Results tagged “CBS” from The Mayor of Television

CBS, which is only down about 3% in the ratings from last year despite the proliferation of DVRs, etc., is applying just a handful of tweaks so far to its schedule, and none with far-reaching ramifications.

On Saturday, Jan. 3, "Game Show in My Head," another chance for Ashton Kutcher to humiliate people, debuts. Basically, people tailed by hidden cameras and wearing earpieces will wander around in public and be instructed to do something embarrassing. If they do, they get money. If they don't - oh, who are they kidding, if they didn't want to disgrace themselves they wouldn't've gone on this show, would they?

(Since making this film, Ashton Kutcher has been hellbent to make sure other people humiliate themselves publicly, too.)

Note that this is actually airing on Saturday, an evening given over of late to repeats, sports and newsmagazines. CBS would assert that this is a bold new initiative of some sort to try to program the evening. I'm guessing they're not expecting too much from this and are putting the best face possible on the situation. It's certainly a cheap show to produce - the most the contestants can earn for debasing themselves in front of a national TV audience is $50K. It'll air at 8 p.m.

"Flashpoint," the summer success starring Enrico Colantoni as the head of an elite Toronto police force, returns Friday, Jan. 9, at 9 p.m..

(What are all these folks with those really big guns overcompensating for?)

What might be a kind of cool mini-series, "Harper's Island," debuts Thursday April 9 at 10 p.m., once "Eleventh Hour" completes its first-season run. We know "Harper's Island" can't actually be turned into a series because most of the characters will be dead by the end of the run.

It's about a group of friends who gather on a secluded island for a wedding celebration, but there's a serial killer among them, and so the body count ratchets at a fairly fearsome rate. Per CBS's press release, "In every episode, someone is killed and every person is a suspect, from the wedding party to the island locals. By the end of the 13 episodes, all questions will be answered, the killer will be revealed and only a few will survive."

(By the end of the show, most of these people will be dead. Murder is fun!)

Now, that's entertainment. And as it's a close-ended show, there's less chance of it going off the rails the way other serialized series do ("Heroes," ahem). And it's produced by people with "Alias," "The X-Files," "Jericho" and "Angel" on their resumes.

CBS hasn't yet announced when it's finally going to give up on "Worst Week" and bring "Rules of Engagement" back, but as far as I'm concerned, "Rules of Engagement" can continue to sit on the shelf, thank you very much.

Hey, we didn't need psychic abilities to see this coming: CBS picked up "The Mentalist" for the entire season, and why not? It's drawing more than 15 million viewers per episode, establishing it as the new hit of the season.

As luck would have it, I'll be visiting the set of the show today. They'll be in such a good mood over their pickup that they probably won't mind my stupid questions.

It's probably only a matter of seasons before the broadcast networks give up on programming Friday evenings with original scripted content and go to repeats, newsmagazines and crummy reality shows (oh wait - ABC and Fox already do that). MediaWeek's ratings guy Marc Berman declared the night a disaster. Only CBS's "Ghost Whisperer" and "Numb3rs" managed an audience that couldn't be described as embarrassing, but its new series "The Ex List" will soon enough be known as "The Ex Show" based on its premiere.

(You didn't need a psychic to have foreseen this show wouldn't do all that well.)

"The Ex List" managed 6.85 million viewers, losing a quarter of its lead-in audience; "Moonlight," last year's timeslot occupant (which CBS cancelled), had 8 million viewers. NBC attempted Friday-night lonely-hearts programming a few years back with "Miss Match" and ABC tried with "Men in Trees;" apparently, more women go out on dates than they estimated.

"Life" died in its timeslot debut, with 5.44 million viewers. "Las Vegas" did better on Fridays, with 7.5 million viewers last year. That's what network executives get for trying to strategize and tinker with their schedules: Fewer viewers than ever. (Of course, if they stand pat, no good comes of that, either; just ask ABC about Wednesday nights.)

Wow, was Wednesday night a bloodbath. MediaWeek ratings maven Marc Berman declared six shows "Losers" and two more "Disappointing." Should be a fun recap.

