Producer Carlton Cuse talked to the Hollywood Reporter about the ending, three years away, of the ABC megahit ‘Lost’. 

The writers have just completed a “minicamp”, where they discussed the direction of the series, and fleshed out the ending for the show, which will not end with a blackout, he says.  We can, however, look forward to some more answers in the upcoming season.

“Obviously, we can’t wait to the 48th hour to say, ‘Here are all the mysteries of the show,’ ” [producer Damon]Lindelof said…”I’m not sure there is any ending that will satisfy everyone,” Cuse said. “Our hope is that the ending will be … the logical conclusion of the story.”

It’s interesting that they talk about fan satisfaction there, because later on, they go on to talk about Nikki and Paulo.  You’ll probably remember that they were the couple that, in an attempt to bring in some of the background players, basically appeared out of nowhere and became part of “the team”, much to fans’ wrath.

“We’re like, ‘Trust us, you don’t care about those guys,’ ” Lindelof joked.  They said they realized almost immediately that adding Nikki and Paulo was a mistake, even before the viewer outcry. Many of the scenes they shot would get cut on the editing room floor, not because of the actors but because they were concerned about how they fit into the story. Lindelof said that it was a lesson for the writers to stay true to the show’s vision even if the viewers don’t seem to like it.

While I didn’t like Nikki and Paulo as characters, I loved their send-off episode.  But I like seeing them address the fact that, just because fans are asking for something, it doesn’t mean that it’s best for the show.

Finally, they discussed “mobisodes”, or short episodes exclusively for your cell phone.  Rather than focus on unknown characters going through storylines that no one cares about, it sounds like they’ve negotiated to have the stars of the show in the mobisodes.  While I’m sure it won’t be information vital to the show, it will add some supplemental value to the story, much like the Lost Experience last year.

I’m super excited for the new SCI FI show ‘Flash Gordon’, but there’s a little shadow of a doubt that is just nibbling away at the back of my mind.  I really feel like if I could get a glimpse of the show, I’d know more about how I feel about it. 

AICN has an insider report from an employee of the production of the new SCI FI program ‘Flash Gordon’.  Here are a few of the big points:

• Just completed shooting episode 4
• A rough cut of the pilot is in the network’s hands
• Eric Johnson (Flash Gordon) and the producers will be at Comicon
• Not as light as ‘Charmed’ but not as dark as ‘Battlestar Galactica’
• Ming is not the ruthless villain (that he should be)…he is more of a benevolent dictator
• “Mongo is a fascinating and terrifying place with a lot of intrigue between the various factions (Cantons), Ming and their dependence upon him for the scarce resource of water (which he controls absolutely).  The art direction for Mongo is somewhere between the Imperial look of “Star Wars” and the more post modern/medieval look of Carl’s dream world in “The Cell”.”

I’m a little hesitant to take it at face value, since it has a “plant” vibe.  If it’s shaping up how this fella says, it sounds like they’re doing a good job, for the most part.

Some major casting changes from the ‘Boston Legal’ set.  TVGuide is reporting that ABC has not renewed the contracts of Julie Bowen, Mark Valley, Rene Auberjonois and Constance Zimmer. 

I’m not a fan of this move AT ALL.  Now, the whole Claire and Clarence thing has never really appealed to me, so I don’t know that I’ll miss her that much.  But the others are such an integral part of the show, it’s tough to imagine it without them.  Denise provided the powerful female presence, Brad provided the hard line attorney to foil Spader’s Alan Shore, and Paul was the perfect character for Denny to play against.  These seem like some pretty significant hits to the draw of the show for me.

As for good news, Christian Clemenson will be stepping up from a guest starring role as Jerry to a full-time member of the cast.  Oh, and we’ll also see John Larroquette join on as a lawyer from the NY offices of Crane, Poole and Schmidt.

Well, we’ve finally got a confirmation for the summer rebroadcast of ‘Jericho’.  On Friday, July 6, CBS will broadcast the pilot episode, and the next week, they’ll run “Return to Jericho”, which recaps the first half of the season, followed by “The Day Before”, which was a flashback episode that told of the events leading up to the explosion, and actually surprised me by being one of my favorite episodes.

 “JERICHO” RETURNS TO CBS ON JULY 6

Rebroadcasts From the First Season to Air Fridays at 9:00 PM, ET/PT for the Remainder of the Summer   

JERICHO, CBS’s drama about how residents of a small, peaceful, Kansas town band together to survive in the wake of a nuclear explosion, will return to the Network beginning Friday, July 6 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT).  Rebroadcasts of episodes from the first season will air in the Friday, 9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT time period for the remainder of the summer.

