Crime Drama TV

Veronica Mars fans, to arms! Rumor has it that our show is in dangerous proximity to the chopping block! While Rob Thomas is currently pitching the fourth season to the CW execs, we need to do our part.

1. Vote for Veronica Mars in the Save One Show poll.

2. Bombard the following address with letters and postcards supporting our favorite teen sleuth. (And if one of you wants to yell at her for cancelling Everwood to make room for yet another “final” season of 7th Heaven, I’m not going to stop you. COME BACK TO ME, EPHRAM!)

Dawn Ostroff
President of Entertainment, The CW Television Network
4000 Warner Blvd., Bldg 168
Burbank, CA 91522-0002

Criminal Minds returns Wednesday! Here’s a little something to tide you over until then.

FOX is already pimping the May 9 season finale of Bones. The gimmick? Solve the murder before Brennan does.

At the website, you are given access to each person’s MySpace page. We’re not told who’s been murdered, but apparently the clues are hidden in the various video clips and comments on their pages.

While I have to admit it’s a really cool idea to do the solve-it-yourself thing with MySpace pages, it feels really reminiscient of the season finale/premiere of Criminal Minds. Except Criminal Minds made you really work for it. But who knows? Maybe it’s really difficult. I’ll check out the site and try to come up with my own theory.

Good luck, Bones fans and amatuer detectives!

Bones is all new tonight! Check out the promo:

Criminal Minds is another repeat with “Profiler, Profiled”.

Sorry about the two days of silence. Things have been a little crazy. But enough about me. let’s talk Numb3rs!

A plane carrying a prototype of something important that I didn’t understand crashes in the woods for no apparent reason. But that’s okay because W00T, Edgerton is back! What a pleasant surprise for us.

Charlie and Alan get a not-so-pleasant surprise when they come home to find that they’ve been robbed. Charlie rushes off to help Don on the case, but when Amita gives him a talk about how someone stole something from her and robbery is a personal, emotional experience, he goes back home and offers to use his math skillz to help the police. Aw.

Turns out the plane was crashed so that when the FAA analyzed the black box, a virus that can hide a plane from radar would get into their computers. The baddies were going to use it to smuggle drugs into the country instead of something cool, like randomly mess with the flight…tech…guys. Look, I don’t know what they’re called. I just know it’d be hilarious to play Jumbo Jet Hide-and-Seek with them.

Charlie has used his math skillz to determine that the robber lives in the L.A. area. Alan and the rest of America are not impressed. Don comes waltzing in with a box of all the stuff that was stolen from them; he activated the GPS on Alan’s laptop and it lead them right to the jerk who would dare think of breaking into that beautiful Craftsman house.

Tonight: No crime drama. BRING BACK VERONICA MARS, CW! I’m just going to sit and cry in a corner until you do…

Zach and Temperance are helping a local church figure out which skeleton is which and what grave they belong in after a water main break messed up their graveyard. Father Matt is happy to provide the burial records to speed things up, but old Father Grumpy says he’s in charge of the records and blah blah crochity blah. He barks at Brennan and Zach to respect the sacred ground. Zach finds a skull that’s out of place and it looks like the person died of a blow with a blunt instrument. Brennan: “Your sacred ground just became a crime scene.”

After Angela composits a sketch of what the man looked like, the church community recognizes the man as another Father who just disappeared one day leaving behind a note saying he was leaving the priesthood. Father Grumpy yet again cops an attitude. I’m seriously surprised no one murdered him. Eventually they figure out that the Father was poisoned and then hit by the blunt object and Father Matt is now the target of poisoning. All roads lead to Father Grumpy, but his reaction to the news of the poison leads Boothe to the church administrator. Raised by Father Grumpy, she poisoned both Fathers because Father Grumpy suspected the first one of touching an altar boy and didn’t like Father Matt.

Meanwhile, Brennan and Boothe fight the entire episode. They think it’s because of their different views on religion but the therapist, who Boothe eventually convinces Brennan to talk to, says they’re both afraid that Brennan didn’t go with Sully because of her ties to Boothe. Which is totally true, but he fudges some explanation that Brennan can’t lead a purposeless life at the moment.

And while that’s going on, Hodgins and Angela are going at it like rabbits when he asks her to move in with him since his closet is already half full with her things. Angela isn’t sure why, but she doesn’t want to at the moment. Angela has Brennan take her to the therapist, who advises her to wait until her closet is 30% Hodgins things. And she calls him on his crap theory that Brennan didn’t stay because of Boothe.

