Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Beginning with the death of a senator and ending with a marriage, the second season of Bones builds on the momentum created during the Fox drama’s debut year. Bones’ sophomore season (which includes all 21 episodes that originally aired during 2006-2007) centers on the collaborations between FBI special agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz, Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), whom Booth has nicknamed “Bones.”
In the third season of Grey’s Anatomy, one medical intern will get married to a superior while another is left standing at the altar. Two interns will lose their parents. And one main character will try to commit suicide–or not fight very hard to save her own life. There will be multiple hook-ups, infidelity, and trust issues.
When Beth Kohl was working on her M.F.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she didn’t want to be known as “that IVF” woman. By then, she had already gained a reputation for writing eloquent class assignments about her reproductive journey — which would become the seed for her debut as an author. But she didn’t want to be pigeonholed.
The first season of Friday Night Lights accomplishes something that few television dramas are able to do: It betters the 2004 film (starring Billy Bob Thornton) on which the series is based. Set in Dillon, Texas, where football–even on the high school level–is everything, Friday Night Lights is a compelling drama with a football subplot. Poignantly and effectively touching on racism, rape, steroids, jealousy, infidelity, and life-changing injuries, the series presents the inhabitants of Dillon as real people who are flawed, but remarkable in their ordinariness.
With her first novel, “Free Food for Millionaires,” Min Jin Lee has won the praise of literary critics. Though 562 pages, the book is a true page-turner, with a Korean-American protagonist and a compelling plot involving the universal clash of cultures, adultery and class distinction.
Based on the best-selling book of the same name, the film version of The Nanny Diaries is a cute chick flick, but it lacks the witty tone of the novel, which took time to flesh out the characters. The tone is set early on when the narrator notes, “In Africa they have the saying: ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ But for the tribe of the Upper Eastside of Manhattan, it takes just one person: the nanny.”
There’s nothing like an overly demonstrative pair of newlyweds to make an old married couple feel like a failure. And old. So when Jeff (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Steph (Kat Foster) Woodcock–married for all of 12 days–move next door to Eddie (Brad Garrett) and Joy Stark (Joely Fisher), the latter feel the need to put their youthful neighbors in their place.
The cantankerous and brilliant Dr. House (Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie) is back for a third season of the hit drama House, which picks up with his being shot at the end of season two and ends with his staff dramatically refusing to put up with his oddball (and borderline abusive) demands. Each of the 24 episodes, which aired on FOX from 2006 to 2007, is included in this 5-disc set. Fans of the drama will be happy to hear that the formula remains the same: Each show begins with a medical dilemma that’s so severe and life-threatening that only Dr. House can diagnose and fix the problem, even if it goes against conventional medical rules.
With the fourth season of JAG: Judge Advocate General, viewers get a real sense of who the characters are. Originally running in 1998-1999, the fourth year is consistently good in both storyline and acting, and rarely loses steam in any of the 24 episodes.
During their career peak in the mid- to late 1980s, the Bangles were so famous that Saturday Night Live’s Dennis Miller was parodying lead singer Susanna Hoffs’ precious sideways glance. “The Bangles: Return to Bangleonia” is the female quartet’s live concert offering. But oddly enough, it isn’t a gig from that era, but rather a concert recorded in 2000 at the House of Blues in Hollywood.