Paget Brewster, Criminal Minds, Sandra Oh, Grey’s Anatomy and Nina Dobrev, The Vampire Diaries
Every week, editors Adam Bryant and Natalie Abrams satisfy your need for TV scoop. Please send all questions to mega_scoop@tvguide.com.
Have you heard anything about how Criminal Minds' plans to replace Paget Brewster in Season 8? — Ashley
ADAM: I was actually on set last week and asked executive producer Erica Messer that very question. The short answer: Don't look for it to happen right away. Messer says she'd like to mimic what the show did in Season 3 when Joe Mantegna replaced departing star Mandy Patinkin a few episodes into the season. "I feel like we come back in Season 8 without Prentiss, and we're functioning just fine," she says. "But there's a void. We need that extra body. But I don't know who that character is yet." Why don't you guys help her out in the comments below?
Any Cristina and Owen scoop for Grey's Anatomy would be great! — Lisa
NATALIE: The couple's issues will...
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Mandy Patinkin
What's Homeland star Mandy Patinkin's favorite medication? Viagra, he tells New York magazine in a Q&A.
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Jackson Pace, Mandy Patinkin, Claire Danes
Homeland co-star Mandy Patinkin knew he had a hit on his hands from the time he read the first script.
"I read the pilot script and I went, 'Oh my God, this stuff is wonderful, I can see the potential,'" he told TVGuide at the Golden Globe Awards. Co-star David Harewood echoed: "It's wonderful to be a part of something where you can't wait to read what's been written."
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Damian Lewis, Claire Danes
[SPOILER WARNING: This story reveals key plot elements from Sunday's season finale. Read at your own risk.]
Homeland's first season finale posed the question: Would traitorous Marine Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) actually carry out a suicide bombing directed at the vice president of the United States?
See where Homeland ranked in our countdown of the Best TV Shows of 2011
The answer...
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Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens
1. HOMELAND
The best new series of the year is Showtime's twisty nail-biter of a psychological thriller, an emotionally intense cat-and-mouse game between two damaged souls: Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody, a Marine POW who may have been turned by terrorists during eight years in Iraqi captivity, and Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the unstable CIA analyst who breaks all the rules to get under his skin — and at times under the sheets. (Bringing new meaning to undercover agent). The actors are as electrifying as the storytelling in this taut tale of homeland insecurity, which also features a marvelously restrained Mandy Patinkin as Carrie's melancholy mentor and a revelatory Morena Baccarin as Brody's understandably conflicted wife. Homeland comes from the veteran producers of 24, who have lost none of their knack for sustained suspense, but within this more realistic framework have been able to concoct a thoughtful and gripping meditation on the human toll of the war on terror.
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Claire Danes
First, weighing in on two cable movies, one of which thoroughly chilled me and another that left me cold.
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Homeland
In Homeland, terrorist plots aren't dismantled in 24 hours and the hero doesn't save the day by slaughtering suspects. Ten years after the horror of 9/11, good and evil are sometimes far from black-and-white.
"This is not 24, which had a muscular response to what happened on 9/11," says British actor Damian Lewis, who plays Sgt. Nicholas Brody, the Marine who's become a hero after eight years of imprisonment by Al Qaeda, on the set near Charlotte. "It was a show for its time. Now we live in a world where people are divided about the best way to wage war on terror."
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Morena Baccarin
Cheers to Morena Baccarin for proving she's flesh and blood on Homeland.
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The Brazilian-born actress is best known for her role as alien queen Anna on ABC's short-lived sci-fi remake V. That makes her down-to-earth work as Jessica, the morally conflicted wife of tortured ex-POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) on Showtime's anti-terrorism drama all the more refreshing. As Jessica deals with her husband's PTSD — and grapples with the affair she had with his best friend after she assumed he was dead — Baccarin gives an ...
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Homeland
Is Showtime's Homeland the first post-post-9/11 TV show?
In a word, yes, according to Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, the former 24 producers who developed the show.
Fall TV: Get the lowdown on this season's must-see new shows
"If you look at 24, it was a response to the towers coming down. It was about America taking action against enemies," Gansa tells TVGuide.com. "This is very much a response to Osama bin Laden's death. It's a psychological exploration of what this war on terror has meant to the United States and meant to the individuals that are involved in it."
Adds Gordon: "It's really about what we have to fear now that all the boogeymen of the last 10 years...
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Claire Danes
Showtime is about to raise the dramatic stakes on Sundays, which were already plenty high. Network TV's finest adult drama, CBS' The Good Wife, recently moved to the night, ABC just launched a delicious piece of escapism in Pan Am, the second season of HBO's deluxe Prohibition period piece Boardwalk Empire is already underway, and in two weeks, AMC resurrects its terrifyingly graphic zombie ...
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