First stop: the FX executive session, where we enjoyed a fireside chat by FX President and General Manager John Landgraf and learned a few things about what we can expect to see on the network in the future.

* “Nip/Tuck” has finished production on the final eight episodes of a 22-episode Season 5. The season will begin airing in January 2009. The network is also ordering an additional 19 episodes of “Nip/Tuck,” and which will be the final episodes of “Nip/Tuck.” The series will end its run on FX in early 2011, going out on the magic 100-episode mark.

* “Rescue Me” is currently in production on a 22-episode season, and will return in Spring 2009. Michael J. Fox will do a four-episode arc on the show, beginning in the Season 5 premiere. He will play Janet’s new boyfriend, who is confined to a wheelchair.

* Marcia Gay Harden will be joining Timothy Olyphant and William Hurt as series regulars for the second season of “Damages,” and – bonus! – Ted Danson will be back as Arthur Frobisher. (More on that when we get to the “Damages” panel.)

* Jay Karnes, a.k.a. Detective Wagenbach on “The Shield,” will be joining FX’s new series, “Sons of Anarchy,” for six episodes (and maybe more, depending on how things pan out), and Drea de Matteo will also pop up for three episodes.

* The network intends to produce 39 more episodes of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” in addition to the 13 that are
currently in production. Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day and Glenn Howerton, who created it and star in it, will remain as stars and executive producers for all 52 of those episodes, and Kaitlin Olson and Danny DeVito will stay on as series regulars.

* They’ll also be ordering 13 episodes of a new original comedy series created by Kenny Hotz, the former “South Park” writer who went on to create the excruciating Comedy Central series, “Kenny vs. Spenny.” Currently titled “Testees,” the series is a scripted comedy which focuses on two friends in their early 30s who earn their living as medical guinea pigs. It will premiere on Thursday, October 9th, at 10:30 p.m. following a new original episode of “Sunny.” I will possibly not be watching when it does.

* “The Riches” may not be back for a third season. Said Landgraf, “We haven’t made a decision yet. We are really struggling with the decision. On the one hand, you know, it’s a show I have spilled blood, sweat, and tears on with (creator) Dmitry Lipkin and with the cast. I love the show. Tremendously proud of it. It was a very challenging tone to take on. I know, because you and I talked about it, that you felt it wobbled and some of you felt it wobbled a little bit in the beginning, but I think we really stuck the landing finally and it grew into something terrific. On the other hand, it fell 44 percent in ratings from Season 1 to Season 2. So that looks to me like the core audience is much smaller, that even though the show continued to grow creatively, there was a significant amount of rejection of the show from Season 1 to Season 2. It’s always a little bit of a question: do you hold onto the past or do you sprint toward the future? And we just haven’t made that decision yet on ‘The Riches.'”

So there you have it. And, now, on to…

Damages: I’ll gladly admit that I missed out on “Damages” during its initial run on FX (I also missed out on the “Damages” panel at the press tour last year, which might have something to do with why I wasn’t caught up in all the buzz), but once the first season of the series came out on DVD, I was addicted right from the first episode and was on the edge of my seat all the way until the closing credits rolled on the season finale. And, wow, what a finale, huh? Talk about a perfect set-up for Season 2! It’s been a long wait, but the show’s coming back – tentatively, anyway – in January 2009, and co-creator Daniel Zelman began the “Damages” panel by setting the stage for what we’ll be seeing.

“This season begins with Ellen cooperating with the Feds to try and get dirt on Patty Hewes,” said Zelman, “so Ellen is acting as an informant or corroborating witness when she goes back to work for Patty. We also have Tate Donovan and his character, Tom Shayes, who, when the season begins, is still trying in many ways to get out from underneath Patty’s shadow. Very early in the season, he has a critical choice to make as to whether or not he’s going to bend the rules or bend the law in order to get ahead, and that’s going to be an ongoing thing for him: how he can actually work with Patty while still improving his own standing with the firm and in the legal community.

