'A Gifted Man' is a medical drama, but, the way actor Patrick Wilson describes his character, neurosurgeon Michael Holt, he could well be talking about a superhero. A blunt, take-charge superhero.

"Do you want the kind of doctor who's going to say, 'Listen, these are your options, and if it were me, I might do this. What do you think?'" Wilson said in an August interview about his CBS show. "Or do you want someone who'll go, 'This is how it's going to go down. I'm going to do this, and this is going to make you better.' You kind of want that."

Holt is indeed gifted in almost superhuman ways -- and he has the gleaming, high-end medical practice to prove it -- but the visit he got from his dead wife in the show's pilot deeply unnerved him, and his shield of clinical arrogance was no help to him in that situation.

There's truth to the old saying that opposites attract, and that truth was at the heart of the central relationship in 'A Gifted Man' (Fri., 8PM ET on CBS). Friday nights on CBS are no strangers to ghostly apparitions, but this may be the first time that a ghost is one of the stars of the show.

Michael Holt (Patrick Wilson) is a neurosurgeon who almost makes Dr. House look like a great guy. He's a jerk, but his ex-wife Anna (Jennifer Ehle) was one of the kindest and giving people in the world. Thus he works for fat checks while she ran a free clinic.

And yet, when he reconnected with her after several years, he was thrilled to see her. But then he found out she had died in a car accident not long before. Suddenly, he was questioning his sanity and health and all the while she kept coming to him.

The best thing about the very good drama 'A Gifted Man' (8PM ET Friday, CBS) might be the fact that it's every bit as skeptical about ghosts as you are.

Well, maybe you're not skeptical about visitors from beyond the grave. Whether you are or not, 'A Gifted Man' should still work for you, because it treats the ghost, the person she appears to and the whole concept of working things out after death with an intelligent mixture of curiosity, confusion and compassion. There's no contempt, but neither is there any cliched, sentimental blather.

What I'm trying to say is, even though this show airs on Friday night on CBS, at no point will you be reminded of 'The Ghost Whisperer.'

Whether or not Margo Martindale wins a best supporting actress Emmy on Sunday, the nomination for her role on FX's 'Justified' has already had an impact on her life.

I spoke to her last month about her new role in the promising CBS drama 'A Gifted Man,' and she said she was both surprised by the Emmy nomination and gratified by how it had raised her profile after decades in the entertainment industry.

"It's lovely to be treated with such respect," Martindale said. "That has changed, and I think it changed with 'Justified.' I have been working for a long time, but it makes me feel great at my age to have a wonderful dressing room, for people to tell me how wonderful I am at what I'm doing."

The first annual Critics' Choice Television Awards honored many Emmy favorites, but gave some love to the underdogs during its June 20 ceremony.

Actors and actresses from 'The Good Wife,' 'Mad Men' and 'Cougar Town' were amongst the winners at the inaugural awards ceremony.

The show, which was hosted by 'So You Think You Can Dance''s Cat Deeley, was streamed live on VH1.com, and will air on ReelzChannel Wed., June 22 at 8PM.

Check out a full list of winners below.

(S02E07) I debated whether or not I should follow that post title up with a "kind of" or an "unfortunately." Because really, it is unfortunate that season two was cut short by the strike. If we were gearing up to watch the next six episodes of season two, this would have been a pivotal episode.

With Dahlia's breakdown, Didi rebelling against her father, and the growing tension between Wayne and Quinn, things are building nicely. As a season finale though, I'm left feeling disappointed. Still, "The Lying King" did offer up some good bits to the story. More on that, after the jump.
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(S02E04) Use any cliché you want: this is the episode where the chickens come home to roost, the shit hits the fan, the bill comes due, the Malloys have to pay the piper, etc. etc. What we do know at the end of this episode is that Wayne is starting to get in over his head, and even he knows that his conning skills are only going to get him so far. He's been able to dig himself and his family out of the messes they've created to this point, but this one is a doozy. Not only is he going up against a guy that's probably an even bigger con artist than he is, but also this guy doesn't have any semblance of a conscience. Talk about a deadly combination.

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(S02E03) Well, the Malloys are back in Eden Falls, living life as the Riches. And all hell's about to break loose.

That's the situation we have in this episode. Wayne's trying to keep the big deal Hugh brokered alive while Hugh searches for his mojo. Dale is stalking around Panco looking for a job so he can be in on the deal. Only we know that the lummox has some information and a hell of a lot of muscle behind him. And Dahlia is having yet another crisis involving her sense of place in the world. Oh, and then we have the kids: Cael wants out, DiDi wants to fit in, and Sam wonders why there's blood stains on the stairs.

Looks like we're entering the darkest part of the tunnel in this show, aren't we?
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(S02E02) For the second week in a row, Wayne spends most of the episode separated from the rest of his family, cleaning up the messes he got in at the end of the first season. In fact, we're pretty much where we left off in last week's season premiere, with Wayne trying to figure out what to do with Hugh and Dale while also trying to figure out how to dispose of poor Pete. Meanwhile, Dahlia, Nina, and the kids try to steal a van but are caught by a stressed out man with a big gun and an itchy trigger finger.

What this sets up is, in a lot of ways, a "scam of the week" episode, something we saw a lot of last season. But I get the feeling this might be the last one we see for a while, mainly because the "big scam," which is Hugh's massive development deal, is going to swallow up not only the Malloys, but everyone around them.
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(S02E01) As much as I liked the first season of The Riches, I thought the show had a couple of basic flaws. First, it seemed like too many episodes were about the con of the week rather than the "big con," which was the Malloys trying to pass for the Riches. But the most fundamental flaw of the entire first season was that, well... we just didn't find enough of a reason to like the Malloys. As despicable as the characters around them in Eden Falls were, we still felt that they were the victims of this family of Irish Travelers stealing the American Dream.

I think Dimitry Lipkin realized this, as the abbreviated second season of The Riches brings us a number of seedy characters that are so heinous that it makes the Malloys look like heroes. The season premiere just sets the table for what's to come.

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(S01E13) Well, there you have it. The big finale for the first season of The Riches. The thing that strikes me about the season is how much it was not what I was expecting. What we ended up seeing was very different than what the promotion FX tossed out all those months ago led one to expect. And I think that was a good thing.

This was a much darker show than those voiced over commercials with Wayne and Dahlia walking down the staircase hinted at. The Malloy family has some serious issues. But at the end of the day, they are a family, and that drives everything they do.