A few odds and ends

• You've likely heard this elsewhere, but Joss Whedon reportedly has a new deal with Fox for a show starring Eliza Dushku, called Dollhouse. Incredible, right? Kristin from E!Online did a short interview with him about more of the details. I'm not sure I really get what it's about yet, but I'm definitely excited.
  
• TV and movie writers are going on strike starting Monday. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about how this going to affect production, but it definitely doesn't sound good.
  
• I got the new My So-Called Life DVD set over the weekend, and it's wonderful! The packaging is really beautiful, with a great booklet with little essays written by Winnie Holzman and some others (including Joss Whedon, who's everywhere lately) and tons and tons of extra features and commentaries. I love that the series obviously had such an impact on everyone involved that they were willing to come back 10 years later to reminisce and make this box set happen. I had rewatched the entire series two years ago but I'm so glad I now have my own copy.
  
• I also got the Veronica Mars season 3 set this weekend, and there are a few good extras, including the Season 4 presentation that I blogged about earlier, and a series of interviews/commentaries with Rob Thomas and Dan Ethridge that are pretty interesting. Rob's always talking about the fan's reactions to things and it's kind of nice to know that a showrunner takes those things into consideration. But it's an interesting contrast to what Winnie Holzman said in the MSCL extras about how part of the magic of the series was they really made the entire series kind of in a bubble with no outside inputs or pressures which gave them the freedom to do things exactly as they wanted...
  
• I watched a couple of random episodes from VM season 3, and I was surprised to see that Sam, the male beauty from Beauty and the Geek, was a guest star in the third episode of the season! He's actually an actor that's been in quite a lot of things. Is it just me or has Beauty and the Geek really not mentioned that at all? I believe they're tagged him as a "party promoter." Hmm.
  

Beauty and the Geek mixes things up

I've actually always wondered whether switching things up on Beauty and the Geek and having male beauties and female geeks would ever work. As a female geek myself, I usually find myself relating more to the guys on the show (and sadly enough understanding pretty much all of their geek-speak) and finding the girls to be ridiculously alien. But I think a full swap would probably have been too much...geeky guys are kind of endearing and cute but I don't know what the American public's reaction to geeky girls would be. So it's smart that they decided to just have one opposite couple. It's be interesting to see how that changes the dynamics in the house.

The little casting special they ran before the show actually started was pretty funny. I love how there were no geeks whatsoever in Las Vegas. I don't know what's going on with Nate and Jennylee but it was cool seeing them and a few other past geeks as well. I do kind of feel like they chose the geeks with more potential in terms of looks, but I think the girls seemed more skanky and ditzy than actually pretty.

Did anyone else feel like the "this season on the Beauty and the Geek" clip show was really overly long and gave too much away? All those crying clips seem like elimination interviews, they showed one of the geek makeovers, and even a few of the hookups. Not that anyone's going to really sit and analyze the clips to figure out who gets eliminated when, but I was kind of surprised that they were giving so much away.

Here's an interview with Nicole, the female geek. It's funny how I related to quite a lot of what she said.