Latest from TV Line - Various Shows - 6th June 2011

House | That House’s sedan amazingly didn’t critically injure Cuddy in the season finale leaves the Fox drama’s writers with the matter of how to account for the boss lady’s absence when Season 8 picks up. “That’s what we’ve got to figure out,” series creator David Shore tells us, noting that Lisa Edelstein’s decision to not re-up caught everyone off guard. “It wasn’t planned that way — we wanted her back, but unfortunately it isn’t happening.” Another question mark looms over PPTH with regards to another original cast member, Jesse Spencer. Shore however remains confident that the Chase will be on come fall. “I don’t know if his deal’s done for sure, but yeah, he’ll be back.” (A show source confirms that as of Monday morning, Spencer’s deal “is not quite done yet.”)

Fringe | Count Anna Torv among those utterly perplexed as to what Peter’s “nonexistence” means not just for Fox series’ coming narrative, but specifically for Bolivia’s bambino. After all, given the jaw-dropping season-ending reveal, “That means that [the baby] doesn’t exist, right?” she wonders. “That’s the stuff that I’m left thinking about.” But while Torv tells me she is “super-interested in what’s going to happen to the baby,” the biggest question on her noggin concerns what the extraction of Peter from Olivia’s past means for her character. As the actress puts it, “Who is she, having never met Peter?”

Grey’s Anatomy | “Mexie” fans have been asking me what if anything else Shonda Rhimes had to say about the fate of their fave couple, outside of what I included in the season finale post mortem Q&A (where she said, “I really like Mark and Lexie together”). Well, I had posited to Rhimes that it must be tempting to have those two lunge at each other in any given scene, given the ridiculous chemistry shared by Chyler Leigh and Eric Dane. She countered, “Chyler has ridiculous chemistry with everybody” — and that is one reason why she shook up the root-for pair by pointing Lexie at Avery. Rhimes also reminds that while it’d be “very simple to have [Mark and Lexie] get together, their problems are large, and there is a big age difference –- and Lexie has some growing up to do.” Which, glass-half-full folks, isn’t a no!

Nikita | Speaking of palpably hot pairings, when I spoke with Maggie Q and Shane West at The CW’s upfronts soiree, I apprised them that series boss Craig Silverstein had told us that Nikita and Michael’s “happy ending” would be short-lived. Maggie at first had a bit of a giggle over the choice of words (“‘Happy ending’ and ‘short-lived’ go together, don’t they?”), then seconded the writers’ decision to “make some waves.” Said Q, “He wants to create friction for them and gut them, then make them happy, and then guy them again. That’s his plan.” West chimed in with a Silverstein sound bite of his own — “It’s very easy to bring two people together, and it’s very hard to pull them apart” — then conceded that “having these two characters together now is going to be difficult.” Maybe helping hiccup their hook-up will be the new male and female characters being brought on next seson, one for each of them? West had fun with that scooplet, joking to his leading lady: “I’ll take the guy, you take the girl.”

Leverage | Quite possibly the best thing to happen to TNT’s caper drama this season is the invasion of some slithery and armored ETs. “We’re going up [on Sunday nights] with Falling Skies, which is Spielberg,” Christian Kane told me with no small amount of enthusiasm, “so [Leverage EP] Dean Devlin has pulled out all the stops and packed in a lot more action, a lot more explosions.” All for a lot more money? “I can’t talk about the budget, but I can say that Eliot is partly responsible for it being bigger,” Kane said with a wink. While Leverage will take the occasional moment to explore its Hitter’s softer side (“Eliot has always been the Tin Man, the guy without a heart, but one is starring to grow inside him,” says Kane), viewers can also expect an answer to the lingering question: What is the infamous Worst Thing Eliot ever did, while working for Moreau? “Yeah,” says Kane, “You’re going to find that out.” Leverage launches its new run on June 26.

Source: TV Line