Ask Matt

Matt Roush: And you think I'm going to jump into the middle of this debate why? You'd think the fact they've marginalized Cameron so much this season would have already put the kibosh on the notion of ingénue and former mentor becoming a serious item. But Cuddy and House? So much more fun to contemplate, not that I'm pining for the grouchy doc to get serious (if that's even possible) with any of the regulars. Personally, I still miss Sela Ward.

Matt Roush: That's about as amusing a demonstration of diminished expectations as I've seen in a while. And for the record, I wasn't much of an A-Team or even a Miami Vice fan back in the day, feeling the latter was more a triumph of style over substance, which I guess is what's being implied here about CSI: Miami. What I love best about all of this (and I've had it reconfirmed by several recent conversations with friends who still watch) is that when you boil down CSI: Miami, it is actually a comedy series in crime-drama drag. I'll keep that in mind next time I watch.

Matt Roush: Ha, you've just tagged this guy as a show-killer. Not that Swingtown isn't already being seen as a particularly risky experiment for CBS, which helps explain why it's airing outside the regular season. (I'm pretty sure it wasn't launched during the strike period because, unlike some midseason shows, it hadn't filmed enough episodes at that point.) As for period pieces in prime time, they're a tough sell, even relatively contemporary ones like this, especially when it comes to attracting the younger demos the networks favor. Even when the content pushes the envelope — as I imagine will be the case with Swingtown, where sex is as much a selling point as the '70s milieu — there's no doubt a fear the show will look dated instead of timeless. (A good thing, then, that Mad Men gets to do its thing on cable.) The conventional wisdom any time a drama like this gets scheduled in the summer is that the network is burning it off with a show of no confidence. There have been exceptions (CBS's own Northern Exposure comes to mind), but the fact is that Swingtown is a long shot, and this summer outing may actually be preferable to programming the show during the regular season somewhere like Tuesdays at 10 pm/ET, where it would quickly die.

Matt Roush: I have no problem with NCIS, and TV Guide in general follows it pretty regularly. The show is on our cover again in the issue that hits stands this week, and look it up on the TVGuide.com search field and you'll see how often we're covering this or that angle in interviews and teasers. But for the first half of the season, if I'm being asked to choose between this and Fox's Bones on Tuesdays, I go with Bones, although the ratings are much higher for NCIS (which is why we pay so much attention to it)/ I like the fact that both shows are solid escapist entertainment, have appealing ensembles and generally don't take themselves too seriously. But I'm more drawn to the mysteries, characters and writing on Bones. And in the winter months, once American Idol kicks in, there goes Tuesdays. NCIS is the sort of mainstream winner that tends to fly under the critical radar, which isn't so much a reflection on the show or on critics as it is an acknowledgement that there are a lot of procedural crime dramas on TV and very few fascinate or move me enough to weigh in on them regularly. For what it's worth, being tipped off that a major character is about to leave gives me incentive to check in again, as I was plenty intrigued by the violent way Kate was taken out and the way the team evolved afterward.

Matt Roush: At the moment, I'm told there are no immediate plans to bring these stories to the Mystery! franchise. Which isn't to say a series isn't being developed from these books (I have no information on that), and there's no question it would be a great fit, especially for fans of the Foyle's War series. (For those not yet in the loop, the Maisie Dobbs novels are about a female private investigator working in the years after World War I, where she served as a combat nurse. Most of the cases deal with issues relating to the war and its aftermath.) Maisie is a terrific and sympathetic character, and I bet if she does eventually become part of the Mystery! family, she'll add to her devoted following.

Matt Roush: I have a very fond memory of this actor. Around the time when he was playing a much darker psychiatrist character on Murder One as well as guest-starring regularly on other shows (like Beverly Hills, 90210), I "honored" him in a year-end package by naming him "slimeball of the year" or some such thing. He wrote me back a personal note saying how much he enjoyed the shout-out. He was a terrific character actor, and the Monk role was among his best. I don't yet know how they'll deal with his absence, but it seems to me the best way to pay homage is to continue the therapy storyline by forcing Monk to adjust to someone who's not at all like Dr. Kroger, the better to remind us all of what we're missing.

Matt Roush: I'm not sure CBS is so much anti-Shark as it is overrun with crime dramas, and not every one is going to get an open-ended free ticket to renewal each season. It's always kind of shocking to me when CBS actually cancels one (i.e. Close to Home), and I'm not convinced CBS has given up on Shark just yet. It's probably true that CBS has shown favoritism to Without a Trace (which I haven't watched much this season thanks to the glut of Thursday programming), but I wasn't surprised when CBS moved Trace back to Thursdays, where it had worked so well with the CSI lead-in. Because of the instant collapse of that ridiculous Secret Talents of the Stars show, Shark is now taking over the 10 pm/ET Tuesday time slot that has killed every show since Judging Amy. (The Unit will return on Tuesdays with repeats in its regular time period, which is where Shark was originally scheduled.) It will be challenging for Shark against Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and possibly even Women's Murder Club on ABC (a bottleneck of procedurals), but it could do worse than airing on a night that kicks off with NCIS. And at least it won't be going head-to-head with American Idol now.

Matt Roush: You bet she is. She's the best thing to happen to this show in ages. As for an Emmy nomination: That could be tough, but back in her China Beach prime (my first experience in writing about her rapturously), she was what's known as an Emmy darling, so she probably has at least as good a shot as most of her co-stars, though you probably have to consider Felicity Huffman a lock again for her strong material during the cancer and twister episodes.

Matt Roush: During the strike hiatus, it appears they did recast the role (now being played by Lily Jackson) for the usual "taking the character in a different direction" reasons. Being from the camp that feels the daughter storyline is the weakest part of the show's premise, I'm not convinced the casting was the problem.

Matt Roush: What you call political preachiness others might call topicality. And in the case of a satire like 30 Rock, playing the lead characters' politics off of each other is part of the comedy, and I can't imagine that is what's keeping the show from being embraced. With 30 Rock, I think it's probably more to do with the overall tone and sensibility of wry and wacky absurdism, which just isn't to everyone's taste. (I'll again use the Arrested Development comparison here.) With Eli Stone, it's undeniably trickier. The George Michael episode, dealing with sex education in schools, was pretty heavy-handed, I'll admit, but to ignore the show's heart because it often wears its heart on its sleeve strikes me as an awfully narrow attitude. (Not that I doubt it exists.) I hear this same get-off-the-soapbox argument when it comes to David E. Kelley courtroom shows. But in Eli's case, we're dealing more often with cases that argue for the underdog against the conglomerates, and how is that not revelant in today's society and economy? (Sorry if that sounded like preaching.) Maybe it is a turnoff, but what really struck me in the final episodes of Eli Stone was the show's inherent sweetness and how much the supporting characters had changed, mostly for good, by their exposure to Eli's quixotic crusades. When his boss Jordan spoke up to the firm's board in the penultimate episode about how "business without humanity, capitalism without mercy is tantamount to evil," I wanted to applaud. I'm just not cynical enough to think people tuned out of Eli Stone for purely political reasons. I'm thinking it has more to do with the show's aggressive quirkiness, which some would call preciousness. Whatever the case, I'll miss it more than I would have expected.