Channel Surfing: Team Darlton Talk "Lost" Series Finale, Pasdar Says Quinto Not Going Anywhere, Shenkman Joins Cast of "Burn Notice," and More

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing.

With the 100th episode of Lost set to air tonight on ABC, many are already looking to the series' next milestone: the all-important series finale, set for May, 2010, and viewers are bound to have high expectations when creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse wrap up the series. "We can't let those expectations terrify us," said Lindelof in an interview with Variety's Shawn Malcom. "The reality is, we've known what the series finale is going to be for a while now." In fact, the real variable is how the series' characters wind up at the end point charted by Lindelof and Cuse. "The path that we take to the end still has some room for surprises and changes and discoveries along the way (in terms of) the characters' journeys and how their relationships evolve," said Cuse. While the duo wouldn't reveal any specifics about the finale, they did say that fans will be left wanting more. "When we say more, we don't mean answers," said Lindelof, "because hopefully, the show will wrap up in an incredibly satisfying way, both mythologically and emotionally." (Variety)

Wondering if Zachary Quinto will be sticking around NBC's Heroes next season? "Zach [Quinto]'s not done. There's Nathan, there's Sylar, and there's the point of view that you have to factor in. If I look up into the mirror, who would I see?" said Heroes' Adrian Pasdar, who teased an epic battle between Nathan and Sylar in Season Four of the series. "Who's going to be able to control the actions of the body? Like one of those computers that self-teaches, the longer he stays in my body and the longer he assimilates my physical structure and DNA, the more control I get. So it becomes a battle of who's in charge." (TVGuide.com)

Ben Shenkman (Grey's Anatomy) has been cast in at least four episodes of Season Three of USA's Burn Notice. Shenkman will play Tom Strickler, a "smooth-talking, gregarious freelance spy broker who offers to cancel Michael's (Jeffrey Donovan) burn notice in exchange for an unspecified -- and potentially lethal -- job." Look for Shenkman to first turn up about halfway through the season. (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Sasha Roiz (Unthinkable), who played the brother of Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) in the backdoor pilot for Sci Fi's Caprica as a guest star, has been upgraded to series regular on the series. Elsewhere, Callard Harris (Roommates) has joined the cast of FX's Sons of Anarchy, where he will play an Irish gun trafficker in the second season of the drama series. (Hollywood Reporter)

Former General Hospital actor and "Jesse's Girl" singer Rick Springfield will play himself in four episodes of the upcoming third season of Showtime's Calfornication. Springfield was cast on the series after producers posted a casting call looking for "an actor who experienced huge fame in the 80's to play themselves as a now down-on his-luck-ex-celebrity waiting tables to get by." (Entertainment Weekly's Ausiello Files)

Looking for more Lost goodies on the day of the 100th episode? Variety takes you behind the scenes of the writers' room in Burbank, far away from the lush jungles of the series' set in Oahu, Hawaii. The Hollywood Reporter offers a look back at journey of Lost over the last 100 episodes, offering a timeline of the series's real-life history and discussing making the original pilot. ("The fact that no one believed 'Lost' was going to be successful in the beginning was enormously liberating," Cuse says. "So we set out to make 12 episodes of what we thought was the coolest TV show we could come up with and in so doing we violated a lot of the traditional rules of television narrative. We had characters who were murderers and had done very bad things. We had incredibly complex serialized storytelling. We had lots of intentional ambiguity, leaving the audience lots of room for interpretation and those things that sort of violated the rules of television were the very things that the audience ended up responding to.") Variety also talks to script coordinator Gregg Nations, who maintains the series' gargantuan bible.

Stargate Universe co-creator Robert C. Cooper has confirmed that the upcoming Sci Fi series is influenced by Joss Whedon's short-lived FOX drama Firefly. "The concept is that we wanted to shoot this a little bit like a documentary crew would shoot a ride-along to a space ship out in the universe - that maybe we could get audiences to embrace the science fiction elements and the characters in a realistic way if we shot the show using the 'language' of documentary and reality," Cooper told crowds gathered at this weekend's Stargate convention. "It's not intended to be style for style's sake, or to emulate any other show. Although, to be honest with you, one of the shows we love that we did look at and say, 'That's a style we would love to try and approach' is Firefly. That's how Firefly was shot. There's a lot of handheld stuff. Cameras were placed in places that were non-traditional or [not] typical of filmmaking." (Gateworld)

MTV will be continuing docusoap The Hills without Lauren Conrad. The cabler ordered a ninth season of the reality hit, which will air new episodes this fall. While Conrad is departing the series, fans can expect to see more of Heidi, Audrina, Spencer, Brody, Stephanie, Lo, and Justin Bobby this fall. MTV also announced a slew of new series including The Alexa Chung Show, The Buried Life, DJ and the Fro, The Stylist, Ultimate Parkour Challenge, Pranked, Popzilla, Gone Too Far, and Disaster Date. (via press release)

NBC has given a seven-episode series order to Steve Schirripa-hosted reality series Face the Ace, in which contestants--who are found via an online search--battle it out against poker players in Las Vegas. Series, from Poker Prods., will launch on August 1st at 9 pm and, after two airings, will then run during Saturday afternoons in September. (Variety)

Eighteen years after seminal drama series thirtysomething went off the air, fans will finally get to purchase the DVD of the first season of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick's series. Season One will be available for purchase on August 25th, with a new DVD volume planned for the series every six months after that. The delay was once again caused by expensive music clearances but Garson Foos, president of Shout! Factory, now says, "It doesn't look like we'll be cutting any music from the show." (Los Angeles Times)

RDF USA has hired former E! staffer Jennifer Danska as SVP of development and current, named former Painless Prods. exec Kevin Shinnick as VP of production, promoted Andy Lennon to CFO, and promoted Miranda Wang to VP of business and legal affairs. (Variety)

Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine Group has purchased Nordic production company Metronome Film & Television AB for approximately $88 million. "It has always been my intention to expand the existing Shine Group companies with the finest creative and entrepreneurial minds from the key markets we have identified, and each Metronome company more than meets this criteria," said Murdoch. "Their addition gives us an unrivalled presence in a market with a well-earned reputation as the birthplace of so many successful international formats." (Variety)

Stay tuned.