Could we take a minute to talk about what a good actor Mark Harmon is?

If you want to see a terrific example of economic acting — few words, underplayed expression — look at the one on in the "NCIS" season finale where Gibbs calls Ducky with the news that Shepard is dead. I have this image stuck in my head of Harmon going through scripts and trimming lines, constantly thinking, "Too many words. Don't need 'em." It's not a tic in the show's writing overall; other characters get to yak. But Gibbs doesn't, and with Harmon playing him, he doesn't need to.

It was no great surprise that Shepard, played by Lauren Holly, was the dead character; what was, was how she died. It had already been established that the director was gravely ill, so it was a nice touch to let her go out in a hail of bullets — and take down four bad guys before she bought it herself. And the way the other characters handled her passing was very nicely done; I really liked the scene with Pauley Perrette talking about the way Shepard dressed — and expanded that into touching, funny thoughts about the other characters' wardrobes.

As for the big cliffhanger, with a new director and the team split up, I'm not getting overly worried. I am sure we'll see more of the new director (well played by Rocky Carroll), although I don't know if he'll become a series regular. Could that shredded document indicate trouble? As for the team being split, well, this is a show that ended a season with Gibbs quitting — and he came back. And "House" found a way to break up its core group and still keep them in the show's mix.

"Reaper" certainly set the stage for a lot of stuff when it comes back midseason. The closing shot of Sam's parents certainly suggested that Sam's powers may not come from being the devil's son; other forces are on the loose. But there has been a shift in Sam's relationship with the Devil. And we got another taste of what it will mean to have Andi in on Sam's secret — can't wait to see her keep pushing for more method in the madness. (Sort of reminds me of when Cordelia went to work for Angel.) The show really feels as if it has a roadmap for next season and beyond, and a good map at that.

Before I leave Tuesday's shows, I have a long post below about "American Idol" and why I think David Archuleta sealed the deal. Which makes the analysis over at Dialidol.com very intriguing, since it has David Cook winning easily. Not sure if I trust the numbers, but I wouldn't mind being wrong on this one.

Sliding back to Monday night, "House" finished its two-part finale and I thought it did very well something I absolutely hated them for doing. Amber had become a strong character, especially because she was so much like House; her ending up with Wilson was precisely on point — giving Wilson a romantic partner with the qualities of his best friend. And there was no question that Amber and House had some chemistry (and boy, was the chemistry flying in House's fantasy). But if the show felt the need to add to the characters' suffering, it did so with considerable skill. I just wish the need hadn't been there.

Disappointing finales from "How I Met Your Mother" and "Two and a Half Men." The best thing in either episode was Marshall's battle with lice — silly, but inspired silliness. Beyond that, not much to offer, and the Stella melodrama was implausibly stretched. As I said after last week's "Men," we've already seen plenty about Charlie's women and Charlie's mother issues; the finale just played out a bit that probably shouldn't have been bothered with.

By the way, Susan Blakely — who played Angie — is 55 or 59, depending on the reference. Seeing her did provide some measure of nostalgia — "Rich Man, Poor Man," anyone? — although judging from IMDB she's been working fairly regularly, just in shows I don't pay much attention to.

"American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars" have been addressed in previous posts. Notes on these other shows after the jump. …

I would have preferred to see "Reaper" back in the fall, but I'll take the midseason order (see the CW announcement below) as better than cancellation. Once again this week the show demonstrated how smoothly it can operate. Yay, they didn't get rid of Gladys! Boo hoo, Lucy Davis is on the run. And I am not sure how I feel about Sam as the devil's son, even though there have been plenty of signs of it in the first season. A lot will depend on how it's handled in next week's season finale.

Still, there are a lot of possibilities in Andi's more pro-active approach to dealing with Old Scratch, not all of them good; it reminds me some of what "My Name Is Earl" has done with Earl and Billie — getting them together but not making them compatible. I had really lost interest in "Earl" during the coma episodes, and found myself fast-forwarding through Earl's sitcom dream. But when I caught up with two post-coma episodes, the show was back in gear, And the coma, the dream sequences make more sense. Not enough to justify so many of them, but the idea indicated what a romantic Earl is, and how difficult it is for him to fit his fantasy life with a reality where Billie takes his potato chips, prefers Van Halen with Sammy Hagar and took a lackluster approach to The List. Much better than the coma misfire.

