Well, as I mentioned a few posts ago, I wasn’t around for any of The CW’s panels after their “90210″ presentation…which, as it happens, was their very first panel. Fortunately, however, the beauty of being a member of the TCA is that I can still provide you with highlights from the panels I missed. God bless transcripts, that’s what I say…

Even before we offer up the “90210″ coverage, however, let’s take a gander the info that emerged from the executive session hosted by the President of Entertainment at The CW, Ms. Dawn Ostroff.

* Like last year, The CW brought us details of a new reality show. This time, however, it’s not as underwhelming a pitch as “Crowned” or “Farmer Wants A Wife.” Not that I didn’t end up watching those shows, but “13 – Fear is Real” is one that I actually want to watch, since it’s executive-produced by Sam Raimi and Jay Bienstock. “The best way to describe this show is ‘The Blair Witch Project’ as a reality show,” said Ostroff. “It’s a competition show, but there’s certainly a lot of tension, a lot of fear, and it’s different. There’s an environment that they created in the bayou of Louisiana where, of course, they know it’s a reality show, but the intensity of the situation that they’re living in and the kinds of challenges that they’re faced with really feel real to them while they’re in it. This is hot off of the editing bay…this week, as a matter of fact…and it was shocking to see how invested these contestants were. I mean, they really felt the horror.”

* There wasn’t much “Reaper” news, unfortunately, except that it definitely has a place on the schedule in mid-season. “It’s a great show for us to have in our arsenal,” said Ostroff. “It’s a show that we believe in, which is why we picked it up.” Yeah, but let’s call a spade a spade: they only believed in it enough to pick it up as a mid-season replacement, not for a full season. We can only hope that, come mid-season, the show’s fanbase has built up enough steam to keep it rolling for a third year.

* There is currently no plan for another season of “Beauty and the Geek.” There is also no formal word of cancellation, however.

* And I’ve saved this bit for last because, frankly, I don’t want to believe it, but…ugh…Ostroff claims to have been happy with the time-jump on “One Tree Hill.” “Our expectations were we would do something different that felt, certainly, in line with the show, because the actors had gotten older,” Ostroff said, “and they were excited about the idea of playing characters closer to their real age. We know that when characters often go into college years on a show, it’s sort of hard to keep them together, and the storylines aren’t quite as relatable, so the idea of jumping the show four years forward, having the characters outside of college, in the working world, being young adults, just felt like the time was right. We knew we would have interesting storylines for each of the characters, and Mark Schwahn is just a really good writer. He took all of these characters and put them into young adulthood, created new arcs, new situations, and the show had a renaissance. I mean, it was a great idea, and it really did pay off for us.”

Pft. The results still felt trite to me, and I’m not backing down on this.

Okay, now we move on to…

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It’s rather gratifying to see Showtime continue to grow into its own as a premium cable network that can compete with HBO. For so long, they were hovering just a shade higher than Cinemax in the eyes of viewers (I don’t know about anyone else, but I distinctly remember seeing many a bare breast on the network back in the day), but now they’ve got a reputation for having at least as much quality original programming as the folks over at Home Box Office, and their popularity is such that the network earned their own executive session.

Matthew Blank offered us a heartfelt introduction, along with the announcement that “Inside the NFL” will be coming to Showtime next season, then promptly passed the buck to Robert Greenblatt, the network’s President of Entertainment, who provided us with several other revelations about upcoming programming:

* Coming soon: “The United States of Tara,” which stars Toni Collette and John Corbett, is executive-produced and based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, and is written by Diablo Cody.

* There are very serious discussions about an “L-Word” spin-off, though it seems to exist predominantly on paper at this stage of the game. “Eileen Chaiken is creating that for us,” said Greenblatt. “We’re going to be shooting it right after ‘The L Word’ wraps this year, and it will star one of the girls from ‘The L Word’ as a sort of crossover. The storyline at the end of ‘The L Word,’ the final episode in the final season, there will be an open-ended component to it. And Eileen is going to carry that story along on the Internet, which we think is an interesting way to keep ‘The L Word’ experience going. Then if we decide to go ahead with the spin-off that storyline will segue into the new series.” He would not, however, commit to which girl was intended as the star of the spin-off, mostly because the actress hasn’t even been told that she’s under consideration yet!

