Friday Night TV

For some reason I didn't record Las Vegas... I may or may not watch it on NBC's website. It's not a show I worry about missing though. Highlight for spoilers:

• Law & Order: So famous "baseball" player named "J.P." killed his wife, but got acquitted in a high profile trial by saying the cops framed him, then lost a civil suit to the father of a victim, owes huge amounts of money to the father, but lives well off his pension, and then decides to write a book about how he hypothetically would have killed his wife, had he done it. This may sound vaguely familiar to you. Normally the "ripped from the headlines" aspect isn't quite so similar in as many details, but I think they're comfortable in thinking that O.J. would have a hard time suing for defamation of character, given that there's not much character to defame.
  
  In this case, the publisher turns up dead. Your standard L&O investigation, bouncing around between suspects, finally arrives at the idea that J.P. (Bobby Cannavale, who's been everywhere lately) bribed the jury in his trial via his publisher, but only the publisher knew the bribed juror's name. When the juror starts blackmailing J.P., he kills the publisher while trying to get the juror's name out of her. P.J.'s lawyer shows up, and he's Mario Van Peebles! I love that guy. Does anyone remember Sonny Spoon? That show was cool. So anyway, despite devoting two whole paragraphs to it, the episode just wasn't very interesting. I really think it's time for this show to call it quits.

• Monk: Could it be... an actual mystery? One woman turns up dead, then a second body turns up shot, stabbed, poisoned, crushed, bludgeoned, and some other kinds of murdered. And some elite FBI unit in a super high tech bus kinda thing shows up to make Monk and the Captain feel inadequate. But in the end, no, it's not a mystery, because the guy who did it was a non-character for the episode. The only mystery was that the second murder was a distraction, which seemed kinda obvious.

• Psych: It's the dad from the Wonder Years! Unless it's Joe Torre, but I'm pretty sure it's the Wonder Years guy. And the episode was directed by Joanna Kearns, Mrs. Seaver from Growing Pains. As an avid poker player, most Hollywood versions of poker bug me. They show pros with magic powers to stare in your soul and see exactly what you're holding. It doesn't bother me as much here, cause Shawn's always shown having powers of observation that are basically supernatural, so I'm willing to suspend my disbelief. In addition to the 80s TV nostalgia, this was fairly entertaning... most of the jokes worked. Sadly, Monk and Psych are wrapping up their seasons next week, so Friday night TV will go back to being crappy pretty soon.

NBC has started running ads for Raines, the series about a crazy detective with Jeff Goldblum. Looks decent enough to give it a shot, but for some reason I don't trust a show with a big star that premieres in March. I figure it'd get a highly promoted Fall launch if it was any good.