TVSquad

This is going to please Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans.

Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello is reporting that Seth Green, who played Oz on Buffy and currently is one of the brains behind Robot Chicken, is joining NBC's Heroes this season. He'll have a multi-episode storyline with fellow Robot Chicken-er Breckin Meyer. They'll play two comic-book aficionados who cross paths with one of the heroes, though it's not certain right now which of the heroes they'll interact with, in what way, or what their character names are going to be.

Is this good news for the show, or are we already starting to see too many new characters for the show so soon after new characters were introduced in the strike-shortened, fan-hated second season? I agree that it's an awfully large cast right now as it is, but I also understand that as the seasons go on and new plots develop, new characters are necessary. And having a fan favorite like Green (playing someone geeky) might be fun.

I have come to an epiphany when it comes to American Dad and Family Guy: a studio audience is needed. I came to this realization after attending both the Comic-Con panels for these respective shows, which showed clips from their respective series. Scenes that I would have generally smirked at or given a chuckle made me laugh out loud along with the rest of the audience. Which brings me to one of two conclusions: either laughter is contagious, or I am just a lemming.

Either way, an enjoyable two hours was spent with casts from both shows as they did some table readings, provided some clues to upcoming episodes,and provided clips from some previously run and new episodes of both shows.

(S06E12) As a result of adopting (and by adopting, I mean bird-napping) a parrot from the veterinarian's office, Peter becomes a pirate. The sad part was that it wasn't even International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day.

Actually, that's not really what the episode is about. It's more about Chris' pursuit of a vet intern named Anna. While Chris' pursues Anna, he gets advice from Peter and the gang (which, as the history of the show has proven, is never a good idea).

The pirate segment of the episode wasn't very good and seemed out of place. Fortunately, it was very short. Despite its use in the promos, it was kind of forgettable. I did enjoy the car chase bit involving "sugar cane, tobacco and spices". The car chase itself seemed like something of a cross between a pirate movie and a video-game.

(S06E11) Brian learns that he had an illegitimate 13-year-old child from a previous relationship (voiced by Harvey Fierstein). The child is dropped off at the Griffin household and Brian now has to raise him.

It should be noted that this season has been shortened to 12 episodes, most likely due to the writer's strike. The season finale will be shown next week. The remaining unfinished episodes will be part of next season's broadcast.

From March 14th to March 27th, The Paley Center for Media is presenting the twentieth-fifth annual William S. Paley Television Festival. The Paley Center, formerly the Museum of Television and Radio, says that the festival celebrates "television's rich and diverse programming and the creative process behind the medium." This year the festival includes Chuck, Friday Night Lights, Pushing Daisies, and Gossip Girl among others.

Last night, I attended the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reunion. For what happened during the panel discussion and some pictures, read on past the jump...

(S04E10) "Dr. Hahn. Shut-up." - Meredith

The final pre-strike episode of Grey's Anatomy. Well... technically, there's one more that's been shot (the infamous Bailey narrated episode), but who knows when that'll air. January if we're lucky. Maybe February. Anyway, I liked this one a lot. It definitely made up for last week's mediocre first half. It was hectic and tense despite the fact that you could see most of it coming a mile away. Fortunately, so many things came together... actually, I should say "fell apart."

(S04E09) "No one ever better call me Nazi again." - Bailey

Nothing says Happy Thanksgiving like white supremacy and ambulance accidents! OK... well, not really. But that's what we got as Grey's Anatomy slowly winds down to its final pre-WGA Strike episodes. There are only two more in the can and production on the show has been shut down. The resolution to this "event" airs in two weeks and S04E11 currently has no airdate scheduled, though I'm guessing that ABC will save it until after the New Year. Now you'll notice that I put quotes around event. Did it really feel like one? I know the mold for a big episode of Grey's Anatomy usually involves something that crashes or explodes, but this felt more like a regular episode to me. However, as forced and predictable as the cliffhangers were, I am excited to find out the resolutions.

What's happening on other blogs via the interweb.

