Q I'm disappointed that "The Mentalist" and "Castle" creative teams didn't produce two-hour season finales wrapping up the Red John and Beckett's mother's murder mysteries, respectively. The story lines are stale and have become annoyingly tedious and tiresome. Will the stories wrap early next season?
A Networks love to drag out these stories because they're terrified that if they resolve the show's premise, viewers will stray. It's an understandable concern, but TV's best shows (think: "Breaking Bad") know they have to take risks and evolve. Neither "Castle" nor "The Mentalist" is a risk-taking show; it's not in either's broadcast-network DNA.
'Killing' continues to confound Q After last season's debacle ending on "The Killing," what do this season's numbers look like for the show? Has there been a serious drop in viewers?
A Ratings for "The Killing" were down from a year ago, with 1.8 million viewers turning up for the two-hour season premiere. Ratings were also down for the second-season finale that aired earlier this month. I'm bored and frustrated by the show's red herrings; I tuned in to learn who killed Rosie Larsen, but now I'm probably done. AMC has not yet announced if it will renew or cancel the show, but my guess is it won't be back.
Not necessarily the news Q Why are all high-def news studios blue? Why not a nice gray or something else? It seems like the stations would want to make their look distinctive, not interchangeable with another station. Also, why do so many of them have constantly moving lines or graphics in the background? Is that sort of a "we paid for that feature, we'd better use it" kind of thing?
A I guess I'm not paying enough attention to background colors, because this isn't a trend I've noticed. Blue has always been a fairly dominant color scheme on local news sets. I do recall a period in the 1980s when browns and tans dominated local news sets, but that didn't last long. As for why no gray, I have no idea. Perhaps it would look washed out or muddy in HD or maybe that's just not a color of the moment.
'Dancing' returning to GSN Q It appears that the Game Show Network has pulled its rebroadcasting of previous seasons of "Dancing With the Stars" after airing just two seasons. Do you have any insight?
A GSN plans to air reruns of "DWTS" again starting Monday at 7:30 a.m.