* Another season of “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!” has been ordered, and with this 7th season, it will officially become the longest-running series in the history of Showtime.

* There will be a new reality documentary series called “Locked and Loaded,” which is not about Denis Leary but, rather, about a gun store in rural Colorado. Greenblatt described the series as “sort of a fly-on-the-wall show. You see many, many different kinds of people coming into a gun store, and you see the reasons why they buy handguns and rifles and all kinds of other things.”

* Based on the creative success (but, ultimately, due in no small part to the ratings success) of “Weeds,” the network has ordered two more 13-episode seasons of the show.

* After much discussion on the ‘net about the possibility, Greenblatt confirmed that the Edie Falco pilot, currently known as “Nurse Jackie” (a title which may or may not stick), has been ordered to series. She plays what Greenblatt describes as “a very complicated nurse in a New York City hospital,” and based on the clips we saw, by “very complicated,” he means she’s a drug addict. And, yes, someone else did bring up the similarity to “House,” but Greenblatt assured us that “it’s not going to be big medical story of the week necessarily. I think it’s a different take on a medical show that’s grounded by a really iconic, caustic character played by a great actress.”

* Even though they’re limited by history, Greenblatt thinks that there’s at least another two years of plot possibilities left in “The Tudors.” “The third season is the next two (wives of Henry VIII), Anne of Cleves and Jane Seymour…I love meeting people who think Jane Seymour, the actress, is in the show…and then the following season, I think, will be the final two wives,” he theorized.

* The future of “This American Life” is murky. “Ira (Glass) is not only the most dedicated person in the world, he’s a perfectionist and he doesn’t want to put any episode out that isn’t really extraordinary,” said Greenblatt. “And I will tell you that’s not true of all producers. He’s also doing a radio show, and he will not let anything affect the quality of the radio show. And the same people are doing the radio show and the TV show. So every year, we step back and have a conversation with him. ‘Can we do ten? Can we do eight? Can we do six?’ There may be a year where we do a couple of long-form specials with him and we don’t do episodes of the show, per se, because it’s really hard to find those stories. They don’t just fall into his lap.” To put a fine point on it, a third season has not officially been ordered, but per Greenblatt, “We’re talking to (Ira) about how many he wants to do and what form it might take.”

* Showtime is currently planning to air the three seasons of “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” – one’s already aired in the UK, Season 2 premieres there in September, and the third has been commissioned but hasn’t yet begun filming – and reserves the right to consider airing any future seasons, should there be any. “But,” added Greenblatt, “it looks like a
franchise that there’s a lot of interest in.”

Okay, that’s that. Now, we move onto a panel described as “Showtime’s SHO Stoppers,” which featured the stars and producers of the network’s four signature series: Weeds (Mary-Louise Parker and Jenji Kohan), Californication (David Duchovny and Tom Kapinos), Dexter (Michael C. Hall and Clyde Phillips), and Brotherhood (Jason Clarke and Blake Masters).

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You may have noticed that my postings have slowed down. You might not have cared, but you’ve probably at least noticed, if only because you haven’t gotten four or five Diggs from me every day. Well, there are two reasons for that: the first is that we’re dealing with days with one broadcast network as opposed to five or six different cable networks, and the second is that my wife joined me on Friday, and given that I hadn’t seen her since July 7th, I wanted to focus more on her than my work for a change.

C’mon, I earned a break! And it’s not like I wasn’t still attending all of these panels for you…well, except for the majority of The CW’s panels. I must admit that, after the “90210″ presentation, we hit the road and went to Universal Studios…and, yet, even then I was working, so be sure to stay tuned for my coverage of the new ‘Simpsons’ ride, which was awesome.

But, okay, enough of my apologies. Let’s continue with CBS’s presentations, shall we?

