Spoilers and thoughts, after the jump…

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Since I've made clear my admiration for Barry Corbin and Frances Sternhagen as Brenda's parents on "The Closer," I'll try not to belabor the point here. …

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My review of "High School Musical 2" is here. My review of "Superbad" is here.

After the jump, Barry Corbin, and the perils of magazine deadlines … and a new part 2, with "Damages," "Mad Men," "Rescue Me" (so beware of spoilers if you haven't caught up)…

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TNT has renewed the series for a fourth season. Announcement after the jump …

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"Saving Grace," "The Closer," "Damages" and tonight's "Rescue Me," after the jump …

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Yesterday I went to the wedding of the Black Keys' Pat Carney and Denise Grollmus. You can find a few notes, as well as photos, here.

The evening was devoted to TV viewing in what turned into a tough-women marathon: Monday's new episode of "The Closer," the premiere of the new series "Damages" (starting July 24 on FX) and two episodes of the new series "Saving Grace" (July 23 on TNT, in the post-"Closer" time slot). …

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During a break from compiling Paris Hilton news, I found this in the e-mail basket:

Emmy®-nominated actress Frances Sternhagen (Sex and the City) will return this season to TNT’s THE CLOSER as Brenda’s slightly overbearing mother, Willie Ray Johnson. And now we’ll meet Brenda’s dad, the tough, but charming Clay Johnson, played by Emmy-nominated actor Barry Corbin (Northern Exposure, TNT’s Monty Walsh). Clay is a retired military officer who owns auto parts stores around the metro Atlanta area. Both are slated to appear in episodes ten (August 20), eleven (August 27), fourteen (December) and fifteen (December).

I've been a fan of Corbin's work for long years, and have had the pleasure of talking with him a couple of times. This could be very cool.

Here's the official word: Cable television’s critically acclaimed series The Closer returns to DVD when Warner Home Video (WHV) releases The Closer: The Complete Second Season on May 29, 2007. The four disc collection features all 14 episodes from the series’ second season, along with bonus material, and will retail for $39.98 SRP. …
In the show’s second season, challenges both personal and professional await Brenda as her relationship with Fritz (Jon Tenney) elevates to a whole new level, her mom (Frances Sternhagen, ER, Sex and the City) comes to visit and Kyra Sedgwick’s real-life husband Kevin Bacon directs her in the season finale. …
Bonus features on the DVD set include the featurette, Breaking Down the Closer, a gag reel and deleted scenes.

So there we were, the bride and I, watching "The Closer" and talking here and there about what we thought had happened. Well, I was talking, anyway. I do that. Then, late in the show, as the pieces were falling together, TNT ran a promo that included a big scene from the episode we were watching. Which was also a scene that we had not actually watched in the episode yet. And which confirmed suspicions we had about one of the chararacters — before we had had those suspicions confirmed in the actual watching of the show.

What a delight. So much for surprise. Forget letting an episode unfold at its own pace. I know, it's not the first time a network has diminished a show with an overly revealing promo. But it's never fun, is it?

I finally caught up with Monday's episode of "The Closer" and for the most part liked it, at least until it got to that cliched justice-in-the-parking-deck moment. I felt as if the show wanted things both ways — to show that the system sometimes lets bad guys get away, but also to satisfy the audience that the bad guy was punished. But I've seen that kind of payoff before, and I would have preferred if the show just let Brenda Lee Johnson — Kyra Sedgwick's wonderful character — be frustrated for a change.

One other surprise about the show was how suddenly it dispatched the hospital administrator — played by "Boston Public's" Anthony Heald — after doing so much to set him up as an obnoxious, irritating counterpart to Brenda and her team. Indeed, the show seems to be searching for a strong, consistent rival to Brenda, someone who can get under her skin on a recurring basis. After all, her original foes have all been softened or co-opted; the detective squad that was once so hostile to her now consists entirely of allies, and her one major bureaucratic foe is allowed to take her side at times and even to be reasonable. (Who wouldn't want help dealing with a possible spree killer?)

