Walker: Hey guys! Love your chats! I have 2 questions: 1) Can my favorite show Friday Night Lights make it through the whole season? Is it possible NBC will keep it going despite less than perfect ratings like it did another great Friday night show "homicide"? 2) What are your thoughts on K-Ville? Is it any good? Will it get good ratings? Thanks!

Ellen: I'm here -- Jon's almost on, I think.

Jonathan Storm: Hello. I'm here.

Ellen: Now that we've taken attendance. I would hope Friday Night Lights would make it through the season -- but having seen the season opener, I think we should both be careful what we ask for. A lot of it's really wonderful, but there's one plot point that just shrieks of network interference and of trying to fix something that wasn't broken.

Jonathan Storm: Well, you always have some price to pay for renewal, if you're a low-rated show. I never like Homicide near as much after the network put in tweaks after about 12th episode.

Ellen: K-Ville's another problem altogether -- it feels like a show put together by committee. I really wanted to love it, and I do love the New Orleans setting, and I sometimes love Anthony Anderson. But the stories are way over the top, even for a city known for being over the top. Starting with the cop who's really an escaped prisoner.

Jonathan Storm: K-Ville: In baseball, a K is a strikeout. That's what K-Ville is creatively, but the first episode was big ratings winner, outpointing Prison Break.

Peter: Speaking of Prison Break, has it lost its way? This South American prison seems fake, the love story and political intrigue have gotten buried.

Jonathan: Prison Break seems fake???????

Jonathan: Shocking! Positively shocking.

Jonathan: I adore Prison Break just because it is so fake.

Ellen: I sort of see what Peter means. And even what Jon means. (Imagine that.) I'd say this season it seems more fake than usual. As in requiring leaps of faith that only someone like Superman -- who could leap tall buildings in a single bound -- would be able to manage. I say, they broke out, Linc's cleared, it should be over now. Just let me look at Wentworth Miller for an hour a week doing something else and I'm happy.

Jonathan: And all I need is a little T-Bag! Man, I gotta have some of that T-Bag. Best character on TV, and after that, I don't care what they do.

Ellen: Oh, good. It's only been 10 minutes, and one of us has already endorsed a pedophile.

Jonathan: A pedophile, a strangler, a mother-raper AND a father-raper.

Tony: I'm a big Heroes fan and have seen the pilots for Chuck and Journeyman.... Looks like a great lineup to me. Do you think NBC will find a big audience on Mondays for its new, consistent block of escapist shows?

Jonathan: Well, I thought Heroes was dumb, but now they have Veronica Mars, so I'll be watching.

Ellen: I love Heroes, too (though fear a second-season slump), and I think the flow on Mondays is good (or at least better than CBS' having Kid Nation run into Criminal Minds). The other two shows aren't quite as good as Heroes -- lots of critics love Chuck, but I liked it better when it was called Jake 2.0 -- and too much intensity in a lead-in can work against a show, as when ABC couldn't find anything to put after Lost that didn't exhaust people. Journeyman's kind of demanding, and maybe not in a good way, though I liked the second episode better.

Jonathan: I have not seen the second episode, and I don't think I'm going back in time to check out. I thought Journeyman was completely lame and uninteresting.

Jonathan: Chuck, on the other hand, is fun. But I think NBC is setting themselves up for a Geek Squad Monday evening where the only thing advertisers will want to push are video games and piercing paraphernalia.

Ellen: So many geeks, so little time: Big Bang Theory's about Caltech guys who can't talk to girls. I was sort of insulted by it, since one of my kids is a grad student at Caltech, but he assures me that since they're talking about physicists, not people in his department (planetary sciences), making them incredibly lame socially is not a problem. At least not for him.

Jonathan: Jeeze, a TV critic has a smart kid? Is he adopted?

Ellen: Sport of nature.

Jonathan: I like The Big Bang Theory. It's fairly cute and not mean-spirited, unlike Two and a Half Men.

Axel Rosenberg: Sorry I am joining late... did anyone else watch Kid Nation last night? Bleh.

Ellen: I caught the last 20 minutes. Double-bleh. Didja notice how they used the same devices as Survivor? Even the typeface on the chyrons counting down the days looked the same to me.

Jonathan: Oh, no! It wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, and it did have too many Survivor influences, but I adored a lot of the kids. "I'm only 8. I'm in the First Grade. I think I'm too young to be doing this."

Jonathan: Awwwwwwww.

Jonathan: "Dude! We've got to focus on what we're going to eat for dinner!"

Ellen: After all that controversy, I now know why CBS didn't want us to see it -- what if we'd reported that it wasn't nearly as interesting as the legal maneuvers that brought it about?

Jonathan: Yeah. I'm afraid it was a bit of a letdown, but I'll keep watching.

Ellen: Who knew you liked children so much?

Jonathan: Preliminary ratings show FOX's Back to You as the biggest success among the new shows last night. Kid Nation did fine, but probably not as well as CBS had hoped after all the hoopla.

