In last week’s episode of Ghost Whisperer [CBS, Fridays, 8/7C], the unthinkable happened: Jim Clancy [David Conrad] was killed, accidentally, when a police detective shot him thinking he was someone else. The episode concluded with Jim’s ghost appearing to his widow in his hospital room.

Tonight’s episode, Threshold, finds Melinda [Jennifer Love Hewitt] unable to see Jim’s ghost because her grief is so strong that it’s interfering with her ability. When the ghost of a teenage girl begins to haunt her – breaking and throwing things – she thinks it’s Jim. Only Jim knows that it isn’t, so he approaches Eli [Jamie Kennedy] to help him figure out why the girl is haunting his widow. Things are complicated by Jim’s brother, who has been waiting for him so that the two of them can crossover together and rejoin their father.

Written and directed by John Gray, Threshold walks a fine line between genuine sentiment and being maudlin. For the most part – and largely due to the cast’s performances – it succeeds. Especially good is Conrad’s work as the increasingly frustrated Jim, though Hewitt gives one of her best performances here. I also have to give full marks to Camryn Manheim, whose work on Whisperer hasn’t really worked for me. Delia finally works as Melinda’s supportive friend and employee.

Naturally, with the complications that arise in Threshold, there are loose ends that will be left for next week’s ep, Heart & Soul – in which Melinda has to deal with a step-in, a man with amnesia and a very angry ghost who seems connected to her life in a genuinely unexpected way. I can’t say anything more than that – except to say that this ep concludes a storyline for Melinda and Jim even as it signals the beginning of an intriguing new direction for her.

Heart & Soul has a bit more trouble avoiding being maudlin, but long time fans of the series will find it to be both and unsettling [in a good way] and satisfying conclusion to the three-episode arc.

Final Grade: B

Tonight’s episode of The Ex List [CBS, 9/8C] – Do You Love Me, Do You, Surfer… Boy” is the fourth of the show’s first [and quite possibly last] season and, despite several ingratiating performances [and a wide variety of ex-boyfriends], it isn’t a substantial improvement over the pilot.

Bella [Elizabeth Reaser] is following her plan to revisit her past boyfriends as per the fortune teller’s [Anne Bedian] prophecy that her soulmate is someone with whom she’s had a romantic relationship – and that if she hasn’t found him within a year, she’ll never marry. As a result, she’s encountering – in various unexpected ways – past boyfriends by the bucket load. This week it’s Shane [Brian Van Holt], a surf bum who has “grown up” to be famous and surprisingly business savvy.

The episode begins when the two meet cute and begin to see each other. We get a token look at Bella at work and there are arcs involving her engaged sister, Daphne [Rachel Boston], getting some photos done; her roommates, Augie [Adam Rothenberg] and Vivian [Alex Breckenridge] having some relationship problems [a showerhead and little to no imagination are involved], and Cyrus [Amir Talai] trying to scam a free board to teach a gorgeous woman to surf.

Although the subject of Bella’s quest is different, the pattern is pretty much beat for beat the same. The reconnect; they feel the generated chemistry; they learn how each changed over the years, and they fall apart just as things might be getting serious. The only difference here is that Shane has the potential to reappear in her life. Of the rest of the arcs, the only one that works is the showerhead one. Daphne might as well not have appeared in the ep, and Cyrus has gotten really old, really quickly.

In the pilot, written by series creator Diane Ruggerio, there were suggestions that we would see more of Bella’s life than just the fun parts and the ex-boyfriend parts. It seemed like we were going to get to see her at work as well as at play – and that her friends were going to actually be characters. The network, apparently, thought that the show should focus on just the play and romance and not the other [biggest] part of her life. The result is a show that entertains only sporadically, held aloft by the sheer charisma of Reaser and the characters of Augie and Vivian.

Given the potential in the pilot, this simply isn’t good enough. After invoking The Three-Ep rule, I was ready to stop watching, but CBS made a screener of the fourth ep available for review, so I asked for one. Sadly, it shows improvement only insofar as the ex of the week has the possibility of returning. In every other respect, The Ex List has not found the balance it needs to make it worth continued viewing.

Final Grade: C

I remember, with great fondness, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Tom and Dick Smothers started out as a comedy/folk duo, playing clubs like the legendary Purple Onion. When CBS offered them their own TV show, they had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. The Brothers Smothers started fairly innocuously, but as the series progressed it became a bastion of political satire that caused one U.S. president, LBJ [who clearly had a sense of humor], to send the duo a letter of praise – and another [Johnson’s successor, in fact] to ask CBS to take them off the air [making them the second top ten-rated series to be removed from a network’s schedule because a sitting president didn’t like it – the first being The Wild Wild West].

