Fox announces its midseason lineup

Fox announced its midseason lineup today and it contains a couple of surprises. Dr. House and Jack Bauer will team up on Monday nights, "Fringe" will remain in its challenging Thursday night time slot, and "Glee" will be off the air until April 13, when it returns on a new night following "American Idol" but up against the last episodes of ABC's "Lost."

"American Idol" returns on Jan. 12 and will help launch "Our Little Genius," a new game show by Mark Burnett ("Survivor" and "The Apprentice") the following night. "Our Little Genius" then will shift to Tuesdays paired with "Idol" until April 13, when "Glee" returns for its remaining nine episodes at 9 p.m.

The new drama "Human Target," starring Mark Valley, premieres on Jan. 20 after "Idol."

As previously announced, "24" returns with a two-night premiere on Jan. 17 and Jan. 18 and then settles into its regular Monday 9 p.m. slot after "House" on Jan. 25.

"Fringe," which has taken a ratings hit on its new night, will remain on Thursdays but will take a break beginning Feb. 11, when Fox launches the new drama "Past Life."  "Fringe" returns to the schedule on April 1.

As previously announced, "Dollhouse" will end on Jan. 22. "Kitchen Nightmares" will take over its Friday time slot the following week.

The new comedy "Sons of Tuscon," starring Tyler Labine, will premiere March 14 at 8:30 p.m. when "The Cleveland Show" moves to 9:30 p.m. and "American Dad" is off the schedule.

Fox also ordered a complete second season of "Lie To Me."

--Maria Elena Fernandez

Photo: Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer on "24" / Credit: Fox

Related:

Fringe looks for an identity in its second season

Mark Valley stars in "Human Target"

24: First Look of new season

Dollhouse is canceled

'Lost' final season to premiere Feb. 2

One "Lost" mystery down: 1 million to go.

The final season of ABC's "Lost" -- boo hoo, did we really say final? -- will premiere Tuesday, Feb. 2, with a two-hour event at 9 p.m., ABC announced today. (Yes, that's a new night for the island mystery).

That means we are 75 days away from learning if the hydrogen bomb Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) hit with a rock before she presumably died in the fifth season finale erases the past and changes the future, like Jack (Matthew Fox) wanted?

We don't know how we feel about this. If the past is erased, does that mean all of the hours we've logged with the castaways didn't happen either? What have we been doing all these years?

Answers, soon, Losties. Answers, in our destiny, soon. In the meantime, watch the promotional video and see if you can help getting a little choked up.

--Maria Elena Fernandez

Video: ABC

Related:

John Locke Lives Again

Alpert said what?

'Lost' holdout not from the original cast

The final season of "Lost" is three months away, but certain members of the blogosphere have been consumed this week by a new island mystery. 

It all started when E!'s Watch With Kristin reported that one of the original cast members of "Lost" had refused the show's invitation to return for one last hurrah. This blew our minds. The Times suspected that Harold Perrineau might be the holdout. But then he went and told E! that he would RSVP "yes" if he was invited, but that he hadn't been just yet.

We have now spoken to the island, and the island has said some definitive things. The most important is that there is a "Lost" love fest -- the writers want all of the original castaways back and all of the castaways want to go back. All of them. 

However, there is a hold-out. You would never guess who it is in a million years, and you probably wouldn't care. This person has never been a regular on the show.

We would tell you who it is, but the island might send us back to the '70s forever if we did.

-- Maria Elena Fernandez

Is Harold Perrineau the 'Lost' holdout? [Update]

Could Oceanic Flight 815 be missing a passenger when "Lost" returns next year?

With rumors rampant that Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof will be setting the clock back (at least temporarily) on "Lost" next season and bringing quite a few characters back from the dead, E! Online's Kristin Dos Santos is reporting that one of the ABC drama's former stars isn't too keen to return to the series, which wraps up its six-season run next spring.

Citing unnamed sources, Dos Santos reports that "offers went out to the original cast members several weeks ago, and this particular 'Lost' star decided to decline." So just who could the final holdout be? Let's take a look at the clues.

We already know that series regulars Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Jorge Garcia, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Naveen Andrews and Terry O'Quinn will be returning for the final season of "Lost." It's been widely reported that Emilie de Ravin, who plays missing single mother Claire Littleton, will be back in some capacity this season. Dominic Monaghan appeared at the "Lost" panel at Comic-Con, so he's clearly on board.

