Khandi Alexander
Former CSI: Miami star Khandi Alexander will guest-star on the upcoming first season USA's Common Law, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively.
USA's Common Law hosts a Lost reunion
The freshman dramedy, which premieres Friday, May 11 at 10/9c, tells the story of Travis Marks (Michael Ealy) and Wes Mitchell (Warren Kole), two sharp LAPD detectives whose partnership becomes so strained that Captain Mike Sutton (Jack McGee) sends them to see couples therapist Dr. Ryan (Sonya Walger).
Alexander will play ...
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Khandi Alexander
Cheers to Khandi Alexander for her tour de hurricane force on Treme.
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As her character, bar owner LaDonna Batiste Williams, raged at the rapist who attacked her — and the legal system that temporarily freed him due to a clerical error — Alexander powerfully embodied the citywide anger at the lawlessness in post-Katrina New Orleans. The actress, who was unjustly denied an Emmy nomination for her fiercely nuanced turn as a recovering drug-addict mother in Treme creator David Simon's 2000 miniseries, The Corner, deserves long-overdue recognition for this role.
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Wendell Pierce
In an early episode of Treme's second season, a disc jockey asks one of the show's musician characters how his new album is selling. "Selling?" the musician replies in almost disbelief. "It's jazz, man."
The dialogue is a perfect metaphor for the HBO drama, whose co-creators, The Wire's David Simon and Eric Overmyer, have always favored atmosphere and character over plot. Like that incredulous musician, Simon is more concerned with art than television ratings, because he says it's the...
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Talking Funny
This weekend, HBO offers up a comedy special (Talking Funny), a new movie about an historic TV phenom (Cinema Verite) and the return of a distinguished drama series (Treme). All are worth a look. It's actually an HBO grand slam if you count Game of Thrones, the triumphant adult fantasy series that was renewed for a second season shortly after the first episode aired. (HBO has a tradition of doing this, but rarely in recent years has the network's enthusiasm been so well deserved.)
In Thrones' eventful second chapter (Sunday, 9/8c), you begin to sense the series' range, as many characters begin disparate journeys through the sprawling land of Westeros: dutiful Ned Stark heads out with...
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Matt Smith and Karen Gillan
Supernatural (Friday, 9/8c, The CW)
Winchesters, meet Colt! As in: the real Samuel Colt, whose infamous demon-destroying gun has loomed large throughout Supernatural's mythology. This week, Dean gets to play cowboy — Sam is less thrilled — when Castiel sends the brothers back in time to the Wild West to get some guidance from the proverbial horse's mouth. Speaking of weapons, over on Fox's Fringe in the same time period, an apocalyptic scenario is triggered when Walternate revs up the doomsday device "over there," in hopes of rocking our (and specifically Peter's) world.
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Treme
HBO is heading back to New Orleans with the Season 2 premiere of Treme on Sunday, April 24.
Treme chronicles New Orleans three months after Hurricane Katrina as its citizens struggle to put their lives, and their city, back together. Among those citizens are a part-time DJ and jazz aficionado (Steve Zahn), a bar owner torn between staying in New Orleans or settling in Baton Rouge (Khandi Alexander) and trombonist Antoine Battiste (Wendell Pierce).
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Melissa Leo
At its languid but intoxicating best, HBO's Treme dances and grooves to its own peculiar and particularly New Orleans beat. Call it the rhythm of life. And, naturally, death. But mostly life. Such is the case in the series' languorous 80-plus-minute finale, infused with sorrow but also overflowing with a defiant resilience and joy in the moment that captures the ebullient nature of this national treasure of a city.
Plot-wise? Let's not dwell on that. As Professor Creighton Bernette (John Goodman) told his students in the penultimate episode, before presumably stepping off the ferry to put an end to his blocked creative life, "Don't think in terms of a beginning and an end. Because unlike some plot-driven entertainments, there is no closure in real life — not really." Could be a testimony to Treme itself, which has taken some knocks for its often oblique approach to actual narrative. (Ominously, Cray added when asked about an upcoming test, "In the end, every one of us will be tested, and every one of us will be found wanting.")
Creighton's suicide, and the grief and rage of his widow Toni...
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Treme
When Treme co-creator David Simon approached Khandi Alexander for his new HBO drama, she didn't even have to read the script.
"I said, 'It doesn't even matter what it is, I'm in," Alexander tells TVGuide.com. "It was just the opportunity to work with David again. To be in the company of someone you feel so comfortable with creatively and personally, there was no second guessing. It was a yes before I read the material."
Treme overcomes tragedy, on-screen and off
So Alexander, who played a drug addict in Simon's Emmy-winning HBO miniseries The Corner, was even more thrilled when she saw just what Simon and co-creator Eric Overmyer were up to with their look at post-Katrina New Orleans...
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Treme
In its own way, the sudden death of Treme co-executive producer David Mills just days before the series premiere is a potent metaphor for the show itself.
The Wire, Treme writer David Mills dies at 48
As the HBO drama's cast and crew mourn Mills' loss, they also celebrate him by continuing...
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Katherine Heigl (Grey's Anatomy), Marcia Cross (Housewives) and David Caruso (CSI: Miami)
Every week, senior editors Matt Webb Mitovich, Mickey O'Connor and Tim Molloy satisfy your need for TV scoop. Please send all questions to mega_scoop@tvguide.com.
Color me shocked that Katherine Heigl isn't leaving Grey's Anatomy. Is it possible we're being duped in some way? — Krista
MATT: I must say that the lack of fanfare surrounding ABC's confirmation of Heigl's status — especially when juxtaposed with the flurry of official statements regarding T.R. Knight's departure — made me raise one of my overgrown eyebrows. "Sure, she's staying... for just one more episode," I cynically hypothesized. But one of my best sources insists that this is not a case of clever semantics, and that Heigl's Izzie will have a significant presence in the fall.
Please give me some scoop on what's next for Desperate Housewives' Bree. — Fernando R.
MICKEY: Bree may come off like a brittle maneater, but at heart she's a real softy, which is why juggling an angry Orson and a horny Karl will really ...
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