So it feels as if the show is trying things out, trying out Heald, trying out Ray Wise's defense-attorney character (who's due back on the show).

It has played with the idea of tough-to-crack criminals (like the one who murdered his wife and hild in a recent episode), but that goes against the grain of the show. Fans want Brenda to get the bad guy at the end of the hour, with character flourishes and developing relationships along the way.

So it has to be someone who is in the middle of her cases without being the target, like Wise has been, or Heald could be (if his hospital becomes a Cabot Cove-like hotbed of murder). The snotty prosecutor, sneering at Brenda's case, is another possibility, and one that would give her trouble not only in dealing with cases but in making progress in her own shop. But it sure seems that, to keep the show fresh, they have to come up with someone who might even outmaneuver Brenda now and then. Any thoughts from you viewers?

From today's e-mail:

TNT’s blockbuster original series THE CLOSER - which ranks as ad-supported cable’s top original scripted series of the year and which kicked off its second season with record-breaking numbers - has been renewed for a third 15-episode season, according to an announcement today by Steve Koonin, executive vice president and chief operating officer for TNT and sister network TBS.

Glad to hear it. "The Closer" has been off to a good start this season, and I'm looking forward to more this year and more in the next season.

This arrived from TNT today:

Cable's top sensation is heading before cameras once again on Feb. 27, when TNT's THE CLOSER begins production on its second dramatically charged season.  In just its first year on the air, the series earned star Kyra Sedgwick (Something To Talk About, Loverboy, TNT's Door to
Door) both Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations,
while also ranking as cable's #1 new series of 2005.  TNT is currently
in the midst of airing an encore of the first season, which is scoring
extremely high ratings, this week delivering 5.2 million viewers and
outperforming the original telecast of the episode, as well as series'
premiere average, among targeted adult demos.
Production for the second season in Los Angeles will also feature the
return of the entire SAG Award(tm)-nominated ensemble cast, including
Sedgwick as Deputy Police Chief Brenda Johnson; Jon Tenney (You Can
Count on Me, Get Real) as FBI Agent Fritz Howard, Brenda's love interest
who also sometimes works with her on investigations; J.K. Simmons
(Spider-Man, Law & Order, Oz) as Brenda's boss, Assistant Police Chief
Will Pope, with whom she once had an affair; Corey Reynolds (The
Terminal, Tony nominee for Hairspray) as Sgt. David Gabriel, Brenda's
right-hand man; Robert Gossett (Arlington Road, The Net) as Commander
Taylor, head of the robbery homicide division and a frequent thorn in
Brenda's side; G.W. Bailey (M*A*S*H, St. Elsewhere, Police Academy) as
quick-witted veteran Detective Lt. Provenza; Tony Denison (Melrose
Place, The Amy Fisher Story) as disgruntled Detective Andy Flynn;
Michael Paul Chan (Robbery Homicide Division, The Insider) as
technology-minded Detective Mike Tao; Raymond Cruz (Collateral Damage,
Training Day) as Detective Julio Sanchez; and Gina Ravera (The
Temptations, Soul Food) as Detective Irene Daniels.
…

THE CLOSER follows the ever-challenging world of Chief Detective Brenda
Johnson (Sedgwick), a transplant from Atlanta who is now working for the
Priority Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department.  Her
position on this elite detective squad, which handles high-profile cases
of a sensitive nature, is one a tenuous balancing act.  She faces
sometimes-antagonistic roadblocks, even from her own peers within the
department, and must manage a team that is only now to the point of
accepting her unconventional style and giving her the benefit of the
doubt.  Meanwhile, she finds herself trying to keep her head above water
in the rushing mayhem of Los Angeles, finding comfort in her beau, FBI
Agent Fritz Howard (Tenney), or sometimes in a package of snack cakes.
But Brenda's primary focus is her job.  She has an impeccable talent for
knowing a person's secrets and obtaining confessions, with skills that
stem from understanding her own quirks, imperfections and neuroses.  No
matter the personal costs, she does whatever it takes to find out the
truth, even if it means alienating others in her squad.

