jackie earle haley

'Human Target' (Wed., 8PM ET on FOX) is crazy-fun for lots of reasons, not the least of which is outstanding guest stars.

In tonight's episode, we had Kevin Weisman, whose vast TV credits include 'Alias' (he's cornered the market on computer geeks), as well as Mitch Pileggi (Walter Skinner on 'The X-Files,' among dozens of other roles).

Between those two and star Mark Valley -- and let's not forget Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley -- that covers just about every show in the past 20 years, doesn't it?

Watch the video after the jump.

One of the most fun things of any press tour is getting to sit down with Chi McBride and just talk, about anything. Politics, baseball, cigars... when you're talking to Chi, the conversation can go just about anywhere.

The drawback to seeing McBride on so many tours is that he's always there with a new show to promote. Because he's able to handle drama and comedy with equal ease, he's cast in a lot of pilots. The problem is, most of the resulting shows rarely last more than a couple of years. In the last six years, since his four-season run on 'Boston Public' ended, we've seen McBride in 'Killer Instinct,' 'The Nine' and 'Pushing Daisies.' Now he's co-starring with Mark Valley and Jackie Earle Haley in the FOX popcorn-action series 'Human Target.'

I sat with McBride as he held court at FOX's all-star party in Pasadena last month. As he puffed away on an Opus X -- he offered me one and I very reluctantly declined -- we talked about which of his roles he misses the most, and how he does his running scenes on 'Target.' Let's just say he doesn't waste too much film on those.

(S01E05) High-speed car chases! Police baton beat downs! Seat belt strangulations!

The 14-year-old kid in me loves this show.

So does the currently overworked and underpaid adult version of me. Like a lot of folks these days, I'm just looking to wash away the week's stresses with some fun, old-fashioned hump day entertainment. Thankfully, 'Human Target' is happy to oblige.

This week's energetic hour offered more kicks and wittier one-liners than last week's mountaintop tussle. "Run" was a confident episode. It felt strong and sturdy, not unlike the series' awesome third outing ("Embassy Row").

(S01E04) Just like Chuck Bartowski, Christopher Chance seems able to access any type of fighting skill, foreign language, or Bible verse necessary to nudge his way out of a tight spot. But unlike Chuck, or Echo from 'Dollhouse', his super skills don't come courtesy of some dubious sci-fi technology. So where did Chance get his awesome abilities? Who knows? We'll probably never learn the answer to that question. Despite the show's small attempts to get a larger arc moving, 'Human Target' is more concerned with delivering fun, action-packed self-contained episodes than with building a rich mythology.

Surprisingly, 'Sanctuary' offered some valuable intel about Chance's past, courtesy of Guerrero's latest "side job." We learned that he's wracked with guilt over his involvement in a woman's death -- a woman he was probably in love with. The same woman might've been the reason he turned things around and started working for the good guys, mirroring this week's client, John Gray ('Fanboys' star Sam Huntington). I'm looking forward to seeing these plot elements finally pay off somewhere down the line, but I don't expect the payoff to be huge.

We've all been there. You need to diffuse a bomb and have no clue what you're doing. So you make a call to the super-geek bomb diffuser of the operation to find out which wires get cut and so on and so forth.

Only right in the middle of the call, you hear the super-geek bomb diffuser flip a coin. Really?! Come on!! Anyway, good thing that Winston's gut has a good feel for these things. "In case you're wondering," he tells Guerrero on the other end of the line, "it was the blue wire!"

And have we mentioned how much we're loving 'Human Target' (Wed., 8PM ET on FOX)?

Watch the video after the jump.

As Guerrero on 'Human Target,' Jackie Earle Haley doesn't get to fly planes, parachute out of trains, or charm his way into an embassy party. That job goes to Christopher Chance, the title character played to perfection by Mark Valley.

But Haley does get to play the more interesting character -- the mysterious guy behind the scenes, the one who can find any information you need about anyone or anything, the guy who, when threatened by thugs, will accept their initial beat-down and tell them in great detail who he will kill in their sleep first, offering condolences the wife and kids.

