When I first heard Jeff Probst describe the Survivor: Exile Island cast as "likeable" (unlike Gang Guatemala), I knew we were in for a long, dull slog -- and I wasn't wrong. It was halfway through the season before I got a handle on ANY of these miscreants, even the fabulousness that is Cirie Fields. But once Cirie was gone, who the heck even cared? It was another dull finale like last season, right down to the finalist with big fake boobs named Danielle; the colorful, entertainingly moronic hunky alpha male dogs were all gone by F5 and the likeable, under-the-radar older woman was out at F4.

As for Gray's Anatomy: I've never understood what people see in this show. When I was in my 20's, I dated a few doctors, and none of them were hunky, and all of them were either perverts, sociopaths, or really boring. It's amazing that after 40-some-odd years of General Hospital, the Myth of the Hunky Doctor is still alive. And they don't even make a lot of money anymore.

I agree with you 100% about Jet Li in Unleashed -- a film that could have been awful, but was astonishing because of the quiet, almost wordless range of this actor. My husband has studied Shaolin kung-fu, so he can attest to the flawlessness of Li's martial arts form, but for me, watching his character in Unleashed last year reminded me far more of Lillian Gish than of Bruce Lee. It would be sad if we don't get the chance to see Li educate people about what a beautiful form Chinese kung-fu is in this society in which every kid goes to a tae kwon do school -- but if it means we get to see him develop as an actor, that's a good deal of compensation.

The final episodes of Heroes and Dexter were like finally having sex with that person you've wanted to much -- and it turns out he/she's a dud in the sack.

I'm being overly harsh, of course, but I turned off the set after both finales saying, "That's it?" Heroes fared far worse than Dexter because of the awful writing and sense that even the actors are growing tired of going nowhere and of their characters' stupidity (Milo Ventimiglia and Sendhil Ramamurthy, I'm talking to you).

But I think they killed off Doakes far too early in the episode (and spoiled it in the previews beforehand). The interplay between Doakes and Dexter was some of the best acting we've seen all season, and started us down the path of righting our ship of hero-rooting as we finally remembered that it's Doakes who's the good guy.

But between the whole Lila storyline turning into a replay of "Fatal Attraction" only with Marla from "Fight Club" walking in to stir things up, what's been a quirky series seemed pressed to wrap things up too neatly.

Or are they?

We now know that Dexter has created his own code that isn't Harry's, though we don't know what it is yet. And you have to love the little wink Dexter gives us at the end, as if to say, "And what does it say about YOU that you're happy I got away with it? Who's the sociopath, after all?"

You can't talk about Dexter without mentioning Michael C. Hall, who makes everyone around him better. At first brush, the living-a-lie Dexter doesn't seem all that much of a stretch from the living-a-lie (at least at the outset) David Fisher from "Six Feet Under". But Hall so understands this character that every week he invites us to try on Dexter's skin for an hour. Hall has now dominated TWO hit series. He is the undisputed king of Sunday night.

And so Walter Shapiro joins the Historic Story Caucus, which has been trying to push Edwards out of the race ever since Elizabeth's cancer recurrence was revealed. The First Woman or the First Black Man may make better copy, but Edwards is channelling Paul Wellstone here; running an unabashedly progressive campaign after the Media Heathers (which Shapiro has now joined) have long since said that there's something unseemly about calling the situation as it is. Hillary is a corporatist and Obama is delusional, thinking you can "reach across the aisle" to Republicans without pulling back a bloody stump. Only Edwards understands what he's dealing with here. Why are you joining in the burial?

So now we'll see just how important it is for the more vociferous Hillarions to have a Vagina-American on the ticket, and whether a colossally unqualified woman is viewed by them as more worthy than a man who's spent his adult life trying to help working people.

My guess is that he will ask questions like: "Piper: cute, very cute, or really, really cute?" He's so far in the tank for McCain he's practically drowning.

Not only are Bush's claims about weapons inspectors lies, but his "regret" that he was unprepared for war is utter horsepuckey as well.

His former ghost writer, Mickey Hershkowitz, said that Bush told him in 1999 (well before the election:

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

link: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm