American HomicIdol

Well, vampire season is over, so now I can have my Sunday nights back to devote to something more humane and domestic -- a serial killer! Yay, Dexter returns this week to quench my bloodlust!

I was a bit surprised that Jimmy Smits didn't take the Emmy award for his turn as DA-turned-killer last season, but what can you expect? I won't even bother to mention the ricockulousness of Jon Cryer winning over Kevin Dillon or NPH. Just...weird. But it's slightly funny that they felt obliged to actually invent an entire new category to atone for overlooking True Blood after the enormous wave of popularity it achieved this summer. Fucking dipshits. Dexter also gets very little "official" love, but fans know that it's wonderfully episodic viewing, and this year looks as though they're going to deviate from the seasons 1 through 3 arc of Dexter finding a killer soulmate and then having to turn on them. It's a good trick, but now that the pony has performed it so many times, I think it's good that we're seeing Dexter move to the struggles of domesticity and fatherhood so that we can see what problems that'll present.

Speaking of dangerous men with a nasty streak, Larry David has also returned to Sunday nights with another season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Thank God. Nothing really speaks to a misanthrope like Larry David's humor. I'd been missing him, but when they started airing the simple promo of a random woman passing him on the street and cheerily saying, "Smile!" to him, I realized just how badly I was looking forward to Curb's return. Larry, in true Larry style, stops and turns around and glares at the woman and yells after her, "Mind your own business!" It's a simple, stupid promo, but it sums up Larry pretty well, and the premier episode didn't disappoint. It was filled with the minutiae of manners, with Larry being the Dirty Harry enforcer and renegade bad-taste outlaw also. Never one to back down from trying wring comedy from the taboo, (he's previously desecrated the sanctity of support groups, funerals (a couple times) and pedophilia) Larry is this year going to go for the uncomfortable and inappropriate laughs at the expense of cancer. Good on you, Larry.

Meanwhile, Entourage trudges along, with Ari actually being nearly too nasty to Lloyd for me to stomach, which is why I was glad Johnny Drama stuck with our unlikely underdog hero of this season. Drama and Lloyd -- now that's a dream team of misfortune if ever there was one. Eric has finally figured out that his chick is crazy bitch, though I never for a second believed he'd have picked her over Sloan anyhow. I mean, Alexis Dziena is totally cutte, and I'm totally straight, but Emmanuelle Chriqui -- yeah, even I'd hit that. I just wish there'd been something for Vince to do this year. The season just lacked big time without the forward momentum created by an overarching storyline.

In TV news regarding other days of the week, I am again into Top Chef, of course. It's in Vegas, baby, what's not to love? Well, other than Tom Colicchio, whom I still loathe. And I can't recall another season where there was such a disparity between the "top" chefs and the ones who suck, but I don't really care about that.

Besides some lame TV observations, I'm not sure that I have much to post about here, so no need to be alarmed if I fall silent for some long stretches. I will have a new book coming out soon (YAY!) so I'll apologize in advance, but I will have to try to post and promote it here a bit. Was that a good enough segue to actually start to promote? Good. It's not a sequel, but if you liked 24/7 at all, this is a bit of a follow up in that Marina and Miguel are back and it's set in Vegas and it's a fast little caper. Kinda like if the "Sex and the City" girls were Soprano's kin and decided to go all "Ocean's Eleven" on someone's ass. So there you go with the first of that unseemly self-congratulatory business. It's called House Money and you can read some about it here and check out the cool cover, which I will be shamelessly posting numerous times in the future, cause I love it. (Thank you, Don!) And, so that this blog post has a symmetry to it, I will also just mention that there is, indeed, some blood and killing in this book. Yay!