Well, two days into the big premier week and I'm already really behind. I didn't get a chance to watch House yesterday like I planned, nor did I watch the premier of The Forgotten. I've got them both TiVo'd though so I should be able to get to them soon. In the mean time, let's talk about what I did watch!
NCIS - I kind of thought it was Mossad who had Ziva and maybe Tony but it turns out that some random terrorist-type in Sudan was holding them both plus McGee. The episode actually wasn't very good until the last act. It was all Tony smarting off to the terrorist man and flashing back to define the character traits of everyone on the show. Like they expected to start the season with a whole bunch of new viewers and were trying to catch them up or something. And given that the ratings hit an all-time premier high of 20 million viewers, maybe they weren't wrong.
But in the final act it's revealed that Ziva is not dead as the team thought, and is, in fact, also being held captive (as she had been for several months) by terrorist man. He wants to know something but I seriously don't know what it is. There is this weird, tense, back and forth where Tony - having been injected with sodium pentathol - kind of tells Ziva he loves her and can't live without her but kind of not and she continues to hate him for the thing with her evil boyfriend last season but also kind of love him as evidenced by how she completely tries to get terrorist man to kill her instead of Tony.
Anyway, then there's a tussle where the awesome McGee, who's been playing possum on the floor through the whole annoying interrogation, tries to disarm terrorist man but it doesn't work out and then Gibbs totally sniper's terrorist man into the hereafter so Tony and McGee can help Ziva out of the place because she is in really rough shape and then they all go home and there is a really sweet moment when they get back to the office between Abby and Ziva that caused me to get a little lump in my throat. Hopefully next week they get back to a more normal-type episode.
NCIS: Los Angeles - Eh. I really like the addition of Linda Hunt and it was nice that LL Cool J got out of the office as opposed to his more tech-y role in the back-door pilot episodes last year. LL and Chris O'Donnell are nice enough to look at and I dig the heavy-duty bromance vibes there, but O'Donnell's sad back story is relied on much to heavily while his character is kind of insufferable. Also, the cell phone usage on that show is ridiculous. Those people must have zillion minute a month plans as often as they're calling each other - which is every 20 seconds. There were parts of the show that felt like a really long cell phone commercial!
The Good Wife - Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about! This is an excellent show.
Julianna Margulies plays Alicia Florrick who's husband, Peter (Chris Noth) is in prison for having taken bribes and all kinds of other ugly stuff while he was the Cook County States Attorney. He swears he didn't abuse his power but Alicia really doesn't care about that. What is sticking in her craw is the fact that her kids are routinely assaulted with the video of him "sucking a hooker's toes" because, you see, what actually brought him down was his predilection for cavorting with whores.
So while he's in jail and the family is humiliated, Alicia sells the big house and moves her family into an apartment and then goes back to work as a lawyer for the first time in 13 years.
Though it is not explicitly stated, it seems that Alicia's old friend from Law School, Will (Josh Charles), used his pull as a partner (?) at a fairly prestigious law firm to get her the job as a junior associate. As it happens though, there is only one Jr. associate position available and two potential candidates so Alicia is unknowingly competing with Cary (Matt Czuchry) to keep the job. And he's a piece of work. He's condescending and manipulative and while they share an assistant, he makes sure he keeps her far too busy with his work for her to help Alicia at all.
(I would just like to add for the record that, as a professional assistant, I can assure you this girl is a huge loser because anyone with half a brain would know enough to walk away from Cary's stupid shit for 10 seconds and bring Alicia's client a freaking bottle of water. This girl is just asking to get fired when Alicia is the one they keep and Cary ends up as the parking lot attendant!)
Anyway, there's a case and it's fairly interesting but the characterizations and relationships are what really impressed me. Alicia isn't a ball buster (that job goes to Christine Baransky as one of the firms senior associates) but she isn't a doormat either. She has thus-far stuck by her husband, at least publicly and Cary steamrolls her at every opportunity and she's unsure of herself in court which she doesn't cover all that well but at the same time she clearly hasn't forgiven her husband privately, she doesn't take crap from the folks in the state attorney's office who try to use her husband against her, nor does she take crap from her meddling mother-in-law (the fantastic Mary Beth Peil) and she is a good enough lawyer to get to the facts and eventually have the charges against her client dropped. She's also a wonderful and loving mother.
The firm's investigator, Kalinda (Archie Panjabi), doesn't have much use for her at first, having once been fired by Alicia's husband, but by the end they've developed a mutual respect and, I hope, friendship. She could use all the friends she can get because it looks very much like Will may be the only other one she's got. He obviously believes in her and I sense a definite attraction that I really hope develops into something because - JOSH CHARLES!
By the time I was done watching this I realized that the few scenes he had weren't enough for me so I watched several episodes of Sports Night. And that's the story of why I stayed up way past my bedtime on a Tuesday because Josh Charles is awesome and Sports Night is my TV potato chip - I can't watch just one.
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