Some additional strike news

I'm sure you've been keeping up with the return status of our beloved TV shows via the list on my blog here, but I wanted to give a little bit more info here on a couple of my favorite shows:

Lost:
Beyond the eight pre-strike episodes that they had completed, the producers plan to make 5 more episodes this season for a total of 13. Had the strike not occurred, we were supposed to have 16 episodes this season. But good news, we are not permanently losing three episodes. The producers will tack on three more episodes to a future season before the show ends. With the five additional episodes that they'll be doing for this season, the producers said that they plan on condensing the storylines that they had planned for their original 16 episode season. This means that the season should end with a proper cliffhanger and not just some random episode. Finally, the producers said that there probably will be a gap between the end of the 8 pre-strike episodes and the beginning of these additional five. These additional episodes will begin airing sometime in April and when that happens, Lost will be moving to 10pm on Thursday to make room for Grey's Anatomy. Normally, I'd groan over that news, but there's going to be other stuff airing at Thursdays at 9, so moving Lost out of that timeslot is fine by me.

The Office:
Speaking of shows airing on Thursdays at 9, The Office will be back with 6 more episodes this season. The first one will be titled "Dinner Party" and involves Michael and Jan inviting some of the other Dunder-Mifflin workers over for a dinner party. This episode was basically written before the strike, but since Steve Carell and some of the other actors refused to film their scenes while the strike was going on, it never got made. Sadly, a Christmas episode was also written before the strike, but the producers have said that they will not make this one as part of Season 4. That's such a shame since their Christmas episodes are always so good. As of right now, The Office is scheduled to return on April 10th. Let the anticipation commence!