Fans of Veronica Mars can now rejoice, sort of. According to Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger, executive producer Rob Thomas has confirmed that the back seven episodes of the series have been picked up. This would make 20 episodes for this season. Traditionally, networks pickup the back nine episodes of a series to make it a 22-episode run.

Since this information is so brand new, Thomas says it will take some time to figure out how the last two story arcs will play out. However, he does confirm to the last arc will comprise of four-episodes. The second story-arc is currently being worked on.

Does this mean that Veronica Mars is in danger of not being renewed? Who knows this early in the season. Sepinwall thinks that the shortened order run may be due to penny pinching by the network, whose first year on the air has not been as stellar as they thought it would be.

I've never seen the show, but everything I've heard about the show - from people whose opinion I trust in these matters - rave about it. Every single review of the show uses the words "brilliant" and "great writing" and "great cast," and the writiers and directors on the show (including David Simon, who also worked on Homicide, and crime novelists George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane) are an interesting bunch. So why doesn't the show get the same massive buzz that The Sopranos and Deadwood do?

The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall has a long essay about what makes The Wire so great. It makes me want to watch the show (I guess it did its job), and that's a good thing, since it looks like a final, fifth season will depend on how many viewers tune in to the long-delayed fourth season, which starts September 10.

• Ken Levine has an interesting post about the use of laugh tracks on sitcoms.
• Aaron Barnhart has a pic of Craig Ferguson's new set. I think it looks kinda Lettermanesque, only Hollywoodized.
• Defamer has a picture of the America's Next Top Model writers picket line.
• Why is FOX handing out free booze to TV critics at 9am? Tim Goodman investigates.
• Alan Sepinwall solves the Heroes mystery (if you've seen it, you know that Greg Grunberg isn't in the pilot like he was supposed to be).

One of my favorite TV critics is Alan Sepinwall, from the Newark Star-Ledger, which is for all intents and purposes my hometown paper. He and his "All TV" partner, Matt Zoller Seitz, put out an excellent joint column just about every day in the Ledger, examining not only particular shows but trends in TV, bad behavior by the networks, and how TV affects society at large. Kind of what we do here, but in a bit longer form. And with less jokes.

What I didn't know about Sepinwall, though is that he also has a blog. And in his blog, he gets to speculate on things going on in the TV biz that he doesn't get to write about in the paper. It's fairly private; NJ.com doesn't link to the page, and it doesn't show up in many searches for Sepinwall's work. An entry, though, has caught people's attention: Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, the original brains behind The West Wing, are on the list of panelists representing the show on the upcoming critic's press tour. Sepinwall speculates that Sorkin and Schlamme will come back to write and direct either a farewell episode for Leo, played by the late John Spencer, or do the same for the final episode. Hm. Verrrrryyy IN-teresting.

[via Pop Candy]