Ian Somerhalder, currently filming the CW's "Vampire Diaries," has shot scenes in Hawaii, so Boone will definitely be making another appearance or two. Despite his massive growth spurt, Malcolm David Kelley has turned up several times on the series since Walt sailed into the sunset at the end of Season 2.

So who's left?

'The Vampire Diaries': Ian Somerhalder talks about going bad, 'Twilight,' and his return to 'Lost'

It has been four years since Ian Somerhalder left the island behind on the hit drama "Lost," but in his new  show, "The Vampire Diaries,"Somerhalder's blood-sucking bad boy vampire Damon is worlds away from the sensitive Boone Carlyle fans came to know and mourn.

After last Thursday's hugely successful premiere -- the highest in The CW's history-- Somerhalder, 31, covered a wide range of topics with Show Tracker, including what's next for Damon, those inevitable "Twilight" comparisons, his "Vampire Diaries" co-stars' highly publicized trip to the slammer and, yes!, his upcoming three-episode return to "Lost."

First off, congrats on the great numbers for the series premiere.

Thanks, let’s hope we can keep it going.

Your character, Damon, shows up late in the first episode so we still have a lot to figure out about him. What can you tell us beyond that he's the “bad” brother?

Well, he comes back for very specific reasons. It's very interesting to him that there’s this girl that Stefan found. She bears a striking resemblance to someone that we knew very well a very long time ago and it is a source of animosity between us brothers. Damon is definitely a bad guy -- he can wreak havoc at times -- but he does have his reasons. He's got a major beef with his brother and possibly with the town.

How do you like playing Damon? He’s very different from characters you've played, and it’s interesting to see another side.

Damon doesn’t take himself very seriously and every other character that I've ever played does. It’s so liberating and so fun to actually go to work every day and not take myself seriously. Kevin [Williamson, the show’s executive producer] and the team, they just write such great stuff for me to say and I’m really, really happy and lucky that I got to do this. 

Somerhalder talks about those "Twilight" comparisons, his return to "Lost" and his jailbird co-stars ... after the jump...

New cast members join 'Lost's' final season

As production for "Lost's" sixth and final season ramps up, we're starting to hear about the new faces we'll be seeing come January.

Today, Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello reported the addition of Japanese superstar Hiroyuki Shimosawa to the cast. Stateside audiences will know him from his roles in "The Last Samurai" and "Rush Hour 3." No word on what part he'll play in the "Lost" world. We used to assume every new cast member was going to be on the island, but these days all bets are off. For all we know, he could be playing the Japanese version of Jin who exists in an alternative universe in which all the characters on the island come from nearby countries (which would make the rest of the characters Canadian and Hurley an Eskimo).

This week, news broke that John Hawkes, best known as Sol on HBO's "Deadwood" is joining the cast as Lennon, "the scruffy, edgy and charismatic spokesman and translator" for a large foreign company. Hmm, could it be Widmore Industries?

This is the last time we'll be able to obsess over these tidbits, people, so let's savor 'em while we can!

-- Patrick Kevin Day

Photo: Shimosawa on the set of Danny Boyle's "Sunshine." Credit: 20th Century Fox

'Lost': How to get your midsummer fix

"Lost's" fifth season finale was just over a month ago and the sixth season doesn't begin for six long months. But just because ABC isn't airing original episodes until 2010 doesn't mean we have to go entirely "Lost"-less. There are a few options this summer to help fill the gaping void in all our lives.

--The second episode of Bravo's "Top Chef Masters," airing Wednesday, features Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and the writing staff as the guest diners. The chefs will prepare the fresh protein (including what appears to be a boar's head) only from a list of Dharma-approved canned and preserved ingredients. Here's hoping they find a use for that oh-so good Dharma peanut butter.

--Evangeline Lilly will appear in Kathryn Bigelow's much-buzzed about Iraq war drama "The Hurt Locker," which opens in limited release June 26. The film follows the exploits of a U.S. Army bomb squad in Iraq.

'Lost': Alpert says what?

Once again, "Lost" managed to pull out an incredible season finale that simultaneously raised as many questions as it answered. Though, I think in a first for the series, we actually got more answers than questions.

But before we get to the whole Jacob/Esau rivalry, let's clear up one of the real head-scratchers of the episode, the answer to "What lies in the shadow of the statue is?" Richard (or Ricardo, as we can now call him) answers in Latin, of course! The answer is "Ille qui nos omnes servabit," or roughly translated, "He who will protect/save us all."

