Channel Surfing: "Runway" Suits, Dawson Talks "One Tree Hill," Michael Landes, Ben Silverman, and More

Welcome to your Thursday morning television briefing. I'm now way behind on last night's telly offerings as Wednesday appears to have become overfilled with series but I made a special point to not only watch Pushing Daisies but to watch it live... just in case the numbers actually do matter.

James Van Der Beek speaks about his return to his old Dawson's Creek stomping ground in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he's filming three episodes of the CW's One Tree Hill, where he will play a feature film director who is interested in adapting Lucas' novel into a film. "I thought it was a real fun character," said Van Der Beek about his Tree character. "I'm excited to work with my friends and to play a little bit." (Associated Press)

One reason to celebrate: Pushing Daisies beat out NBC's Knight Rider in the key adults 18-49 demo for the very first time last night. Huzzah! (Futon Critic)

Lifetime has filed a countersuit in a Manhattan federal court against Bravo, NBC Universal, and The Weinstein Co. as the legal battle over rights to Project Runway continue to intensify. The cabler claims that its rights to air Project Runway are in fact protected under federal copyright laws that should "upersede any decisions made in state court with regard to the suit filed by Bravo parent NBC U against the Weinstein Co." But by going that route, it puts the onus squarely on Lifetime as they will have to defend in court why they are suing the producer of their acquired series. Looks like Runway fans are going to have to wait quite some time before they get to see the next season, if the clothes are even still in fashion by the time it airs. (Variety)

Is Ben Silverman behind the anonymous Page Six comments made recently about Universal Media Studio topper Katherine Pope? The Daily Beast's Kim Masters seems to think so, in yet another article that details Silverman's excessive, partying ways. (Ahem, tigers in the bathtub.) (The Daily Beast)

Former Love Soup star Michael Landes has signed a one-year talent holding deal with 20th Century Fox TV, under which he will star in a series project developed for him by the studio or will be cast in an already existing pilot. Landes most recently starred in 20th's legal dramedy pilot Courtroom K and was a co-star on FOX's short-lived romantic dramedy The Wedding Bells last year. (Hollywood Reporter)

Eddie Izzard is trying to get a feature film version of his canceled FX series The Riches off the ground. "We've had the meeting and the writers are going to go off and slam out a story," said Izzard. "We're going to raise money like Barack Obama through the internet and we're going to shoot it guerilla-style." (BBC)

Flight of the Conchords returns to HBO on January 18th. (Televisionary)

Ethan Peck, Lindsey Shaw, Meaghan Jette Martin, Kyle Kaplan, and Nicholas Braun have been cast in ABC Family comedy pilot 10 Things I Hate About You, a series adaptation of the 1999 feature film that was itself inspired by William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew." (Hollywood Reporter)

A&E is launching original drama series The Beast, starring Patrick Swayze and Travis Fimmel, on January 15th at 10 pm ET/PT.

Discovery has handed out a series order to The Detonators, a 13-episode reality series that will look behind the scenes at demolition crews around the world. Hosted by explosives experts Braden Lusk and Paul Worsey, the RDF-produced series will feature the duo meeting "the blasters behind such structures as urban skyscrapers, massive steel bridges and giant stadiums and give viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the demolitions." (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

Channel Surfing: FX Cancels "The Riches," "Pushing Daisies," Ratings Dim for "Friday Night Lights," "Ashes to Ashes," and More

Welcome to your Wednesday morning television briefing. While everyone is buzzing about last night's presidential debate, there are more than a few television-related news tidbits to discuss as well.

Following several months of discussions, FX has confirmed that it will not be renewing drama series The Riches for a third season, due to falling ratings for the drama. In its second season, which was shortened to seven episodes due to the writers strike, viewers dropped 44 percent in the key 18-49 demo. The move is hardly a surprise: showrunner Dmitry Lipkin is currently working on his HBO pilot project Hung and I had assumed for a while now that The Riches would sadly not be returning to the cabler. (Variety)

TV Guide talks to Pushing Daisies star Lee Pace about what to expect for Season Two, a certain game of "slap jack" between Ned and Chuck that never made it to the screen, and the Pie Maker's family. (TV Guide)

Sadly, there might not have been a new episode of Fringe last night but you can still get some hints about The Pattern and what's going on with Walter, Olivia, and Peter in this handy video from Fringe's executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Jeff Pinkner, and Roberto Orci. (FOX)