My favorite moment of the series came as the teaser for one episode that found Tom and Dick noting that CBS had been getting a lot flack because of the show, and that henceforth the audience wouldn’t hear “anything you wouldn’t hear in your own home…” followed by the sound of a toilet flushing. The Best of Season 3 has moments that match that hilarious moment [the opening song of the season premiere, We’re Still Here, for example notes that they’ve survived, among other things, the network’s censors]. And presented some of the most memorable musical performances of sixties television – as when Jim Morrison of The Doors blanked on the words for Touch Me, or when Donovan turned the show into a love-in/sing-along for Happiness Runs. And where else would you find George Harrison stopping by just for a couple minutes to urge the brothers to keep on keeping on? 

Most of the eleven episodes included here are edited – partly for content [not all the moments on the show were gems, and not all of the show’s musical guests were all that memorable], and partly because the pacing of variety shows [and television in general] wasn’t anywhere near what today’s audiences are used to. What remains, though, is the wit and charm of the Smothers Brothers and their show’s writers – along with some hot button issues that contributed to their show’s demise – including a medley that was excised from the season premiere because of controversial content [activist Harry Belafonte performing a carefully structured medley of calypso songs before a screen on which played scenes from the Democratic Convention of 1968]; a comedy sermonette by David Steinberg [part of the episode that CBS removed from the schedule when they fired the brothers, and other odd bits [like the take-off on Bonanza that dared question why the series featured only men as regulars...]. Also included is the CBS Special, Pat Paulsen For President, possibly the funniest campaign film of all-time [and, given the manner in which Paulsen spoke about the issues, another nail in the Comedy Hour’s coffin].

Along with the eleven episodes [which include that unaired ep], The Best of Season 3 also comes with a mitt full of bonus features. Two such are especially noteworthy: when you click on certain episodes in the Episode Selection menu, before it plays, you will hear Tom Smothers comment on the notable circumstances of that episode, and, again, when you use the Episode Selections menu, you can choose to screen each ep with an Introduction and Close by the Smothers Brothers.

Other Features: Disc One: Interviews With Harry Belafonte, Bob Newhart, Third Season Producer Allan Blye, Doors’ Drummer John Densmore, Filmmaker Chuck Braverman, and Writer Rob Reiner; Featurette: A Fable For Our Time [Tom smothers reflects on the series the duo’s battles with the network]; Rehearsal Footage Shot By 60 Minutes [aired January 7, 1969]; 1969 Emmy Awards Clip; Photo Gallery, and CBS Documents: Network memos and other documents regarding some of the show’s controversial elements.

Disc Two: Interviews: Just Collins, Bob Einstein [Writer/Occasional Performer]; Mom Always Liked You Best – Tom, Dick and Mrs. Smothers; Dr. Benjamin Spock Interview [censored from season three premiere]; Photo Gallery, and CBS Documents.

Disc Three: Interviews: Joan Baez, Jackie Mason, David Steinberg; Excerpts from Tom and dick’s Post-Cancellation Press Conference; Jackie Mason Dress Rehearsal; Joan Baez Dress Rehearsal and Alternate Performance; Episode Promos; Smothers Brothers 2000 Reunion at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado; LBJ Letters; David Rumsfeld’s “Department of Peace” Letter; CBS Documents; Photo Gallery, and Tom’s Final Reflections.

Disc Four: Robert F. Kennedy With Pat Paulsen and Tom Smothers – never before seen outtakes from the Pat Paulsen For President special; Interview Outtakes From special: Woody Allen, David Frye, Eddie Fisher, Paul Hornung, Nancy Ames, and Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara; Pat Paulsen at the White House; Pat Paulsen at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; Pat Paulsen Comedy Club Act at the Pierce Street Annex, Anchorage, Alaska [March 31, 1992]; E! Intro segment to Pat Paulsen For President; Photo Gallery; Pat Paulsen’s Malignant Humor – Pat’s personal notes from his fight with cancer, At Paulsen’s Memorial humor.

Grade: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour: Best of Season 3 – A

Grade: Features – A+

Final Grade: A

Elizabeth Reaser did such a great job of playing the badly injured Ava/Rebecca on Grey’s Anatomy that it seems only right that she should have asked to front a series of her own. The Ex List [CBS, Fridays, 10/9C] is a bit of a high concept dramedy – Bella Bloom [Reaser] is told by a psychic [Anne Bedian] that she must marry within the year or she never will – but she has already met her soulmate, and he’s someone she’s had a relationship with in the past!

