Dream cast? Jerry Orbach (essential!), Chris Noth, Sam Waterston, Jill Hennessy, Stephen Hill, and S. Epatha Merkerson, otherwise known as Reva the Mail Lady. And I'm starting to like Benjamin Bratt enough that if he's there instead of Chris Noth, I'm just as happy. . .perhaps even happier. Guest star bonus: every New York-based actor you ever saw in anything.

Can someone tell me why I'm still watching this show? Almost every single thing that got me hooked on it has disappeared. (It's on WPIX, usually at 2:00 a.m. on Sundays & Mondays, but the Sci-Fi Channel is running the first season weeknights at 7:00.)

I happened to catch the very first episode, and thought it was SO cool. (Keep in mind I watched the entire "V" miniseries, all those years ago.) But it was such a great story! Aliens have come to earth & taken up residence in a giant ship above the planet, they have representatives working with every government on the globe. They're called Taelons but they have humans refer to them as "Companions", and they all have groovy names with apostrophes like "Da'an" and "Zo'or". They seem to be benevolent on the surface but it becomes increasingly apparent that they have some kind of secret, dark agenda.

There were also all these excellent side characters: Jonathan Doors, corporate ubermagnate who faked his own death to go underground & lead the resistance; Captain Lili Marquette, shuttle pilot & former marine, a tough cool chick, albeit one with big hooters & tight t-shirts, but you know, cool; Sandoval, the sinister right-hand-human to the Taelons; and Augur, the computer hacker extraordinaire who helped the resistance but claimed that all he was interested in was getting paid for it. (He collected original art, you know, like Van Goghs & Picassos.) And the bonus for me is that they shoot the show in Toronto, my hometown, so I'd get glimpses of the CN Tower & Roy Thompson Hall every once in a while. (I'd occasionally see ads in the streets for "Phantom Of The Opera", but I suppose it'll still be running for another hundred years or so anyway.)

They killed off Boone at the beginning of the second season, those ruthless bastards. Since then, Jonathan Doors has been killed off, as was his son. Augur went into hiding and was replaced by some young flaky chick named Street. Lili was sent off to some remote planet, and even though it was a really cool scary story that got here there, she's just gone now. They added Renee Palmer, a hot blonde chick who runs Doors' company and works with the resistance and always wears tailored outfits & pounds of make-up and high heels and has super-plucked eyebrows. The Boone replacement is Liam Kincaid, a half-alien (but not a Taelon) who grew into an adult within an hour of his birth & used to have some cool powers, but now seems to have forgotten that and talks about his life as if he actually grew up on Earth. And nobody reminds him. Ever.   

And here's the thing. . .I'm still watching. Sandoval's still there, and Da'an's still around but keeps floating back & forth between being nice & being a mean bastard. Even my favorite set, the whole area with Boone's office, is long gone. They do come up with some fun stories every once in a while and the technology is cool, but it just isn't the same. It lacks direction. They also used to give out tons of their guest roles & extra roles to actors from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, but lately I feel like everyone they use is white. But like I said, I'm still watching. I still enjoy it. I don't know why. Nobody else I know watches it. Nobody else I know has heard of it. There's no point in writing episode reviews for it then, is there? I just feel obliged to mention it, since I've been watching it in silence for years.

It's lonely loving Earth: Final Conflict.

SO IT'S A NEW SEASON, STARTED OCTOBER 6TH. LIAM'S GONE, THE TAELONS ARE GONE, STREET HAS SOME DIPPY NEW CURLY HAIRDO THAT MAKES HER LOOK LIKE A CUPIE DOLL, RENEE PALMER IS THE NEW STAR AND DOES THE V.O. IN THE NEW SHOW OPEN, AND SANDOVAL HAS TEAMED UP WITH ANNOYING (AND BORING) NEW ALIENS CALLED "ATAVUS" THAT EAT HUMANS. OY VEY.

AND NOW, THE SHOW IS DONE. Wins an award for dumbest series finale ever, and it never got back to any of the old characters except for Liam, who went off with Rene into the space-sunset. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

What can I say about Iron Chef that can't be better understood by just watching it? It is an experience unique in television. Okay, so I've grown a little weary of the ten-minute open, but after that it's all uphill. The Food Network has a lovely FAQ on their site that explains all of the specific goings-on, but the basic premise is this: it's a game show, conceptually. It takes place in this giant "kitchen stadium". Every show, a challenger (who gets another 10-minute intro) takes on one of the three iron chefs in a kitchen battle. There's a secret ingredient in every show that isn't revealed until the battle's about to begin, and the two chefs have to come up with a variety of dishes -- from appetizers to main courses to desserts -- that best "articulate the main ingredient". It can be anything from salmon to steak to asparagus to potatoes to tofu to squid to some kind of wriggling eel-fish that's still alive & keeps trying to bite the chefs as they hack it to bits.

They shoot it really well, cutting back & forth from one chef to the other, and there's an announcer guy who fills us (the audience) in on exactly what's in each dish. At the end, they have a tasting session with "celebrity" judges, and they vote on who wins. We get to see them eating everything & they're pretty honest if they hate something, but they usually like stuff. I always worry, being a fussy eater, about being a judge on asparagus day. Especially if they're "articulating" the main ingredient. Ew.

There are some other funny things about the show, besides watching them make dessert out of eels & stuff. Everyone gets dubbed except the crazy host, who gets subtitles. They usually use the same set of people to dub the voices for the judges, so all the pretty actresses sound exactly the same. And there's this sense of high drama to everything, the music is loud and grand and everything is done with these pomp-filled gestures & announcements. The unveiling of the secret ingredient, the selection of which Iron Chef will do battle, and the announcement of the winner at the end are all loaded with fanfare.

You just have to watch it to get it. It's on the Food Network. They show 2 or 3 episodes at various times each weekend, and there's always one at 10:00 p.m. on Fridays. The other night I happened to catch a Blue Crab battle. When the crabs came out they were still alive & kicking. The first thing the chefs had to do was sever their claws before they got clawed. The Iron Chef grabbed a big pair of scissors and started cutting the claws off and tossing them into the pot. It's not usually that creepy, but you can count on something pointy or squishy or wriggling to turn up every once in a while.

But there's only one way to really get Iron Chef, and that's to go and watch it. Trust me.