, but more specifically, that they had a knowledge and an awareness of the show that was so detailed and so committed and so passionate that we said, ‘Look, this is a rare opportunity for us to interact with our audience and take another shot.’” Ms. Tassler, welcome to the world of cult television.

She hopes to create similar vibes from her new slate of offbeat shows, most of which fall way outside the typical CBS brand. The new series include Jimmy Smits’ Latino family serial drama, Cane, hardly a thriving genre, and the incredibly strange Viva Laughlin, a mystery drama with musical interludes that is based on a successful British concept and evokes echoes of ABC’s Cop Rock fiasco among the skeptical TV press corps. When a release came out this morning revealing that its premiere had been pushed back to mid-October, the first thought many of us had was maybe that’s one way to keep Viva Laughlin from being the season’s first cancellation. (Tassler explained that the late start is due to double-header football overruns in the first part of the season.)

There was a noticeable “bring it on” attitude in Tassler’s answers as she was grilled about several of her more unusual high concepts. She hopes there will be controversy and debate over the reality-show “social experiment” of Kid Nation, in which 40 kids from ages 8 to 15 relocate to a New Mexico ghost town to fashion a kids-only civilization. Exploitative? Potentially. We’ve only seen a clip reel. “The whole objective was to get out there, do something different… and have people talk about the show.”

She also hopes to raise eyebrows with the mid-season drama Swingtown, set amid the sexual revolution of the ’70s in a suburban area rocked by freewheeling experimentation. “I hope there are concerns about it. I really do. And we’re going to push the envelope with that show.”

Is this what we really want from CBS? Is this another example of that old maxim, "Be careful what you wish for"? After years of hearing us gripe that CBS had cluttered its schedule for too many years with too many same-sounding procedural crime dramas, TV’s most populist and mainstream network is shifting gears in a noisy, and some might think reckless, way. What hath Jericho wrought?

Following an introductory clip reel that prominently featured the phrase “A change is coming,” Tassler opened with remarks including the declaration that for this season’s development, “We really looked for projects that were different, that were a little bit daring. We have a very strong and stable schedule, and it really seemed like a great opportunity for us try things that were different creatively.”

Even if it means sacrificing a show that was performing relatively well (though skewing old) on Fridays, like Close to Home, in favor of the much riskier work-in-progress vampire drama Moonlight (which has undergone all manner of changes in casting and content since the presentation reel from the pilot season). “We wanted to be daring and we saw an opportunity to not only better the time period but do something that would make a little bit of noise and be a little bit better companion to Ghost Whisperer.” Forgive the skeptical mutterings from those of us who remember how well Threshold fared in that same Friday time slot a couple of seasons ago.

I’d like nothing better than for some of these risks to pay off, and for several of these shows to display more promise than is evident in their problematic pilots. Because if the new CBS schedule ends up looking more like the nuclear bomb that took out the world outside Jericho, you have to wonder how long it will be before they start doing location searches for the next CSI venue. And that would be a crime.

The network of Heroes is going hero-crazy this fall. But two of NBC's more buzzed-about new genre series couldn’t be more different: a dark and disturbing "reimagining" of '70s superhero series Bionic Woman and the laugh-out-loud action-comedy Chuck, about a computer nerd whose brain is accidentally wired with government secrets, catapulting him into the spy game. Both were presented in back-to-back sessions at the TCA critics' press tour Tuesday morning.

Of course, much of the latest Bionic buzz has focused on this week’s announcement that the ever-controversial Isaiah Washington is joining the show for an early five-episode arc as a mystery man brought into the secret bio-science organization that turned Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan in a new twist on the old Lindsay Wagner role) into a part-machine superhuman. It’s a casting stunt that at least a few journalists in the room feel could backfire. Executive producer Jason Smilovic defended the casting stunt by saying, “We feel that he is the right actor for the role. But we also believe in second chances.”

The bigger risk, as executive producer David Eick learned when he adapted Battlestar Galactica for the Sci Fi Channel, is in confronting the history behind a show with such an iconic title while also seeking to update it. “Like Battlestar — which had at its nucleus a great story that just in its time was executed one way and then we found a way in an allegorical sense to execute it in a different way so it would have a contemporary resonance — this title has a history to it.” The original series, he says, emerged in an era when the ERA and women’s lib was in the zeitgeist. But now, at a time when a woman is making a serious run for the presidency, it’s not so much about asking anymore whether a woman can do what a man does. “If the answer is yes, what does that mean? How do we feel about it? In this show, our heroine is faced with a choice about whether to embrace the thing that she’s become that makes her super, other than human, unique — or embrace the things that make her a human being, a family girl, a big sister.”

Eick doesn’t seem particularly worried about alienating devotees of the original show. “In terms of the fan base, I don’t believe that the core of the Bionic Woman fan base is quite as rabid or certifiable as the Battlestar core.” Time will tell.