And "Earl" the last couple of weeks was decidedly better than what the folks at "How I Met Your Mother" and "Two and a Half Men" were up to. I generally like both comedies, but this week was not good. "HIMYM" squeezed in another Britney Spears appearance — and ensured its renewal by doing so — but it felt way too contrived. Spears's first appearance as Abby was a logical piece of the show, a case of having a character written that Spears could play; this time, it was more of a "we have to get Abby back into the story but, oh, mercy, how will we do it?" And the answer was a half-thought-out idea too rapidly executed. Nor was the Marshall/Lily stuff all that good.

"Men," meanwhile, should have rebounded from the "CSI" crossover episode from a week ago with something much stronger than yet another look at Charlies's mother issues. And not an especially inventive one.

As for "Bones," steady work hurt only by the stalker-shoots-Booth ending. On the plus side, they didn't do that in the season finale, so I give them credit for avoiding a cheesy brand of finale cliffhanger (well, until we see what they have in mind next week). On the minus, this sort of scene has been beaten to death on TV — I think David E. Kelley alone has done a zillion or so — and my reaction at this point is basically, "Oh."

I've got a fever, and the only cure is more Kober…

"Reaper" just gets more and more confident every week, building on its devil/demon subculture (with this week's great addition of a burnout scrounger played by Jeff Kober, above, as well as more details about Gladys). And the Lucy Davis subplot has continued to have good little bits; it was in some ways more entertaining than the main plot. (Didn't we all immediately sense that Andi's ex-boyfriend was the chainsaw maniac?) This is a show that has found its voice, hit its stride and any other compliment your inner Paula Abdul can generate. "You're so you, you know yourself …"

"House," meanwhile, was amusing but seemed to show too many cracks in its basic setup. I know that every week involves House et al. making a series of mistaken diagnoses before hitting the right one, but it seemed especially annoying and wrong-headed in this episode. Maybe having the inspector in the hospital heightened my sense as a viewer that things were going wrong. I did enjoy House's obsession with the soap actor, at least for a while, and the discussions with Cameron.

I've been recording "NCIS" just because of the "ooh! someone will die!" hype
(and because it's one of those shows that I like when I find an hour for it). Have to say that they're certainly playing the audience well, with the whole opening segment having a team member in jeopardy. It was also genuinely suspenseful. And I just like the way Mark Harmon plays Gibbs, especially his no-words-wasted style. ("Lose the skates," for example.) It's a solid show even when there's no plot gimmick brought into play.

Nice to see Lucy Davis again. Even better to see that she was still around at the end of the episode.

Trying to catch up on things I've missed. Am sampling the "Costas Now" town meeting, including the Bissinger rant/debate.(Good gosh, Braylon Edwards, what did you think you had walked into?) But here I'm going to talk a bit about some of the Monday/Tuesday dramas that I finally grabbed some time to watch today. After the jump. ….

Good "Reaper" last night. Nice mix of horror and humor, a fun runaway soul (played with great aplomb by Ian Gomez), a good introduction of Lucy Davis as Ben's wife (and better yet that they set it up so she will be around for a bit). The demon-devil war isn't over, and Sam has been put in a great spot in it. And, possibly best of all, Andi is now in on Sam's secret, so we don't keep suspending disbelief that he could keep it hidden. This was yet another episode that said this show still has a lot of stories to tell, and I would love to see what else it tells.

Kind of blah episodes of "House" and "Bones," and neither is one something I would point people to if I wanted them to watch the show more than once. The domestication of Temperance was mildly interesting, but only in the context of what she's been for dozens of episodes. And how freakin' rich must she be if she can afford to build a bridge? She must have gotten a pile for the movie rights.

"House" felt disjointed, although I liked the ending — the patient discovering something that he did not like, with the question of what else he won't like left hanging. Since I haven't seen "House" in some time, I am wondering if its rhythms were off because of the strike, or if my viewing is off because I haven't felt its rhythms for some time.

