CSI

CSI star Gary Dourdan was arrested at 5:21 AM and charged with suspected possession of heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and maybe other drugs as well.

He was arrested in Palm Springs, CA when police saw him sleeping in his car early in the morning. When they got to the car and investigated further, Dourdan was arrested for the above offense. He's out on bail.

This arrest will trigger approximately 327 different jokes about the CSI gang helping him and tests being done on the car, etc. Now we just have to figure out whether he's leaving CSI (official word is that Dourdan and the studio came to an understanding on his departure) because of his drug use or (as Keith wonders) he's doing the drugs because he's leaving the show.

Chicken, egg.

I can't believe this is actually happening. I've told you before how much I hate cross-overs on TV; it's tolerable if it's at least the same genre of show. This is like in-breeding. If CSI and Two And a Half Men were brother and sister, then their deformed, incestual love-child is what's going to air on Monday, May 5th.

We actually reported on this almost a year ago, that the writers of CSI and Two And a Half Men were going to flip-flop and pen an episode of the other show. Well it never happened. Now, according to this press release, it's a go. I would imagine that the Writer's Strike played a role in resuscitating this awkward match-up.

Last fall, CSI's Jorja Fox left the show. Two weeks ago, it was confirmed that William Petersen signed a one-year contract to stick around for the show's ninth season. This week, we learn that series regular Gary Dourdan decided to quit the show at the end of the current season.

Dourdan, who plays CSI Level 3 Warrick Brown, and CBS/Paramount came to a mutual decision not renew the actor's contract with the show.

Every time he thinks he's out, they pull him back in again! No, just kidding. It's not like that. This isn't Michael in Godfather 3. Nobody's forcing anyone.

However, it is true that William Petersen is returning to CBS's CSI for the ninth season. This is great news for fans of the show -- and the star -- because for years now he's been yelping about leaving the hit series to do other things. Last year, for example, he was written off the show for a brief hiatus in which Liev Schreiber was cast as a temporary replacement for Gil Grissom in the Las Vegas crime lab.

Television has a long standing tradition of making its stars feel more popular than they really are. As somebody who used to be on TV, five nights a a week, I know what that feeling is like. Generally when that person leaves television, they go on to do movies or change professions and they often become even more popular. However, there is always that TV celebrity who overestimates how much people want to see them and when they leave their hit TV show, it ends up being the biggest mistake of their career.

David Caruso
Before Caruso became the star of the weakest part of the CSI franchise, he was the star of NYPD Blue. After playing numerous bit parts on TV and in film, he finally hit the big time. The critics and the public both agreed that he was a breath of fresh air in what had become a stale world of TV dramas. He was sexy and tough, just like his show and he fit in perfectly with his supporting characters. Then suddenly, Caruso decided he was too talented for the small screen and bailed on the show. His much talked-about departure allowed him to make unwatchable films like Jade and the remake of Kiss of Death that nobody asked for. Luckily, the ginger-haired tough guy was able to revive his career, but one can't help but wonder how different things would have been had he continued to be Detective John Kelly.

Hear that sound -- a nearly inaudible rumbling coming over the horizon? Everyday it is getting louder and louder. Soon, the stampede that is the return of scripted series back from the depths of the WGA strike will overrun our televisions and computer screens, bringing overwhelming joy to our lives.

Okay, that statement may be a little flowery, but the sentiment is still there. After a very long dry period a good many of our favorite comedies and dramas are returning to the television landscape. We've had a taste of it these last few weeks with the return of shows like The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Dirt, The Riches and Smallville. That was just a preview of what is to come. Over the next few weeks we will see the return of The Office, Scrubs, Ugly Betty, all of the CSIs, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost, among others.

The world of primetime TV are primarily set in the real world. The real world based on the fiction they create. So, Law and Order -- in all its incarnations -- is set in New York City, but it's not the real five boroughs. The newspapers they read are not The New York Times, the Post or the Daily News. For contemporary TV fiction, reality is on the margins of the storytelling because you can't really set those characters in a real world. However, when the two worlds intersect, the results can be magic. Here's 8 big-time, primetime examples:

1) Cowboy Up Time
Remember the episode of Lost when Ben wanted to convince Jack that he was in communication with the world outside the island? To prove that he was telling the truth, he showed Jack a video of the Boston Red Sox winning the world series in 2004. You can't get more real than that, right? And yet it was used in one of the most out of this world shows on the air. In fact, using Lost's own terminology, the Red Sox video is a constant truth in a universe that's a complete fiction.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist, let alone a forensic specialist, to detect that the CSI franchise is hot. CBS currently boasts three shows with CSI in the title -- CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York -- four if you include the non-Jerry Bruckheimer produced military procedural NCIS. So, then, it shouldn't come as a surprise that CSI is expanding. No, there's not a new CSI TV show happening, but there is an amusement park variation on CSI coming to life at Magic Mountain, the Valencia, California tourist attraction. (By the way, isn't it nice that Valencia didn't get nuked for real like it did on 24 last season?)

