TVSquad

(S01E01) "You know why we're all here? It's about helping you." -- Sgt. Gregory Parker

Yet another cop show has blasted into our lives: Flashpoint, which premiered Friday at 10 PM on CBS. I'm not much for cop shows, and never got into all the CSI, Law & Order shows that continue to grace the airwaves. But I have to say, I was riveted to this one. Not as riveted as I am to 24, but you never know. We'll see how it goes.

It revolves around an elite emergency police unit in Toronto known as the Strategic Response Unit (SRU). The show was actually inspired by Toronto's real-life Emergency Task Force, and the series is filmed in Toronto, which gives it an authentic air and allows the city to shine in a way it hasn't before. Even in this first episode, we see beautiful shots of the architecture and urban landscape.

The SRU team handles all the nitty-gritty stuff -- hostage situations, gangs, bombs, suicidal teens, you name it. Because of this, they also have an impressive array of state-of-the-art weapons -- sniper rifles, tasers, flash-bang grenades, and a bunch of other stuff I've probably never heard of.

Back in July, Richard gave you the scoop on comedian Brian Froud's theater show Swiss Family Guy Robinson. Froud's one-man act is essentially a staged mash-up of Johann Rudolf Wyss' 1812 novel and Seth MacFarlane's animated series. Froud's show was a hit at Toronto's Fringe Festival, but his chances of ever staging the show again are slim to none. Fox has slapped Froud with a cease-and-desist order for unauthorized use of Family Guy characters.

It's no secret that some of us over here at the palatial TV Squad offices are a bit confused by the recent scheduling decisions that have been handed down by the Sci-Fi Channel's executives over the past few months. I mean, other than the shows that are part of the Sci-Fi Friday block, a good portion of the schedule is filled with cheesy made-for-tv movies, reruns of creepy Law & Order: SVU episodes and, for a reason only known to the executives of Sci-Fi and Universal, Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Conan O'Brien is once again taking his show on the road... all the way to windy Chicago. For the week of May 9-12, Conan will broadcast from the Chicago Theater. It's not something he does every year. In 1999, Conan went to Los Angeles, but his all-time best trip was to Toronto, Canada in 2003 where Jim Carrey and the Barenaked Ladies made the audiences go nuts. And Triumph the Insult Comic Dog famously became a topic of discussion in the Canadian Parliament when he targeted French-Canadians in a legendary sketch.

When he visits Chicago, what does Conan need to see?