I could sit here and make puns based on Rumer Willis’ name, but I would be putting my life at serious risk – you don’t just poke fun at the name of Bruce Willis’ daughter and live to tell the tale. There isn’t a bone in my body that believes Bruce Willis isn’t fully capable of being as awesome as his movies portray him to be. That being said, I think I’ll just talk about Rumer Willis’ latest acting gig, which will put her in the midst of one of televisions most gasp-inducing dramatic hours. I hope she knows how to handle herself in the strange world of Pretty Little Liars.

According to THR, Willis will be playing Zoe, an organizer of a worldwide charity. She’ll be in one episode airing in July, but there is potential for her character to appear in subsequent episodes. Zoe is described as the type of girl who will change the world and keep her sense of humor at the same time. My only question is how Zoe fits into the bigger picture of Pretty Little Liars, which is in the midst of a big mystery surrounding “Red Coat”. Whoever he or she is, will Zoe have any connection to Red Coat? Or is she really just a charity organizer?

On top of dealing with its own intense storylines, Pretty Little Liars will be setting off a whole new world of drama in October. Ravenswood will be spinning off from Liars, which will introduce the new show, its setting and characters. Season 4 will be a big season for Liars, but some of the pressure has been eased off thanks to a fifth season already being ordered. Season 4 will premiere June 11 and will run for 24 episodes. What will happen through out the season? Your guess is as good as mine, but knowing this show, we’ll both be wrong.

If you’ve ever seen Scream 4, you might’ve seen Emma Roberts in a new light. She perfectly portrayed the kind of person who would be a normal teenager in one scene and a psychopath in another. The people behind American Horror Story: Coven must have watched her performance because she’s the latest to join the cast of the FX series’ third season. As with previous seasons, Roberts stands an equal chance of playing either a killer or a victim and it’s anyone’s guess which type of role she’ll land on. You could make assumptions based on her character’s description, but that won’t be enough to predict the insanity that is American Horror Story.

Roberts will be playing Madison, a self-involved party girl, reported TVLine. It sounds innocent enough, ignoring the vanity that will clearly be on display in this individual, but it wouldn’t be the first time a part-girl lost her mind and killed a couple people. But we can’t forget the witch theme of this season. I’m willing to bet Madison, as party-girls tend to do, will alienate someone on a lower rung of the social ladder. Little does she know that person is a practicing witch and will cast some kind of spell on her to make her life more difficult or simply end it all together. It would certainly serve her right. Of course, this is all just speculation on my part.

Interestingly, this part will put Roberts on screen with her real-life boyfriend, Evan Peters, who has been a part of American Horror Story since the first season. Roberts had a pilot ready for this fall on Fox, Delirium, but it wasn’t ordered to series. A good thing to, otherwise she might not have had the time to do this part. I’d much rather watch American Horror Story than a show based on the Delirium trilogy by Lauren Oliver.

I don’t know if I’m completely floored by this news or was subconsciously expecting it all along. Either way, Steven Spielberg is producing a live-action series set in the Halo video game universe. Part of my confusion is from my immense appreciation and distrust for Spielberg, who has directed some of my all time favorite films, but on the flipside has produced absolute crap like the Transformers movies and that one TV show that was supposed to be about Broadway musicals but was instead about anything and everything else at times. In a way I expect the best from Spielberg, but sometimes the things he producers are just disappointments.

“But this is Halo we’re talking about,” some of you will no doubt say, as if that were some universal recipe for a work of art. Yes, Halo, as a video game, is phenomenal. But you know what else? I love Transformers. I played with those toys for years and to this day I find myself reading the comic books, watching the cartoons and occasionally buying a toy or two. But just because the source material is good doesn’t mean the adaptation will be. And with Spielberg wearing his producer’s hat and not getting his hands dirty directing, he is – in my mind – putting this Halo series on the same level as the Transformers franchise. Some other person will come in and ruin what should have been great.

Look at me here, ranting away about Transformers and Spielberg as a producer and I haven’t even mentioned the finer details of this series. Variety tells us it will be exclusive to Xbox Live – I wouldn’t expect anything else – and will be produced with 343 Studios. The series comes from Nancy Tellem, the head of Xbox Entertainment Studios. This will be the second time Halo has had the live-action treatment, the first being the web series Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn.

I don’t know whether this new series will be any good. Part of me absolutely knows the potential is there, but I just can’t shake this feeling I have associated with Spielberg’s work as a producer. I’ve been hurt before, guys, and I’m still feeling the pain. I don’t want another Terra Nova.

If I were to tell you Homeland’s Carrie Mathison would be needing a lawyer in the upcoming third season of the hit Showtime series, would you be all that surprised? Considering how involved she was – emotionally and physically – with terrorist Nick Brody and the chaos surrounding the Season finale, I’m not surprised to hear she’s going to need some solid legal advice. But I’m still curious to know what charges have been brought against her, especially with so many of her detractors now so very dead. But before we can talk about Carrie’s legal situation, she needs that lawyer, which is why Homeland will be introducing us to Amy Morton this fall.

The former Boss star will be joining the Season 3 cast as Erin Kimball, Carrie’s CIA appointed attorney, says TVLine. She’ll be in involved in a recurring capacity and it should be fun to see how Carrie interacts with an attorney who really just has her best interests in mind. We should all know how stubborn Carrie is, not to mention how she gets when she doesn’t take her pills. But whom is she going to court against? Is this an internal thing at the CIA? Or is it someone outside the agency?

Also joining the Season 3 cast is Tracy Letts, recurring as Senator Andrew Lockhart. He’s a powerful, authoritative and commanding Committee Chairman. What his role will be is unclear, but with everything else going on, I could hardly care. Season 2 left this show in such a state of flux, what with the horrific terrorist attack laying waste to the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Now there’s a global manhunt for Brody and Carrie was the last person to see him. How long will it be before Saul realizes she aided a terrorist, even if he wasn’t the one responsible for the attack? One thing is for sure; Homeland will be a whole new show when it returns Sept. 29.

