Yesterday, it was announced that he’ll be guest-starring on an episode of The Office this season as Andy Bernard’s younger brother, Walter. You may recall the following, from “The Delivery”:

Don’t get too hung up on baby names. I was named Walter Jr. after my father until I was about six or so, when my parents changed their minds. My brother was born, and my parents felt he better exemplified the Walter Jr. name, so they gave it to him. I was given Andrew, which they got out of a baby name book.

It’s so sick and weird, and obviously whoever grew up as Walter Jr., the chosen one, would end up being an insufferable human being, so it’ll be interesting to meet him. (I’m assuming that Groban’s character will be insufferable–do you think he’s being typecast as someone who is insufferable?) The plot is curious because we don’t yet know why we need to meet Andy’s family, which will also include Stephen Collins as Walter Sr. and Dee Wallace as Mom. Other family members have been introduced organically–it made sense to meet Pam’s family at her wedding, or Dwight’s family at his beet farm. I’m becoming increasingly concerned that Andy will, in fact, become the Scranton branch manager.

Talk about insufferable.

When you think back on the Office news since Carell’s departure, all anyone has to get excited about is new casting. Is anyone actually looking forward to the plot?

just please don't be gross. // fox promotional photo

By now you’ve likely heard the news that Idina Menzel is returning to Glee next season for a major story arc that will find her Shelby Corcoran joining the McKinley High faculty. I have mixed feelings about this, so let’s talk about it in terms of pros and cons, shall we?

Pro: She’s Idina. That’s never a bad thing. Mrs. Diggs is arguably the best singer Glee has managed to snag, and if this means more songs for my “Idina Belters” playlist, I’m on board.

Con: Ryan Murphy JUST SAID that there would be no major guest stars this season. This guy can’t even keep his story straight between an interview he gives and … the very next interview he gives.

Pro: She could bring a juicy storyline for Quinn. As the mom of Puck and Quinn’s biological daughter, Beth, Idina has some drama on her back. I’d love to see how Quinn and Shelby interact on a regular basis, or what a Quinn/Beth reunion looks like. Giving Dianna Agron anything more to work with than “Sam, Finn, or Puck?” gets my vote.

Con: If she recomplicates things between Will and Emma, I will stage a coup.

Pro: They want to bring her on for a STORYLINE. That means … this season … they want to have … STORYLINES. PRO PRO PRO PRO PRO.

Con: Why would she take a job at McKinley, knowing she has baggage there with Quinn, Will, and Rachel? It’s actually a little mean. If you were Quinn, would you want to see Shelby every day? Would you want to have to follow her directions? If you were Rachel?

Pro: CAN SHE STAY FOREVER? The fact that she has history (strong, painful, complicated history) with so many characters gives the writers a lot to work with. A lot more than they gave themselves in season two.

Con: Who’s she going to play? A second Glee coach? Or just a French teacher who backseat drives the Glee club?

Pro: It’ll be just like Rachel wanted, when she said, “You and Mr. Schuester could be co-directors. We’d be unstoppable. There’s so much that you can teach me—so much only you can teach me.” Actually, it’d be great to see someone a with a little bite challenge Schue’s direction. Somebody needs to turn these kittens into champions, and it’s either Shelby Corcoran or that woman from Dance Moms.

Con: I’m done with cons. I’m excited.

don't you see what this means, rachel? it means you get to go to college! // fox promotional photo

Consider me shocked. Glee executive producer Ryan Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter last night that New Directions stalwarts Rachel, Finn, and Kurt are not going to be back at all for Season 4.

Sure, he’s been saying they’ll graduate for weeks, but I was skeptical that this would mean cutting ties with the lead cast, particularly Lea Michele. When you’ve got those vocal cords under a seven-year contract, I’m sure your instinct is to hold on tight. The decision to cut these actors loose—lest you end up employing actors 30+ to play seventh-year seniors—is perhaps the riskiest plot move that Ryan Murphy has ever made on this show.

