Traffic drugs across the border, of course:

The fourth season of Weeds premieres tonight at 10 on Showtime.

I was lucky enough to attend a Q and A last night in NYC with the cast (aside from Jason Segel), co-creator Carter Bays, and director Pamela Fryman. (You can check out some pictures here.) As a group, they were funny, gracious, and charming. By the way, thank you, Josh Radnor, for nodding politely while I gushed in a probably incoherent manner about how much I love HIMYM. I made eye contact with Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris touched my arm. I am fairly sure nothing will ever top this until possibly my wedding, so good luck every moment up until then, for you have met a formidable rival. Now imagine Barney saying that. It'll sound funnier.

I also learned a few fun tidbits about the show:

The "mother" holding the yellow umbrella (go to 9:04) in the third season premiere? Pamela Fryman.

The Barney and Robin relationship will be explored more (by the way, NPH and Cobie Smulders have a great rapport), but the show will stay true to the characters. No head-over-heels Tedding out for Barney.

Throwaway lines can become great moments. A random joke from the second season about a stoned Marshall thinking Ted was the dean when they first met at college became a flashback in the season three episode "How I Met Everyone Else."

We have most definitely seen the mother on the show already. Not only that, but they have already filmed various reaction shots from the actors playing Ted's kids (David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonesca, aka on Dylan Desperate Housewives) to account for the fact that 2030 Ted tells the story on one long afternoon, but in the real world, there have been many afternoons since the pilot. Somewhere there is a tape that has these two reacting to Ted telling them who their mother is. So, to use an analogy: this isn't season one Lost, when they show you the darkness in the hatch without knowing what they're going to put there. This is having a finite number of seasons Lost. In other words, Bays says they do know their endgame and what will happen in the final episode when we get there.

I am applying the 24 rule to Jin: if we do not see the character's dead body, he is still alive somewhere. Corollary, also known as the Michael Vaughn Axiom: even if we do see the character's dead body, if it is a show associated with J.J. Abrams, the character can still be alive. Subsection A of the corollary (the Christian Shephard Principle): if the show is Lost, the character may be an apparition thing who walks and talks and makes Claire leave her baby and confuses Michael seconds before he dies. But Jin's not dead. He's not. And don't you tell me that the character who has had the greatest transformation (aside from Sawyer, who was a bigger jackass than Jin when the plane crashed?) will never be reunited with his wife and daughter.

I don't think I have ever cursed at anything the way I cursed at the TV when the boat blew up. I swore off watching Lost next year and actually meant it for a whole hour, I felt so demoralized when Sun lost Jin. (But she didn't. She didn't.)

There was a sense of completion in connecting the island time to the off-island time; the show made good on its promise of showing us how the Oceanic Six got rescued. But it didn't give us the time-space continuum shattering moment of last year's flash-forward finale. The two big reveals — that they REALLY have to go back and that Locke is in the coffin — were actually strangely logical for Lost. Of course they have to go back. What, were we just going to watch the two groups concurrently for the rest of the series? And Locke is the only character who has ever had that kind of effect on everyone else, maintaining and strengthening his adversarial status the entire time, forever on his personal missions. He may be dead, but it's three years later; dude has clearly screwed up a lot of stuff. Oh, and he's probably not dead, based on the aforementioned rules.

Lost jumped a lot of its hurdles in this recharged season but it has set up quite a few for the next one. Like Locke's transformation into another philosopher. And what exactly happened thanks to the frozen donkey wheel. Is the island in a biodome? Do they all have the ability to breathe underwater indefinitely like Super Mario, killing fish with little fireballs that inexplicably burn? In the Lost world, both are actually possible.

Still, the finale was peppered with moments loud (the boat going bye-bye), soft (what do you think Sawyer whispered?) and finally (Desmond and Penny!). It was satisfying enough, though the end did leave you wanting just a few more bites. Sidenote: in what world should Ben look better than Jack?

So why for the love of Patrick Galen Dempsey have you got every character on Grey's Anatomy sounding the same? That season finale was the best episode in a year and half and you've got the characters repeating themselves, over and over and OVER again like they don't even realize they're talking till the fourth time they say the same thing. Even as you shore up other aspects that have been lacking — making things funnier thanks to uber-dork Lexie, making the medical cases less like thematic bulls eyes and more like interesting medical cases, stopping anything related to George and Izzie — you persist in giving the same kind of dialogue to all the characters. That is Meredith's thing, the repeating thing. She repeats herself because she is unsure of herself. But the other characters, Cristina, Derek, the Chief, these are strong characters. Why have you got them talking like wishy-washy, dark and twisty, it's taken her over a year in Grey's time and four years in real time to get her act together Meredith?