So, it appears the Others and the Ajira Airlines folk weren't kidding when they said they were the good guys. A quick trip to the Bible, (OK, OK, Wikipedia's version of the Bible), tells us that Jacob and Esau were fraternal twins who spent the majority of their lives in a fierce rivalry. When Esau finally got the upper hand and killed Jacob, Jacob's children rose up and overpowered Esau and his followers.

Judging by what we saw in the season finale, with Ben stabbing Jacob at Locke/Esau's request, the first part of the Bible story has come to pass. Now it just leaves us with the rising up of Jacob's children (the Others) and the overthrow of Esau. So there you go, "Lost," fans. That's how the series is gonna end! Sorry for the spoilers!

But I somehow doubt Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof will make it that easy for us. Despite all the talk of destiny and inevitability, nothing, and I mean nothing, has been straightforward on this series. Just look at how they handled the climactic nuclear explosion. When it failed to go off for Jack, I was truly fooled into thinking that it wouldn't detonate at all. Joke's on me.

But what I think this season finale did more than anything was to finally give us a stable frame with which to watch the entire series. So much we've seen before makes perfect sense. Remember the dream where we saw Locke with the black eye and the white eye? His talk with Walt about there always being two sides. The mysterious behavior of Christian Shepherd, the resurrected Locke and the smoke monster. Poor Ben, he was fooled the whole time into thinking he was working on the side of the angels. Poor, pitiful Ben. No matter what else happens next season, I think we'll finally see Ben redeem himself in sacrifice. His tortured confrontation with Jacob revealed that his manipulations have only been a ruse to cover up his sense of lonliness and wanting to belong. I predict Season 6 will give us Good Ben (though don't expect it right away).

Meanwhile, they continued to explain minor bits of the story. Pierre Chang's missing hand in the Dharma Initiation film? Explained (he lost it after having it crushed by the electromagnetic forces on the island).

The white/black, good/evil motif? Finally crystallized in the bodies of Jacob and Esau. The reason Hurley managed to find his way onto Ajira air? Jacob's urging, of course.

Though as Jacob pointed out several times in the finale, it was left up to individual choice. No trickery on the side of the angels. That, apparently, has been the provinence of Esau, who it appears has been the main manipulator of the island's events all along.

We're now down to 17 hours of "Lost" left. What once seemed an impossibly sprawling mess of unexplained happenings is rapidly coming down to a final and primal clash between good or evil.

How long until 2010 again?

-- Patrick Kevin Day

Photo: ABC

'Lost' co-creator Damon Lindelof explains The Numbers

For five seasons, they've haunted Hurley, they've haunted us:  4 8 15 16 23  and 42.

What do they mean? Do they mean anything? Are we wasting our time caring?

Damon Lindelof, the ABC series' co-creator, attended a Comics on Comics event at Meltdown Wednesday night and explained the numbers as well as some other interesting tidbits about the future of "Lost."

E! Online attended the event and posted the Q&A, which you can find here.

As far as those menacing digits, this is what Lindelof said:

"The Hanso Foundation that started the Dharma Initiative hired this guy Valenzetti to basically work on this equation to determine what was the probability of the world ending in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Valenzetti basically deduced that it was 100 percent within the next 27 years, so the Hanso Foundation started the Dharma Initiative in an effort to try to change the variables in the equation so that mankind wouldn't wipe it itself out."

This information, in more convoluted form, was leaked out via the online games rather than explained on the show itself, Lindelof said, because "That would be the worst thing ever. We have to make the show for the hard-core fans who care about the numbers, but we also have to make it for my mom, who just wants Sawyer to take his shirt off."

-- Maria Elena Fernandez

Photo: Jorge Garcia as Hurley/ABC

'Lost': It hasn't all been miserable

The nice thing about time-travel story lines is you get to reuse footage. Just ask Robert Zemeckis. The second half of "Back to the Future Part II" is Marty McFly crawling through "Back to the Future."

This time it was John Locke running across himself from the past in the future. It was cool to watch Locke prep Richard to talk to … well … Locke, but it also supports a theory I’ve been worried about most of this season: What if Locke set himself up?

