• July 16, 2006 | 2 p.m. PT

Live from LA

Welcome to this special version of Test Pattern, coming to you live on location from the TV Critics’ Association summer press tour in Pasadena. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be attempting to update both this Weblog and original-recipe Test Pattern, in which we’ll continue our hunt for the year’s best and worst commercials.

Here at press tour, commonly referred to by participants as the Death March with Cocktails, critics from all around the US and Canada gather and each network shows up for a day or more, offering up network executives as well as writers and stars from its new (and sometimes old) shows. I’m a press-tour newbie, so what’s old hat to many critics will be new and possibly exciting to me. Like the fact that I just barely avoided literally running into “Young and the Restless” star Peter Bergman, whom I’ve known as Jack Abbott on that soap since the late 1980s. (In person he looks even tanner than on TV, if that’s possible. And his co-star Tracey E. Bregman (Lauren Fenmore) looks even tinier.

I'll be offering up the choicest tidbits and some erratic sidebars about the panels I attend. Sometimes there's real television news that comes out of these sessions, but other times we leave the ballroom saying to each other "Did you SEE Jeri Ryan's shoes?" Or maybe that's just me.

Only interested in certain shows or topics? I'll provide a handy table of topics each day so you can jump to your favorite. Here's CBS' day one:

• Leaving fans hanging with canceled serialized dramas. (Ahem -- "Reunion" -- ahem.)
• James Woods, Jeri Ryan's shoes, and jumping the "Shark."
• Your 'Amazing Race' questions answered (well, some of them)
• Still 'Young,' still 'Restless'
• 'Class' is in session, and damaged jeans get an A from Jason Ritter
• 'Jericho,' when the walls came a-tumblin' down. Also, 'Skeet' is fun to say.
• 'Smith,' and main characters don't all have to be Ned Flanders

Serialized dramas: The reality shows of this year, otherwise known as "some of us are still made about 'Reunion,' "
In her panel, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler proudly proclaimed that "network TV has reclaimed the water cooler," bragging that the cast of one of CBS's new shows, "Smith," is the kind of "cast you'd see in a feature film." (Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen are among those players, the show revolves around Liotta's criminal gang and their heists as well as his private life; Madsen plays his wife, who has a few secrets of her own.)

Critics got in a few questions about schedule changes and the like, but the unquestioned topic of the hour was network TV's rush to copy the success of serialized shows such as "24" and "Lost," churning out more and more shows that your average viewer needs to be tuned in from the beginning to be able to follow. CBS's "Jericho," in which a small Kansas town is apparently cut off from the world by nuclear explosions, is one of those shows.

Questioners wanted to know if Tassler felt the networks were loading up too much on this kind of show, requiring too much of a commitment from viewers, and essentially, if it would backfire. Regular readers of regular Test Pattern know I was a big booster of FOX's "Reunion," and tried to ferret out plot details when that show was canceled well before its murderer was revealed. Critics wanted to know if the networks weren't afraid of turning off viewers by getting them hooked on a show and then never satisfying their need to know what happened. Tassler kept repeating that the good shows would make it, that they'd find audiences. Someone asked if she was saying that the "Reunion" fans really didn't care who the murderer was, and she backtracked a bit, saying she was "sure it was important to them," but basically that "the show would still be on the air if people cared." I cared, Nina! As did many  MSNBC.com readers, who even wrote in with their own theories as to who killed Sam.

Nothing was essentially answered to critics' full satisfaction in the Tassler session, but one thing is clear to me: Serialized drama is the reality show of this season. It's popular, some have done quite well, and now we're seeing everyone trying it, and there's bound to be a bit of a downside. I wish Tassler had talked more about ways in which the networks can keep viewer goodwill -- there are numerous ways to do it. If unaired episodes exist of a serial, release them as downloads. Sell them as extras on the DVD. Devote part of your Web site to letting the show's writer talk about what would have happened and why. That, to me, is the way to keep fans happy, even if you can't keep the show they liked on the air.