Only 400,000 viewers tuned in to watch the third season opener of Friday Night Lights, which debuted on DirecTV's The 101; series will run exclusively on the satellite provider for four months before launching its third season on NBC in February. Granted, DirecTV only counts 17.1 million subscribers overall but that's still extremely low, as Friday Night Lights only ranked in 7th place among all basic cable programs available to its subscribers. (New York Times)

Writer/executive producer David E. Kelley and Warner Bros. are shopping a spec script for a new one-hour legal drama. CBS and NBC said to be extremely interesting in picking up the project, which is expected to land a significant commitment. (Hollywood Reporter)

Fire up the Quattro. Filming has begun on Season Two of BBC One's Life on Mars spinoff sequel Ashes to Ashes, which stars Keeley Hawes, Philip Glenister, Dean Andrews, Marshall Lancaster, and Montserrat Lombard. In the second season, Alex (Hawes) will discover that she may not be the only one in 1982 in her, uh, predicament. (BBC)

TBS has renewed comedy My Boys for a third season, with nine episodes set to air in early 2009. (Variety)

HBO has cast Bryan Greenberg (October Road) and Victor Rasuk (Stop-Loss) as the leads of its single-camera comedy pilot How to Make It in America, from writer Ian Edelman and executive producers Stephen Levinson and Mark Wahlberg. Project revolves around two twenty-something NYC hustlers who are determined to grab a slice of the American dream. Julian Farino (The Office) will direct the pilot. (Hollywood Reporter)

Jack Kenny (Book of Daniel) has joined the staff of Sci Fi's upcoming drama series Warehouse 13 as showrunner/executive producer, a move that reunites Kenny with his former Book of Daniel colleague David Simkins. Warehouse 13, which stars Eddie McClintock, Joanne Kelly, and Saul Rubinek, is set to launch in July 2009. (Hollywood Reporter)

Stay tuned.

An Embarrassment of Riches: Season Finale of "The Riches"

While the expression "an embarrassment of riches" might refer to having more of something good or pleasant than you need, that was just the opposite this year with the severely truncated season of The Riches, which wrapped its second season last night on FX.

Originally ordered for thirteen episodes this season, The Riches found itself downscaled to just seven when production was shut down during the writers strike. Personally, I am a huge fan of this series and hope that the shortened season doesn't bode against renewing this compelling, subtle drama for a third season. (Not helping matters is that creator Dmitry Lipkin has sold a pilot script for Hung to HBO.) Especially since last night's unintentional season finale ("The Lying King") left nearly every characters' plotlines hopelessly dangling in the wind.

While some viewers have found this season to be creatively uneven, I've been really intrigued by the second season of The Riches, which placed the characters in far more dire straits than in the freshman season and put them in morally compromising, soul-killing situations that pushed them to their breaking points.

It's never been in question that the name of their little adopted community, Eden Falls, was anything other than intentional. Here, it signifies the ultimate purgatory as each of the characters--from Wayne and Dahlia to poor Nina--are forced to relive their sins in a neverending and perpetual cycle of self-destruction. Try as they might to become buffers, to give themselves new names and iPhones, they can't escape their pasts. Wayne claims that everyone creates their own luck but they same holds true with bad luck and the Molloys seem to have found themselves surrounded by a big old mess of bad karma.

I was really on the edge of my seat as Dahlia contemplated returning to drug abuse and obliterating herself; when she wrapped that belt around her arm, I worried that she was totally and completely relapse. After all, she's been stripped of her armor completely now: her parole officer turned his back on her (more on that in a bit), Wayne was revealed as a liar and accomplice to murder, Cael ran away, and Nina abandoned her. Dahlia is a consummate liar but she's finally realized that she's been lying to herself... even if her confession to Nina resulted in a complete lack of belief on her friend's part.

I literally gasped when Nina asked her about what happened to Pete. I get that Dahlia wouldn't want to involve Nina in the entire Pete murder/cover-up but she did to Nina just what she's angry at Wayne for doing to her. For proving once again that the best thing a Traveler is good at is lying. Still, I couldn't believe that her married parole officer kissed her after he discovered Dahlia skulking outside his house... with his wife and kid just a few feet away. I could tell from the way he looked at her and fingered his wedding ring that he was attracted to Dahlia but I had no idea that he would actually act on this and cross that boundary. For Dahlia's part, at least she put a stop to it. In a lot of ways, this was Minnie Driver's episode and I was completely transfixed by her vulnerability and raw emotion as she portrayed Dahlia as a woman beset by demons, both internal and external.