Picture your perfect world, a utopia if you will… See the technology at your fingertips, the neighbors who get along so peacefully, the clean air. Now, tell me what’s on television. Is there a new episode of AMC’s The Walking Dead coming to your wide screen every week for infinity? Yes, that’s my perfect world, and Walking Dead network execs say, hey, it could happen.

“We hope that zombies live forever,” said AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan on Wednesday at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference. “And we’ve just begun to find out what the post-apocalyptic world is like,” said Sapan.

That statement is very true. So, how many seasons can the show keep going? Theoretically, as cast members die, they can be replaced with new ones, right? This idea is a fangirl’s dream! Just like a zombie, the show could potentially have a very long life…or living death, whatever.

THR reported Sapan’s comments. “We’ll all suffer from some minor heartbreak when these shows come to a natural close,” he said. “Like some of the best shows in history, there will be a mantle that exists sort of virtually in people’s minds, and in the world maybe they’ll actually put a statue somewhere,” he said of both The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, two of the network’s hottest properties. “We will bring them to a close with the people who created them at the right time.”

But it is season 3 already and there’s still so much further it can go.

“So,” he said, “…we’ll be sitting here at the Barclays conference in 2022 discussing the fact that Walking Dead is not over … at that point, I think any one of the companies will have replaced the United States government and we’ll be in a complete free enterprise world in which there are no nations.”

Either way you slice it, the Barclays conference was a good sign for Walking Dead fans everywhere.

The rumors are true, Jack Bauer lives again. Any TV fan worth his or her salt has spotted headlines regarding the sudden return of hit Fox series, 24. The show’s star Kiefer Sutherland is primed and ready and today we learned, so is his former executive producer, David Fury.

This news highlights an evolutionary new wrinkle in TV history. Its called the limited series, and I’m seeing more and more of them in the news this year. Case in point, the Fox network has greenlighted the real-time drama, 24, as a limited series. It will continue Jack Bauer’s exploits, as first envisioned by longtime 24 showrunner Howard Gordon. Gordon is a household name now, by the by. He’s currently executive producer of Showtime’s Homeland.

As for David Fury, the ink is drying on his new two-year overall deal with 20th Century Fox Television, the studio behind the Emmy-winning drama, reported Deadline. This deal makes Fury the first writer to join the return limited series being called 24: Live Another Day.

Don’t worry, Howard Gordon, is back to lead the project.

What else is David Fury up to these days? He has an FX drama project called Tyrant, which just so happens to also be executive produced by Gordon.

“We are huge fans of David at this studio and are thrilled to welcome him back,” 20th TV chairman Dana Walden said. “Howard Gordon has a shortlist of writers whom he relies on enormously, and David is one of them. He was hugely important to 24 over the course of its run, and bringing him back for Live Another Day was quite frankly a no-brainer.”

Fury also worked behind the scenes on ABC’s Lost and received a writing nomination for the episode titled “Walkabout.” He has also been a co-executive producer on Fringe and executive producer for the coincidentally the 20th TV-produced Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Nice resume by any standards.

Imagine’s Brian Grazer is also returning as executive producer for this, the Fox network’s second event series. The first? That was M. Night Shyamalan’s Wayward Pines starring Matt Dillon, which we brought you the news on previously.

So, who’s stoked?

Cinemax just recruited a Marine sniper. Okay, so Prometheus actor Logan Marshall-Green isn’t really a soldier, but he’ll play one on TV. The network chose him to star in their new drama pilot titled Quarry.

The pilot is based upon a Max Allan Collins’ book, which follows a Marine sniper who returns home from Vietnam in 1973 to become disillusioned by the America he finds. It isn’t the one he left behind and it isn’t kind to him. “Combat-hardened and disillusioned, he’s recruited into a network of contract killers and corruption spanning the length of the Mississippi River,” reported THR. I told you it was a drama, and what a drama, but I see exciting thriller elements here as well.

If you are thinking that the title is weird, don’t. A quarry holds rocks and any member of the military can tell you there are times that war leaves an individual hollow, stoney and hard. And in case the metaphor bothers you, well Quarry is also our protagonist’s name. So there.

Graham Gordy and Michael D. Fuller are penning the pilot and executive producing with Steve Golin, David Kanter, Matt DeRoss, Keith Redmon, Collins, Ken Levin and John Hillcoat. Hillcoat will also direct the pilot.

Marshall-Green’s resume bullets include TV’s Dark Blue, Traveler and The O.C..

I’ll keep my eye on Quarry, which has enough story to become an addictive serial. Its a little bit Homeland and little bit Jason Bourne or Jack Reacher, with some time jumping, not unlike, say, Mad Men. Marshall-Green is a hunk and his character is quite the anti-hero.

Marshal-Green was also in the news for joining the Carson McCullers biopic, titled Lonely Hunter.

And Cinemax is on a roll, having renewed Banshee for a twisty second season and granting a third season to Strike Back.

It was a pretty spectacular day when news broke of Ang Lee’s committal to directing the Tyrant drama pilot for FX. The man had time and again proved himself to be such a visionary; any project would be lucky to have him working from behind the camera, adding his personal touch to everything in the production. I still am in awe of just how good Life of Pi is, how visually stunning it is – I couldn’t wait to see what he would do with the Tyrant pilot. But life has a funny way of pulling the rug out from under you when you least expect it. Despite all the excitement at his involvement, Lee had to pull out as director.

As disheartened as I was to hear this news from Deadline, the reasoning behind it makes complete sense and I hold no ill will toward Lee. He’s not a young director and he spent four years of his life pulling Life of Pi together and has been keeping busy as a juror at the Cannes Film Festival. So when he came out and said he couldn’t direct Tyrants out of sheer exhaustion, I understood immediately. When you put so much of yourself into a project, big or small, you need a chance to recuperate.

There is a silver lining in this: Lee loved the Tyrant script, saying it was a brilliant idea and was genuinely excited to be directing the pilot. With his praise, some other director will no doubt want to take his place. Great! We need more big name directors involved with television shows. It gives them a chance to do something a little different.

Tyrant tells the story of an unassuming American family who are drawn into the workings of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation. The pilot hasn’t even been filmed yet and already the project is expected to go to series.

