The Walking Dead's Season 3 finale airs tonight at 9pm. Game of Thrones' Season 3 premiere airs tonight at... 9pm. And after seeing the internet's latest take on the Syrio Forel "not today" meme, we have a feeling we know where most people's priorities lie. But that won't stop us from asking anyway...
It's almost heeeeeeeere. The Vampire Diaries' Klaus-centric spin-off The Originals, that is. The backdoor pilot is set to air as the April 25 episode of TVD, and as of today there's an official synopsis and a handful of episodic photos to peruse! Ahoy:
KLAUS RETURNS TO HIS PAST IN NEW ORLEANS — Acting on a mysterious tip that a plot is brewing against him in New Orleans, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) makes a trip to the town he and his family helped build. Klaus’s questions lead him to a reunion with his former protégé, Marcel (guest-star Charles Michael Davis), a charismatic vampire who has total control over the human and supernatural inhabitants of New Orleans. Determined to help his brother find redemption, Elijah (Daniel Gillies) follows Klaus and soon learns that Hayley (guest-star Phoebe Tonkin) has also come to the French Quarter searching for clues to her family history, and has fallen into the hands of a powerful witch named Sophie (guest star Daniella Pineda). Meanwhile, in Mystic Falls, Damon (Ian Somerhalder) and Stefan (Paul Wesley) continue with their plan for Elena (Nina Dobrev), while Katherine (Nina Dobrev) reveals a surprising vulnerability to Rebekah (Claire Holt) and asks her to deliver a message. Chris Grismer directed the episode written by Julie Plec (#420).
Okay, so there isn't all that much new info to go on. But there seems to be a lot of love out there for Elijah, and Klaus certainly has his moments. So there's definitely potential, right?
Anyway, here are those photos I promised you! Caution: There is a LOT of intent staring ahead.
Photos from The Vampire Diaries: "The Originals"
Alright guys, go nuts. What's your excitement level for this thing?
GUARANTEED RATINGS BOOST NEWS
... The greatest football match in all the land, the Super Duper Bowl, will be broadcast by CBS this year. That means CBS will not only have to brush up on its young person lingo so as to deal with a mass influx of young people, it will have to pick one of its shows to air a new episode after the Super Bowl and reap the rewards of a drunken audience too comatose to change the channel. This year, the lucky show is Elementary, the updated Sherlock Holmes procedural starring the very cool Jonny Lee Miller. In case you were wondering, CBS aired an episode of Undercover Boss the last time it broadcast the Super Bowl, in 2010. [CBS via press release]
BUSINESS TIME
... Disney XD has renewed Kickin' It for a third season. The comedy is about a group of kids who punch and kick their way into your hearts... by breaking your sternum and cracking your rib cage! Don't trust their lovable hijinks! [Disney XD via press release]
... CBS is finally going to embrace Hulu and will put thousands of episodes on the streaming-video site early next year. The majority of shows, which will largely consist of programs from the network's vast library of older series, will be available only for Hulu Plus subscribers. Hulu is a group effort between Comcast (NBC), Viacom (Fox), and Disney (ABC), and CBS had long been the lone holdout/non-participant. Though CBS has finally decided to join the fun, it's still far off from being one of the Hulu gang. You can watch current CBS shows on CBS.com. Thank you, this has been a message from your pals at CBS. [CBS via press release]
... Those kids from Jersey Shore are getting back together for a fundraiser to help rebuild their stomping grounds after Superstorm Sandy damaged the area. Restore the Shore will air on November 15 from MTV's Times Square studio and encourage kids to donate to relief efforts. If this goes well, the cast of Jersey Shore will hold another benefit to unclog that toilet they destroyed a few seasons ago. [EW]
CASTING NEWS
... Aisha Tyler, who your mom knows from The Talk and you should know from Archer, will soon be known to your kid sister as Jake's mom from Glee. The actress will guest-star on the Fox musical-comedy-drama later this year. [TV Line]
... One Direction is performing on The X Factor on November 8! Woooooo! One Direction for president! Wooooooo! [Fox via press release]
... Criminal Minds is inviting Michelle Trachtenberg (Gossip Girl's Georgina) to come on for a guest role in its eighth season. She'll play a stalker who goes a little crazy in Episode 12. [EW]
... The ageless Jane Seymour is stopping by Fox's comedy Ben and Kate. Seymour will stop shilling heart-shaped pendants to play BJ's mother in an episode next year. David Hornsby (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) will also guest-star in the episode, as an entrepreneur who got rich off of one of Ben's ideas. [TV Line]
BUSINESS TIME