Through the first three episodes, there are few concrete details about Guerrero's past, and aspect of the character that Haley enjoys. "That's what's fun about this guy, it seems like we're kind of all learning it together." he said during a conference call with the media.

(S01E02) If there's one thing that Human Target gets right, it's the action. This episode just kind of sat there until Chance started kicking the assassin's teeth in at the fifteen-minute mark. The fight scene wasn't as nuts as Sunday night's bloody train tussle, but it added some much needed energy to the first half of this episode. And things only got crazier a few minutes later when Chance uttered the line of the night: "We're gonna flip the plane!"

Flipping an airplane at 30,000 feet would probably be a "jump the shark" moment for most other shows. But not on Human Target, a show so ridiculous and over-the-top that "jump the shark" simply does not apply.

I love the tone and spirit of this show. It's retro and fun and a little tongue-in-cheek, but it's also packed with some very appealing characters, compelling stories and a top notch cast. The first half of tonight's ep left me a little cold, but I was still invested enough to want to see how it would all turn out in the end. And I'm glad I stuck around.

Did you watch the premiere of 'Human Target' last night? It's jam-packed with kick-ass action, cool guest stars, and a lightning-fast bullet train. It's like James Bond, 'The A-Team,' and a Bruce Willis movie all rolled into one.

Based on a DC Comics comic book and graphic novel, the Fox show stars Mark Valley as adrenaline junkie Christopher Chance, a unique bodyguard/private detective who thwarts murder attempts by impersonating the intended victims in order to draw the killers' fire.

Watch the videos from TV's Top 5! after the jump.

(S01E01) Chris Chance is The Mentalist's Patrick Jane, Lie to Me's Cal Lightman and Die Hard's John McClane rolled into one phenomenal package. It's ridiculous, but it works.

The same can be said for this show. Simply put, Human Target rocks. It's a lightning-paced, cocksure and surprisingly funny contempo version of an '80s action TV show. So rejoice, folks. The smart action-packed hour we've been waiting for has arrived.

If there's any justice in this world, Human Target will make Mark Valley a star. No -- a superstar. Three minutes into the pilot and I saw the makings of a classic witty TV hero in his performance. The veteran actor hits all the right notes and manages to make his implausibly awesome character feel like a real person.

After nearly four decades in show business, Oscar-nominated actor Jackie Earle Haley is jumping on the TV show bandwagon.

In 'Human Target' (premieres Sun., Jan. 17, 8PM ET on Fox), an adaptation of the DC Comic, Haley stars as Guerrero, the sketchiest member on a team of life-saving, crime-fighting security pros, which also includes Mark Valley and Chi McBride.

AOL TV visited the show's Vancouver set where we got Haley's take on the show -- "every week it's just like another action movie of the week" -- and where he sees his character going: "I'm really looking forward to the episode where we discover that Guerrero moonlights as a gigilo," Haley joked.

Watch our full interview now, and check out our chats with Chi McBride and Mark Valley, too.

There's been a lot of talk coming out of the Television Critics Association press tour about the opening credits for FOX's new version of The Human Target, which premieres this Sunday. Here's a look. I like the graphics, but the music isn't as moody or energetic as it should be. It's more "majestic," which seems wrong for this kind of show.

But hey, it's an actual opening credits sequence and a theme song, which is more than most shows have today, so let's not argue. (Here's the opening of the 1992 Rick Springfield version of the show.)

While it was a little odd that the "screener" of Glee we got was the exact same episode that FOX aired after American Idol in the spring, the rest of these shows were truly new. Dramatic offerings included FOX's loose adaptation of the DC Comics property Human Target and Past Life. On the comedy side they offered us screeners for The Cleveland Show, Brothers, Sons of Tucson and the aforementioned Glee.

After enduring the screener for Do Not Disturb last season on FOX, I could only hope that these offerings were at least better than that offense to the senses. And they were. Well, most of them. Unfortunately, it seems that FOX has at least one Do Not Disturb in them every season. Other than that, one of these shows was far better than I expected, another a bit worse, and a third one stands as one of the better pilots I've ever seen.