JERICHO, which last week received a seven episode mid-season order following an impassioned display of fan support, will return on July 6 with a rebroadcast of the pilot episode.

On July 13, CBS will present back-to-back broadcasts beginning with “Return to Jericho” (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT), which recapped the first 11 episodes, followed by episode 12, “The Day Before” (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT), which launched “Jericho’s” spring return.

The remaining summer broadcasts will consist of episodes 13–22, in which tensions continue to escalate between Jericho and the neighboring town of New Bern as they battle the Kansas winter, dwindling resources and the uncertainty of a new world. The citizens of Jericho must now find a way to unite against these hardships, working together to preserve their community and their way of life as they prepare for an all out battle for survival in the season finale.             

Jon Turteltaub, Stephen Chobsky and Carol Barbee are executive producers of JERICHO for CBS Paramount Network Television.

The New York Times interviewed some of today’s leading writers about the controversial ‘Sopranos’ finale Sunday night.  I think it’s very interesting to see what writers think of their peers’ work.

Damon Lindelof - Lost - “I’ve seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect…My heart started beating. It had been racing throughout the last scene. Afterward I went to bed and lay next to my wife, awake, thinking about it for the next two hours. And I just thought it was great. It did everything well that ‘Godfather III’ did not do well…If you feel that everybody is going to hate it anyway, no matter what you do, there’s a certain liberation in writing it.”

Carlton Cuse - Lost - ““There was immediate blowback for me.  A sense of fear ran through my veins, thinking that we are going to be in this position…we know the end is coming in 48 short episodes.”

Doug Ellin - Entourage - “The show just ended, and I’m speechless. I’m sure there is going to be a lot of heated discussion, but that’s David Chase’s genius. It’s what made ‘The Sopranos’ different from anything that’s ever been on TV. It invented a whole new approach to storytelling that isn’t afraid to leave things open-ended, and now the biggest open story line in the history of television.”

David Shore - House - “Obviously he wants us to speculate on what it all means. Obviously that’s what we’re all doing.”

David Milch - NYPD Blue and Deadwood - “It was a question of loyalty to viewer expectations, as against loyalty to the internal coherence of the materials. Mr. Chase’s position was loyalty to the internal dynamics of the materials and the characters.”

Chuck Morre - Two and a Half Men - “This is what you get when you let a writer do whatever he wants…People just finished watching that show and immediately talked about it for a half-hour.  That’s just wonderful. What more could you want as a writer?”

Tim Kring - Heroes - “I have to admit that as soon as it ended, I immediately went there. I don’t have an ending for the series yet. I put myself years in the future thinking about what you do when you have viewers with these sorts of expectations. And I think you just have to be true to what you were originally trying to say…the storytelling in the finale a bit disjointed, so that you lost the cause and effect of some scenes…This was a show that always did everything its own way,”

‘The Sopranos’ ended an eight-year, six-season run Sunday with a finale that has the fans brewing.

I know, I don’t regularly follow Sopranos on here.  I used to watch it religiously, but sometime around the third season when the show went on its first super-long hiatus, I stopped subscribing to HBO, and never could get caught back up.  I did, however, go on a six-hour marathon over the weekend (by the way, when you watch several hours of ‘Sopranos’, you inadvertantly become quite the potty-mouth.  FYI)  and got caught up on what’s been going on with the show since it returned for these last episodes, so that I could be prepared for the end of a show that really changed television drama.

And, you know, I wasn’t terribly upset about the finale like so many others were…and maybe it was because I had the past few episodes fresh on my mind.  For those of you who didn’t catch it, Tony and family are gathering to eat in a diner.  Now, every viewer is expecting Tony to die at the end, and the show knows this, dwelling on each patron in the diner, making us wonder if that’s the guy that will do the deed.  One guy, who is focused on several times, moves to the bathroom, recalling the scene in “The Godfather” when Michael does the same thing to retrieve a gun that is hidden there.  Just as Tony is watching Meadow enter the restaraunt, the music, “Don’t Stop Believing”, drops, and the screen jarringly goes black for a good ten seconds before the credits roll. 

At face value, there’s no closure.  But you may recall a few episodes back, there was a statement made…”they say you never hear the shot that kills you”, or something like that.  So, just my opinion, either the bathroom guy, or some other unassuming diner customer, took Tony out. 

But don’t look for any official word from creator David Chase.  He told the Star-Ledger of Newark:

“I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there…People get the impression that you’re trying to (mess) with them, and it’s not true. You’re trying to entertain them,” he said. “Anybody who wants to watch it, it’s all there.”