What's more, you handed this trait over to Addison and whisked her off to LA, where she infected the rest of the staff at Oceanside Wellness. So you got two shows where everybody talks the same! The characters on Grey's and Private Practice may all be screwed-up, but that is no reason to give them identical verbal tics to demonstrate that. With all the relationship change-ups (see below), you're on your way to getting Grey's back to what it was. For the first time in a long time, the medical subplots were actually more understated in their relationship to the doctors, outlandish as that block of cement was. But you still need to get back to who these characters are without the medical cases. Start by letting them talk like themselves.

Sincerely,
Emily Lasky

P.S.- Would somebody please give Jurnee Smollett her own show (go to 1:52)? She deserves more than to be known as Denise by everybody under the age of 25.

Like my beloved, I too will be going on a summer hiatus, after a quick roundup of all the season finale goodness:

Did anyone else think Gossip Girl was a letdown after Serena's confession two episodes ago? (As my friend so eloquently put it, "It was either porn or murder.") But after that, they leave us with Vanessa and Dan and Nate and Serena joking around as two would-be couples? You can almost sense Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage's apprehension in pulling the trigger on anything bigger than S and D's break-up. Too afraid they'll burn through all the good stories like they did on The OC, particularly with a 27-ep super season of GG next year.

How I Met Your Mother and One Tree Hill went with the old standard: popping the question and cutting to black before we hear the answer, and in the case of OTH, even see who Lucas is talking to. This puts them in the grand tradition of... pretty much every other show from the past 15 years. Meanwhile, DH picked up on a new fun trend popular thanks to the strike: the time jump. But the big reveal is that Susan's not with Mike? Come on, my dog saw that one coming.

The Office wasn't the funniest episode ever, but it was the best-told story in the series' history. "Goodbye, Toby" was actually heartbreaking. Once again, Michael didn't make a good change in his life, but his lack of awareness was especially sad this time. I cringed when he called Jan. And I cringed when Angela said, "Ok." I mean, Angela, cheating? How could you? What would your cats think? Plus, with Pam pursuing her graphic design dreams and Ryan ousted from a job Jim could easily do, this could be the beginning of the end for Jam. And what makes this story so good is that the future is uncertain for normal, logical reasons; of course Jim wouldn't propose just then, but that one moment could define the course of their relationship. (But I will venture a guess now that the show ends with Jim and Pam married and living in New York.) As usual, The Office finds humor and drama in the little things in life, in this case, creating a show that was heartbreakingly perfect.

Ironically, this strike-hobbled season gave some shows their greatest moments because everyone had to shove in their best stuff before the end (Amber's death on House and the new illegitimate child on Brothers and Sisters to name two). Yet as we all know, TV never sleeps, and isn't even technically over yet (Grey's and Lost and Idol oh my!). So two or three times a week, check here for recaps of summer shows (Weeds returns June 16!) and news about the upcoming fall season that's only four short months away.

Your summer mission, if you choose to accept it, is to catch up on one of the best dramas on TV this year.

At 8:30, we see the season finale of Scrubs. Continuing the show's love of parodying movies (The Wizard of Oz, possibly every other movie in existence), tonight's episode is a variation on The Princess Bride, with Dr. Cox telling his son a lovely bedtime story about our favorite will they/won't they couple:

Then at 9:30, 30 Rock ends a beautiful year (favorite line of the season: "You used Ghostbusters for evil!) with that tried-and-true season finale plotline: pregnancy. Liz Lemon, what have you been doing, or should I say, whom?

Desperate Housewives

Who thinks Gary Cole is a little creepy? Bully for Dylan that she has a dad now, no matter that he is somewhat stalking her. But this means that Katherine has some 'splaning to do. Did you check your husband's pulse before burying him? Cause dude found his way out.

Or she never killed Wayne and DH fed us a plate of red herring a few weeks ago. Which I'm fine with, so long as they do reveal what happened eventually. Speaking of revealing, while they handled the Orson-running-over-Mike story with grace, I'm just happy they resolved it. That was bugging me the way Michael disappearing for a season and a half on Lost was bugging me. Television writers, the people wanna know!

It was a nice switch to let Mike accept what Orson did and make Bree unable to do so. Same with the twist that Lynette's twins burned down Rick's restaurant instead of Tom. They love their mom so much they don't want her to leave with another man! That's sort of disturbing in a "given an interest in taxidermy, these kids might grow up to be Norman Bates" kind of way, but still, definitely not something I saw coming.

Brothers and Sisters

Who thinks Justin is a little creepy? How hard up are you that you start hoping someone isn't your sister in order to get a girlfriend? If the writers let something happen before Rebecca tells him she's not a Walker... I'll still watch because this show's amazing, but I won't be happy about it!

I personally am much more interested in how Rebecca being David's daughter will affect the Walker family as a whole, and as Rebecca was quick to note, how it will affect her relationship with Holly. Fun as the relationship issues are (Kevin and Scotty are so getting hitched, Kitty is so getting pregnant), family drama is this show's bread and butter. The DNA results, combined with the possibility that Ojai Foods could go bust thanks to a risky deal, should make for some good TV in the final two episodes.