'Battlestar Galactica': Say it ain't frakkin so!

Sad but true: "Battlestar Galactica" will end its run next year after its fourth and final season.

After weeks of speculation, the end is in fact near. According to a high level source at Sci Fi Channel parent company NBC Universal, the show will dock after its next 22-episode season, slated to kick off in early 2008.

Sources say the decision came down from executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, who are said to feel creatively like this upcoming arc will be its last.

Rumors began circulating this month when two "Battlestar Galactica" stars, Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff, referred to the next season as the show's swan song while attending the annual Saturn Awards.

“It’s the final season, so it’s definitely going to be the most vicious,” Olmos told reporters.  “As far as we know, in respects of the way we have this show constructed, this is the final season.”

Sci Fi Channel is expected to announce the news as soon as this afternoon.

UPDATE: Minutes after this was posted, Sci Fi Channel sent us the press release confirming the show is ending. See what Eick and Moore have to say after the jump...

CW picks up 'Eight Days a Week' for midseason

Who said the next TV season’s lineups were set in stone? The CW has picked up “Eight Days a Week,” a single-camera comedy, scheduled to begin midseason. The show, created by newbie comedy writer Meredith Lavender and produced by Sean Hayes (“Will & Grace”) centers on four twentysomethings who work as assistants to VIPs and have no life, so they learn to rely on each other.

    The show’s stars are Mario Lopez (“Dancing With the Stars”) and Christina Milian, who has guest-starred in “Clueless” and “Charmed.” The cast also includes Rosa Blasi of “Strong Medicine”; Johnny Lewis of “Quintuplets”; Jerrika Hinton, who has guest-starred on “Everybody Hates Chris” and “Gilmore Girls”; Anna Chlumsky, who has guest-starred on “30 Rock”; and Robert Ri’chard who guest-starred on “Veronica Mars.”

--Maria Elena Fernandez

(Photo: Charley Gallay / Getty Images)

'Hidden Palms': Welcome to the neighborhood

All right, fellow "Hidden Palms" viewers - let's get the rules straight up front. We know that this show is trash. We accept this. We embrace it. Because, deep down, we understand that there's nothing wrong with that. In the season opener, half of the actors from "The O.C.," and, oddly, "NYPD Blue," meet up in Palm Springs. In an homage to "Beverly Hills: 90210" -- they all work/hang out at a snooty country club and knife each other in the back. (Perhaps literally, it is hinted.) Supporting all this goofiness is pretty great soundtrack, and a little too much talky talky talky cringe-inducing dialogue.

'So You Think You Can Dance': The thinking man's reality TV dancing show

It’s early in the season, so all this potential goodwill has lots of room to be spoiled, but “So You Think You Can Dance” seems to insult its audience’s intelligence much less than the average reality TV show. While there are times where the viewers at home are being overly played to (did we really need two contestants who managed to power through with false limbs?), in large part the show seems to treat its fans and participants with a healthy amount of respect. Maybe they have a small budget or something.

A few reasons why “So You Think You Can Dance” isn’t as guilty a pleasure as it might first seem:

1) The judges. Nigel Lythgoe, Mary Murphy and whoever is sitting in the third seat (it’s been rotating these last two episodes) have no catchphrases, no eye-rolling, no slurring. They tell the dancers when they’re good but moreso, tell the dancers when they’ve been entertaining. They don’t sugarcoat the bad news but at the same time don’t make a point of sticking the dagger as far as it can go just for entertainment’s sake (we’re looking at you, Simon Cowell). A good example was the overweight young man who tried out in L.A. in the first hour: while Nigel chided him for his build and astutely pointed out the audience was being patronizing when they cheered for him, the judge admitted that he actually had potential and to keep going. The result? An out of breath, yet dry-eyed contestant who promised he’d try again.

'The Shield': Puppet masters

One thing is clear as “The Shield” nears the end of its sixth season: this show is for dedicated viewers only. And rightly so.

That’s always been the case, but with this week’s episode dropping casual insider references to Terry Crowley, the Armenian money train and Antwon Mitchell, anyone who wasn’t already well-versed in the show’s elaborate narrative must have been completely lost. Their loss.

“Shield” devotees were rewarded with another densely packed hour that turned the delicate art of manipulation into a bloodsport. There were so many glorious power plays and acts of one-upsmanship you’d need a scorecard to sort it all out.

'House': A season finale without suspense

It’s so hard for a medical drama to construct the cliff-hanger that has become the season finale standard. You can’t just leave some poor patient hovering between life and death for the entire summer -- so the writers must turn to the personal lives of their characters to leave viewers in the necessary suspense. On “House,” however, personal lives are in short supply, so somehow staffing issues must be made fascinating.

On Tuesday night’s season finale, the strange and tentative romance between Drs. Cameron and Chase was dutifully given the possibility of a last-minute reprieve but mostly the show concentrated on the state of the team.

Oh sure, there was a medical case—a woman and her husband braved the stormy seas from Cuba to seek House’s expertise, which he eventually provided—but many more people were obsessed with Foreman. Would he really go? Could House get him to stay? Would House admit he cared either way?

'So You Think You Can Dance': So you think you're ready for more reality TV?

So you think you can write off “So You Think You Can Dance” as being a lesser “Dancing with the Stars”, or an even lesser “American Idol”? So you might be right, but it’s still fine summertime fare, as the show is just different enough to make it entertaining.

Here’s how the show is like “American Idol:” It was made by the same people. Three judges, one a woman, one British tour the country as amateurs try out in front of them to make it to Hollywood—no wait, Las Vegas—and go through additional winnowing processes until they are presented on a call-in vote-off show. The unattractive/overweight are at a disadvantage.

