True TV | Life & Death: What’s gone, what lives on for the next TV season 

The shortest and most effdup network TV season in recent memory is finally over—now comes the time to pick through the carcasses. The Only TV Column That Matters™ knows that all you care about is “Has my favorite show been canceled?” (it probably has) and “When are you going to update the BillFrost.tv blog?” (probably never), so let’s get right to the networks’ brilliant calls:

ABC
Canceled: Big Shots, Carpoolers, Cashmere Mafia, Cavemen, Men in Trees, Miss/Guided, Notes From the Underbelly, October Road and Women’s Murder Club. Most of these are no surprise, but Miss/Guided and Notes deserved better, and October Road deserved the dirtnap last year—what took so long? Did ABC think, “Well, it satisfies our lobotomized housewife demographic”?

Returning Fall 2008 or midseason 2009: According to Jim (!), The Bachelor, Boston Legal, Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives, Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Private Practice, Pushing Daisies, Samantha Who?, Scrubs (swiped from NBC) and Ugly Betty. The re-ups of Dirty Sexy Money and Pushing Daisies are heartening, but According to Jim? How long does Jim Belushi’s pact with Satan/Mickey Mouse run?

CBS
Canceled: Cane, Jericho, Kid Nation, Moonlight, Shark, Viva Laughlin and Welcome to the Captain. Sure, Moonlight and Shark were aggressively stoopid, but at least they stood out in CBS’ lineup—Criminal Minds and The Unit are just cut together from outtakes from every other Eyeball net show, far as I can tell.

Returning Fall 2008 or midseason 2009: The Amazing Race, The Big Bang Theory, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: NY, Ghost Whisperer, How I Met Your Mother, NCIS, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Numb3rs, Rules of Engagement, Survivor, Two & a Half Men, The Unit and Without a Trace. If it ain’t broke, why take another chance on a supergay musical? (Ciao, Viva Laughlin!)

NBC
Canceled: Bionic Woman, Journeyman, Las Vegas, Quarterlife and Scrubs (off to ABC). Ah, Las Vegas—where am I going to get my Vanessa Marcil fix now? Oh yeah, hourly reruns on TNT …

Returning Fall 2008 or midseason 2009: 30 Rock, Chuck, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Knight Rider, Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Life, Lipstick Jungle, Medium, My Name is Earl and The Office. Chuck may yet become the great series it was hyped as, and Life was already there when the writers’ strike killed the season—too bad NBC’s now sentencing it to die on Friday nights (getting ahead of myself, sorry).

Fox
Canceled: Back to You, Canterbury’s Law, K-Ville, Nashville, New Amsterdam, The Return of Jezebel James and Unhitched. Does anybody remember any of these?

Returning Fall 2008 or midseason 2009: 24, American Dad, American Idol, America’s Most Wanted, Bones, Cops, Family Guy, Hell’s Kitchen, House, King of the Hill, Kitchen Nightmares, Prison Break, The Simpsons, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and ’Til Death. The only new Fox series to stick was Terminator, which makes sense—but I’ve yet to meet anyone, anyone, who’s seen a nanosecond of ’Til Death. Not even Jim Belushi.

The CW
Canceled: Aliens in America, Beauty & the Geek, Girlfriends, Life Is Wild, Pussycat Dolls: Girlicious and WWE Smackdown (moving to MyNetworkTV—yes, that still exists). Good riddance to all of ’em, and the gawdful green color scheme.

Returning Fall 2008 or midseason 2009: America’s Next Top Model, Everybody Hates Chris, The Game, Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Reaper, Smallville and Supernatural. Good news about Reaper, even though the new/utterly unnecessary 90210 remake is pushing it to ’09. And, despite what you’ve read on the Interweb, The CW isn’t going to pick up Moonlight—that vamp is waaay too old for the Gossip Girl demo.

DVD
The Chair
From the director of Ginger Snaps 2 (!) comes the tale of a young woman (of course) who moves into an old house possessed by the spirit of a serial killer (natch) who liked to torture kiddies in a nasty chair (hence the title). If you think this is scary, just wait for the sequel: The Ottoman!
(Lionsgate.com)

Grizzly Park
Bad-but-pretty 20-somethings are sentenced to community service in Grizzly Park, where an escaped serial killer (again?) just happens to be on the loose, as well as a hungry grizzly; blood, violence, nudity and wisecracks ensue. California is tough on repeat offenders!
GrizzlyPark.com

Lipstick Jungle: Season 1
Brooke Shields, Kim Raver and Lindsay Price star as New York City lady-business playas who are tough, yet vulnerable, sexy yet imperfect, driven yet … oh, screw it—it’s Sex and the City, just with less sex and more stilted drama. Or Suddenly Susan with more actual laughs. Your call.
NBCUni.com

Rambo
Twenty years later, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is kicking ass in Burma because … does he really need a reason? Besides saving a whiney American missionary (Dexter’s whiney Julie Benz) from evil military goons in a rage of guns, guts and unintelligible grunts? No! U-S-A!
Lionsgate.com

What Would Jesus Buy?
“Reverend Billy” travels the country preaching against the evils of Wal-Mart, Starbucks and Disney (“Mickey Mouse is the Antichrist!”) in the hysterical documentary that compels you, in the name of Jeebus, to stop shopping. After you buy his DVD, anyway.
HartSharpVideo.com

More New DVD Releases (May 27)
All Hat, The Air I Breathe, Bomb It, The Cleaner, Cassandra’s Dream, Grace is Gone, The Lather Effect, Simple Promise, The Take, The Walker

Listen to Bill Mondays at 8 a.m. on X96’s Radio From Hell. Blogging for Jesus at BillFrost.tv.