If I had free time, I would have turned the accompanying image into an animated gif in which Jack vanished, which is the trademark of his show Without a Trace. The victim of the week was always shown doing something and then disappearing through camera trickery.
The season finale of the show had the feel of a series finale, in that they showed a photo montage of many of the victims from past shows. Turns out, the show was canceled by CBS, so I guess they were playing it safe and read the writing on the wall. Also gone is The Unit, which was a consistently better show than Without a Trace (or Cold Case, for that matter, which was not canceled), although this season there might have been too much Mamet for casual viewers.
I also read that Samantha Who? was canceled. I’m not sure why I watched that show, because it was often uncomfortably bad. I won’t miss it–though I do regret the cancellation of The Unit. That one I will miss. Glad to hear that Castle was picked up for a second season.
Now that the spring season is over, it’s time for the summer shows to start. I’m looking forward to rejoining Burn Notice and The Closer, perhaps Raising the Bar. I’ve decided to pass on In Plain Sight. I stuck with it through its freshman season but it, too, had uncomfortably bad moments. Too many to justify watching it any more. Eureka doesn’t start up again until July. The final episodes of Eli Stone are supposed to air this summer, too. I don’t know if the series will be wrapped up or just play out until it runs out. Mad Men doesn’t start up again until August, so all in all it looks like a quiet summer in TV land. The only new series I’m contemplating trying out is limited series The Prisoner on AMC, though I’m not sure when it debuts.
I started reading Jonathan Carroll’s A Ghost in Love this week. I’ve had it on the TBR stack for quite a while, but only now got around to it. I had heard some uncomplimentary things about it, but I’m enjoying it so far. You know you’re in Carroll land when you meet the talking dog, and in this case that happens pretty much straight away. You have to prepare yourself for exceedingly odd events in a Carroll novel, such as having the Angel of Death appear as a plate of scrambled eggs in a greasy spoon diner. Due to a system virus of some sort in Heaven, a man who was supposed to die after he fell and cracked his head on the sidewalk survived, and he now has a ghost attached to him who is tasked with monitoring what happens, because no one in the afterworld has any idea of what’s going on, or the consequences of this event.
