This weekend, Mr. D'onofrio and his family--eight members total, including wife Carin van der Donk and their three children, Leila, Elias, and Luka --took home first place for "mixed category" in Coney Island's Sand Sculpture contest, which was co-sponsored by Astella and the WCS/NY Aquarium.

According to DNAInfo.com, which has photos from the event, Mr. D'onofrio's team created an elaborate treasure hunt with their grainy particles. It included " an elaborate treasure chest that was guarded by sand skeletons, and decorated with gold coins."

Check out the other winning sculptures, courtesy of Astella Development.

I thought I'd learned how to beat jet lag a dozen years ago from bicoastal movie producer Scott Rudin, who, between being interviewed and making contradictory bargaining phone calls ("We have to pay him that, he's Vincent D'Onofrio!" … "Who the fuck is Vincent D'Onofrio?") touted his method: take the 4 p.m. out of L.A., arrive in New York at midnight and go right to sleep.

Of course, such rigor is a lot easier when you're self-employed and flying first-class. In the past year, working in Burbank at entry-level TV money with two kids back in Manhattan and mounting debt, I frequently flew in JetBlue steerage and, to avoid missing even more work, took enough red-eyes to make me a Visine poster boy.

But the worst thing I lost in the red-eye commute-and in working in showbiz, where you have to read the trades, scripts, memos, spend hours online researching, and watch a lot of TV and movies-was my ability to read novels to completion. This was particularly frustrating, as I'd recently bounced back from years of new-parent illiteracy, the phase when all you're reading is The Runaway Bunny or What to Expect When You're Singing Baby Beluga on Two Hours' Sleep and you fake your way through dinner-party conversations about what you believe are obscure current events which you later learn have been on the front page of The Times for weeks.

When the TV season ended, there was supposed to be a month off, and I was looking forward to 30 straight days without getting on an airplane. Two days into it, my job unexpectedly ended, and I had to fly back several times to job-hunt; for a variety of reasons, I'm not leaving L.A. just yet, but I have at least been able to schedule a more humane bicoastal passage.

And freed from having to catch up on sleep or homework, instead of feeling compelled to check in on what "everyone" was reading (like The Lovely Bones and The Corrections ) or what I had never read in college (Faulkner), I returned to Philip Roth, whom I hadn't read past Portnoy's Complaint . Dauntingly, each one was better than the last- The Counterlife , The Human Stain , Sabbath's Theater (or, as a friend called it, Men Behaving Badly ). These were keepers, books I would want to return to for inspiration. I started buying used Roth hardcovers via the Internet, which were as cheap as new paperbacks. On a recent JetBlue jaunt, I settled into my seat, turned off the DirecTV screen taunting me a foot away from my face (how many times can you really watch True Lies on A&E?) and got cracking on Operation Shylock: A Confession .

I was thoroughly enjoying myself until I hit page 55, when I was jarred by a penciled note in the margin. I leafed ahead and discovered to my horror that a previous owner had underlined, annotated, asterisked, circled and exclamation-pointed with abandon. Not every page, but enough to be incredibly distracting.

My first response was annoyance at the bookseller, who hadn't noted (nor, likely, even noticed) this literary graffiti. I took out a pencil and began erasing furiously. But as I started reading only for notes, the reporter in me started to get curious. Who was this person?

The careful handwriting looked feminine; the fact that every Yiddish word had been underlined with a question mark in the margin led me to believe she was not Jewish. (She didn't get Roth's admittedly cringeworthy pun, "There's no business like Shoah business.")

She stopped to marvel several times that she was reading the book in August 1993, the very week when the decision was handed down in the trial Roth had used throughout Shylock , that of Ivan Demjanjuk, the U.S. citizen accused of being the Nazi concentration-camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.

I too might have marveled at such a coincidence, but would I have taken the time to scribble such musings to myself in the margins? This was more than just a college student dog-earing passages for a possible pop quiz. What motivated her to stop reading and pick up her pencil? Who did she think would be reading this?

This question lingered as I paged through her notes. Though she had highlighted many compelling passages, her notes often expressed frustration with Roth's style: "PROLIX," cried one, "de trop" another. And, most memorably: "Please, Mr. Roth-one sentence!"

How weird: to be so pissed at a book's wordiness as to lodge a written complaint, yet so formal as to address the author as "Mr." Did she think some day Roth himself might come across her copy?

It was a bizarre twist on an idea Roth loves to play with-the novelist as a character, the implication of the reader in the story. This random stranger had become inextricably enmeshed in my experience of the book. Though I removed several of her question marks and quibbles, I soon set aside my eraser; some of her highlightings were indeed passages I would like to return to.

