TV Q&A: 'Weeds' moves on from Perkins

Q Do you know why they eliminated any mention of the Celia character (Elizabeth Perkins) from the series finale of "Weeds"?

I had thought she left on good terms, and she was one of the best characters during the show's first few seasons. It seemed like the elephant in the room, especially when every other significant character was either on the finale or mentioned during it.

A I don't know why Perkins was not asked back, but the two most logical reasons are that the writers couldn't come up with a creative way to work the character back in or, perhaps, there were other reasons.

In July, Perkins was asked about it during a press conference for her new midseason ABC sitcom, "How to Live With Your Parents for the Rest of Your Life."

"They can't afford me anymore," she said, deadpan. "No. No. No. It wasn't really up to me, anyway."

As far as why the character wouldn't even be mentioned -- her daughter was mentioned -- that's also curious. Perhaps the thinking was she'd been gone from the show so long -- and estranged from her ex-husband and daughter -- that she simply wasn't in their orbit, so her ex-husband would have nothing to say about her.

'China Beach' lost in actionQ Dana Delany had a show in the 1980s called "China Beach." Will the DVD box set of this series ever be available? This was one of our favorite shows of all time.

I was at a press tour party in August at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills, Calif., and I had a chance to talk to "China Beach" creator John Sacret Young and star Marg Helgenberger about the lack of "China Beach" DVDs. As in so many cases, it's all about the music rights.

"China Beach" used a lot of music, and back then there was nothing in contracts about rights to use the music in the DVD format because DVDs did not yet exist.

This is the same problem that prevents many shows from being issued on DVD: Producers would either have to renegotiate music rights (probably prohibitively expensive) or replace the music (less expensive but still a pain and potentially damaging the creators' intent in various scenes).