TVSquad

I was really bitter towards CW for canceling Veronica Mars, so I was planning on not watching Gossip Girl out of spite. However, as a fan of (at least the first few seasons) of The O.C., the idea of another Josh Schwartz show intrigued me. Okay, that, and the fact that I loved Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (shut up), and the realization that my one-woman boycott wasn't going to bring VM back, all led me to the show.

When I tuned in, I really thought it would be The O.C. East, but Schwartz and the rest of the writers did a good job of making it its own show, I'm sure in no small part due to the fact that they had a series of books to work with. In fact, last night's 90210 premiere reminded me more of The O.C. than Gossip Girl ever has. So when I read that an O.C. alum was making her way to the Upper East Side, I wasn't exactly thrilled.

Casting spoilers ahead.

There are only so many hours of television I can fit in a day, so I'm picky and particular about what I watch. Chuck is one of those shows that I watched early last season, I liked it, but for reasons I can't think of, it didn't make the cut. Seeing as it was good enough and is clearly popular enough to have a second season, with the first season DVDs out in a couple of months, I may have to do some catching up and find a way to fit it in.

This session was great for fans of the show, as the first five minutes or so were filled with a video montage of scenes from next season. I'll describe some of those scenes in my summary below, but I'll start them off with SPOILER in case you don't want to know.

Today was the very last day of the press tour here in Beverly Hills. It was "TCA Day," with members of the association (including me) going to the Warner Brothers lot to visit the sets of ER, Pushing Daisies, and Chuck, where we spoke to cast members and producers (Oh, we went to the set of America's Best Dance Crew, but let's just forget I mentioned that one). Then we bused it over to the Fox lot, where Joss Whedon showed us around the set of Dollhouse, and the entire cast of King of the Hill gave a table read of their 250th episode. All this fun will be in upcoming posts later this summer.

Despite some of the griping you may have seen from me, it's been lots of fun. It's just a very tiring experience. Case in point: On Monday, NBC decided to close out the press conference portion of the tour by having us sit through ten panels, five of them after lunch. Here's a wrap-up post that goes over some of what went on yesterday that I haven't already covered.

Anyone who's followed the NFL over the last fifteen years knew what Michael Strahan's plans were going to be after retirement: TV, TV and more TV. It was a given; during most of his career with the Giants, Strahan loved to be in front of the camera, and often did commentary and studio gigs on his off-weeks or during the playoffs.

Now, with a Super Bowl ring in-hand, the newly-retired defensive end is making his move. Not only has he joined the FOX NFL pregame show, but he also just completed filming a cameo on the NBC geek adventure comedy Chuck. He plays Mitt, the manager of the sporting goods store that's in the same shopping center as Buy More, the store where Chuck works. He and his crew take over the home theater portion of the store during lunchtimes, playing Madden '09 and making a mess. My guess is that we'll set up a geeks vs. jocks scenario with retail being the venue, instead of the locker room.

The CW has ordered a full season of Gossip Girl, making it the first new series to get the go-ahead. Gossip Girl has been posting impressive numbers for the network, and just got a 9% viewership boost from just-released DVR ratings. It's also doing well in iTunes, currently #3 and #5 of the Top 10 TV show downloads.

Gossip Girl is the latest creation from Josh Schwartz, creator of The O.C. and Chuck. It's about an anonymous blogger called Gossip Girl who has all the dirt on the teens at a Manhattan prep school.

One of my favorite characters on The O.C. was Summer Roberts. I liked her humor, naivety, and her spark. When FOX announced the cancellation of the show, I was sad to depart with characters like her, the Cohens and Taylor. So when NBC announced today that she would guest star on a few episodes of Chuck, I was delighted to see the actress return to the small screen!

Bilson will appear in a multi-episode arc on NBC's new action-comedy airing Mondays before Heroes. She is set to play a love interest for the lead character of Chuck, played by Zachary Levi. Her character will be Chuck's first romantic interest since his girlfriend broke up with him a few years ago while in college.

It's that time of the year again. Time to put away the bathing suits, winterize the boats, and start thinking about getting the big coats out of the back of the closets, at least up here in the Jet City. While it will be sad to see those long summer days fade into fall, the silver lining is a truckload of new and returning shows, all set to debut.

One of the first out of the gate is Gossip Girl, which premieres next Wednesday at 9 on The CW. They were nice enough to send a copy of the pilot over to TV Squad HQ, and I couldn't resist the possibility of a good teen drama, so here is an early look at what the fifth network has cooking.

CW's new series, Gossip Girl, will debut a week earlier than announced, kicking off on September 19 at 9:00 p.m. The series is debuting early in order to stay ahead of highly-anticipated premieres from other networks, such as NBC's Bionic Woman and ABC's Private Practice.

