michael weatherly

This was the second part of "Legend," the episodes that are acting as the NCIS spinoff starring Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J. It looks like a sure thing for the fall, though CBS will make it official at their upfront on May 20.

What did you think of this two-parter? Can you imagine following O'Donnell and LL Cool J for as many seasons as you've followed Mark Harmon and Michael Weatherly?

What are the odds that a big screen adaptation of ABC's 1980's hit MacGyver will be a success? Judging by the success-to-failure ratio of TV-to-movies, I'd say it's 50-50 at best. For every The Fugitive, there's The Wild, Wild West. A Mission: Impossible reboot works well enough as a Tom Cruise vehicle, but a live action Speed Racer is an unmitigated disaster. Still, the optimist in me will hope that New Line's MacGyver to the big screen will work. They first mentioned this about a year ago, but it's picked up some traction now.

There's no star attached as yet, but a lot of De Laurentiises -- Dino is exec producer, Raffaellla and Martha are producing for Raffaella Productions. (Giada is sticking to the Food Network.) Fortunately, the series creator, Lee Zlotoff is attached, too.

Did you know that double Oscar winners Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro acted in soap operas? It's true. Many of today's biggest stars honed their craft by doing New York soaps like As the World Turns and Another World. Before she was Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar was Susan Lucci's daughter on All My Children.

Hollywood soaps like Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless also produced stars. Tom Selleck, for instance, was a Y&R hunk before becoming Magnum, P.I. There are a lot of current stars right now on hit shows who were daytime characters just a few years ago. After the jump, we count down the top ten primetime stars who started in soaps.

Hunks are in the eye of the beholder apparently. When I read -- drooled -- over the hunks chosen as the 50 Hottest Hunks Ever by our friends at AOL (that's a long time), I couldn't help but wonder about the guys that just missed the cut. I made a list. It was longer than the dozen men listed here, but these were the ones that I wanted included because they make my toes tingle.

Unlike Debra -- nice choices, Deb -- I've refrained from putting pictures of these hunks on my walls, but I sure have followed them from show to show, enjoying every moment when they were forced to take off their shirts or flex their muscles.

Bruce Campbell
Oh, Bruce! He is such a hunk. Remember The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.? He was the epitome of the western hero, looking great in black with a cowboy hat, on a horse. And that killer smile. Now, on Burn Notice, he's sort of an older hunk with the great Tommy Bahama shirts and perpetual five o'clock shadow, but still great looking. And since I was fortunate enough to meet him -- on a set visit -- I can tell you that he's a really an eyeful up close. I'd love to be in his arms any time!

Something amazing has happened recently in the TV media: the critics have discovered CBS's stealth ratings champ, NCIS, and it's now cool to come out of the closet and declare your fandom. Articles in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times have reported the fact that not only is NCIS consistently in the top five of the weekly Nielsen ratings, but it's also a smart, well-acted and compelling TV show.

There are reasons to admire NCIS, and if you haven't been watching, here's five really good reasons to check out the show. I know that before I got coerced into giving NCIS a try, I didn't think I'd like it, but boy, was I wrong.

NCIS has to be the #1 show that no one I know watches. I don't mean anything by that, I hear great things about it from readers here. It's just interesting that it's incredibly popular (always in the top 20, often in the top 10) and yet it's one of those shows that no one talks about (see also JAG).

As regular viewers know, the entire team was split up in the season finale, and then word came that Rocky Carroll had been made a series regular. Now comes word that the show has added three more cast members (no word on if they are in for the long haul or just this season), and one of them is a familiar face and name.

(S04E24) CBS has been teasing this episode for a couple weeks now, with promises of secrets being revealed. They did get to the big one, though that was more of a confirmation of what we already expected. Overall though, I think they oversold it. Another case of the promotions department writing checks that the writers aren't cashing.

That feeling of something being incomplete carried over into the rest of the episode as well. It just didn't have the feel of the big season finale. The show set a very high bar with "Twilight" in season two and can't afford to just phone it in like this. Half of this episode could have just been dropped right in the middle of any other episode and it wouldn't have made a difference. That's fine, for episodes 2 through 23, but the big guns have to come out for the first and the last.

(S04E23) This was kind of a confusing episode to me. Not that the story was hard to follow, just that it seemed poorly conceived. I thought the case of the week was well done, but kind of out of place. With it being the end of the season, and the plan already in place to make this a two parter, I would have rather seen something that focused in on the big stories.