As for Wayne, he's finding himself playing both sides against each other. He's made a deal with the devil by turning to Minkov to defend the Bayou Hills construction site from Quinn's men. He's obviously conflicted about this decision--with it comes the promise that he'll throw Hugh under the bus--but it seemed the most expedient way to ensure that he can collect his $13 million from the land deal. Likely he thinks the Molloys can just disappear into the night after that, but Minkov is far too cunning to let that happen. Wayne is playing with fire; he has Dale, Quinn, Minkov, and Hugh looking over his shoulder and none of them are going to let him off the hook for what's liable to happen next.

I loved the scene between Wayne and Nina in the kitchen as Nina lights up (much to Dr. Morgenstern's delight) and asks him, as he tries calling Dahlia for the nth time, if he's looking for Dahlia Molloy or Sherien Rich. Have they started living the lie? To me, this episode included some of the very best Nina-driven scenes of the series and actress Margo Martindale deserves an Emmy for her performance. Her distraught tantrum at Jim's funeral, her disbelief at Dahlia stringing her yet another lie, her confrontation with Wayne at the house; these all add up to a nuanced performance of a woman fed up with being lied to her whole life.

I was intrigued about where the writers were going with Sam and his new friend from school; she clearly accepts him for who he is and is going to great lengths to get him to express his true identity as a cross-dresser. I loved the scene in his bedroom where she dresses him up in girl's clothing and tells him how beautiful he looks. I am not sure where this will go but it was a fantastic coda to Sam's entire relationship with his conflicted nature.

Cael has begun to fit in among the Travelers again, helped along by his newfound relationship with Rosaleen. I loved the scene in which Quinn asked him to come with him to break up that fight and then stood beside Cael and offered a toast to the reunion of the clan, to a Quinn standing next to a Molloy... and then later called Wayne to say that they'd now be business partners and, if Wayne didn't like it, well, Quinn has his son.

As for Didi, it's only fitting that she'd suddenly be interested in how the other half was living, in skulking around the huge buffer mansions that pepper Eden Falls with her new security guard friend Ike (Joan of Arcadia's Michael Welch). Her affair with Ike and her breaking and entering routine are a surefire act of rebellion against everything Wayne has come to stand for. Of all of the Molloys, she did seem the most at home as a buffer, attending school and wanting more from life than just con and con. Lying in the palatial, imperial bed of her latest B&E victim's house, she can pretend for just a few minutes that this is her life and not the screwed up mess it's become now that she's seen her father for what he really is: the king of liars.

I really hope that FX does decide to renew The Riches for a third season. I for one am not done with the Molloys and hope that fans of the series have the opportunity to see these storylines pay off in a meaningful fashion rather than just have the series end on a slew of mini-cliffhangers that never get resolved. Fingers crossed that the cabler sees it the same way and rewards the cast and crew of The Riches with a reprieve.

Talk Back: FX's "The Riches"

Oh, Malloys, how I have missed you.

I raced home last night after Chuck's Paley Festival panel to catch the second season premiere of FX's pitch black dramedy series, The Riches ("The Last Temptation of Wayne"), last night. When we last saw the Malloys--who had assumed the identity of the dead Riches--they were about to flee Eden Falls after being discovered by so honest-you-want-him-dead Pete and dangerous-as-fox-on-acid Dale, who wasn't about to let them escape from their fate.

Eeek!

The second season finds them trying to escape their precarious situation by running into the night. Dahlia quickly packs up the kids and Cherien's senile mother as they hit the road--joined by jilted neighbor Nina who wants to leave behind her life of suffering for adventure on the open road--and Wayne stays behind to deal with Pete... who winds up bludgeoned to death in the back of Wayne's car, courtesy of sociopath Dale.

I was a little confused as to whether Dale intended to murder Pete or if he truly did "hit him too hard" with that hammer. Either way, he clearly meant to stuff the body into the trunk of Wayne's car and possibly (A) frame him for the murder or (B) blackmail him after framing him. Whatever the explanation, I think that Todd Stashwick's Dale is absolutely insane and his off-kilter perspective (and willingness to do anything to get his revenge on Wayne and steal a piece of his American dream) makes it impossible to take your eyes off of him. Good thing too, as he'd most likely hit you over the head with the hammer if you did.