I'm still a little new at this blog system, and am not quite sure how to reply to comments. So I'm going to do it here.

On the Al Gore posting, about trying to get a question in at a Gore press conference, a reader asked: "So what were the questions (and answers)? "

My first question (suggested by a colleague) was, "How current will Current be? For instance, can you go live with reports or events?"

Current Programming President David Neuman took that one, saying ""We will imminently have the ability to do that when merited, and it will be a judgment call."

My other question was to Gore: "When mainstream cable networks look at what they think the audience wants, we get the runaway bride and Aruba. How are you going to be sure that you're giving the audience what they need, as well as what they want?"

Gore's reply was: "We're going about it in a completely new and different way. I know that you all have probably been saturated with so-called reality TV. In our experience … a lot of reality TV quickly becomes fantasy TV with people who, from real life, are assigned to play certain roles. We think of ourselves as authenticity TV, with the difference being that the people who are watching have the opportunity to actually help make the programming. And by interacting with us on a regular basis, it's not a question of conducting focus groups or polls or advertising surveys. It's a question of being in an intelligent ongoing dialogue with our audience and learning from them as we invite them to participate."

Which, as I said in the Beacon Journal, doesn't quite answer my question. You can find more of what Gore had to say in my story, posted on www.ohio.com.

The other reader comment, about "The Closer," said in part that "I'm also glad to again see Barry Shabaka Henley and the bald actor (can't remember his name)…both from the Tom Sizemore cop show that was cancelled."

The show was "Robbery Homicide Division," and Michael Paul Chan is the other actor on "The Closer" who was also on "Robbery Homicide." But he's not the only one in the "Closer" cast who is hair-challenged. J.K. Simmons is as well; you may remember him from "Oz" or a recurring role in "Law & Order."

Former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti seems happy to be out of his old line of work. He's been busy as a photographer, declines comment on current legal cases and is a consultant to the drama "The Closer."

But because he was such a high-profile law enforcer, he stil gets asked what he thinks of crime shows on TV. And he answers, not kindly. "Everyone was talking about how great 'Law & Order' was," he recalled during a "Closer" press conference. "I watched about 20 minutes of one. I said, 'This is ridiculous.' "

Apparently he spoke before thinking things through.

"The shrink wasn't in that episode, right?" said "Closer" co-star J.K. Simmons. He had a recurring role as a shrink on "L&O."

"Those are not the episodes currently replaying on TNT," added "Closer" executive producer James Duff. "The Closer," like "Law & Order" reruns, airs on TNT.

But Garcetti once again said, "I watched some of it and said, 'This is crazy.' … I got to tell you, I still don't watch 'Law & Order,' not even the reruns of it."

Actors take parts for a variety of reasons. If you ask them, more often than not they'll say they've been attracted by the script, but there's more to it than that.

Actor-writer-director-producer-charades-player Bob Balaban said — not entirely joking — that he likes to work with people whose home phone numbers he has; that way, he not only knows them, he doesn't have to go through the many filters of an entourage. Barry Shabaka Henley  has talked more seriously about the importance of working with people he trusts, hence his frequent appearances in the movies of Michael Mann.

Then there's actor G.W. Bailey. You might remember him from "M*A*S*H." Lately he has been playing the grumpy but smart detective Provenza on "The Closer," the fine new drama on TNT. He said he decided to play the role based not on the pilot script, but on one word in it..

"I have never had a one-word line, a one-word response that told so much about a character," he told me at a "Closer" press conference Sunday.

He was talking about the scene in the pilot when he referred to a character as "a murderer and a lesbo." But that's not the word. He then recalled how Brenda — Provenza's boss, and the closer of the show's title, played by Kyra Sedgwick — warned Provenza that such language meant Provenza might have to take two weeks of sensitivity training.

"And I had a one-word response," Bailey said. "I said, 'Again?'  …

"It all became clear to me," he said. "I said, if this is picked up (as a series), this is going to be a great guy to play. … And I knew from that one-word response."