As I said in a previous post about "Grey's Anatomy," the absence of a connection to a show for weeks may make it that much harder to enjoy it again, especially if it has a particular voice. Comedies, I suspect, are less likely to have that impact than dramas, because a good laugh is a good laugh even if you haven't chuckled in weeks. But the stuff I've been talking about here, or something like last week's "CSI," which also felt off-kilter, have me thinking once again that the damage of the strike is much deeper than anyone thought when it was over.

Could Michael Ian Black be the show's salvation? Notes after the jump …

As I have said more times than I can remember, "Reaper" is a show that has seemed to have limitless potential but too often hasn't measured up to it. Last night's episode, though, finally put a whole bunch of loose pieces together, even if it may be too late. (The show comes back on April 22, and I suspect CW will have made most or all of its fall 2008 decisions by then. And The CW has become increasingly girly, and "Reaper" is decidedly not girly. It's a guys' show through and through.)

Anyway, the addition of the demon neighbors a week ago, and their becoming part of Sam's orbit last night, moved the show much closer to a "Buffy"/"Angel" world. All right, close to some of the funny episodes of those shows; still, the genuine threat to Andi's well-being — and Sam going all Peter Parker (or at least the "Spider-Man 1" Peter Parker) — gave the show some heft that it has not as a rule been comfortable with.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying the show may have figured itself out. And not in a that's-a-good-episode way but in a way that lets viewers think there are plenty of stories yet to tell. Of course, we have to wait until April 22 to know if that is really the case, and we may not get to see much beyond that.

The "Jericho" series finale — or at least the CBS finale, since apparently there is still some scrambling to keep the show going — offered a pretty open-ended wrap. Since there's still a war to be fought, a nation still divided, a Jericho that's a mess, hostile forces down the road in New Bern … Well, you get the idea. If not more episodes, some two-hour movies perhaps?

That said, the finale still had the rushed quality of a show trying to wrap up a bunch of storylines with the understanding that it had run out of time. (See the series finales of "Kidnapped" and "Day Break," other shows that knew the end was nigh, and listen to the commentary on the DVD of the series finale of "Day Break.") And some of the surprises just didn't feel all that surprising. I mean, did anyone not think that (a) aircraft would come after Jake and (b) Texas had its own air force?

Still, I would have liked to see the conclusion drawn out more, and to see what would have been in store for the third season, whether through the ending as presented or the even more inconclusive one that was shot. Of course, I liked the show and, as I've said before, it seemed like a good alternative to "24" for the serialized-TV-thriller crowd.

The "Heroes" soundtrack, below, has been out for a couple of weeks now but I've neglected to explain how much I like it.

It's a blend of soundtrack music from the show (from the splendid Wendy & Lisa), old songs, new songs, not so much songs from the show but — as Allan Arkush says in the CD liner notes — "the music that helps us make the show."

But here's why I like it: because it feels like a seamless, complete thing instead of a collection of songs. When I put it on, I am not inclined to skip cuts because the soundtrack has its own flow, and I don't want to break that up just because I feel like hearing Wilco or Dylan or Death Cab or, yes, Bowie, another time. In fact, it's a better total work than a lot of second-season episodes of "Heroes" have been. To use some honorable old words, it's a concept album. And it knows what that requires.

Pretty nifty illustrations, too.

Notes on "Lost," "Reaper" and "Jericho," after the jump …

This was the last of "Lost" before the writers strike, and now we wait until late April a new episode. And I have to think that the then-looming strike affected this episode. Two specific ways:

– The incredibly long Michael flashback, without benefit of cuts back to the present. It was if the show knew it had to fit in a whole bunch of exposition and explanation, if this proved to be the last telecast of the season. When the flashback was done, we had been in the past for so long, I wanted Sayid to declare, "I thought I told you to talk quickly" — or "What a long explanation that was!"
Of course, the explanation skipped over some key events, especially how exactly Walt and Michael got from the island back to the U.S. And even some of the explanation was deliberately ambiguous. Do we believe everything Zeke told Michael? I don't. And I still think it's possible that Ben has the resources to fake a plane crash. (I have been thinking that Walt and Michael went from their little boat to a freighter controlled by Ben, which took them stateside. And that the present freighter could therefore be Ben's. Not that I'm too paranoid.)
Then there was Ben's declaration that he "I will not kill innocent people" when at war. Are we supposed to forget that his murdering of masses on the island? Then there's my other problem with last night's show.