But wait. Before I returned to Roth's words, something else struck me. After she'd devoted so much time to annotating her copy, marveling at her personal relationship with it, how had it ended up in my hands? Had she gotten to the end and flung it across the room? Deaccessioned it when she moved? Had she married an anti-Semite who demanded she dump all her Roth books? Or just become a devotee of Updike? Had she broken up with someone who had tried to turn her on to Roth (in vain?), or gotten so broke she needed to sell it? Or had she died, and her grieving husband/partner/sister/parents couldn't bear to keep the copy around with all these reminders of her (studiousness/obtuseness/penmanship/etc.)?

Reading Operation Shylock had became a wholly schizoid experience: finding out what happened to Roth the character/author (and his dopplegänger, another Philip Roth who was running around pretending to be him and stirring up Zionists), while also trying to learn what had happened to the previous owner. Did she like how it ended? Did the accumulated Yiddish prove too alienating?

Halfway through the book, my plane landed in Long Beach. I got my bags, picked up a rental car and got home, only to find that somewhere along the way I had lost the book. I called JetBlue and the car rental desk, to no avail.

I was devastated. At first I couldn't bear to read any Roth, so I read something else ( Three Junes , highly recommended). Finally I ordered another copy. I'm sure I'll finish it, but I will never know how the "other" story ended-the one of this woman's relationship to the book, to Roth, to Jewish colloquialisms. And where is she now, a decade later?

I realize now that whenever I say I'm reading a book that's so good I don't want it to end, that isn't really true. You want closure-even if it isn't the ending you hoped for when you started.

When the actorVincent D'Onofrio leaves his apartment in the East

Village, he can walk down the street in almost any direction and, in a matter

of minutes, come across his face in an advertisement for Law & Order: Criminal Intent , the new television series he

stars in for NBC. It was once a New York thrill, of course, having one's visage

plastered all about town, announcing a show or product launch. Yet in the days

since Sept. 11-as the city's bus stops, subway walls and plywood walkways have

been blanketed with thousands of photos of other, absent, less famous

residents-those promotional posters have felt suddenly worthless and

embarrassing, especially to people in them, like Vincent D'Onofrio.

"As an actor, I feel completely insignificant," Mr. D'Onofrio,

42, said on a recent afternoon. He was sitting on a park bench in Tompkins

Square Park, his long, blue-jeaned legs stretched out before him. "I feel

completely useless. I feel like a fool. I feel that what I do for a living has

so little to do with anything that is good for us as a people. I can't believe

that anything I have done or will do as far as my acting will ever help anybody

or ever serve us in any way that is helpful. I just feel silly."

Mr. D'Onofrio fumbled with a pack of Camel Lights and lit one.

The air outside was damp, muggy.

"I was supposed to do the Today

show next week and I have pushed everything back," he said. "I was supposed

to do lots of press for [ Law & Order:

Criminal Intent ] right before it came on, but I told them I can't do it, I

feel silly. I feel silly trying to sell anything on TV. I can't do it. It's

going to have to wait until I can do it, and I don't know if it will affect the

show. The truth is, I don't care. I'm contracted to do this show and I'll do

it, but this thing is bigger than a contract, and bigger than any of us can

fathom."

Just a month before, Mr. D'Onofrio had been in a different mood.

The tall, brown-haired, baby-faced Bensonhurst native-who has co-starred in

films such as Full Metal Jacket, Ed Wood

and Men in Black -has never been a

Robin Williams–style extrovert, but back on a rainy day in August in his

apartment, he talked excitedly about his new television show, about being back

in New York, about being closer to his family, about a movie he was developing

about the late rock critic Lester Bangs.

He also spoke that day about a planned Law & Order miniseries that would integrate all the performers

from the three Law & Order shows.

The miniseries was about a bioterrorist attack on New York (plotted by Osama

bin Laden, it turned out). Mr. D'Onofrio promised the miniseries would be

scary. "I can't really talk about it," he said.

Now it was more than a month later, and that miniseries idea was,

of course, kaput. And Mr. D'Onofrio-an actor who had spent much of his career

trying, decidedly, not to be an actor schmuck, resisting fame, resisting big

paydays-felt like, well, a bit of a schmuck. It all seemed so dumb. As a kid,

he had worked as a bouncer alongside dozens of New York City firemen; in recent

years, he'd worked out with a local fireman friend when he needed to be in

shape for a role. That fireman was O.K., he said. But others ….