Looks like ABC's just going to have to be all "Dancing with the Stars," all the time. Its relaunch of its evening of sophomore shows pretty much tanked. "Pushing Daisies" lost half of its original audience year to year (6.3m viewers last night), "Private Practice" lost close to half its debut crowd (8.05m) and the only reason "Dirty Sexy Money" didn't lose half its viewership is because its was never very large to begin with. Still, "DSM's" 7.14 million viewers were on a par with what the show was doing before it took a premature writers-strike-induced vacation. The other two shows lost a couple million or so apiece from their final audience size last season.

So if ABC had brought these shows back after the strike ended, they might've discovered their viability or lack thereof then, and spared themselves the grief of going through a costly and futile relaunch. Of course, since they didn't have any other shows in development, Wednesday would've just become Test Pattern Theatre Night, but the cost-to-viewership ratio might've been a little better.

Berman, ever the diplomat, deems "Private Practice" merely "disappointing," even though, as the anchor of the night, it's sunk the whole ship. But it did do better than "Knight Rider" (7.56m), "The New Adventures of Old Christine" (6.86m), "Gary Unmarried" (6.97m), "Lipstick Jungle" (5.3m) and "'Til Death" (4.66m - oh, yeah, by the way, Fox cancelled "Do Not Disturb" last week, but it was hardly worth mentioning since no one would've noticed anyway). Here's what qualifies as upside - "Knight Rider" didn't drop off from last week, and "Gary Unmarried" improved a smidgen from its lead-in. These factors will inspire network executives to exercise something in very short supply: patience.

So, what did well? "Bones" actually won its hour, which might've been a first for it in terms of competing against all-new shows (9.8m). "Criminal Minds" won its hour, but that's no big news flash (14.51m), as did "CSI: NY" (14.67m). And "America's Got Talent" got 12.55 million viewers, but that's the end of bright spots for NBC, as that show has finally come to its conclusion.

And The CW was The CW. As usual.

On yesterday's ratings roundup, Bill commented:

"(R)atings are flawed, though, considering the bottom line and the Internet.

"I work nights and have no DVR (and finding blank VHS tapes is not as easy or cost-effective as it used to be). So, much of my viewing is on the Internet. I watched 'Heroes' on Tuesday morning on Hulu.com, and had previously watched the 'Chuck' and 'Life' premieres last week on Hulu, and I bet a lot of others had as well.

"Why should we continue to use a now antiquated system to judge a show's success?"

Excellent question, and it could be expanded to: Why did we ever use a system that polls such a small percentage and the same basic people on a weekly basis rather than trying to get a more diverse sampling?

And the answer, as insufficient as it is, is: Because it's still pretty much the only game in town. TiVo users provide more data, adding what shows were watched up to a week after they aired, but that isn't reported as much because this is a culture that values instant gratification and, after we hear about the overnights, we move on to the next set of factoids. The networks will report on what got watched online if it's really impressive news (for example, NBC touted the fact that its first Tina-Fey-as-Sarah-Palin sketch was NBC.com's most-watched online video), but they don't offer much else - willingly, at least.

Also, the ratings are for the benefit, primarily, of the advertisers, who want to know whether they're getting their money's worth for ponying up big bucks to get their commercials in certain shows. They just happen to be of interest to (some of) the rest of us because we want to know which shows we shouldn't be getting too used to. Hulu runs spots, too, but they're not always the ones that ran in the show's initial airing.

The networks have spent a lot of time talking about their online business guiding viewers back to the TV, but based on the low ratings of, say, "Chuck" and "Life," that doesn't quite seem to be the case yet. If in fact it ever will be. If someone has numbers to prove otherwise, I'll be happy to see them.

And now, onto our Tuesday ratings extravaganza:

CBS won the viewership battle but Fox won the demographic war. "NCIS" kicked everyone's butt with 17.24 million viewers, but "House," with 12.66 million viewers, actually had far more in the 18-49 age range advertisers spend their money on.

Same deal with "The Mentalist" and "Fringe:" "Mentalist" had five million more viewers (15.27m to 10.04m) but "Fringe" had more aged 18 to 49. (In the same hour, the "Dancing with the Stars" results show had 15.14m viewers, but was No. 3 in the demo).