– The somewhat flat cliffhanger at the end of the episode. The shooting was somewhat interesting but it wasn't a big "Whoaaa" moment. I was expecting someone amazing to step out of the bushes, or some kind of big event that would have us all dying to see the post-strike episode. This didn't cut it.

On to other shows:

After a strong telecast a week ago, "Jericho" was not as good this week. This episode was more about pushing the plot forward, and it did not do that all that well. The post-chase stuff with Hawkins on his cell phone, walking and declaiming, just wasn't effective. On the other hand, there were good bits about the nature of freedom and oppression; it's easy to see the citizens of Jericho as the people of Iraq dealing with their U.S. invaders.
Still, I've begun feeling pessimistic about next week's season finale (possibly series finale). As you know, the show made two endings — one to use if it gets a third season, another to use if it doesn't. The indications seem to be that it won't get a third season, and I can't imagine a final episode that wraps things up in a dramatically satisfying way. Anything I could imagine would have to be implausibly tidy. But I hope I'm surprised.

Then there's "Reaper." Pretty good episode this week. Liked the use of the paintballs to spot the invisible soul. Really enjoyed the stuff with the apartment neighbors, even if we could all see they Are Not What They Seem. (That continues into next week, too.) The Sam-and-the-devil's-daughter stuff has really fizzled, though.

Busy weekend with only a little TV, but some comments on "SNL," "Reaper," "The Bachelor" and the local digital-cable overhaul, after the jump …

Today the bride and I mark our fourth wedding anniversary, and a fine marriage it is. We celebrated with an overnight getaway on Friday night. A somewhat challenging getaway, as it turned out. For one thing, it was a dreary, wet, foggy night. And we had actually made reservations for Saturday, but somehow got Friday in our heads and so showed up a day early. Were able to get a room, though. Then, by the time we went out to dinner, it was pretty late for a Friday and every restaurant we stopped by was packed. Since the University of Akron was playing in the MAC semifinals, we decided to get takeout from Swenson's, go back to the room and watch the game on TV. The Swenson's part went as planned, but the hotel TV system didn't have the game. We ended up listening on the radio instead. And still, on balance, had a nice little batch of time together.

Saturday was house-cleaning day, and Sunday involved a couple of small but long-delayed projects, such as rehanging some pictures that had been taken down during a room rearrangement. But we managed to watch Akron in the MAC finals. (They lost, reprising some playing flaws we had seen in earlier games, but at least managed to get an NIT berth.)

Also on the TV side, I am not pleased with the way Time Warner is overhauling its channels lineup. At least where I live, the process is quite gradual — a channel here, a channel there — and so far consists of dropping channels and then making people wait for replacements, if any is coming. For instance, TWC has moved GAC out of the analog tier but has yet to put TV One on in its place. The HD version of Showtime West is gone for good, but Starz HD has not appeared yet. (Nor have the other promised new HD channels.) HBO West's HD feed is also gone, although that's supposed to be temporary.

This all strikes me as really stupid tactically. If you're trying to minimize the irritation that channel changing causes, you should at least have replacements up and running when you peel things out. Instead, I see channels dropped and wonder if TWC is trying to save a few bucks by cutting things out and then delaying the replacement. And it's annoying to have to keep track of a few little changes when I know that I'm going to have to relearn a lot more once the massive overhaul takes place.

As for things I cold watch, I recorded "Saturday Night Live" — Jonah Hill hosting, Mariah Carey the musical guest, a late replacement for an ailing Janet Jackson — and watched it piecemeal on Sunday. Hill makes me laugh, and he did that more than once on the show, notably in "What's Youu Situation?" and as an abrasive 6-year-old dining out with his father. But neither of those sketches had a good ending, and the show overall was flat. A couple of good gags in "Weekend Update" but nothing that I was dying to replay. And Carey's vocals looked, to me at least, as if they had been prerecorded.

Finally caught up with Thursday's telecast of "Reaper" on Sunday. Was glad to have the show back. It's uneven, especially considering its promising premiere, but I have found enough good in it to keep coming back. (Ray Wise alone is worth the hour.) And the romance with the devil's daughter still has possibilities. But I wasn't knocked out by the episode — and I have never been a Jamie Kennedy fan, although he was relatively subdued here.