Bella’s situation arises from the bachelorette party for her younger sister, Daphne [Rachel Boston], and her own weird thought that visiting a psychic would be the perfect way to cap the evening. When other predictions she made come true in wildly unexpected [and funny] ways, she begins to take the psychic seriously – not least of all when bird poop leads to her discovery that former boyfriend Johnny Diamont [Eric Balfour] is back in town – and has a punk rock band. When she and roommate Vivian [Alexandra Breckenridge] go to his show, his first song shows he remembers her, and not particularly fondly…

The Ex List is based on an Israeli series, but seems to be of a vastly different tone [Diane Ruggerio, who adapted the series for America, left the show over creative differences – and she wanted to maintain the tone of the original]. In the premiere, she has a life – she runs a flower shop and has a core group of friends who share a house with her: the aforementioned Vivian, her best friend; Augie [Adam Rothenberg], Vivian’s boyfriend, and Cyrus [Amir Talai], who is a bit of a cynic and a slacker.

Although Reaser doesn’t have to do all the heavy lifting, she is the principal here, and her ability to shift from comedy to drama to melodrama in mid-line [and to look really, really good in a bikini] is the show’s primary plus. The cast has solid chemistry [always important], but the writing isn’t quite right, yet. The balance between humor, drama and melodrama needs to be tweaked [less melodrama, more drama – the humor content is about right]. I enjoyed the pilot, but I hope that the show will find that balance – that sweet spot – that can elevate it to the next level.

Final Grade: B-

In the season premiere for Ghost Whisperer [CBS, Fridays, 9/8C], Firestarter, Melinda [Jennifer Love Hewitt] has to say farewell to a friend, while helping a sceptical psychologist learn to deal with being able to hear ghosts. It’s an entertaining episode of a series that never quite achieves greatness, but is always entertaining.

When Jim [David Gordon] is called to a fire at the university, Melinda tags along fearing that her colleague, Rick Payne [Jay Mohr] might be a victim. Rick, it turns out, is fine – but Melinda sees a mysterious black woman who disappears, and the spirit of a victim leave his body while Jim works on him – and then return after being hit with the defibrillator.

The man is Dr. Eli James [Jamie Kennedy] and when Melinda sees him and a ghost chatting in his hospital room later, she decides to help him with his new “gift.” Unlike her, though, he can only hear ghosts – not see them. And he seems to prefer thinking that he’s gone crazy over being able to talk with ghosts – especially this ghost, Fiona [Alona Tal], who was his patient.

Like the best eps of the series, Firestarter is more than adequately written; directed with a deft touch and features the best performance that Jamie Kennedy has ever given. There are scenes that are simultaneously comic and dramatic – as when Eli is surrounded by a half-dozen ghosts, all imploring him to help them, in a bar that’s otherwise empty but for the bartender and a guy playing pool – and there are scenes that are heartbreaking – as when we learn why Fiona’s ghost hasn’t crossed over. I’ll let you discover who’s leaving…

Fans of the series will love this ep, while those who haven’t tried it before will find it to be a solid hour’s entertainment. No more, no less.

Final Grade: B-

As The Unit [CBS, Sundays, 10/9C] wraps up its latest mission overseas - with the help of an undercover female soldier [pictured below] - their wives are told to drop every connection they have to their everyday lives, send their kids off to distant relatives and repair to an unknown location.

The fourth season of The Unit, Sacrifice, finds the team attempting to thwart a terrorist attempt to assassinate the President-Elect Benjamin Castillo [Benito Martinez] – a task made more difficult because the men attempting the assassination are dressed in proper military garb and know the codes of the day.

Written by the show’s Co-Executive Producer, Frank Military, and directed by the show’s creator, David Mamet, Sacrifice is the show’s best season premiere since the first one. Military’s script is smart and manages to create an arc that allows The Unit and their families to become – in an unexpected way – connected, story-wise. With the seeming uprooting of the families, and a terrorist organization that has the funding and training to attack the United States President, Vice-President, President-Elect and Vice-President-Elect, this first part of a two-parter pretty much cooks from beginning to end.

And that unofficial rule that “The Unit has no women?” It appears that the knowledge of that rule may have given the team an unexpected advantage as they track down the group behind the assassination attempts. Between that twist and the upheaval in the lives of The Unit’s families, the show’s creative team is showing that they have no plans to let the series get stale.

I just wish my screener had both eps. I hate cliffhangers! Seriously!

