Kevin Bacon has signed on to direct the season finale of “The Closer,” which will mark his first time working on the show.
“We’re guessing, though, that he’s already familiar with the material.
Bacon is married to the show’s star, Emmy nominee Kyra Sedgwick.
The couple has worked together several times in the past, including on both of his previous directorial efforts.
TNT, which airs “The Closer,” is planning to keep fans in suspense over the end of the season for a while come fall.
The show will conclude its regular run in September but won’t officially close the books on its second season until a two-part special airs in December.
Bacon will direct the final episode, which will find Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson (Sedgwick) and Lt. Provenza (G.W. Bailey) appealing to keep their jobs after they’re placed on administrative leave.
“The Closer” is the most-watched series on ad-supported cable this year, drawing better than 6 million viewers per week.
Guest stars flock to ‘Nip/Tuck’
When “Nip/Tuck” returns to FX in September, it will be bringing a gaggle of high-profile guest stars, ranging from French screen legend Catherine Deneuve to Rosie O’Donnell.
Also taking guest turns on the show will be Peter Dinklage, Jacqueline Bisset, Melissa Gilbert and Richard Chamberlain. Additionally, Brooke Shields, Kathleen Turner, Larry Hagman and Sanaa Lathan will have recurring parts – the latter two as a husband and wife who offer to buy the McNamara/Troy plastic surgery practice from Sean (Dylan Walsh) and Christian (Julian McMahon).
In keeping with the show’s over-the-top tradition, several of the guest stars will be involved in eyebrow-raising stories. “When you think Catherine Deneuve, you think French murderess. At least I do,” creator Ryan Murphy told reporters Tuesday at the Television Critics Association press tour.
And that’s just the start of it: “There’s a storyline that I’ve always been obsessed with that I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to give that to Catherine Deneuve,”‘ Murphy says. “It’s a woman who comes in and wants her husband’s cremated ashes put in her breast implants so she can always be close to her husband. … And then, of course, the question is why does she want to get rid of these ashes? What has she fed her husband? It’s that kind of a whodunit.”
Shields, meanwhile, will play Christian’s therapist, who has problems of her own and “develops a mad, obsessive crush on him,” Murphy says.
Despite all the star wattage, though, Murphy says that “Nip/Tuck’s” fourth season will return the focus to Sean, Christian and Julia (Joely Richardson) after last season’s Carver-fueled plot. Early episodes will deal with the impending birth of Sean and Julia’s child, the offer from Hagman’s character to buy the business and Christian’s realization that his most intimate relationship is, in fact, with Sean.
“This show was always about these three people. Make no mistake,” Murphy says. “And the guest stars that come in are here – their stories, their medical cases are there to thematically tell us what’s going on in the lives of these two doctors and with Julia. … It’s never going to be an episode where (guest stars) are in every scene.”
—
“LOST’ NUMBERS ARE UP
No one on the TV series “Lost” has yet been able to explain the significance of the number string that seems to follow the characters around. Those playing the “Lost Experience” game, though, may find out soon.
ABC says the globe-spanning online game, which launched in May, will reveal the meaning behind the 4-8-15-16-23-42 number string – which has bedeviled Hurley (Jorge Garcia) in particular – in its current phase. The network also promises information on the mysterious Alvar Hanso and his Hanso Foundation before the game concludes at the start of the show’s third season.
“The reward we’ve always promised from the Lost Experience is information, which is currency to anyone who is a fan of the show or a participant in this game,” says Mike Benson, head of marketing for ABC Entertainment. “This additional form of storytelling allows us to engage current and new fans in a genuinely innovative way while delivering the same extraordinary content that “Lost’ provides as a television series.”
The “Lost Experience” takes viewers deep down the rabbit hole of mythology surrounding the series and involves a number of Web sites, blogs and video clips – some embedded in the sites of corporate sponsors – as well as a bit of theater. At last weekend’s Comic-Con in San Diego, an actress saying she was “Experience” figure “Rachel Blake” interrupted a panel on the show to tout one of the game’s sites, Hanso Exposed.
The game has already given players clues to the significance of the Black Rock – the old ship several castaways discovered during the show’s first season – and the reason why the DHARMA Initiative is so named (apparently DHARMA stands for Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications).
ABC says players need not have watched “Lost” before to get in on the game, which is also running in the U.K. and Australia. Players from around the world are encouraged to share clues.
—
(c) 2006, Zap2it.com.
Visit Zap2it.com at http://www.zap2it.com
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-07-26-06 1654EDT
Comments are no longer available on this story