Here’s how the show is like “Dancing with the Stars:” The contestants are dancers instead of singers. Sometimes there is ballroom or Latin dancing like on “DWTS,” but we also see jazz, tap, breakdancing, hip hop, ballet, what looks like gymnastics and a hundred other things.

'Lost': Rescue me

I'm sure most viewers saw the twist behind Jack's bloated flash-forward coming half an hour into the episode, but it did shed light on one key bit of information: Life off the island ain't grand. At least not for Jack.

And that's only important because it makes me that much more interested in Ben (who I still mistakenly call Henry every now and then because I preferred the mystique back when that was his name.) Sure, he's a murderous, lying tyrant. But maybe the guy has a point. Maybe leaving the island isn't the way to go.

Other than that, Tuesday's finale kept deflating the suspense as soon as it had built some up. And, of course, we're left with more questions than we got answers. This time, however, that was OK.

'American Idol': A night full of good feelings, but for Jordin, this is her now

It was the friendliest of fights for these gladiators of song, all the way to the finish.

After a season-long climb out of obscurity, 17-year-old Jordin Sparks was crowned Season 6 champion of "American Idol" Wednesday night in front of a raucous crowd of 4,000 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood and tens of millions viewing on television. The Glendale, Ariz., native won out over Blake Lewis, the good-natured beat-boxing specialist from Seattle, who seemed as happy over Jordin's victory as he would have been for his own. More than 74 million votes were recorded, an "Idol" record.

Jordin's rise to the championship came after perhaps the most unpredictable season in "Idol" history. Early handicapping put the high school student and former model deep in the second tier of contestants, behind two early favorites, shy-backup-singer-coming-out-of-her-shell Melinda Doolittle and soulful-single-mother LaKisha Jones. Jordin and Blake landed in the final two after demonstrating that most potent and elusive of "Idol" virtues -- growth, rising to the foreground with a consistent string of showstopping performances.

Since the season's early days, Jordin and Blake became heavy favorites of the sign-wielding children attending the live tapings. But Jordin's victory demonstrates a return to classic championship form for the series. After a detour last year with the victory of Taylor Hicks, an oddball salt-and-pepper-haired singer of R&B classics, Jordin is the sort of youthful pop star, with a girl-next-door demeanor hiding formidable vocal powers, that the contest was designed to discover.

She was crowned in a finale show that lacked the drama of previous seasons but was nonetheless studded with numbers by big-name acts such as Tony Bennett, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson and -- by remote -- Gwen Stefani and Green Day. Also present were all past "Idol" winners minus Fantasia Barrino, now a Broadway star. The show also showcased the big stories of the season, giving cult icon Sanjaya Malakar a solo backed by Aerosmith's Joe Perry as well as allowing former backup singer Melinda to enjoy a moment in the sun along with the act she once supported, BeBe and CeCe Winans.

Accepting her title, among a shower of confetti and her adoring former co-contestants, Jordin was at a loss for words before launching into a fireworks-studded reprise of her soon-to-be single, and a grammatically jarring new catchphrase for a nation, "This is my now."

Since January, the show has taken us through an audition tour that tested America's tolerance for cruelty toward the untalented (along with introducing us to new heights of delusion). Then came the first unpolished and unaccompanied glimpses of the singers who would ultimately emerge from the masses. We moved onward to the tears and catfights of Hollywood week (the momma's boy, Sanjaya's sister, etc., etc.) and the tension of the Green Mile episode, during which the contestants, one by one, learned whether they were on the path to fame or a lifetime of obscurity. Then there was the Antonella Barba porn kerfuffle, the crash and burn of Sundance Head, Sanjaya, Howard Stern, votefortheworst.com, the ponyhawk, the crying girl, the "Idol Gives Back" show, Gwen Stefani, J.Lo, Bon Jovi, the Melinda-versus-LaKisha battle fading as two new faces slowly rose from the pack and supplanted both, to the final cliffhanger battle and coronation.

What other show in a four-month season gives its viewers so many story lines to feed on? What other show sees so many twists and so much controversy, uproar and hoopla even in a season roundly criticized as representing a drop in quality?

The show's producers say that without the audition weeks, "Idol" would not work, that if viewers had just met Jordin and Blake on the Idoldom stage, they would not have been invested in their journey. We traveled an epic road with our finalists. And with the battle done and the armies pausing to gather their dead, we can look back and know that what history will record is not just who won this day but the valor of those who fought.

And for them -- as Season 6 fades into history -- the rest is not silence, it is "Idols on Tour," Summer Camp, Season 7 Idol talk shows, records, movie deals, Broadway, "Today" show visits....

The real battle begins today.

(Photo courtesy Fox)

'Veronica Mars': Burn, baby, burn

And so The CW burns off the last two episodes of Veronica Mars in one night - against the final performance evening of that singing competition thing on another channel. And they wonder why not enough people watched this show. It's grating that Veronica Mars didn't even get a proper send-off; the two episodes shown Tuesday were adequate, but didn't have any sense of occasion to them.

In hour one, Veronica busts some rich kids who framed janitor/occasionally-recovered gang member Weevil for making fake student debit cards. It's nice to see the class conflict element of the show brought up again - it's what made the first season more than a quippy teen melodrama. In hour two, Wallace gets caught up to rush a secret society at Hearst College - a secret society that apparently inserts cameras into their initiates' rooms to keep an eye on them. The camera wound up catching Veronica and Piz in a very compromising position, and promptly lands on the Internet.