Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

The volume of the news is back to normal now that Comic Con is out of the way. Here are the tidbits that I found for today:

TELEVISION

Actress Lindsay Sloane and actor Greg Grunberg will guest star on an upcoming episode of Psych when the show returns for its sixth season this October. In a Psych parody of The Bachelorette, Sloane will play Melinda, the star of the pseudo dating show Missed Connections, on which guys she’s crossed paths with — but never met — compete for her love. Grunberg will play the show’s producer, Dimitri, a ruthless, ratings-obsessed mastermind who Shawn (James Roday) suspects may have orchestrated an attack on one of the men. (Joyce Eng at TV Guide)

Actor Mike Doyle (Law & Order: SVU) has joined the cast of the new fall medical drama A Gifted Man that will debut on CBS on September 23. Doyle will appear as Dr. Victor Lantz in what is being reported to be a potential recurring role. The series stars Patrick Wilson as an ultra-competitive surgeon whose life is turned upside down when his dead ex-wife starts visiting him from the hereafter. (Michael Ausiello at TV Line)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Lifetime has quietly passed on its remaining two pilots, Meet Jane and the untitled Michael Sardo project. (Deadline)

BOX OFFICE TRAILER

New Year’s Eve Trailer: Who Isn’t in This Movie?

Q&A SECTION (with Adam Bryant and Natalie Abrams from TV Guide and Michael Ausiello at TV Line with additional reporting by Vlada Gelman)

Question: Got any new info on Hawaii Five-0’s new season? — Jared

ADAM: Kono, the team’s go-to bad guy lure, will catch the eye of a former crooked cop who’s now a sleazy crime boss. Infiltrating his ranks won’t be easy — nor will passing the test he gives Kono to prove she’s legit.

Question: I must know more about Bones’ new squintern! — Wesley

ADAM: He exists in the overlapping section of a Venn diagram with circles labeled “young,” “redneck” and “genius.” (Think Doogie Howser with Larry the Cable Guy’s accent.) Although Cam welcomes him to the Jeffersonian, Caroline isn’t exactly brimming with Southern hospitality. Why not? It seems that despite all his fancy book-lernin’, the Doog used to “git-r-done” in juvie.

Question: Got any Nikita spoilers? — Marco

ADAM: Get ready to meet a Robin Hood with a real mean streak. The show is casting an assassin who targets the rich and powerful and then sends videos to the media that outline his motivation for each murder. One thing the videos don’t show, though: This brash killer uses a wheelchair.

Question: There’s been a serious lack of Falling Skies scoop. What can you tease? — Dave

NATALIE: Ready to find out what that alien harness is really for? You will in this week’s episode, in which Blair Brown (Fringe) also guest-stars. She plays an eccentric survivalist whose luxurious lifestyle is highly suspicious to Tom, Hal and Captain Weaver. Even more suspicious is her connection to the long-missing Karen.

Question: Do you have any new Vampire Diaries scoop? —Samantha

Ausiello: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is set to guest on the show!!!! Well, OK, not so much Buffy. But a vampire slayer, at least. The incoming character, named Eric (a nod to True Blood’s sexiest fanger?), is a middle-aged hottie who, from what I hear, is sorta like Indiana Jones with a stake instead of a whip. In possibly related news, check out what EP Julie Plec told us at Comic-Con when asked her if there were plans to introduce a baddie bigger than Klaus this season. “I would definitely say that Klaus isn’t the worst baddie that we’ve seen so far. It will be fun to see who’s going to steal his thunder eventually as we get deep into Season 3.” Hmm…

Question: Since Castle started back filming last Thursday, got any spoilers for Season 4? —Danielle

Ausiello: Look for Ryan and Esposito to get considerable more air time this season, something Jon Huertas confirmed to me at Comic-Con. One Ryan/Esposito-centric episode revolves around “a double date with Ryan/Jenny and Esposito/Lanie,” he revealed, “and things don’t go so well.”

Question: Heard of any plans to have Carla Gallo back on Bones this season? —Rex

Ausiello: Yes. Gallo is slated to return as Daisy in Episode 3, per exec producer Stephen Nathan, who adds, “Daisy can’t live without her Lancelot.” True dat, true dat.

Question: The biggest scoop of all would be if you could tell us when Kyle Chandler is returning to television? —Harry

Ausiello: Rumor has it the Friday Night Lights Emmy nominee has been offered every pilot under the sun, only to turn each and every offer down. “That’s not true,” Chandler humbly responds. He won’t deny, however, that he’s being very picky about choosing his FNL follow-up. “I’ve looked closely at what the next project will be,” he says. “You kind of have to. FNL went for five years. I certainly know enough now that if you’re going to climb into bed with one of these television shows and it becomes successful, you’re there for a while. When you’ve got [FNL exec producer] Peter Berg and other folks putting this thing together it’s a little bit easier. You knew you had quality people you were signing up with. I just did Super 8. I didn’t even see the script, but it’s quite obvious that’s pretty easy to do. So I am very considerate of what it is I do next. I listen to my gut for sure.”

Question: It’s really looking like Cas is going to be killed off in Episode 2 of Supernatural. Can you give us any hope at all that he’ll survive beyond that? —Tabitha

Ausiello: Nope, and neither can his portrayer Misha Collins. “I would love to tell you [but] I’m not going to,” he told TVLine over the weekend at Comic-Con. “I don’t like to give away secrets… You might see me a lot next year. If you have a poster of me on your wall, you’ll see me daily. But how much I’ll be on Supernatural is a secret. And I actually don’t know. That makes it easier to not tell you.” When we do see Cas, he will be “drunk with power,” reveals Collins. “He’s trying to do what he thinks a God should be doing on Earth and in Heaven, which is fairly righteous and wrathful. Rectifying the world’s problems. I think he’s making, in many respects, the world a better place. But there’s a fair amount of smiting going on too. You take the good with the bad.”

Question: Any Supernatural spoilers? Please? —Nic

Ausiello: Look for Sam and Dean’s already difficult lives to get even tougher. After years of skirting the law, the boys are “starting to be found,” Jared Padalecki teased at Comic-Con, which means the Winchesters are “losing a lot of our aces in the hole.” Adds executive producer Ben Edlund, “We’ve been saying that they do things a certain way. Their techniques, their methods – they know what they’re doing. They know their job. They have their support networks. Those things in their lives are going to challenged.” Insert the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid feel showrunner Sera Gamble teased to us back in May, and, “They’re going to find themselves, in a sense, running from lots of guns,” continues Edlund. “The stuff they face this season, it’s massive.” But Edlund believes there’s still room for laughs. “There’s a natural absurdity to being on the air for seven seasons and the number of times they’ve died,” he says. “There’s a quality that’s going to lend itself to a little more ambient comedy this year.”

Question: There’s been a lack of scoops on Chuck recently! Anything you can give me? —Adam

Ausiello: You already know from reading our Comic-Con recap that Casey is getting a new love interest/foil by the name of Gertrude Verbanski. The newbie runs what EP Chris Fedak calls “the best spy company in the world.” But what you may not know is that the just-released casting breakdown describes her as “tall, gorgeous and striking. She’s Miranda Priestly meets Lara Croft, with a rather wicked sense of humor.”

That’s it. Enjoy!