So we'll say it again: "The Mentalist," which held on to its sizable lead-in as well as the audience it attracted with its debut last week, is the season's first new hit.

"Without a Trace" and "Law & Order: SVU" similarly swapped bragging rights. More people watched "WaT" (12.65m to 10.02m), but more younger viewers tuned into "SVU."

The rest of the night was Shrugsville: "Biggest Loser," 6.7m, "Opportunity Knocks," DOA with 5.9m, 3 or so million for The CW, and an ABC special on weight loss had a very slender 5.3m viewers.

Pretty much a bloodbath in the ratings last night, as MediaWeek ratings guru Marc Berman calls no fewer than six shows "losers."

It was all about "Dancing with the Stars," which bulldozed the competition with 19.28m viewers and a hefty No. 1 in the 18-49 demo. (I'm going to quit explaining that from here on out.) But at 10 p.m., "Boston Legal" chased away half that audience - there's your first loser.

("Boy is there egg on our faces! Ha, ha - get it? Because we tanked in the ratings and we're dressed like birds? Ha, ha, ha - oh, never mind.")

CBS did OK, with "Big Bang Theory" (8.7m), "How I Met Your Mother" (8.8m), "2.5 Men" (13.76m) and "CSI: Miami" (14.07m). "Worst Week" won't have many more of them in the future, as it squandered nearly 4.5 million viewers from it's "2.5 Men" lead-in and had lower numbers in the 18-49 demo than "Big Bang" and "Met Your Mother," even though it had more viewers. There's your second loser.

NBC glumly provides us with losers three and four: Its relaunches of "Chuck" (6.2m) and "Life" (6.9m) were (insert grisly launching-pad metaphor here). (Previously, NBC had announced it was picking up "Chuck" for the entire season. Wonder if they'll remain good on that promise.) And "Heroes" has lost its super powers, managing only 9.3m viewers, a precipitous drop from last season, though Mr. Berman thoughtfully kept if off the loser list.

Fox rounds out our parade of failure, with "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (5.3m) and "Prison Break" (5.2m). Mr. Berman cuts The CW some slack, apparently because they kvetch when he labels their shows losers, but "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill" had more than 3m viewers apiece, which is good by their standards.

Not a bad Sunday ratings-wise; no executive is pulling his hair out today.

Football on NBC led the way with 16 million viewers. ABC took second with "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" averaging 9.5 million over two hours (the only mildly worrying aspect of the night - that's down more than 2 million from last season), "Desperate Housewives" (18.4m) and "Brothers & Sisters" (12.35m).

CBS had "60 Minutes" (12.1m), "The Amazing Race" (10.3m), "Cold Case" (11.2m) and "The Unit" (9.75m). Fox's "Simpsons" (9.3m), "King of the Hill" (7m), "Family Guy" (9.2m) and "American Dad" (6.86m) scored well in the 18-49 demo, so their lower numbers are forgiven by advertisers who don't even want to think about people over the age of 50 seeing their commercials and buying their products.

And an estimated 57 million people who care about the fate of the country watched the McCain/Obama debate Friday night.

There's a compelling reason, or three, or four, maybe five, that no other reality competition series has ever beaten "The Amazing Race" at the Emmys: Spectacular production values (amazing images of globe-trotting scenery), frenetic pacing (they could probably eke out several more episodes per cycle and still have it be riveting), non-mean-spirited depictions of the participants (rather than have strangers get up in one another's faces for "good television," the show focuses on the long-standing relationships between team members, either for comic or poignant effect) and it's just a really fun and exciting game.

I don't watch many reality shows willingly, and I don't watch "Amazing Race" all the time, but if it's on and I'm in front of a TV, I will happily watch it.

(Spoiler alert: Here's the route that contestants will traverse this entire season of "The Amazing Race." But it's really not all that much a spoiler, since CBS willingly provided it.)