Sometimes good stories go bad. Especially in the world of science fiction, creative types must constantly keep their ideas fresh and believable before staleness sets in. Well, the great minds behind TNT’s Falling Skies are watching their backs. In the news today, they invite Carol Barbee aboard the team to keep bringing you the best in alien smashing drama.

We had news about Falling Skies yesterday when we delivered your first look at the newest season 3 teaser promo. The video was squirm inducing to be sure. That’s what fans have come to love about the show, though. Much like AMC’s The Walking Dead, it managed to balance gore, action, and very human drama. Hey, here’s another parallel, there will be a post-apocalypse baby.

The Steven Spielberg production has a new showrunner in David Eick and his first order of business has seemed to be taking action to keep the staff behind the scenes really strong. One such effort culminated in the hiring of veteran showrunner Carol Barbee to serve as a consulting producer, reported Deadline.

Barbee previously worked with Eick on Fox’s Touch. Over there she was an executive producer and he was a consulting producer.

The ten-episode long third season of Falling Skies will start things off this summer with a two-hour premiere on June 9. The two episodes merged into that two-hour sci-fi fest are titled “On Thin Ice” and “Collateral Damage”. Falling Skies is hailed as TNT’s #1 scripted series, especially among young people. Do you have what it takes to join the resistance?

Falling Skies stars Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Drew Roy, Connor Jessup, Colin Cunningham, Maxim Knight as Matt Mason, Seychelle Gabriel, Mpho Koaho and Will Patton, with Robert Sean Leonard as Dr. Roger Kadar and Gloria Reuben as Marina Perlata.

The finale of season two introduced a brand new horror, a new race of alien invaders. Oh yes, and Tom discovered Anne’s pregnancy. That’s were the bouncing bundle comes from. Hope she learns to handle a weapon early on, eh?

If you aren’t familiar with the past five years of True Blood then you might be missing out on something special. This show has been a gathering place for all who are fans of vampires, werewolves and eroticism for years now and it promises to continue to be such a thing for many more. Season 6 will be airing on HBO this summer, premiering June 16, but there’s still plenty of time to catch up on the previous seasons. In fact, Season 5 was just released for purchase on DVD and Blu-Ray for your home entertainment and we have a small sneak peek at one of the special features that comes with the set.

If you aren’t caught up, you can still watch the quick clip – it doesn’t spoil anything from the season, only going into a small amount of detail on how the design of one of the sets was settled upon. Alan Ball introduces production designeer Suziki Ingerslev who was given the task of designing the Vampire Authority headquarters. She was told by ball to create something both ancient and contemporary – an interesting challenge and one Ingerslev was up for. At the time, she relates, she was in Istanbul and visited the Sunken Palace, which eventually served as a big inspiration for the Authority HQ. You can see the pillars of the Sunken Palace were integrated into the set, giving it this weird sense of being thousands of years old, yet the walls tell the story of a younger building. It’s a job well done.

It’s short, but it is only a teaser after all. If you want to see more of this and other bonus features, you’ll have to pick up True Blood Season 5. Rewatch it and the other seasons and you’ll be primed for the new season. I would start now if you can, time is running out.

I love it when a plan comes together. One day after casting  Mia Maestro as the lead for an intense little FX network pilot called The Strain, now the masters behind the vampire thriller, Guillermo del Toro and Carlton Cuse, select two more actors, choosing Titanic‘s Jonathan Hyde and Inglourious Basterds‘ Richard Sammel.

Who is who? Well, Hyde, who acted the part of Ismay in James Cameron’s massive and enduring blockbuster, Titanic, has been cast in the series regular role of Eldritch Palmer. Palmer is described as an elderly gentleman, the THR report calls “the third-richest man in the world” and “an invalid since childhood”. Where’s the kicker? Brace yourself, because here it comes. The goal our rich friend will stop at nothing to obtain is immortality.

Yikes! Right about now I’m remembering Cronos, Del Toro’s brilliant 1993 vampire film, which is perhaps one of the most original ever to haunt the genre. In it, a very wealthy, inferm and dying businessman, Dieter de la Guardia, acted by Claudio Brook, also wants to live forever. He sets his lackey nephew, Angel, acted wonderfully by Ron Perlman, to steal an ancient and mysterious artifact that can make him into a vampire.

All I can say is that if Cronos is any example, than Del Toro will definitely rock the campire genre yet again, with this project he hopes will become a full series.

Sammel, our second actor of the day, will play Thomas Eichorst. That part is one we will know more about when the role of Abraham Setrakian is cast. They two are inter-related.

Also inter-related are Maestro’s role as female lead and the male lead role, to be acted by Corey Stoll. Stoll was so dynamic in the Netflix original series, House of Cards, that I think he has made a lifetime fan of me. Go Stoll, go. I think this could be a good vehicle for him and he should have nice chemistry with Maestro. I hope.

Gluten intolerance, it turns out, is no laughing matter. In a headline you’d expect more from an episode of South Park, or some such other source of non-political correctness, the Disney’s Channel offering, Jessie, gets one of its episodes pulled from the airwaves thanks to some ill humored pokes at the real life medical problem. An apology has also been issued.

“To our viewers, we received your feedback about tonight’s Jessie episode which some of you accessed early on Video-on-Demand. We are removing this particular episode from our regular programming schedule and will re-evaluate its references to gluten restrictions in the character’s diet. Please accept our apologies for the upset this episode caused you and your family. We value your feedback and thank you for watching Disney Channel.”

The statement appeared on the Disney Channel’s official Facebook page and read to me as very contrite. I guess even a comedy need to protect children with even what can be construed as a miniscule handicap or affliction from hardship or teasing or negative self image.

The episode was titled “Quitting Cold Koala,” and would have premiered on May 17th if it had not been pulled. In this installment of the family friendly sitcom, Debby Ryan’s title character, a nanny, makes jokes about her sometime archenemy’s intolerance for gluten. These, apparently, were very mean-spirited. At one point pancakes are thrown at the actor, inducing the scream, “Gluten!” Which, I’ll admit, I would have found comical. Mind you, J.J. Totah, the actor portraying a gluten intolerant, is only about 9 years old.

