Question: I remember a show from the early '70s that starred Adam Arkin as a kid who was on his own for the first time. His apartment had wallpaper with ducks on it and Barbara Rhoades played the neighbor who lived across the hall from him. No one else seems to remember this show. Please help. If it helps, I think it was on Monday nights on CBS.
Answer: No one else remembers because you seem to have vacuumed up all the spare facts about the show, Chet. Impressive work; you make my job easy.
The CBS sitcom was called Busting Loose. It debuted on a Monday in January 1977 and did indeed star young Mr. Arkin (Baby Bob, Chicago Hope) as an engineering-school grad who m
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Before "snark" was even a word, Rene Auberjonois was wonderfully full of it as Clayton Runnymede Endicott III, the fancy-speaking foil to Robert Guillaume's titular manservant-turned-civil servant on the '80s comedy Benson. These days — and a sci-fi-fabulous run as Deep Space Nine's Odo later — the veteran actor is sharing a set with fellow Star Trek universe alum William Shatner on ABC's Boston Legal (Tuesdays at 10 pm/ET). In fact, Auberjonois' prickly Paul Lewiston recently embarked on a juicy new story arc, one of the many topics covered in this Q&A with TVGuide.com.
TVGuide.com: Long before there was The West Wing, befo
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He has played Che Guevara and Georges Seurat on Broadway, is a constant presence on concert stages, and his TV roles include a doctor, a hunchback, and a dead guy. Now, on CBS' Criminal Minds (Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET), Mandy Patinkin plays FBI profiler Jason Gideon. We talked to the actor-singer about the series, his role, his health and his blessings.
TVGuide.com: So who's Jason Gideon? He has to get inside the minds of truly vile and evil perps, and he's — shall we say — intense.Mandy Patinkin: He's somebody who has a dark past, has made mistakes through impulsive behavior and doesn't intend to go [there] again. He's about eliminating suffering, sa
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Question: What can you tell us about Commander-In-Chief? Will there be similarities between it and The West Wing? Or will it be more like the days of ER and Chicago Hope when we had two decidedly different shows set in Chicago hospitals?
Answer: More the latter. Wisely, ABC's Commander-In-Chief is not attempting to be a clone of West Wing in any way except, perhaps, setting. Whereas West Wing is a romance about public service, Commander is, at least at first, a darker melodrama with the focus more on character and family than on banter and process. (For those who haven't caught ABC's plentiful promos, it stars Geena Davis as a political Independent who, as vice president to a popular Republican president who dies in office, assumes the top job despite massive opposition.) It's among the more recommended of this season's new dramas ...
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Poor Christine Lahti. You'd think being married to a former executive producer of The West Wing would guarantee her a role in any of his future projects. Not necessarily. According to the Emmy-winning actress, her husband, Thomas Schlamme, didn't initially see a part for her in Jack & Bobby (debuting Sunday). That's his new WB drama about a conflicted single mom raising two boys — one of whom is destined to be president of the United States. Here, the 54-year-old Chicago Hope alumna talks about her role as future first mother Grace McCallister, and how she persuaded her husband to keep it all in the family.
TV Guide Online: In the pilot episode, Grace smokes pot. Any reservations about playing a professor, a woman of influence, who uses marijuana?Christine Lahti: It's probably not good for her. Certainly not for the kids. No, [I don't have any] reservations. In fact, one of the things I loved about her the most is that she'
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