It almost felt like flipping the channels between two episodes that were running at the same time. The brief phone conversations between Gibbs and Shepard kind of tied the two stories together, but more than anything, they just pointed out that the story of the week was taking up time that could have been spent on La Grenouille. Maybe I'm just a little impatient, having caught a bit of the finale fever, but it just didn't all fit together for me.

(S04E22) We started season four with a look at Tony taking over for the retired Gibbs. So it's fitting that as we move toward the end of the season we get to see the two of them in parallel stories. They both are facing big decisions where the women in their lives are concerned. And both of them are struggling with what to do, though for different reasons.

Over the last 90 episodes we have learned plenty about Gibbs' past. The issues he has with making a more official commitment to his relationship with Hollis (Susana Thompson) didn't come as a surprise. Gibbs has baggage, and a lot of it. It's a complicated situation and I really like the way they handled it.

(S04E21) This week the NCIS team managed to put the viewer in the same position as Jenny. Unfortunately, that's not a good thing. When she opened up that cargo container and realized that she had been taken for a ride, I was right there with her, because the viewers had been on a ride of their own.

Now, I get how the formula works. NCIS is a mostly stand alone show, with serial elements. And I'm perfectly fine with that. I've been waiting anxiously for the last half of the season to get some answers about Tony/Jeanne and Le Grenouille, and that's fine. I enjoy the stand alone episodes while we wait. This week though, I would describe as a stand alone serial episode. What I mean is that while they were playing with the ongoing storylines, in the end it amounted to nothing. With the possible exception of knowing that Tony had dinner with Jeanne's mother, this episode could be left off the DVD and the story wouldn't miss a beat.

Michael Ausiello at TV Guide is reporting a big scoop: NCIS star Mark Harmon is threatening to walk off the hit CBS show.

Citing inside sources, Ausiello says that Harmon has always been fed up with producer Donald Bellisario's (Magnum, P.I., JAG, Quantum Leap) "chaotic management style" and wants off the show. The source also says that Harmon is one of the nicest guys on television and that he's in the right on this one. The dispute is described as "a big standoff."

So I'll ask you readers the same thing that Ausiello asks his readers: can NCIS survive without Mark Harmon, or is he the main reason to watch the show?

[via TV Tattle]

(S04E20) Twenty episodes in, and I'm chomping at the bit to get to the Tony/Jeanne story. Credit to team NCIS that they have created an arc that has people waiting anxiously for a resolution. With that in mind, if you would have told me that we were going to get a stand alone episode that didn't get into any of the big seasonal stories, I doubt I would have been excited about it.

But then they went and did this. Bringing McGee's next book, "Rock Hollow," into the picture made for some great scenes. And those scenes were really what sold this one. The actual mystery was interesting, but more for what we learned about McGee and the new book than the actual whodunnit aspect. I thought they gave Landon away right off the bat when he recognized "Thom."

(S04E19) Those pesky writers at NCIS just continue to tease us with the Tony/Jeanne story. I saw that Scottie Thompson was going to be in this episode, and after the way the last one ended I was hopeful that we would get tipped off to just what is going on there. No such luck, but I'm ok with that. There were a lot of other things to like about this installment.

Things like the case. The conflicting results from Abby and Ducky had me all confused. Having the plan hinge on the voice modeling software was an interesting way to go with it. The magic door was also a fun twist, and made even more so thanks to Tony's scene both discovering it, and trying to defeat it.

(S04E18) One thing we can say for this episode, the answer to the mystery wasn't obvious from the get go. Between the loan shark, the shady freight carrier, and the return of Mike Franks (Muse Watson), it was a complicated affair. That's ok though, because it made for a pretty entertaining episode.

The folks in promotion over at CBS get a couple demerits this week for the misleading teasers. The various previews I saw kept mentioning "a connection to Gibbs' past." Now, that's some of the good stuff that I think a lot of fans are waiting for. If there was a connection in this episode, it was either very minor, or I completely missed it. If that connection was just Mike coming back again, then they horribly oversold it.

(S04E15) After the big revelations last week regarding the ongoing case, I fully expected a stand-alone episode that mostly ignored it this week. And that is pretty much what was delivered. It's ok though, because while it was open and shut, this was an interesting case.

What really sold the mystery for me was the way it was presented. The Club One angle worked on a couple different levels. I would have said it was worth it just for the scene with McGee, Abby, Ziva, and Lee making their entrance, but there was much more.

The exclusivity of the club put the team at a disadvantage because they couldn't investigate as they normally would. It had the bonus of putting us in the same situation, because we couldn't get a feel for the suspects.