TVSquad

It seems like there has been a new Stephen King series appearing on television every other week for as long as I can remember. We had The Stand and Golden Years and The Langoliers and Kingdom Hospital (not to be confused with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace) and a myriad of others. The man has a longer television and movie resumé than Donald Sutherland (well, maybe not).

Now King is returning to the airwaves with Haven, a series based on his novella The Colorado Kid. The premise is about a small town in Maine (as usual) where cursed people live in exile. A female FBI agent named Audrey Parker arrives to solve a mystery and fight supernatural forces.

Is it me or does this sound a lot like the episode of The X-Files that King wrote? In that episode, Scully is in Maine and Mulder only appeared on screen from his office for counsel.

King has been known to recycle ideas. We'll see how this one turns out.

Are you ready for more CSI? I mean, there's original CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, NCIS (which isn't part of the franchise, but has the letters), plus all these shows are in reruns and now, William Petersen is ready for a big screen CSI. He's downright positive about it, even though he himself exited the TV show last December. I don't know if a movie version of CSI is really necessary, but to hear Petersen talk, there are some valid reasons.

For his point of view, some stories couldn't be shown on TV because of the graphic or sexual content. He'd like to see a movie version go where no TV CSI has gone before.

Do not adjust your web browser. You are now entering the Retro Squad, where we are reviewing past episodes of classic TV shows.

For the most part The X-Files was an intense character study of two FBI agents struggling with their beliefs in the supernatural, in America and in each other. Sometimes, however, it was just a show about cool monsters. Here are some of my favorites.

Eugene Tooms ("Squeeze," "Tooms")
Tooms was so cool and creepy he had to be brought back for another appearance. What I liked best about Tooms was that he was one of the few monsters that looked totally human but was pure monster. Whether he was eating livers or squeezing through an air vent, Tooms was the first threat on the show to make me believe that monsters might actually exist.

This week, I got a very nice letter from a fan named Adam...

"In the mid '90s a show aired that lasted about half a season. It was a space show where the main characters were cadets who flew fighters. One of the main characters was a test tube baby with a navel on the back of his neck. I was wondering what that show was called (if I recall... it got pulled because it cost too much to make, not because it had poor ratings)."

(S01E15) I was a little bit skeptical coming into the episode this week. The promo at the end of the show last week, and running during other shows this week, was a little bit out there. After 36 pretty solid episodes though, I'm willing to give Kripke and his crew the benefit of the doubt. So I entered into "Tall Tales" with an open mind.

Fortunately for all of us, they were more than up to the task and delivered another standout episode. This one certainly took a turn to the comedic, but it was a welcome diversion.

One that called to mind such classics as The X-Files episode "Bad Blood." As we enter the last third of Supernatural's sophomore season, this was a nice pallet cleanser to get us ready for some of the dark things that must surely be headed for the Winchester boys.