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Jason Katims, the producer behind Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, is making another drama for NBC. This one will be a modern take of an old classic, The Wizard of Oz. But rather than having Dorothy go to Oz, she will go to New York City (her version of the Emerald City) and join the art world as a naive Kansas girl. Her boss will be the Wicked Witch.

Okay, so it's a Sex And The City version of The Wizard of Oz. It may work. It certainly has enough familiar elements to do so.

Without knowing anything about this series other than what is written in the article, I already know that she will have three co-workers, one with no brain, one (and pretty loose) with no heart (and fairly stiff) and one with no courage (and quite possibly hairy. And, if he acts like Burt Lahr in the classic movie, quite possibly gay).

NBC and its various cable stations are making their presentations today and tomorrow. Since it is Sunday, the critics got a little bit of a break and didn't have to start until noon, when a lunch session was held for Friday Night Lights. This session had a little bit of added juice, due to the unique deal NBC struck to have DirecTV shoulder the cost of producing the series in exchange for the rights to air new episodes on the satellite service first, before they air on NBC. Thirteen episodes will be produced and will air in October on DirecTV's 101 Network, and they'll air in February on the Peacock network.

Not surprisingly, there were as many questions about the new arrangement as there were about the creative aspects of the show. Show-runner Jason Katims and DirecTV entertainment head Eric Shanks fielded most of those questions, and the cast of the show fielded the rest.

(S02E02) As I was watching the show tonight, thoughts on this post were running through my head. Initially I planned on doing like last week and pushing the Landry/Tyra stuff to the end of the post, after we go through the parts of the episode that actually make some sense. But then I typed out that episode title, "Bad Ideas", and I just can't get over how well that fits.

They may have intended that title as a reference to what is going on with many of the characters. Things like Tami's admission that her insistence that she and Julie stay in Dillon was a bad idea, how Buddy's own actions have created his situation, the experimental Mexican surgery proposed to Street, or even Antwone's trip to the Justin Timberlake concert. To me though, THE bad idea is nothing that any of the characters are doing. It is this Landry and Tyra story that the writers and producers have cooked up. So we'll get started there, after the jump.

NBC has brought in Friday Night Lights executive producer Jason Katims to consult on Bionic Woman, after Glen Morgan left over those curious 'creative differences.' It's certainly not a new story, a producer getting an extra iron in the fire even though they have a show already on the schedule. Although, usually we see this with producers who have established hits on their hands. This one comes as a bit of a surprise to me, given the tenuous nature of FNL's position.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as much in the bag for the show, and Katims, as anybody. But we have to be realistic and admit that the renewal did come as something of a surprise after the way the show performed in the ratings last season. Renewing it was a gamble for the network, so is pulling one of the people credited with giving it that quality away to work on another show really the best idea? I certainly think that Katims can be a help to the Bionic Woman team, but I hope that Friday Night Lights doesn't suffer for it.

[ via Ausiello Report ]