TVSquad

(S05E01) The Closer season opener was a good news, bad news situation. The good news is that the show is back for the fifth year and the ensemble is clicking along like a finely tuned watch. Although Brenda Leigh is now a "Sadie, Sadie married lady," she's still as obsessed, determined and driven to do her job as ever, so there's been no major shift in the main character, thank goodness. The bad news, however, is that the premiere episode started out like a compelling drama but soon devolved into a case laden with coincidences and leaps of faith in plotting that were beyond my jumping abilities.

The emotional impact was intense when the Priority Homicide team arrived at the crime scene to find four dead bodies, two of them pre-teen children. Flynn was hot under the collar immediately, ready to prejudge the man of the house who had opportunity and possible motive in the quadruple killing.

Jason Katims, the producer behind Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, is making another drama for NBC. This one will be a modern take of an old classic, The Wizard of Oz. But rather than having Dorothy go to Oz, she will go to New York City (her version of the Emerald City) and join the art world as a naive Kansas girl. Her boss will be the Wicked Witch.

Okay, so it's a Sex And The City version of The Wizard of Oz. It may work. It certainly has enough familiar elements to do so.

Without knowing anything about this series other than what is written in the article, I already know that she will have three co-workers, one with no brain, one (and pretty loose) with no heart (and fairly stiff) and one with no courage (and quite possibly hairy. And, if he acts like Burt Lahr in the classic movie, quite possibly gay).

Everyone loves lists, and everyone has an opinion, so it's not always nice or productive to point out that another person's list might be lacking in some way. Having said that, let's talk about how this list is lacking in some way.

It's a list of the 10 best series finales of all-time. I'll get right to the point: Newhart should be on this list.

Everybody loves lists, right? That's why I was attracted to this AOL Television list of the best TV shows of the 1990s. Lots of good entries, some head-scratchers, and two incredibly glaring omissions.

You can immediately guess which shows are on the list: Seinfeld, The X-Files, Sports Night, Oz, The Sopranos, The Larry Sanders Show. There are some shows that I certainly would never put on such a list, but I can understand why they were chosen, such as Party of Five, Dawson's Creek, and Ally McBeal. I think this is probably yet another example of "best" being confused with "popular" or "buzzworthy." Actually, I would never include Ally McBeal on any sort of best of list.

But what really confuses me? There are two major shows, two shows that are often mentioned in a "best of" list (not just the 90s, but all-time) that aren't on the list! Can you guess what they are? Both appeared on NBC, and one of them was created by someone who created one of the above shows.

A week from now, HBO will probably be one of the big stories from the Primetime Emmys thanks to the success of the John Adams mini-series. But it's not sitting on that success, the premium cable net is banking on it. HBO announced today a mini series based on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln called Manhunt. That news would be interesting enough because the series will deal with the 12 days after Lincoln was shot when the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was on the run. However, the guys that HBO have tapped to work on Manhunt are two of the best in television -- David Simon and Tom Fontana.

HBO knows Simon and Fontana's work really well. Simon was the creator of The Wire and Fontana's brainchild was Oz. This is also not a new collaboration. Fontana turned Simon's book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, into the Homicide: Life on the Streets TV series for NBC.

A few thoughts about Kristin Chenoweth, if you don't mind. First, congratulations to the Pushing Daisies' actress --she plays Olive -- for snagging an Emmy nomination as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. And kudos for the effervescent and spontaneous adlibs and asides she and Neil Patrick Harris -- another favorite of mine -- brought to the reading of the nominations Thursday morning.

So often the reading of the nominations is as dull as dishwater, like the stars doing the announcing are simply trying to get through it without tripping over their tongues. Not so with Chenoweth and Harris; they were delightful together and added a kick to the nomination announcement.

All-in-all, Angel was a good series, even though it kept reinventing itself each season. The set changes (Angel's original digs, the hotel, Wolfram and Hart), the cast changes, and the character changes (Fred to Ilyria) threw off my equilibrium, sometimes leaving me longing for the security of the previous season.

One of the hardest changes for me to take was the death of Doyle, who added so much heart and humor to season one. Even sadder was that the actor who played Doyle, Glenn Quinn, went on to die a tragic death in 2002.

The greatness of the Scooby Gang on Buffy the Vampire Slayer was enhanced by the addition of Oz (Daniel Osbourne) in seasons two, three, and four. Sometimes a werewolf, mostly Willow's boyfriend, he added a new level of comedic relief to Buffy.

