William Peterson is out and Lawrence Fishburne is in. That's the plan, anyway, over at CSI central.

Peterson's decision to say goodbye to CSI was one of the big stories of 2008. The actor's onscreen phase-out started earlier this month with the introduction of Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Raymond Langston, but he's not really saying goodbye. Peterson will remain on the hit CBS show as an executive producer and will likely appear as a guest star in future episodes. His final ep airs January 15.

Since CSI is one of those ever-lasting franchises, like Law & Order, I wouldn't rule out a complete return for Peterson a few years from now. Maybe he'll spin-off another show. I'm sure fans wouldn't mind seeing CSI: The Gil Grissom Chronicles.

Me, I don't really care. I don't watch CSI (I guess I'm not that intrigued by forensic science). So let's talk about the 2008 TV star departures that meant something to me.

(S02E13) Well, despite some ups and downs throughout the season, to say that this second run went out with a bang, both literally and emotionally, would be an understatement. Definitely, this ranks as one of the best episodes of the series so far and so amazingly surpasses the first season finale in every way. Where that was a silly overblown giant monster romp, this one existed on a much more intimate level within the lives of our cast of characters.

The cast and crew spent all season really fleshing out this team for us and making us learn to love and care for each of them; all of it leading to this stunning finale. Now the events herein could really resonate. Now you might be asking why such a generic Torchwood picture for such a key episode? I see it as a tribute. To what? Well, if you've seen the episode, maybe you know what. If not, what the hell are you doing here? Go watch it already.

(S02E12) The penultimate episode of the second season delivers in a big way, both setting up the season finale as a major event with huge stakes for Captain Jack as well as delivering some great looks back at what brought each member of Torchwood to the team. Using the framing sequence of a massive explosion, we spend the majority of the episode in Lost-like flashbacks.

What's so brilliant about the stories we get is that in most cases the back-stories are nothing like I would have expected for that character, and yet at the same time it so perfectly serves the personality and drives of each individual on the team. Suddenly, Tosh's meekness, Ianto's eagerness and Owen's boorishness make perfect sense in the context of their past experiences. Even Jack's cavalier behavior and obsessive dedication to Torchwood make sense considering his own history with it. What they've managed is to add more depth to our relationship with each of the individual Torchwood members just in time for all hell to break loose in the finale.

(S02E10) I guess everyone at Torchwood Creative was still exhausted from the Owen three-parter, because this episode was even more of a letdown than the previous one. While the notion of these "night travelers" somehow being able to step out of old film and into the real world is interesting enough, it seems a better fit for a show like Supernatural than Torchwood, which tries to explain everything away with the Cardiff rifts and space aliens.

It was cool to think of Jack exploiting his immortality by performing as "The Man Who Could Not Die" in a traveling freak show a hundred years ago or so. It would make perfect sense that he'd go into that line of work. But then we learned that he did so while investigating the "night travelers," but he wouldn't say for whom and why he was investigating. Another layer of the Captain Jack onion almost peeled.

(S02E09) Gwen Cooper finds her career intruding on her home life when she is impregnated by an alien shapeshifting carnivore on her wedding day. And you thought your wedding day had problems.

This was more of a comic-relief episode than any of the season's previous ones. It was a welcome respite from the heavy life-and-death episode about Owen from last week.

On a side note, I'm amazed Owen, since he died and was resurrected, still doesn't have the craving for human flesh that the shapeshifter from this episode had. In all other aspects he's pretty much become a zombie. Maybe that bit happens later.

(S02E08) "You get to live forever. I get to die forever." -Owen comparing his situation to Jack's immortality.

This was a very different Torchwood episode. There were no aliens to battle and no major action sequences. In fact, Team Torchwood was mostly inactive. Instead, we got to take an episode to look deep into the psyche and situation of Dr. Owen Harper. Everything from the music to the way the various scenes were shot lent itself perfectly to the melancholy and hopelessness of the character. Burn Gorman showed tremendous depth in his portrayal of Owen this installment, and it looks like we may finally be looking at some major growth for Owen. Not that he still doesn't have some very serious issues to deal with.

(S02E05) If you're one of those people who believes what I tell you then I apologize. As was corrected in the comments last week, this episode was not the one that featured the start of Freema Ageyman's run on Torchwood, reprising her Doctor Who role of Martha Jones. That one is next week. Instead we got a fantastic one-off episode that not only got into the inner workings of the personalities that make up the Torchwood team, but that also showed us some of Jack's mysterious past.

Did you really think Captain Jack wouldn't be back? Now in its second series/season in both the UK and the US, we're going to do things a little differently with our Torchwood reviews this year. The fine folks on both sides of the pond finally got things squared away so that new episodes air much closer in the US to their initial UK airing. The third episode airs this Saturday, February 9, on BBC America, which is a little more than a week after the UK airing. To minimize any "spoilery" concerns, the episode reviews will follow the US airings.

But before we can get to that, we need to play a little bit of catch up, so look for an overview of the first two episodes of Series/Season Two after the jump. And about that image up there spoiling the first episode? Hey, that might just be a flashback sequence. That's right, I got you there.