If the news that Lauren Graham was joining the cast of NBC’s Parenthood wasn’t exciting enough, now comes word that Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino will write and exec produce a drama for HBO. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the untitled project follows the “complicated relationship between three adult sisters, all writers sharing the same upper east side apartment building, and their mother, a domineering literary lioness who reserves most of her affections for their ne’er-do-well brother.” If we forget all about Sherman-Palladino’s short-lived Fox sitcom The Return of Jezebel James (of which, FYI, you can catch unaired eps on Hulu), we can just focus on how awesome this sounds: Three adult sisters who are writers and have a rocky relationship with their literary lioness mother? It’s like we’ve died and gone to dialogue heaven, where all the angels are articulate and speak quickly with pop culture references and, god willing since it’s cable, the occasional F bomb for comedic emphasis.

Were I an actress, I’d be having my agent call Sherman-Palladino’s people begging for a meeting. Who’s your dream cast? (In my fantasy world, where contracts with other shows don’t exist, I’d go with Lauren Graham, Rachel Griffiths, and Carla Gugino as the siblings. I fear we’ll need to skew younger and go for “movie stars” like Claire Danes….)

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This just in from the let-bygones-be-bygones division of the CBS casting department: Mandy Patinkin — the very talented but oh-so-complicated actor who walked off of Criminal Minds after its second season — will guest star on an upcoming episode of Three Rivers, the network’s new drama about organ transplants. Patinkin, who was the recipient of a double corneal transplant, won’t re-enact his real-life problems with degenerative eye disease; instead, he’ll play an ALS patient who wants to be taken off life support so his organs can save others. In a network press release today, CBS tried to make hay out of the fact that Patinkin has a “very personal connection with organ donation,” but I think they were missing the point. Patinkin’s back, baby!

Far be it from me to give Patinkin a pass for not showing up to work back in the day when he was helping to make Criminal Minds a surprise hit for CBS, but there’s something oddly respectable about a guy who walks from a job — not because of money or the grueling schedule — but because he reportedly thinks the show is too violent. His surprise departure didn’t hurt the show — Joe Montegna proved to be a superior replacement — but it certainly left a sizable void in primetime. However persnickety this Emmy and Tony winner is, Patinkin is a bona fide TV star who deserves his own show. What do you think, Patinkin watchers? Do you miss the Chicago Hope alum as much as I do?

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