The Mentalist: I’d like to take this moment to give a shout-out to my mother-in-law, who was interested in this series before it was even on my radar. When I told her I had started to get my usual flurry of advance screeners in preparation for the TCA tour, the first question she asked was, “Hey, have you gotten one for that show ‘The Mentalist’ yet?” In fact, I had just gotten one that day…and when I told her, she all but flipped out. “We need to watch that when I come over for dinner on Friday!” she informed me. She kept trying to tell us about the shows that the series’ star had been in, except that she was blanking on both his name and his other shows, but a quick trip to IMDb.com solved both problems, at which point she gave a look of disdain when I admitted that I’d never actually seen an episode of Simon Baker’s previous series, “The Guardian.”

Finally, as we began to screen the pilot, the truth came out: she thinks he’s hot.

I can’t speak to the man’s inherent hotness because I don’t want “The Mentalist” to fall victim to what is henceforth to be referred to as “The ‘Moonlight’ Effect.” I really, really dug what I saw, possibly because it reminds me of what “Psych” could be if James Roday didn’t grate on my nerves. It’s a drama about a guy named Patrick Jane (Baker) who has honed his observational skills to a degree where he was able to make a living as a TV psychic, but he’s since given that up and become a detective. He’s got a major ego, but it’s warranted, given how good he is at what he does. Still, it’s been known to backfire on occasion; he has a dark history which is hinted at during the course of the pilot and will be explored during the course of the series.

Baker admitted that he got particular enjoyment out of playing the flashback scenes to his character’s early days. “That was a lot of fun,” he said, “because you’re playing an actor and you get to actually comment on the shallowness of acting. You’re commenting on yourself, so it’s sort of self-deprecating in a sense. I love that the character is a fraud and is aware of his fraudulent nature.”

Baker did not, however, have an opportunity to do much research for on playing a TV psychic, given the speed at which things happened with his casting and the pilot’s subsequent filming. “I was flown in from Australia, met with Bruno (Heller, producer) the day I arrived,” said Baker, “and a day and a half later, we were shooting, basically. So Bruno said, ‘Have a look at a few different people on YouTube,’ and I had a look at stuff. Next thing, I had my whole family around me, we’re all going, ‘Oh, my God, how did he do that? How did he do that?’ And then on YouTube, there’s also people posting other clips where they debunk, explaining how these tricks are working through NLP, neurolinguistic programming.It’s just tip-of-the-surface of the knowledge that these people have, so I didn’t ask anything. We had a consultant from the Magic Castle, who was more of a sleight-of-hand guy, but he had a few different hypnotizing tricks and stuff like that. And Bruno furnished me with a bunch of literature, holiday reading. It’s very heady stuff. What these guys get into and the skills that they have and then the capacity to remember things and move forward is…it’s too much for me. I’m pretending totally 100 percent to be a mentalist.”

To bring things full circle, let us note that Heller is aware of the similarities to “Psych,” but he’s not worried about critics making snarky comments. “Patrick Jane isn’t pretending to be a psychic,” explained Heller. “He was someone who worked as a psychic but now is very honest and direct about not having those powers, so there’s no pretense. They’re two quite different shows. You can always draw parallels with other shows, but this is much more like Sherlock Holmes than (‘Psych’).”

I second that emotion.

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Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you can’t deny that CBS has been talked about quite a lot in the last couple of years. First, “Jericho” got the network lots of press as a result of their decision to resurrect the show for a second season because of fan demand, then it got them even more when they canceled the show for good after it failed to win the appropriate ratings. In recent weeks, they’ve been dealing with bitter vampire fans who can’t believe that “Moonlight” managed to win the People’s Choice Award for Best New Series, only to get canceled when it, too, failed to win the ratings necessary to earn it a sophomore season. Last year, Mandy Patinkin’s abrupt decision to bail out of “Criminal Minds” was all the talk of the TCA Tour, and, now, William Petersen is leaving “C.S.I.,” which is also chat-worthy.

CBS President Nina Tassler took all comers in her Executive Session, and here are the highlights…besides that bit about “Moonlight,” of course.

* The future of “Swingtown” is ambiguous at best. “I’m very proud of the show, I love the show, everybody knows how passionate I’ve been about it,” she said. “I wish the ratings were better, but this is the life we’ve chosen for ourselves. But right now, we’re behind the show and we are proud of it.” When further questioned as to whether “proud” translated into “second season,” however, she wouldn’t commit. “We haven’t made that decision right now, but I am proud of the show. Creatively, I think they’re doing a great job.” (She also reiterated her disappointment in the ratings, which is surely not a good sign.)