OK, stay with me here. How does Locke know he is supposed to be the leader of the Others? Richard told him. But how did Richard know Locke was coming and would be their leader? Locke told him. Back in the '50s. Which, for Richard, was the first time meeting Locke. How did Locke know that he needed to bring the Oceanic 6 back and die in the process? Richard told him. But how did Richard know? We saw tonight that Locke also told Richard that. Just before Richard came out of the woods and told Past Locke what he needed to do, Future Locke fed him his lines. Time travel, right? Isn’t it fun?

So what if Locke dying and the Oceanic 6 returning weren’t the plan of destiny/the island/Jacob/etc.? Tonight raised the question of whether it was actually all cooked up in that shiny, shaved noggin. John Locke has always felt that his life was meant for something greater. "Walkabout," "Orientation," "Lockdown," "Further Instructions," "The Man From Tallahassee," "The Brig," "Cabin Fever." They’re all about Locke thinking he (or his father) is something greater than he is. And how did every one of those turn out for Locke? At least he’s consistent.

But "Follow the Leader" did give the one piece of evidence that this theory can’t be the case. Locke coming back from the dead? No. The compass. Where did it come from? Richard has had it since the 1950s when he got it from John Locke, who got it from Richard in 2007 right before he traveled back in time. That’s a continual loop, but the compass couldn’t have just spontaneously come into existence. It had to come from somewhere. And if it did just continually go back in time and then exist for 50-some-odd years, wouldn’t it continue to age? It had to come from somewhere. That’s why Locke can’t be his own grandfather. Wait. What was I explaining again?

If all those Lockes weren’t enough for you, there’s another person acting very Locke-ish back in 1977. Jack picks up right where Faraday falls dead with the plot to change the past/present/future all at once. Jack, once he figures out how to get a 12-foot, 40,000-pound hydrogen bomb out of the basement, plans to follow through on Corpsey McDirtnap’s intention to detonate it at the Swan station and pressing the reset button on everything that has happened and basically erasing all the past-season DVDs I bought. That’s how it’s going to be, you know. If Jack succeeds, then all old episodes of "Lost" will change and become about an airplane landing and everyone inside going on with their normal lives. It’s a fact.

No one else seems to be going along for Jack’s ride. Hurley, Miles and Jin are heading to the hills with all the food Hurley can grab. Though first they stop to confess to Dr. Chang about being from the future after they couldn’t come up with the president in 1977. It’s Carter, right? Damn, where’s Wikipedia when you need it?

Sawyer and Juliet buy their subway fare to the mainland with a hand-drawn map (can you use those on Priceline?). I couldn’t help but wonder if this crude doodle by lefty LaFleur becomes the basis for Radzinsky’s blast door map. Radzinsky’s gonna end up spending a lot of time in the Swan station pushing a button, and the more they show of him, the better I feel about that. He was a paranoid lunatic this week. Jeez.

Not even Kate is willing to go blow some stuff up with Jack. “Since when did shooting kids and blowing up hydrogen bombs become OK?” Since always! Come on, Kate. Where’s your spirit of adventure? Where’s that girl who went racing out into the jungle with Flight 815’s transmitter even though she saw the pilot ripped apart by the Smoke Monster? I know blowing up hydrogen bombs and shooting kids are far removed from where they were five seasons ago, but you gotta constantly be taking it to the next level. Eventually, you’ll be jumping out of an airplane in just shorts.

The only person who would follow Jack anymore is Sayid. Though Sayid does admit that be it changing history or killing themselves he’s good either way. Makes sense that after three years plus of all this craziness, one of the survivors of Flight 815 is just ready to call it quits. Sayid is half hoping to ride this bomb like Slim Pickens in "Dr. Strangelove." Though he couldn’t go quietly. He had to question why Jack trusts Eloise, and Jack explains that in 30 years she helps them get back to the island, which starts a whole new time loop I don’t want to get into.

So we’re heading into the season finale. Everybody’s traveling. Locke, Sun, Ben, Richard and a group of Others are heading to Jacob, so Locke can kill him (though part of me thinks Jacob doesn’t exist). Sawyer, Juliet and Kate are traveling back to the real world (looking at the preview for next week, I guess they don’t make it). And Jack, Sayid, Eloise and Richard are traveling to Home Depot, I expect, shopping for tools to build a pulley system of some sort. How are they gonna move big old Jughead?

The real question is: Where are Rose, Bernard and Vincent? Come on. I’ll gladly give up any airtime used to show the Sawyer/Juliet/Kate love triangle to know where they are.

Hopefully, next week.

-- Andrew Hanson

Photo: ABC Studios