Chameleons on TV

Zeljko Ivanek — it’s a name that just rolls of the tongue. Google it so you’ll know who I mean. He’s a pasty, ghoulish looking guy who always manages to elevate whatever program he appears on. This week he was the hostage taker on House, the guy who’s so desperate to find out what’s wrong with him that he’s not afraid to shoot people to get an answer. Of course, he didn’t count on meeting up with someone as cavalier as House, which leads to one of the best episodes of the show in a while. I know there were all sorts of places where the patient could have been overpowered or outwitted, but the point of the show, as always, isn’t about the actual illness (in the end, the diseases always sound the same to me) but about how the illness reflects on the characters—in this case “Thirteen” (character’s real name: Remy Hadley) and House.

Cullen Douglas, who played Guy, the crazed maitre d’ in our adaptation of “Gotham Cafe” played a pedophile on Private Practice this week. It was a gutsy performance, as he detailed the torment that goes on inside his mind and his personal struggle against unwanted thoughts.

I liked Criminal Minds this week. Currie Graham (Balco from Raising the Bar) is another chameleon. Most of his recent parts have been characters on the sleazy side (Balco, for example) and his Viper was as sleazy as the come. He was also the lieutenant on NYPD Blue and Sela Ward’s ill husband on House. Spencer Reid had some nice moments on the show this week, with his magic tricks and the SWAK business card the bartender sent him after he came to her rescue.

Law & Order was overly convoluted this week. Started out with a ripped-from-the-headlines falling crane in NYC that led to a corruption investigation that was promptly forgotten once they found out that the widow of the accident’s victim was on life support due to “dry drowning” that was the result of an assault motivated by her opposition to a radical surgical procedure proposed by a couple to keep their brain damaged child small. Phew. Even typing that out exhausted me.