TVSquad

Hey, have you seen any promos for Mercy on NBC lately? It's like they forgot the show was premiering in just a couple weeks. Usually the marketing machine is running into overdrive right about now.

For those who may be planning a volley of comments about how stupid I am, please note that the preceding paragraph is dripping with sarcasm. If you can't see it, perhaps you don't have the right fonts loaded. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you have seen the promos, I'll bet you haven't seen Captain Janeway prowling around the hospital halls, have you?

That's because Kate Mulgrew just joined the cast of Mercy. She'll be playing the mother of main character Veronica, played by Taylor Schilling. Mercy's already been getting some good buzz, and you just know NBC is looking for their next ER. Could Mercy be it? Or better yet, their Grey's Anatomy? It already appears to have a more personal slant, if Mulgrew's addition means anything.

Star Trek: The Experience is ending after an 11 year run at the Las Vegas Hilton on September 1st, 2008. The interactive ride contained elements from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.

Chad Boutte, Operations Manager and Director of Marketing, said in a press release, "Hailing frequencies open. We'd like to thank all the fans and friends of Star Trek, whose constant and amazing support we've enjoyed throughout our tenure at the Las Vegas Hilton. As we boldly go into the futures that await, know that we take your love of Star Trek: The Experience with us. We share the memories of time spent in the most unique place in the Galaxy, and we carry those memories into our futures with us. Live long, and prosper. Hailing frequencies closed." He said it in this fashion because he's a big nerd.

(S04E13) "Denny Crane, to serve and protect" - Denny Crane

Only a couple minutes into the show and the crazy meter is off the charts. Nutjob Leigh is threatening Katie. Denny is having anonymous sex with Shirley's friend and I'm having a Murphy Brown flashback.

I've lost a lot of respect for Jerry. What could possibly compel him to get involved with Leigh again other than his being a pitiful loser? It seemed like he was making progress for a while there. Doesn't he know that a woman who leaves you once is very likely to leave you again? I just hope he never takes her on a date to an electronics expo.

To update this post, where I said Lt. Columbo's name was Philip, I'd like to point you to the Wikipedia page for Columbo, that shows a screen cap from the episode "Dead Weight." It's a pic of Columbo's badge, and the pic clearly shows that his name is "Frank Columbo." The Wikipedia page says that the name "Philip" didn't start with the Kate Columbo series, but in a trivia book (which I used to own) by Fred L. Worth. He made up the name, hoping to catch people stealing trivia from his book (he sued Trivial Pursuit for $300 million, but the judge sided with Trivial Pursuit's defense that it was "research").

Of course, this doesn't put the whole story to rest. Even though it says "Frank Columbo" on his badge in the pic from the episode, it could have been just a name they came up with to fill in the first name spot on the badge, not thinking that anyone would actually catch it and hold them to it (this was before VCRs and DVDs, of course).

So, is it Philip or Frank? Until someone from the show says something 100% definite, we have to go with the evidence we have. Just like Columbo would. And in my opinion, the facts lean toward Frank.

Check out this Columbo site for the full background story.

[thanks to Bill for the info]

I heard this many years ago, and now TV Guide's Televisionary talks about it after getting a question from a reader.

When Columbo first started in the late 60s (first as the movie Prescription Murder, and then as part of the NBC Mystery Movie in the 70s), they never said what Columbo's first name was. He was always just "Lt. Columbo" or "Columbo,"  and they never even played with the audience in any way, like showing a piece of paper with a thumb blocking his first name or anything like that. They just never addressed it. But when a spinoff show was made in the 80s (yes, there was a spinoff to Columbo), Kate Columbo, they finally revealed his name as "Philip." The spinoff did what Columbo did, only in reverse: they showed his wife all the time, solving mysteries, but they never showed her husband. I remember seeing this show, and it wasn't that great. Later they even changed the name of the show to get rid of the Columbo connection.

Now, this doesn't mean that his first name was "officially" Philip. It might be one of those cases where some other show answered a question, but it was never made official, sort of like how the new Superman movie pretends that Superman III and IV never happened. But it's a cool trivia question to ask your friends.

Update: As reader Bill points out in the comments, check out the Wikipedia page on Columbo for more clues about his first name.

(S07E21)  Yes once again, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for another SVU episode that involves children. It is the type of episode that makes you want to lock your children in a safe room until they are 30-years-old and a 12th-level black belt. Now that I have four children of my own I always get that creeping feeling up my spine when I see these episodes. Oh well, let's move along, shall we?

All in all it was a solid but dull episode with the main focal point on Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) and his sexual abuse investigation of a 8-year-old boy. And, with the limited appearance of Detective Olivia Benson (the very pregnant Mariska Hargitay), who has moved into the Computer Crimes division, some of the secondary characters had meatier roles than normal. Namely, Detective Tutola (Ice-T), Dr. Huang (B.D. Wong) and Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU, the tech geeks) Morales (Joel De la Fuente), who actually beat up a perp in this episode. See? Don't mess around with us pencil-neck geeks: we're super-humanly strong.