Nobody would ever confuse Rufus Sewell for Patrick Stewart (Star Trek: The Next Generation), right? Well, super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer has chosen Sewell for the lead in the $4 million pilot of the British drama series Eleventh Hour. Presumably, Rufus will be playing the same role Patrick played, that is Professor Ian Hood, Special Advisor to the government's Joint Sciences Committee, enlisted to tackle all kinds of dangerous threats stemming from science gone awry.

Is it really a big surprise that television advertising isn't as effective as it used to be? As TV watchers -- okay, we're uber-watchers -- we know that with DVRs and TiVos we're zooming through ads, or we're channel surfing in between segments of our favorite shows, or renting/buying content in formats that allow us to avoid commercials altogether. Now, according to the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research's TV & Technology Survey, we learn that six out of 10 marketers believe that TV advertising has become less effective in the past two years. And it's getting worse.

If you've watched 30 Rock this past season, you've seen how funny actress Edie Falco can be. As C.C. (Celeste Cunningham), she's been a hoot opposite Alec Baldwin. Well, Showtime noticed, and they announced today that the three-time Emmy-winner, best known as Carmela on The Sopranos, will star in a new show for their network. She'll be playing a "strong-willed, iconoclastic New York City nurse juggling the frenzied grind of an urban hospital and an equally challenging personal life" is the 30-minute, single camera, dark comedy.

Fans of the Tiffany network can do the happy dance. CBS has renewed 11 scripted shows for the 2008-2009 TV season. The lucky 11 are: CSI; CSI: Miami; CSI: New York; NCIS; Criminal Minds; Cold Case; Without a Trace; Ghost Whisperer; Numb3rs; Two and a Half Men; and The Big Bang Theory.

There are not a lot of surprises in this bunch, although it's great news that The Big Bang Theory, CBS's rookie Monday-night sitcom from Chuck Lorre's stable, made the cut. Still in limbo, however, are three other Monday-night comedies from the network: How I Met Your Mother, Rules of Engagement, and The New Adventures of Old Christine. The story speculates that Mother will get the greenlight for a fourth season soon, but Rules and Christine seem to be in competition for the 9:30-10:00 half-hour slot.

Tired of trying to figure out the status of your favorite shows post-strike? Well, if you're a fan of CBS's lineup, you no longer have to: the Eye Network released a list of shows, when they're likely to come back and how many episodes they have left. I'll reproduce the list for you after the jump.

It looks like some of the shows -- most notably, three of the network's big four Monday comedies -- are going to have close to a full complement of episodes for the season (for instance, there will be nine more episodes of the only show on this list I care about, How I Met Your Mother). It looks like fans of The Unit, Cane, and maybe Shark will be out of luck until fall. And Swingtown, the risque drama about swinging couples, will resume production, meaning that we'll finally see this series the network announced way back at last year's upfronts.

It was nice of CBS to do this. Let's hope the rest of the networks follow suit.

While Elizabeth Berkley's TV pedigree was perhaps better received than her feature film debut, it was the notorious Showgirls that made her a household name and launched her into the "Worst Films Ever" hall of fame. Her career began in the teen series Saved by the Bell, which also netted us Dancing with the Star's Mario Lopez, NYPD Blue's Mark Paul Gosselar and Beverly Hills, 90210's Tiffani-Amber Thiessen.

After Showgirls, it took the actress many years to regain credibility and acclaim, working in theater and off-Broadway productions until her return to television in 2002 in a recurring role on Titus. Since then she has guested on several shows, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Now, Reuters tells us the 35 year-old Berkley is set to play Horatio Cane's (David Caruso) ex-wife Julia Winston and mother to his recently discovered teenage son (Evan Ellingson) on spin-off CSI: Miami. Miami is known as a "hotter, sexier" CSI, so she should fit right in. She can even try to match Caruso's one-of-a-kind line delivery when they inevitably spar.

About two years ago, I set out to list the hottest women on TV who are over 40, over 50, and over 60. There were a lot candidates to choose from, even in the over 60 category, making it a particularly tough set of list to compose.

But now that our friends at AOL have decided to compile a list of TV's 50 sexiest women of all time (starting today with Nos. 50-41), I'm going to take on an even greater challenge: making one master list of seventeen beauties over 40. It's not as easy as you think; the TV landscape has changed a bit, and a few new strong contenders have recently entered their 40s, and a few of the previous list members have left the TV landscape. To make this list, a woman has to have been a regular or significant guest on a TV series or news program in 2007. So, after the jump, a list -- in no particular order -- of fifteen beauties who combine looks, maturity and grace to make one compellingly sexy package.

Thumbnails are with the list, but you can click on the gallery below to get a much better view of these lovely women. Then add your own choices in the comments.