Final Grade: B+

It’s hard to believe, but Cold Case [CBS, Sundays, 9/8C] has been setting the ghosts of the past to rest for over five years. The sixth season premiere, Glory Days, follows the familiar pattern – after we see the final moments of Michael “Bad Moon” McShane [Aaron Hill] in 1973, a piece of evidence is discovered in the present that suggests he was killed much later than was previously thought. Enter Lilly Rush [Kathryn Morris]  and her team of cold case investigators.

“Bad Moon” was a football star who disappeared the night before the championship game. The investigation puts together a picture of how his last few days were spent by questioning various of his friends, coaches, tutors and such. There’s his teammate, Tom “The Breeze” Bernard [B.J. Britt/Clifton Powell], who lost his scholarship because McShane reported his ill health; Steve Pratt [Sean O’Bryan/James Karen], the alumnus who recruited McShane [and treated him to dinner once a week – and gave him extra spending money for books]; Assistant Coach Walters [Tom Griffin/M.C. Gainey], who was aware that the team’s unofficial, off-campus doctor was giving them steroids, R. Boretski [Justice Leak/James Read], McShane’s tutor, who, McShane threatened to reveal was cheating on class work for members of the football team.

With lots of suspects, there are lots of stories – some of them touching, some funny, and some false. The procedures through which the team solves the case may be familiar but the variations provided each new set of circumstances and suspects allow for enough variety to keep the series feeling fresh – especially when each ep is anchored by music of the period [here it’s by BTO and Steely Dan].

Another ep furnished by CBS, Wednesday’s Women, the third ep of the new season, deals with a group of women who drove from Philadelphia to Mississippi to help run Freedom schools under the cover selling Tupperware®. In it, what was thought to be a hit and run turns out to have far greater implications. The ep’s guest cast includes Olympia Dukakis and Carl Lumbly, among others.

The Cold Case ensemble [Morris, John Finn, Thom Barry, Jeremy Ratchford, Danny Pino and Tracie Thoms] is reliably together and between the regular cast, the guest stars and the consistent writing, the show remains one of the more watchable procedurals around.

Final Grade: B

There are many reasons that I gave up on Criminal Minds [CBS, Wednesdays, 9/8C] – among them, a seemingly deliberate bad treatment of women and unctuous and predictable writing. Both are present in this season’s premiere, subtly entitled Mayhem. It’s the resolution of the terrorist investigation/car bombing cliffhanger that ended the show’s third season.

You may remember the scene: members of the team moved to their various SUVs and one exploded. Turns out that in the case of the one that exploded, its passengers hadn’t quite gotten into it [can you say cheat?] and were blown back by the explosion, not instantly killed. Not only that, but a passer-by calls 911 – of course no one is allowed to approach them because it was established that the bombers were actually looking to follow up the initial bomb with one to take out the initial response team[s].

So, we’ve got a badly injured woman. How she survived being scraped along the street for twenty yards, leaving a trail of skin and blood, is beyond me [when we get a glance at it, her back is so much hamburger]. Meanwhile the male agent is blown into the air and comes down across the street and is only shaken up and cut from the SUV’s windows – or so it seems. Actually, it’s later shown to be bad enough to have both agents requiring emergency treatment.

In the meantime, we get a bunch of fairly predictable events – the injured agent driving the ambulance to a hospital that has been barricaded, another agent discovering the second bomb and appearing to die saving everyone… the usual – and the only member of the team that comes off well is, once again, Garcia [Kristen Vangsness].

Sadly, all of the episode’s major reveals were obvious to me well before we reached them [before the teaser was over, actually]. And the promised death once again put a woman through all kinds of agony – a Criminal Minds staple. Not that Mayhem was totally ridiculous – it was beautifully filmed [though the hamburger shot could have been briefer] and Vangsness’ performance was excellent. On the other hand, Joe Mantegna’s David Rossi was reduced to the role of bystander and Paget Brewster’s Emily Prentiss was little more than window dressing.

Overall, then, Mayhem reminded me why I seldom watch Criminal Minds. It was overblown fooferaw and pretty much a waste of my time. Don’t let it waste yours.

Final Grade: D

Have you ever wondered what the series Psych would be like if it had been played as a drama? It might well have looked like The Mentalist [CBS, Tuesdays, 9/8C], a series about Patrick Jane, a former fraud television psychic who makes a major career change after a performance on a talk show takes a nasty turn.

The premiere finds Jane, who is now working for the California Bureau of Investigation, solving a murder in the opening minutes by simply, as he puts it, “paying attention.” His methods, being somewhat unorthodox, his boss, Teresa Lisbon [Robin Tunney], suspends him – but a new set of murders appears to strike home to him and he goes over her head to get back on the case.

