TVSquad

Actually, they were asked to split. Ike Barinholtz and Frank Caeti did not have their contracts renewed for the show's upcoming thirteenth season. This news comes about the same time as news of comedians Johnny Sanchez and Anjelah Nicole Johnson joining the cast.

Barinholtz worked on the series for five seasons. Caeti was on for only two.

Anyone who watched The Class tonight may have noticed something: Lucy Punch, who played snooty reporter Holly Ellenbogen, was missing from the opening credits. Her bio has disappeared from the show's page on CBS's web site; she's even disappeared from the site's cast photo (right).

This isn't unexpected, since the producers said that a) they were going to concentrate on the romantic storylines on the show and b) it was obvious to everyone that her storyline, which included her gay-but-not-gay husband, wasn't working. She was being shown on the program less and less, usually reporting something that set up some plotline in an episode. But to unceremoniously dump her like that, wiping her off the screen like she was never there, seems pretty cold to me.

For twelve seasons, ER used some of the most memorable and intense theme music heard during the last decade or so; it started soft, then pulsated to a climax that matched the frantic pace of a big-city emergency room and of the show itself. And the climax was usually punctuated visually, either by Eriq LaSalle's Benton punching the air after a surgery or Laura Innes' Weaver bursting through the door with her cane.

But for season thirteen? It's gone. We've got the cold open, a title card with generic music, and then a commercial. The credits are shown over the first act. It's the most glaring example of a trend that's been going on since the late '90s. Erin Carlson of the AP is the latest person to write about the death of the theme song. The article cites all the same reasons cited for years: an increase of commercials, a desire from networks and show-runners to keep people's attention, etc., etc.

(S03E05) As if the writers were pumping promicin themselves and reading the viewers' minds, Maia is neither gone nor forgotten in the second part of "Gone." And she comes back with explosive force, erupting into Tom and Alanna's fantasy worlds, radiating through Diana's frantic subconscious. I'm rapt as I watch Diana making a frightening collage of little girls' faces, as I see her sink into desperation when she learns that Maia has been sent back to the 1800s -- and died, at 25, only having left diaries behind as she expired on the Oregon Trail.

While I'm rapt by Tom and Diana emerging from the distinct wooden quality of the past several episodes, I'm thrown by the seemingly random details skittering about the edges of the plot. The 4400 we meet this week, an investment banker, can smell pheremones. It's a cool party trick and, you'd think, useful in the plot of a drama starring Alicia Silverstone. But it's a sideshow, just like the valiant efforts made (and subsequently erased) in the far past by the other children: synthetic fuel, colonies on the moon. Lovely, but ... why do these very interesting details feel as if they were picked out of a science fiction grab bag?