Kristin Kreuk has confirmed on her Facebook profile that she will be returning to Smallville for a “small, undetermined” number of episodes during the series’ 8th season.

Over the last several years some fans have become increasingly tired of the on-again, off-again Lana/Clark relationship, and the show has struggled to find the right fit for the character of Lana Lang, moving her from cheerleader to college student, to pregnant wife of Lex Luthor, to dead – then to not dead (and hiding in Asia) – to her current role as the founder of a foundation. There is no word currently on the status of the couple – but since Superman is known universally as having Lois Lane be the love of his life, its a safe bet they won’t be ending up together.

It has been a very strange ride for the Smallville incarnation of Lana, and my guess is that it will only get stranger before the series wraps up…assuming it ever does.

WHAT?!?!? WHAT?!?!?! WHAT?!?!??!?!?!?!

I…um…I just can’t wrap my head around this. I don’t understand if the world is about to implode…I just…ah…I can’t believe what I’m typing.

Snoopy Doggy Dogg – yes, the “gangsta rapper” – is going to appear on ABC’s “One Life to Live”. He will be on May 8th and May 9th episodes, performing at the “Ultra Violet” dance club.

Have middle American housewives/husbands (and hard working women – and a few men – with DVRs) really gotten ready for the likes of Snoop? Could one additional CD be sold because of this appearance?

Could Snoop Dogg sell out any more?

I can’t answer these questions…I’m not sure I can answer ANY questions anymore. I just don’t understand the world.

Season 4, Episode 7 – Ji Yeon

The past few episodes have been a bit of a relative slump for this season. While the first few installments really seemed to start off with a bang, the previous two weeks have seemed to be…well…filler. Ji Yeon, unfortunately, continues that tradition.

In the “main” storyline, Sun convinces Jin that they should not leave the island, and they decide to join in Locke’s camp. Juliet pleads with Sun to leave the island for the sake of her baby…and finally reveals the secret of Sun’s affair to her husband. This results in them staying in Camp Jack. And then they all make up and everyone’s okay. So the characters are in the exact same place as they were when they began the episode. Zero character development = filler.

Elsewhere, Desmond and Sayid are still stuck on the freighter. They receive a note from the mysterious mole on the boat, telling them not to trust the captain. They meet said captain, who reveals that the boat is the property of one Charles Widmore, the father of Des’ beloved Penny. Some chick commits suicide. The captive duo are then lead to their new, roach-infested, blood-stained quarters. This lead to my favorite moment of the episode…the return of Michael, in the guise of janitor Kevin Johnson. I love the barely contained surprise, and somewhat rage, between the characters.

Then, in the flashbacks and flashforwards, we discovered that Sun had a baby girl, named Ji Yeon. Somewhere however, apparently between the “rescue” and the baby’s birth, Jin met some kind of untimely end.

And that’s really it. There weren’t any major revelations…we already knew the freighter was Widmore’s boat, and that they were not really there to rescue the castaways. We already knew that there was wreckage of Oceanic 815 that has been recovered. Granted, these revelations were made to new characters, and that new information has new meaning for them. But, since the series has a finite end in sight, this show has to continue to dish out answers and continue to push the narrative forward. This episode did neither of those things.

Episode grade: C+

UPDATE

So when I was watching the show, I saw all of the dates on the tombstone except for the important one, I guess. Take a look at this picture…especially the date on the far right.

Click to enlarge

Jin’s date of death is actually listed as 2004-9-22…which, for us Americans who don’t read dates like everyone else in the world, translates to September 22, 2004. Sound familiar? That’s the date of the Oceanic 815 crash.

Jin is not one of the Oceanic 6. So now I’m confused…it was teased that we would know the identities of all the Oceanic 6…but Jin seems to have never left the island. Did they consider little prenatal Ji Yeon to be one of the survivors, too?

Now that we have something to talk about, I may have to bump my review up to a B.

TV Jab cowriter Michael and I have had many a conversation about Lost, and its ability to have a satisfactory ending. His concern, as well as many other fan’s, I’m sure, has been that the only way that the show can end is to go with the “it’s all a dream” ending, which has been done to death in everything from St. Elsewhere to Newhart (now there’s a throwback for you). On this weeks official Lost podcast, producer Damon Lindelof gave a definitive answer on that very issue…

“We’re not interested in ‘all a dream’ storytelling…You can have dreams on the show, but you won’t ever have a character waking up, going ‘it’s all in a snowglobe’…we can confirm that Lost is not all a dream.”