It wasn't the situations he was in, nor did he take the pratfall route. Oz was dry -- dry like a desert, dry like overcooked Thanksgiving turkey, dry like a leather shoe left out in the sun for several thousand years. Master of the understatement, man of few words, sarcasm blended with wit.

Arguably, Oz was the most quotable character on Buffy. For instance, when he found out vampires were real, he simply stated, "That explains a lot!" Another of my favorite Oz quotes was from season four, when Buffy was complaining about her college roommate and punching the air. Oz posits, "No one deserves mime, Buffy."

Revisit some of Oz's best quotable moments from each season he appears in and enjoy a giggle or two remembering the werewolf with a sense of humor.

HBO and Alan Ball have teamed up once again to develop an American version of Bad Girls. The show is familiar territory for HBO which aired the critically acclaimed prison drama Oz for six seasons.

The British drama about the staff and inmates of a women's prison recently ended production after eight seasons on ITV.

Everybody wants Donal Logue. Just one month after NBC added him to the cast of NBC's Life, as Charlie's new boss, now comes news that HBO has booked Donal Logue as a biker in 1%. The new pilot casts Donal as a character named Misfit, a Silicon Valley member who's sent to Carefree, Arizona, to get one of the toughest biker clubs in the west in line. Also joining Logue in the show are W. Earl Brown (Deadwood), Timm Sharp (Undeclared), Lucy Punch (hilarious in The Class as Holly Ellenbogen), Marisa Ryan (New York Undercover) and Sonny Barger. Barger is an actual biker and has been enlisted to no doubt add realism to the project.

I remember when I was a kid and I saw a bald man I always thought, "He must be old." As I've become an adult, I have been lucky enough to keep my thick head of hair but it's clear that baldness is no longer something to be embarrassed about. In fact, there are a number of bald men on television who are quite adept at getting things done. Here are my top ten toughest bald guys on television.

10. Chris Turk (Scrubs)
While Turk wouldn't be considered a tough guy by most standards, I think he deserved to be on this list for a couple of reasons. First, Turk chooses to be bald. Sure, his hair is thin but at some point he decided to shave his head and I applaud his choice. More importantly, Turk is a surgeon, a father and the husband of a very hot lady. If that isn't an example of how to get it done, I don't know what is.

Hello! The Saint is rising again. The venerable character, who was created by writer Leslie Chareris in novels in the 1920's, will be back on television in a contemporary setting, and actor James Purefoy (Rome) has been in talks to play Simon Templar, the suave, British "good guy" thief. Aside from Purefoy, the Hollywood Reporter writes that the production team includes first class talent: Homicide's Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana (Oz), writer Jorge Zamacona, Bill Macdonald, and the original TV Saint himself, Roger Moore, and his son Geoffrey Moore.

When one of our favorite TV shows goes off the air, it can be devastating. However, many times, the cancellation is the birth of a spinoff. Sometimes it can be a great thing (Frasier) and sometimes not so much (AfterM*A*S*H). Here are some this month's spinoff ideas that I would love to see.

McCormack & Van Lowe: At Your Service
When Keith Mars becomes sheriff of Neptune and his daughter Veronica joins the FBI, Vinnie Van Lowe emerges as the county's number one private detective. His new caseload is so overwhelming and his moral compass is so out of whack that he's forced to employ attorney Cliff McCormack on a permanent basis. Together with the help of their excitable intern (Alia Shawkat), they bring their distinctive style of crime-solving to the citizens of Neptune.

According to preliminary data, and as reported by Variety, Tin Man appears to have beaten virtually every record the Sci Fi channel has ever seen. It's 6.4 million viewers surpassed the 6.1 million who saw Steven Spielberg's Taken, back in 2002. Demo ratings were equally as strong, where Tin Man unseated 2000's Dune in adults 18-49, and Taken again in adults 25-54.

With reviews coming in either mid-range to downright negative, it'll be interesting to see how these numbers continue through the mini-series' three-night run.

(S02E17) I was looking forward to this episode for two reasons, only one of which panned out. First, like Dean said, "Werewolves are badass." From American Werewolf in London right up to the recent Dresden Files episode "Hair of the Dog," I like stories involving werewolves. "Heart" can now take a well deserved spot in that long line of lycanthropic entertainment.