RETURNING SHOWS: The dramas
This is the week when the TV season begins in earnest, with a slew
of new shows and an even slewier slew of returning series. We covered
the new ones last week in these pages; today we’ll look at the most
notable returning dramas and next week, the comedy and reality shows.
Just a reminder: All times Central.
This week gets off to a colorful start when “CSI: Miami” becomes “CSI: Rio” for a day, as CBS counters the debut of NBC’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” with some razzmatazz of its own (9 p.m. Monday, KCTV-5). Filming in the Brazilian hotspot will give viewers, especially those with high-definition TVs, as much eye candy as “Studio 60” will ear candy.
CBS rolls ahead on Tuesdays, as “NCIS” (7 p.m. Tuesday, KCTV-5) resolves perhaps the most intriguing cliffhanger of last season: why Gibbs (Mark Harmon) packed it in to build boats in Mexico. And how the NCIS is going to reel him back in. That’s followed by the action-packed “The Unit” at 8, where we last saw President Palmer … uh, I mean Jonas … taking a bullet when Yugoslavs kidnapped Jack Bauer … I mean, broke up a dinner party among Unit families. Boy, it is getting harder to keep these international thrillers straight, especially when they use the same good guys and bad guys.
The biggest news out of the “Law & Order” factory this summer wasn’t the addition of Eric Bogosian to “Criminal Intent.” It was the schedule shuffle. Two of the three “L&Os” will be scheduled back-to-back, as “Criminal Intent” — where Bogosian plays a captain of the “my way or the highway” variety — is at 8 Tuesdays followed by “SVU” at 9.
Original recipe “L&O” is now at 9 p.m. Fridays (all on KSHB-41). In other crime news, “Cold Case” moved to 8 p.m. Sundays, followed by “Without a Trace” at 9 on KCTV-5.
It’s a sign of how far “Desperate Housewives” fell from grace in its second season that ABC felt the need to send out screeners of the third season premiere to critics, something it’s apparently not doing with the season premiere of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
But then, “Housewives” generates only a fraction of the buzz as “Grey’s Anatomy,” a show ABC moved to Thursday nights at 8 in the hopes of finally competing with NBC and CBS that night.
If you’re one of those who enjoyed the sparkling first season of “Housewives” and was turned off by the aimless second season (frankly, since the show has never worked for me, it was hard to tell the difference), you’re probably curious to see what changes were made in the off-season.
Yes, Bree (Marcia Cross) is still being hit on by the diabolical neatnik Orson (Kyle MacLachlan), but show creator Marc Cherry has added a story even creepier than that: Susan (Teri Hatcher) falls in love in the coma ward.
Looking ahead, more dramas will return in the next few weeks, including “Lost” on Oct. 4, though only for six weeks. Acknowledging fans’ complaints that there were too many weeks when “Lost” was in reruns, ABC made the smart decision to take the show off the air, try something different in its place (Taye Diggs in “Day Break,” starting Nov. 15), then bring it back in time for February sweeps.
Also making late starts are “Crossing Jordan” and “Las Vegas,” now comprising two-thirds of NBC’s Friday lineup, on Oct. 20 (KSHB-41), and “What About Brian,” which returns Oct. 9 to ABC (KMBC-9).
“The Gilmore Girls” return at 7 p.m. Sept. 26 on the new CW network (KCWE-29, or Channel 7 on most cable systems). Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino is gone, but sadly the implausible storylines have stayed behind.
In the first 10 minutes Lorelai (Lauren Graham) throws up yet another pointless wall between herself and the obvious love of her life, the drippy café owner Luke (Scott Patterson).
The third season premiere of “Veronica Mars” is a week later, at 8 p.m. Oct. 3, on the CW. I haven’t seen it, but surely it has more gas in the tank than the Gilmores do.