Gone are the slo-mo trappings of the original, replaced by sleek special effects “to create the illusion of a superhuman being, which in those days you didn’t have,” says Eick. “If the tone of the show was campy or retro or somehow satirical, it would make sense to [recreate the original effects]. But it’s a drama first. We’re playing it pretty straight. And her unique abilities are intended to accentuate who she is and what she's going through emotionally, not just to give the viewers eye candy.”

Despite the often-disturbing violence in the pilot, which culiminates in a bruising battle between Jaime and an earlier bionic model (played by recurring star Katee Sackhoff, better known as Battlestar’s rock-em, sock-em Starbuck), Eick insists the show isn’t meant to be dark. He decribes the new Bionic Woman as “a story about a woman coming of age, a young girl actually, realizing her potential as a human being while she’s realizing her potential as a hero, as this new thing that she has become, which is part machine.... By and large, it’s an uplifting story.” Thankfully, it’s also more exciting and unnerving than he’s making it sound.

No such confusions when it comes to Chuck, which is purely delightful. The show got the good news yesterday that it was being moved from Tuesdays (where it would have faced the CW’s thematically similar horror comedy Reaper) and is now on Mondays at 8 pm/ET, leading in to Heroes.

“We appreciate the vote of confidence,” says executive producer Josh Schwartz, who has grafted the irreverence of The O.C. onto this action comedy. Zachary Levi (Less than Perfect) is a real find in the title role, channeling the likable goofiness of Jimmy Fallon in a star-making turn as Chuck Bartowski, a “nerd herd” employee in the tech department of a big-box story who becomes a reluctant instant spy. Think O.C.’s Josh Cohen gone the Jason Bourne route.

“I think everybody in the audience sees themselves in a character like Chuck,” says Schwartz, likening the title character to Peter Parker’s Spider-Man or to Neo of the Matrix movies. Levi, a self-confessed video-game addict, calls Chuck “cool-challenged.” A buzzword both Schwartz and fellow exec producer McG are fond of is “quarter-life crisis,” which a twentysomething slacker like Chuck is facing before he finds purpose in his new action-hero persona.

Schwartz talks of “wish fulfillment” as he describes the appeal of Chuck. My idea of wish fulfillment: the audience finding and embracing Chuck and turning it into one of the more deserving hits of the fall season.

He dropped names as diverse as Norman Lear, Uri Geller, Isaiah Washington and Jerry Seinfeld. He teased an all-celebrity version of The Apprentice (with a half-joking promise to extend an invitation to Rosie O’Donnell). In describing his vision for NBC's immediate and long-term future, the network’s boyish new co-chair Ben Silverman showed his affinity for both packaging and programming TV in an enthusiastic debut performance in front of the nation’s TV critics on Monday morning.

Though he took the stage alongside the relatively subdued co-chair Marc Graboff, whose expertise is on the business side, this was Silverman’s show all the way, and he wasted no time in announcing some surprising programming deals and a few aggressive scheduling changes, including turning Monday into an all-fantasy night and shifting Friday Night Lights an hour earlier on Fridays, so it’s now cozily hammocked between the strong franchises of a relocated Deal or No Deal and Las Vegas, which he feels will be re-energized with the addition of Tom Selleck to the cast. Both of these moves make sense to me.

“This was what I always wanted to do. I love television, and I have grown up watching television,” says the former agent who evolved from being a master packager of foreign TV formats to executive producer of breakthroughs like The Office and Ugly Betty. “I have had an opportunity to represent incredible creative people and the opportunity to produce wonderful television, and I believe that the place I would have the greatest opportunities to make decisions about television shows and enable creativity and have opportunities to find ideas and bring them to market quickest was going to be at a network.”

How quickly Silverman can move is demonstrated by his embrace of last week’s instant summer hit The Singing Bee, which now has been scheduled to follow a 90-minute version of The Biggest Loser on Tuesdays, forming a two-hour reality block from 8-10 pm/ET. The promising action-comedy Chuck, originally set for Tuesdays, moves to Mondays at 8 pm/ET, leading into last year’s Heroes and the time-traveling Journeyman. That’s an awful lot of high concept for one night, but for those who still believe in the notion of audience flow, why not? Silverman sees it as a “big night” that can be further helped by promotion during Sunday’s football franchise.

As for Friday Night Lights, which many fear may suffer without championing from former programming chief Kevin Reilly, Silverman is hopeful that some Emmy attention later this week, along with its critical acclaim and a few strategic partnerships (possibly with a car and soft-drink company) to help with the bottom line, will ensure the future of a show he describes as “a very efficient show to produce.” (In other words, it’s a lot cheaper to make than Heroes.)

No reason to lose sleep over that one just yet, I suppose, even though some of Silverman’s other programming ideas might give a critic pause. In particular: Phenomenon, a live reality competition fronted by Uri Geller and Criss Angel based on a hit format from Israel that’s described as “an intensive search for the next great mentalist.” Hmmm, I’m getting a vision of myself changing the channel. But that’s just me. And while the prospect of another go-round of The Apprentice sounds like pure desperation, the notion of an all-star edition, involving celebs from sports, entertainment and fashion who’ve set up their own businesses, could inject some juice into the long-fading franchise. Silverman says that Trump personally asked him to extend an invite to his nemesis Rosie O’Donnell, and it may be foolish to hope that wiser heads will prevail. (That Silverman and NBC want to be in business with Rosie in some way is very clear.)