See, it’s all there. 

Anyway, love it or hate it, Sunday saw the end of a television great.  Sopranos…we’ll miss you.

Chapter 37
It Takes A Village
Part 3 of 4

Guillame has used both his influence as a spiritual leader and his mysterious powers to defend his people against the corrupt forces of the Tonton Macoutes…until the day that his powers failed him.  Despite a shameful defeat, Guillame manages to inspire his people again.  Unfortunately, as a child, the mysterious Haitian didn’t realize he was behind his father’s downfall…

This story arc has been one of the stranger ones that we’ve seen, and this installment continues the trend.

When we left off, the Haitian was being beaten severely by his father.  He inadvertantly lashed out with his powers, ripping out his entire village’s souls, causing them become empty shells.  When we pick up this week, he and his father, Guillame, are trekking through the jungle.  When the Haitian asks where they are going, his father tells him they are cursed, and must go to make amends.

After they make camp, Guillame is not very talkative.  The Haitian tentatively asks his father if he hates him.  He pauses, and then begins to tell a story that his people tell about a snake and a crane.  In the story, the snake is very ambitious, but is tired of crawling around on his belly and eating insects and mice.  One day he sees the crane, who is carefree, and could fly anywhere.  The snake is envious, knowing that he could accomplish great things if he could fly.  So one day, he goes to the lake where the crane likes to drink, and swallows the bird whole, taking his wings.  (It should be noted here that while he is telling this story, Guillame is drawing the symbol that has become very familiar to us.) 

The Haitian says that that is a good thing; the snake got what he wanted.  His father agrees, but follows up with the question, “What good is it to fly if you have nowhere to go?  Once he had the power, the snake lost touch with the ground.”  He compares himself to the snake, saying that the Loa (gods) have given him great power, power with which he could control nations, and he uses it to “get them high and sleep with their women”.  That is what they are to make amends for.

The next morning, they make their way to the “Crossroads”, an altar surrounded by skulls, with an axe lying nearby.  When there, the Haitian questions his father about what they are doing there.  Guillame drops his machete, ordering his son to pick it up.  When he turns, he has covered his face in blood from the altar, and is holding the axe in his hand.  With a crazed look, he says that, since he lost touch with the ground, the Loa cursed his seed, and sent him a son to punish him.  Now he must cut out the “poison” to remember the ground, so he can fly again.

This arc is turning into an interesting twist on how people in different cultures interpret their powers.  I’m looking foward to see how this one wraps up next week.

The Easter Egg this week is a behind the scenes shot of Bennet and the Haitian.

Today comes the report that next season, Clark will not be the only survivor of Krypton to make it to Earth. 

While no one has been cast yet, The CW announced today that the show’s seventh season will begin with the arrival of Kara, Jor-el’s cousin. 

From the article at Zap2It:

“One of the joys of creating ‘Smallville’ has been our ability to reinvent and reinterpret classic DC Comics characters,” says executive producer Al Gough. “Miles and I believe that Supergirl will give our series the mythic jolt that it needs as we head into our seventh season.”

She will show up with an early start versus her cousin…she already has the ability to fly.

Kristin at eOnline that David Anders, best known to you TV fans as Sark from Alias, is in talks to join up with the ‘Heroes’ team next season.  If it goes through, he will join up as the character of Kane, who will be introduced in the pilot episode.  Word on the street is that Kane is an “ageless American with an European feel.  He is said to be a charming womanizer who as a soul that seems to be older than he appears to be. ”

So will his power be that he can stay perpetually unaged?  I would originally have thought that he could change is appearance, but we’ve already got that in Candace.  Anyway, it’s great, again, to see that the next season is already gearing up some great talent.

It was announced late yesterday that Isaiah Washington would not be returning to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ next season.  Today, it seems that he’s none too pleased with what happened.  In his press release, his spokesman, Howard Bragman said, “If they wanted to fire him, why didn’t they fire him when [the incident] happened?”

While his comments about costar T.R. Knight’s sexuality are unjustifiable, Washington’s anger is totally justified.  He did the meetings, he did the counseling, he did the PSA…he worked hard to make it right.  If ABC really wanted to make a statement, he should have been fired when the incident occurred, or fired if he was unwilling to set things straight.   But to string him along all season long, only to drop him now…that’s just not right.  Honestly, it sounds like something that ABC wanted to keep in their back pocket when contract negotiations came up, but that’s all just speculation.

Now I’m looking forward to see how the show deals with Dr. Burke’s sudden departure.