Rewriting History

I'm not complaining, but I had a bit of a feeling of deja vu this week watching TV. Maybe it's because, hey, I watched TV last week, so I have been here before.

Or maybe it's because I have a recollection of someone in the Soprano family bringing an outsider into a card game where they proceed to get fleeced, and subsequently shaken down, and of the boss of the Counter Terrorism Unit fearing for his life and trying to flee, and subsequently dying with a degree of redemption.

That second part was kind of surreal, seeing as how actor Paul Schulze was presiding over a funeral on The Sopranos on Sunday night just as he was getting offed on 24, courtesy of a timeslot shift after Tuesday's presidential press conference. And unlike Robert Patrick's character in the second season, Tim Daly was closer to Christopher (yeah, I'm bouncing between actors and characters, but you know what I mean) than Patrick was to Tony. The best part, by far, was Christopher's genuine disappointment that Daly's character didn't come to him about his drug problem after Christopher had beaten the stuffing out of him for not having his money. Moral ambiguity rules!

Elsewhere, I had an argument concerning Angel on why Eve was ultimately more effective in her role than Lilah would have been had Stephanie Romanov not been dumped from the show, but I've sorta forgotten what that was. Maybe just that the Lindsay storyline wouldn't have been able to work, which seemed somewhat compelling a week ago, but less so now. That said, I loved the misdirection with the coming of the new liaison, the Baldwin who's not a brother that some of us may recall from the dreadful final season of The X-Files and from Firefly.