Hugh Laurie
This week on Fox's House (Tuesdays at 8 pm/ET), an impatient patient takes hostages at Princeton-Plainsboro until what ails him can be determined. So complex is his diagnosis, and so taut is the tension, that the hour-long drama demands an extra seven minutes to unspool (so adjust your DVR).
In preparing to tell this story, executive producer Katie Jacobs — who also directed the episode — picked the brain of real-life SWAT team members who have been involved in near-identical hospital face-offs. "One had a really interesting story about how ...
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Zelijko Ivanek
Heroes' next chapter already has a new baddie cast and ready for the kill (maybe). Zeljko Ivanek, who just won an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor on Damages, will be joining the gifted ones as a character called "The Hunter."
According to E!, Ivanek will arrive in episode 14, which is the first of Volume Four: Fugitives. The new volume is expected to hit the air in January or February 2009, with creator Tim Kring rumored to be writing the premiere installment.
Who, then will the new guy be after?
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Zeljko Ivanek courtesy Jordan Strauss/WireImage.com
Zeljko Ivanek, Emmy-nominated this Sunday for his supporting role as Damages' "troubled" Ray Fiske, is poised to set Fox's House on fire. In one of this season's early episodes, Ivanek will deliver a guest-starring turn that is sure to grab people's attention — at least within the walls of Princeton Plainsboro. "I'm a would-be patient who has had enough, and needs to know what's wrong with him," Ivanek told me Friday night at an Academy event honoring Emmy-nominated actors. So how does this "would-be patient" pursue an appointment with Dr. House? "I start hijacking people," says Ivanek, "taking them hostage in the hospital."Is that the only Damages the actor will be doing this TV season? Asked if Ray might return to haunt Patty Hewes in Season 2, Ivanek said, "The official answer I'm supposed to give is, 'You never know, the writers might have some surprises in store.'" Regardless, the FX series' sophomore run looks solid. "I've been reading scripts," he shares, "and they're fa...
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Rose Byrne in Damages by Barbara Nitke/FX
This Saturday, FX is running the entire first season (up to now) of its legal thriller Damages as an all-day marathon, which means theoretically there will be viewers who will get to experience this show the way it might work best: as a rock ’em, sock ’em miniseries, compounding all of the story’s elaborate and sometimes preposterous shocks and twists into a roller-coaster ride that doesn’t require waiting a week between chapters.The ratings have been, even by cable standards, a disappointment, and as I write this, FX had yet to confirm a second-season renewal (although as I’ve said before, any network that would keep Dirt and The Riches going and fail to renew this gritty gem has some explaining to do). I’ve wondered if the show’s elaborately serialized structure, with an entire season built around a single case and its murderous fallout, may have kept viewers away (shades of ABC’s short-lived Murder One).The brutality and darkness of Damages...
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Question: Not only do I think Damages was the best new show to air this summer, I now have to say it is the best show on television! I usually can't stand it when shows do flashbacks, then revert to real time and go back and forward again. But Damages does it so well, and that device makes its stories all the more compelling. Here's my question, though: Will Damages be back for a second season? I ask because they have killed off so many of their major players; will enough cast members be left to do a second season, and if so, what storyline could they possibly come up with next? Glenn Close's performance is out-of-the-park superb. Most times Patty is cold, calculating, vindictive, cruel (remember the doggie?) and downright nasty. (Didn't we all love it when Ellen told her off and even again last week when she declined to come back to the firm?) That makes it all the more compelling when we see even the slightest humanity or compassion from her. She is riveting. Also, I've been a fan of ...
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Again, I lead off this recap with: Wow.I mean, wow.Yes, you had to see it coming. The usurping of his power at the firm, the blackmail, the guilt.... Any other outcome than Ray swallowing the barrel of a gun seemed impossible, a cheat. Then when they showed him in bed with his wife, I thought, "OK, maybe we're not going there." But suicide is a selfish act.It appears that our two stories, present day and the flashbacks, have now met, since Ray's spatter of cranium has soiled Patty's loafer. That's a question answered, a red herring dismissed. So, assuming that Patty flakes and flees because of Ray's suicide, she never sees Ellen again. Meaning that she already cleared Ellen to stay at her place....But Ellen and David haven't had the big fight yet, have they? Don't they have to have the fight over "a man being dead now," before Patty lets Ellen stay over? So Patty must see her again. And what of the "Did we go too far?" chat? Perhaps that came before Patty met with Ray in her offic...
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FX's Damages, which premiered on Tuesday, is simply too good a show not to have a "watercooler" blog, so I am stepping up to the plate and authoring one. In exchange, you will give me some leeway if each week's recap doesn't get posted until, say, 8 am the morning after. (Recapping 10 o'clockers is tough for a tired father of 4-year-old twins!)As I said in the title, what a pilot episode, right?This is not a courtroom drama.This is not a legal drama.This is not a procedural.What this is — and Michael Nouri (who plays Glenn Close's hubby) first spun it this way when I saw him at a function last month — is a psychological thriller. And a darn good one.I've already screened Episode 2, so I must be careful here not to cover too much ground. But I love the setup, how up-and-coming legal eagle Ellen is seen fleeing the grisly scene of god-knows-what, and then we proceed to flash forward and back and forward and back, piecing together — throughout the entire first season, mi...
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According to the Hollywood Reporter, Janeane Garofalo has been tapped to star in a CBS drama pilot following the loves of a team of public defenders.... Aussie beauty Rose Byrne (Marie Antoinette) is a fresh-out-of-law-school attorney who goes to work for Glenn Close's high-powered litigator in FX's untitled legal-thriller pilot. Additionally, Tate Donovan (The O.C.) and Zeljko Ivanek (24's Andre Drazen) have been cast as Close's most-trusted adviser and her opposing attorney, respectively.... David Carradine and Amy Madigan will guest on Criminal Minds during February sweeps. Check out the fresh Ask Ausiello for details.
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