Ask Matt

Matt Roush: Nothing like a little summer TV stream-of-consciousness to get the ball rolling. Ah, Mary Murphy. Love her or hate her, or cover your ears when it's her turn to react, but this judge's shrieky shtick comes with the So You Think You Can Dance territory now, and she's about as likely to retire that screech as Randy Jackson is likely to drop "dawg" and "pitchy" from his vocabulary. As for the show's winner, there have been seasons when they've offered the winner a job as well as a the cash prize, but it seems to me that the money and especially the exposure from the series itself and the subsequent national tour are probably the most substantial benefits. What the winners do with their career after that is pretty much up to them. Dancing, for all its vogue on TV right now, doesn't create that many household names. On to your other points: I'm pleased with In Plain Sight as well — the annoying family aside — and am also eager to see new seasons of Burn Notice and especially Mad Men. July should be a very busy and fun month thanks to cable. Rock Star? No. CBS dropped that one a year ago, and I've heard of no plans from the network or from Mark Burnett's company about reviving it. And Stephanie? I loved that she became the first (overdue) female winner of Top Chef. I loved her attitude, she impressed and surprised the judges a number of times throughout the season, and she seemed to have another hit (dessert aside) on the final challenge (whereas the highly conceptual Richard appeared to fall apart at the end). Lisa, hardly a fan favorite, was lucky to get in the finale, another case of these shows keeping their villains around way too long into the game. Antonia deserved to be in the final three. (Still, if we agreed with every decision, these shows wouldn't be as much fun to watch.

Matt Roush: Thanks, but it really isn't up to House when it's scheduled, is it? If given the choice, I'm sure the producers would be happy to stay at 9 pm/ET, but this fall, that slot is being given to one of Fox's biggest new hopes, the promising sci-fi thriller Fringe, and giving it a strong lead-in with House is classic network strategy. Personally, I think House is better suited for the later time period, but Fox doesn't have a lot of options if it wants to use House to better the chances for a new show. This does pit two hit shows against each other, but that happens a lot on crowded nights. (Just look at Thursdays.) My advice: Invest in a DVR that records two channels at once. It's a life-saver.

Matt Roush: My initial response to this, before NBC News made it official over the weekend, was that while Andrea Mitchell is at least as deserving as any of the other NBC News veterans, it would make the most symbolic sense for Tom Brokaw to be the steward of Meet the Press during this wrenching transition period. His experience and gravitas, and his availability, make him the perfect authority figure to fill the void left by Tim Russert's unexpected and tragic passing. If NBC had not gone this route, I would have expected the news division to rotate the moderator's chair among a handful of NBC News stars, including David Gregory and Mitchell as well as Brian Williams, who handled the job the first weekend after the Russert tribute. The good news amid all of this bad news is that Meet the Press is now in very capable hands until a true successor can be named sometime after the election cycle, and this will at least for a while put a halt to what some have felt is unseemly speculation this soon after Russert's death. (Though I will tell you who I would definitely not want to take over the show: any of MSNBC's star news anchors, especially the strident Christopher Matthews — not that he's even a serious option.)

Matt Roush: I haven't heard precisely what the networks are planning regarding the relaunch of last season's freshman shows cut short by the strike, but I would be surprised if you'd see the entire seasons of any of these series repeated. The networks are more likely to contend that making them available online (as most already are or, I imagine, will be) is enough, and at least a few of these are likely to be issued on DVD before fall. I agree it would be in the shows' best interest to get some network exposure in late summer/early fall, and it's possible at least a few key episodes of each series will be repeated shortly before the new seasons begin. But the trend these days is very much against repeats, especially of marginally rated and serialized shows, and that's not likely to help these shows when it comes to regaining the momentum that was so tragically stalled when the writers went on strike.

Matt Roush: Everyone's in limbo right now, waiting to see if the shoe will drop again when July comes and no SAG contract is ratified, which appears to be a real possibility. My take on it for now is to hope for the best, but to be prepared for the worst. And I honestly can't think of a worse scenario for the network TV business than another ill-timed work stoppage that could delay a fall season that's already being asked to repair so much damage caused by the last strike. I hope everyone involved comes to their senses and finds a way to resolve this mess, but if there is a strike, there's no reason to think that big names will stay silent; they were pretty visible on the picket lines last time. At the same time, I would also expect some serious power-broking behind the scenes among industry movers and shakers to limit the damage this time around so it doesn't drag on as long as the last one. I shudder to think of the chaos that will result in another stop-and-start TV season.

