Criminal Minds 6.3: Proust, Twain, and Travanti

Daniel J. Travanti - best known for his stint as Captain Frank Furillo on Hill Street Blues - put in a memorable, chilling performance on the other side of the street in Criminal Minds 6.3, where Travanti played an aging vicious serial killer (there are no other kind on Criminal Minds), assisted now by his son.

Travanti's "The Butcher" turns out to be an old, unrequited case of Rossi's, who's pulled into this one on vacation, not accomplishing much because he's plagued by writer's block.  Apropos the writer, this episode of Criminal Minds has both quotes by writer's writers, one by Proust at the beginning and one from Mark Twain at the end.   The story here is all about memory - Rossi's and The Butcher's.

For Rossi, the new killings are horrible, but a second chance to finally catch The Butcher.  His files on the Butcher, and his recollections, point the team in the right direction - realizing that the new killings are being done by the old Butcher in some way, not just by a copycat.

For the Butcher, he's killing again because he forgot what scared him off of the killings the first time, years ago.   That would be Rossi, who came this close to nabbing the Butcher back then.   The Alzheimer's that's now afflicting the Butcher also makes him forget each killing that he and his son are doing now.  So he repeats the last killing, from years ago, over and over again.

Television these days seems to often address the serial killer with a difference.  In Dexter's case, we have a serial killer on the side of good, a serial killer with a conscience.  In Travanti's case, we have a serial killer with Alzheimer's.   And it's his memory loss that goads him to keep killing.

The Butcher ends this episode in prison.  I'm glad he wasn't killed.   Not that the monster did not deserve that, but Travanti gave such an indelible, frightening,  performance that I wouldn't mind seeing him again.  It was certain a performance that will be hard to forget.


See also Criminal Minds in Sixth Season Premiere ... Criminal Minds 6.2: The Meaning of J. J. Leaving

And Criminal Minds 5.22 and the Dark Side of New New Media

And here's a little song I wrote years ago, about time and memory ...

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The Plot to Save Socrates





"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


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Lie to Me 2.13: The Whole Truth and Rep Joe Wilson

And here I am back with a review of Lie to Me 2.13, which was just on Fox.  A fine show-

But first, I just gotta say, where else can you see a real shot of President Obama, worked into the story line?   Only on Lie to Me, which always cuts to a few shots of real people - it's one of the show's signatures.   So tonight we get Obama's cool response to the Republican boor who screamed out "you lie" (that would Rep. Joe Wilson) as the President addressed Congress and the nation about health care this past September.   And Gillian explaining the meaning of Obama's response to the son of a presumed murder victim...

Which brings us to the story.   A gorgeous woman - Clara, played by Melissa George, who had a similar role in the first season on In Treatment - is accused of murdering her husband, twice her age (her character wasn't accused of murder in In Treatment, but she did her best to seduce the psychologist).  Cal's ex-wife Zoe (Jennifer Beals from The L Word) is defending Clara.   Before the episode is over, there'll be some good attractions between Cal and Zoe (as always), Cal and Clara (of course), and there's always a little something between Cal and Gillian.

Bruce Weitz - who's looking far more distinguished now than he ever did on Hill Street Blues - also plays a role as the deceased's best friend, and Diane Baker is the judge (Raising the Bar should've worked her in).   And Cal's at his best in seeing the truth, going with the side of truth, and ending up in bed with ...

Well, see the show.   I'm going to watch a little news, and see if I can spot any shots of famous people that may show up on Lie to Me someday...



5-min podcast review of Lie to Me

See also my reviews of Lie to Me and Bill O'Reilly, Saddam Hussein, and Ben Reynolds in Lie to Me 2.6 and Lie to Me 2.7: The Redeeming of Loker and Lie to Me 2.8 in Afghanistan and Viva Lightman and Las Vegas in Lie to Me 2.9 ... Lie to Me 2.11: Double Feature ... Lie to Me 2.12:  The One Prevarication

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Sneak Preview Review of Nurse Jackie!

I caught the first episode of Nurse Jackie a few months ago. It's to debut on Showtime on June 8 at 10:30 PM (ET/PT) - right after the season premier of Weeds - and I've been dying to tell you about it, but had to respect the "embargo" (I do enjoy tossing around terms like that - makes me feel like a real inside reviewer), but I can tell you about it, at last, right now, so here goes -

First, the half-hour episodes star Edie Falco, just great of late as Carmela on The Sopranos, and in fact in every TV show or movie in which she appears, and she's feisty, sharp, tough, vulnerable as Nurse Jackie.

There haven't been too many nurse shows on television - the last ones were The Nurses, The Doctors and The Nurses, and The Nurses, three versions of the same show, the first two prime time, the last a daytime soap, back in the 1960s. There have been plenty of excellent, provocative, even powerful nurses on doctor shows ranging from St. Elsewhere to Chicago Hope and ER, but they have usually been in supporting roles - Nurses Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) and Lockhart (Maura Tierney) on ER were exceptions. So, with that as backdrop, it's especially refreshing to see a show that centers completely around a nurse.

The elements of the story are mostly familiar. Jackie stands up to arrogant doctors, is smarter than some of them, and is willing to break the rules to save a life. She's on pain killers (ala House), and of course is sleeping with at least one doctor. She likes sex.

There's a jolting surprise at the end of the first episode - along the lines of our finding Furillo in bed with Joyce at the end of the pilot of Hill Street Blues - but I'm not going to tell you what it is, and it's not specifically like that Hill Street Blues scene, it's reminiscent of the shock value....

You'll have to see the premier of Nurse Jackie to see what I mean - you won't be disappointed.

See also Nurse Jackie at 6

Southland Debuts with Good Storylines, Appealing Characters, and Irritating Beeps

Southland - ER showrunner John Wells' latest creation - debuted on NBC this week. The LA cop show has an appealing ensemble of characters, promising story lines - and distracting beeps.

The good stuff, first ... Rookie Officer Ben Sherman (Benjamin McKenzie) and his mentor John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz) make a good team. The talk Cooper gives Sherman after Sherman makes a righteous kill - you have a front row seat to the most real action, a chance to make a difference in this world with your every move - was one of the best I've seen of this kind of scene. It's difficult for any cop story to be shocking and original after The Shield, but Southland had some nice twists, and a pace reminiscent of Hill Street Blues. And the dialog was--

Punctured by beeps. In a big step backward from NYPD Blue, it seems you can't even have a cop say "asshole" on network television these days. So we're treated on Southland, instead, to "ass[bleep]" any time an officer wants to voice such an opinion ... and that's the least of lacerations.

Here's a message to NBC: if you're so afraid of the FCC and Congress, get out of the television business. You do a disservice to your viewers, and freedom of expression, when you kowtow to unconstitutional FCC regulations. Southland clearly has a story to tell - let its writers tell it.

As it is, viewers are leaving network television for cable and the Internet in record numbers. People want real emotions, real language, real people in their fiction. If NBC wants to continue to be a significant player in the presentation of cutting edge, important entertainment programming, it needs to get its collective head out of its [beep].

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





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