What got Disney’s attention the most? It may have been the petition posted on Change.org, which asked the network to “stop using gluten-intolerance as an excuse to bully children with any disease, disorder or disability.” Oh my.

Did Disney do the right thing? You tell us.

The series is in its second season now.

Love him or hate him – and some people really can’t stand him – Ricky Gervais is not going anywhere and continues to put together some of the best comedies across the pond. I think we all remember how successful the original UK version of The Office was. And now Gervais is continuing his success in comedy with his latest series, which he writes, directs, executive produces and stars in – Derek. And as with The Office, we can’t wait to get it over to this side of the ocean and thankfully that day is coming soon and it won’t be because of a shoddy remake with American actors.

Because Netflix is quickly becoming the place to watch the latest and greatest TV series, it makes perfect sense Gervais would send his new show to the streaming service. While Derek has already premiered in the UK on Channel 4, it won’t be up on Netflix until September 12 at 12:01 AM PT. But the focus isn’t just on the U.S. The series will, according to Deadline, head to the international Netflix territories which include Canada, Ireland, Latin America, Brazil and the Nordics. Basically anybody with Netflix will be able to sit down and enjoy all seven 30-minutes episodes the second they premiere. The best part is a second season has already been ordered, guaranteeing more of this wonderful comedy.

Gervais plays the titular Derek, a naïve man who works in a nursing home. Fellow co-stars David Earl, Karl Pilkington and Kerry Godliman all play Derek’s co-workers. The series has found some controversy due to the perception of cruelty toward mentally disabled people, though Gervais has said Derek was meant to be a satire of prejudice against the disabled. Really, Derek is just about a nice guy trying to do nice things and you can’t fault Gervais for creating such a character, even if others on the show can be cruel.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim trailer is seriously sweet, but don’t call him a one trick pony. The man is a ground breaker in science fiction and horror, but have you heard about his upcoming vampire drama? Actress Mia Maestro knows all about it. He chose her for the lead role in The Strain.

Your first order of business is to forget about The Andromeda Strain, because this is something completely different. The Strain is an adaptation of del Toro’s vampire novel trilogy, which official has a pilot order. Del Toro has his fingers crossed that this will become a 13-episode series pickup.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn actress Mia Maestro will star in the pilot opposite former House of Cards actor Corey Stoll. The FX drama project is already quite high profile, explained the recent Deadline article.

The thriller tells the story of Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, to be acted by Stoll. He’s the head of the Centers for Disease Control Canary Team in New York City. When he’s assigned to investigate a mysterious viral outbreak it turns out to be an “ancient and evil strain of vampirism.”

Maestro’s character is Dr. Nora Martinez. As she teams with Ephraim to combat the outbreak. they wind up in a more serious and more romantic relationship. He’s the crazy twist. A “brilliant biochemist, Martinez cares more about people than the diseases that threaten them, but she will soon be forced to embrace a new identity as a ruthless warrior.” Warrior eh? As in vampire or vampire slayer?

Del Toro will direct the pilot from the script, which he co-wrote with Chuck Hogan, who incidentally, co-authored the original books with del Toro. Carlton Cuse will serve as a co-executive producesr alongside del Toro and will also be showrunner.

Maestro’s last television series was Alias.

MTV has finally released the full trailer for Teen Wolf season 3 and you’ll have a howling good time if you give the video a little watch now. The series returns, more thrilling than ever, beginning June 3rd.

The last time the show delivered video, it came in the form of a rather dramatic teaser. In that promo, showrunners show Tyler Posey’s Scott McCall drowning as a metaphor for the very deep, dark waters he’s traversing in his new life a werewolf.

Here’s what we already know about the upcoming summer season. Season 3 will introduce the brand spanking new characters, acted by Charlie Carver, Max Carver, Adelaide Kaine and Felisha Terrell. The Carvers are real life brothers whose acting credits include Desperate Housewives. The guys will be playing two of our very scary Alpha pack members. Remember, the end of season 2 introduced this dominant pack, made up entirely of Alphas.

But what could be worse? Will be that the Alpha pack wants to kill Tyler or that they want to recruit him? Either way, our favorite lacrosse player is in for a heck of a time. And what happens if who the Alphas really target is wants Tyler Hoechlin’s Derek? Dun dun dun. I could argue, who wouldn’t want Derek?

Did you forget to DVR some of last season’s episodes? Naughty, naughty! Well, here’s one solution. MTV has plans to release an hour-long recap special, to air on May 27. Not only will the hour catch you up on the goings on from season 2, but fresh new interviews from the cast will be included, along with a special sneak peek at the fun in store during the new season.

The only other morsel we have to bit down on is that showrunner Jeff Davis has stated he wants to beef up the horror factor for season 3, so look out world, because here it comes.

Teen Wolf returns to MTV on June 3 at 10 p.m. ET.

At first blush, I’d definitely stand up high upon a soap box and tell the world that we really don’t need another reality singing competition. Isn’t viewership way down on the big ones anyway? What can anybody do to make vocal contests more interesting? Add John Barrowman? Say what!? Now you’ve got my attention Sing Your Face Off.

Is it April Fool’s Day? Sing Your Face Off can’t be a real series title. And yet,  EW confirms that ABC has signed judges, cast and a host for the new competition series.

Before you ask me if Barrowman, star Torchwood and Arrow can sing, let me explain something, Barrowman has signed on to host the series. The guy is so talented that I wouldn’t be surprised if he could sing anyway.

He’s the other twist (if you consider Barrowman hosting an American reality show a twist). Like Dancing with the Stars, the new show pits five celebrity contestants against each other as each takes on the identity of an iconic music performer every week.

The judges are former Saturday Night Live cast member Darrell Hammond and pop singer Debbie Gibson. Sounds like a winning combination to me.