Jonathan: I'm a softie.

Axel Rosenberg: Well, I guess that one kid was cute... the rest of the kids should be put in a commercial supporting sexual abstinence.

Ellen: The "ghost town" also looked a bit like the set of Deadwood, and a bit like the tourist attractions in Dodge City, Kansas, which we visited last summer because my husband's such a Gunsmoke fan. He'd probably love to have been on Kid Nation. Too bad the age cutoff's so low.

Jonathan: That Axel's harsh!

Jonathan: Dodge City, Caltech. When do you have time to watch TV?

Jonathan: This town ain't big enough for both of us.

Jonathan: Smile when I say that.

Ellen: I still haven't gotten over the fact that they called it a "summer camp" for legal reasons but held it during the school year. Even The Amazing Race held its family edition in the summer so kids wouldn't miss school. And it's not like I got into Caltech. I've spent my entire career proving that it's possible to live your life without algebra.

Jonathan: Those kids learned a lot more at Kid Nation than they ever would have in school.

Jonathan: School is overrated, unless it's Caltech.

Jonathan: Look how far I've gone....

Ellen: I think some kids would learn more as pickpockets than they would in school. But I don't recommend turning your kids into pickpockets.

Ellen: Or putting them on a reality show, either.

Jonathan: OK, I'm Fagin and you're Bob Cratchett.

Cindy: Hi guys. We did catch K-ville the other night and we both liked it although I was a little surprised by the ending. Is that Wings Hauser's son playing the partner? As for the other new shows, I think we'll stick to our L & O's & CSI's and all of those type shows.

Ellen: Not only is he the son of Wings Hauser, he is (according to IMDB.com, where I looked him up when I was writing the review), the great-grandson of Harry Warner, who founded Warner Bros. And yet I still do not buy him as an escaped convict-turned-police officer.

Jonathan: I don't think Hauser was on Wings. Wasn't it Tim Daly and Steven Weber?

Ellen: Tim Daly's on Private Practice. Try to keep up.

Jonathan: There's one that's going in the toilet.

Ellen: Wasn't it our last chat out in L.A. that was all about the bathroom scenes? Aren't you glad we did that one before Larry Craig's arrest came to light?

Cindy: Funny Jon, very funny!!!

Jonathan: Is Wings Hauser any relation to Chris "Wheels" Wheeler?

Paul: Have you seen any additional eps of Bionic Woman? The pilot was pretty dark... but I'll probably give it another shot.

Jonathan: Uh-oh, there *goes* the Bionic Woman. Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh....

Jonathan: Except she doesn't do that anymore, and I miss it.

Ellen: I haven't seen anything but that one, and yes, it was quite dark. And since I abandoned Alias after about five episodes, I don't see starting over with Jamie.

Jonathan: You mean Larry "Wide Stance" Craig?

Ellen: Look for Boston Legal or L&O to feature a "wide stance" story any day.

Axel: What about The War -- what's the word there? Is anyone actually going to watch a 14-hour documentary?

Jonathan: Uh, it's actually more like 15 hours.

Ellen: Not that we're counting or anything. I had to haul it off on vacation (not Dodge City) or I wouldn't be ready for tomorrow's War package in the Daily News -- product placement alert -- for which I'm still writing.

Jonathan: Oooh. A War package! We don't have that, but we have a most excellenty written review on Sunday. I though it was great, but not the Second Coming.

Ellen: I haven't yet seen the Second Coming, so it's hard to compare, but yes, I mostly liked it. I haven't spent my life watching the Nazi Channel, though, so maybe it seems fresher to me than it might to some.

Jonathan: I learned a lot and enjoyed many of the people's tales, though I did get tired of the incessant shooting and dying.

Ellen: A lot of that, yes, and that's why the controversy, if you could call it that, about the very occasional strong language seems so ludicrous. No way that a child should be viewing this many dead bodies.

Jonathan: Oh, dear, I hope no children are reading this.

Ellen: No, no. They're all off practicing their rabbit-hunting skills for the next edition of Kid Nation.

Jonathan: I get so tired of the constant carping about naughty words and such. We are such a society of children.

Jonathan: Be happy! Hunt rabbits! Don't go home to whiny parents.

Ellen: Well, contrasted to the obscenity of war, the milder obscenities do seem pretty mild.

Jonathan: Yes, ma'am. You are correct, for once.

Jonathan: Just kidding. You are often correct.

Cindy: Have there ever been any new shows that either of you have absolutely hated and yet was a ratings success?

Ellen: Not much has premiered yet, but I didn't particularly care for Gossip Girl and was pleased to see that its ratings dipped in the second half-hour (though I'm sure the CW will spin it as some great success).

Jonathan: And as to *Ever* having shows that I hated that turned into ratings success, let's see. ...According to Jim ... King of Queens ... Family Guy ...

Ellen: We could probably come up with dozens over the years. Currently, I'd say Deal or No Deal.