Watched a preview of tonight's "The Bachelor" and have to say that the bachelorettes seem to include more extreme cases every go-round. Has someone at ABC decided that, oh, "Flavor of Love" has changed the rules on courtship shows? When one bachelorette stuffs her underwear into the bachelor's pocket on tonight's show, it was definitely a step beyond the arm-wrestling and singing.

This morning I scrambled to the office to write a movie review ("The Golden Compass," which I did not like much) then hit the road for Cleveland. Stop one was the Cedar Lee to see "Sweeney Todd" (which I liked a great deal). Then it was on through the snowflakes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to talk to John C. Reilly and director Jake Kasdan about "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," the comedy that hits theaters on Dec. 21. Reilly's doing a music tour to promote the movie, starting with tonight's show. Besides talking about the movie, we talked about the music tour and the rock hall, so I could have a story for tomorrow's Beacon Journal as well as movie material for use closer to the opening date. Then, once someone helped me figure out the wireless network at the hall, I wrote the story. Now I'm going to pass the time until a little later this evening, when I'll be at the red carpet for Reilly's performance, and then at the performance itself. This all makes for a long day, but a useful one. I hope to post later tonight or early tomorrow after Reilly's show.

Well, it's about an hour and a half later than the last time I posted here, and I am deeply into the just-hanging-out portion of the evening. It's another couple of hours before Reilly plays, but media are supposed to be here now, so there was no sense in my driving back to Akron only to turn around and head back to Cleveland.

So I had a bite to eat in the Rock Hall cafe (chicken wrap, chips, soda) and have roamed the hall. It's been quite a few years here, so there are new exhibits (the making of the Beatle's "Help," the history of the Doors) and even the older stuff feels fresh again. I've noted how much of stuff in here is in my record collection (yes, record) and how many people I've interviewed, seen at press conferences or gone to concerts by. I went and found Lowell George's guitar and overalls for reasons that will be clear in my story tomorrow. I have wandered through the souvenir-and-music shop, debit card locked safely away. I've checked my home and work e-mail, sent a note to Target Demo and in a few will call the bride.

So, anyone have any thoughts about last night's "Reaper"? I thought it had some amusing parts, as it usually does, but I don't know about the whole devil's-daughter thing. But hey, it was something new last night. Rerun season has kicked in in a big way, not only because of the strike but because December usually has a post-sweeps batch of reruns and pre-emptions for holiday specials.

My DVRs, at least, are breathing easier. From running three in a single night, I'm down to one, and not much on that. But that gives me some time — well, when I get home — to play with the new HD DVD player. Hello, technology.

Could you scare me just a little like you would on "The O.C."?

Pretty good episode Tuesday, but I have some thoughts about the casting …

Now that the natural order has been restored to the universe (that is, Marie Osmond did not win "Dancing With the Stars"), I have moved on to other Tuesday fare, including "Reaper."

Plenty of good things in the episode. I liked learning more about Ben's life and family, and especially his grandmother's supposed gift, although I wanted to know more about how he ended up at the Work Bench instead of becoming a priest. (Maybe he really is doing God's work?) I wondered about some other details, too, including why he didn't demand that Sam and Sock at least find ties when they came to the party. (It was, after all, a dressy occasion.) But overall it was a good way to flesh out the show.

Also liked seeing Sock charming people, not only Mimi but the carpet customers. It's a reminder that, like Sam, like Ben, he isn't a pure loser, he's just made some choices that put him in Loserville.

On the other hand, the whole Andi thing still just bores me. Not that I think that dating the Devil's daughter is going to qualify as Sam moving on, but at least it gets us away from Mope Town (which is down the road from Loserville and has its own Work Bench.)

Which gets us into what could have been the most interesting storyline of the night, but which fell a little short. That's Mimi and the Devil (or Jerry). When I saw that Melinda Clarke was playing Mimi, I thought this could be more than a little fun. Considering her "O.C." style, Clarke seemed like an excellent match for Satan.

And then she wasn't. She was a nice person, and one completely oblivious to the Devil.