* Despite much prodding, Tassler claimed to have no actor in place to fill the shoes of “Billy Petersen” in “C.S.I..” “I don’t think you replace Billy,” Tassler said, “but you sort of look at adding elements to the show that are really going to invigorate and contribute to the alchemy of the show where it is today. They’ve created a great character. He’s a doctor, a scientist who’s got a very interesting DNA that is going to inform the duality of the character. Like I said, it’s not necessarily replacing Billy, but it’s adding an element that is going to sort of inform the dynamic of the team today. What I know of him so far…Carol (Mendelsohn) and Naren (Shankar) are still working on him…is that he is an outsider coming into the CSI unit. When Gil Grissom leaves, he’s the head of the unit, (but) this character doesn’t come in at the beginning as the head of the unit. He comes in a little bit as an outsider, someone who is ultimately going to work his way up within the team and ultimately become the head of the unit. But he has an interesting genetic profile that, in certain sort of medical contexts, they’ve noticed that many times serial killers have that same genetic profile. And this gentleman knows this about himself and is sort of in this journey and to discover who his true character will ultimately become.” The gentleman in question, however, has not yet been cast, and if there’s anyone under discussion, his name did not leak out during the course of the panel.

* Disappointingly, “Harper’s Island,” the new thriller series starring Bill Pullman, is not scheduled to debut ’til mid-season. (Okay, granted, it’s probably not any better than your average slasher flick, since that’s clearly what it resembles, but I was still entertained by the teaser reel they sent us.)

* There is no controversy over the omission of Jay Mohr’s new sitcom, “Gary Unmarried,” from the panels. “Jay is re-taking his vows with his wife and her entire family on the other side of the world someplace,” Tassler explained. “He planned this about a year ago, and he flew over his in-laws and his whole family, so that’s why he’s not here right now.”

* Sophina Brown has joined the cast of “Numb3rs,” and Rocky Carroll has become a regular on “NCIS.”

* Despite doing relatively well on CBS this summer, there are no plans to continue re-running “Dexter” on CBS.

* There are six more episodes of “Password” being filmed, but there is no concrete time-frame as to when they will air. There is no word on the return of “Power of 10,” though CBS apparently reserves the right to bring it back. (At the very least, Tassler never said it was canceled.)

* There will also be more Hallmark movies aired on the network, though no specifics were offered.

* Despite rumors to contrary, there is no plan for an overhaul of “The Price Is Right.” “We are very respectful of the brand and the integrity of that show,” Tassler assured us, “and probably about a year, two years before Bob finally stepped down, there was a multiyear strategy to perhaps put a fresh coat of paint on some of the games that hadn’t been touched in years. As you’ve seen, the sets have been refurbished, but certainly respectful of what those doors looked like, what the lights looked like, but this is all basically it was a plan that was put in place years before Bob left just to sort of make some minor adjustments to the show.”

* Tassler revealed that Sarah Chalke will be doing multiple episodes of “How I Met Your Mother” this year (hey, maybe Bill Lawrence was right!) and that Jason Alexander and Luke Perry would be turning up on “Criminal Minds.”

* As to the problems with “Two and a Half Men” becoming “Three Men,” Tassler says, “You’re going to see Angus is going to be going through typical teen things. I mean, he’s 14. So it opens up a whole new treasure trove of stories. Charlie’s got a whole host of issues that he has to deal with in terms of having a teenager in the house, so it forms a great season of new storytelling for them on the show.”

* “Flashpoint” may return. Or it may not. “Like I said, we’re in the ratings game,” said Tassler, “and if they do well, it’s certainly something for us to consider.”

And that’s the end. From there, we move into…

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Because for the second year running, he bought us pizza for our TCA meeting.

Even though each of these panels was its own entity, it just seemed best to combine them all into one posting, since I think most people really just want the bullet points about what we can expect from the new season. If I’m wrong, don’t be afraid to tell me so, but in the meantime, here’s what was doled out…

Desperate Housewives

* The big news, as noted in the previous entry, is the five-year jump between last season and this season…or the “One Tree Hill”-ing of the series, if you will. (Look, I’m telling you, this description is so fetch. It’s totally gonna take off.)

