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LOST Cut in Half & Related WGA News

Executive producer Carlton Cuse explained to Entertainment Weekly the current plans for LOST if the WGA strike is prolonged. The season was intended to air 16 episodes in order next spring but it's now reported that it will be shortened to 8 episodes, shows which already are in the can.

"It will feel like buying a 'Harry Potter' book, reading half of it, and then having to put it down for many months," explains Cuse. "There is a cliffhanger at the end of the eighth episode. It will only be frustrating [for viewers] to have to step away from the show and not see the second half of the season.

"The first half of the season, like a good novel, sets all the events of the show in motion and the second half deals with the consequences," Cuse continued. "We're very proud of the first eight but it feels weird to have to stop literally mid-stream."

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This same effect is happening for other shows as well. The Hollywood Reporter reports that the final season of Scrubs has gone from 18-episodes to 12-episodes, leaving the series finale in limbo.

"On a personal level, yeah, it would be nice to finish work on 'Scrubs' the way I wanted to," creator-executive producer Bill Lawrence told The Hollywood Reporter. "That it looks like it's not happening is certainly disappointing, I can't lie. But it's also not the end of the world. The last thing anybody wants to hear right now is some idiot saying, 'Hey, I worked really hard on my show, I want to end it the way I want to end it!' It's hard to care right now about any legacy."

Lawrence hasn't done much in the way of stockpiling "Scrubs" episodes in anticipation of a writers walkout. There are two scripts written and ready to shoot, "and with a single-camera show, once a script is locked, you have no real rewrites," he said. That will take "Scrubs" up through Episode 12, six episodes short of the ending Lawrence had envisioned for the show.

NBC's The Office is also in question. Half the stars of the show are credited writers from the WGA, including Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, B.J Novack & Mindy Kaling.

Several "Office" cast members, led by star Steve Carell, didn't show up for work Monday on the hit NBC comedy.

Reps for Carell, who also has a background as a writer, declined comment on whether Carell's action was in support of the strike. It wasn't clear Monday night if Carell would report to work Tuesday.

Co-star Rainn Wilson called in sick, while B.J. Novak and Mindy Kaling, who also are writers on the show, were on strike, as was "Office" showrunner Greg Daniels, who was spotted on the picket lines in front of the production offices of his own show..

“We have non-writing producers on the show who are perfectly capable of doing any non-writing producing duties,” Mr. Daniels said. “They want me do to writing-producing and just pretend it’s producing. Every decision you make has a writing aspect to it. If they really just thought it was producing, they could just as easily get somebody else to do these tasks.”

Without Carell and Wilson, only two scenes of "Office" were shot Monday, sources said.

Daniels isn't the only one picketing his own show.

CSI's Marg Helgenberger is currently walking the WGA picket lines at Universal Studios in Universal City, Calif. Mrs. Helgenberger is married to Alan Rosenberg, current president of the Screen Actors’ Guild.

Who else is picketing? 30 Rock's Tina Fey has joined the line outside the famous NBC building in New York. Battlestar Galactica's Ronald Moore has been spotted in the lines outside the Universal Studio Gate. The writers/actors of Desperate Housewives, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Lost (Abrams was spotted picketing) and many more shows have also joined the fray.