More promising is a deal with legendary producer Norman Lear to supervise production of an hourlong comedy “focused on a mother who reenters the work force and is pitted against her late husband’s ruthless partner in a money-charged battle of the sexes on Wall Street.” Speaking like a true TV devotee, Silverman talked of striking up a friendship with Lear, who “inspired me to go into television,” and listening avidly to Lear’s stories of his battles to get All in the Family on the air.

Among Silverman’s other announcements: the addition of Grey’s Anatomy pariah Isaiah Washington to the first episodes of the new Bionic Woman, a smart publicity stunt to be sure; and getting Jerry Seinfeld (who already had a deal to produce “minisodes” for NBC to promote his Bee Movie feature) to appear as himself in the season premiere of the ratings-challenged 30 Rock.

All in all, an impressive first bow to announce that Ben Silverman is going to have quite an impact on the Peacock network at an especially challenging time for the network.

Mulder and Scully could be reunited back on the big screen sooner than we imagined. David Duchovny dropped a bombshell at the end of a Saturday afternoon TCA session promoting his raunchy new Showtime series Californication (which premieres August 13 alongside the third-season launch of Weeds). Our favorite "spooky" FBI agent says he's expecting to get a script next week for a movie sequel to 1998's The X-Files blockbuster. Chris Carter, who'll also direct, wrote the script with Frank Spotnitz, and Duchovny says Gillian Anderson is also on board for production to start, possibly in the fall. No details beyond that at this point, but it's exciting news for those of us who've long been convinced there's more truth out there to be discovered.

Just when you thought you'd had your fill of those over-the-top plastic surgeons on FX's Nip/Tuck, they've shaken things up and moved those hot docs Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) and Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) to the world capital of face-lifts and body augmentation, Los Angeles, for the fifth season. (The first of 22 new episodes will premiere in October; it hasn't yet been determined how this season will be broken up.)

Series creator Ryan Murphy took the stage Thursday at a Television Critics Association panel in Beverly Hills to describe the new season, and he and the rest of the cast certainly sold me — including Joely Richardson, back after taking a personal hiatus for part of last season; John Hensley and Kelly Carlson as newlyweds Matt and Kimber; and Roma Maffia as nurse Liz, whose character travels West after being offered double her previous salary. (The core cast will be reassembled in L.A. over the first three or four episodes, Murphy says.)

Guest stars will include Lauren Hutton, Jennifer Coolidge, Portia de Rossi (as an acupuncturist), the return of Rosie O’Donnell for several episodes as Dawn Budge, and, in what sounds like a much more promising development, Bradley Cooper and Oliver Platt as part of a "show-within-a-show" subplot that finds Christian and Sean being hired as medical consultants for a TV series about, what else, plastic surgeons.

Murphy describes the fictional "Hearts & Scalpels" as "the worst medical show that has ever been made. It is run by Oliver Platt, who plays me — in a weird way." Alias' Cooper plays the show's lead, "the world's biggest cad/plastic surgeon." (Sound familiar?) Murphy says the fictional show "is kind of like Nip/Tuck, and not. What happens is that it's so bad that they hire our guys to be the medical advisers, which is fun" and it allows Nip/Tuck to satirize itself. "The show has always been a satire, and I think moving it to L.A. [is] even more so."

Richardson describes the new season as "a whole fresh start. Certainly with me and Dylan, we were done with that kitchen. There was nothing left we could do in that kitchen. Thank god we don’t have to go there anymore."

Murphy says the look of the show will be "shinier and bigger," and in the greater thematic scheme of things, Season 5 will explore how these doctors, who were such big fishes in the smaller pond of Miami, will readjust in their forties to swimming in a much bigger pool of professional sharks. As with so many who go to Hollywood to pursue their dreams, it's all about reinvention this season.

In for the biggest sea change is Christian, who will "switch parts in an interesting way" with Sean, says Murphy. "Dylan’s character becomes much more competent and instantly successful, and Christian has to work a little harder at it and is in Sean's shadow for a while."

The Nip/Tuck panel was followed by a session introducing FX's next big thing, the terrific legal thriller Damages (premiering July 24 for 13 episodes), starring Glenn Close as a ruthless, enigmatic trial superstar, Ted Danson as a tycoon she's pursuing in court and Australian ingenue Rose Byrne as Close's initially naive protégé. We've seen the first two episodes, and they're dark and dazzling.

I'm glad to see FX back in top form with a new drama, after having been repulsed by Dirt and disappointed by The Riches (both of which have been renewed for a second season, so you have to think it will be a slam dunk to keep Damages around for a while). If Nip/Tuck's new change of venue results in a re-energized show, that's even better news for what has long been one of my favorite, and certainly one of cable's most daring, networks.