Rachel Goes 'Solo,' the Bullets Fly in Vegas and Hannah Says Goodbye!

I'm really enjoying this season's Alias storylines from Rachel's story paralleling Sydney's to Sloane's betrayal to save his daughter and Syd's quest to avenge Vaughn's death. So far, it has been a season filled with good old-fashioned spy capers and undercover work. Last night's episode, "Solo," continued the trend as new agent Rachel completed her first solo mission, and it was nail biter! Rachel has been very reluctant from the beginning, and then watching her freeze and run during the intel collection in India caused me to have serious doubts about her. She makes me nervous because she is so unsure of herself. Obviously, she has the guts and the abilities to complete these missions, but she seemed to be lacking the confidence. I think that her ease of collecting the data combined with her fight scenes with former friend and Gordon Dean accomplice Kelly might have done the trick. She completed the mission with just a few missteps ("RayMichelle") and got herself out of a sticky spot without compromising the data. I liked the parallel between Syd helping Rachel by "being in her ear" for her first mission and Syd's own experience with Vaughn in her ear during her early missions. The ending scene with Sydney holding the tape player with a tape of the communication between her and Vaughn during the earlier missions to her pregnant tummy was really poignant. It was nice to see Nadia, even if she was unconscious in a hospital bed. I admire Sloane's tenacity toward saving his daughter, but turning over information to someone as dangerous as Dean just doesn't balance out the scale correctly. I did like the stand he took after Dean sent Kelly to the oil rig and almost messed up the entire mission. Too bad Dean refused to play along. I can't wait to see what happens when APO discovers Sloane's betrayal.

Man, were the bullets flying last night on CSI, or what? I felt bad for Greg when he found out he had to mark bullets and casings for 20 blocks. Talk about an overwhelming task! I'm not a fan of Nick's new 'stache. It ages him, but I did like Warrick's "mustache boy" comment. The detective from internal affairs was really smug, and he didn't seem to care that Sofia was having a hard time dealing with everything that happened. For crying out loud, the girl just made detective. She was a CSI previously! Cut her a small break, huh internal affairs! I had never seen Captain Brass shaken up before, let alone with tears in his eyes. The whole incident seemed to happen so fast. When the detective was asking those involved what happened, I couldn't remember, and I was simply watching and not participating, so I can imagine that these cops must have been struggling to remember every minute detail. The real shame in the whole matter was the shooting of the innocent kid on his bike. It looks like he was shot by one of the suspects and not one of the cops, though. The ending scene when they captured the last suspect had me a little leery. It seemed like something was about to go down, but I wasn't sure until someone fired and hit the suspect. Then we got the dreaded words, "To Be Continued..." I thought this episode worked really well. It never dragged, and I found myself very wrapped up the story. I'm looking forward to the conclusion next week.

So, I get that Hannah was upset about not getting to say goodbye to her father before he died on last night's Everwood, and I even get that she feels that her mom needs her, but what I don't get is how she could seem so indifferent to leaving Amy, her life in Everwood, and especially Bright. Her comment about having no reason to stay was cold, even if she tried to backpedal and say it didn't come out right. During this scene at the Abbott's, I kept thinking, "Why can't her mom move to Everwood and then everyone gets what they want?" I suppose, just as in real life, it's not that simple. Speaking of the evening at the Abbott's, I LOVED Harold's slideshow of his and Rose's African safari. It was just so him! It was nice to have him in the final scene because I definitely missed him this week. Ephram has really gotten himself into a whole with Amy. He got angry at Reid, who could not have been more fair or nicer about the whole thing, came to an agreement that Reid would no longer see Amy and Ephram would tell her how he feels, and then chickened out on the whole telling her how he feels part when he learned that Amy had met Reid over the summer. This was probably the last opportunity he's going to get for a while to turn things around with Amy, and he let it pass him by! The writers, they tease! It was nice to see Andy and Nina hanging out and talking like friends again without the Jake and Andy thing hanging between them. Another strong episode for a show that's having an amazing season!

