TVSquad

A new reality show premiering Monday is on a bit more serious quest than giving a D-list celebrity malaria or finding the next pop star. NBC's The Wanted is going after suspected terrorists and war criminals.

The show has already drawn its share of controversy as governmental officials say it could interfere in ongoing criminal and espionage investigations. Media critics are all over it, too -- calling it stunt journalism.

But, NBC is no stranger to such claims. Its investigations into alleged pedophiles on Dateline (To Catch a Predator) went from gritty reporting to police support to sensational pop culture phenomenon.

Traveler was originally on ABC's fall schedule, but it kept getting bumped back. Now it's the end of the regular network television season, and Traveler is finally getting a chance to air. Why is this? After seeing the pilot, I suspect it is because ABC was worried that the show would get lost in a sea of new dramatic serials that premiered last fall. It seems like a reasonable assumption, because there really isn't anything wrong with this series. I'm not jumping for joy over it, but I do find it somewhat intriguing.

The premise of Traveler is this: Three best friends (Jay, Tyler, and Will Traveler) graduate from Yale and plan to go on a two-month, cross-country road trip. Only, it all comes to an end on the first afternoon when there's a terrorist bombing in a NYC museum that they're in. Jay and Tyler get out, but Will is gone. And so is his stuff from the hotel. Jay and Tyler end up becoming suspects in the bombing (trust me, it makes sense), and, instead of turning themselves in, they decide to go "underground" and try to find out who this Will Traveler person really is.

ABC is giving Traveler some love. What is Traveler? Well, I'd honestly be surprised if you remembered. It was on ABC's fall schedule, which was announced almost a year ago, and then kept getting bumped back to later dates. The series is about two college grads who end up getting framed for a terrorist act by another college buddy. Bob has been looking forward to it for nearly a year now!

Earlier this month, ABC announced Traveler would premiere on May 30th, but now the network has bumped up that premiere and given it a sweet time slot. The pilot episode of Traveler will air on May 10th at 10 pm, following a new episode of Grey's Anatomy. Then, the pilot will air again on the May 30th date.

I'm not sure if this is a good marketing idea. It seems odd to give a sneak preview of a show and then make people remember that they need to pick it up again during a holiday week (Memorial Day).

Whatever your feelings are on the recent kerfuffle spurred by Turner's Aqua Teen promotion in Boston, you have to admit that flashing signs is probably the worst idea a terrorist could come up with. I mean, it might attract attention, but it's not exactly boss, ya know? Although, it would be nice to live in a world where the only acts of "terrorism" were completely innocuous: they make flashy signs, we retaliate with skywriting over Afghanistan that reads, "Osama has poopy pants." We could hire kindergartners to head our counter-terrorism efforts, leading us into the great I Know You Are But What Am I? Insult War of 2012. My god, it would be beautiful.

Anyway, College Humor has an idea of how this whole mess in Boston got started. I think they might be onto something. Check out the video below.

(S02E08) Well that certainly didn't disappoint. Definitely a fitting end to what I think was the best mini-series that aired this year. I think it's pretty lousy that Sleeper Cell wasn't nominated for best mini-series in this year's Golden Globes (it was last year), but at least Michael Ealy got a nod for best actor. Although I am a little torn because Andre Braugher was spectacular in Thief and I loved that show too. But I think Ealy may have the edge because this finale was just phenomenal in every sense of the word.

(S02E14&15) I decided to sleep on it before writing this review, and I'm still confused as hell. This episode of The Closer required intense concentration. There were a lot of names -- Russian, Arabic, American -- thrown at us, as well as a lot of terrorist scenarios.

The story/investigation was so complicated that we only got to see hints of Dep. Chief Johnson's unusual personality. I enjoyed the little tidbits in the first hour that showed her restless at her house as she waited for the investigation to conclude about the shooting in her murder room. Like you would imagine, she attempted gardening, but appeared to have killed all the plants. And she tried to go for a jog but ended up at the pastry shop "that I hate!" down the street.

Fox has ordered a pilot after seeing a script for a drama called Suspicion. It's written by Emily Whitesell, a writer for ABC's Brothers & Sisters. The series is about a woman who becomes a reluctant heroine after discovering her boyfriend is a terrorist. Sounds like a narrow scope but that's how industry types like to sum these things up-- in one sentence.