Judging by the premiere, The Mentalist is one of those shows that seem like it’s going to go one way and then, BAM! It’s snuck up on you and grabbed you by the throat! Unlike Psych, which places the humor upfront, The Mentalist seems like it’s going to be deadly earnest – and mostly, it is – but at key moments, shrewdly placed bits of gallows humor serve to both emphasize the drama and relieve the carefully built up tension.

David Nutter, a true king of the pilots [Millennium, Roswell, Dark Angel, Smallville, and Without a Trace, among them], really has a handle on Bruno Heller’s [Touching Evil, Rome] excellent script. Some of the key moments are [deliberately] predictable in order to set up the ones that aren’t – and he draws series defining performances from an ensemble that also includes Owain Yeoman [Kitchen Confidential, The Nine], Amanda Righetti [The O.C., Reunion] and Tim Kang [Third Watch, Rambo].

The Mentalist may be the series that gives Simon Baker the hit his talent and charisma deserve – and with its NCIS lead-in, it’s positioned well. The fact that it’s a police show – if not exactly a procedural – means that it takes a different tone than NCIS, but its quality should hold that show’s audience.

This evening the new fall season of television programming begins with two returning series on The CW [Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill], one on TNT [Steven Bochco’s inept Raising the Bar] and one on Fox [Prison Break]. Overall, the new season looks a lot like the last one. Thanks to the writers’ strike, a number of series that might have been cancelled are reappearing, series like Life, Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies, Chuck and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to name a few. Add to them the few buzzworthy new shows [Fringe, The Mentalist, and Eleventh Hour] and it still doesn’t add up to the anticipation for Fox’s Joss Whedon-created Dollhouse. Which is not to say that there aren’t points of interest on the fall schedule.

NBC has already picked up Chuck for a full season based on their appraisal of the show’s first six episodes of the season. Again with NBC, My Own Worst Enemy, which features Christian Slater as a suburban dad who is also, unbeknownst to him, a superspy posits the question, which identity is the real one [and what happens when they begin to merge]? The CW’s Valentine revolves around a family of Greek gods whose mission, it seems, is to bring soulmates together without revealing their true identities [Cupid for teens?].

CBS has a winner, quality-wise, with The Mentalist which, on paper, sounds like a reverse-Psych played for drama [former TV psychic becomes investigator for the California Bureau of Investigation], but the teaser immediately dispels that illusion. CBS also has the promising new romantic dramedy, The Ex-List, starring Elizabeth Reasor [Ava on Grey’s Anatomy] as a women who is told by a fortune teller that she’s already met [and dated] her husband-to-be. Its balance between drama and comedy isn’t quite right yet, but Reasor makes it worth your time all by herself.

ABC’s Life on Mars is loosely based on the BBC series of the same name, but has been retooled so that the premise – outside of having Detective Sam Tyler waking up in 1973 after being hit by a car in the present – has reportedly been changed to allow the series to run for longer than the two seasons it ran in England. The fact that the pilot has been retooled and completely recast – except for star Jason O’Mara – is not a good sign…

Fox’s Fringe is the fall series with the biggest buzz. The series revolves around a team of investigators [a female FBI agent, an allegedly crazy scientist and his ne’er-do-well son] look into strange cases a la The X-Files. Created by the rapidly becoming legendary J.J. Abrams [Felicity, Alias, Lost], Fringe will have elements that build to an overall arc, but unlike his other shows, will feature mysteries that are resolved each week – making the series easy to get into at any point in its run. That will be a good trick if it works, but Abrams is talented enough to make it happen.

Of all the second season series, NBC’s Life will have to work the hardest to survive since it’s been relegated to Friday nights. As one of the more complex shows, this could be its death knell, though it may have a shot based on the manner in which it provides answers to many of its questions in a far timelier manner than most.

NBC’s Chuck has already been shown some network love, as mentioned above. Since its lead-out, Heroes, is back with a bang that may good things for our nerd hero and his minders. The same can’t be said for Pushing Daisies, which many found a bit too weird, whimsical and convoluted last year. While the whimsy remains, we are promised that storylines will be streamlined. The hope is that the show’s whimsy is less of a problem than its complicated arcs.

Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles got off to a great start last season, but ratings fell off until Brian Austin Green was added to the cast as John Connor’s uncle from the future. The explosive [in more ways than one] series started out smart, but seemed to get smarter from Green’s debut on – and the season ended with quite a bang, considering that it wasn’t planned for that purpose. One of the key relationships in the series [after Sarah Connor and son] has to be the one that’s developing between the cautious Derek Connor and John’s guardian terminator, Cameron [Summer Glau].