"This [movie] company, they want to meet with me about a film

tonight," Mr. D'Onofrio said. "I don't know what to talk to them about."

Mr. D'Onofrio said that in the aftermath of Sept. 11, he had

considered leaving the city with his wife and young son. He said if it weren't

for his deal to do Law & Order ,

they might have left, moved someplace else.

"It's something so unfathomable-to have no control over whether

your child is going to survive or not," he said. "The people who were on their

planes with their children sitting next to them, flying to their deaths. A

couple with a 2-year-old kid. I can't even …. "

Mr. D'Onofrio paused. "I make a living because of my imagination,

but I can't even come close to imagining what the hell that would be like."

A man approached Mr. D'Onofrio and bummed a cigarette. Behind, a

group of men listened to a portable radio loudly playing thrash metal.

"The reality of it is that I am involved in the entertainment

business," Mr. D'Onofrio said. "I'm sure that people who like these shows are

going to be entertained by it-and I hope they are. If it takes their mind off

what has happened to us, all the better. But I am not going to pretend that

right now I am enthusiastic about my career. All of my attention and all of my

focus right now is on our country and what our next move is going to be."

Mr. D'Onofrio smiled. "You wanted to interview me after this

attack," he said. "And this is what you get.

"There is no way for me … not to feel affected by this thing," he

continued. "Talk to me three months from now, and hopefully America will be in

a better situation. I'm going to feel differently; I'm going to be gung-ho

about what I do for a living again. We all are, hopefully."

-Jason Gay

Raging Onward,

With the Bull

It's fair to say that on the evening of Sept. 29, the last thing

many people in New York were looking for was a fistfight. And yet there we

were, 19,000 of us, packed into Madison Square Garden to watch the young

middleweight champion Felix (Tito) Trinidad take on Bernard Hopkins, a

36-year-old ex-con from North Philadelphia. Originally scheduled for Sept. 15,

the fight had sensibly been postponed, but two weeks later, one still had a

nagging, slightly skeezy feeling-that is to say, more than the usual one

associated with professional boxing-watching men club each other for money and

fame. These were supposed to be reflective, quieter, less grandiose times. In

other words, not Don King time.

Before the main event, the Garden was restless, subdued. Because

of security precautions, Mr. Trinidad's sizable, passionate fandom had its

usual stable of horns and noisemakers seized at the door, dampening Tito

Nation's usual Mardi Gras–like atmospherics. Sharkskin suits and white fedoras,

normally so ample, were tough to find. Even the ring girls-the half-naked

Amazons who strut around between rounds, numbered placards high above their

heads-seemed a little lost, miscast. (All thongs, though, were appropriately

black.)

"There is something

missing," said Jake LaMotta, the 1949-1951 former middleweight champion

portrayed by Robert De Niro in the film Raging

Bull. He wore a black cowboy hat with a black shirt, black pants and a

blazer the color of buttered popcorn. "I think in the back of people's minds,

they don't have the energy to be happy all the time."

Still, the Bull advised moving forward. "It's got to start

sometime," he said. "You got to start doing things. You can't go on forever

like this. I think it's good for the public. It's good for the people who went

through a lot of torment and agony and stuff like that. It's not a pleasant

thing."

Mr. LaMotta had watched Sept. 11 from his apartment on the East

Side, on 57th Street. "I could see the smoke," he said. "And I was watching it

all day on TV, for days. They had the same thing over and over again."

Tonight, Mr. LaMotta liked Mr. Trinidad. "He's got a style a

little like Sugar Ray Robinson-a very colorful fighter, throws a lot of

punches, takes a good punch," he said. "Same with the other guy. I think it's

going to be a toss-up."

As fight time approached, other celebrities turned up in the

crowd-Denzel Washington, Matt Damon, Jay-Z, the former champion Evander

Holyfield. Unannounced, a troupe of firefighters and police officers crossed

the Garden floor, and the arena erupted into a two-minute wave of applause.

Even sportswriters-a weirdly prissy bunch who wouldn't clap in the press box if

their mothers scored the winning run in Game 7-rose and applauded.

Shortly after 11 p.m., Messrs.

Hopkins and Trinidad appeared, the former to Ray Charles singing "God Bless

America" and accompanied by an attendant brandishing a dusty fireman's helmet.

Mr. Trinidad, too, nodded to the occasion, arriving in a policeman's hat over

his standard white headband and sequined Puerto Rican–flag outfit.

