Mandy Patinkin (Criminal Minds) will guest-star on Three Rivers, CBS has announced.
The Emmy and Tony winner will play...
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Say this for Joe Mantegna: He doesn’t make Criminal Minds any worse. Like that’s even possible. This inexplicably popular crime drama remains the most pretentious, the most simplistic and the most dehumanizing of CBS’ current glut of procedurals. Replacing Mandy Patinkin, who quit between seasons — I’m guessing he finally watched an episode — Mantegna makes a valiant effort at creating an actual character, but he invariably gets lost amid the wood (his supporting cast) and the cheese (the scripts).We first see him bird hunting in a Virginia marsh. The next time we see water, a dead body (a brutalized, mutilated woman, naturally) is floating in a Dallas suburb. This victim’s backstory? She comes home to find a "Have You Seen Me?" poster on her door with her own face on it. Understandably spooked, she goes to the sheriff, who figures it’s just a Halloween prank. We know better, having seen this show in action before. Soon enough, she’s a go...
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First, an important public-service announcement: Tonight on The War, we relive D-Day, a momentous turning point in military history brought to vivid life by those who lived through it, courtesy of Ken Burns' masterful way with documentary narrative. I know this is premiere week, and Wednesday is the most competitive night for new shows this season, but I wouldn't be doing my duty if I didn't remind everyone that this is TV you not only shouldn't miss, but it's an experience you'll never forget. (The reality, though, is that PBS is giving viewers multiple opportunities to see these episodes, and I can't think of a better gift DVD for holiday season.) Back to the network game, where only one of the nine new series being launched on Wednesdays is MIA: ABC’s marvelous Pushing Daisies, its premiere pushed back a week by the tsunami-like launch of Dancing with the Stars, which once again is turning out to be the ratings monster everyone expected. (And the men, by and large, had a bla...
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Criminal Minds is back! Well, at least in the homes of America it is. It's been back for us since the start of June. While you guys were busy watching shows that judged whether people could dance, sing, spell and lose weight, we've been coming up with new ways to terrify America and rescue those in fictional peril. Currently we're shooting our eighth episode and have writers working on up to the 12th episode. So, in our minds it's the middle of the season. I had to think back a little to remember this season's first episode. Sitting in the writers' room and reading all the drafts, it's funny to realize how much has happened to our characters since we last left off. Oh America, are you in for a treat! A lovely, frightful treat! Not to give away too much information, but by the fifth episode every cast member will be replaced by a child and they will have to form their own society. Seems weird, but it's not. You'll love it. (Just kidding, that's the premise of our new lead-in Kid Nati...
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The 2007-08 season is starting soon and there are many questions looming. After consulting a few network insiders, The Biz is going to try to answer a few of the big ones.Will Private Practice be the next Joey?Ah, the much maligned spin-off. The answer is no. The audience still has a lot of goodwill towards Grey's Anatomy. ABC has surrounded it on Wednesday with two of its strongest pilots, Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money. It has a solid night, with Private Practice as a presold tent pole to hold it up. But expect the veteran cast on PP to attract an older audience than the Grey's mother ship.Will the recent controversy over Kid Nation help or hurt the show?Help — but only for the first week. "The publicity is not about the show, it's about the making of the show, not about the content," said one exec at a competing network. "Viewers are not going to stay around for three or four weeks just to see if CBS has been doing something unethical." That being said, network researc...
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