TVSquad

A former female writer at Late Night with David Letterman has dropped a bombshell in a Vanity Fair article in which she complained of a "hostile work environment for women". While he didn't hit on the writer, she claims that she noticed Letterman paid "extra attention" to her and had a reputation of sleeping with female workers.

While this could be a legitimate complaint, I find it somewhat suspicious that she waited until now to write about this. It could be a case of jumping on a bandwagon or she may have been afraid to say anything for fear of repercussions (as in "you'll never work in this industry again").

There is also that fine line between taking advantage of a subordinate and flirting. Not having been there, it's difficult to access what the case actually was. Mind you, flirting with subordinates at the workplace is probably not a good idea in this litigious society, but he was likely so busy with the show, how else was he going to meet single women? Match.com?

You have to admire the tenacity of writer Harlan Ellison. He filed a lawsuit against CBS Paramount accusing the company of not paying him for all the ancillary income the company earned from the episode of Star Trek he wrote in 1967, "City on the Edge of Forever." Yesterday, Ellison announced on his web site that he had settled with CBS Paramount and he was very, very pleased. He didn't reveal how much money he made, but he probably did quite well.

After all, CBS Paramount has done very, very well with that original Star Trek episode. It's regarded as -- and is -- the all-time best show in the entire original ST canon. Ironically, Ellison never liked what Roddenberry and company had done with his script.

Last month, Mad Men was celebrating winning a slew of Emmys. One of them was for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, the episode entitled "Meditations In An Emergency." When creator Matthew Weiner went onto the stage to grab the Emmy, with him was Kater Gordon, the co-writer of that episode. Today, Kater Gordon was let go from Mad Men.

Are you shocked? Apparently, the industry press is. Gordon had risen from personal assistant to writer's assistant to member of the writing staff. After the Emmy, you would think that she was in like Flynn.

However, something must have gone awry or why has she been given her walking papers? And if you think it's not a dismissal, listen to this announcement from the show:

A couple of months ago, Mike showed you a preview of the new faux-noir series Bored To Death, which chronicles the adventures of a real writer (Jonathan Ames, played by Jason Schwartzman) who becomes a private eye for some reason. It looks quite entertaining, as this new clip below shows. Ted Danson, Patton Oswalt, and Zach Galifinakis? I'm there. It premieres on HBO September 20.

The votes were counted and 77.2% of TV Squad readers believed Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory has Asperger's Syndrome. Based on Slate writer Paul Collins' article on the subject and reported by Joel, you were asked your opinion and agreed with Collins.

Well, majority may rule, but the writer is king. Big Bang co-creator Bill Prady knows the character better than we do, and Prady said Sheldon does not have Asperger's.

Give Justine Bateman credit: She could have been typecast after playing the dippy, fashion-obsessed Mallory Keaton on Family Ties, but she's been able to build a nice career for herself over the last twenty years by playing interesting supporting roles in movies like The TV Set and series like Desperate Housewives. But she's also been -- just like 75% of the people in Hollywood -- an aspiring writer, struggling to get her scripts produced (and you think having connections helps ... she knows Michael J. Fox and her brother is Jason Bateman, and she still couldn't get her scripts produced).

But now she can add "sitcom writer" to her credits; she just wrote an episode of The Disney Channel's hit Wizards of Waverly Place, according to the New York Daily News. Apparently, she's a friend of executive producer Peter Murrieta, and she got to know some of the show's writers during the writers' strike. So, when the strike ended, she was invited to write an episode for the show.

When you hear the name "Shonda Rhimes" what words come to mind? I'm pretty sure those words are "Grey's" and "Anatomy." But what you may not know is that before writing gripping TV series such as Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, Rhimes also put pen to paper for The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and -- you'd better be sitting properly on your chair before reading this -- Britney Spears's Crossroads! Can you believe that the Emmy award winner wrote that terrible and rightfully Razzie-nominated Crossroads?!?

