Hugh Laurie is such a powerful presence on "House" that it's sometimes easy to ignore the show around him. And in the early going, I think the show leaned on that idea — letting the character's appeal carry the day when the plots were not as strong as they should be.

Now, there are times when House almost seems too much for "House." That doesn't mean the character has gotten worse. It means the show has gotten better.

I have seen the episode airing Tuesday night, and the one on Nov. 8, as Fox wants folks like me to remind viewers like you that the World Series is over and the regular programs are back. In tomorrow's episode, there were moments when House seemed a little too jokey, a little too deliberately annoying, as if the balance between anger and humor in the character had been thrown off-kilter.

My mistake. In fact, it turned out that House's extreme behavior was part of a larger point — to remind us that House is a deeply flawed person. We can at times forgive his bluntness, even his cruelty, because — to borrow an old phrase from Barry Goldwater — in our hearts we know he's right. But these two episodes will argue that there are limits to what House can do even when he is right — and sometimes he isn't remotely right. He is petty, he is capable of jealousy, he really is that angry man.

And while reminding us of that, the show is giving more insight not only into House but into the people around him. In the Nov. 8 episode, you're going to get to see House's parents and find out something about that relationship; but House's dealings with his father also provide a look at his feelings about Cameron, giving that relationship new complexity. In fact, the episode — called "Daddy's Boy" — is a wrenching consideration of the relationship between fathers and sons (both because of House's parents and because of a patient's case), between lies and truth and between the lies and truth that fathers and sons tell.

The Nov. 1 episode, meanwhile, establishes a character that brings out House's bad side — which makes me hope we might see more of him. (The episode leaves that possibility open.) It is a good and noble doctor, played by Ron Livingston, who at first seems to designed to put House's limitations in a bad light. He is Lance White to House's Jim Rockford, or Richard Stone to House's Martin Tupper. The new doc is also more complicated than he at first appears, although not so complicated that House comes off as any better a person.

In other words, the show is not taking it easy. I do worry sometimes that we are learning too much about House — that the more we understand him, the less we fear him, and House's ability to inspire fear is one of the things that makes him so interesting. But when he is not in the middle of things, the show still tells a good story. And those stories make it all the more interesting when House is in the middle of things.

A critic once summed up "The Empire Strikes Back" as a very long trailer for "Return of the Jedi." Tonight I watched a "West Wing" episode that was an hour-long trailer for next week's "West Wing." Most of the time I didn't mind.

As you may know, "West Wing" is going live on Nov. 6 for a debate between Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Vinick (Alan Alda). With "West Wing" struggling in the ratings, this is an attempt to get back viewers for at least a week. And there have been promotional efforts about it. In my office are buttons for both Santos and Vinick, a Santos flying disc and a Vinick mug — all meant to make me pay more attention to the show.

Well, I pay attention anyway, at least when I remember to watch or record it on Sunday, and I've been much more interested in the campaign stuff than the White House scenes. So I watched tonight, as the two campaigns moved toward the moment — already shown in the promos — when the two candidates finally agree to debate.

Up until that moment, I also enjoyed the episode. Yes, the show is trying to keep us off-balance about these guys. Tonight's episode focused on Vinick being a pro-choice Republican, Santos a Democrat with a pro-life bent, and how those positions put each in an uncomfortable box relative to his political party. And while the boxes got tighter, the show was pretty good. Only, at the end, we didn't really see if they got out of the boxes — or if they decided just to scrunch in — because they decided to debate face-to-face instead.

In other words, stay tuned for next week's Very Special Episode. I knew we were basically headed in that direction, but it still felt kind of cheap, especially at the end of a telecast that was fairly entertaining. (I mean, we knew we had not seen the end of Donna, but what a nice way to bring her back.) But that's what shows trying to drag viewers along will do.

Still, "West Wing" was my main TV viewing today, aside from a little football. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and nearly warm. This was also the afternoon for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, a fun couple of hours, and one where you can for awhile see kids just have fun — and delight over getting a root beer-flavored lollipop.

My wife was channel-searching tonight for something to have on TV while she finished a chore. You know the kind of program. Something either familiar or undemanding, something that works as company but that doesn't require your full commitment.

She settled on "Love Actually," which was on one of the umpteen HBOs — HBO Comedy East, I think. (One of my favorite jokes about branded-channel excess is in "Dodgeball," where games are not only on ESPN 8, but that its name has to be accompanied by its contrived nickname, "The Ocho.")

