Joss Whedon

Strikewatch: TV’s Bosses Walk the Line—and We’re There

It’s not every day you see the top show runners of the biggest and best shows on television all together in one place. But such was the case this morning at ABC Studios in Burbank.

Unfortunately, as you probably know, these TV bosses gathered together for what many of them called a "sad," "sobering" and even "funeral"-like occasion (as My Name Is Earl producer Greg Garcia put it, "I want to throw up and cry"): to walk the picket line in support of the Writers Guild of America strike, which entered its third day today.

Team WWK (Korbi, Jen and I) hit the Walt Disney Studios gate to check out what happens when the likes of Damon Lindelof, Joss Whedon, Bill Lawrence, John Wells, Ronald D. Moore, Shonda Rhimes and many, many others grab a sign and face the press to rally the writers’ cause. A few actors we love (Sally Field, Dave Annable, Justine Bateman) also joined in to show their support.

Here are the parts about Whedonverse people:

The theme of the day was Show Runners United, and all the TV-show chiefs were asked to carry signs identifying their shows. Some noted they were coming midseason, and Joss Whedon made a point to describe his newly hatched Dollhouse as "not coming soon."

"I honestly wasn’t sure what to put on my sign," he told me. "But of course I had to be here. This is too important."

Adorable pixie and show runner Marti Noxon, one of the many Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel alums now staffed elsewhere, talked to the media about the strike and her work on Grey’s spinoff Private Practice.

Craig Thomas, cocreator of the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother, revealed that HIMYM is shooting its last script this week—the season’s eleventh—and then will go out of production, which means the series is expected to air through the first or second week of December. Not surprisingly, Craig says the HIMYM cast has been "totally cool" regarding the strike. "Alyson Hannigan was on the line with us for like three hours yesterday, handing out her leftover candy bars from Halloween. Several of the castmembers came, actually." We always knew they were a tight-knit fam!