Sing Your Face Off has already chosen the show’s first contestants. Ex-Skid Row frontman and heavy metal singer Sebastian Bach, comedian Jon Lovitz, Toronto Raptors player Landry Fields, teenage Disney Channel actress and singer China Anne McClain and former soap star Lisa Rinna will all compete. Now I have to ask…can Jon Lovitz sing? I guess I’ll find out soon. I suppose singing isn’t the only important skill. If our contestants are impersonating an icon, some acting and costume will also come to play.

Barrowman is qualified to host in case you were wondering. He has hosted been presenter for man unscripted shows in the UK.

The six-episode Sing Your Face Off series is produced by Endemol USA with Georgie Hurford-Jones of America’s Got Talent.

Growing a channel on YouTube is still a new endeavor, but for some it seems to be proving quite fruitful. Felicia day started her channel, Geek & Sundry, last spring and to this day it continues to grow. Not only has it renewed two of its programs for second seasons – Tabletop and Space Janitors – but it’s been adding new programs as well. The YouTube channeling is looking to continue its expansion by launching its own talent search with the Geek & Sundry Vlogs Channel. In a nutshell, it’s like American Idol but with vloggers. And that’s a very small nutshell, so don’t expect it to be anything so typical.

The Multi-Channel Network was launched Monday, May 20, of which the Vlogs Channel is a part. According to THR, Day and producer Jenni Powell will act as mentors to 20 vloggers, with each vlogger getting support from Geek & Sundry and a per-video stipend. When I said this was like American Idol for vloggers, I didn’t mean it to be a reality show with a winner, but as a platform for exposing talented individuals who might not otherwise be noticed. Day says it best herself: “My hope is to create a platform and home for up-and-coming vloggers who have a chance to participate, learn and develop with us, while continuing to grow Geek & Sundry by authentically connecting with and serving our community.”

Whereas reality shows will systematically whittle down its numbers until only the very best remain, it sounds like the Vlogs Channel is giving each vlogger its full support, leaving nobody behind. So long as these vloggers have the drive to do what they supposedly love, then they should all be able to build themselves into admirable YouTube personalities.

Submissions for the Vlogs Channel also opened on Monday, with anyone who thinks they have something worth saying about literally anything invited to submit an entry vlog. Who knows, you might find others who share your enthusiasms and will gladly watch you talk about whatever it is you geek out over.

Just when it seemed like Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars and everything that came with it meant the end of anything awesome that was on already here, a ray of sunshine pierced through the dark clouds. While the days of The Clone Wars are over, a new era is upon us. A new series is coming and it promises to take us back to a different time when Star Wars was less about Jedi and more about a growing empire and the small numbers who opposed it. Disney is introducing the next step in its plans for this universe: Star Wars Rebels.

The one-hour animated pilot is in production at Lucasfilm, says Entertainment Weekly, and will premiere in Fall 2014 on the Disney Channel, with the proper ongoing series moving to Disney XD. The series will find itself exploring the years in between Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope, which in total is 19 years of untapped story potential. As for what kind of stories Rebels will tell is anyone’s guess at this point, but we will likely see the start of the rebellion against Palpatine’s empire and the rise of Darth Vadar as a threat known throughout the galaxy. Perhaps we’ll even see some traces of other popular Star Wars characters still alive in this time period, namely Han Solo and Boba Fett.

Star Wars Rebels is being executive produced by a group with great track records. Dave Filoni was a big part of making The Clone Wars such a great series and will hopefully bring the same touch to Rebels. Simon Kinberg worked on X-Men: First Class and the new Sherlock Holmes film franchise, giving him experience in making old properties seem fresh. Finally, Greg Weismam has worked on a number of wonderful animated series, including Young Justice and The Spectacular Spider-Man. I’m just glad we’re finally moving away from stories set within the prequel trilogy.

How I Met Your Mother has been full of nothing but the most world-shattering, game-changing announcements since it’s eighth season ended with the first ever look at the mother, now played by Cristin Milioti. For those of you that were worried Season 9 would only make use of Milioti at the end of the series, putting us right back into the dark after finally shedding some light on us, you have no need to fear the disappearance of the mother. Not only will Milioti continue playing the mother through out Season 9, but also she will be made a series regular for entirety of the season.

Four the last eight years, How I Met Your Mother has only had five regulars – Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris – and really didn’t need anymore. But the times, they are a changing. TVLine reported Milioti would be made a regular and I’m super okay with it. If we’re going to be happy with who Ted ends up marrying, we need to get to know her a bit first. I don’t think the series could have ended with Ted meeting the mother and we knew next to nothing about her.

But Milioti’s series regular position wasn’t the only announcement to completely change the course of HIMYM’s future. It was revealed she would, through out Season 9, meet all the other main characters before she meets Ted. Making things even trickier, Season 9 entirely take place during Robin and Barney’s wedding weekend. That doesn’t mean we won’t get any of HIMYM’s classic flashbacks and flashforwards – in fact, I’m counting on them to make this work. Setting the whole season during a single weekend is pretty daring, but I’m confident Carter Bays and Craig Thomas knew what they were doing when they decided to go down this route.

And they better explain where that pineapple came from.

The latest trailer for Dexter’s eighth and final season takes us deeper into Deb’s breakdown than we’ve ever gone before and it’s not a pretty sight. Up to this point, we knew Deb regretted her last minute decision to save Dexter’s life and murder LaGuerta instead and could possibly picked up a drinking problem, but that was only scratching the surface of all that’s wrong with her life now. She’s got so many drugs in her system – we see her doing a line of something – it’s hard to keep track of all the pill bottles. And the drinking is still present, as we see her get into an accident, confirmed to be the results of driving under the influence.

It’s amazing how quickly Deb’s life has turned to shit and yet Dexter continues living without empathy for what he’s done to his sister. Deb’s emotions, however they may have crippled her, make her so much more dangerous to Dexter than any of his previous victims. Because she’s capable of feeling guilty she’s likely to fess up to what she did. In fact, we see her approach Quinn, mumbling about wanting to make an official statement. About what, I wonder? Is she ratting on Dexter, or just turning herself in?