These Travelers really can't catch a break. Dahlia's car breaks down, stranding her and the kids; Cherien's mother gets drunk and has to end up in the hospital, after Dahlia is accused of elder abuse; Wayne runs over a drunk Hugh as he tries to flee Dale and has to contend with an officious Eden Falls security guard; Cael manages to steal them a new car and they're taken hostage by the truck's owner.

And while these series of unfortunate events feel a little over the top, unbelievable, and ever-so-slightly manufactured, you can't help but root for the Malloys... or the Riches... or whoever they claim to be this week. And that, in a sentence, is why The Riches is a slam-dunk of a television series.

Panko People: FX Reunites with "The Riches"

While there might only be seven episodes this season (cut back from a typical thirteen), fans of FX's darkly comic drama The Riches have one reason to celebrate: it's coming back on the air.

Cabler FX will launch the second season of The Riches, which stars Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver as members of a family of Irish Traveler conmen who assumed the identities of a dead family, on Tuesday, March 18th.

Season Two will pick up when the freshman season ended with the Malloys attempting to escape their past lives and fit into so-called normal society. The sophomore season's seven episodes are expected to run consecutively without any repeats or pre-emptions.

Series, which also stars Noel Fisher, Shannon Woodward, Aidan Mitchell, Margo Martindale, Gregg Henry, Todd Stashwick, and Jared Harris, comes from creator Dmitry Lipkin, FX Prods, and Fox TV Studios.

Personally, I can't wait for the return of The Riches, which grew on me more and more during the course of its first-season run and, while I wish we were getting all thirteen promised installments this year, I'll take whatever scripted series I can right now.

"The Riches" Reduced; "Dirt" Too

FX has scaled back the episode orders for two sophomore dramas set to launch in the next few months.

Both Dirt and The Riches, whose production was impacted by the writers strike, have had the episodic order for their second seasons reduced to seven episodes apiece, following FX's decision not to produce any more installments of their series after the strike has ended.

Both productions ran out of scripts during December and will have to wrap their sophomore seasons without any resolution to their current storylines.

The basis for FX's decision to cut back their Season Two orders is said to be pure economics and will not impact either series' shot at getting a third season order. But let's be realistic here. Neither series was a smash hit in the ratings their freshman year (though I do love The Riches and miss it terribly), so the creators of both series were left with quite a lot to prove to the network suits and the critics.

Dirt's second season is scheduled to launch on March 2nd. (Those animated promos that FX is running seem more interesting than the series itself.) As for The Riches, the cabler is expected to make an announcement about an airdate sometime next week.

Stay tuned.

Who's Crazier: Dale or Alby?

While watching this week's episode of FX's The Riches, in which the Molloy clan returns to the Traverlers camp to attend the funeral of the murdered Earl (and nearly attends the wedding of DiDi to Ken Dannigan), I couldn't help but reminded of the commune on HBO's Big Love (which thankfully returns to the airwaves after way too long on June 17th).

The two series are definitely distinct in their own ways, but they do share some similarities in the familiar theme of outsider families pretending to be something they're not, in suburbia, no less. While the series' leads couldn't be more different from one another (I don't, for example see Dahlia and Boss Lady knocking back drinks together), it's impossible not to compare the two series' most insane characters.

Yes, I'm talking about examining the crazies: Big Love's Alby (Matt Ross) and The Riches' Dale (Todd Stashwick).

Name: Alby (Big Love)
Occupation: Commune enforcer
Likes: Knives, sandwiches, holy missions
Dislikes: Bill Henrickson, anti-freeze, hospital stays
Antisocial Traits: Terrorizing little girls, strangling Ben Henrickson, breaking and entering Home Plus
Deviant Behavior: Alby takes a male hustler he picked up outside a grocery store back to his motel room, makes a sandwich, then bangs his own head against the wall after forcing the guy to leave.
Crazy-O-Meter: 10

Name: Dale (The Riches)
Occupation: Acting Patriarch of the Travelers
Likes: Tacky neon beer signs, pens with ink, Dahlia Malloy, small, unmarked bills.
Dislikes: Wayne Molloy, getting passed over for leadership opportunities, yellow Mercedes and the people who drive them
Antisocial Traits: Pushing pregnant women, beating up the mentally disabled, reneging on sworn oaths of protection
Deviant Behavior: After learning that Earl had selected Wayne as his successor, Dale takes his paralyzed father out into the woods, says he'll carry him forever in his heart, and leaves him to die from exposure.
Crazy-O-Meter: 9

Conclusion: they're both pretty damn insane, but I do have to give Alby the slight edge in craziness over Dale as the root of his insanity is still somewhat under wraps, while Dale appears to be a sociopath with a fixation on Dahlia and some daddy issues.