"Love Actually" is indeed comforting, and is near the top of my favorite Christmas movies. But I wouldn't call it undemanding. Like a handful of other TV shows and movies, it's one that begins by drawing you in for a scene or two, only to make you realize that you're not leaving until the end. And so it was tonight. Long after her chore was done, long after we could have moved on to something else, I was watching. And laughing, and smiling and feeling sentimental.

Now, we could watch "Love Actually" any time. A DVD of it sits in the movie cabinet. And more than once, we have pulled out the DVD to watch. But it was also fine to happen upon it on regular TV, and to linger.

"Why is an entertainment guy making calls?" a police officer asked me this morning.

"You must have (ticked) somebody off," said another.

I was just doing my job. The Beacon Journal rotates most of its reporters into weekend shifts, and today was finally my turn.

Instead of watching TV and writing about it, I found myself calling local police and fire departments, asking a medical examiner for information and covering a local congressman giving out service awards to high school students.

For a few hours, I was the only person in the place. So I also answered phone calls, most of which involved the sports department, which wasn't open yet. Still, I managed to come up with the answer to a question about the time of the Akron-Bowling Green football game and the score in an Akron soccer game the day before.

There was also a story I was slow in getting to, which meant that I didn't get the information I wanted, and I kicked myself a bunch of times for not  doing better. That, and other things, reminded me how long I have been a specialist.

Yes, I have done hard-news stories, although they have been tied to entertainment or TV in some ways, and I have written on deadline a lot. But the last time I had to make police calls was long before I came to the Beacon Journal, and I have been here since 1994.

And, judging from those comments I mentioned at the top of this piece, some people were surprised to find me operating outside my specialty. Me, too. We hear a lot of complaints about "the media," which always suggest that news organizations collectively form a monolith. (It's especially funny when members of "the media" attack "the media" as if it was something apart from their work.) but even within a single news organization, individuals do different kinds of jobs in different ways.

The basics — in print, giving people something they want to read — may be the same from one job to the next. But there are nuanced differences between a columnist and a regular reporter, or someone who writes mainly breaking news and someone who can devote their time to features.

And even within such categories you can find distinctions — that the expectations for a Judith Miller, say, or a Mitch Albom, are different than for another person having the same title but far less status. When I took on a different task today, it wasn't just a matter of changing my desk and making different calls. It was, for a day at least, about becoming someone else. I'm glad to go back to being myself.

In his press conference today, Patrick Fitzgerald noted that Scooter Libby had come to the Plame investigation with a compelling story.

Fitzgerald tells a pretty compelling one, too.

He was a perfect figure for television on Friday afternoon. Well, he was perfect once I switched away from CNN, which was doing one of those split-screen crazy quilts that start giving me a headache, to a channel that was content to fill most of the screen with Fitzgerald talking.

He came across as a straight talker. As someone who was obsessed with fact, and with the law, and with doing what he had been instructed to do.

I realize that could all be a cagey performance, although most accounts I have read about Fitzgerald have been admiring. I admit that Libby has proclaimed his innocence, and that the guys in the White House are pushing the presumption-of-innocence line, and that he could yet beat these five raps in court. But all those things also applied to O.J. Simpson, and I still think he was guilty of something.

But for here, I'm going to stick to what I saw on TV. And what I saw was a guy I liked. A guy who managed to strike several notes of idealism while describing a trail of wrongdoing. Nothing sneering, nothing smirky. That I might think about voting for him for something.

Then I reminded myself that I had no idea of what Fitzgerald's political positions are. That I liked him because of what I saw on television. So if I voted for him, it would have to be in the TV world.

Maybe he could run for office on "The West Wing" or "Commander in Chief" …

The official word, from ABC today:

The summer hit “Dancing with the Stars” will return with an eight-week
run, beginning Thursday, January 5 (8:00 p.m., ET), it was announced today by
Andrea Wong, executive vice president, Alternative Programming, Specials and
Late-Night, ABC Entertainment. This summer’s only true hit series, “Dancing”
will replace the action drama “Alias,” which will take a broadcast hiatus due to
Jennifer Garner’s maternity leave and which is scheduled to return to the lineup
with original episodes in the spring. …

             This second season of “DWTS” will feature a new lineup of celebrities,
who will be announced at a later date. A weekly results show will air in the
days following the Thursday broadcast. The day and time of that broadcast will
also be announced at a later date.