... NBC has confirmed to TV.com that it's delaying the premiere of Community in order to give the show "proper marketing support." The comedy was supposed to return for Season 4 on October 19, but it looks like the network has finally come to its senses and doesn't want to exile it to Fridays. If I'm reading into this correctly, this is a strategic scheduling move and the plan would be to move Community to a different night once NBC decides some of its new comedies stink and cancels them, which would give Community a better chance at survival. Also, my dream of an hour-long Crystal the Monkey comedy block could come true if Community ended up paired with Animal Practice! To be clear, NBC has NOT set a new premiere date or confirmed that Community will no longer air on Fridays—all we know is that it won't return on October 19. And I guess I should also tell you that this news applies to Whitney as well. [NBC, Hitfix]
... Syfy has ordered a fourth season of its strangely compelling reality series Face Off, which pits aspiring movie makeup artists against each other with impressive and terrible results. At this point, the series' biggest task is going to be finding contestants in this niche profession to compete on the show. [Syfy via press release]
... Animal Planet has ordered a second season of Off the Hook, its hiply titled reality series about pro wrestler and fishing aficionado Eric Young. Look for 18 episodes next summer. [Animal Planet via press release]
... NBC is going to throw a bunch of people into the wilderness and call it a show. Get Out Alive will be hosted by Man vs. Wild star Bear Grylls and feature two teams of regular people who must survive in the outdoors and drink each other's urine. Eight episodes have been ordered for next summer. [Deadline Hollywood]
... Syfy is adapting the Chilean reality series Opposite Worlds for America. The competition program features 20 people who obviously compete in challenges, with the winners living in a futuristic utopia where all their needs are met and the losers scraping by in a prehistoric struggle. The 12-episode series, which does not have a premiere date, will air twice a week. There's a decent chance people will drink each other's urine in this one, too. Cross your fingers! [Syfy via press release]
... ABC has ordered three more scripts of its new comedy The Neighbors, a sign that the network is considering a full-season pickup. The series, about aliens disguised as humans that live in a gated community, performed well in its opening week after Modern Family, but crashed back to Earth (haha!) in its second week when it settled into its real timeslot after The Middle. Maybe ABC ordered three more scripts because it just can't get over Dick Butkus jokes. [The Wrap]
... The CW is helping out its target audience that's too lazy to read books for English class by starting development on an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. The series, titled Expectations (not so great this time around?), follows a small-town girl who moves to San Francisco with great expectations only to find that making it in the big city is like totally hard. Luckily, she gets by thanks to an anonymous rich person who makes things happen for her. America's darling Reese Witherspoon will produce. [Deadline Hollywood]
... For those of you looking for Cliffs Notes on video games instead of books, Fox has your six. The network is developing an action/comedy series based on the EA game Battlefield: Bad Company, about four soldiers who leave the military and complete missions for private organizations. Hopefully the network will stay true to the atmosphere of the game by occasionally playing audio of 12-year olds calling you homosexual slurs. [Deadline Hollywood]
... Comedy Central has ordered a pilot for Broad City, based on the web series of the same name that follows two women in New York who... basically just do normal things. It looks kinda funny though, and Amy Poehler will produce. [Comedy Central via press release]
CASTING NEWS
... FX's drama pilot The Bridge has found its male lead in Demian Bichir. The Oscar nominee will play a Mexican detective who is hunting a serial killer who's killing people on both sides of the border. Diane Kruger was previously cast as the female lead, an American detective who's working with Bichir's character. [FX via press release]
... Morris Chestnut is joining Showtime's Nurse Jackie next season. He'll play a new doctor who served in Iraq an Afghanistan in a season-long arc. [Deadline Hollywood]
Follow TV.com writer Tim Surette on Twitter: @TimAtTVDotCom
It takes a special breed of person to produce just ONE hit show, let alone a string of them over several decades. But for obvious reasons, television networks want each new series to be as much of a sure bet as possible. One of the best ways to ensure a hit is to work with producers who've created them in the past. The problem is, too often it seems like mega-producers get TOO MANY shows on the air, perhaps spreading themselves a bit too thin, and, if anything, become just as much of a crapshoot quality-wise as an untested young talent. So we say, take a break, you buncha billionaires! Let's get more untested fresh blood up in our TVs!