Who do you think is the more certifiably insane of the two? And which one should be locked up post haste?

Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves: FX's "The Riches" Explores Suburbia's Oddest Family

Teehee. I may have found my new Monday night TV fixation, a night which I've found to be sorely lacking lately with any dramatic tension (don't even get me started on last night's lackluster episode of 24).

Looking for something different and a little dark? FX has got that in spades with its new drama, The Riches. The second episode of the series, which aired last night, put to right some of the problems of tone that the pilot episode had; instead of being darkly humorous or painfully bleak, it was all over the place. But that, boys and girls, is what happens when you smush two different pilots (from two different directors) into one single episode.

Quick recap: the Malloy family are Travellers, gypsies and con artists extraordinaire. When Dahlia Molloy is released from prison (the sight of Minnie Driver in cornrows is hilarious), the family takes off with some stolen cash from the Travellers and is forced to hide out in suburbia after they inadvertently kill a married couple, the Riches. With nowhere to go, they steal their identities and move into their new home inside an exclusive gated community.

Last night's episode ("Believe the Lie") found its footing instantly, giving us some sharp suburban angst, laugh out loud moments (I'm thinking here of the arm incident), and some genuine emotion. It also served to better place the "Riches" in their new atmosphere and underpinned the fact that, for most of them, they are completely out of place.

Dahlia freaks out about their rusty old RV getting towed, buries the stolen money in the ground, and tries to con her boozy neighbor Nina into giving her some more of those little pills, all while taking copious swigs of cough medicine straight out of the bottle. Meanwhile, Wayne decides that he's going to give his family the life he feels the deserve, by becoming Doug Rich, securities litigator. Whatever that means. To that end, he goes on a job interview that Doug had scheduled with a law firm but ends up accepting a job with the shady (not to mention certifiably insane) Hugh Panetta (Gilmore Girls' Gregg Henry), a man prone to shooting pictures of loved ones, neighbors, and Rush Limbaugh in order to lower his blood pressure.

The cast is superb: Eddie Izzard as visionary pater familias Wayne is tremendously charismatic to watch; it really does seem as if this guy does believe the lies he spins and it becomes impossible to take your eyes off of him. Minnie Driver turns in a deliciously OTT performance as Dahlia, but she's instantly made human because of her many, many foibles (ahem, meth addiction). As their kids, Shannon Marie Woodward, Noel Fisher, and Aidan Mitchell are perfectly cast. Each one of them brings something different to the table: Woodward's Di Di is tough as nails but there's an underlying vulnerability there as if she might just snap and deck her mother; Fisher's Cael is a tech-loving teenager whose calls to his girlfriend back home might just be their undoing; Mitchell's Sam is an adorably soft spoken gender-confused kid who will have to choose which sex he is very, very soon if they're going to blend in.

All in all, The Riches is the perfect way to start the week, offering its audience a dark, hysterical, and refreshing look at just what makes suburbia tick, from the point of view of the ultimate outsiders. And, if the second episode is any indication, this season is going to be a taut, scintillating, and dangerous ride. Just be sure to buckle your seatbelts in that there RV.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: NCIS (CBS); Dateline (NBC); Gilmore Girls (CW); America's Funniest Home Videos (ABC); American Idol (FOX; 8-10 pm)

9 pm: The Unit (CBS); Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC); Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search of the Next Doll (CW); Primetime (ABC)

10 pm: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS); Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC); Boston Legal (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8-10 pm: American Idol.

Tonight, the eleven remaining contestants compete against one another in a vicious cage fight to the death. Or, er, sing hit songs from the 1960s British pop invasion. And a special treat for Absolutely Fabulous fans: Lulu!

8 pm: Gilmore Girls.

I've given up on this once-great drama, but for the few of you out there still watching, here's what's going on. On tonight's repeat episode ("French Twist"), Christopher and Lorelai take GiGi to Paris to visit her mother and, gee, I wonder what happens there, while Rory's tenure as editor-in-chief of the Yale newspaper ends, leaving her floundering. Le sigh.