TV Bits: More 'Ash Vs. Evil Dead' Possibilities, 'Battlestar Galactica' Finale Trivia, 'Devils,' Unexpected TV Ratings

In this edition of TV Bits:

  • Ash vs. Evil Dead stars believe they can convince Bruce Campbell to come back.
  • Ronald D. Moore reveals the original, 4-hour concept for the Battlestar Galactica finale.
  • Patrick Dempsey's new dram Devils gets picked up by The CW.
  • The highest-rated show on broadcast television Wednesday wasn't even a TV show.
  • Ash vs Evil Dead Season 3Ash vs. Evil Dead brought Bruce Campbell back to the role of iconic Ash Williams more than two decades after he last strapped on the chainsaw arm. But it seemed that as soon as we saw him back in the monster-fighting role, Campbell was done for good, retiring from the role at the end of season 3. But his Ash vs. Evil dead co-stars Dana DeLorenzo and Ray Santiago thinks they could convince Campbell to return to the role if a different network brought it back from the grave.

    "Well, I say, 'Never say never,'" DeLorenzo teased at Mainframe Comic Con 2.0 (via ComicBook.com). "The way things are going, I've been reading all these very terrifying things about our industry and just productions and things are being shelved, so I honestly feel like never say never. There have been shows where they get cancelled but then they're picked up by another network. I know Bruce has said he is in retirement but I feel like Ray and I could convince him."

    Santiago added, "I think enough time has passed by. He just needs a good one or two years of just like chilling in the woods and not having the Boomstick in his hands and then he starts to crave it and it'll come back."

    There are currently no talks about the series being revived, but Campbell and original director Sam Raimi and producer Robert Tapert are developing a new film for the series. Perhaps a resurrection of the film franchise could give some life to a TV series revival.

    battlestar galactica reboot

    Ronald D. Moore talked to Collider about his original vision of the ending of Battlestar Galactica, which would have been a whopping four hours long. Ultimately, nearly two hours were cut from the Battlestar Galactica finale, but Moore describes in detail what the original cut looked like:

    The original cut was probably closer to four hours. There was a different structure in the script than what ended up on screen. The structure in the script was much less linear – it was very non-linear. I was doing flashbacks and current stuff and mixing up the flashbacks. You would see the end Laura's story before you saw the beginning of it and then you'd come back to the present. Then you'd see another piece of Adama's story. It was really very challenging. When you read it...it was like "Wow!" It was really a huge thing to wrap your mind around. Everyone got really excited about it.

    When you laid it out like that in film it was really hard to follow. As much as I wanted it to work, people around me were going "I'm not sure it works. Maybe you should make it linear." Then I started feeling like maybe you're right. So it just became a more linear piece in that all the flashbacks lined up chronologically instead of doing them all the flashbacks out of order. Once you did that it changed the fundamental structure. There were some scenes that worked and some scenes going too long. So that's the difference between the four hour and the three hour was. It was really just changing the structure, tightening up, and making the usual cuts and edits you do on almost any piece of film to just get it down to its fighting weight.

    McDreamy is returning to TV, but the devil is in the details. Five years after he left Grey's Anatomy, Patrick Dempsey has a new TV drama, Devils, which has just been picked up by The CW. TV Line reports that the international drama series, which also stars Italian actor Alessandro Borghi, will air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. before the investigative drama Coroner.

    Here's a sign of the odd times we're in right now: the highest-rated TV show on broadcast television Wednesday night was not even a TV show, but an ABC airing of Pixar's 2009 film Up. According to The Wrap, ABC aired the Oscar-winning movie Wednesday night from 8 P.M. to 10 P.M., carrying it to first place in ratings among adults 18-49.