Of the rest of the returning series, a few return without much fanfare, but Fox’s Bones comes with a two-hour premiere that finds Booth and Tempe following a case to London, England – where they encounter their British counterparts. Another Fox two-hour premiere finds Sarah popping up on Prison Break after seemingly being beheaded not all that long ago [needless to say, the show has long since ceased pretending it has any levels reality to it].

ABC’s Desperate Housewives, which cooked like crazy, last year, appears to be staying on track. With its leap forward five years, Mark Cherry’s semi-satirical soap has been given twice as many storytelling options than before. One highlight appears to be Bree Van De Kamp’s emergence as the new Martha Stewart. Dana Delaney’s return as Katherine Mayfair can only be considered a plus.

The CW continues to milk Smallville for all it’s worth [which undoubtedly plays a factor in the continuance of the much lower rated, but far superior Supernatural]. Over the last two seasons, Smallville was at its best in episodes that featured Oliver [Green Arrow] Queen. The Kent/Queen dynamic brought a very superman/Batman vie to the show and seemed to inspire the show’s writers to some serious highs.

Supernatural did what fans never thought would happen. In last season’s finale, Dean Winchester wound up in Hell. He will be back in action in the premiere, but things will have changed between him and his brother Sam. We’ll learn what happened to Dean in Hell as the season progresses. Because of The CW’s seeming inability to draw a larger audience, Supernatural should be able to serve up a full season of weirdness. That would be a Good Thing.

Still with The CW, there’s the new 90210. Sigh.

Obviously, there are a lot more shows required to fill the various networks’ schedules, but they will be addressed at a later date – if appropriate.

Sheldon’s Picks: Fringe, Pushing Daisies, Supernatural, Bones, Chuck, The Mentalist.

Sheldon’s Pans: Knight Rider, Do Not Disturb, Worst Week.

Flashpoint [CBS, Fridays, 10/9C] looks like a lot like an updating of SWAT – for most of the first two acts. The members of Toronto’s Strategic Response Unit [based on the real Emergency Task Force], Team One, are called in to deal with a hostage situation – which is resolved, uncharacteristically, before the end of the second act.

The teaser introduces SRU Team Leader Ed Lane [Hugh Dillon] and sets up the team’s shift preparation and a hostage situation. When the call comes in, assignments are made and the team rolls. Onsite, Jules [Amy Jo Johnson] and Ed take up sniper positions [Ed winds up being lead when her location isn’t as good as his] and Sergeant Gregory Parker [Enrico Colantoni] tries to talk the gunman into putting down his gun.

To this point, Flashpoint is a smoothly executed cop show as it cuts back and forth between the events leading up to the hostage taking and the team’s shift preparations. The difference comes in the second act, when the situation is resolved and we follow Ed through the regulation follow-up investigation. Now we’re into something different – the way the day’s work affects Ed – leading up to the ep’s compelling final scene.

At first Flashpoint seems like just another cop/SWAT series, but then it takes a turn that changes the game for the characters and the audience. As skilfully as the first two-thirds of the episode are produced, the flashpoint pilot doesn’t quite fully engage us until after the resolution of the hostage situation, when Dillon takes Ed through some strange and affecting moments. When Parker tells him that he’ll one day have to do the math on the “I’m fines,” Flashpoint goes from being about cops to being about people – people working a job that has incredible ramifications. From that point on, it’s appointment TV.

Final Grade: B

Showtime’s Dexter – one of the five or ten best series on television comes to CBS [Sundays, 10/9C] in a somewhat different, but equally effective form. The series, which features a serial killer who only targets other serial killers – and lives by a code instilled in him by his late adoptive father – does not glorify the character but, rather, seeks to understand what kind of circumstances can lead to the creation of a psychopathic personality, while tackling a truly bizarre myster!.

Dexter Morgan [Michael C. Hall] is a nice guy. He brings doughnuts to his workplace – he works as a blood spatter expert for the Miami Police Department; he has a lovely, if somewhat damaged girlfriend [the lovely Rita, played by Julie Benz, who was a victim of spousal abuse before she got a divorce]. His sister, Debra, [ Jennifer Carpenter] is a tough cop with a vulnerable center – and is quick to use Dex’s “hunches” about a new serial killer on the loose in Miami in order to get reassigned from Vice to Homicide. Then there’s Lt. Laguerta [Lauren Velez], the head of Homicide, who finds Dexter intriguing and is constantly flirting with him – and Sergeant Doakes [Erik King] about whom Dexter says it best when he wonders why, out of all the trained, allegedly observant professionals in the department, Doakes is “the only one I give the creeps.”