About Last Night... Another Thursday night, another sweep for CBS. The eye network started out on top with Survivor, followed by NBC's comedy hour of Joey and Will & Grace and Alias on ABC. At 9, CSI easily snagged the hour for CBS, followed by The Apprentice on NBC and Nightstalker on ABC. Everwood landed in fifth for WB, ahead of UPN's comedies. The final hour of the night went to CBS's Without A Trace, followed by NBC's ER and ABC's Primetime. For more on last night's ratings, visit Zap2it.

~Primetime Pass~
@8 p.m. - An opossum decides to make its home at the Mac house and Bernie becomes the butt of jokes after his reaction to the critter on Fox's The Bernie Mac Show.

@9 p.m. - CBS's Close to Home tries out a new night and time in hopes of generating more viewers. Tonight's episode finds Annabeth contending with a defense lawyer who wants to shift the blame from his client to the victim's parents. Over on NBC, the Three Wishes teams travels to New Philadelphia-Dover, Ohio to grant the wish of a Girl Scout who's collecting books in order to open a library in her town.

@10 p.m. - Don and his team investigate a string of upscale home invasions, the latest of which resulted in a father's murder on CBS's Numb3rs.

SUNDAY EDITION
@8 p.m. - Lilly reopens a 1999 case after a diary is discovered on a recycled computer that belongs to a woman involved in the dot.com world who died of a stress-induced heart attack on CBS's Cold Case (may start late due to football).

@9 p.m. - Linda Dano guest stars as George's mother, Gabby takes a trip down memory lane when some old friends visit, Lynette and Tom learn more about the Applewhites, Bree answers a big question and Betty loses something important on ABC's Desperate Housewives. NBC airs a two-hour special that visits Saturday Night Live in the '80s: Lost and Found.

@10 p.m. - Derek and Addison's disagreements become professional when their close friends have a medical crisis on ABC's Grey's Anatomy.



QUICK CUTS

*SHOW COMINGS/GOINGS: Things aren't looking so good for Fox's Arrested Development and Kitchen Confidential. The network pulled both shows for the remainder of sweeps, replacing them with reruns of Prison Break. Fox also cut both shows' episode order to only 13 for the season. The two shows have struggled to find an audience this season and reruns of Prison Break returned better numbers for Fox than new episodes of either series. Fox plans to bring back both comedies starting December 5th, but their futures remain up in the air. There's also not-so-good news for fans of the WB family drama 7th Heaven. The network confirmed that this will be the show's last season. It is mainly due to a cost issue for the network, and creator Brenda Hampton concurs that she'd rather take the series out on a creative high note. This is 7th Heaven's 10th season. There's good news for freshman comedy Freddie. ABC wants a full season of the Freddie Prinze Jr starrer. The show has garnered a modest audience on Wednesday nights for the alphabet network.

*Ray Romano will reprise his Ray Barone role on an upcoming episode of CBS's King of Queens. In the episode, Ray and Doug go out on the town while Doug's wife is out of town. Romano has appeared on Queens, which stars his good friend Kevin James, in the past with his most recent appearance five years ago. Look for the episode to air on CBS on November 28th.

*And finally, the People's Choice Awards nominations are out, and it seems that the people really love Chris and crime. In the television categories, comedies Everybody Loves Raymond, That 70s Show and The Simpsons all landed in the Favorite Comedy category. Dramas CSI, Law & Order: SVU and Desperate Housewives (yes, in the drama category) garnered nods. Favorite Female TV Star nominations went to Jennifer Garner, Teri Hatcher and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Favorite Male TV Star nominations went to Ray Romano, Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland. Everybody Hates Chris, How I Met Your Mother and My Name is Earl all garnered Favorite New Comedy nods and Commander In Chief, Criminal Minds and Prison Break landed Favorite New Drama nominations. The 32nd Annual People's Choice Awards air January 10th on CBS. For a full list of all the nominations, click on over to The Futon Critic.

That's all for today. Be sure to tune in Monday for Cold Case (will the balance remain restored and can this episode possible live up to last week's?), Desperate Housewives (will George continue to creep us all out?) and Without A Trace (will my rediscovered love for this show continue?). Plus all the latest television news!