The show does have one itsy-bitsy problem: They're recycling the relationships between team members. Once again, we have a couple in crisis (Ken and Tina, who are separated after Ken cheated on Tina - here's betting he hooked up with someone who doesn't nag him anywhere near as incessantly as Tina does in Sunday's premiere); goofy frat brothers (Andrew and Dan, who way overestimate the power that belonging to a fraternity has in terms of seducing women unless rufies are involved); a brother-sister team that are skeekily far closer than any brother and sister you've ever encountered (Nick and Starr); a parent-adult-child team that decorum prevents too much further psychological excavation (Toni and Dallas); the long-distance couple (Aja and Ty); the geek (as opposed to the aforementioned Greek) buddies (Mark and Bill, comic-book geeks who look a little like at least half the gay couple in "The Sarah Silverman Program"); the sistahs-are-doing-it-for-themselves couples (Marissa and Brooke, Southern belles who declare that they're "into fashion," though they wear unflattering couture; and Kelly and Christy, friends who both went through nasty divorces and can barely contain their contempt for differently abled individuals anatomically speaking); and couples who have been dating for a real long time (Anthony and Stephanie) and a very short time (Terrence and Sarah).

To mix things up (sort of), they add an old hippie couple (Anita and Arthur) who are also beekeepers and owners of the last tie-dyed T-shirts remaining in captivity and who conspired to steal Arlo Guthrie's hair.

So anyway, all involved head to Brazil and scurry around (another great thing about this show is how it demonstrates that corporate attorneys have not overrun the cultures of foreign lands - there still exist on the planet ill-advised tourist attractions that look totally fun but even more totally dangerous) until that fatal moment where the host announces: "We interrupt the frenetic, coke-addled pacing to bring the show to an abject crawl in order to present some utterly belabored product placement for an online travel service."

And still: Even that awful moment doesn't sink the show. "The Amazing Race" remains, startlingly enough, pretty amazing.

- "The Amazing Race:" 8 p.m. Sunday, CBS (Channel 2).

(One final aside: I ragged, wryly, to my mind, on the New York Reality TV School just one blog post ago; its founder, Robert Galinsky, has good-naturedly offered me full tuition into one of his classes. Which I totally intend to accept next time I visit NYC, so that I can learn how to get on "The Amazing Race" and get an all-expenses-paid round-the-world trip. All I have to do now is find someone who can stand me enough to be my other team member, and I'm golden.)

... though a number of shows are losing steam. "Survivor," for example, clocked 12.9 million viewers, which is fine, except that that's almost 2.5m fewer than its premiere last year, and a full 4.5m fewer than two years ago. "Ugly Betty:" 9.77m viewers, down nearly 1.5m from the same point last season. "Grey's Anatomy:" 18.3m, down more than 2.5m from last year. "My Name is Earl:" 6.4m, down 2.2m. "ER:" 7.9m, down 2m - and had fewer viewers than an rerun of "CSI."

By comparison, "The Office" did OK - 9.1m, close to last year's premiere. And so Jim finally proposed to Pam already - there. You happy now?

(Congratulations to the happy couple!)

"Smallville," 4.1m. This is still on? Is he Superman yet? If not, maybe they're following the wrong Clark Kent. The real Clark Kent would be Superman by now.

So John McCain "suspended" his "campaign" "yesterday," in order to save the economy and the human race. That meant canceling his appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman," to which Dave took umbrage:

To be fair, it makes sense for a Presidential candidate, in the middle of a crisis, to be interviewed by someone who seems like a real reporter (or, at least, Katie Couric) rather than a late-night comic. On the other hand, if a candidate "suspends" one's "campaign" and then issues "talking points" about said "suspension," as McCain did, then that's not really suspending a campaign, just coaxing it in another direction and hoping for some heretofore unrealized traction. (Oh, and Presidential debates have been conducted during crises before in America's history. Lots of things happen during national crises. Like, I haven't suspended this blog to save the economy.)

That Letterman replaced McCain with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann speaks volumes. And Olbermann was on his best behavior, perhaps saving his vitriol for his own show:

A number of flops littered the primetime lineup last night, and we're not even talking about President Bush's address on the economy at 9 p.m. "Knight Rider" is already out of gas - 7.7 million viewers tuned in, about half of the number that watched the TV movie last season. The stupid David Blaine special on ABC did similar numbers. "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and "Gary Unmarried" couldn't even manage 7 million viewers apiece. "Lipstick Jungle" barely enticed 6 million viewers to watch. "'Til Death" scratched together 4.8 million viewers, and "Do Not Disturb" was untroubled with fans, with a mere 3.5 million tuning in.