In the pilot, Dexter is confronted by something new – a bloodless corpse. His response – “Why didn’t I think of that?” – is not quite what you’d expect from a blood spatter expert, but it feeds in nicely to the “monster” he thinks himself to be. Of course, as he puts it, “I’m a very neat monster” – after he captures and eliminates a serial killer who has preyed on young boys. [“I could never do that,” he says. “I have standards”]

In flashbacks through out each episode, Dexter recalls how his adoptive father, Harry Morgan [James Remar], a cop, figured out how that he was different and trained him to go after serial killers whom the law could not find, or couldn’t prosecute. I have to wonder if Harry was named after the actor Harry Morgan who once played a detective on the classic Dragnet – Morgan’s fatherly onscreen persona could well have been a fit for Dexter’s dad.

The series begins with Dex taking care of the killer of young boys, but before long he is confronted by the bloodless corpse of a murdered prostitute. There is clearly a new guy in town, and he’s very, very good at what he does.

When Debra overhears a conversation about one victim’s autopsy and the phrase cell crystallization comes up, she asks Dex what that means. The answer gives the killer his official nickname, The Ice Truck Killer and gets Debra her shot at playing with the big boys of homicide.

Dexter was based on Jeff Lindsay’s novels about the character. The first closely follows the first novel, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, though there are a number of changes that enable the show to take its own direction – away from the books – in its second season. Like the books, the series is incredibly smart and darkly humorous, as well as occasionally shocking.

The use of sunny, hot Miami as the location for Dexter’s exploits is a good idea. The contrast between the sunny surface of Dexter’s world, and the dark places in his life makes more apparent his struggle to understand where he came from and why he is what he is. These themes run through the entire season, but are only just beginning to occur to him in these early eps.

The first two episodes of the CBS version of Dexter are, it turns out, not as badly cut as it might have seemed. According to Julie Benz, alternative takes were shot of scenes with excessive language and nudity in case the series was syndicated to basic cable or independent over-air stations. There are one or two places in the two eps where the outbursts of “friggin’” and/or frikkin’” seem a bit more humorous than dramatic, but overall, nothing essential is lost with the cutting of the worst of the language.

The big surprise should be in how little of the blood and gore is edited out. The reason it’s not that big a deal is that anyone who watches forensic procedurals like CSI, NCIS and Bones has seen worse. The result is that the episodes of Dexter that were made available for review run pretty much as long as they did when they aired on Showtime.

There’s a lot at stake for Dexter as it airs in primetime. On Showtime, its audience is under two million, so it can’t sustain itself for too many more seasons without a ratings bump on its home venue. On CBS, it also needs to prove that it’s a better draw than the reruns on the other networks that it plays against – especially since its length means fewer commercials spots to sell.

On the plus side, the writing direction and performances on Dexter have made it a critical darling – and even with the editing necessary to make it work on commercial television, it remains startlingly original and extremely entertaining.

Beginning Sunday, this is a chance for everyone who doesn’t have Showtime to see one of the best shows on TV. If you love a good procedural – and love your procedurals to be at least partially character-driven, then you owe it to yourself to check out Dexter.

Final Grade: A-

The folks at CBS just love giving us their insights into each week’s episode of CSI. We have another ten things you didn’t know about this week’s installment, called "Laying Down With Dogs."  This CBS logo is freaking me out man…

Continuing in their unique promotional campaign for their hit series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS has released another ‘Behind the Crime Scene: Ten Things You Didn’t Know’ list. This one is about the upcoming rebroadcast of the episode titled ‘Cockroaches’, which airs this Thursday at 9PM EST. ‘Cockroaches’ was directed by Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winning Director, William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection). Here is list of fascinating facts and trivia about the episode ‘Cockroaches’. 

1. ‘Cockroaches’ was the first time Academy Award winner William Friedkin had directed an episode of a Television series. He had only done movies before.

1. ‘Cockroaches’ was the first time Friedkin and CSI star William Petersen worked together since they did so in the movie to Live and Die in LA – when Friedkin cast Petersen in his first major motion picture.

1. Actor John Capodice, who played Lou Gedda, has done over125 movies and TV shows. Most notably, he played Aquado in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which starred Jim Carrey.

1. Towards the end of the episode ‘Cockroaches’ when Warrick is hallucinating from his mixture of alcohol and prescription drugs, the music that is playing in the background is actually Gary Dourdan’s own music from his band ‘Kolade’.