It underscores an early mistake that he made in creating Glee: writing an entire show about a group of sophomores. As it stands, Ryan Murphy is going to be relying heavily on new characters in season four. (Is this all just a ploy to make us care more about The Glee Project, perhaps?) He’s put himself in a huge bind for this year, as he takes on the task of introducing and endearing us to new kids, at the same time as he tries to successfully send off the seniors we know. Considering how season two went, I can’t say I’m optimistic. Thank Cheesus he bit the bullet and hired help.

This could mean good things for my favorite Glee character (Emma), who’ll be some of the only institutional memory left at McKinley after season three. For the departing seniors, it means that Rachel and Kurt will hopefully get to live out their Big Apple dreams. For Finn, well, I just figured he’d settle down in Lima and get a job at Sheets ‘n’ Things or Emerald Dreams.

It’s good news for Lea Michele, who will undoubtedly have many, many career opportunities post-Glee. Chris Colfer has probably been pigeonholed as Kurt, but his recent portfolio diversification (kids TV series, films, etc.) will help him stay relevant. Cory Monteith, it was nice knowing you.

After listening to writers, actors, and pundits talk about the inherent creative opportunities in Steve Carell’s departure, it’s hard for me to see this as anything more than a safe bet cop-out. I’ve felt disconnected from the Office writers for a few seasons now–Has their sense of humor changed? Has mine?–but I just really don’t understand what they’re going for here.

Says executive producer Paul Lieberstein,

“James will reprise his role as Robert California, this uber-salesman that has a power to convince and manipulate, like a high-class weirdo Jedi warrior. He’ll have been hired over the summer as the new manager, but within hours, got himself promoted. Within days, he took over the company. James has an energy that is completely his own, and The Office has no tools for dealing with this guy. We’re thrilled he’s joining our cast.”

The Office started with such a simple concept—one so universally relatable that it has been replicated in countries around the world. And yet its greatest strength (the painful monotony of office work) has, in many ways, become its greatest weakness. Turns out, there are only so many stories you can tell about corporate banality. And whereas the hiring of a new boss could have been an opportunity to bring in something completely different, it feels like they let that chance pass them by.

They could definitely prove me wrong here. Perhaps it was never about who would sit in Michael Scott’s chair, but rather about giving the writers a fresh character to write for. Or perhaps Spader will surprise me and bring something completely new and hilarious to the show. Maybe the boring creepmonster thing will grow on me. Or maybe—just maybe—as others have suggested, he will in fact turn out to be the Scranton Strangler, and we can all go home happy.

rule #1: don't ever do THIS ever again. EVER. // fox promotional photo

Dot-Marie Jones (Coach Bieste) and Matthew Morrison (Will) recently spoke to reporters about the slapdash script-writing on Glee, claiming that production is just as haphazard as I had imagined.

Says Jones, “Some days they’d only finish three of the six acts — so when we’d get a script two days before we start working and you weren’t anywhere in there — you’d know you’re going to be in the episode, you’ll just get your lines sometime during the eight days we shoot a show.”

Morrison said, “Literally, the end of the season, the season finale we just shot, they were handing us script pages, like, ‘Say this right here.’ The show is such an epic thing to film, we got so backed up. So I have no idea, I think the writers are taking a little break, and no one really knows anything.”

As a viewer, that makes me livid. As a writer (even of this rinky-dink operation), that makes me insane.

I appreciate that Glee has more actual production to schedule than its peers. The cast spends plenty of time in the recording studio for each episode, and there’s choreography and vocal rehearsals mashed in there, as well. Every hour of Glee is a massive undertaking. But that doesn’t mean that writing is what should be sacrificed. The bottom line is that Glee bites off more than it can chew … and it shows. In its infancy, we called the show ambitious; now, we’re calling it uneven and messy.

