ABC (Sundays, 9 p.m. ET)
A medium who doubles as a publicist called to say that Mary Alice Young, the dead woman whose spirit narrates Desperate Housewives, was available to talk up the second season. By seance. So I said sure. But as happens with Housewives, the dead can be mischievous...
"Sometimes we regard a hit series as tenderly as family... and then there are times you want to hit the TV set with a shovel. No, this is not Mary Alice. My name is Martha Huber. I was that nice woman who was killed off in season one for no better reason than I was also a blackmailing busybody. All those weeks, I never objected that Mary Alice got to do all the narrating, even though I was just as dead. But all anyone cared about was why she'd killed herself. Well, wasn't that cleared up by the end of season one? Mary Alice should do what placated ghosts do on Medium: Skedaddle. Or her house should be rented out to an exorcist.
"After all, stranger things happen on Wisteria Lane—I mean that new plot about the man imprisoned in the basement. A bit Gothic for my taste. Maybe Gabrielle's next gardener could be Boo Radley.
"Not that I'm rattling my chains or howling along with the living who say the new season is a letdown. I may hate Mary Alice, but I haven't lost my pleasure in watching those women do cruel, muddled, stupid things. There's always a moment to treasure. The other week, Bree Van De Kamp learned her stupid husband, Rex, went to his grave thinking she'd killed him. She was so furious, she all but buried him in a potter's field. For all I care,' she said, 'let him decompose with strangers.' I was in heaven. Which, by the way, I'm not."
CBS (Nov. 6 and 13, 9 p.m. ET)
This four-hour mother-of-all-storms miniseries, a follow-up to last fall's Category 6: Day of Destruction, must have been cast by someone blindly grabbing names out of a cumulonimbus cloud. Gina Gershon as the newly appointed head of FEMA, Shannen Doherty as a storm chaser and Swoosie Kurtz as a sneaky televangelist—married to white-haired preacher James Brolin? They don't seem to belong in the same level of the stratosphere, let alone the same big dumb movie. Kurtz is good in a grand, nutty way. Many special effects were still lacking in my preview tape: It might be fun to see the Statue of Liberty's arm detached by lightning and heading for Doherty and fellow storm lover Randy Quaid.
DON'T MISS
Two and a Half Men (CBS, Nov. 7, 9 p.m. ET)
Make that 3.5. Charlie Sheen's dad, Martin Sheen, guest-stars as the father of Charlie's stalker Rose.
An All-Star Salute to Patti LaBelle (UPN, Nov. 8, 9 p.m. ET)
Ashanti, Nelly, Mario and Kelly Rowland take the stage to pay tribute to Lady LaBelle.
The Simpsons (FOX, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. ET)
The 16th annual Halloween trilogy, only post-Halloween. Includes a parody of Al with Bart replaced by a robot.
The West Wing (NBC, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. ET)
For the first time in its seven seasons, a live episode—the presidential debate between Alan Alda's Arnold Vinick and Jimmy Smits's Matt Santos.
Hot Properties (ABC, Nov. 11, 9:30 p.m. ET)
The girls go to Chicago for an Oprah taping and meet...Gayle King, which is probably the next best thing.
THREE FAVES FROM
The New Season
So the fall rollout didn't bring any killer hit shows. But do you see me sulking, America? No: Because fresh performances and characters kept luring me in.
NATASHA HENSTRIDGE AS JAYNE MURRAY ON ABC'S COMMANDER IN CHIEF Translucently blonde, she's like a beautiful icicle that might have formed on an overhang of the Capitol and plunged down, landing upright with a stiletto spike. Henstridge is very smooth here, playing an aide to crafty Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland). She responds to his schemes with a smirk that's either amused or flirtatious. She's tough to read. She belongs in Washington.
NIMROD ON NBC'S SURFACE A baby form of a mysterious super-duper lizardlike species, he looks like some new, green, skinless breed of show cat—vile but cute. He's a digital effect, and yet in personality he edges out the actors. But on the Nov. 7 episode he'll swim away into the ocean—then what?
PETER STORMARE AS JOHN ABRUZZI ON FOX'S PRISON BREAK With his stringy hair and lazy, lolling delivery, Swedish-born Stormare first struck me as utterly implausible as a mobster. He looked like he'd be lucky getting a job mopping the floors of the Bada Bing club. But he plays Abruzzi with a believable note of fear (his family may be targeted for Mob hits), and his low, grubby style gets under the skin. Prison dirt will do that.
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
