The Sly Oyster | culture & entertainment on the sly

But what the world really needs is for Nathan Fillion to find a project that is worthy of his considerable talents.  He’s got leading man chops, pulls off humor well and has that sly twinkle in his eye like Han Solo.  It’s just, well,  most everything he’s been in with the exception of Firefly has been the suck.

Okay that’s not entirely true.  Waitress was touching and so was Slither in that B-movie kind of way.  But you probably didn’t know he was in Saving Private Ryan or on the sitcom Two Guys, A Girl and  a Pizza Place with Ryan Reynolds.

Cameos in Lost help, and a role as Dr. Hammer in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog have endeared him to many, but this guy shouldn’t be slumming on Desperate Housewives or that FOX show Drive (starring alongside Emma Stone, no less).

Still, we’ll give any project he’s in the benefit of the doubt and the hope that it won’t be beneath him.  ABC has picked up his pilot for series Castles. In it, Fillion stars as a horror novelist who helps the NYPD solve crimes.  Ugh.  Really?  We don’t need another Murder, She Wrote.

I think at this point, that Fillion needs to get with Joss Whedon (still the only director to fully understand how to make Fillion a star and utilize his abilities as an actor) to create a vanity project along the same lines as Eliza Dushku’s Dollhouse.

The message boards on IMDB are saying the show is more comedy/banter than procedural show, similar to FOX’s House. Okay, that’s a good thing.  Others are saying it reminded them of several USA programs like Burn Notice or Monk. I can get behind that, if that is the case.

Okay, okay, you don’t have to tell me that we’re beginning to flog a dead horse around here.  But it sounds as if the writers are intent on not caving, which is good for them, bad for television watchers.  Joss Whedon shares his thoughts on striking and getting a fair deal and he makes it sound as if the WGA is going to be resolute.

This of course means that many shows will be pushed back if this drags on through December and into the new year.  TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello claims that everyone’s fav mystery show Lost, might not air any new episodes until 2009.  Holy schnikies you read that right: 2009!

If the strike extends into the new year and beyond, there is a chance ABC may opt to delay the new season until the fall. Or worse yet, February 2009. Another scenario has the network simply airing the eight episodes already in the can this February as originally planned — something Team Darlton would not be in favor of.

Says Lost cocreator Carlton Cuse, “Damon [Lindelof] and my concern about running the [eight] episodes we will have made is that it will feel a little like reading half a Harry Potter novel, then having to put it down. There is a mini-cliff-hanger at the end of Episode 8, but it’s like the end of an exciting book chapter; it’s not the end of the novel. Damon and I didn’t write [the ending of Episode 8] differently [with the looming strike in mind]. We wrote it to be the ending of Episode 8.”

In any case, he concedes that the decision to hold or air the episodes isn’t ultimately theirs. “It’s really [ABC honcho Steve MacPherson's] call,” Cuse notes, adding, “No one was happy with the six-episode run last season.”

Damn.  Not that I think this is a bad idea, but clearly the creators of the show had an idea for the last three seasons to each be 16 episodes long.  By tacking on the first half of what would be Season 4 to the entirety of what would be Season 5 (this would comprise the last eight episodes of Season 4 and the first eight of Season 5), ABC would then essentially be forced to air an elongated version of the final Season 6.

So all of that is to say that instead of three seasons of 16 episodes, viewers would get two seasons of 24 episodes.  Would it be worth the wait?  Would ABC dare do this to loyal viewers?

On a related note the first mobisodes shot for Lost won’t be aired on ABC.com until Nov. 22, but the first one has already popped up online in crappy quality.

“Lost: Missing Pieces are 13 two-to three-minute stories of compelling, new, never-before-seen moments from LOST. These newly-created scenes (not deleted scenes from previous episodes) reveal answers and new details about your favorite characters. For each story, we leave it up to the you, the fans, to figure out where these pieces fit into the overall mythology. Watch new episodes on ABC.com”