Ain’t It Cool News has a great interview up with Michael Emerson, who plays Ben Linus on Lost. Here’s a clip:

Quint: I think the hardcore fanbase was really excited to see the smoke monster return and I think the idea that Ben has some sort of control over it is really fascinating. I think that that has really piqued the interest of a lot of people, especially what is coming up in the next few weeks. I know you can’t say much, but can you talk about, based on what you know, do you think the fans will be satisfied with the promise of last weeks episode? Do you think that will be fulfilled?

Michael Emerson: Oh yeah, I think they are going in to some mind bending new surprising directions. I am liking the evolving idea. Let’s say that Ben was able to manipulate the smoke monster, but on the show everything is a binary system, everything is in balance, morally balanced or economically balanced, so for Ben to make a thing happen like that, there is also a price, I think, that he had to pay. We don’t know what Ben paid yet to make the smoke monster come. We don’t know that he… “Is he allowed to do that?” and everyone who has power also pays a price. John Locke is going to pay a price. Ben has paid a price… Nothing is for free in terms of power or morality on the island and I’m beginning to see that the writers are more interested in that pattern, too, of this living ledger book system.

It’s a great interview, and here it is.

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If you haven’t heard, NBC has officially cancelled Scrubs, which has resulted in untold carnage throughout the world. That second part may be made up, but it’s still pretty bad news.

All hope is not lost, though, since it’s being reported that ABC has decided to take another network’s hilarious but ratings challenged show after cancelling its own (Carpoolers died much too young).

NBC will air six more new episodes of Scrubs this season, beginning this Thursday, April 10. (Woo!) The cast finished shooting episode “712″ (the 12th episode of season seven) on Monday, which is the last episode that will be shown on NBC. However! The production train keeps on chugging.

According to sources on set, Scrubs began shooting an episode on Tuesday that is being numbered as “713/800.” (Meaning, it is the 13th episode in production this season but is scheduled to air in season eight.) The cast and crew will shoot through August and are expected to end on episode 816.

Those episodes—yes, 16 of them by my count—are slated to air on ABC.

Source: E!

While we’re on the subject of Scrubs, there’s some related casting news for Oliver Stone’s movie about President Bush the second. Elizabeth Banks, who plays the accidental mother of JD’s child on the show, has been cast as Laura Bush. From what I hear, Josh Brolin (playing the President) isn’t complaining.

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Variety just informed me personally (by personally, I mean through their website) that every episode of South Park is available for viewing online through the newly launched southparkstudios.com.

Clips, not full episodes, can be embedded like so:

Entire episodes can be linked.

The site is still in beta, and I’ve already come across a bug in the video overlay functionality, but the videos themselves play fine and look decent. Also, they’re following the commercial break revenue model, so no free rides here.

I’ve been watching South Park for years, but have had entire episode runs go by unseen. These new fangled internets may come in handy after all.

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The cast of BSG invaded The Late Show with David Letterman this week and destroyed the talk show host and leader of the Cylons. Either that, or they just showed up to share the ‘Top 10 reasons to watch Battlestar Galactica.’

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The final season of Battlestar Galactica is getting ready to launch (April 4th). We know it’s the final season because we were told ahead of time by the show’s creators. That’s something rare and to be appreciated in the entertainment business: The conscious decision of content providers to let the content determine the length of its run more than its ratings.

Whether it’s great shows getting killed too soon (hold on Jericho!), crappy shows overstaying their welcome (the reality TV genre, in general), or once great shows slipping to good (Stargate SG1) or worse (My Name is Earl), the norm is to follow the money, not the quality.

The producers of Lost have also put a cap on their island in a bottle, although the writer’s strike has modified that plan a bit.

The point, which has surely been lost somewhere in the past few paragraphs, is that knowing that Battlestar Galactica will end on its own terms is a good thing. There’s always a catch, though, and here it is:

It has been confirmed that the long rumored and scantily reported spin-off, Caprica is in fact a go project. SCI FI Channel has given the green light to a two-hour “backdoor” pilot for the series – which means it’ll air as a TV movie (not unlike the promotion and rollout for “Razor”) – and if that’s successful it’ll get a series commitment from the network. The project is currently slated to shoot this spring and air in the fall. IGN

I’m a big BSG fan, don’t get me wrong, but I sincerely hope they take this show in a different enough direction that it is able to serve as more than just a reminder of how great that other show was. From the description [Dallas, in space (it could work)], that’s their goal.

I can’t help but hear a bomb coming, though. Make the show too different, and you lose the original audience. Keep it too close, and you would have been better off not cancelling the original in the first place. “All of this has happened before,” as they say.

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After a decent stretch in beta testing, hulu has officially been unleashed on the world, and by world I mean the United States. Crazy things like licensing and distribution rights have to be cleared out before the world can be conquered.

If you’re wondering what in the continental US I’m talking about, hulu is a ‘new media’ partnership between many of the major film and TV studios that makes their content available on the web. By content, I mean full length TV shows from years ago right up until last week as well as feature films.

The advertising model is similar to television, with ads distributed throughout the playback. The ads are shorter, though, and hulu feels comfortable referring to the interruptions as ‘limited,’ relative to what, I’m not sure.

Video quality goes as high as HD, so those of you with monitors too big for your desk should be excited.

I was in on the beta testing (don’t tell them, but I didn’t do all that much testing), so I’ve had access to the service long enough to know that I’m not yet ready to watch TV/movies anywhere other than my TV.

That being said, I am very excited about the video-sharing opportunities offered by hulu. For example, a blogger like myself now has the ability to babble on about an episode of, say, The Incredible Hulk, where Bruce Banner displays particularly poor anger management skills and link to that exact moment of the episode.

Even better, I can now wield the Sword of Destiny in my posts (the play button plays the embedded clip, the surrounding area links to the entire episode in a new window):

So yeah, you should probably check out hulu, because it’s ‘super badass.’

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