On top of Deb, Dexter will have his hands full with yet another killer on the loose. This new case will lead to the introduction of Dr. Evelyn Vogel, a neuro-psychiatrist who knows all about psychopaths. Will she see Dexter for what he is? The trailer seems to suggest some suspicion with a scene where she asks Dex about the Bay Harbor Butcher. And later on, Dexter has her up against a wall rather threateningly. This season is going to be quite a wild ride as we wait to see if Dexter will finally have his true nature exposed to Miami Metro. My fingers are crossed, hoping that he is.

Today’s brand new Falling Skies promo is not for the faint of heart nor weak of stomach. In all honesty, it’s pretty gross. Still, the video advertising the science fiction series’ upcoming 3rd season is designed to prove to fans whether or not they would be up to the task of joining the resistance. It’s a test. I only looked away once, so I guess that gives me a 95% chance of survival. I’ll take those odds.

If you pass the test, join in on season 3 of Falling Skies, premiering June 9 at 9 p.m. on TNT. When the show returns, seven months have passed since we last witnessed the survivors in Charleston facing the new alien, who by the way, will be acted by Doug Jones. Also Moon Bloodgood’s Anne is pregnant with hero Tom’s child and about ready to pop. Noah Wyle is Tom. And unfortunately the new president in Charleston, Hal, acted by Drew Roy has the dreaded eye bug. Oye!

The alien invasion series was created by Robert Rodat and produced by Steven Spielberg. It’s a production of DreamWorks Television. Other stars include Connor Jessup, Colin Cunningham, Maxim Knight, Sarah Carter, Mpho Koaho, Seychelle Gabriel, Will Patton and Jessy Schram.

Viewership has dropped a bit since the show’s first season. The series premier of Falling Skies pulled in 5.91 viewers, but the second season averaged about 3.64 million.

Might videos like this one bring back an up-tick in viewers? There’s a video game challenge aspect almost to the video. Fans of sci-fi staples like Alien and the X-Files might also be lured in. There are people who dig those queasy inducing moments in their television.

The BBC knows a good thing when they see it. Case in point, the wildly popular sci-fi series, Doctor Who has been officially renewed to come on back for an exciting 8th season. This isn’t the only news wrapped up in the long running series’ bag of goodies either. Buzz has also reached a fever pitch regarding the 50th Anniversary Special.

The extravaganza celebrating 50 years of TARDIS is coming November 23rd to the BBC. It’s written by Steven Moffat and will feature Matt Smith, David Tennant, John Hurt, Jenna-Louise Coleman and Billie Piper among others. We reported on John Barrowman’s little 50th Anniversary Special snub just recently. Hey, things like that do happen. Lucky fans did catch Barrowman in a very cool Scandal guest appearance on ABC. He did a terrific job as a rival fixer to our lead, Olivia Pope. Obviously, showrunner Shonda Rimes is just as big a geek as the rest of us.

On a brighter note, fan favorites, the Cybermen are said to feature in the special, along with Zygons and Daleks.

As for the positive news about season 8, the announcement came Saturday.

Doctor Who executive producer Steven Moffat is “already plotting a brand new run of adventures for the Doctor.” Brian Minchin will join Moffat as co-executive producer.

Matt Smith, who has played the Doctor since 2010, and is the series 11th Doctor plans to return for season eight, firmly placing series 5, 6, 7, and 8 on his resume.

The penultimate episode of season 7 was hugely exciting. Titled “Nightmare in Silver,” it was written by the one and only Neil Gaiman and, yes, was full of Cybermen. The season finale, titled “The Name of the Doctor” aired May 18th.

As usual, that staple in the Doctor Who world, a Christmas special, is also planned for the end of this year.

So, X-Factor fans, LA Reid and Britney Spears are out. Who will replace them to be the next season’s talent judges? How about Kelly Rowland and Paulina Rubio?

Like X-Factor programs around the world, the reality series is huge singing in which performers vie to win a $5 million dollar recording contract with Simon Cowell’s record label Syco Music. On the U.S. series, Cowell and Demi Lovato will remain on the judging panel as LA Reid and Britney Spears make their exit after finishing up season 2.

Season 3 begins this September and the fall will be here before you know it. We need new judges! Will Kelly Rowland and Paulina Rubio join the likes of Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger, who were season one judges? Deadline reports these two ladies are in negotiations now.

Rowland is a former Destiny’s Child singer. Rowland is from the South, she helped the group earn four Grammy Awards and two Billboard Music Awards, and she has the acting bug, so television should be fun for her. She has appeared in The Hughleys sitcom, in Freddy vs. Jason on the big screen, as well as in Think Like a Man. She’s no stranger to reality shows either, having cut her teeth on Bravo’s reality competition series The Fashion Show with Isaac Mizrahi, and, get this, in 2011, she was a judge on the eighth series of UK version of The X Factor. She’s uniquely qualified.

Mexican singer and actress Paulina Rubio was also a coach on the second season of La Voz- México. She also coached on Telemundo’s children’s singing competition show La Voz Kids, which will air this spring.

X Factor U.S. is geared up to film auditions in Charleston, SC, this Tuesday and Wednesday. Yep, time is of the essence! Cowell tweeted that his judges will be revealed Monday. X Factor‘s third season hits this fall only on Fox.

Warehouse 13 is a prime example of how cruel the world is, but also how sweet it can be. When it first premiered in 2009, it pulled in respectable numbers for a Syfy series. Flash forward to the present, when Warehouse 13 is in the middle of airing its fourth season, and its numbers are half of what they used to be. Why am I bringing this up? Well, because Warehouse 13 was canceled and I’m trying to find justification for giving the axe to a series that, for all intents and purposes, was doing great creatively. I keep coming back to the dwindling viewer count. But I did say this was an example of cruelty and sweetness – there’s a silver lining.

Not only is Warehouse 13 finishing off its current season, but it was also renewed for a fifth and final season. Deadline reported Season 5 would definitely be the last and only run for six episodes, enough for the writers to wrap up the whatever dangling plot threads they might have at the conclusion of Season 4. It’s also too few a number of episodes for low ratings to really matter. If you don’t buy that the ratings are what led to Warehouse 13’s death, may I present to you an alternate theory I’ve been working on?