So if you were in charge of the universe, which mega-producer would you tell to take a break for a while? Here are at least six people who have no fewer than THREE shows currently airing (or coming up). Make no mistake, all of the people listed below are masters of the industry and respectively brilliant, but perhaps masters should concentrate doing a few things well and not bogarting primetime?
More or less the inspiration for this post just for the sheer number of series he'll be bringing to The CW—a network with only TEN hours a week to program, mind you—Josh Schwartz has in recent years begun to emphasize quantity over quality. Sorry, it just needs to be said. The O.C. was fantastic, Chuck had its charms, and then... well. Then he made more shows. A lot of them. Enough already?
Current Shows: Hart of Dixie (The CW), Gossip Girl (The CW)
Upcoming shows: Cult (The CW), The Carrie Diaries (The CW), Copeland Prep (The CW pilot), Losing Our Cool (Fox pilot)
Who could've predicted that one of the masterminds behind the Britney Spears film Crossroads would become one of the most powerful and prolific writer-producers in TV history? Well, Grey's Anatomy was a deserved hit (at first), but Rhimes' self-plagiarism at ABC started wearing thin a long time ago. Fortunately Scandal has turned into something of a treat, but there's a sizable contingent of viewers who MIIIIGHT have become fatigued by Rhimes' distinctive pretty-girl-sad-times style, you know?
Current Shows: Grey's Anatomy (ABC), Scandal (ABC), Private Practice (ABC)
Upcoming shows: Under the Gun (NBC pilot)
The best thing that can be said about Ryan Murphy is that he doesn't tend to repeat himself and for that reason he's undeniably made the TV landscape a better, more interesting place. But the most damning (and accurate) thing to say about him is that he has a crippling inability to quality-control. Whether it's how dramatically Glee or Nip/Tuck went from must-watch to must-avoid, there's definitely a consistency issue at Ryan Murphy Productions, and constantly generating NEW shows is not the best way mitigate it.
Current Shows: Glee (Fox), The New Normal (NBC), American Horror Story (FX)
Obviously the kinds of shows Jerry Bruckheimer produces aren't the most creatively thrilling ones on television, so nobody's demanding originality here. No, Bruckheimer's shows are mostly mindless, expensive diversions for people who just want to kick back after work. And that's fine! But after a while they've just become interchangeable and the sheer number of them has made TV a worse, more boring place.
Current Shows: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS), CSI: NY (CBS), The Amazing Race (CBS)
Upcoming Shows: Trooper (TNT pilot), Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives (NBC pilot)
Mark Burnett is in the franchise business. He doesn't just produce reality shows, he produces DOZENS OF SEASONS of reality shows. He's good at it (all the people on this list are brilliant businesspeople) but that doesn't mean we deserve the same old thing over and over. Even people who ASK for the same old thing over and over don't actually deserve it. Let's do better.
Current Shows: Survivor (CBS), Shark Tank (ABC), School Spirits (Syfy), Celebrity Apprentice (NBC), The Voice (NBC), Stars Earn Stripes (NBC)
Upcoming Shows: Romancing the Globe (USA pilot), The Bible (History miniseries), The Job (CBS pilot)
I'm guessing Chuck Lorre already owns several castles by now? Sir, please go chill in one of them. We'll be fine.