“In terms of the new characters, William Hurt is playing a character named Daniel Purcell, who enters Patty’s life in the first episode. He’s in trouble. We’re not exactly sure why he’s in trouble, but he needs some form of protection and legal assistance, and he comes to Patty for that. It appears as though they have some past, but what that past is will be uncovered as the season progresses. Then we have a new character named Wes Krulik, played by Timothy Olyphant. Ellen meets Wes in grief counseling early in the season, and he’s sort of a mysterious figure who comes to be a confidant of Ellen’s, because they’ve both been through similar traumas recently. So they share that, and what the future of their relationship will be is something that is left for the audience to guess at and wonder about. And we have Marcia Gay Harden, who plays a very high-powered attorney for a company early in the season. We’re not sure what exactly that company is, but we feel like they’re behind some wrongdoing and Marcia will be playing a very high-powered attorney who will go up against Patty Hewes as the season progresses.”

Hey, what about Arthur Frobisher?

Well, to our surprise, Ted Danson was actually on the panel. His name had not been floated around as an attendee, so there were raised eyebrows and many mutterings when they announced who was in attendance. Co-creator Todd Kessler quickly clarified, however, that “just because Mr. Danson has joined us today doesn’t necessarily mean that Mr. Frobisher has survived.”

For his part, Danson gestured to his chair and said, “This is the Zeljko Ivanek seat. This is the ‘your life is hanging in the balance’ seat. Last year, he was sitting here…and you know what happened to him!”

“As you know, the show moves back and forth in time,” reminded Glenn, the other Kessler on the production team, “so we have the opportunity to use Ted and (other) actors in ways that are not conventional. We love Arthur Frobisher and we’re very excited to try to find a way to keep that character and his presence in the show.”

If there was one major complaint about “Damages” while it was on the air (though not, of course, once it came to DVD), it was that the episodes were so labyrinthine in their plot developments that missing one episode was enough to make you want to give up on the show for fear of being unable to catch up.

“In terms of the serialization of our storytelling,” said Todd Kessler, “Glenn, Daniel and I got together to brainstorm an idea for a series which became ‘Damages,’ and every time we started to talk about the characters – it being character-driven and how we wanted to explore these people in the world – it led us to having serialized stories and not plots that end each episode or a case each episode. To us, it’s not really about the cases; it’s about what the case — in the first season, the Frobisher case — does to our people. It’s putting high-powered people in extremely intense situations of a crucible and seeing how they respond and pushing people to the limits. So for us, the storytelling is at its core. Yes, it’s serialized, (but) we feel that, in each episode, you’re getting the characters and a greater understanding of the characters, and the relationship between plot and television episodes is one that this season for us lends itself to moving outside of the notion.

“We don’t think of it as serialized in the standard way,” he continued. “We think of it as each episode you’re getting a deeper understanding of who our characters are, and the situation may remain consistent and may not have a resolution in terms of a new episode (or) a new case each week, but in this second season, what we’re interested in exploring is having defined plot elements which we didn’t entirely do in the first season, to help punctuate and help address some of this notion of what the television audience seems to be aware of and, in certain ways, crave, but as far as we’re concerned, the main tenets of our story is having these characters in front of you, arced out over the entire season in a story that will continue to hopefully pull in the audience, but really continue to put these characters in the increasingly complicated and pressurized crucible that is what ‘Damages’ has become.”

I’m in, baby. I am in.

Sons of Anarchy: When I arrived at the tour, I didn’t know anything more about this series than what had been provided in the original FX press release, so let me share that with you and put us on the same level playing field.

“‘Sons of Anarchy’ is an adrenalized, darkly humorous drama exploring a notorious outlaw motorcycle club’s intent on protecting their simple, sheltered town of Charming, Calif. from advancing drug dealers and local corporate developers. It is also a family saga seen through the eyes of Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) whose love for the brotherhood comes into direct conflict with his growing apprehension regarding the club’s lawlessness. Katey Sagal stars as his force-of-nature mother who, along with the club’s president, Jax’s stepfather, has her own ideas about the direction of the Sons of Anarchy.”

And you’ve already read about how Drea de Matteo and Jay Karnes will be appearing, so once I add that the cast also includes Maggie Siff (“Mad Men”) and Ron “Hellboy” Perlman, it can be stated unequivocally that we’re all on the same page.

Well, mostly. I did, after all, catch the pilot episode.

Truth be told, I really wasn’t blown away by it. It was dark and depressing, and I never really found myself caught up in the onscreen events; more often than not, I felt like this was a world I didn’t really have any interest in investigating any further. But maybe I’ll have my mind changed if I watch it again, since, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that it was around midnight when I watched it and I’d just come back from the Fox party at the Santa Monica Pier, where I’d had more than a few mojitos.