• Gloria Reuben is returning to ER, and so is Noah Wyle.
• CBS is getting heat for having Rita Braver interview Lynne Cheney.
• Seth Green is going to guest star on two episodes of Grey's Anatomy.
• I first saw this on Jimmy Kimmel Live: the Star Wars trumpet girl!
• What's with the odd promos for the new TBS series Frank TV?
• Jaime Weinman analyzes The Brady Bunch as much as I do, heh.
• Check out Buddy TV's television quiz.

(S06E01) A long time ago, but somehow in the future . . .

Who would've thunk it? When Family Guy premiered back in 1999(!) many people tossed it away as a pale imitation of The Simpsons and kind of ignored it. Who knew that eight years later, at the start of the show's 6th season, Seth MacFarlane and his crew would be able to get the approval of George Lucas himself to air a spoof of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. It shows how far Family Guy has come since it returned to the prime-time airwaves.

By now, you've probably heard about Britney Spears superfan Chris Crocker and his tearful pleas to leave poor Britney alone after her not so auspicious return to MTV's Video Music Awards. You haven't seen it yet? Well, click right here to view the video before you continue. Done? Feel scared? Wondering if that's a boy or a girl (it's a boy)? Even more scared? Now you're ready to continue.

As we live in a world of instantaneous ridicule, plenty of videos have gone up on YouTube and other video sties mocking Crocker. One of these comes from Seth Green, he of Robot Chicken and Family Guy fame (oh, and that show that featured a girl vampire killer. Her name was Barbara, Belinda, Beefy . . . I can't remember).

A few days before an advanced copy of Robot Chicken Season Two arrived in the mail, I had been watching my Mission Hill DVD. For those who don't know, Mission Hill was the creation of Simpsons writers Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley. It focused on a college graduate named Andy French, living the typical slacker existence of an aimless college grad. The series aired when I myself was an aimless, slacking twentysomething, so I found the series funny, poignant, and often heartbreakingly real.

I realized while watching it that Adult Swim hasn't had a series with that kind of substance in a long time. Series like Baby Blues and Home Movies have been replaced by weird post-modern fare like Aqua Teen Hunger Force* and the works of Tim and Eric, with very little programming left with any real emotion.

Out of the dozens and dozens of shows that go to pilot every season, we only see a handful. Some of them vanish forever and some might end up online in one way or another.

Below is a list of ten shows that didn't make the fall schedule on the networks this year. Some of them might show up midseason, but most won't. And just for a little added fun, I've included three shows that are completely made up. Can you tell which ones they are? I'll answer in the comments later tonight (and don't go looking online for the answer; that's no fun). The shows are listed after the jump. Some of them sound crazy, but hey, if you told me two years ago that those Geico cavemen commercials would be a series...

The stage version of Family Guy will be in Chicago next month. That's right, there's a stage version of the Fox show. Family Guy Live started in 2004 at a Montreal comedy festival and then had a couple of shows in LA and New York in 2005. It appeared again in Montreal this summer and now is headed for a two-night gig in Chicago.

The live show features all the actors who do voices for the show, including creator Seth MacFarlane, Mila Kunis, Seth Green, Mike Henry and Alex Borstein. The performance is a compilation of musical numbers from the actual series. And, because it's live, I can only imagine that it hasn't been nearly as censored as it would be on Fox.

There will be just two shows in September 15th at the Chicago Theater. The production coincides with Family Guy's syndication on Tribune stations, which have headquarters in Chicago.

And now we return to E! True Hollywood Story -- Optimus Prime.

The early 21st century wasn't kind to the Autobot leader. With revenues from his successful 80's cartoon drying up, the accumulated losses he took from his investments in WorldCom and Enron, and the disaster that was the short-lived game show Autobot or Decepticon, Optimus Prime could barley put a cube of Energon on the table. He tried to get back in television with small bit parts on According to Jim and Still Standing but no one was really watching.

Geeks get treated pretty badly in the media. Thanks to the fact that most people who get above-the-line credit in Hollywood are anything but geeky, when a script calls for a socially maladjusted character, it's almost always a terrible caricature of true geek culture. For years little geeklings only had the likes of Steve Urkel to look up to and that's not right (believe me, Jaleel White, when the geek revolution comes, you'll be the first one guillotined).

The fact that I'm about to become the father of my own little geek-spawn has led me to start looking around the current TV landscape, looking for appropriate geek role models. I was surprised to find so many...