THE MAYOR OF TELEVISION 'GOSSIP GIRL' SLAMS 'BIONIC WOMAN'.

Byline: David Kronke's blog and podcast

Mediaweek is reporting that advertisers like the CW's new fall lineup, thanks to shows like the teen-angst epic "Gossip Girl." Because it's, as they said in "The Hudsucker Proxy," "you know -- for kids."

Meanwhile, they're not so bully on Fox shuffling its schedule in January, consigning "Bones" -- which made some inroads this past season -- to Friday, the network's perennial Dead Zone. Advertisers aren't so keen on NBC's new remake of "Bionic Woman," either, or ABC's "Cavemen" (no! really?) or CBS' "Viva Laughlin" (advertisers being longtime opponents of musical comedy, having lobbied Congress in the 1990s to pass the No-Singing,-No- Dancing-as-Entertainment Directive; the legislation died in committee).

"Bionic Woman" reprograms the '70s series into a more sinister, paranoid animal. Here, Michelle Ryan stars as a bartender with a high IQ (if it's so high, then why is she a bartender?) almost killed in an automobile accident -- that was no accident at all. Her equally brilliant boyfriend, who survived the punishing wreck with just a couple of scratches, patches her together with militarized body parts (because, you know, our nation would be crippled by a sudden bartender shortage). Turns out he's part of a shadowy government agency attempting to create high-tech soldiers. As with "The X-Files," "Battlestar Galactica" (both shows contributed executive producers to this venture) and "Heroes," unnerving questions of the "who's the good guy?/who's the bad guy?" variety carry the day.

"BW's" pilot concludes with a hellacious catfight between our new bionic woman and the first bionic woman -- no, not Lindsay Wagner; Katee Sackhoff (so that's why "Battlestar Galactica" killed off Starbuck), who went nuts, went rogue and promises to be a burr in the backside of all involved. After the two women tussle, they seem well-satisfied with their little workout, a sequence that will no doubt invite all sorts of conjecture and stir prepubescent boys for reasons they cannot fathom.

'HEROES': "How to Stop an Exploding Man" ... except that technically, on Monday's season finale of "Heroes," they didn't stop the exploding man. They just changed the place where he exploded. So we still need to know exactly how to stop an exploding man, you know, for future reference.

Other questions/comments (obviously, if you TiVo'd the episode, you won't want to read any further until you've actually seen it):

I didn't see the past couple of episodes, so can anyone tell me if they explained why the streets of New York were completely empty except for the occasional "Heroes" cast member? Because, usually, they're, you know, not.

For a while, it seemed, they had dialed back on the corny narration, but, boyoboy, they ladled it on tonight: "Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream?" At least that, of course, was followed by a replay of Lindermann's messy lobotomy. Answer: "The soul is what gets jazzed when watching a guy's brain get sucked out of his skull."

Plotting seemed alternately sloppy -- Sylar allows himself to get played, again, by Hiro?; Peter's unexplained journey through the past in order to receive key plot points -- and fairly clever in the way they managed to get so much of the cast in the same place for the final showdown (though how did Claire know where to turn up?).

Re: Peter's journey through the past: He's told, "In the end, all that really matters is love." Aw, c'mon, not quite: In the end, all that really matters on "Heroes" is an average of one grisly scene and one unforeseen plot twist per episode. Even Tina Turner has long suspected that love has nothing to do with it, and I doubt she's ever seen the show.

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Advertisers like the CW's new teen drama, "Gossip Girl," starring Blake Lively.