TVSquad

Things are really cooking at the USA Network. Not only has the new show Royal Pains been renewed for a second season, but Burn Notice is also coming back for a fourth. Law and Order: Criminal Intent is on the verge of being re-upped, and now In Plain Sight has just gotten a pick-up for Season Three.

Wow! Talk about a winning formula. This part of the Universal family, as opposed to NBC, seems to have figured out how to make dramas work and work well.

In Plain Sight has become one of my favorite TV shows. I didn't think that way last year, its rookie season, when the show lurched a bit to try and find balance between Mary's professional life as a U.S. Marshal in the Witness Protection Program and her dysfunctional personal life with an alcoholic mother, a troubled younger sister with a drug-dealing boyfriend, and an on-again/off-again relationship with a hot Latin minor league baseball player.

When it went well, it was very satisfying, but the show seemed to be struggling to find its tone. Well, this season is a whole new thing. Perhaps there were changes behind the scenes, perhaps the first year was about shaking out all those story strands and building a stronger foundation, perhaps it was simply the actors getting more comfortable in their roles. Whatever the case, In Plain Sight is now hitting on all cylinders.

(S01E13) The surgery is done. The brain aneurysm is gone. But Eli's life hangs -- or hung -- in the balance. This was a very trippy episode, a term Dr. Chen uses to explain to Eli why everything seems so out of whack. By the end of the hour, I'm not sure we can say with any certainty that Eli is really back. But it sure seems that when faced with a choice of letting go or letting God, he took the latter and opened his eyes.

It's always interesting going back to see something that you were once fond of again. Sometimes they hold up, and sometimes you are left shaking your head wondering what could have been in the air in 1982 that made you like this pile of crap. That's how I headed into the new Saved By The Bell double feature DVD, which includes "Wedding in Las Vegas" and "Hawaiian Style."

Somewhere along the lines Saved By The Bell ended up rerunning on cable at the perfect time to fit into my daily routine, and I got in the habit of watching it regularly. I'm not positive that I have seen every last episode, but I know I'm pretty close. So, you could say I was a fan of the show. That, or I really should have popped for the more expensive cable plan all those years ago.