It may not be true just yet, but I’ve got my fingers and my toes crossed that this happens. According to an official statement released by TNT today, the network has given the thumbs up to Jada Pinkett Smith (The Women, The Matrix Reloaded, Menace II Society), who will executive produce and star in the pilot episode for a new potential drama called Time Heals.

The series was created by Emmy winner John Masius (St. Elsewhere, Providence, Dead Like Me), who also penned the script for the pilot. It features Jada as Nancy Hawthorne, a recently widowed mother of a teenager and a nurse who persists helping others, even when she knows the odds are against her efforts making a significant impact in the larger scheme of things.

The TNT description clarifies:

Whether treating the homeless woman in front of the hospital like a human being or trying to talk a suicidal cancer patient off the ledge, Nancy must challenge hospital administrators, heartless doctors, apathetic colleagues and a system that sometimes forgets it’s there to serve the sick.

Recently widowed and the mother of a smart, willful teenager, Nancy juggles her career with her equally important role as a single parent. Between the two, she barely has time for herself and has difficulty keeping things together. But she knows she has to. She can’t give up on anyone. That’s what her passion requires; it’s what it takes to be a hero.

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This was a no-brainer in so many ways — Oscar winner Holly Hunter, for starters — but still the network has to make it official before Saving Grace fans can properly jump for joy.

The time to have at it is right about now, then, because TNT has done the deed and renewed the series for a third season of fifteen episodes. In case you’re counting, that order equals the number of episodes in the current second season, which is on hiatus right now until early 2009.

What excellent news for us Grrl TV watchers. And if you’ve been enjoying the network’s new Steven Bochco legal drama Raising the Bar, that top-rated show was renewed for a second season of fifteen episodes on September 16, as well.

And, finally, as I was writing this post, the news dropped that HBO has renewed its freshman vampire series True Blood for a second season, too. The show’s cast is lead by Canadian Anna Paquin, who became the second youngest Academy Award winner in history when she received Best Supporting Actress honors at 11 years old for her performance in 1993’s The Piano, the same film that allowed Hunter to win her Best Actress Oscar.

Congrats to the cast and crews of each deserving series. Plus, don’t forget that Hunter is up for a Best Drama Actress Emmy when the 60th Primetime Awards special airs on ABC this Sunday, September 21, at 8pm EST.

The summer half of The Closer’s fourth season comes to a close tonight with episode “Time Bomb.”

Now called the Major Crimes Division instead of Priority Homicide, Brenda’s team investigates a dead teenager’s connection to a suspected plan to murder hundreds of people. And, yes, if the title didn’t give it away, a bomb is involved.

A sneak peek at the episode follows the jump, complete with one of those handy yet weird-looking little bomb robots.

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Uh-oh! We knew it was coming.

Brenda gets in deep you-know-what during “Tijuana Brass,” the September 8 episode of The Closer, when reporter Ricardo Ramos’ article on Priority Homicide is published and the you-know-what hits the fan due to its negative depiction of Team Brenda. Yes, the boys and two girls can come off as an abrasive bunch to the uninitiated, but who in their right mind would argue they don’t get the job done?

Of course, Chief Pope gets pissed about the potentially damaging publicity, which is almost as dramatic as the central case revolving around two cops from Tijuana, Mexico, found dead in a stolen vehicle. The prime suspect? An FBI snitch.

Check out Pope pitching a righteous fit in front of Brenda because of that newspaper article in the sneak peek after the jump. I don’t think J.K. Simmons is capable of ever turning in a bad performance, and somehow I still have to stop myself from calling him Skoda whenever I see him. That reflex probably won’t ever go away, which is why it’s weird to see him so angry when Skoda was always so darn calm. Good stuff.

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Am I ever!

Now that all of the (unnecessary and undeserved) hype over The CW’s tepid 90210 has (finally) subsided (I hope and pray), here’s some news that’s actually worth going ga-ga over: TNT is in the beginning stages of producing a spinoff of its hit Kyra Sedgwick crime drama The Closer. Can you hear me screaming with joy?!

According to reports, the network has issued a script order for the potential new series. That means a chosen team of writers — in this case Closer creator and executive producer James Duff, Closer co-executive producer Adam Belanoff, and Closer writer Michael Berchem — are currently working on a script for an episode.

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Original Air Date: September 1, 2008

Although definitely not the best or most riveting episosde of The Closer so far this season, “Split Ends” does have its moments. Many of them, in fact, are comedic, which is a nice counterpoint to the very grave and extremely depressing topics the show has tackled in recent weeks.

The main murder of the installment involves a 33-year-old Hollywood hairstylist named Rachel Hughes, whose viciously beaten and bloody body is found underneath a trailer on the lot of her popular TV show Trauma Unit. It’s easy enough to determine where Hughes works since the crime takes place practically on the set, but not so much when it comes to where she actually lives when she goes home.

A little basic detective work reveals Hughes has made several trips to the hospital, thanks to her physically abusive husband, a struggling actor with severe problems controlling his anger. After the last treatment session six months ago, she filed for divorce and a restraining order, in addition to moving out of the house that she, as the breadwinner, owned.

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