Or was she? Here is where I look at the casting and give the show more credit than it might deserve. Mimi knows more about Jerry than his commitment issues; she made a passing reference to his temper. So what if she really is just another tool of the Devil, who is playing with Sam's head by making her seem nice, so Sam will be drawn to the daughter?

There are possibilities, though when I think even more about "Ashes to Ashes," the more I try to remember that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And this was probably just an episode. But I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

Although it's an up-and-down ride, "Reaper" was definitely up this week …

One odd thing, though, was that the subplot (Sock and the motor-vehicles woman) was more interesting and better done than the main story, about the killer keeping revenge. And didn't you figure that something was up with Mitch Pileggi's character as soon as you saw his trophy case — unless, that is, you caught on when he didn't bust Sam as soon as he had the victim's watch.

Still, the Sock story was a good one, expanding our understanding of the characters, giving us a little extra in the soul-drop scenes and reminding us that the whole demons-on-earth thing has a certain grandeur and pathos that goes beyond the Devil sticking Sam with the check. And I prefer that to Sam's romantic saga, even if the boyfriend complication has been removed. (And I did laugh at the slap-fight. Exactly what kind of guys does Andy fall for, anyway?)

As for "Nip/Tuck," I had enjoyed the change in tone of the first couple of L.A. episodes. So, of course, this week, it was back to more of the old "Nip/Tuck." Humiliating behavior in the extreme, starting with the hot tub scene. Gross gross gross. And yes, I get all the meaning about the extremes to which Hollywood people will go for the sake of their image, and the dire consequences of such abuse, and so on. Still, gross gross gross.

In fact, it was a creepy episode generally when you add in Sean's fear-fascination with Olivia's daughter. Or Julia's manipulation of Christian. And the Matt-Kimber drugs-and-sex scene. Yes, the show cuts not only close to the bone but deep into it when it comes to portraying family relationships. But there's a way to do discomfiting art without making us nauseous.

Isn't there?

If only I had an 8-track of "In Your Eyes" …

I expected more, as I will explain after the jump …

When I saw last week's promo for "Reaper," I was expecting, fearing, hoping that they were going to go "Grindhouse," dropping the guys into the visual and narrative equivalent of a movie with a title like, oh, "Love, Bullets & Blacktop."

Coming off a Halloween episode that made me believe in the show again, that could have been a very bad idea — or kind of fun, especially if it gave all the "Reaper" gang a chance to become exploitation-movie characters.

Unfortunately, that's not what I got, and even the presence of the sublime Mercedes McNab was wasted. Yes, she can intimidate in a convincing manner, but she's got more range as an actress than that. Or did in her Joss Whedon days, anyway.

So what were we left with? A sporadically amusing but not overly interesting episode that was preoccupied with romantic entanglements and, Curtis Armstrong notwithstanding, allusions to the '70s that proved to be nothing more than sidelights.

Then again, when the Devil gets the blues, he turns to … Brenda Lee. So I'm not done yet.

I had bailed out on "Reaper" for the last couple of weeks because, after a promising start, it had fallen into the same plot week after week. I was recording it, but I didn't feel any great urge to watch. But this morning I checked out last night's episode, and it seemed somewhat better.

The show is finally allowing Sam to be used to his job, so we don't get the reluctant dragon bit every week. The use of a famous historical soul — in this case Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President McKinley — was a nice little flourish. The scene of the dead bodies in the slaughterhouse was genuinely unnerving. And having the Devil hate Halloween was not only a funny line but an idea that was built on; I especially liked him playing golf with the pumpkins at the end.

Not so sure about the serialized stories. The awkward romance isn't much except for a way of showing new assertiveness in Sam. The business with the contract from last week (I did a quick skim after watching this week's episode) looks too much like a setup for a season-ending cliffhanger. The show did plenty with the Devil's warning about what could happen to everyone around Sam, to establish that he's not getting out of his deal and he really shouldn't tell anyone else. Then we could get down to soul-hunting.

Of course, the effects, including the monster dog, are beyond cheesy. The whole Leon thing didn't hold up over the episode. And Missy Peregrym seems to have two, maybe three expressions in her acting bag.

But there's still Ray Wise. And enough decent storytelling that I'm a little bit more interested in future episodes.