A couple of weeks ago, I’m pretty sure I stumbled upon a Syfy conspiracy to make former Eureka star Colin Ferguson the mascot – of sorts – for the network. He would slowly, over time, take over the lead roles on all the shows currently on the schedule – Haven seems like it will be the first victim in this mass rebranding. Perhaps Warehouse 13 was an obstacle that needed to be removed in order for Ferguson’s ascension to continue. It’s possible fans of the series would never buy Ferguson coming out of nowhere of making him the star, so Syfy had to get rid of the show entirely and will replace it with something already starring Ferguson from the very beginning. It’s complicated, but it would work.

Ever since I was a tiny, starry-eyed little sprocket, I’ve been more than a little obsessed with Australia.  I think it probably started the first time I ever watched “Dot & the Kangaroo”.

“Dot & the Kangaroo” is actually kind of a trippy little movie.  The part that I remembered the most strongly was actually the part about the Bunyip, a monster that terrorizes just about everyone.  Weirdly, however, I remembered the word bunyip without remembering where the heck I had actually heard it.  For a long time, I had just assumed that I must have made it up, maybe because of a bad, long repressed experience with turnips or something, except I have never actually hated that particular tuber.  They can be quite delicious.

When I was a little kid, a couple of family members had VCRs and they used to have my cousins and me over for slumber parties that included watching movies.  Junk food was usually involved, especially ice cream and Doritos, and we’d get out sleeping bags and pillows and sprawl over couches, the floor, and chairs to watch avidly.  “Dot & the Kangaroo” was one of the movies that got rented at some point.  It was the first time that I had seen a platypus.

That was something that I wouldn’t realize until much later.  About five years ago, give or take, I was raiding a dollar DVD bin at a local store and finding a very few odds and ends that I wasn’t very excited about.  Then, from somewhere towards the bottom, I hauled up the case for “Dot & the Kangaroo.”  I stared at it a little bit stupidly trying to figure out why this movie seemed so familiar.  I read the back of it and a few synapses fired, indicating that, yes, at some point in my childhood I had in fact seen that film.  I remembered nothing about it. So, I decided to go ahead and buy the thing.  It was only a dollar and it had to be better than the dollar-bin anime that I’d gotten myself some weeks previously.

“Dot & the Kangaroo” is about a little girl who gets lost in the Outback one day.  She meets a red kangaroo that helps her to find her way home.  Along the way, they encounter other animals, including a pair of platypi.  I have to say, I rather like the song that the platypi sing, even now. It’s silly and has some great word play in the lyrics and has an embarrassing tendency to stick in the head.  It’s also really difficult to explain when someone who’s never seen that movie asks what you’re singing under your breath.   It’s not overly preachy, which it could easily have been, although, I’d caution for anyone who’s curious and may have starry-eyed little sprockets of their own that the Bunyip is actually pretty scary for the sensitive set.  I did remember being scared the first time I saw it, but wanting to see more of the movie because I wanted to know if Dot got home to her family safely.  I don’t remember  actually having nightmares about the thing, but I might have.

As a kid, my fascination was mostly fueled cinematically.  I saw movies like “The Man from Snowy River” which still, to this day, has one of the most amazing horseback riding scenes I have ever watched.  I have people who don’t understand what I’m saying about someone being able to “sit a horse” watch that movie to demonstrate it.  We watched “Phar Lap”, which is a horse racing movie that will break your heart as much as it will inspire and I wish I could get it on DVD.  “Crocodile Dundee” and “Quigley Down Under” were later added to the roster.

Time marched on and I continued to grow up, and I discovered the expansive vistas of science-fiction and fantasy.  I read collections of Australian science-fiction and fantasy when I could get my hands on them and was delighted to find that some of my favorite writers were Australians as well. One of my favorite anthology editors is Jack Dann, who is not a native Australian, but has lived there for quite some time. I’d highly recommend any of the anthologies that he has edited with Gardner Dozois if you can find them.  I wasn’t actually actively seeking them out, I was mostly stumbling on these works in the haphazard manner that can only happen when you’re a starry-eyed little sprocket spending whatever money you’ve gotten as gifts or from mowing lawns at used book stores and the closest one with any kind of decent sci-fi selection is two hours away. My favorite book from that time is still Dreaming Down-Under, which is edited by Jack Dann and made me think that Australia must be the most incredible fantasy-land for writers to exist on this planet.

As a teenager, I found out about Yahoo Serious, who also did more than his fair share to introduce me to a smorgasboard of Australian musicians. Seriously, the soundtracks for his movies are fantastic, and if I could get my grubby little nerd paws on all of them, I’d have them. Unlike Lisa Simpson, the idea of a Yahoo Serious Film Festival actually makes me a very happy starry-eyed sprocket indeed.  One was, in point of fact, staged for me by friends when I was horribly stressed out and they wanted to help me cheer up.  It worked exactly as planned.

One might think that, eventually, I’d get tired of learning about Australia’s unique flora and fauna.  Or, maybe, that I might get tired of looking at Australian movies or music.  That really didn’t happen, though.  Then, a magical thing happened to me.  I went to college. Surely, where my native countrymen had failed in their attempts to distract me from my obsession with the island continent, science would do the trick.  I’m happy to say that it, in fact, did not.

I majored in Geology, and, while Australia’s dinosaur fossil record is not as well-represented as other parts of the globe (seriously, fossils are the reasons that I want to go to the Gobi desert and to Patagonia), there are other, more enticing geological features that I would love to see first hand.  Firstly, Australia has the oldest rocks on Earth.  They’re pieces of zircon crystal that are more than four billion years old.  It’s the closest we can get, geologically, to the origins of our planet without leaving it. The geek in me gets excited about that on a scale that I can only describe as exponential.