(Jay Mohr asked me to drop his grandmother's name into today's interview with him in the paper, saying she reads the paper and seeing her name in it would "Melt her heart and mind." Alas, there was nowhere I could fit it in organically. So, hey, Helen Alice Spohr! If you're on the Internets, your grandson Jay says, "Hi, Gram!")

Successes included "Dancing with the Stars" (15.57 million), "Criminal Minds" (15.1 million, up 2.5 million from its premiere last season) and "CSI: NY" (15.5 million, also up, by 2.7 million).

Doing OK enough were "Bones" (9.6 million) and "America's Got Talent" (10.2 million).

The CW was The CW.

Not that I'm taking it personally, as he wants to crush the entire newspaper industry: "'One of the advantages of the Internet is we're taking money away from the newspapers,' he said gleefully."

("Once we destroy the newspapers, people won't be smart enough to know that 'Worst Week' and 'Gary Unmarried' are lame - bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!")

... would appear to be CBS's "The Mentalist," which debuted opposite "Dancing with the Stars" and "Fringe" with 15.55 million viewers. (It wasn't so strong in the 18-49 demo, though - even "Fringe," which had nearly six million fewer viewers, had more in that age bracket that is celebrated over all other humans on the planet.) But CBS's "NCIS," the little sleeper hit that could, continues to boggle the mind - opening its sixth season last night, it had 17.72 million viewers, nearly four million more than its premiere a year ago.

Night two of "Dancing with the Stars, and Kim Kardashian, Too" averaged 18.2 million viewers over its two hours, but ABC's "Opportunity Knocks" was a no-show in its premiere with 6.63 million.

In the "Physician, Heal Thyself" department, Fox's "House" took a hearty tumble with 12.14 million viewers, down 6.17 million from its numbers last year. To be fair, it won the hour in that 18-49 demo that advertisers get on their knees and pray extravagantly unctuous prayers to, and it's now on at 8 p.m. rather than 9, and viewing levels tend to be lower in that hour, but I wouldn't have expected it to be so roundly spanked by such a meat-and-potatoes show like "NCIS."

But if "House" is limping along, "Law & Order: SVU" is staggering, punchdrunk. One week last season, "L&O:SVU" was the only NBC show to have more than 10 million viewers; last night, it didn't even manage that (9.52m, down 2.6m from last season's debut); "Without a Trace" beat it handily, by almost 2 million viewers. And "Biggest Loser" was ehhh with 7.18m chubby chasers tuned in.

Am I forgetting anything? No, just The CW, where that "90210" show that everyone was salivating over a month ago fell below 3 million viewers.

Truth be told, I've never been much of a fan of "Criminal Minds." It's too lurid, too misogynistic, too, well, too. But tonight's episode had me fairly well hooked, for a while, at least.

The fourth-season opener begins where the season-three cliffhanger left off - with Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) and that British agent Kate that he seemed kind of fond of getting the hell blown out of them by a terrorist blast in New York. All sorts of attendant chaos rains down as the team (and the word "team" is used in this show as if it's some sort of holy relic) tries to locate those behind the bombing.

(The cast of "Criminal Minds" debates whether Paget Brewster looks better with bangs or without.)

Hotch and Kate are left dangling in the wind because protocol suggests that since the true target is apparently the wave of first responders, they must hold back and not really do anything. So Kate's guts and bare feet (she was literally blown out of her shoes) are exposed to the world, since she's but a bit player who's not even mentioned on imdb.com, while Hotch, who's a series regular, just has a little blood trickling out of his ear, even though he was just as close to the blast.

Intrepid Agent Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore, who gives this episode its oomph and more) has to bully his way past cops who have cordoned off the block and basically left Kate to die. An ambulance finally breaches the barricade, which I initially wrote off to the sort of sloppy plotting the show usually trucks in but actually turns out to be something of a plot point.

