Criminal Minds' Mandy Patinkin
Call it Stealth Television. Last season, CBS' Criminal Minds (Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET) simmered just below pop culture's boiling point. Now a solid hit, the show's true-to-life stories of the FBI's hunt for serial killers, rapists, arsonists and terrorists frighten — and fascinate — millions of loyal fans. Many of whom may be harboring such questions as:
Is there a real Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) at the FBI?
Yes, it is considered an elite team of agent profilers. "Of the 12,000 FBI agents," says star Mandy Patinkin, "only 26 are in the BAU."
What led series creator Ed Bernero to want to write about this subject?
He's a former Chicago cop whose 10 years
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So You Think You Can Dance's resilient Musa Cooper.
What makes So You Think You Can Dance's Nigel Lythgoe so mean? Why can't a break-dancer catch a break? TV Guide presents a step-by-step guide to American Idol's sister show.
Fox's So You Think You Can Dance (Wednesdays at 8 pm/ET and Thursdays at 9 pm/ET) started the day after American Idol ended. Why the rush?
Producers wanted to capitalize on Idol's tidal wave of momentum to launch Dance's second season. A solid performer in Season 1, Dance's summer audience — eight million last season, 10 million now — still doesn't compare with the 30-plus million who regularly watched Idol.
Nigel Lythgoe, executive producer of b
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So You Think You Can Dance's resilient Musa Cooper.
What makes So You Think You Can Dance's Nigel Lythgoe so mean? Why can't a break-dancer catch a break? TV Guide presents a step-by-step guide to American Idol's sister show.
Fox's So You Think You Can Dance (Wednesdays at 8 pm/ET and Thursdays at 9 pm/ET) started the day after American Idol ended. Why the rush?
Producers wanted to capitalize on Idol's tidal wave of momentum to launch Dance's second season. A solid performer in Season 1, Dance's summer audience — eight million last season, 10 million now — still doesn't compare with the 30-plus million who regularly watched Idol.
Nigel Lythgoe, executive producer of b
read more
Jeff Probst, Survivor: Panama — Exile Island
Are the exiled really alone on CBS' Survivor: Panama — Exile Island? And how much does host Jeff Probst know before tribal council? TV Guide scavenges for the answers to those questions and more, unearthing along the way an immunity-idol twist that you did not see coming.
A big deal was made in the promotion of the banishment to Exile Island as this season's new twist. Why do they show so little of what happens there?
"The notion of Exile Island was to remove someone socially as well as physically from the game," says Probst. "But there's simply not enough time, and you would see the same thing over and over: People hungry, sitting in the rain and trying to figure out how many more hours
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Tichina Arnold and Terry Crews, Everybody Hates Chris
Terry Crews and Tichina Arnold are as funny and direct with each other as their characters Julius and Rochelle are on UPN's Everybody Hates Chris (Thursdays at 8 pm/ET). While the first-year comedy was filming the spring's final episodes, the actors sat for a playful, and sometimes painfully honest, chat about the intersection of their real and TV lives.
TV Guide: Has success changed things for you?
Terry Crews: I literally don't go anywhere without someone knowing who I am, loving the show. I have to think about whether I can go to the mall.
TV Guide: Did you anticipate it being a hit?
Tichina Arnold: The show just felt right, even before it aired. When we did the pilot, going up the
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Dancing with the Stars' Stacy Keibler and Tony Dovolani
Last week's second-season premiere of ABC's Dancing with the Stars (Thursdays at 8 pm/ET; results show on Friday at 8 pm/ET) saw a record number of viewers tune in — and ESPN talking head Kenny Mayne ushered out. Who of this year's remaining hoofers has what it takes to waltz their way to the top? TV Guide offers a roundup.
Lisa Rinna & Louis van Amstel
Ignoring her gut instinct, Rinna, 42, turned down the first season of Dancing with the Stars. Her agents — and hubby Harry Hamlin — worried that it was just another cheesy reality show. But when it debuted last June, "I wanted to kill myself! I thought it was brilliant," Rinna says. Now the self-professed "workout fiend" is getting a second chance. "My body is ready for this, but I'm tired mentally," she says. "The mental part is very hard
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Dancing with the Stars' Stacy Keibler and Tony Dovolani
Last week's second-season premiere of ABC's Dancing with the Stars (Thursdays at 8 pm/ET; results show on Friday at 8 pm/ET) saw a record number of viewers tune in — and ESPN talking head Kenny Mayne ushered out. Who of this year's remaining hoofers has what it takes to waltz their way to the top? TV Guide offers a roundup.
Lisa Rinna & Louis van Amstel
Ignoring her gut instinct, Rinna, 42, turned down the first season of Dancing with the Stars. Her agents — and hubby Harry Hamlin — worried that it was just another cheesy reality show. But when it debuted last June, "I wanted to kill myself! I thought it was brilliant," Rinna says. Now the self-professed "workout fiend" is getting a second chance. "My body is ready for this, but I'm tired mentally," she says. "The mental part is very hard
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Las Vegas' James Lesure with Kelly Clark and Gretchen Bleiler
NBC's Las Vegas is coming down with Olympic fever. For tonight's episode (airing at 9 pm/ET), three top U.S. snowboarders — two of them 2002 gold medalists — will be the reigning celebrities at the show's Montecito Resort & Casino and star in a two-and-a-half-minute "minimovie" to promote the 2006 Winter Games at the end of the show. According to Olympics host NBC, the strategy of embedding hopefuls in a prime-time drama before the games is unprecedented.
The idea came from Las Vegas creator and executive producer Gary Scott Thompson, who says he wanted to take advantage of his network's preparations for broadcasting the 2006 Games in Torino, Italy, beginning Feb. 10. "If NBC has the Olympics, then why can't we get some Olympians?" Thompson says.
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American Idol is getting older and wiser. For Season 4 of Fox's monster hit, some of the "kids" waiting in line to audition may be pushing 30. "We felt the process could withstand widening the age range," says executive producer Ken Warwick, who added four years to the previous upper limit of 24.
After five weeks of audition shows in such cities as San Francisco, New Orleans and St. Louis, there will be three weeks of elimination rounds.
But instead of what we've seen before — 32 finalists competing in four groups of eight — the producers have decided to cull 12 men and 12 women from the hundreds invited to Hollywood. For three weeks running, the women compete against each other one night and the men slug it out the other, with a results show the third night. In the end, the show is left with 12 finalists: six men and six women.
Why? "Last year," Warwick says, "we were a bit embarrassed. We had loads of girls go through [remember t
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