As the second season of the NBC spy spoof, “Chuck,” winds down, fans are gearing up to fight for a third season. Where else are you going to get a and witty spoof of both spy movies and geek culture expertly woven into 44-minute packages?
Marueen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune sums up the situation quite well.
Personally, “Chuck” is one of the best things about television on Monday night or any other night of the week. I was recording it along with “Heroes,” but it’s gotten to the point where I’ve dropped the superhero show from my lineup and focused on “Chuck.”
It’s a great combination of spy drama and geek comedy with just a touch of ’80s nostalgia thrown in for kicks. Some of the plot falls apart when you probe for specifics, but it holds up for most casual viewers.
Considering all the creative energy the show has in its tanks and the lack of many strong one-hour programs on NBC (can you name two?), I hope the network considers picking up the series for at least one more year.

I watched about 2 minutes of the premiere of the new ABC drama (or dramedy) “The Unusuals.” I didn’t give it a full 44 minutes Wednesday night, but the scene I watched was lifted from a classic crime show from 15 years ago. Well, I don’t know if it was a homage or lifting.
That show of yesterday was the incomparable “Homicide: Life on the Streets.” What was the scene? It was the one where Baltimore detectives are interrogating a suspect and they hook up to a “lie detector.” The gag is, and has always been, that the lie detector is really a photocopying machine but the detectives have done a convincing enough job to dupe the subject into thinking that it was a real polygraph.
The gag involves the subject placing his hand on the scanner while the detectives ask a series of three questions. The first two are gimmies — Is your name John Doe? Do you live on Clancy Street?
The suspect would tell the truth, the detective would push the “Start” button and, lo and behold, the copier would spit out a piece of paper with the subject’s handprint and the word “TRUE.” Of course, the detectives had arranged the paper tray in advance to obtain that very result.
The third question is crucial — did you kill the victim? The subject would lie and somehow the polygraph would know this — the paper that emerges says “FALSE.” Faced with such overwhelming evidence, the suspect then confesses.
Something similar did happen on the “Unusuals,” although it was after one of the detectives showed the suspect body parts in a cooler and imitated the victim’s voice.
I can’t say the creators of this new show were lifting from “Homicide” — It’s apparently a very old tale (according to Snopes.com). In modern storytelling, the Xerox polygraph was in David Simon’s 1991 book, “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets” and it cropped up twice in TV shows based on Simon’s work or created by Simon himself — “Homicide” and “The Wire.”
That’s where I first encountered the story, although even the source material alludes to the incident happening in Detroit.
Regardless of where the polygraph by photocopier originated, I wonder why we’re seeing it again. It’s a good gag, but shouldn’t a new show strive for new ground at least for the first few episodes?

The long-running medical drama “ER” is ending tonight. I never was a die-hard fan of the show, but I do have one memory that I hold somewhat dear.
It was my first year of college and I was working at the student newspaper. We published the paper twice a week (Mondays and Thursdays, IIRC), but we were there other days of the week too.
Thursdays were always kind of a fun day — the paper had just come out and we had some breathing room before next Monday. Often times, we would hang out and watch some TV in the sports office.
“ER” was one of the shows we would watch. It was 1996 and the show was in full stride. The characters were interesting and the frantic pace of the drama was exciting (even if they did seem to intubate every patient that set foot in the hospital). It also didn’t hurt that our opinion editor looked like Dr. Greene.
Just as I lost track with most of my college newspaper colleagues, I haven’t kept tabs with “ER” as the years have rolled past. Nonetheless, the show will have a place in my heart for entertaining us all those years ago.