theRecap: 24 gets a movie

Friday Night Lights saved, Kristin Bell returns to Heroes and Jack Bauer gets an extra two hours. Welcome to theRecap, your weekly source for the TV news that was.

24 takes two
The production company behind Jack Bauer is working on gathering a cast together for a two-hour TV movie, to air in the fall, which will bridge the gap between season six and seven. Season seven was originally going to air in winter 2008, but was pushed back to 2009 because of the WGA strike. The 24 team is currently working on filming the rest of season seven and will have all 24 episodes completed by the time the show airs on FOX.

Friday Nights Lives
DirecTV and NBC Universal have teamed up to save cult hit/ratings-impaired Friday Night Lights. Under the deal, DirecTV will air new episodes first, then NBC will later get rights to reruns. (Similar to NBC's deal with USA for Law & Order: CI)

Noah Wyle gets a paycheck
TNT has ordered a new installment of the Librarian action movie series, starring Noah Wyle as a mild-mannered adventurer/explorer. The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice will air in late 2008.

Fierce Runway
Between Tyra, Danny Norwiega and Project Runway, this has been an extremely fierce television season. So perhaps it's fitting that the fiercest Runway contestant of them all, Christian, wins the shows fourth season.

Idol's Wild Week
Every now and then, Simon Cowell will call someone's performance "very cabaret." Little did we know that someone would be able to relate to that reference very well. Current contestant David Hernandez once worked at a strip club called Dick's Cabaret, up until last year. He also had a record contract with Universal, but was dropped.

This same week we also saw old videos from Danny Noriega pop up, in which he wishes Santa Claus to do something to your mom that could get Santa on the sex offender list. We also learned that he went to a school for at-risk children.

Leaving the reality competition this week were: Kady Malloy, Luke Menard, Asia'h Epperson and Danny Noriega.
Next week on Idol: The top 12 perform songs by The Beatles on the newly re-designed big stage. And there's only one performance night, thank goodness. And the results show will turn into a call-in show. Hillarious!

TNT goes original
Thanks to successful series like The Closer and Saving Grace, TNT is ordering a bunch of new series. Their goal? To have the cable channel to air three nights full of original programming every week by 2010. Instead of Law & Order marathons, I presume.

Will We Meet the Mother?
Alicia Silverstone has been cast on a multi-episode arc on How I Met Your Mother, leaving Michael Ausiello to wonder: Is Silverstone the mother?

The CW kills laughter
The CW, that young start-up network, has decided that after just a few years of existence that their comedy division isn't working out, so they are getting rid of it. Well, more accurately, they are combining a bunch of departments together, but that restructuring doesn't include the comedy unit.

High School Musical: The Reality Show
ABC is developing a reality TV show based around High School Musical. There aren't many details known, apart from the fact that the network wants the show for this summer, but it sounds like a singing competition with HSM-themed weeks, with appearances by HSM stars, and the winner gets a secret top-prize, which I am going to presume is being on the tour, or in a new HSM movie. But that's just needless speculation.

Lipstick Jungle: Pilot

Synopsis: Three intelligent, powerful women work in high-class establishments in NYC and try to juggle their personal lives with business. And yes, this is from the same author as Sex and the City, so it should sound familiar. Nico works at Bonfire magazine and is strong, confident and overpowering, except she becomes bored with her husband (in one night?) and starts cheating on him. Wendy is a movie executive whose husband struggles to succeed in her shadow. And Victory is a falling star in the fashion world who starts dating a billionaire. And they all eat cupcakes.

What worked: Kim Raver's Nico was fantastic. Ditto Paul Blackthorne as Wendy's struggling husband and Julian Sands as Nico's boss. (Trivia alert: Blackthorne, Sands and Raver all starred on 24, with the men playing villains in different seasons.) The story lines moved well without feeling rushed or force (like Cashmere Mafia's premiere), and the characters were mostly believable. Nico's character had an amazing range of depth and is, I think, the reason the episode was good. And if you like seeing people eating cupcakes multiple times an hour, then this show is for you! All in all, I really enjoyed this episode a lot, when compared to Cashmere Mafia.

What didn't work: Parts of this episode felt more like Charmed, without the cheesy supernatural part. And I view Charmed as a whole to be a cheesy show, so take from that what you will. Brooke Shield's Wendy didn't quite feel right, but hopefully in future episodes, the character is written more to fit Shield's strengths. I wish there was more to indicate that Nico was tired of her husband before she met BoyToy, because it felt like (to me, anyways) like she quickly grew bored with her husband. Which could be a character trait to be explored, I don't know.

Victory's plot started out good, but somewhere between the car ride and the insane amount of flowers that NO girl would seriously enjoy because it would clutter the house, it felt more like comedic relief than anything useful. And finally, the color fade in the end. That transition effect is fine if it is your own personal camera, but please never fade from color to black and white on a national TV show - it looks cheap. Also, cupcakes?