(S01E04) - "What's the point of having power if you don't use it?"

The inevitable has slowly become reality. NBC has shuffled Kings off to a Saturday time slot, affectionately known in TV watcher circles as the "death slot." Kings has now been left in that barren viewer-less void of TV's unwanted to rot in the hot sun of the shunned. Does anyone else smell bacon burning?

It's a shame really. Last Saturday's episode was able to give the series a good kick in the ass, even after the last episode felt like an action packed opus setting itself up for a shark jumper.

"Judgment Day" has turned Kings from a simple game of "Candy Land" where the good make it to the land of sugary goodness and the evil end up stuck in the Chocolate Swamp to a complex mesh of chess where the pieces are allowed to move each other.

You see this picture? That's Christopher Egan in NBC's new midseason drama Kings. He'll be playing a David-like character -- as in David versus Goliath -- when the series debuts later this year or in early 2009. And in an interesting casting coup reported by EW's Michael Ausiello, Macaulay Culkin has been cast on Kings as King Silas' nephew. The king, by the way, is the formidable Ian McShane. Joel reported just how formidable McShane is at last summer's TCA.

Culkin is a long way from the adorable Kevin McAllister in the Home Alone movies, but he's still got that charismatic appeal.

Since Kings is all about power, as McShane's nephew who has been exiled from the kingdom and returns after David's success defeating the Goliath of the show -- a killer tank -- I can see him perhaps as a Mordred character. In other words, an antagonist with issues.

Culkin isn't the only name to join Kings in some capacity: Brian Cox, Miguel Ferrer, Leslie Bibb and Michael Stahl-David are also on board for guest arcs.