* Gale Harold is playing Susan’s new love interest. “He’s kind of an interesting artsy guy who’s very much very different from the previous man in her life,” says executive producer Marc Cherry, “and he will present her with all sorts of new challenges, especially the fact that she kind of doesn’t really even want to be in a relationship. She’s not sure. So that’s kind of some of the colors we’ll be examining there.”

* There are no immediate plotlines planned which surround Andrew’s gayness, but “but some part of Andrew’s personal life will come up and probably cause problems for Bree soon enough,”says Cherry.

* Eva Longoria’s character, Gabrielle, is looking decidedly haggard after the five-year jump, but, then, that’s what happens when you pop out a pair of chubby little darlings in a short amount of time. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

* When asked where Edie’s character would be going this season, Nicolette Sheridan instantly deferred to Cherry, who would only say that “Edie will come back to Wisteria Lane in a very surprising way, and we’re not telling you anything more than that.”

* Neil McDonough is going to be moving onto Wisteria Lane. “He will be bringing the mystery with him,” says Cherry, “and all I’m going to tell you is he has revenge on his mind.”

* Even though he and Susan are no longer together, you will see Mike Delfino in the show. “It will be revealed what happened to Mike and Susan,” said Cherry, “and that’s all I’m going to tell you.” (Do you sense a recurring theme here?)

* The time jump has resulted in some of the actors and actresses playing the kids on the show to fall out of the show by necessity, but at least in the case of Andrea Bowen, who played Julie Mayer, Cherry says, “We’re going to bring her back and try to come up with stories to bring her back,” with fellow producer Bob Daily adding, “I think we’re hoping to see some of those kids in flashbacks.”

* In further discussion of the five-year jump and how much in the way of flashbacks we’d be seeing, Cherry reiterated that they were very much committed to staying in this new time period, with Daily clarifying, “I think the fun for us and the audience is revealing in dribs and drabs what you missed in those five-year periods. Sometimes that will involve flashbacks and sometimes it won’t. I think we’re trying to parcel that out over the first half of the season and then leave some mysteries open.”

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Confirmed: Shannen Doherty is returning to “90210.” So sayeth producer Gabe Sachs.

At first, we thought he had hired her as a director of an episode, but, in fact, there will be an episode where West Beverly High puts on a musical, and Brenda Walsh will be the director of that musical.

Per the official press release handed out by The CW after the “90210″ panel, Brenda’s departure for London resulted in her ultimately becoming a successful theater actress, splitting her time between London and New York. She soon transitioned into directing for theater and had equal success in that career, which is why West Beverly High has approached her to return to her alma mater as a guest director for the school’s musical production.

And like you haven’t already heard, but Jennie Garth will be returning as Kelly Taylor (now a West Beverly High guidance counselor) and Tori Spelling will be back as Donna Martin, who now owns an upscale boutique. More importantly, though, Joe E. Tata will be back as Nat…and, yes, he’s still the owner of The Peach Pit. Well, he’s the owner of *a* Peach Pit, anyway. It’s not quite the same place you remember, apparently…but more details on that when I write up the “90210″ panel in its entirety.

This was a nice idea: get the show runners for ABC’s returning dramas on one panel, and let the critics pummel all of them with questions at one time. It kinda worked…but it also kinda didn’t, with the biggest issue being that the panel ended up being dominated by the producers who also had panels for their own shows. Obviously, I would’ve liked to hear a lot more from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (“Lost”), but I guess it really wouldn’t have mattered a whole lot even if they hadn’t had Marc “Chatterbox” Cherry, producer of “Desperate Housewives,” off to their left, since those guys aren’t exactly known for their loose lips.

Here’s some of the info we managed to gleam from the various show runners…

Lost:

* We were given no answers as to when the Oceanic Six will return to the island, nor when the two timelines of the show might merge. “Season 5, obviously we’re not going to talk too in depth about,” admitted Lindelof, “but suffice to say, it’s very exciting for us to be 86 hours into the show. We’re going into Season 5, and the fact that people are still asking us, ‘What is the show going to be next year? How are you guys going to tell stories?’ It’s enormously cool. All we can say is it will take place in some time.” (This was the most illuminating thing offered by Lindelof during the entire panel, just so you know.)

