Veronica Mars Scoop (plus The Office)

It's Wednesday and for all of us TV freaks its a great day, similar to Xmas... It's Ask Ausiello day where we learn all the goodies for our favorite shows. This week is no exception. From Emmy gossip, to Lost casting news, to season premiere death's this week's column has it all! Including the following Veronica Mars scoop.

Question: You looked absolutely awesome on the red carpet for the Emmys. I saw you in the background of the E! preshow. Now, after that shameless intro, I was hoping to score some Veronica Mars scoop. — Erin
Ausiello: And Veronica Mars scoop you shall receive. I asked Rob Thomas whether Piz, the new hottie in Veronica's life this season, will pose a serious threat for LoVe. "I think Veronica and Logan's struggles are going to have little to do with Piz. They're two pretty intense characters on their own, and I think most of their issues are going to be with each other. I don't want to play some traditional thing where Piz is insinuating himself into the relationship, or attempting to break them up, or doing anything other than being a nice guy who happens to be around Veronica a lot, due largely to proximity, but they also get entangled in a couple of cases together. Logan should just be worried about Logan." Piz, meanwhile, is "from a suburb of Portland, Oregon. With all the sort of brooding, rich bad boys we've had on our show, he's sort of the antithesis of that. He's much more a Lloyd Dobler, frenetic kid with a lot of words in his mouth, and a very similar middle-class background as Veronica. So he should have a real different energy than, say, Troy or Logan." BTW, check out my column in this week's issue of TV Guide to get your first look at Piz (aka up-and-comer Chris Lowell) on Mars. If you're straight and female or gay and male, I think you'll be pleased with what you see.


Question: Any chance we'll see Aaron Ashmore (Troy) back on Veronica Mars? — Becca
Ausiello: As Rob Thomas reminds us, "He kinda got another job on us." That job, of course, would be playing Jimmy Olsen on Smallville. Still, Rob says, "We thought about bringing Troy back quite a bit, and if we could ever work out a guest-star [thing], we wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on that. But we felt like we had just put Veronica together with a lot of similar boys. If there did develop another love interest for her, we kind of want him to come from a different place." Like, say, a suburb of Portland, Oregon?


And over at The Office...

Question: Can you give me anything on The Office? — Tommy D.
Ausiello: Ricky Gervais, a nominee for Extras, gave me some exclusive details about the episode he's penning this season. "It's Michael desperately trying to be PC, as usual, and failing miserably. And Jim and Pam send Dwight on a wild-goose chase. They [send him off on an] investigation, and there's a very, very embarrassing moment." Gervais also hinted that there's a "little bit" of a development in the Jim-Pam saga. "It was great writing it. And the strange thing was, I wasn't thinking of [the original British characters] David Brent and Tim and Dawn. I was thinking of Michael Scott and Jim and Pam. We wrote for them. Even though we sort of acted it out, which is how we do stuff, we were totally writing for the American version. I think it's great, by the way. I genuinely think it's great. And we can't wait for it to be syndicated. I'm very excited about the money, even though after taxes we'll be lucky to clear $100 million." Gervais dispelled reports that the British cast would show up at Dunder-Mifflin this season. "That wasn't true," he insists. "That's not true. One of the British tabs probably [started that]." You also shouldn't hold your breath for a revival of the original. "Absolutely not," he huffed. "Because when [the American version] gets syndicated, I'm not going to work again. I'm just going to eat pizza."