I think that at the beginning of season two, the writers figured that New Directions would make it to Nationals … and that’s as far into the planning stage as they got before they had to start clearing the rights to Katy Perry’s catalog. It was a very lopsided season, with a few hits and a lot of misses. Glee put up very few episodes this year that the viewership approved of en masse. I’d argue that “Born This Way” was the closest they came, and even that episode faced some Twitter backlash. But what did that episode have that others were lacking?

It had well-constructed, interlocking plots that shared a similar theme and were supported by complementary tracks. It was a ninety-minute episode that featured six musical numbers, a significantly lower sung-to-spoken-word ratio than the usual undertaking. There were no big-name guest stars, and they even dared to let Sue Sylvester miss a week.

In other words—it was well-written.

So what can Glee do to make every episode at least coherent and relevant to some semblance of season-long story arcs?

Cut back on songs. Yeah, y’all are raking it in on iTunes, but I know for a fact that I purchased far fewer tracks this year than last, because they just weren’t as memorable. Cranking out quality television is your job—not cranking out singles. Your musical performances have become your own version of product placement, and it’s as un-fun to watch Lea Michele belt a Streisand number with a blank face as it is to watch the Bones characters gush about their magical Toyota minivans.

Cut back on characters. Why did you keep Jessalyn Gilsig on the payroll this year? How did Sam contribute to the plot, aside from being the inspiration for “Trouty Mouth”? How much did you pay John Stamos and Kristin Chenoweth for their nonsensical stop-bys? The ensemble on this show has gotten out of control, especially with such an extensive stream of stunt-casted celebrities making guest appearances. Week-to-week, the show will be more manageable if you have fewer characters to service, and season-long story arcs will matter more if they’re about a core group of characters we care about. If you don’t have the guts to fire anyone, continue the trend of writing characters out of certain episodes. Although Emma’s absence was awkward when it stretched on for weeks at a time, one episode without Sue Sylvester mostly just feels like coming up for a breath. Consider taking similar breaks from characters like Tina, Finn, Kurt, and Lauren.

Cut back on episodes. This will never happen, but I would much rather see 13 well-crafted episodes of Glee than 22 mediocre ones. Shooting a shorter season would allow you to write episodes with more lead time, spend more time perfecting songs instead of relying on auto-tune, and creating thoughtful storylines that pay off by season’s end. (The 13-episode midseason order is one of the biggest reasons I can’t wait for NBC’s Smash.)

Overall, my message is cut back. Glee proved this season that it is woefully overextended, but unlike a frazzled Oprah who pulls herself together and runs her empire on three hours of sleep and a Moscow Mule, this show just doesn’t sparkle when it’s not done carefully. And an unsparkly Glee is just sad.

you're doing what now? // abc promotional photo

Patrick Dempsey announced to Italian Vanity Fair (great scoop, Italian Vanity Fair! Quotes are translated into English on TVLine) that he will be leaving Grey’s Anatomy after next season, his eighth. Dempsey’s departure could mark the beginning of the end for many more of the show’s core cast members, as the initial crew of Seattle Gracers all have contracts that expire next year. Ellen Pompeo, Meredith Grey herself, has expressed an interest in possibly leaving the show, as well, and plenty of insiders speculate that the show would shift focus toward (gag me) Lexie Grey in order to maintain its title with dignity.

While Shonda Rhimes doesn’t seem to be sweating the likelihood that the actors who made her a rich, rich lady could be deserting the series, this writer certainly is.

Let’s just put it this way: If Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo leave Grey’s Anatomy, there will be no reason for me to continue to watch, and I will move on with my life.

If Dempsey leaves and Pompeo stays? I will revolt.

It’s an outcome I refuse to even dignify with a speculative post.

Eh, what the hell.