* When someone pressed the issue and asked if the Oceanic Six and those remaining on the island would spend any quality time on screen…perhaps a visitation, perhaps a dream sequence, Cuse responded, “Obviously, the turn that’s happening with the characters off the island is that the island does seem to be drawing them back, and Ben makes it kind of clear at the very end of the finale that it’s important that they go back to the island. So that, hopefully, is going to be something that you see a lot of in Season 5, and that’s something we are excited about: the journey about how those six kind of return to the island…or contemplate returning to the island.”

* Lastly, Cuse provided the only actual fact about the upcoming season: “There will be more of Daniel Dae Kim in the series in some form.”

Grey’s Anatomy:

* Shonda Rhimes was – shocker! – tight-lipped about the reported major plotline for Izzie (Katherine Heigl’s character), saying only, “Storywise, we have a really great story worked out that we’re all very excited about.” The end. Ugh.

* She did, however, open up a bit about the lesbian storyline that was introduced last season. “We have a really interesting, wonderful, funny way of laying out the story of Callie and Erica that I’m pretty excited about,” she said, “that I feel like is not necessarily your typical — if there can be a typical — way of dealing with the storyline. What I love is we sort of sat down with GLAAD and talked about women who figure out that they’re lesbians later in life and what that means, and we really were able to find some really great, humorous, and serious emotional stuff to play that’s going to feel really interesting and also affect their lives in the hospital.”

Private Practice:

* Rhimes really only offered one thing for her other show: “Our medical cases this season are really laid out in terms of having real medical and ethical dilemmas and the problems that doctors sort of face every day: what do you tell a patient? What don’t you tell a patient? I don’t think that we’re talking about less soap per se, in that word, but I think that we are talking about sort of making the medical cases stronger so that the soap is supported.”

Desperate Housewives:

God love Marc Cherry. If you looked up “hoot” in your Funk and Wagnalls, there’d be a picture of him. But he spent more time talking about how there should be less sports metaphors in conversation and more Broadway musical metaphors, and that ate up a sizable amount of time during the panel. Funny stuff, but not illuminating from a show standpoint. But we still managed to glean a few items of interest…

* As already leaked by Marcia Cross, the show has jumped ahead in time by five years, thereby inspiring accusations that the series is pulling a “One Tree Hill.” (Actually, no-one even remotely said this, but I’m trying to popularize it, so don’t be afraid to say it to someone yourself.) Of the primary cast members, Eva Longoria has apparently suffered the worst as far as how her character looks.

* Carlos will still be blind…for a little while, anyway.

Ugly Betty:

* Silvio Horta was asked if he’d always intended to get rid of Henry or his departure was to do with Chris Gorham, the actor who played the character. “You know, it was neither,” said Horta. “Part of it was going into the strike and having that time to really think where this was going. I think we kept rushing it and thinking we were going to continue the relationship. We had no end point in sight. And thinking about it and where we could go, I just didn’t see where there was a place that was exciting that I wanted to write about and where I thought the audience wanted to watch it. So it just made the most sense to part ways. Chris is great – this is the second show I did with him – and hopefully he’ll be a part of this at some point. It doesn’t mean that the door is closed to him being a part of this at any point. But it just felt like it was time to move on.” It is perhaps telling…or, okay, perhaps not…that, when asked if Henry would be back at all in the new season, Silvio replied, “I can’t tell you.”

Brothers & Sisters:

* Greg Berlanti only got one question about this show, too, and that was when someone asked if he was repeating himself by having a missing sibling in the last season. “Hopefully, as it plays out, people won’t feel that way,” he said, “and we certainly aren’t designing the story in the same way. I mean, I definitely, toward the end of the year…I think it was a byproduct a little bit of the strike in terms of we had wanted to lay out the story a little bit better initially, and we wanted to dismount from the story a little bit better. And everything was sort of abbreviated. So I don’t think we quite pulled it off entirely. But I’m looking forward to this year. I think people will enjoy the way it plays out.”

Dirty Sexy Money:

Not a word. Maybe Berlanti was saving his strength for later in the afternoon, when the show got its own panel.

