On Sundays, Ed turns on the millionaire matchmaker program. I don’t know why. Anyway, I do get hooked and start looking at the hopefuls and the fellows. Overall, they sound like kids at a high school prom, even when they are in their late 20s and 30s, and the women speak with a tonal quality much like a Valley girl’s.

In this episode, the two bachelors looking for love were Jewish. Finally ready, they thought, to find the perfect mate. They wanted someone of their faith, but one chose a woman who was not Jewish for his first date. I think, in any case, unless you are devout and your mother is holding a knife to your throat, that these kinds of “musts” should be avoided.

I remember one episode where the guy brought the woman home to meet his parents and the mother absolutely hated her on sight. The mother wanted someone dowdy and this girl was a knockout. I don’t know if he stood up to her or not. As for the guys, money or not, they are all pretty average and some, because of their early success, swagger with a self-importance that is quite unappealing.

NCIS is one of my favorite programs. Mark Harmon and the actress who plays Ziva play my favorite characters. I saw re-runs of some really early episodes recently, ones I hadn’t ever seen, and in them the Pauly Perrette character, Abby, is more reasonable than she has been shown to be in current episodes where she is an emotional weather vane and behaves like an infant who has lost her rattle. I liked her better before the writers decided she needed to be a twit for, I guess, contrast. She doesn’t have to be totally serious, but her outbursts of hysteria wear a bit thin for me. I’m reminded of the young black girl in “Gone With The Wind” who screams and wails “Ah doan no nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies, Miss Scarlett.”

Elsewise, I like it that Ziva, an Israeli on permanent loan to NCIS, is an assassin trained by the Mossad, can protect herself in serious ways, and I wish they would invent a reasonable romantic interest for her that does not include suspected terrorists from her homeland who then get killed. I would like it if she got involved with Gibbs or DeNozo. Barring that, I would wish that DeNozo’s doctor girlfriend would come back. He broke her heart. He was dating her in the beginning in order to trap her father (Armand Assante), an arms dealer, but fell in love with her. When the truth came out, she didn’t trust him any more.

I am personally pleased to see the director character, Jenny, out of the series. Her character was rigid, authoritarian, obsessive and self-delusional. I couldn’t identify. Honest.

Another series I like is “The Mentalist”. I think Simon Baker is very appealing. He is a former “psychic” con-man, whose wife and child were murdered and eventually he will get his revenge. Meanwhile, he says there is no such thing as a psychic, merely someone with superior observational abilities that he uses in his post-con artist legit job as a consultant to the police, sort of a latter-day Sherlock Holmes. They should invent a relationship for him although he appears to be too damaged to consider one. His boss, a woman, is a mixed bag –- sometimes okay, sometimes obnoxious. And, of course, one of the recurring themes is that his unorthodox methods are always doubted (much like “House” where no matter how often Dr. House proves he is right and saves lives, his colleagues always think he is nuts and should be stopped).

Speaking of themes or gimmicks, I could never watch “Monk”, much as I like Tony Shaloub, because it is a one-joke plot. He’s afraid of germs. That's it. How many bizarre plots can you draw around this one quirk? Give the writers a prize for imagination and perseverance. If you knew someone like this in real life, you’d want to strangle him.

And the other night, Ed was tuning around and chanced on the Meryl Streep/Pierce Brosnan movie out in the last couple of years, titled “Mama Mia”. After a few scenes I was overdosing on saccharine. The young bride of the movie (I didn’t get her name) was cute and infantile as were her friends. The squealing and giggles and whatnot were too much for me. Much as I like Pierce Brosnan in almost anything, I couldn't stay with this one. What was he thinking?

I’ve been reading too. A library book by Lawrence Block I read recently really got my attention. It is about a hit man, Keller, he’s written about before. He is really smart, also sympathetic. He is quitting the game, having amassed a hefty nest egg. He doesn’t want this last gig, but is forced into it, and then finds out it’s a set-up to frame him for the murder of a Midwestern governor, whom they kill after sending Keller to that city for a supposed hit. They don’t hire Keller for the hit on the governor because there are some jobs he won’t take. Oh boy, a hit man with morals. But he outwits them. Along the way he falls in love and settles down. Okay, it’s a fantasy, but first, of course, he identifies the guy who set him up and gets him.

And an aside: Years ago at Harper & Row, my editor was considering a book by a “former” mob hit man who came to the office and met with her. He was large and beefy, not appealing at all, although he was very polite, what with finding himself in normal society. The book never happened, at least not at Harper’s. I was just as happy to never see him again as in "Gee, what if I annoy him?"

Thomas Perry is an author I really like. He writes about people on the run. One of his favorite characters is Jane Whitehead, part American Indian, who has developed the ability to help people adopt new identities and disappear when they are being hunted by thugs or an abusive husband. These are very suspenseful narratives. And I just finished his most recent Whitehead book, “The Runner” which comes a few years after the last one.

One of my favorite themes is about turning the tables on people who have tried to do you in –- for instance, the cheating spouse who abandons you with massive debt. One of my favorite movies is “Double Jeopardy”. The husband has lost his wealth and is in danger of being indicted for fraud. He wants to disappear and start a new life with stolen funds. He pretends he is buying his wife (Naomi Judd) a sailboat and they go out on it for a trial run. They have a wonderful time, make love, have a great dinner. She’s truly happy and then she wakes up from a drugged sleep, all alone on the sailboat, holding a bloody knife and covered in blood as the Coast Guard approaches.

Even though there is no body (the supposition is that she threw him overboard), she is convicted of his murder. She asks her best friend to take care of her son and she is happy to do so and meanwhile, she is the husband’s new squeeze.

While in prison, Judd uses her phone calls to talk with the friend and her son and one day the friend can't be reached, disconnected phone, no forwarding info, nothing, and then she finds out the husband is still alive. She gets to a halfway house on good behavior and escapes. She sets about locating the husband and she wants her son back. The warden of the halfway house, Tommy Lee Jones, goes after her. I loved this one and it has a satisfying ending.

xx, Teal