The problem is this: they are married and they are (at least now) longtime Seattle residents. They have a home now, and a child. If Justin Chambers decides not to renew his contract, it’s easy to envision him picking up and moving to Africa to take care of sick babies. And while Izzie and Burke could just pick up their crappy little lives and move to … wherever they moved to … Derek and Meredith have ties. It would be very strange for them to decide to move their family to some other part of the country … but perhaps even stranger for them to continue to live in Seattle without working at Seattle Grace or  interacting with the rest of the cast.

It’s a strange little box that Rhimes will have to write her way out of.

More terrifying is the possibility that they will leave at different times. What happens to Zola in that situation? Would Rhimes have the audacity to split them up? To kill one of them? Or would she resort to Meredith talking about her husband but never actually interacting with him onscreen?

What I would propose in this situation is what one might call a “Reverse Doug and Carol.”

Maybe Derek ends up making a deal with the hospital and the trial review board to keep the study-fudging under wraps in exchange for moving away. He moves to Chicago ahead of Meredith, who has to stay for whatever reason. Finally, when Pompeo’s contract is up, Meredith CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE and flies there to be with Derek. She sends for tiny Zola the next day and, for the next nineteen seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, we hear stories about how happy they are. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

In all seriousness, Grey’s is likely facing a mass exodus of main characters next season. I’m not staunchly anti-Lexie, but I also have serious doubts that the character is interesting enough to center the series around. Even if you are enamored of the newer characters (Lexie, Arizona, Hunt, etc.), the originals still dominate a lot of the storytelling, and if Dempsey, Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Justin Chambers, Chandra Wilson, and James Pickens, Jr. all leave, the absence will be palpable. (Well, maybe not Pickens. I wouldn’t miss the Chief at all.)

i miss peter already. // fox promotional photo

So it’s old news that Seth Gabel is joining Fringe full-time next season, but it’s taken me this long to really digest that fact and do some serious thinking about the role that Lincoln Lee might play in season four.

See, my first thought was just pure giddiness. Lincoln is the treasure of Over There, a character who’s immensely enjoyable as an agent, as a boss, and as a stand-in father for precious nugget Henry Dunham. Getting to know him better is something that many Fringe fans had been hoping for, and I know my fingers were crossed for the possibility of the producers trying to get Seth Gabel under a bigger contract.

Once you start thinking about that in the context of Peter’s absence, however, things get a little more complicated.

I was reminded of this quote, which Gabel said on a press call around the time “Stowaway” aired, the first (and so far only) episode in which he appeared as this side’s Agent Lee:

“There’s a butterfly effect and you get to see who that person becomes a completely different person. In Lincoln’s case, Peter was in the world over here and became what Lincoln would have become… So Lincoln has been off doing something else and accidentally bumps into these people, which raises the question about fate and destiny. Are there certain people you’re karmically intertwined with?”

Delicious, right? I think it’s safe to assume that, now that they have access The Bridge, we should plan on seeing both the Blue and Red universions of everyone, including Lincoln. And considering that Peter is absent, I think it’s probably a safe guess that Lincoln will play a role on the Fringe team on this side. Will he still be the sweet nerd we met in “Stowaway”? Or will his involvement with Walter and Olivia have turned him into a version of himself more aligned to the burny-face alternate version we’ve grown to love?

The show has to take some caution here. Make the world too different without Peter and they risk disconnecting the audience from the characters we’ve followed for three years. (Who is the grown-up version of the little girl in the tulip field if she never found the Bishops?) Make the world too similar, though, and they do a complete disservice to the character of Peter and the many choices we have believed were made around him. I mean, the mere fact that Olivia and Walter are still standing there suggests that Agent Dunham was able to finagle Walter out of St. Clare’s without a next of kin, which upends the entire premise of the pilot. (Unless we’re to believe that without Peter, Elizabeth never killed herself and/or Walter never went crazy, so the whole “check Dad out of a mental hospital” was never an issue to begin with.) Anyway, that’s a conversation for another blog post or a doctoral dissertation.

Of course, what I want to know most is … will he be involved with Ourlivia? There are two sides of this argument.