As I said in a previous post, I've had the TV blahs this week. And on Thursday night, "Survivor" just added to the feeling. But before I went to sleep, I gave one more show a chance, pulling "Everybody Hates Chris" off the DVR. And felt better for doing it. What a good show — funny, sweet, unpredictable, with characters I'm happy to spend a half-hour with every week. If you haven't found the show yet, you get a couple of chances next week — in the show's regular time slot at 8 p.m. Thursday, and in back-to-back reruns from 9 to 10 p.m. Tuesday.

Over the years, when a new "Star Trek" series was unveiled, at least one reporter would ask about the show's underrepresenting gay characters. It was a reasonable question, and you couldn't really count that "Deep Space Nine" episode where Kira's parallel-universe self was attracted to her.

But now we can simply wonder if the Federation had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. George Takei, Sulu on the original series, has said publicly that he is gay. (A story about it is here.)

This, of course, creates a great opportunity for Paramount, which packages and repackages the various "Star Trek" productions. Now it can put out a special "Sulu Collection" of episodes that either gave him significant screen time or contained what might be hints about Sulu's sexuality. Perhaps they could even get Takei to do commentaries. I'm sure some fans are already arguing about how the show's art may have imitated life.

Well, tonight was one of those "Survivor" episodes where it's obvious at the end that the editors held back crucial information. Amy was voted off, and it wasn't close, and all we saw going into the vote was her attempt at forming an elimination-proof alliance — not the other alliance that easily trumped hers.

I've become so used to this sort of misdirection on "Survivor" that I don't generally mind it. It's like knowing that a magician is distracting you from a tricky hand motion, but if you don't actually see the motion, you're happy to play along. But I'm still having a hard time getting very involved in this "Survivor," and I had gotten to like Amy, so the editorial deception tonight was more annoying than usual.

Besides, I've not been knocked out by what little TV I have managed to see this week. "Veronica Mars" had some good scenes, and it's nice to see Wallace get some story time, but it still did not feel like a great episode. The psychic plot felt like one destined to go awry, and once Wallace went missing, it was likely he would be with his father, and the Duncan-Logan friendship just feels peculiar. I keep the bar pretty high with "Veronica" and this one wasn't close.

"Gilmore Girls" was all right earlier in the week, if not extraordinary. I like the way the show refuses to just let Rory and Lorelai hug and be done with their conflict; real families don't patch up things so easily, so neither should they. And I still have a bunch of stuff DVR'ed that I haven't gotten to, so maybe there's a hidden gem.

Or maybe it's just tough to get through a week without a new "Lost." …

With the availability of information across the Internet, some news organizations across media have become ever more focused on the local angle — either a story about something in the news organization's backyard, or a local element of a national or international story. It provides a way of giving a story a unique context, as well as connecting with readers. To cite an obvious recent example, I have written a lot about "Three Wishes" because it has taped a bunch of segments here.

Which brings me to a collection of highlights from "The Original Amateur Hour" coming out on DVD on Nov. 15. I've been working on what keeps turning into a growing piece (or pieces) about it, thanks to local angles right and left.

Given my fascination with old TV, and my frequent writing about TV on DVD, "Amateur Hour" was a logical topic for me. And  Pat Boone, who hosts the DVD presentation, was a good person to talk to. For one thing, my newspaper, like many others, has plenty of readers old enough to remember Boone in his heyday — as well as "Amateur Hour."

So I was looking at the DVD, including a telecast from 1953 — one of the shows where Boone won — and found that another competitor on the show was from Akron. Ah! The local angle! And while the man in question has passed away, there was enough of a clip file about him at the Beacon Journal to merit a sidebar about the DVD.

Then, today, I talked not only to Boone but to Albert Fisher, the man behind the DVD and a former talent scout for "Amateur Hour." I talked to Fisher first and almost immediately he started talking about his fondness for Northeast Ohio, and his work for a TV station in Cleveland in the '70s. More local angle, and an unsolicited one at that.

After I talked to Fisher, I got on the phone with Pat Boone. Here was a guy who well understood the importance of the local angle. He started with reminiscing about how deejays in Northeast Ohio had helped get his early records played on the radio. Later, he recalled playing a sock hop in Clevelander where Boone was the headliner and Elvis Presley was an opening act. Then, before we were done, he brought up a visit to the Soap Box Derby, participating in the celebrity race — and how he still had the prize he received for winning the race.

Talk about making my job easier!

I had plenty of other things to talk to Boone about — he talked in detail about his "Amateur Hour" experiences, and even had some kind words for the local man he had competed against. Fisher and I also covered a lot of ground that had nothing to do with Akron. But they both knew that, even if the interview was not great overall, they had nabbed some extra print by bringing up their local connections. And not all media folks are that knowing.