1. In that same sequence, towards the end of ‘Cockroaches’, Friedkin used a quick flash-forward cuts of the yet-to-be-seen moments to help portray Warrick’s jumbled state of mind. It is the same technique that Friedkin used in ‘The Exorcist’.

1. Since directing ‘Cockroaches’, William Friedkin had been working on directing an opera which will premiere alongside two other operas being directed by Woody Allen and David Cronenberg.

1. Portions of the chase sequence in the teaser for ‘Cockroaches’ were shot in Santa Clarita, California during the devastating October 2007 wildfires. If you look closely you can seethe smoke and embers in the sky.

1. Rebecca Budig, who plays Candy, the stripper that Warrick gets intimate with at the end of the episode, is a famous soap star having acted in over 150 episodes of Guiding Light and All My Children; and is married to former ‘Bachelor’ Bob Guiney.

1. The Pigalle Place Strip Club is actually an Elks Club in San Fernando, California. The CSI set decorating crew put the neon signs and marquee on the building to make it look like a strip club.

1. Friedkin wanted the brightly lit ‘sex scene’ at the end of ‘Cockroaches’ to have the feel of something from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.

Courtesy of CBS

Los Angeles CA, January 16, 2008

As we all know, most shows are currently in reruns until the end of January when new episodes will be trotted out for February Sweeps Weeks. To put themselves ahead in the ratings game, CBS/Paramount has come up with a unique way to draw viewer interest to the reruns currently airing of CSI and has sent around a publicity image titled ‘Behind the Crime Scene: Ten things you didn’t know about this week’s episode of CSI’. This week’s rerun of CSI is a rebroadcast of the episode ‘Go to Hell’, which airs this Thursday, January 19^th at 9pm EST on CBS. Above is the publicity image containing the ten things we didn’t know about ‘Go to Hell’.

This evening CBS presents a unique documentary, In God’s Name [ 9/8C], in which twelve of the most influential spiritual leaders in the world talk about the most pressing questions of our time and discuss how and why they have been able to deal with some of the most of the most devastating events in recent history.

“People of all faiths and of all homelands are divided into reasonable and unreasonable people, and all I wish – and pray to God for – is that reasonable people will outnumber the fools.” – Imam Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar and a prominent Sunni Muslim leader.

Jules Naudet was in the World trade Center, shooting a documentary about New York firefighters when the south Tower fell in one of the most horrific terrorist acts in history. His brother, Gedeon, was afraid that he’d never see him again – and when they were reunited, they realized that they spent their time apart wondering the same things: who am I, why am I here, why is there such evil in the world.

At that time, they determined to seek out world spiritual leaders and find out what they believed. In God’s Name is the result of their travels to spend a day with, and interview, a dozen of those leaders. It is the first time that these twelve spiritual people have been filmed in this context – and the first time that we will see them espouse their beliefs in the same program.

The one belief that is common to all twelve people is that there is no religion that sanctions violence and killing for any reason other defence of self, country or faith. There is further, no sanction for the killing of innocents under any circumstances. Every single one of the twelve denounced acts of terrorism, such as the 9/11 attacks.

What makes these declarations important is that we not only hear them from such influential leaders, but that we are given some insight into the backgrounds of these people: how they were called to lead; the sacrifices they’ve had to make to lead, and some of the ways in which their faith has been tested.

Between them, the twelve are spiritual leaders to something like four billion people!  There are various Christian sects, a Hindu leader, the Dalai Lama, the High Priest of Shintoism, the chief Rabbi of Israel, both Sunni and Shiite Muslims and the Sikhs’ highest authority.

The Naudet brothers have done a marvellous job of showing us the daily lives of the twelve. We see Amma [Sri Mata Amritanandmayi], the Hindu spiritual leader known as The Hugging Saint, who spends her days hugging and comforting the people who seek her out; Joginder Singh Vedanti, Jathedar Sri Akal Takht, the Sikh leader, who lives in two small rooms with his wife and daughter; the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile from the Communist China run Tibet, who espouses his appreciation of all faiths, and so forth.

This candid and forthright documentary shows that all of these people have so much more in common than their differences that there should be a way for the reasonable people to indeed outnumber the fools. In the end, In God’s Name is both an indictment of those fanatics who pervert religion to kill, and a call for all the peoples of the world to unite – and share the core messages of their faiths at the most basic levels – in the hope that we can change things for the better.

Jules and Gedeon Naudet have clearly touched the hearts of these twelve spiritual leaders. They have been given unique access to all twelve and put together a film that speaks to us in positive terms, despite the evils of the world around us. It is a once in a lifetime achievement.

Final Grade: A