Posts by Gino Sassani

Jay (O'Neill) is the patriarch of his extended family. He's a pretty wealthy businessman who lives in relative comfort. He's married to a Columbian woman who is much younger than he is. Gloria (Vergara) also brings her son Manny (Rodriquez) to the Pritchard home. They also have their own 5-year old named Joe (Maguire). Jay has two grown children with families of their own. Mitchell (Ferguson) is gay and living with his partner Cameron (Stonestreet). The two have adopted a Vietnamese daughter named Lily. Mitchell is an attorney who supports his family, while Cameron is the jolly stay-at-home dad. Jay's daughter Claire (Bowen) has a more traditional family. Husband Phil (Burrell) sees himself as a cooler, hip kind of dad, which usually leads to some embarrassing situations for him and his family. They have three kids. Luke (Gould) is the only boy and more clueless than his father. He's obviously not playing with a full deck. It's ironic, because actor Nolan Gould is a Mensa member and somewhat of a child genius. Now that's acting. Daughter Alex (Winter) is the smart one in the family and finds herself the most embarrassed by everyone else. Daughter Haley (Hyland) has become quite worldly.

The show contains numerous interludes where various cast members are talking to an invisible counselor. They offer some commentary from their character's point of view on the events of the story. I thought I would find it distracting, but I ended up loving it.

When Michael Weatherly left NCIS it was like losing an old friend, both for the cast and crew of the franchise and for the millions of fans who had invited him into their living rooms for almost 15 years. But he returned to both. His presence was very much alive in the last season of NCIS. He was discussed, shown in flashbacks, and somehow continued to carry on his teasing war with McGee. But he wouldn't return in person. That's because he was busy with the second season of his own show Bull. And while Bull is reportedly based on the early career of Dr. Phil, nothing could be farther from the reality that Bull is 100% Michael Weatherly. I'm not sure if the shows exist in the same television universe, but they continue to be somewhat entangled. Both shows aired an episode with the exact same title on the exact same day. The shows were called Keep Your Friends Close, and there's obviously a message to the fans in there that however successful Bull turns out to be, we're not completely done with Tony, and there's an effort to keep the family bonds close.

There were no cast changes going into the second season, but there will be going into the next. The show did a good second-year job of showing some evolution of these characters from one year to the next, and we learn more about them in this release than we did in the first. Bull (Weatherly) himself is looking a little more human and fragile. Events of the season will take a bit of a toll, and he begins to inch toward some self-destructive behavior. It's very nice to see some flaws in the cocky armor, something blatantly missing in the first year. Benny (Rodriguez) was the courtroom lawyer about half the time in Season 1. This year he rarely takes a back seat, and the trust between the two characters is a great improvement. Marissa (Carr) has quite an emotional year that sees her questioning if she should stay. She falls for a guy who turns out to be a con man, and the damage is quite dramatic. She certainly gets the most emotional growth this season. Chunk (Jackson) is no longer just the gay fashion consultant on the show dressing witnesses for the stand. He ends up going to law school, where he encounters a professor who has quite the chip on his shoulder for what the firm does. Cable lets her own emotions get in the way of her judgment and makes a big mistake that puts the entire firm in jeopardy. Annabelle Attanasio is the daughter of the show's producer Paul Attanasio, and she'll be leaving the series after this release. Danny (Kirchner) has her own loyalties tested this season.

For its first seven years there have been few departures on the refreshed version of Hawaii 5-O. What we have seen instead is additions to the cast pretty much on an annual basis. The result has been a fairly large ensemble that wasn't there for the start. But Season 8 sees the largest departure to the series since its inception. It started out with Daniel Dae Kim wanting the same pay as the show's two leads, Scott Caan and Alex Loughlin. That wasn't going to happen, and before long Kim started to accuse the show runners of being racist because of the difference in pay. Now keep in mind that every series has a lead or leads who get more money than the rest of the cast. Unfortunately, this attempt at a raise brought in racial accusations. That brought Grace Park into the fray to defend Kim. The end result is that both walked and appear to have seen their last days on the show. So this is certainly a milestone year for the series, and I promise you that it didn't miss a beat. But that also means new additions to the cast.

The first one we meet is Meaghan Rath, who joins the regular cast as Tani Rey. She was going to the police academy and ended up punching an officer. She gets kicked out only to be scooped up by Steve (Loughlin) because he sees the kind of spark in her that he sees in himself. She is trying to keep a troubled brother from drugs and gangs, and it gets her into some scrapes this season. The next new member we meet is Beulah Koale, who stars as Junior Reigns. He has just returned from combat in The Middle East and shows up on Steve's door looking for a job on the task force. Steve likes his initiative and makes a deal that if he can get through the academy, he's got a spot on the team. So he is intermittent at first. Steve checks on his progress, and he joins the team several times in the series start and gets to be a permanent member around mid-season. These aren't the only two new members. An early episode involves a K-9 officer who is shot and killed. His dog is also badly wounded but helps catch the killers. Steve adopts Eddie, and you'll see a lot of him this season.

"Everything is always about Sheldon."

Warner Brothers is very familiar with superheroes. That goes double for the character of Sheldon, played by Jim Parsons on The Big Bang Theory. A common thread in the superhero business, of course, is the origin story. With the popularity of The Big Bang Theory, and the Sheldon character particularly, it isn't all that surprising that we would eventually be treated to Sheldon's origin story. But instead of flashbacks on the series, the decision was made that Sheldon's childhood was territory that could be mined for years. Thus is born Young Sheldon. For fans of the original show and character, it couldn't have come at a better time. Parsons just turned down an offer of $50 million for two more years of Big Bang. I can't imagine how it must feel to be able to turn down that kind of money. But faced with doing the series without him, the smart decision was to shut it down. This will be the final season of The Big Bang Theory, but apparently Sheldon with live on as a kid for years to come. Not sure what Parsons' paycheck is here, but it requires only his narration.

Criminal Minds is about to enter its 14th season, and unlike some of the other long-running shows on CBS, this one has had a fair share of bad luck. Cast members have gone, and even returned after a couple of years. A year ago the show's top star gets fired for physically threatening people on the set. The series has had two attempts to spin off, but unlike CSI or NCIS, neither show could get out of its second year alive. Not even Gary Sinise could save the franchise. It's understandable that as the series went into its 13th year, fans were just asking themselves what can go wrong now. It turns out that 13 was a lucky year for Criminal Minds. There weren't any big cast shakeups, and the show has gotten back its legs and delivered one of the better years of its run. If you've been away hoping for the show to get back on track, this is the season for you to rejoin.

While no one appears to be leaving after this season, year 13 brought in a couple of the characters from Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, and unfortunately, none of them was named Sinise. It turns out to be a case of good news and bad news for the BAU team. The bad news comes in the guise of Kim Rhodes, who played the rather nasty assistant Director Linda Barnes. She spent a few weeks on the spinoff and joins here as an internal threat to the team. She's out to break them up. Her episodes bring a lot of team tension to the show, and she's pretty much like a threat from within. Fortunately, she isn't long for the show, and we get back to the traditional storytelling. Kim Rhodes is actually a pretty good actress, and many fans know her best as Sheriff Jody Mills from Supernatural, where she almost had her own spinoff of that show.