Also, according to Variety, most high schools and colleges are back in full swing by September 19, though I'm not certain why that matters since I figure most kids watch TV year round.

I know the picture's a little blurry folks, but isn't it worth it to know how far the cast of NBC's new pilot Chuck is willing to go to get you to love them? Stars Zachary Levi and Joshua Gomez were not, in fact, reenacting the finer points of the Kama Sutra on stage. They were recreating their comic ninja fight from the pilot. Now that's we've cleared that up, more on Chuck after the jump.

(S04E16) Does this count as the end of an era? I'm not sure. When The OC first began, it sure felt like the beginning of an era. Now that it's over, I'm not exactly sure what it's the end of. Other than something that I'm really, really going to miss.

I have to be honest. The first twenty or so minutes of this episode fell pretty flat for me. I really wasn't enjoying the six-month jump, only to find out that everything we thought we knew was no more. Julie was engaged to Bullit, Taylor was back in France, and Seth and Summer had become "comfortable." Nothing was right, and despite the fact that we all knew how this was going to end, I was a little put off by the way it started. But it picked up steam and by the episode's end, I was completely satisfied with the way it all turned out.

(S04E10) You can tell that Josh Schwartz and his writing team are having fun with this season. They knew the show was going to be canceled well before we did. So it only makes sense that these remaining episodes feel fresh, like the writers are taking chances. Why wouldn't they? The show is over -- they can do whatever they want.

There are pros and cons to that though. Sometimes too much creative freedom can be a bad thing. Example one? I feel like Sandy and Kirsten have been forgotten. Especially Sandy. It seems that lately his only role has been popping in here and there to offer brief words of advice to Ryan. Although I will say that his Jerry Lewis impersonation was hilarious.

Don't cry for young Josh Schwartz, the creator of now-cancelled The O.C. Sure, the ratings for the show dropped to terribly low levels (fewer than 500,000 teens watched it on a weekly basis). And his star wanted off the show. But, he has been given greenlights from both NBC and The CW for pilots.

Joel already told you about the NBC pilot, called Chuck. It's "a high-concept action dramedy about spies and twentysomethings..." His other pilot, which was just greenlighted by The CW, is called Gossip Girl. It's about New York teens and their parents, as told through an anonymous blogger. Kinda sounds like Sex and the City meets Dawson's Creek. (With Josh Schwartz, everything "meets Dawson's Creek").

Oh, and did I mention that Josh Schwartz is merely 30-years old and has a three-year, seven-figure deal with Warner Bros. television? Yeah, he's gonna be just fine.

Our friends at AOL TV just passed us a press release from FOX saying that The O.C. will air its season finale on February 22nd.

"The O.C. Season Four finale will also be the series finale. This feels like the best time to bring the show to its close," said creator Josh Schwartz in the press release. New episodes will air starting tomorrow, January 4, and run all the way until the finale. No word on what will happen during the finale, but I'd imagine that there will be a lot of goofiness and young nubile people having relations.

This wasn't unexpected, because ratings for the show were dismal last year, and FOX only picked up the show for 16 episodes this year. Despite a return to the tone and humor that the show had in its earlier seasons, ratings didn't improve, so it became a goner. Also, NBC's pickup of Schwartz's pilot Chuck might have contributed to both parties' decision to end the show.

The full press release is after the jump.

Here's a piece of news from our "Networks Have Run Out of Ideas" department:

Reuters and The Hollywood Reporter are reporting that NBC has picked up a one-hour pilot for a remake of -- hold on to your artificial knees -- The Bionic Woman. You remember The Bionic Woman, right? Basicially it was The Six Million Dollar Man with girl parts. Lindsay Wagner played Jamie Sommers, a woman who's life was saved by bionic transplants after an accident and is recruited by the government to work spy missions. It ran from 1976-1978, not exactly the world's most successful run. But, for some reason, NBC thinks it's worthy of a revisit, maybe due to the success of Heroes. According to the article, the pickup is contingent on casting, so I'd imagine we won't be seeing anyone older than 30 in the role of Jamie.

(S04E08) If this keeps up, the current season of The OC won't just rival the first -- it'll beat it. Everything that was great about this show in its debut season has returned. The writing is stronger than either of the middle seasons and it seems clear that Josh Schwartz and Co. are flexing their creative muscles fully knowing that this may be their last chance to do so. Seth's dry wit is in full force. The storylines are funny again (no more Marissa to bring it all down). But they're believable storylines too. And the relationships? I actually care about them again.

To illustrate what I'm saying, just look at this episode. It ripped a page right from the Alias playbook and gave us an opening scene only to jump back seven hours earlier. Before this season, I would have never expected to see something like that on The OC.