TVSquad

A familiar face will be popping up at Seattle Grace before Grey's Anatomy goes on hiatus at the end of the season. Kate Walsh, a.k.a. Addison Montgomery, M.D., will return to the medical drama when her character makes a visit to the Emerald City. It'll be for just one episode, though. ABC has already picked up Kate's spin-off series, Private Practice, for the fall.

Executive producer/writer Shonda Rhimes confirmed that Kate Walsh will return to Grey's Anatomy for a guest bit this spring, but a definite date has not been pinned down. Five new episodes of GA are set to air starting April 24.

J.J. Abrams is in talks with HBO to direct and executive produce a new medical drama that looks at the toll cancer takes from the patients point of view. This would be the first project that Abrams undertakes with the new mega-contract he signed with Warner Bros. back during the summer. Abrams' own production company, Bad Robot, is part of the contract he signed.

The drama, based on the book The Anatomy of Hope, will be written in part by Tom Schulman -- the same guy who wrote Dead Poets Society and won the Oscar for it.

Seems like Abrams has his hands full lately. I doubt very much he'll have much time to devote to Lost if he's busy directing this new show, executive producing What About Brian, and getting things ready for the eleventh Star Trek movie. This guy is in demand.

[via Hollywood Reporter]

Salma Hayek, apparently hoping to duplicate the success of Ugly Betty, which she produced with partner Jose Tamez, is developing another telenovela, an untitled medical drama based at an Ivy League university. Joe Sachs, a writer and producer on ER, is also executive producing the show along with Hayek and Tamez.

Given the television industries knack for jumping on any bandwagon once it's proved there's an audience for it, one wonders what will happen if this new drama becomes as successful as Ugly Betty. It could be we're not too far away from a slew of shows all adapted from telenovelas and other foreign series. I saw a show on Univision the other day where a man dressed as a pink gorilla was chased by another man dressed as a baby. I think that would translate well to an American audience.

(S03E06) Hello, my name is Jen, and I will be covering House for Tom Biro this evening. To our right, please notice that Michael Tritter, policeman extraordinaire is still with us, and searching House's house for narcotics. Tritter has been called the anti-House, but let's examine the evidence. He is vengeful, like House. He breaks into people's apartments and searches for evidence, just like House. He is addicted to Nicorette gum, just like House. I think House even points out correctly that Tritter is taking out his anti-smoking frustrations on House-- why not? House takes out his pain on everybody else too. Especially when he can't have his drug of choice.

Just when you think a show is dying, it comes to life.

ER is currently in its 13th season, and NBC's original plan was to interrupt the run of the show for three months in early 2007 and premiere the new drama The Black Donnellys. But ER had to go and be one of the top rated NBC shows (it's always in the top 20 now), so now the plan is to keep ER on the air throughout the winter and spring.

I'll say one thing: I swore up and down, right here on this site, that I was through with ER and wasn't going to watch it anymore. But I find myself pulled back into it after checking in to see what happened to Jerry (he's OK, just on another show for now) and Abby's baby (it's OK, as Rich has reported). So I guess if the show can keep a jaded veteran ER watcher like me interested after so many years, it must be doing something right.

The Smiths are becoming entertainment moguls, aren't they? They already produce the CW comedy All of Us; now Will and Jada are pairing with a writer-producer team to create a medical drama for CBS. Just what we need, right? Well, this one has the potential to be a little different: the show will follow the doctors at the Centers of Disease Control as they battle viruses and other diseases that threaten to become pandemics (the pilot episode: bird flu... it's a natural!).

The writer-producer team that the Smiths are joining are Jan Nash and Jennifer Levin, who met while working on Without a Trace.

The National Enquirer is reporting that Grey's Anatomy costars Patrick Dempsey and Isaiah Washington got into a fight on the set of the hit ABC drama on Monday. While Patrick, Washington, and costar T.R. Knight were waiting to do a scene, Washington said something nasty to Knight, and Patrick stood up for him. That's when Washington got into a shoving match with Dempsey, and one source says that Washington even tried to choke him, then stormed off the set. He later came back to finish the scene.

Supposedly, Washington is upset over the whole "McDreamy" nonsense that shows like The Insider and Entertainment Tonight and gossip mags are pushing. To which I say, "amen." Though it's not enough to McChoke somebody. I mean, that's just McStupid.

[via Defamer]

Update: Dempsey and Washington confirm the fight, though they say no punches were thrown.

That's the word from a retailer anyway (no word from Fox yet). The first season of the critically-acclaimed drama will be released on December 12.

Sometimes it's easy to forget how groundbreaking this show was. The topics they covered, the writing. And the cast! Denzel Washington, Howie Mandel, Mark Harmon, Ed Begley, Jr., David Morse, Eric Stoltz, and Tim Robbins were all regulars on the show at one point or another, along with many others.

TVShowsonDVD.com reports that the first season of the long-running Dick Van Dyke series will be released on September 12. It will be a 5 disc set, but will not include the pilot episode of the series, which was actually an episode of Jake and the Fatman. So maybe we'll have to wait for that DVD set to see the pilot ep of Diagnosis Murder.

I really liked this show, actually. It was sort of a male Murder, She Wrote, and it was good to see Vany Dyke on a weekly series again.

Remember back when ("when" being, I don't know, last year some time) there was news going around that John Stamos was going to join ER full-time, but then couldn't do it because ABC unexpectedly renewed his Jake In Progress? So all Stamos could do was a two episode guest stint as a paramedic.

But wait! The news is now official that Stamos will join ER full-time next season, but only if Jake In Progress isn't renewed (and this time it looks like it's dead in the water). I never knew what happened to Stamos' character on the show. I thought he died in that plane crash or run over or a blimp fell on top of him or something. He just seemed to vanish one episode, so it will be good to see what happened to him.