This pilot order follows a similar order by Fox for a series called NSA Innocent, about a typical citizen who finds himself caught up in the world of espionage.

This Wednesday, CNN is broadcasting a two-hour special hosted by Christiane Amanpour that will track Osama Bin Laden from his early days to his current status as the world's most wanted terrorist leader. Normally I don't bother with basic cable news coverage, but I like Amanpour as a reporter, and based on the clips on the Web page for In the Footsteps of Bin Laden, this looks like it might be quite informative and interesting. Amanpour and her crew traveled to ten countries on four different continents in order to follow Bin Laden's journey, and, little surprise, trying to get coverage and speak to those close to the man wasn't without its dangerous moments. The special will air August 23 at 9 pm.

(S04E05) Maybe I have some kind of chemical imbalance, or I just wasn't in a comedy kind of mood, but I didn't think this episode was that great. Normally I love this show, but this episode just kind of left me cold.

Fans might recall that in the first season there was a two-part episode where some officials from Home Land Security came to Reno to teach the deputies about terrorist training. It turns out they were actually con artists and they wound up stealing a bunch of stuff from the evidence lockers. In this episode, one of the con artists, "Spanish Mike" Alvarez, is placed in custody in the Reno jail where he tries to get inside the heads of each of the deputies. My favorite scene was with Junior, who he convinces to hand over his gun, but little does he know that Junior took the bullets out of the gun first. Junior taunts him: "Now who's in whose head?" That was pretty funny.

(S10E04) This episode of South Park, like the last one, was so densely layered that if I were to start picking it apart for the purposes of this review I would risk becoming lost in my own navel, so I'm not going to do that, because it would bore both you and I to death. Also, to be perfectly honest, I haven't made up my mind about the episode. So what you're going to get is my random reflections.

First of all, revealing that Family Guy is written by a tankful of manatees who push "idea balls" into a "joke combine" was the quintessential South Park gag, and the reason I still keep watching even after ten years. Not only was it a clever and irreverent jab at Family Guy, it also makes a point about freedom of speech, as the manatees refuse to write if they're denied to use even one idea. Speaking of freedom of speech, I loved the scene in which President Bush has to explain to reporters what the First Amendment is.

I also loved the irony of Cartman using terrorism to try and get Family Guy off the air, and the sissy slap fight between him and Kyle was the perfect embodiment of the pointlessness of arguing over the merits of Family Guy, or any other cartoon. The final scene, in which the terrorist retaliate by making a cartoon in which President Bush, Jesus, and others crap on themselves and the American flag was a clever way of saying that everything and everyone is fair game, not just Muhammed (who was never shown, but whatever, the point is still taken).

I think the requirement to get your own reality show is that you have one mildly interesting thing about you. For instance, Wafah Dofour bin Laden happens to be Osama bin Laden's niece. Of course, she's never actually met the criminal mastermind. She's an American who was born in California, lived in Saudi Arabia from age three to 10, and has a master's degree in law from Columbia University. She's putting that degree to work by trying to launch a career in music and has already received headlines for her provocative photos in GQ Magazine last December. The producers of the reality series say it'll be about her "quest for stardom", but they also claim she'll be bridging the gap between cultures.

Wafah Dofour has actually dropped the last name 'bin Laden', for obvious reasons. But, she also is obviously exploiting her blood relative because, why else would this chick get her own reality show? Sure, she's hot. But that's only grounds for a guest appearance on Fear Factor.

[Photo from GQ Magazine]

It's been a little over four years since Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was captured and beheaded in Pakistan while reporting on the aftermath of September 11, 2001. On October 10 of this year, what would have been Pearl's forty-third birthday, HBO will air a documentary narrated by CNN's Christiane Amanpour that will focus on both the lives of Pearl and accused terrorist Omar Shiekh. The documentary is titled The Journalist and the Jihadi: The Murder of Daniel Pearl.

Hey! Don't kill the messenger. I had it on good authority (USA Today) that Elisha Cuthbert would be back on 24 on Monday night. And, in case they change their story, here's the original quote: "It's official. The magnet of mishaps is returning to 24 tonight. Though actress Elisha Cuthbert took a season off to star in big screen flicks (House of Wax, The Girl Next Door), her character, Kim, will be back to complicate matters for her dad, Jack Bauer." The story printed February 13, 2006.