There's hope after all for an American television landscape with more than reruns and reality shows in 2008. As reported here on TV Squad earlier, while the strike continues, the Writer's Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have agreed to return to the negotiating table come November 26, after the Thanksgiving holiday. We at TV Squad, who let's face it make our livings off the written word, decided that the main focus of this whole strike has been lost in all the hype over picketing celebrities, reruns and layoffs. So we gathered half a dozen of the top television writers and offered them the chance to speak anonymously, openly and honestly about how this experience has impacted them and their families.

A few TV Squad readers contacted me to know how the strike will affect TV show spoilers and if columns like Spoilers Anonymous would vanish at some point this winter.

The short answer is that spoilers will be quite rare this winter if the strike last beyond the Holidays but not gone since a few series that already shot all or part of their upcoming seasons (e.g., The Shield, Greek, Monk, etc.) will start airing new episodes in spring time. As for the long answer...

Being the huge TV fan that I am, when I first heard about the possible writers' strike, I must admit that I was a little bit worried. I remember they went on strike before, but the 1988 strike sounds like nothing compared to the impending one because more is at stake right now.

My main concern was this: Would we be able to watch full seasons of our shows or would we be stuck with a huge break at the most inopportune moment?

Actors Donal Logue and Eliza Dushku, along with writer/producer David Hemingson, recently signed on for new network projects.

Logue stars in FOX's Barry Sonnefeld-directed comedy pilot, Hackett, as a "bad-boy literary luminary" who goes from teaching at Yale to teaching at a public school in Ohio. The pilot also stars Rachel Boston (American Dreams) and Morgan Murphy. Logue was last seen on ABC's short-lived The Knights of Prosperity. Sonnefeld will work on Hackett, as well as direct episodes of Pushing Daisies, a new series for ABC premiering Wednesdays this fall.

I think the phrase "hit or miss" is appropriate when it comes to television and Jeffrey Tambor. He's been involved with some truly great series (The Larry Sanders Show, Arrested Development), and some not-so-great series (Twenty Good Years).

Now, Tambor is heading back to the small screen to star in The Captain, which was recently approved for a six-episode, midseason run on CBS. Tambor stars as a retired writer whose apartment building is soon occupied by a younger writer, played by Fran Kranz. The series also stars Raquel Welch, Al Madrigal, Valerie Azlynn and Joanna Garcia.

Last month, I mentioned that some rumors were floating around about a possible Simpsons movie ride at Universal Studios. According to a recent interview with Simpsons writer Matt Warburton over at TV.com, it's true. Warburton was rather coy about what the ride would consist of, but he says he is writing for it and that it will be "cool."

Earlier rumors claimed the new ride, allegedly titled "Travel with Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie" would be a motion-simulation ride in which a "car" twists and moves along with an animated film to give the feeling of actual movement. One assumes that's probably going to be the case since I can't imagine how someone would "write" for any other kind of ride.

Conan O'Brien, host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Adam McKay, co-writer and director of Talladega Nights and Anchorman and father of the infamous Pearl, have at least one thing in common: they both worked on Saturday Night Live. The other thing they have in common is that they were each interviewed recently by two different publications.

O'Brien was interviewed by StarWars.com to coincide with the recent taping of his show in San Francisco (George Lucas was a guest on the program). This was my favorite exchange:

What was your favorite part of visiting Lucasfilm/ILM when you were here in San Francisco?

The part when Lucas took me into a glass elevator. It smashed through the roof and he told me the entire chocolate factory was mine. That poor man has lost his mind.

An acquaintance of mine used to ask me if I ever listened to The Sound of Young America, and I told her I didn't like it. As it turns out, I had it confused with some low-rent internet podcast with a similar name I cannot recall at the moment.

Anyway, Jesse, the fellow who helms Sound of Young America, recently had a couple great interviews with some very funny women. First, he interviewed Anne Beatts, who was the first female editor of National Lampoon, wrote for Saturday Night Live when that show first started, and created Square Pegs. Major TV nerd points to those of you who remember Square Pegs.