The “Yes” Side. The show wants to demonstrate just how different things would be without Peter, and so they put Olivia in a relationship with another character, who we love, to play up the bizarre nature of the situation. It would make his absence all the more palpable, and his sudden extrication from their lives even more jarring. Joshua Jackson would love this, and would go around talking about how it’s obvious that Lincoln is Olivia’s soul mate. Also, they just want to screw with our minds in a meta way. (More on that later.)

The “No” Side. There’s an argument to be made that without Peter, Fauxlivia and her Lincoln would still be strictly friends, with no acknowledgement of deeper feelings. Considering that Lincoln only admitted his feelings for Liv while she was giving birth to little Henry–and that the pair seemed to grow closer once Henry was in the picture–it’s possible that even the alt versions will be extremely platonic in a Peterless world. Also, my shipper heart has to believe that Olivia’s going to be busy dealing with THIS EMPTY FEELING SHE CAN’T EXPLAIN and thus will not have time for boyfriends who actually exist.

What really gets me is the meta take on this whole thing. How is it that there are two versions of one character (Olivia), played by one actress, and yet it will BREAK MY HEART if either of those two versions ends up with the wrong guy? Lesser shows would never be able to sell me Fauxlivia/Lincoln, because I would never allow them to sell me ANNA TORV next to anyone but JOSHUA JACKSON. Yet they’ve done such a good job of separating Olivia and Fauxlivia that you really believe that they would be all wrong with the other’s boyfriend. I’m all for showing us the consequences of choices, and I support Lincoln playing a role in the It’s a Wonderful Life-type situation they’re setting up for season four–but hopefully it will underscore how important Peter is and always has been–as the man Ourlivia is destined to marry, and as the father of Fauxlivia’s son–rather than set up a dual-universe love quadrangle.

::Shudders::

oh, tammy 2. it's hard to even fathom your predecessor. // nbc promotional photo

I’ll go into detail about the season finale of Parks and Recreation later this week, but today I want to focus on one question that’s been on my mind since last Thursday. Nope, not “What’s gonna happen to Ben and Leslie??!?!” I am desperate to find out who’s going to play Tammy 1.

And I’ve got a few suggestions.

My ideal candidate for Tammy 1, and the human being who should act as the model for the character, is Elisabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of The View and known crazy. Ron would have been drawn to her conservative values and her sassy attitude, but would ultimately have run away in fear. She’d be a different kind of crazy than Tammy 2, but nonetheless terrifying.

Problem is, we all know that’s not actually possible. Even though Hasselbeck’s View co-host Sherri Shepherd moonlights as Tracy Jordan’s wife, Angie, on 30 Rock, a similar night job isn’t feasible here. For one, 30 Rock films in New York, as does The View; Parks and Recreation films in Los Angeles. Sherri Shepherd has a sense of humor and a comedy/acting background; Hasselbeck’s history is as a contestant on Survivor.

But using her as a guidepost, I started thinking about other women who could play a character like that. I also factored in that she should probably be very different from Tammy 2; ergo, as Tammy 2 wields her power over Ron in a very sexual way, I imagine that Tammy 1 is a frigid, withholding ice queen. Nicole Kidman comes to mind, but I assume she’s busy. Anyway, here are my real ideas.

Lisa Kudrow. Although she played the more-or-less carefree Phoebe for ten seasons on Friends, it’s her role as Valerie Cherish on The Comeback that proves she can play an edgy kind of crazy. You can imagine her going toe-to-toe with Ron on sexual and community matters. Plus, considering that Kudrow and Megan Mullally were Thursday night tentpoles on NBC for years, it’d be fun to see them together as mortal enemies.

Judy Greer. Epic Flail loves her. She deserves so much better than, like, the last three shows she’s been on. Her style and sense of humor is a perfect fit for Parks and Rec; I actually just IMDb’ed her to make sure she hadn’t already been on. (Don’t worry. She hasn’t.) She, too, can toe the line between sweet and insane, and I feel like she’d just be really fun to watch. To be honest, I think she should just be on this show all the time. For all I care, she can play Ann.