Current Shows: Two and a Half Men (CBS), The Big Bang Theory (CBS), Mike & Molly (CBS)
Haha, sorry guys! But real-talk: J.J. Abrams is NOT the surefire bet a lot of us may have once considered him to be. Maybe he's just too scattered with his thriving film career, but it's time to accept that the Bad Robot brand is no longer synonymous with quality. Alcatraz? Undercovers? And don't get me started on his newest Event TV dud Revolution. Mr. Abrams, you are cordially invited to take some time off, regroup, and come back only when you have the time to actually make these concepts actually worth our while.
Current Shows: Fringe (Fox), Person of Interest (CBS), Revolution (NBC)
Upcoming Shows: Untitled Robot Cops Project (Fox pilot)
POLL: WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING TV PRODUCERS
SHOULD TAKE A VACATION ALREADY?
Do you smell that? It's the smell of death! And it's coming from your TV set. No, it's not the possum that crawled up in your flatscreen and died, it's the abundance of new, not-so-good-looking television shows that will soon debut on the major networks and then find themselves pushing up headstones as they fail spectacularly. MUAHAHAHAHA!
Which is to say, welcome to the 2nd Annual TV.com Dead Pool, where we all come together to revel in the misery of others. This is an interactive game where you predict which new shows will be canceled first. Are you ready? Let's begin.
Selecting Your Shows– This year, we've made it much easier for you to pick your shows and, more importantly, for me to keep score. Gone are the hand-drawn spreadsheets and abacuses; instead we've built some sweet web-based tools and an automated leaderboard. If you've ever dabbled in creating your own TV.com viewing lineup, you'll be familiar with the layout. And if you have at least two brain cells, you'll probably understand it, too. In the widget below, drag and drop the five shows you think will be canceled first into the blank spots, and then pick a tiebreaker—the show you think will be first to earn a full-season pickup. (For lots more detail on how the game works, see the "Rules" section, below.) The shows are tabbed out by network, so don't forget to click over to see what NBC has to offer because the network is a goldmine for points.
– Once you make your picks, they're automatically saved in the system and good to go. (They're also shareable; we won't be sad if you post them to MySpace and Friendster... or Facebook and Twitter, your call.) If you decide you want to change your picks, simply drag a new show over the one you want to replace and let the magic of the internet handle the rest.
– The shows eligible for the Dead Pool are those that premiere during the major networks' fall premiere season (September through the end of November). No midseason shows are eligible, and no cable shows are eligible.
– Entries will lock after September 30, meaning you can enter (and edit) your lineup up until that date. Because ABC and The CW have several premieres after that date, you'll just have to guess at their chances without seeing a full episode.
The Rules– The competition is open to all registered TV.com users. IMPORTANT: Please make sure the email address affiliated with your TV.com account is up to date so that we may contact you in the event that 1) you win, 2) there's a problem with your entry, or 3) we want to make fun of you for picking The Mindy Project as one of the shows that will be canceled first.
– The concept is simple: Pick five new shows you think will be canceled first, talk some trash to your friends, and get to some hate-watching! We're not as interested in exactly when shows get canceled as we are in how soon they're canceled. Because all the new shows premiere at different times, scoring is based on how many episodes of a series have aired before its demise. The fewer episodes that make it to air, the more points the show is worth. Points for all your shows will be tallied, and the user with the most points wins.
– New shows typically begin with a 13-episode order, so we calculate each show's score by counting backward from 13 according to how many episodes have aired once a show's cancellation is announced. Wait, don't freak out, it's not THAT confusing! Let me give you an example. Let's say NBC's new comedy Six Hot Friends Having Sex in New York gets canceled after airing four episodes. We take 13 (the number of episodes in the initial order) and subtract four for the number of episodes that did air. That means Six Hot Friends Having Sex in New York is worth nine (13 – 4 = 9) points. Another example: If CBS's Doctor Cop Lawyer is canceled after 10 episodes, it's worth three points (13 – 10 = 3). Get it? Of course you do. Points are only awarded once a cancellation is announced.