Good episode. I thouroughly enjoyed it. Nothing stood out to me has great or worthy of attention, but nothing stood out as bad either. Father Grumpy kind of grated on my nerves a bit with his strictness, but that’s about it.

Bones is new tonight. Take a look!

Criminal Minds fans get a repeat of “Sex, Birth, Death” tonight which, if you haven’t seen it, definitely tune in because it’s probably the best episode ever. Seriously. I’m not kidding. Watch it. If not for my spectacular reccommendation, then to blow Lost out of the water. You KNOW you’re sick of JJ Abrams not knowing what the hell he’s doing.

Let’s talk about romance and it’s place in crime dramas. A lot of people aren’t interested in the characters personal lives, they just want to watch them solve cases. And that’s perfectly respectable. I mean, if I’m watching a crime show I’m obviously expecting some crime and the solving thereof.

But there are those of us who enjoy the little glimpses into the lives of our characters outside of the office. I have already professed that I am one of these people. Every time there’s an Eppes family moment or a new love interest for a character, I get giddy. Now I could go on and on ad nauseum about how seeing their personal relationships not only humanizes a character, but shows how their job affects them (Veronica Mars is a good example of this. Her PI gig has made her very untrusting and slightly paranoid). I could do that, or I could be completely honest with you about my motivations.

Living vicariously. I am a boyfriendless girl, so when one of my TV boyfriends has a new love interest, I get excited because I get to live through them. And don’t be so quick to judge; it’s like reading a romance novel. A well-written, crime-riddled romance novel.

Any thoughts?

Today is the first day of the new quarter for me. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m on the fence about declaring Criminology as my major. I’m taking Criminal Justice this quarter (lucky Veronica, getting to take the actual criminology class as a frshman. I want to go to Hearst.) and feeling it out, since it’s on the opposite end of the spectrum from my current Creative Writing/Film major.

Anyway, I was peeking at the Criminal Minds official site in a fit of boredom and came across the Profiler Quiz. Sweet! I love personality quizzes and I love profiling; they are two great tastes that taste great together. 26 out of 30. Guess I should give some serious consideration to the major change.

Take the quiz and see if you’ve got what it takes to hang with the BAU.

Are crime shows less enjoyable if you miss the first couple of minutes?

Running late after taking my cats to the vet, I sat down at 8:14 to watch Bones and I just couldn’t get into it. I watched the entire episode but I felt lost the entire time. The first few minutes are the set-up for the entire episode; the initial comitting or discovery of the crime. The initial presentation not only to the characters but to the audience.

What do you guys think? Do you turn off a crime show if you’ve missed the first few minutes?

Whooo! Hotch-centric episode! This week the team is looking for a serial killer who sets fire to houses while the family is still inside and then uses a fire suit to stay inside and watch them burn. It’s learned that the fathers of the households were employees of companies that were found guilty of hiding leaking underground benzine tanks and the team suspect the leader of the eco group EDF.

Hotch and Prentiss tail the leader. It looks like he’s getting ready to run until he stops at a hospital. He has leukemia caused by years of inspecting the tanks for companies. Figuring that the killer is at least a member of the group, Hotch gives him the profile and is pointed in the right direction.

Side note: Hotch tells the guy a story about how everyone knew his father was having affairs and he went to confront him about it. Only it turns out that his father had lung cancer. Okay. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in “The Tribe” Hotch’s brother says that their father died of a heart attack at 47. BAD continuity people! No cookie!

Anyway, the leader has the killer meet him at an old warehouse standing over benzine tanks that has been rezoned for an elementary school. Leader and bad guy go boom. Hotch is sad. The EDF leader left him a letter to give to his estranged son, which he does while wearing a fleece pullover, marking the third time we’ve seen Hotch in something other than his Three-Button Suit (of Justice).

If that continuity screw up wasn’t so bad, I might have forgiven the writers for having Reid talk about addiction. When giving the profile, Spencer mentions that fire is and addiction for this guy and he’d be unable to stop without help, throwing a significant glance at Gideon. Thank you, Spence. That was EXACTLY my point three weeks ago.

All in all a good, enjoyable episode.

I have a serious question for y’all. Does anyone watch American Idol anymore? Really? And how about that Pussycat Dolls reality show? Is anyone watching that?

