Television

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – A recurring message among executives, producers and actors at the Television Critics Association press tour has been that the strike that shut Hollywood down for five months and brought last year's new fall season to a screeching halt was, really, when you think about it, a good thing.

For established shows, it was a good thing because it allowed everyone on the show to "regroup" and "recharge" – if attendees had been playing a drinking game in which they downed a shot every time someone onstage used one of those two terms, you'd have had a ballroom full of passed-out journalists.

As Damon Lindelof, executive producer on Lost, explained it during a Thursday afternoon panel, the strike helped the show because it gave the writers a chance to receive feedback from family and fans on how the season was progressing, and to make some adjustments. That won't be the case during Lost's upcoming fifth season.

"We start production in August and we'll finish writing in February, about a month before we start broadcasting. So there's not going to be that opportunity for course correction," he said.

But what about new shows that were shut down by the strike just as they were starting to build audience and momentum? That had to be a bad thing for them, right? Wrong.

Shonda Rhimes, creator and executive producer of both Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, explained : "It's starting over in a good way. We're a better show than we were last year, so it's not starting over, it's just starting in a better place."

For anyone surprised to learn that the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences classified Desperate Housewives as a comedy (I thought comedies were supposed to be funny), you should have been in the Beverly Hilton ballroom to hear former Golden Girls writer Marc Cherry cut up. In comedian parlance, he killed the room.

When Shonda Rhimes was trying to answer a question about how she handled "the Katherine Heigl incident" (the actress publicly complained about the quality of writing for her character on Grey's Anatomy), Mr. Cherry offered this advice on handling upset actors:

"I pretend they're real people and talk to them. ... I explain that it's show biz, not real life, and that sooner or later the media will forget about you and go back to attacking Lost."

When someone asked Lucy Liu, new to the cast of Dirty Sexy Money, what advice she had for people about staying sexy over 40, Ms. Liu gave a smile that didn't look all that happy.

"After I'm 40 I can tell you how to be sexy. I turn 40 in January, so ask me then."