Charlotte Unlocks a Mysterious Web on 'Alias,' 'Everwood' Weaves a More tangled One and the FBI Gets Caught in a Family One!

Despite the CSI rerun, it was still an overloaded night of television last night. Let's go ahead and dig right in with last night's Alias. You have to love the old Alias bait-and-switch. First they reveal the cryogenically frozen man, and we're left scratching our heads. Ok, you guys didn't think it was going to be Vaughn, right? I'll admit the thought crossed my mind, but I knew better than to expect the obvious with this show. Then, they tell us that the frozen man is Renee's father. He got involved in Prophet 5 after Renee's medical bills kept adding up (she was a sickly child). He allowed Prophet 5 to conduct their experiments on him in exchange for some serious cash. The last time Renee saw her father he was injected with something and dragged off. The heartwarming reunion between father and daughter was abruptly cut short when an observant Syd realized that "not-Dad" shouldn't have known about the beacon. And all the men dressed in black outside the building weren't trying to kidnap "not-Dad," but rather trying to rescue him. We learned at the end of the episode that "not-Dad" was actually Dr. Desantis, the man who conducted all of the experiments for Prophet 5. No wonder they wanted this guy back so badly! Just a side note, but am I the only one who wanted my very own "Charlotte?" I mean, this little mechanical spider could read documents through steel, allowing our favorite APO members to learn about Desantis' work! Marshall is just so crafty. Elsewhere, Sloane manipulated the only hold-out Senator on his clearance reinstatement for APO, so he's back. The only problem is that he has to work for Gordon Dean if he wants to help his daughter, so he'll be essentially spying on APO for Dean so Dean can be sure to stay at least one step ahead of Syd and co. I guess this is what APO gets for trusting Sloane in the first place.

Some of the best episodes of Everwood usually involve the hysterical interaction between Harold and Andy, so when I heard that these two, along with Bright and Ephram, would be taking a weekend camping trip, I was so there! It's so much fun to watch two very talented actors play off of each other the way these two do. Their exchanges are the best on television! I also loved the conversation between Bright and Ephram on whether or not Bright could deal with Hannah's assertion that she does not believe in having premarital sex "until after you're married" (loved that quote from Bright!). This conversation was especially great when you contrast it to the one Amy and Hannah had in the costume store. Hannah was gushing about Bright's no-big-deal attitude when she told him about her beliefs. Meanwhile, Bright makes the decision to break up with her as soon as he gets back, even though he realizes he's being a jerk. I really didn't think he would do it. Ok, for a moment or so I thought he would, but then when I saw him watching her through the window, I knew he was way past that stage. So, Ephram returned to Everwood because he's still in love with Amy. What a tangled web my dear Everwood weaves. Amy gets caught up in a charity haunted house debacle with Reid, and comes away thinking he doesn't have any interest in her. But Reid is a tricky one, and catches her off guard by kissing her the next day. Amy tells Hannah later at Nina's restaurant, Andy overhears it (and he knows about Ephram) and now it looks like my favorite teenage couple ever will not be getting back together any time soon. There's one thing I can always count on, though, and it's the guarantee that this show will always give me an awesome, first rate episode each week. The surprise this season has been that each week keeps getting better and better.

Go ahead and throw the tomatoes. I can take it, I swear. But, I will not bash Agent Delgado on Without A Trace. I'm really liking her, as in, she's quickly becoming one of my favs along with Viv and Danny. She's feisty, and that's something that this show was missing. I know I wasn't a huge fan of the new girl on Cold Case, but she was different. First of all, that show is supposed to focus on Lilly and her crusade to solve the unsolved and the new girl added zero, zip, zilch. Delgado adds something to Without A Trace, which is much more of an ensemble show than Cold Case anyway. She has an edge from working vice and, as we learned last night, she comes from a traditional family and she broke out of the mold. This experience was especially helpful last night when the team was searching for a young Korean woman named Wendy who went missing from her family's deli. Wendy was also raised in a traditional family, but, as she told her brother, she wanted more than that life now that she was an adult. She had gotten mixed up in an arranged engagement to a man who turned out to be gay. They even staged a break up scene for their families in order to protect his secret. She was also involved with some not-so-nice guys that she met through an internet dating service, one of whom, posted a nasty ad that instructed guys to climb through her window and they'd get whatever they wanted. Despite all the wrong men in her life, it ended up being her brother who was worst of all. In a fit of rage (and a page ripped right out of Cold Case's playbook), he killed her with a found piece of wood in an alley outside the deli because she was getting out of the traditional life all together and he was going to have to stay. It was a bummer to find out that the missing person was really a murder victim. A lot of the time on this show, they turn up alive. I guess it's a sobering reminder that many real missing persons cases don't end well. I thought this was a strong outing for this show, and further proof that it's back on the right track.

About Last Night... CBS once again dominated the night. At 8, the eye network's Survivor: Guatemala took the hour, followed by a tie between ABC's Alias and reruns of NBC's Joey and Will & Grace. At 9, a repeat episode of CBS's CSI easily won the hour, followed by NBC's The Apprentice and Fox's movie Maid In Manhattan. The final hour of the night went to CBS's Without a Trace, which had a larger audience than NBC's ER and ABC's Primetime combined. For more on last night's ratings, visit Zap2it.

~Primetime Pass~
@8 p.m. - Fox's The Bernie Mac Show airs a special Halloween episode. Zombies invade the Mac house after Jordan is left in charge of the babysitting. He watches a DVD and scares himself into believing zombies are attacking his house.

@9 p.m. - Marines serving in a unit that lost 48 men in combat get new homes in their special homecoming on NBC's Three Wishes.

SUNDAY EDITION
@8 p.m. - It's do or die time for the candidates on NBC's The West Wing when they are both faced with the abortion debate.

@10 p.m. - Woody and Macy work an old missing persons case after the body surfaces in a park while Jordan struggles with her issues with commitment after a violent husband/wife murder case on NBC's Crossing Jordan.


QUICK CUTS

*ABC is bringing back Dancing With the Stars at the beginning of next year. The celebrity dance competition will fill in for Alias while star Jennifer Garner takes her maternity leave from the show. That places the show on the Thursday night schedule at 8 p.m. EST. The competition will run 8 weeks through January and February starting January 5th. No details yet on any of the celebrity contestants, but there will be an American Idol-type results show this time around.

*Lifetime is pulling the plug on the longest running original cable series Strong Medicine after 6 years on the air. The show averages 2 1/2 million viewers and has aired 132 episodes. Lifetime feels that the program has run its course and it's time to send it off. The show stars Rick Schroder and Rosa Blasi. It will end its run early next year.

*And finally, you like her, you really like her!! That's right Wednesday's episode of UPN's Veronica Mars scored its largest audience ever! More than 3 1/2 million viewers tuned in the other night. That may not sound like a lot compared to timeslot rival Lost's more than 20 million a week, but it's a huge feat for a show that usually averages around 2 million. Veronica got an extra push this week because ABC aired a repeat of Lost. You go girl! In other ratings news, it was a different story for Fox's coverage of the World Series this year. The broadcasts received their lowest ratings ever for the network.

That's all for today. Be sure to tune in Monday for my final thoughts on Veronica's first season (I'll have the DVDs finished then) and Primetime Pass, About Last Night and all the latest television news!