The idea came from the mind of Kurt Sutter, who – as a former executive producer on “The Shield” – is certainly no stranger to gritty dramas. “I had lunch with John Linson and Art Linson two years ago,” said Sutter, “and John had this notion about doing a family drama set in the world of outlaw motorcycle clubs. John was completely immersed in the culture, well-versed in the area; he had friends and associates who were living the life, and what he offered me was a front-row seat. I didn’t want to get involved with anything that I felt I couldn’t do authentically and, y’know, I can’t mention any organizations, but one of these organizations sort of opened their doors to me, and I got to see it firsthand. It’s a fascinating culture, and the thing that attracted me to the world and these guys, I think, was…I had no doubt that they were dangerous cats, you know, but there was this amazing camaraderie. There was this amazing sort of familial ‘I’d kill for my brother’ bond that all of them had that was just somewhat endearing. And that, juxtaposed against the lifestyle, just was fascinating material. From that, I began to do some academic research on the world and some of these clubs.

“Most of these clubs really began as something else. They began as fraternities, of brotherhoods of guys, most of them war veterans getting together to blow off steam, and in a very short period of time, a lot of these clubs morphed into essentially organized crime syndicates, and I thought that was such an epic arc that happened. And the core of the idea for the drama was that I thought, ‘How does that guy who designed the patch, put on the cut and said, “Hey, let’s go out and ride motorcycles, have a few beers, and kick some ass,” feel about eventually what the club became? Does he have regret? Does he have remorse? Would he feel the need to change it?’ And at that point, the idea and the club and the world is much bigger than the individual, and that’s sort of the idea that the drama grew from.”

See, if I’d known all that stuff before I watched the pilot, I might’ve enjoyed it more.

The Shield: I’m not a regular viewer of “The Shield,” but I know a lot of people around the Bullz-Eye bullpen are, so I knew I’d better get as much scoop on the final season of the series as I possibly could. Unfortunately, almost nothing specific was revealed. This much, however, is certain: whatever the hell happens in the series finale, it’s apparently pretty fucking awesome, based on the comments from around the panel.

“I think that Shawn did a tremendous job in writing this finale. Whether or not you guys see it that way, that’s entirely in your hands, but I have to say that “The Shield” as a whole…I feel like it’s the longest movie ever made. I look at it as one big movie, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And what’s happened to Vic Mackey…the writers have continually been able to do something that I marvel at, which is to come up with twists and turns that happen, and when you watch them, they’re so surprising and stunning. But then when you look back at it, you go, ‘Well, yeah, that makes perfect sense.’ And what thrills me about the finale is you will not see this coming. You will not know what we do, yet when you look back at it, you’ll go, ‘Holy cow, yeah, that’s exactly right.'” – Michael Chiklis (Vic Mackey)

“I think it’s the greatest finale ever that you’ll ever see anywhere. Hands down. Blew my socks off. I’m not a great fan of ‘The Shield’ as a watcher, in the sense that I’m, like, a cringy person. I’m a bit of a chicken…even though my role is so huge and non-chicken-like…but this finale is what Vic Mackey deserves.” – CCH Pounder (Detective Claudette Wyms)

“When you invest all this time and energy, seven seasons, and you want to culminate into something where you feel like you’ve gotten something out of it. And you know, with ‘The Sopranos,’ it’s been mixed reviews about that finale, but I will tell you about this finale: there will be no mixed reviews. You will get your money’s worth. Money back guarantee.” – David Marciano (Detective Steve Billings)

“I won’t say it feels like a tragedy, but I think the finale, to me, feels right.If and when you watch the finale, it will feel like the ‘Shield’ universe. It will feel completely appropriate, and we hope that you’ll be knocked over by it.” – Shawn Ryan (creator)

Do you see what I’m saying? I mean, there’s selling a show, and then there’s being honest, and I get the impression that every single person on that panel truly believes in their heart of hearts that the final episode of “The Shield” is brilliant. Of course, David Chase probably felt the same way about the end of “The Sopranos,” so, clearly, it’s still going to be a wait-and-see situation, but, man, these people are really getting my curiosity up!