I'm late finding out everything...

...mostly because I rarely touch a computer on the weekends. I sit in front of one all week. Weekends are for reading, hanging out with my husband, and watching addictively bad movies on the SciFi channel. So imagine my surprise this morning when I go to the Reel and find out Warren Leight is leaving as showrunner for LOCI.

But, unlike my fellow obsessives, I don't quite see it as a loss. Oh sure, the series's ratings increased in its move to USA, but that couldn't have been hard considering the disaster known as the sixth season (Leight's first as head script writer for the show), which had some of the weakest storylines, worst guest acting, and intelligence-insulting crap to be shown on network TV. No wonder their ratings dropped. Not that the entire season was a loss. The Goren-backed bookends Blind Spot and Endgame were brilliant in that way something mediocre is made brilliant by a talented cast. The rest of the season was a complete waste of the talent Leight was handed on a silver platter, as he attempted to salvage the floundering show by making it more a cross between the cringe-inducing CSI Miami and the last three seasons of SVU.

Gone were the days when the actual criminal intent was a part of a show titled Criminal Intent. Gone was relying on talented local acting in favor of badly used guest stars (really? did anyone really care that Fran Drescher was in an episode? or Doris Roberts? Brooke Shields? really?). Gone were the carefully nuanced scripts that balanced the sophisticated crimes against the intellect and detecting prowess of the teams. Oh no, we must RIP FROM THE HEADLINES!!! And not headlines from days of yore, but ACTUALLY YESTERDAY'S HEADLINES!!! WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY!@!! OOOH LOOK!, LIZA MINELLI! SHE CAN'T MOVE HER FACE, BUT WE'LL STILL USE HER!!! WAIT, IS THAT TOM ARNOLD?!? GAY PREACHER SCANDAL ANTI-TYPECASTING! SQUEEE!

Please.

And gone were the days when our favorite detectives actually detected, apparently because they only need to be led around by the nose from suspect to suspect until the solution was blaring across the screen in giant letters. Doesn't anyone else remember that smirk Goren would get when he know someone was telling him a big fat lie? When he would sit in that room and stare at something waiting for the pattern to emerge, chips bags and coffee cups artfully strewn about? He and Eames poring over files together? Remember when Logan episodes were - while not brilliant - actually watchable?

The only thing the sixth season brought us that kept me returning were amped up personal storylines, pulled off only by the amazing acting abilities of the core cast. That and the hope it would eventually get better. Which, in the first half of season seven, it seems to have. Detecting returned. Depths showed some research happening. Self-Made reminded us Goren sometimes does get a clue on his own. The usual crime-solving hijinks came across in Courtship. And so I look forward to the remainder of the seventh season if only because the first half showed so much improvement over last season. Because, honestly, if it hadn't, the only reason I would be watching at all anymore is this man:


PS, if you want an even longer, more intelligent sounding, and more direct post about the travesty that was season 6, read this. My favorite is when the author basically equates it with fanfiction due to the high emotional content.