As a rule, I don’t watch reality television. The only show I allow myself to watch is Project Runway because Tim Gunn is my life coach (by the way, I met Angela Kesslar this fall and she said “Tim Gunn is the jewel in the crown of humanity.” Truer words have never been spoken).

Do you have any thoughts about reality television? I know this doesn’t have anything to do with crime dramas, but I wanted to ask since all my shows are being preempted by “reality” programming.

Numb3rs and CSI weren’t even showing repeats this week, so let’s talk about Criminal Minds. This week’s repeat was of “Lessons Learned”. The DEA has raided what they thought was a meth lab but is actually a terrorist cell planning to disburse anthrax. The BAU is brought in to question the leader of the cell, who has been held for a few months in Gitmo. Gideon, Reid, and Prentiss (who happens to be fluent in Arabic) fly to Gitmo while Hotch and Morgan team up with the DEA and Garcia and J.J. spend some quality girl time together back at Quantico.

Pretty much every crime drama has done their terrorist episode since 9/11, but this is my favorite by far. Mandy Patinkin was amazing, which isn’t really a break from the norm because Mandy will always be awesome no matter what he’s doing, but this my favorite Gideon-centric episode. His face when Jind Allah proclaims that innocent people “hurt [him] by existing” is a great reaction of an educated man hearing something so ignorant.

Also great; more Hotch family moments. When the target of the terror cell turns out to be the mall where Haley and Jack are supposed to be getting Jack’s pictures taken, Hotch struggles with whether to breach security and call Haley to warn her. He returns home to find that Haley decided to reschedule so he could be there. It’s very sweet. I love me some Hotch family moments, yes I do.

This week’s episode is new! Rejoice, fellow Criminal Minds fans!

Bones is finally back with an enjoyable and slightly unpredictable episode. Temperance Brennan’s new book, Red Tape, has hit the shelves and the bestsellers list. But as her publisher Elen pesters her to do more interviews and book signings, Brennan and Boothe are called away to the marina to investigate a dead body. The victim was bound to an anchor with red tape and fed to the crabs. Just like the first of three victims in Red Tape.

Both Boothe and Sully are concerned for Brennan’s safety. She refuses their help and throws herself into the case, feeling guilty that her book has caused this to happen. Just like in the book, two more people (one of which is Elen) show up dead, bound with red tape and fed to animals. Since the M.O.s are different for each victim, Brennan wants to treat them as three seperate murders, but the best suspect they have for each victim has a solid alibi.

And here’s where the twist comes. I had the perp pegged as Elen’s twitchy, diabetic assistant. The camera seemed to focus on him whenever he was in the scene and he controlled the circumstances under which Elen’s body was found, which people who plan a murder do. It turns out there were actually three killers; the suspects from each victim killed another person for the other guy so the guy would have an alibi. Awesome, right?

Throughout the episode, Brennan pushes Sully away because she’s afraid that it won’t work out and Sully’s rethinking his relationship with her. Angela tells Temperance to enjoy what she and Sully have right now and Boothe (BOOTHE!) gives Sully a pep talk and tells him not to let her push him away. They make out and all is right with the world. Or not, as we see Boothe sigh and walk away.

There’s a new show about a detective solving supernatural crime on…..Lifetime?

That’s right, Lifetime. Blood Ties, based on Tanya Huff’s Vicki Nelson series, had a 2-hour premiere on the network for women (and gay men) Sunday. “Blood Price” Parts 1 and 2 had former police officer Vicki witness a homicide and unwittingly stumbling on a demonic plot to plunge the world into darkness. While fighting with her ex-partner and ex-lover Michael, she teams up with Henry the vampire to solve the case.

Vicki is an awesome heroine for Lifetime; she kicks ass and she doesn’t look like a supermodel. And she isn’t a supernatural whore (at least not yet), which puts her several steps ahead of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake. I like her and I can see myself rooting for her for an entire season.

And holy god am I hot for Henry. Think Stuart Townsend in Queen of the Damned but prettier and writing/illustrating more comic books.

The show is pretty much a weekly, hour-long B vampire movie. The special effects are cheesy, the acting is sometimes hammy and over-dramatic, and the fight scenes weren’t that well choreographed. I can honestly say I loved it. I loved it for a lot of reasons, most of which were probably unintended by those involved in the production of this fine hour of television, but I loved it nonetheless.