Connie Britton. She hasn’t done a sitcom since Spin City, and she’s gearing up to do Ryan Murphy’s F/X pilot because no one ever listens to me, but I wonder if she’d have time to pop over and guest on Parks and Rec. She definitely has the school principal attitude down, and you get the idea that she wouldn’t be nearly as patient with Ron Swanson as she is with Coach Taylor. Actually, you know what? Can we just have a crossover situation next season, where the Taylors move to Pawnee for a job coaching high school football? (That whole Braemore College thing didn’t quite work out, I guess.) And the football team is so poor that they have to play on a public field, which means LOTS of liaising with the Parks Department. You’re welcome, Michael Schur.

Hear me out on this one. Jennifer Garner. She takes those kids to school, like, every day, so I know she’s not busy. She could just pop over, film some scenes, and be home in time to take Violet to the petting zoo. Also, she and Rob Lowe co-starred in 2009’s The Invention of Lying, so obviously they are best friends, and all it will take is for him to call her up and she’ll agree to do it. (Right?) It’d be a pretty obvious act of stunt casting, but I would still approve. Acting-wise, she can totally handle this. She has the polite demeanor of a public school teacher, but at the end of the day, she will mess you up. Double points if they somehow work in a martial arts background. Quadruple points if they can reference this finale cliffhanger from Alias:

In addition to previously-announced guest stars Ricky Gervais and Will Arnett, The Office has added James Spader, Ray Romano, and Catherine Tate to the season finale’s guest cast. While Spader and Romano obviously have long and storied histories on American television, Tate’s work is far more under the radar, far less mainstream, and decidedly British.

Across the pond, Tate is known for her sketch comedy series, The Catherine Tate Show, as well as a season as Donna Noble, Ten’s companion on Doctor Who. (She’s also an accomplished stage actress, who’s appearing this summer in Much Ado About Nothing opposite David Tennant.)

I had a good squealfest last night about this news, because, despite not knowing the role they’ve written for Tate or the direction the show wants to go in with a replacement for Michael, I can’t help but feel like she’s completely perfect for this job.

Tate is a brilliant comedian. As Donna, Tate was by far the funniest companion, but she also brought so much heart to Doctor Who. Unlike universe-crossing love interest Rose Tyler or whiny crush-harboring Martha Jones, Donna was the Doctor’s best friend without benefits or expectations, which gave the character altogether different and wonderful reasons for following the Doctor through space and time. Over the course of season four, Tate provided some of Doctor Who’s wittiest, quickest, and most touching moments. (She also figured out the whole TARDIS coral thing, so that Rose and Ten can build their own TARDIS, for which I am eternally grateful.)

She’d be an unexpected choice—and by far the least known actor in the running for the job—but, creatively, I think she’d be an amazing hire. With actors like James Spader and Will Arnett, you can pretty much count on what they’re bringing to the table. The Office at its best is understated and casual, not adjectives often used to describe either of these actors. And as TVLine pointed out, Romano is committed to TNT’s Men of a Certain Age, so it’s highly doubtful he’s on board for more than May’s finale. (Ditto for Arnett, who’s signed on to a pilot, and Gervais, who’s never been seen as a serious candidate for a full-time gig stateside, no matter how great that could be.)

Ultimately, these candidates could all be brought in for interviews in the season finale, and then Sabre could just choose to promote from within. But with such a huge change underfoot, I’m increasingly feeling like this is a huge opportunity to shake things up and introduce a completely new character who will really change the dynamic of the show—without changing the tone. And for that reason, I’m gunning for Catherine Tate.

(Bonus points if you make bringing in your own team a condition of taking the job. I have no idea if the Children of Time can sell paper, but they CAN stop the Daleks from destroying reality and fly the earth home in time for supper.)