If Howie had been a tad slower, Stephen Furst might be hosting "Deal or No Deal" now.

More disappointment from "30 Rock" and "Reaper," big fun with "Earl," after the jump. …

I saw last night's "30 Rock" about a week ago, and it was a letdown, especially after the pretty funny Jerry Seinfeld episode.

Given my disappointment in last night's "Office," there's an argument to be made that "My Name Is Earl" was the most laugh-out-loud funny show on NBC last night. If you haven't watched yet, go over to NBC.com and tune in. Then consider lines like:

"You're going to feel awful bad is this turns out to be Baby Jesus or a tumor."

"Sweet spots."

"I tried all of fifth grade to get rid of that nickname."

AND …

"That's like the Cadillac of cars."

I'm not going to quote the lines about sake or Al Roker (who is apparently a name to be dropped for all the Thursday night comedies). But it's a vigorously funny show right now.

Looking back to Tuesday night, I've now seen three episodes of "Reaper," and what started out as my favorite new show of the season has settled into tedium.

Although this week found the characters settling more into soul-hunting (and I did like the extension-cord bandoliers), and Ray Wise is a wonderful devil, the show still feels like one plot endlessly repeated, and not in a good, "I Love Lucy" kind of way. It needs to get much, much better.

Premieres tonight

I've mentioned my enthusiasm for The CW's "The Reaper" before. Akron's Ray Wise makes a jolly but utterly convincing devil, and the show understands that it can be silly and a little scary at the same time, without undercutting either quality.

The premise, for those of you tuning in late, is that a guy discovers on his 21st birthday that his parents have sold his soul to the Devil. And Old Scratch wants to put the kid to work, collecting runaway souls.

What I'm struggling with is explaining why this is more interesting than, say, "Chuck," which is also about a likable slacker who suddenly gets into a situation he's not prepared for. In a way, comparing the two is not fair, because I have only seen the first episode of "Reaper" and I've seen a lot more of "Chuck."
Which means that I've seen "Chuck" begin to lose its grip on the more amusing aspects of its premiere — while "Reaper" has yet to prove if it can sustain the tone of the pilot.

That said, my amusement at the pilot for "Chuck" was still relatively mild while "Reaper" had me wanting to see lots more. I think part of the distinction is that "Reaper" just feels more clever than "Chuck," smarter, knowing just how farcical to get without going too far. (The second "Chuck" definitely loses track of that line.) But we'll see how things go as the season rolls along.

Tommy Gavin and his guys are in a state of confusion. I know the feeling …

Tommy first: I've seen the first three episodes of the new season of "Rescue Me," which starts tonight, and I expect to be back for more, but I'm still kind of on the fence about it.

That reflects some confusion within the show itself. Oh, it has plenty going on, and it has put Tommy in a very difficult spot regarding the fire that ended last season. There's a lot of funny business, and a painfully dramatic moment a few episodes in.

But it didn't feel as sure-handed as it usually does, more like a bunch of things tossed together without any clear idea of where it will all lead. And I still remain on edge about what I still consider the rape episode last season, because I think the show has shrugged it off, and the event deserved more serious treatment than that.

I've been meaning to watch and write about some other things. Only got through the first episode of
"John from Cincinnati," for one thing — although it may be sufficient judgment that I didn't charge immediately through the second. And I've been carrying around the Newsweek article about "beta males" because it fits with some of what I've been seeing in pilots for the fall, including "Reaper," which you should put on your viewing calendar now, and not only because Akron's Ray Wise is a superb Devil in it.

I've seen some other pilots, too, and have a few notions. For example: How many times did the makers of the new "Bionic Woman" watch "Blade Runner," and did they think Rutger Hauer's stealing the movie from Harrison Ford meant that Katee Sackhoff should do likewise to the supposed star of "Bionic Woman"?

But I've found myself dragging too much lately. And I've had some different demands on my time — metro shifts on Saturday and on Monday night — as well as attempts to get ready for vacation. Still, I get twitchy when I don't write on a break, so you can expect fresh posts from me even if I'm sunburnt while writing them.

Anyway, that's a long explanation for the gaps here, and for the terseness of my "Rescue Me" notes. Watch tonight, and let's argue.