Matt Roush: I didn't see that episode — not much of a fan of Criminal Intent even before it moved to cable, and a week ago Sunday, between sports and the Tonys, I was otherwise engaged — but that gag does sound pretty cheesy. Still, I wouldn't let your disgust for what Criminal Intent did bleed over to the mothership, which is just coming off a strong and transformative year. There have been times I thought Wolf should just fold the franchise for dignity's sake, but this last season felt like a reinvented, re-energized show. We'll know things have gone seriously awry if NBC Universal forces them to insert a Knight Rider cameo into the original next season. Let's pray that doesn't happen.

Matt Roush: Desperate Housewives will indeed be set five years in the future next season, but they're not going to take such large leaps after each season. This was just a way to creatively jump-start the show. I think it's a bold and smart strategy, as I said at the time, but not everyone agrees.

Dave writes: "I had exactly the opposite reaction. I'm invested in these characters as they are now — I would much rather see them evolve than learn about the evolutions after the fact. Sometimes this kind of five-years-later jump can work really well for a series (television, of course, but comic books do this kind of thing often, too), but sometimes it just feels like a cheat. For example, when Heroes started its second season sometime in the future after its first season finale, it seemed the writers used the jump as a way to create some false tension, as they doled out answers about what happened during that time slowly over the season. It's one way to create mystery, but I think it's often a cheap one."

It really depends on the execution, doesn't it? One of the reasons I'm encouraged by Housewives taking this leap is that in my experience with classic prime-time soaps (from Dallas through Melrose Place), it seems that after a handful of seasons of churning through juicy storylines at a rapid pace, they inevitably begin to slow down and get a bit stale and repetitive. I'm hoping this jolt into the future will re-energize the show and keep it fresh for at least the next few seasons.

Matt Roush: The Americanized Kath & Kim is something of a mystery to all of us, because like the rest of NBC's fall newbies, we haven't yet seen a frame of film from any of them (several of which were ordered straight to series). But yes, it makes much more sense for Kath to get traction as part of NBC's Thursday comedy line-up than to be sandwiched on Tuesday between the bloated The Biggest Loser and Law & Order: SVU. Until I actually see it, I can't gauge its hit potential, but NBC would probably settle for it being a buzz or cult show like the rest of the modestly rated comedies that air in that lineup.

Matt Roush: Flabbergasted is a pretty good word, but for me, I was floored because of how powerful the final episodes were. The death of Amber was undeniably tragic, yes, but evil? The intent here, it seems to me, was not just to startle and upset the viewers — which it appears to have done — but also to throw the greatest challenge yet to the Wilson-House relationship that would test it to the limit, and on that level, I again think that these remarkable final episodes succeeded. The greatest tribute that could be paid to a character like Amber was, to me, embodied by the richness of Robert Sean Leonard's portrayal of Wilson's grief at the end. Killing off a character can often feel heartless, but there was a lot of heart involved in the way this storyline played out.

But, as always, there are dissenting voices. Like this from Brian N.: "I am not sure where you stood on the Izzie/Denny relationship on Grey's Anatomy, but a lot of people felt that was rushed into, unbelievable, and Izzie's intensity of feeling came out of nowhere. Then you have a House finale at the end of a season that has been supremely conscious of other hit shows, and it trots out its own Izzie/Denny in my view with the whole Amber/Wilson big charade that came out of nowhere. Amber/Wilson huge joke (Wilson is sleeping with House!!) and then everyone is supposed to climb aboard how sad and tragic the whole thing was. It was ridiculous."

Couldn't disagree more on both counts. Denny was a wonderful character who stole any number of viewers' hearts as he fought to live, and Izzie's devotion to him and her devastation at his death (plus near career suicide) was one of the show's dramatic high points. It might have been over-the-top, but just about everyone I knew thought it was effective. (That was such a great season.) And on House, the surprise of the Amber-Wilson relationship, at first delightful because they seemed such an unlikely couple and them because of the jealousy it triggered in House, all of which culminated in the climactic tragedy, will likely be looked at as a peak for this series as well. Of course, any time a show aims for high emotion, it risks being ridiculed. Nothing new in that. Both shows had me in tears. Nothing new in that, either, I'm afraid.

Matt Roush: I really don't know enough about the mechanics of the DVD business to explain with any authority why the release of some full-season box sets are timed the way they are. But it does make sense from a promotional point of view to time the release with the impending return of the series for a new season, heightening the buzz. I get your argument that it doesn't give a fan who's fallen behind much of a chance to catch up, although in Dexter's case, we're talking about only 12 episodes, and believe me, once you start watching, I bet you'll zip through them in record time. (Whatever you do, don't start watching the third season until you've made it through the second. The suspense and surprises are incredible.) I know many people who get their hands on a complete-season DVD of a TV series and devote an entire weekend to burning through them. I also know many people (myself included) who only wish they had that luxury of time. In short, I guess I'm saying I agree with you that these DVD packages should be released as early as possible, but marketing strategies probably make that unlikely in many cases.