My Disney Channel coverage is going to consist solely of me saying that there’s a new Cheetah Girls movie on the horizon where the gals take on India (“The Cheetah Girls: One World”) and that, while they might be hot, the Girls were way too damned perky for a 9:00 AM panel, constantly giggling and talking over each other. (Pity the poor transcriptionist.) Despite some insidiously catchy songs and Bollywood-styled production numbers, there’s no chance in hell that I’m going to be watching this…well, that is, unless my daughter wants to watch it. But she’ll only be three when it airs, so I’m hoping she’s not quite of “Cheetah Girls” age yet. If your kids are in that demographic, though, God speed to you.

Okay, how about a little ABC Family Channel love? This network keeps impressing me with its programming, even if they aren’t necessarily aimed at people my age. They first caught my attention with “Kyle XY” (which returns in January), kept it and held me rapt with “Greek” (returning on August 26th, woo-hoo!), and now that they’ve added “The Middleman,” they’ve secured a position where I’m instantly curious about pretty much anything they put on the air. Of course, by casting Molly Ringwald as the mother of a pregnant teen in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” (which just got picked up for 13 more episodes, by the way), they’ve made an entire generation feel really, really old, but at the same time, that generation suddenly has ABC Family Channel on their radar, and I sense that will pay off handsomely for them in the future.

Coming in September is a six-hour miniseries event from the producers of “Alias” and “Gossip Girl” that should really grab those of us who appreciate a chick who knows how to kick ass: “Samurai Girl,” starring Jamie Chung, Stacy Keibler, Brendan Fehr, and Kenneth Choi.

Though “Samurai Girl” is based on a popular series of books by Carrie Asai and Annabelle Verhoye, producer Andre Nemec says we shouldn’t be looking for a precise translation from print to screen. “We really took the spirit and the archetypal nature of characters from the books,” said Nemec, “but because we didn’t really want to tell a story that had already been told, we spun a little bit of a different web. You can read the books, and they’re exciting and they’re wonderful and, obviously, the base for all of this, but the show goes off into a different direction in terms of the overall arc of the story, so it’s exciting and new.”

Hmmm. That sounds a little dodgy, but having checked out some of the miniseries, I do have to admit that it looked great and flowed nicely between drama, action, and even comedy…but, most importantly, Jamie Chung kicks some serious ass…and looks good doing it.

Man, I love “Scrubs.”

I’m not gonna tell you that I love every episode equally, because I think even the show’s most diehard fans would concede that it hasn’t entirely been firing on all cylinders for the last year or two, but even the episodes that weren’t consistently great invariably still had moments that made me laugh out loud. So when Bill Lawrence says he’s excited about the prospect of this new season and that he’s feeling creatively reinvigorated, I couldn’t be happier.

“I’m really proud of the show this year,” he assured us. “If you go online, there’s a lot of nerds and blogs…I say “nerds” affectionately…that love to say this season was the best or that season was the best. But I’m going to put some of the shows that we’ve done this year out to people that are interested early before we premiere because I’m really proud of them, and I think they’re as good as anything we’ve done.”

Let’s start off with a few revelations that Lawrence laid out during the course of the panel:

* Ken Jenkins will remain a regular on the show. “Dr. Kelso won free muffins for life on the show,” Lawrence reminded us, “which gives him an excuse to hang around the hospital and be somewhat of a different character.”

* Courteney Cox will be appearing for a three-episode arc as Dr. Kelso’s replacement as Chief of Medicine, and “we would have her back in a heartbeat,” said Lawrence. “I wrote on the first year of ‘Friends,’ so I know her a little bit, and her greatest attribute, besides the fact that she is hilarious and just a great actress, is that she is what we call a gamer. She is up for anything, and I don’t think you get that all the time with high-profile actresses.”

* Don’t hold your breath waiting for another musical episode. “I think we were not the first people to do a musical, nor do I think we are definitely the best people to do a musical, even though I liked ours,” said Lawrence. “I think for us to do another one would be slightly insane, but, as always on this show, there’s a huge musical presence and already there’s a fantastic song that we wrote called ‘Steak Night.’ But probably not another musical.”

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