They tend to have a mystery that, well, it isn't that it isn't important, but the path and character of the people is more important. The murder mystery is only a tool for us to get to know the people and circumstances.

It reminds me (especially this ep, because of the time period) of Sena Jeter-Naslund's Four Spirits. Drenched in a time, but what sucks you in and twists you up is that not only do you care about the historical character still mourned (and you know how that ends), you sign on to the fictional ones as well. CC builds the fictional in a realm known. And you don't know how it ends for the fictional and it is wrenching.

Watched LoM last night. I liked Jason O'Mara, which I didn't expect since I loved John Simm so much. The DH and I both thought Keitel blew, though. Maybe it's because Philip Glenister's Gene Hunt was so impressively organic and real. Keitel seemed to be all bluster without much behind it.

He did kind of dominate the scenes too much.

Like I said earlier upthread, the one place I really enjoyed Keitel was in his interaction with the grandma. He really understood what made her tick and what would get her to talk. If they have a better balance between the bluster and the old-school insightfulness, it might really work as a nice counterpart to O'Mara's by the book approach.

That's the one bit of re-casting I regret. I like Keitel, but I really would have liked to see Colm Meaney give it a go.

Ooooh... yeah. That would've been something.

Dammit! I keep losing my Fox series subs on my DVR, and when I reset HOUSE I didn't notice I'd done the high-def channel. I missed the first 15 of this. Was House's dad the one who was the opening incident, or was it the chick who Kumar (I can't remember the newbies characters' names to save my life) is doting on?

The Chinese girl, Frank. She confronted the couple she thought was her biological parents, they tell her to bugger off, she throws up blood and ends up in the hospital.

Crap!! This damn show keeps running over and I keep forgetting to set the TiVo to record an extra minute.

Frank, do you know what Wilson said after he says he guesses you can't choose your friends either?

I'm still watching so I can tell you in a mo.