But the doctor refuses to bill or talk money with anyone. He'd be running around for free if the brother didn't come along with contracts and bills.

Making the doctor like this might have been dumb, but they did.

Does anyone know anything about this new TNT show, with Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula? I like them both (so long as I ignore the existence of Enterprise), but the advertising makes it look kind of meh.

Heh. I did a focus group survey a few weeks ago on ads for that show--they had some stupid, "Guys, you know how hard yet wacky things are at this point in our lives, and the little lady and the rugrats aren't making it any easier, amirite?" ads, some abhorrent, "Ladies, those big overgrown boys you're sleeping with and raising teens with are just such big confused kids themselves, aren't they? Wanna understand them and have some laffs? Check us out!" ads, and some reasonably decent ads featuring actual dialogue, the voices of both male and female characters, and highlighting of Braugher's and Bakula's names.

So I voted good and hard for the third and told the surveyors that the first two were pretty near guaranteed to turn off not just me but most of the people I know, and we're all pretty sturdy Braugher and Bakula fans.

Did it work, or did they go with the awful ads, or did they go with the decent ones but it still sounds "meh"?

It still sounds meh, but . . . Andre Braugher! OTOH, Ray Romano (ptui! let us never speak of it again!)

I'm for anything that brings Braugher and his lovely family work, but I don't intend to watch it.

Don't confuse the advertising/marketing spiel from USA and the actual programming/programs. I put it in the same category as Cosmopolitan self-consciously slanting itself towards 20somethings when its readers are for the most part women in their 40s and up.

It's like Old Guy Entourage...I'm in. With the caveat that I wouldn't want to see even beloved Andre do reverse cowgirl with anybody, but it looks like a pleasant experience with that in mind.

Women in their 40s read Cosmo? Seriously? I can't imagine why.

Why would a woman in her 40s read Cosmo? I mean, by now, don't we already know "What He Really Wants In Bed" and "Seven Secret Moves That Will Drive Your Man Wild In Bed" and "How To Tell If Your Man Is Watching Porn Over Your Shoulder In Bed"?

It was quite a few years ago, before the current magazine crash, but I saw statistics about readership, and was surprised to find that the average Cosmo reader was 40- or 50- something wanting really to feel 20-something, and that also the editors were quite aware of this.

Around the same time, I noticed how many female-oriented commercials were showing on shows like Highlander and Star Trek series which were ostensibly male-oriented action adventures.

I'm not surprised by Highlander, since they started off with his epic romance with Tessa, which definitely wasn't for male viewers. And ST:TNG looked like they took the opportunity to acknowledge the female viewers they'd actually had all along, what with the Crusher and Yar. Troi, on the other hand, was not for us.

I like Romano. His stand-up is really good. Many episodes of his show were mediocre, but the best were hilarious.