A sad thing happened to me last Thursday. ER returned with new episodes — and I forgot. Granted, tornadoes were swirling through town at the time, but I didn't even remember to be irritated that bad weather always seems to strike during prime time. For someone who has watched ER faithfully since its first year, apathy is a bad sign. So, I have mixed feelings about the show coming back for one final season.

Photo credit: Brian Bowen Smith

I'm not sure what happened to my fandom. After all, Maura Tierney's still around.

Photo credit: James Sorensen

Considering all that her character Abby Lockhart has been through, that's quite a feat. Alcoholism, bipolar mom and brother, failed marriage, medical school, unplanned pregnancy, life-threatening childbirth — reading Abby's Wikipedia entry is exhausting. Maybe that's part of the problem. … continue reading

When I read the news that Fox planned to do a drama based on Cathy Lanier, I had only one thought. Who?

Turns out that Lanier has made quite a splash in Washington, D.C., where she's the new chief of police for the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC). Lanier's story certainly sounds like the stuff of television drama — she's a 39-year-old single mother who dropped out of high school in ninth grade because she was pregnant. As any good protagonist would do, she pressed on, got her GED and eventually obtained a B.A. and M.A. from Johns Hopkins, earned an advanced degree from Naval Postgraduate School and attended the JFK School of Government at Harvard. She also graduated from the FBI Academy and the DEA Drug Unit Commanders Academy. Whew.

Lanier is MPDC's first permanent female police chief, leading a 3,800-member department that is predominately black and male. Staying on the job hasn't been easy, especially in the early '90s when she joined the force. She endured "unrelenting harassment from male officers," eventually filing a sexual harassment suit — which she won. … continue reading