But, still, the episode boasts a lot of propulsive urgency and an impressive body count and is pretty exciting despite gaping holes in both security perimeters and plot logic. Putative stars Joe Mantegna and Paget Brewster are given next to nothing to do while their co-stars are saving Manhattan - Brewster's big scene involves Mets tickets - but as Hollywood sage Donald Rumsfeld once said, you go in with the storyline you have, not the storyline you want.

- "Criminal Minds:" 9 tonight; CBS (Channel 2).

The first night of the new season didn't have much that was surprising. "Dancing with the Stars" dominated, averaging 21.12 million viewers and clocking in at No. 1 in the 18-49 demographic advertisers and network executives care about so much, as well as the demo of people who enjoy watching Cloris Leachman lose her mind.

CBS's comedies did reasonably well, though the new "Worst Week" piddled away nearly 4 million viewers provided it by "Two and a Half Men" (and now that viewers have been treated to a glimpse of its cartoonishness, I predict even worse weeks to come for the show). Nearly 17 million celebrated David Caruso Day by watching Horatio fake his own death on "CSI: Miami."

But the bad news comes for the fanboy crowd - your shows disappointed if not outright tanked last night. "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" and "Prison Break" managed fewer than 6 million viewers apiece and came in fourth in the 18-49 demographic. In "Sarah's" case, the show's so expensive to produce that they're paying $1 for every 2 or 3 viewers.

"Heroes"' two-hour season premiere averaged just under 10 million viewers, which doesn't sound so bad - until you consider that its season debut last year attracted nearly 17 million fans. That's an awful lot of viewer attrition for one season, and in fact, there was significant viewer attrition over the course of the episode itself:

9:00 p.m. - Viewers: 10.15 million (#3)
9:30 p.m. - Viewers: 10.28 million (#3)
10:00 p.m. - Viewers: 9.61 million (#3)
10:30 p.m. - Viewers: 9.52 million (#2)

Its recap show tanked, too.

And The CW managed more than three million viewers last night and I'm sure they'll be crowing about it all day.

Jeez, either I'm losing my sense of humor or every broadcast-network sitcom writer in the country is. "The New Adventures of Old Christine" returns Wednesday and it's, well, not very funny. But at least it's not awful, unlike some of the other "comedies" I've had to sit through have been. It's just inoffensively blah.

(Wacky!)

It opens with Christine's (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) ex Richard (Clark Gregg) announcing that he's "going to ask New Christine (Emily Rutherfurd) to marry me." That, of course, will not go well. Then Barb (Wanda Sykes) barges in with more expository news - now that her divorce is final, she may not be able to stay in the country - she was born in the Bahamas.

(OK, now I know the whole country has become increasingly paranoid these days, but I call bullsh!t here - the rules used to be, once you get your Green Card they can't give you the boot even if you did divorce the dupe you used to get your Green Card (and even if you did so within weeks of getting said Green Card). And since Barb has been in the country for 20 years, as this episode establishes, she's clearly not a security risk, and so - oh, why the hell am I trying to make sense of a sitcom episode?)

Christine is shocked to learn that the Bahamas aren't under U.S. jurisdiction: "Are you sure? American Airlines flies there."

For some reason, they've decided to make Christine really obtuse, moreso than usual even, this episode. When she discovers that California has legalized gay marriage (really? She hadn't heard that? Like, doesn't, most of the country know this?), she dismissively responds, "Yeah, gay marriage between two men."

Once she's clear on the concept, Christine asks Barb to marry her. Their marriage, she tells her, will have "everything real marriages do," including that bonus of "no sex." Barb asks Christine if she really wants to do this, and - spoiler alert - she responds with a genuinely funny line: "I never do what I don't want to do, except on second dates, but that's just good manners."

There's an almost-funny scene when they go to get their marriage license, and just as they're working their way to a graceful climax (sorry, poor choice of words), the writing and/or directing finds a really clunky way of ruining the final scene.

Apparently, I was more prescient than I realized.

- "The New Adventures of Old Christine:" 8 p.m. Wednesday, CBS (Channel 2).