There are also four billion year-old greenstone formations known as greenstone belts.  They’re metamorphic rocks, which means they’ve been subjected to intense heat and pressure that has deformed them so much that they’ve become a categorically different type of lithic material.  While I’m more of the sedimentary rock kind of geek girl, I still think that those particular formations are something to get excited about.  They are, after all, the bedrock that provided a substrate for life to get its footing.  When you’re talking about finding your roots and going back to where it began, then you’d be awfully hard-pressed to find  something that goes back farther.  I have dreams about how cool it would be to go and see those rocks and be able to touch them, so that I could feel that connection to both the Earth itself and all of nature.  Yeah, I admit, I get kind of oddly mystical about the whole thing.

Then, there are the stromatolites.  Stromatolites are basically bacteria that pull small particles out of their environment and cement them together to form structures that are visible to the naked eye.  The most famous stromatolites are the ones that are found in Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve in Shark’s Bay, Western Australia.  They aren’t particularly beautiful organisms.  They do, however, photosynthesize and they release oxygen into the atmosphere.  Their ancient ancestors, which were much more prevalent and have left evidence all over the fossil record, are the reason that the atmosphere started gaining enough oxygen to become breathable in the first place. They’re pretty important little critters.  I’ve seen their fossilized ancestors.  I’d love to see the real ones. So, to say that I’m geologically motivated to see Australia is more than a little bit of an understatement.

It’s the stromatolites that I have to thank for the latest TV series that I’m going to have to buy on DVD.  You might wonder how that happens. They’re bacteria, after all, it’s not like the little beggars can pick up a telephone and tell me that they’re going to be featured on a show any time soon.  However, enough of my friends and family had heard me talk about them that when PBS’s “Nova” started airing “Australia’s First Four Billion Years”, I got no less than six calls from various people letting me know that those “bacterial thingies” that I “want to go see in Australia” were on.  This is not to say that I didn’t appreciate the calls. I did.

So, I started watching “Australia’s First Four Billion Years.”  Richard Smith, an Australian geologist, hosts the four-part series. The show is set up to show the whole geological history of Australia as a huge road trip.  Rather than traveling in kilometers or miles, everyone is traveling in millions of years.  Each distance is given as the actual distance and as a time unit (even at a speed of x number of millions of years, it will take a couple of days to get to significant points).  I found it to be both an effective and relatable way to show the scope of geological time. There’s a whole lot of time where there’s virtually nothing, just rocks, more rocks, and a few struggling single-celled organisms trying to get food and procreate. Then, it takes an even longer expanse of time to get to a point where that life becomes visible to the naked eye.

The first episode is, naturally, the formation of the planet and a chronicle of those tiny organisms.  It may seem like there would be a whole lot of really boring stuff to cover and it would get old quickly.  Smith explains any technical terms that he uses effectively and easily, which makes the program accessible for laymen who want to know more.  There are volcanic explosions, colliding land masses, and fire and chaos aplenty during those formative years.  The Earth had a very turbulent gestation.  If those primitive life forms had actually had a central nervous system and a brain, they would have been terrified, and rightly so.  Fortunately for us, those things evolved later, and those single cells instead ate (in whatever form that occurred-some of them synthesized chemicals directly from their environment, some of them evolved to photosynthesize, some of them absorbed each other) and made more single cells. They divided and evolved.

The second episode, entitled “Life Explodes” takes on not only the strange life to be found in the seas, but the move to land.  The ocean was full of all kinds of creatures and plants, from trilobites to large almost fern-like plants. Arthropods pretty much ruled the planets.  If you’re unsure what an arthropod is, because I understand that not everyone is either a biology or geology nerd, that would be the same phylum that contains modern spiders, insects, lobsters, and scorpions.  They tend to have exoskeletons and lots of legs. They’re the ones that managed to get to the land first.  Plants made a huge contribution, too.  That whole oxygen as a byproduct thing and plants themselves as a food source made the invasion of land a possibility. The ocean was still producing plenty of interesting creatures itself, this episode also shows the evolution of primitive fish through the gigantic armored monsters that swam through those ancient waters.

Episode three, “Monsters” is probably the episode that will be the most captivating for the most people.  After all, who doesn’t want to get to the part with all of the dinosaurs, right?  Smith takes the time to explain why the fossil record in Australia is not as rich in dinosaurs as so many other parts of the world.  The short answer is that there was a big inland sea in the way, but the detailed explanation is very interesting and well demonstrated in the stratigraphic record.  There is also footage of some of the most beautiful fossils that I’ve ever seen, opalized fossils of the giant marine animals swimming at that time.  Opals are a pretty stone. Opal fossils are beyond scientifically awesome. Or, at least they are to me. Also, there aren’t many shows where the host gets lowered down a narrow mine shaft to see the really cool stuff.  It was as close to an Indiana Jones moment as real-life is probably ever going to get.

“Strange Creatures” is the final installment.  It covers only 65 million years, which, given the previous episodes, is actually a pretty small amount of time.  Still, a lot can happen in the geological blink of an eye, or exhale of a stromatolite, as it were. This is where Smith covers how the marsupials rose up to reign supreme in so many ecological niches.  They were isolated geographically and, thus, evolved differently than the fauna of any other continent.  Even primitive humans had a huge impact on their environment, and Smith explains that, too.  Hunting and agriculture and even patterns of migration change everything drastically. Geological upheavals also contribute to the climate zones in Australia.  One of the most famous and unique features of Australia is the Great Barrier Reef. Geologically speaking, that’s a very recent development as well.

Each episode had good, clear video of the current geological record. Richard Smith’s ability to find visible representations of those prehistoric events should be commended. Sometimes, it’s difficult to explain what makes a geological feature significant, much less try to show someone new to the ideas what you’re hoping to get them to see. Each installment had a good mix of animation that gave an  idea not only of the environment where everything was taking place, but the various forms of locomotion organisms were using, and the general scale whenever possible.  Some of my favorite footage was the animation of sauropods plodding past a gas station where Smith’s car was parked. Again, it’s a wonderfully effective way to try to give a sense of scale to something that would otherwise be almost impossible to imagine.

The series is still available to watch on the Nova website through PBS and it  can now be purchased on DVD. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m going to be feeding my starry-eyed sprocket self quite soon and getting my very own copy.  If nothing else, I’m really going to enjoy revisiting the parts with the plesiosaurs and the trilobites and, of course, the stromatolites.