I have seen the future of Castle … and it is good. Well, the season two premiere is anyway, and the little promises they’ve given us, if they should be fulfilled, will make for a well-developed season, building nicely upon the groundwork laid in season one.

Lots of our favorite elements are back — quotable lines, Beckett / Castle banter, Castle getting advice from his not-like-him daughter, the poker game (yeah, I almost jumped out of my seat!). They’ve added a couple of new dimensions as well, that I think will make the series even stronger. Aryeh would like to see more crimes based on Castle novels. We don’t get that in the premiere, but that would be fun to explore this season.

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Get past the fact that it’s actually not a crime drama on CBS … the Powers That Be saw fit to produce The Good Wife, a legal drama centered around lawyer Alicia Florrick, played by Julianna Margulies, who recently returns to work to support her family. Why? Her husband Peter was basically a giant douchebag politician, tossed in jail for a sex scandal, and other illegal acts.

It sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? But this, my friends, is not a sob story. It is a charming story of a woman’s strength and her love for her family, her interactions with the quirky people she meets in her revived career, and her relationship with her estranged inmate husband and her mother-in-law (who lives with her and her children).

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Strangely enough, in all these years, I’ve never caught a full episode of NCIS. I really liked JAG when it first came on and I generally like Mark Harmon, so I’m not sure why it never graced my screen. When I heard they were making a spin-off starring Chris O’Donnell (my gimme) and LL Cool J, I couldn’t wait to check it out (and now I’ve seen the pilot). With that star power, there had to be something good going on, right?

[What? You don't know what a gimme is? You all have them. In the event I meet Chris O'Donnell someday and he wants to sleep with me, I have permission to do so. He's been my gimme for about 15 years ... Keith's changes with the wind.]

It will be interesting to see what NCIS fans think of this show, but I’m hoping some non-fans will give it a try, because it works for me on a number of levels.

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When I received the latest Little Einsteins DVD for review, Little Einsteins: Fire Truck Rocket’s Blastoff, complete with never-before-seen episode “Fire Truck Rocket,” I thought I’d just grab a few quotes from my son and be done with it. Why shouldn’t the four-year-old who is the intended viewer be the reviewer, too?

There may be some precious “out of the mouths of babes” gems to follow, but I had to put in my two cents about the real hook on this DVD: the interactive component. No, I’m not talking about interactivity akin to Dora yelling at the pint-sized viewer from inside the screen (though Swiper’s “Oh Man!” sounds awfully cute coming out of a preschooler’s mouth). Think Wii meets your remote, meets Who Wants to be a Millionaire … or maybe Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?.

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Hmmm … what to say about The Philanthropist…. I was pretty excited by the premise of this show when NBC announced it, simply because it was very different from everything else out there. You’re not going to believe this, but the main character, Teddy Rist, is not a cop, a doctor nor a lawyer. No, I’m not making that up. He’s not a vampire, either.

Businessman, philanderer, philanthropist … no medical degree — did I say that already? Teddy Rist is an interesting character, and what struck me immediately about him is that he’s understatedly spunky. His adventure to get a vaccine to a remote village in Nigeria is juxtaposed with him ordering his assistant to have some decent booze delivered, because all they have is Jim Beam. James Purefoy’s got a great face — expressive, wise-assy, tender, hard.

It gets better, though.

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I’m generally a pilot-hater. There are not too many shows that catch me on the first go around. Most need some time to find their groove and usually, I give a series a few episodes before I dump it. OK, that’s not entirely true; sometimes, like with Mental, I give it about fifteen minutes, whether it’s fair or not.

The Listener I gave two episodes, because that’s all I had. Some things really work for me; elements of the show have huge potential. Other things fell flat and I hope it gels soon. Watching the second episode become more painful as it went on, and I found myself drifting off … so slow … is this show still on?… how many more minutes left? … that sort of drifting off.

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Any self-respecting Joss Whedon fan (and even fans who don’t respect themselves) has been dying to see if the master can wow us all again with another Buffy/Firefly/Angel-like masterpiece. Given the rather lukewarm reviews of Dollhouse as of late, we’ve all been a bit nervous. Add to that the pilot rewrite and the Friday night death slot and … well, I don’t need to tell you how that makes most people feel.

I finally got my chance to get an official look at the Dollhouse pilot, and so far I’ve got to say we’re right to be worried.

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