Richard Schiff

Question: Please give me some scoop on The West Wing.

Answer: We're going to see Toby (Richard Schiff) again right before the big election — on Halloween, to be exact — when he returns home to take his son, Huck, trick-or-treating. Oh, and the show isn't returning next year. Nothing official from NBC yet, but reliable sources tell me it's all over in May.

Entourage (HBO): Highest marks. What a brilliant second season this show had, primarily because there finally was such a juicy story to tell. Ari, ousted from his plush office in the superb next-to-last episode, takes a client meeting — who knew Richard Schiff yearned to be a tough guy? — at a Coffee Bean shop. (What, Starbucks was too common?) Speaking of common, what a riot that Johnny Drama's louse of an agent — the kid who helped get Ari fired — is such a bottom-runger that when Johnny barges into his office, he's taking a meeting with the execrable Pauly Shore. Eric, as usual, is in way over his head, taking a meeting with Ari's supersmarmy boss Terence, who advises the kid to become an agent and "invest without emotion," as if clients were commodities like stocks.

Which is why Ari's final-appeal meeting with Eric was so well-timed. Ari read more