TVSquad

You have watched something produced by Brian Grazer. Imagine's prolific producer has been all over TV and film for the last fifteen years. Apollo 13, Bowfinger, A Beautiful Mind, Sports Night, 24 and Friday Night Lights were all executed by the crazy-haired impresario.

Grazer's latest project, which has landed a series commitment at Fox, will follow Iraq war veteran Michael Cavanaugh as he leads the Critical Incidents Response Group section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Grazer has promised an emotionally complex show, avoiding the normal depictions of straight-laced, stolid FBI agents.

Bob already mentioned this new detective drama to y'all back in October, but we didn't know exactly when the show would air. Now we know Raines, starring Jeff Goldblum, will debut on NBC in March. The series will air on Fridays at 9 pm, booting Las Vegas out of that timeslot.

I'm a bit tired of all this supernatural nonsense like Medium and Ghost Whisperer, but Raines does have a slight twist, in that Goldblum's detective only imagines the ghosts he's seeing, and they help him solve the murder cases. Huh, a human who confabs with imaginary creatures only he can see? Isn't that essentially Calvin and Hobbes? And wouldn't that be cool if Calvin actually grew up to become a homicide detective and Hobbes helped him solve all his cases? And wouldn't it be even cooler if I could learn to stay on topic instead of digressing into talking about comic strips that have absolutely nothing to do with the show I'm writing about? Yes, in a perfect world that would be grand.

(S01E03) Writers are the most shameless, self-centered bastards in the world. We lie, we seduce, we'll steal your soul. Anything to look good on the page. -Sam Landry

I thought I had read every story from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and I might have, but nothing about "Umney's Last Case" was familiar when I read it just recently. Nevertheless, it's not a bad story, and it's also very "meta" as the college kids like to say.

In the story, as in the TV adaptation, we begin in the 1930s where a grizzled private eye named Clyde Umney is leading a storybook life that he'll soon learn is more "storybook" than he realizes. He wields snappy dialogue with the precision of a trapeze artist, and always knows just what to say to get what he wants, at one point managing to turn two women to jelly in his office one after the other.

So I was reading this piece about Bonnie Hunt, who says she used to sit with a cup in front of her television to try and catch characters like Fred Flintstone in case they slipped out of her television screen. Her plan as a young girl was to keep Fred and other cartoon characters stowed away in her dresser drawer for safe keeping. I have to admit that's rather adorable, and it also made me think back to when I was younger and cartoons seemed more "real" to me than they really are. I used to wish I could be a character in any of the Peanuts specials. I'd philosophize with Linus, be extra nice to Charlie Brown, and maybe get in a shouting match with Lucy. Although, her psychiatric rates are reasonable, I'll give her that.

So how about the rest of you? Was there a cartoon you loved so much you wished you could somehow have your body altered a la Kid Video and jump in and join all your favorite characters?