Now, I guess you can start with the “he said it wasn’t a dream…but it could be something like the Matrix” argument, but I choose to believe that we can rule out that, in my opinion, lazy plot device. It’s safe to say that what these characters are experiencing is real…in some form.

Oh, yeah, and Lost is on tonight, and we officially find out who Ben has on the boat (though that doesn’t exactly take any powers of divination to figure out), as well as the final two members of the Oceanic Six.

Whether you blame it on the strike, on the studios, or just the low quality product that is being put out, the fact remains that there are a ton of shows out there in jeopardy right now. The Hollywood Reporter has broken down the shows in the most danger of cancellation, and their perceived chances of renewal.

I really hate to see that Jericho is struggling so much. On the other hand, I really grew to enjoy Sarah Connor Chronicles this season, so hopefully there’s a ray of light for it.

Here’s a simple breakdown of Hollywood Reporter’s verdict…hit the link at the bottom for the full writeup.

Probably to Return

Bones
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Scrubs
How I Met Your Mother
Knight Rider
Moonlight
Law & Order
Friday Night Lights
Prison Break
According to Jim (why, God, why?)
‘Til Death (I honestly had no idea it was still on)
Back to You

In Trouble

Jericho
Reaper
Cashmere Mafia

(Source: Hollywood Reporter)

College Basketball ruled the cable airwaves this week, and SpongeBob slithered all over the Top 10, taking 5 of the available spots. That’s one show that I’ll never understand. It has no appeal to me what-so-ever, but you can’t deny that it has some serious staying power, still dominating the animated area of cable for years and years now.

WWE took a hit this week being knocked down to 4th and 5th place. Which I would assume is not a good sign since they’re leading in to their biggest time of the year, Wrestlemania.

1. College Basketball – Duke vs. NC (ESPN)
2. SpongeBob SquarePants (Nickelodeon)
3. Project Runway (Bravo)
4. WWE Monday Night RAW (USA)
5. WWE Monday Night RAW (USA)
Read the rest of this entry »

There have been several rumors and rumblings over the past few weeks/months that Scrubs will be making the move from NBC to ABC for its eighth and final (for real this time) season. ABC has been in negotiations with ABC Studios, who owns Scrubs (reminds me of that commercial with the Coke guys wanting to sue Coke) to bring it over to the Alphabet network, since NBC seems to have a decided lack of faith in the show.

Last night on TV Guide, Michael Ausiello confirmed…

Question: What’s the latest on Scrubs moving to ABC? — Gina
Ausiello: Cast and crew are due back on the set the week of March 24 to begin production on an 18-episode final season to air on ABC. Thanks, writers strike!

This is the closest to official word that we have on the move. Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have an official statement.

Hulu is the future of online video content distribution. If you think that’s an overly-ambitious comment, then you’ve probably not used the service. If you didn’t sign up for the beta a few months ago, don’t worry…the hulu service will go public starting this Wednesday, March 12, for users in the US.

Hulu goes beyond the traditional offering of streaming media (funny that something that’s only been around for a couple of years can be “traditional”). While the only option you have on other sites is to watch the content, hulu takes it to the next step. Instead of having to wade through pages and pages to get to the content you want to watch, only to be plagued by ad after ad, hulu provides a slick, ridiculously easy avenue to get to the show that you want to watch as quickly as possible. It also includes what is my favorite feature…embeddable content, as can be seen below. You just click “Embed”, set the start point, then the end point, and boom, you’ve got code to stream on your site. Love it.

Be sure to click on over to hulu.com starting tomorrow, and get on board. This is the future of entertainment.

This is pretty shocking to me. The debut of NBC’s The Office back in September managed to pull in a respectable 9.7 million viewers. That week, the same episode was streamed on the web a whopping 2.7 million times. That means that 1 in 4 people who watched the show, watched it for free online.

That just goes to show what the writers were fighting so hard for during the strike. They earned nothing from any of those viewings then, but now, they will, deservingly, be earning royalties for online content.

(Source: NY Times)

Grammy Award winner Jill Scott as Precious Ramotswe is set to star in ‘No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency’ a new series based on Alexander McCall Smith’s popular book series. A two hour pilot was recently filmed, and based on that, HBO has ordered 13 episodes of the series.

I have to say, I find this to be a surprising pick up for HBO, but I look forward to seeing what this show has to offer.