The Washington Post's impeccably droll Lisa de Moraes has declared today David Caruso Day. (We would've posted this earlier, but the blog server was down. Still, there's plenty of time to join in the fun.) Some of the tips:

"When speaking, head must be cocked to one side, hands on hips (aka Caruso Handles).

"If you are using more than 10 words in a sentence while speaking, you are doing it wrong. ...

(Every single publicity still of David Caruso looks like this. Every damn one.)

"At least 75 percent of statements made in the course of the day by participants must be delivered as a question. Example: 'It's ... cold outside?' ...

"When speaking to someone at length, you must first address the person's feet, then slowly look up and, before making eye contact, look away, then walk out of the frame. Exception: It is acceptable to look a small child in the eye."

Further assistance in perfecting your Caruso can be found here (it's old, but it's still great):

In the meantime, there's tonight's season premiere of "CSI: Miami" to consider. Horatio (the name they call Caruso on this show) was shot at the end of last season, but, even worse! His sunglasses got shattered.

So, tonight: Horatio is put in a body bag. No! you gasp. Yes, I must sadly report. Even Emily Procter is upset, and I hate to see her upset.

OK, so not to give anything away, but, well, Horatio's really not dead. (Oh, wait - that gave it away. Sorry.) See, he was working on this case and decided that he needed to do some investigating incognito, so he faked his death. But: He staged his murder - he took a bullet to his flak jacket - but somewhere where there were no witnesses? And broke his sunglasses, to boot? Couldn't they just ring up the media and say, "Oh, bad news - could you report that Horatio's dead so we can fool some bad guy he's after?"

Anyway, they try to cover that up with some editing so disorienting I thought the disk had some sort of glitch in it that was causing it to skip. And I was watching a rough cut, but boy did I have to ride the remote's volume buttons, because the episode's all whisper whisper whisper EXPLOSION GUNFIRE EXPLOSION GUNFIRE whisper whisper EXPLOSION GUNFIRE EXPLOSION!

Just another day in Miami.

- "CSI: Miami:" 10 tonight, CBS (Channel 2).

Today's reviews:

"Good will battle evil," reads the promotional copy for the season three premiere of "Heroes." Memo to NBC's marketing department: That's pretty much the plot of all of Western literature. Could you be a little more specific?

NBC only made the first hour of the two-hour premiere available for review, but, really, that's enough. There's some intriguing stuff in it, but a lot of nutty stuff in it, as well. It's not really a strong-enough return for a show that was roundly considered to have lost a lot of steam in its truncated second season.

(Comic book drawings can assume hokey poses just like real actors.)

Which, if you'll recall, ended with what seemed to be the deaths of Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) and Niki/Jessica (Ali Larter). Nathan appeared to die at the end of the first season, too; he's still up and kicking. Initially, the idea was that the characters were expendable, but now "Heroes" just seems to be crying wolf when they off their main characters.

Tonight's installment opens four years in the future, with an evil Claire (Hayden Panetierre) and an at least semi-evil Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia), though Peter at least seems to want to put things right when he ventures back to the present day.

Where, good Claire is being threatened by Sylar (Zachary Quinto) - she locks herself in a pantry, and he can't get the door open, though even the biggest wimp in the planet could easily kick through the thin slats in the pantry doors.

Meanwhile, in the dumbest subplot, Hiro (Masi Oka), flush with his late father's (George Takei) inheritance, watches a video instructing him as to his destiny: Never open the safe in his office, he's told. That's it?

It plays like a bad joke: A minute later, he's watching another video: "I asked you not to open this safe," his dad sternly scolds. And of course, that opens a potentially deadly Pandora's box.

"Heroes" can't really be accused of spinning its narrative wheels, though with some of the odd revelations in tonight's first hour, those wheels do seem in danger of spinning off the hurtling vehicle that was a once-addictive show.

*

There's no polite way of putting this: "Worst Week's" Sam (Kyle Bornheimer) is an irredeemable moron. Sam has gotten his girlfriend, Mel (Erinn Hayes), pregnant, and they're planning on breaking the news to her parents (Kurtwood Smith, Nancy Lenahan), who for reasons that will become all too obvious disapprove of their little girl's "friend."

