Whatever happened to .... ? That's what some people are asking.

Whatever happened to .... ? That's what some people are asking.
By DANIEL FIENBERG
ZAP2IT.COM
LOS ANGELES -- It was only weeks ago that industry insiders were buzzing about Alicia Silverstone's Fox pilot "Queen Bee," while NBC looked ready to walk the beat with a 1970s-set cop drama based on the same real-life drug bust as "The French Connection."
ABC was stoked to have the "thirtysomething" team of Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz chronicling twentysomethings with "1/4 life," while Bill Lawrence's ("Scrubs") "Nobody's Watching" was going to revolutionize The WB's comedy line-up.
William Goldman's classic Hollywood maxim that nobody knows anything goes more so for pilot season buzz, where nearly every available actor, writer and director in town is attached to something and every show is a potential classic until schedules are announced.
There's no way of knowing why pilots don't get picked up. The easiest explanation would just be that an idea that sounded great in a pitch meeting became an repugnant waste of time on tape. But sometimes a network might blanche at the potentially high cost of series production. Sometimes a network's relationship with a certain production studio might sour because of negotiations over an existing series.
No amount of star power can save a doomed pilot. At CBS alone, established film and television stars like John Leguizamo, Sally Field and Eric La Salle ("Conviction"), Dylan McDermott ("3 Lbs."), Jeri Ryan and David Arquette ("Commuters") and James Van Der Beek ("Three") couldn't stick.
Some discarded pilots may be reconsidered, reimagined or recast and still find homes as midseason replacements. (NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly admitted that "The Book of Daniel," for example, contained many elements that the network really liked.) Others are probably dead forever. (Reilly glibly noted that nobody will hear from the Janeane Garofalo poker comedy "All In" again.)
One of the most entertaining subplots of this pilot season was monitoring the attempt by former "Beverly Hills, 90210" stars and featured players from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" (commonly known as the Whedon-verse) to make it back on the small screen. Now that the dust has settled, it's clear that the Whedon-verse won big.
While "90210" vets like Brian Austin Green (ABC's "Freddie"), Lindsey Price (The WB's "Pepper Dennis") and Shannen Doherty (UPN's "Love, Inc.") found network homes, some of seminal Fox soap's biggest stars -- Jason Priestley (CBS' "Love Monkey"), Luke Perry (Fox's "Ticket to Ride") and Tiffani Thiessen (CBS' "Stroller Wars") -- are looking for work again.
Meanwhile, networks landed placements for such "Buffy" vets as Nicholas Brendon (Fox's "Kitchen Confidential"), Alyson Hannigan (CBS' "How I Met Your Mother") and Seth Green (NBC's "Four Kings") and for "Angel" favorites David Boreanaz (Fox's "Bones"), Amy Acker (CBS' "The Unit") and Christian! Kane (CBS' "Close to Home").
Here's a glance at some of the other higher-profile rejections from this pilot season:
"Pros and Cons" and "The Catch" (ABC, dramas): "Lost" and "Alias" will be back again next fall and ABC has ordered "What About Brian" for midseason, but rumors that J.J. Abrams was prepared to take over the network appear to have been greatly exaggerated. Given the number of different permutations that "The Catch," a bounty hunter drama starring Abrams' buddy Greg Grunberg, has already taken, it wouldn't be surprising to see it resurface some day, but for now, Abrams will have to be satisfied with mini-domination at ABC.
"The Prince" (The WB, drama): Did Greg Berlanti do something mean to WB Entertainment President David Janollari? "Jack & amp; Bobby" is gone. "Everwood" has been shipped off to face "CSI" on Thursday. And "The Prince," a buzzworthy pilot (also executive produced by Matt LeBlanc) starring Tim Matheson and Mariel Hemingway, didn't make the cut.
"Halley's Comet" (The WB, drama): It used to be that if David E. Kelley told your network he wanted to do a show, he didn't even need to shoot a pilot. Then again, that's how CBS ended up with "The Brotherhood of Poland, NH." The trades suggested that this medical drama was still in the running until the last minute, but Kelley's name couldn't put it over the top.
"Hitched" (Fox, drama): This Aaron Spelling-produced drama set in a full-service Las Vegas wedding chapel may not have necessarily sounded like a great idea, but with co-stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar ("Saved by the Bell") and Tara Reid ("Saved by the Bell: The New Class") it was going to be fun to eternally call this one "Saved by the Wedding Bell." In other pilot news, Lark Voorhees remains unemployed.
"New Car Smell" (Fox, comedy): The cast -- Brooke Shields, Christopher McDonald and Dave Attell -- was intriguing. The creative team -- "Lucky" brothers Robb and Mark Cullen and "Friends" star David Schwimmer -- was reliable. Who knows what went wrong?
"Goody's" (NBC, comedy): The idea of Dick Wolf producing a comedy for the network must have seemed like a good idea at some point. However, it probably sounded less good when star Vincent Pastore ("The Sopranos") was charged with assaulting his girlfriend.
"Early Bird" (NBC, comedy): Everybody kept describing this series, about a young man who gets fired from his dream job as a TV writer and moves into a retirement community, as "Golden Girls"-esque. When did you last hear a comedy called "Golden Girls"-esque? And when did any network last attempt to program to viewers outside of the 18-49 age range? Well, it won't happen this fall either.
"Crazy" and "The Studio" (UPN, dramas): Yes, UPN is trying to be all about women these days, but high-profile pilots starring Lara Flynn Boyle and Gina Gershon probably became less viable when the netlet decided to stand by "Veronica Mars."