One Grand Slam, One Error, and One Walk
The Grand Slam: If you haven't watched "The Mentalist" (CBS, Tuesday nights), you are missing a GREAT show. Catch up at cbs.com. Simon Baker ("LA Confidential") is spot-on as Patrick Jane (note for future reference: stupid name for a major character, CBS), and the supporting cast is great, especially Tim Kang (from the AT&T U-verse ads) as Kimball Cho. The show is smart, fast-paced, and, best of all, different -- this is not "CSI: California". For me, it's a "Must See", and has the potential of joining "Quantum Leap" and "Beauty and the Beast" in my list of The Best Shows Of All Time. In the meantime, I'll just keep drooling every time Simon Baker smiles. It's a genuine, half-flirting, half-"I'm having the time of my life" smile, the kind you can't fake, the kind that makes women swoon and men jealous. I wish he could bottle it. Maybe he could sell some to our next candidate....
The Error: If you haven't watched "Eleventh Hour", you haven't missed anything. I keep waiting for something interesting to happen, and it never does. That's hard for a science geek like me to type, because the main character is a science geek! But watching this guy -- Rufus Sewell (no credits I've ever heard of) -- is like watching a glacier move. The supporting cast is just one woman, Marley Shelton ("Pleasantville"), but even she can't save this clunker. The plots, like the main character, are slow and implausible. This is one British import I think we should send back -- C.O.D.
The Walk: I don't know how to explain "Life on Mars". The first episode was intriguing -- a guy in 2008 gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He wants to get back to 2008, mostly because Lisa Bonet is there. But he can't. So he's stuck in the era before Swingtown and after The Wonder Years. I'm marginally interested in finding out how he gets back, but to do so means sitting through a standard 1970's cop show. It's not even a good cop show -- no Jerry Orbach or Jesse L. Martin to liven things up. Basically, it's just a bunch of guys in wide ties and leisure suits beating the crap out of suspects, interspersed with the fish-out-of-water time-traveller story who does typical time-traveller things (asks for Diet Coke, tries to find his family, etc.) Yawn. The star, Jason O'Mara, is an experienced actor who, in my opinion, did an excellent job as a pyromaniac on "The Closer", but even he seems a bit confused about how to portray his character.
To be honest, I think I'd rather watch an old "Law & Order" episode... (This is me, walking....)
Moral of the story: WATCH "THE MENTALIST"!