(If anything, the show's worse than this still suggests.)

So, in the course of tonight's premiere of CBS's new sitcom, Sam manages to lose his clothing in the company of a drunken female co-worker, miss dinner with her family, lie to his fiancée repeatedly, injure her father a couple of times, cause no end of property damage and mistake a pot holding a brining goose for a toilet during a blackout.

Huh? How does a sentient human being mistake a kitchen for a bathroom, even in the dark? More to the point, why does Mel stay with this guy?

"Worst Week" is based upon a far superior British series, "The Worst Week of My Life," which played out in seven-episode seasons and managed to escalate the absurdist havoc in a drier, funnier and more credible fashion. Here, the characters and actions are far more cartoonish but far less entertaining.

"I'm starting to wonder if something's wrong with me," Sam laments late into tonight's premiere. You're just starting? We had that problem about five minutes into the episode.

Despite a fairly inventive premise and a good cast, "How I Met Your Mother" has too often been content to simply be a standard-issue sitcom, exulting in boorish behavior and riffing on catch-phrases and eschewing anything that might be construed as genuine human interaction. No wonder Entertainment Weekly loves it so much.

(Hey, we've all been at this point somewhere in our lives, right? Am I wrong? Anybody? Or is everyone here just giving your average sitcom reaction shot?)

Last season left us with eternally earnest Ted (Josh Radnor) proposing to Stella (Sarah Chalke), and inveterate womanizer Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) realizing he was kind of in love with Robin (Cobie Smulders), if, in fact, he actually understood the notion of "love."

Tonight's season-three premiere finds Ted realizing, thanks to Marshall (Jason Segel), who's otherwise clueless but fairly attuned to women, that he knows precious little about Stella, and decides that they're only destined for one another if she loves his favorite movie - "Star Wars" - as much as he does. Meanwhile, Lily (Alyson Hannigan) advises Barney on how to win Robin's heart - but can a guy who's heretofore proven himself willing to sleep with anything that traverses his line of periphery persuasively convince anyone with a palpitating heart and something resembling a soul he's capable of change?

There are decent jokes at the expense of TV news's decadent exploitation (Robin's miserable job), and even the show's most simplistic characters are allowed some depth in tonight's episode. Harris is granted a pretty good soliloquy celebrating "bimbos" - a lot of people had him pegged to win the Supporting Actor in a Comedy Emmy last night, and he didn't, but this episode might grant him the opportunity to deliver an acceptance speech a year from now.

- "How I Met Your Mother:" 8:30 tonight, CBS (Channel 2).

Or at least that's how it goes in "The Big Bang Theory's" universe. In tonight's second-season premiere, Leonard (Johnny Galecki) has a date with Penny (Kelly Cuoco) that doesn't seem to go too well, but it doesn't go disastrously, but that's no reason that Leonard and Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and their buddies and even Penny can't worry it into an utter debacle.

Next week, you'll think that there's an episode missing that almost utterly cleaves Leonard and Penny, because they're history and Sara Gilbert plays Leslie Winkle, a self-confident wonk who makes a play for Leonard and insults Sheldon mercilessly.

The insult comedy can be amusing because it's so willfully obtuse, and Parsons again reveals himself as the show's secret weapon, selling his laugh lines discreetly and making them even funnier than they actually are (and, often, they're more than funny enough) - his deadpan hangdog act is genuinely funny, even if the show's writers don't always understand that his character is plenty funny without their stuffing him in dopey costumes - in fact, doing so actually kind of tamps down his most inspired moments.

Still, and I understand this isn't necessarily the case in real life, but wouldn't genius nerds who research everything else on the planet so assiduously bother to investigate the precepts of social interactions, just a smidgen, if they're vaguely interested in scoring with women? "Big Bang Theory" has its moments, but if it really wants to win bigger audiences, it's going to have to accept its braniac characters' humanity rather than foist them off as MacBooks with flesh, bone and "Star Trek" fetishes.

- "The Big Bang Theory:" 8 tonight, CBS (Channel 2).