– Cancellations aren't always made official by networks that are trying to save face, but it's quite obvious when a show is technically canceled, even if a network says it isn't. If a show gets moved to Saturdays at 11pm or is "temporarily removed from the schedule," it's is as good as canceled, and the TV.com edit team will have the final say on what is and what isn't canceled and how many episodes aired. We'll also make final determinations on any other wacky network decisions, such as a show being canceled and then uncanceled. Our decisions are final, because we rule.
– If you choose a show that gets picked up for a full season, that's bad. You'll lose two points for that. For example, let's say Fox's Quirky Girl Is Unlucky in Love becomes a big hit and gets a full-season order at any time during its run. Those who selected it as one of their five shows headed for cancellation will get two points deducted from their score, because this is a Dead Pool, not a Success Pool. With such a large field of participants, entries that choose a show that gets picked up have almost zero chance of winning.
– Because lots of people can tell when a show stinks, there are bound to be ties. We have a tiebreaker for that! After you pick the five shows you think will be canceled, you'll select a sixth show that you think will be the first to earn a full-season pickup (the opposite of what you were predicting with the other five shows). Do not forget to do this! Multiple entrants lost out last year because they didn't pick a tiebreaker or they didn't pay attention to the rules. This pick does not count toward your overall score, it's only used as a tiebreaker.
– There will be prizes! Assorted schwag from the TV.com offices will find its way to the lucky winners. (Note: Unfortunately, authorities with legal power only allow prizes to go to American residents, so foreigners should work on getting that green card now in order to have a chance at winning a Breaking In notebook that TV.com Managing Editor Jen Trolio has half scribbled in. [Ed. note: It's a Game of Thrones "The North Remembers" notebook, thankyouverymuch. But it is half scribbled in.]
Dead Pool HQThis page right here is officially Dead Pool HQ. You'll see the Dead Pool picks widget at the top. It's where we'll eventually post a leaderboard, as well as news and updates.
Tips, Hints, and Strategy– While the general rule of thumb should be "bad shows will get canceled first," that's not always the case. Americans don't always have the best taste. Have you seen the two guys running for president? I mean, come on! Consider a show's potential for mass appeal when picking.
– Don't forget to consider the individual networks! CBS will make its decisions a lot differently than The CW because CBS is loaded with successful shows. CBS will keep a short leash, whereas a CW show can go eight seasons before the network realizes it stinks.
– Don't forget to take note of where new shows fit on the schedule (check out our fall schedule analysis to see what shows will be up against what other shows). Choosing a new series that's up against NCIS is a lot smarter than choosing one that's up against Whitney.
– Don't forget to encourage your friends to play, and once your picks are made click on the Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus icons to share them with the world. There's also an old-school URL to send to your friends that will show them your picks and take them directly to the Dead Pool homepage. The wonders of technology!
– Good luck, and it is MANDATORY that you have fun. If you do not have fun, you will be removed from the contest and shot into space. With Mario Lopez.
Resources– Here's Your 2012 Fall TV Schedule, Day by Day
– Trailers and descriptions for ABC's new shows!
– Trailers and descriptions for CBS's new shows!
– Trailers and descriptions for The CW's new shows!
– Trailers and descriptions for Fox's new shows!
– Trailers and descriptions for NBC's new shows!
– Watch the Pilot for J.J. Abrams' Revolution Online Now
– Watch the Pilot for Ryan Murphy's The Normal Online Now
– Watch the Premieres of the The Mindy Project and Ben and Kate Online Now
– Watch the First Episode of Animal Practice Now
– Watch the First Episode of Matthew Perry's Go On Now
– Finally, for inspiration, watch this clip. If you want to play the game, you better know the rules.