Lost, The Vampire Diaries, Heroes
Every week, editors Mickey O'Connor and Adam Bryant answer your burning questions. Want some TV scoop? Please send all questions to mega_scoop@tvguide.com.
Any Lost scoop? — Ari
MICKEY: You can add Katey Sagal's name to the list of Lost alums who have jetted off to Hawaii to shoot scenes for the final season. Call me a romantic, but I never believed that Locke's beloved Helen was actually dead; that whole cemetery scene reeked of fakery. Plus, we've all heard the rumors about Season 6 employing an alternate timeline (or, more intriguing, a "do-over" of Oceanic Flight 815), which means that even if Matthew Abaddon was telling the truth, Helen is still just as likely to be alive as, say, Charlie, Boone, Shannon, Eko or Juliet.
Sylar crawled out of the ground on Monday's Heroes. Does that mean no more Nathan? — Justin
ADAM: That remains to be seen. But I will tell you this...
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Another energetic episode that managed to give nearly everyone something to do even if the writing for the showcasing of Diane Farrs Megan couldve been sharpenedWe begin with young apparently affluent adults clubbing with the focus hanging on Ella Pierce Ari Graynor who at first suggests a Paris Hilton-style tabloid magnetthe Patty Hearst and Symbionese Liberation Army resonances come later She is apparently abducted by a small group which includes a woman shed been dancing with Stephanie Bast who leave with much gunfire into the air and other theatrics but no injury to the witnesses Our FBI unit is called in even if Don Rob Morrow doesnt choose to waken Liz Aya Sumika sleeping in bed next to him Charlie David Krumholtz joins them at the scene immediately suggesting models he could use to track the kidnappers flight as does private kidnapping consultant Jeff Upchurch Sean Patrick Flanery temporarily an employee of Pierces father textiles and clo
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Another fine episode and one that actually builds in part on the last one a rarity so far this seasonWe begin with the investigation of a possible suicide but more probably murder a middle-aged man who turns out to be a US attorney from the Midwest has fallen from a building in a scruffy part of Los Angeles Hes also a team leader in a real-life scavenger hunt that has grown out of a multi-user online battle game called Primacy The prize for the winning team in the real-life game is 1 million which seems motive enough and certainly there is no lack of suspects including members of the attorneys team who have left markers at the murder scene from previous visits Megan takes the lead on this case but her secret weapon she soon learns is Amita who has been playing Primacy for years An obsessed gamer who has been using fake identities to create his own team and who has killed his one actual coconspirator has been intimidating and harrassing other teams to fo
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This was a pleasant leisurely episode a definite shift in pacing as well as tone from the frenetic previous installment In fact beyond seeing Navi Rawats Amita and David Krumholtzs Charlie behave more like an actual couple than weve seen before and aside from some nice business between Diane Farrs Meghan and Peter MacNicols Larry as they attempt to grow more intimate again I have relatively little to note about this episode Will Patton is quite good at keeping his occasional recurring character Gary Walker from slipping into an utter caricature of the tough cop with the heart of gold and happily for Dylan Bruno and his stunt doubles or both Granger was required only to do one shallow dive and some running pursuit of a suspect Alimi Ballards Sinclair even got to do the diving tackle of the fleeing manA synopsis The episode begins in an ornate bank lobby only the apparent sophistication of the vault keeps it from being just as likely a chamber in a museum An o
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Quite a packed episode this Veteran scriptwriter Don McGill and whoever else mightve had a hand in it managed to get at least an episode and a halfs worth of incident in wrapped around solving the central case but with plenty of little nudges toward resolving aspects of the longer arcs within the series some of those resolved or at least dealt with perhaps a little too quickly Thanks to any number of crime dramas we mightve seen before ranging from Grand Guignol and its heirs the weirder edge of film noir and contemporary English suspensehorror films and German krimis and Italian gialli and on up through that other film with a digit in its title Se7en and its contemporaries and all the crime fiction that helped to inspire them this episodes fanatic is a familiar type One might even have grown accustomed to his sort from the other procedurals and policeinvestigator shows This is where spoilers will become more explicitBut what was most remarkable about
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This was a consolidating episode for the series It eased the Colby character back into the team and it showcased the romances of the Eppes brothers David Krumholtzs Charlie with Navi Rawats Amita and the slight edge in Charlies voice in response to the gentlest of nudges from his woman friend Rob Morrows Don with Aya Sumikas Liz Warner neither of whom are good at defusing the workplacerelation tension It gave nearly everyone in the cast a setpiece and it also gave the show an opportunity to mock Entourage and to make a few inside jokes about Numbers itself as when mildly star-struck Charlie and the less-impressed Larry Fleinhardt Peter MacNicol demonstrated how they use calculations of water displacement to determine the size of a murder suspect only to be told by their audience of a film actor and his lifelong friend that their efforts are just like something out of the movies only not as coolAside from the Eureka moment th
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In Numb3rs to give it its preferred logotype Cheryl Heuton and Nicholas Falacci have created an almost perfect machine taking the classic eccentric detective series whose roots go back at least as far as the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle but which is perhaps best represented on US television by Columbo and combining that with the ensemble workplacefamily drama which came to its mature form on US tv with such 1980s series as Hill Street Blues and St Elsewhere In addition to good-to-excellent scripts sly casting and performances and often impressive production design the two extra strokes of brilliance in the makeup of Numb3rs are the gimmicky but nonetheless enjoyable use of applied mathematics in the characters crime-solving and less obviously the splitting of the single eccentric detective into a team of eccentrics including making at least some of the FBI agents at the heart of the show nearly as odd as the mathematicians and physicists and a c
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Peter MacNicol by Joseph Viles/Fox
Peter MacNicol's days on 24 are apparently over.The actor has sealed a deal to return to CBS' Numbers next season as a full-time series regular, exec producer Cheryl Heuton confirms to me exclusively. "Peter MacNicol's a vital part of the show, and we're thrilled to have him back," says Heuton. "The fans love him, we love him, and it's not the same show without him."MacNicol left the CBS drama and his role as Dr. Larry Fleinhardt early in the season to join 24 as smarmy White House aide Tom Lennox. He briefly returned in May for one episode. So, does Numbers + MacNicol = good news by your calculation? Do the math in the comments section below!
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Question: I read that Peter MacNicol will not be returning to Numbers because of the popularity of his character on 24. Is there any truth to this?
Answer: Did "certain people" tell you that? (Spoiler alert) First off, MacNicol shot his final 24 episode weeks ago. Second, he's returning to Numbers on April 27.
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Question: While some people are complaining about the ridiculousness of another Palmer coup on 24, can we all just agree that the assassination plotline is actually the writers' attempt to salvage their season? DB Woodside did a fine job last season, and obviously the powers that be wanted to capitalize on the JFK/RFK angle. However, it's pretty apparent now that Woodside just isn't cutting it. He isn't presidential, and his delivery is rather wooden. I believe the writers saw the performance, realized they made a mistake, and tried to come up with the darkest possible scenario to get rid of him. It is in no way, shape or form more ridiculous than Logan being evil last year. So while a few critics are groaning, I'm actually welcoming these plot developments in the hopes of a better season to come. Plus, who doesn't want to see Powers Boothe as President? Bueller? Bueller?
Answer: I'm not a big President Wayne Palmer fan either, but I seriously doubt the assassination-coup story line was
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