The fight itself was a knockout-Mr. Hopkins, a severe underdog,

baited the elegant Mr. Trinidad all night, crouching and luring him into the

ropes before unleashing furious uppercuts that caught the 28-year-old

champion's jaw and bolted his young legs to the floor. Mr. Trinidad hung tough,

even dancing a bit in the ring like Ray Leonard, but it was more of a delaying

tactic than showmanship: Mr. Hopkins simply bided his time, waiting to unleash.

He finished the job in the 12th, with a series of blows and a body nudge that

sent the now ex-champ sprawling and Mr. Trinidad's father into the ring,

calling it finished. In the darkness and clamor, Jake LaMotta rose and went

home, an aging flash of color in a gray night.

-Jason Gay

Nope. Mr. Lagasse–the effusive, barrel-chested Food Network star, the very paradigm of a cable-ready but not-quite-ready-for-prime-time personality, the man who invented the blood-curdling Emerilisms " Bam !" and " Kick it up a notch !"–had been recruited by NBC. And not just anywhere! Mr. Lagasse had gotten his own sitcom, Emeril , and it was going on Tuesday nights. At 8. Next fall.

The world, it seemed, had been inverted; cable had swallowed network. NBC entertainment president Jeff Zucker had just announced Mr. Lagasse's eponymous show–a sautéed version of Home Improvement , in which the chef plays himself and the plot revolves around ( duh !) a TV cooking show.

Mr. Lagasse swept past the new NBC president Andrew Lack and NBC chairman Bob Wright and hopped onto the Radio City stage. "You know, I love television, I love cooking, and Bam !–a TV comedy about a cooking show!" he bellowed, delivering a vibration that rattled eardrums back in the mezzanine. "Talk about happy happy !" Mr. Lagasse took a breath breath . "Folks, wait until fall, grab an appetite and tune in–because this fall, we are going to kick it up a notch on Tuesdays at 8 o'clock right here on NBC– Bam !"

Bam! Well, why not? It was an odd little moment, one that illustrated the bizarre, often confounding universe that prime-time network television has become. A cable curio, Mr. Lagasse, enlisted to kick off a major night of broadcast network programming. He's not an actor, and he's not married to Brad Pitt. But Mr. Lagasse and Weakest Link sourpuss Anne Robinson –who's not exactly Jennifer Aniston herself–were being hailed as the Jerry and Cosby of 2001-2. And the man who dragged them in was Mr. Zucker, who just five months ago was keeping Katie Couric and Matt Lauer's coffee mugs hot as the executive producer of Today .

But why not shake it up? After all, NBC–the network of Sid Caesar, Jack Paar, Huntley and Brinkley, Johnny Carson and Bill Cosby–had been feeling the heat in a mega-media world. Just recently dominant, it had gotten to the point where its chairman, Mr. Wright, had been caught whining about The Sopranos. But you'd be whining too if you'd invested $35 million in the XFL, or seen your once-infallible Thursday 'Must See TV' franchise torpedoed by CBS's Survivor .

So now NBC was doing what battered networks do: It was getting a little loopy.

"They say there are rules in television," NBC's West Coast president, Scott Sassa, told the crowd. "They say there are things you can't do. Only we've never known those rules, and we've never cared."

Well, it sounds good. Today's network television executives want you to believe they're all a bunch of nutty professors, mixing genres, shaking up time slots! Putting chefs on television! But broadcast TV remains a highly conventional business. As David Chase told The New York Times, responding to Robert Wright's complaints about The Sopranos ' relative freedom on HBO, if The Sopranos had been on network television, "they would have tried to make it that, on the side, Tony is helping the F.B.I. find the guys who blew up the World Trade Center." Indeed, with so much money on the line, the bulk of prime time continues to be filled with conventional dramas, sitcoms and snoozy news magazines. Strictly speaking, Weakest Link is the only conceptual risk in NBC's fall 2001 lineup.

But these are strange days, especially at NBC. Mr. Zucker's in, Garth Ancier's out and management's denying that Mr. Sassa's clutching to the awnings. Will G.E. sell or grow? The Friends look a little old and geezy, like when Dobie Gillis was still in high school at 25. ER … who are those people on ER , anyhow? Where's the guy with the glasses? Is he still there? Is Suddenly Susan still on the air? How about Veronica's Closet ? How many Law & Order s are there?

This haze of confusion was evident at Monday's Radio City presentation. Where once there was Carson–who announced his retirement, surprise-attack style, at an upfront presentation–or at least Ted Danson, now there was Ms. Robinson, slithering asexually onto the stage with her Rustoleum-dyed top and bound-up boobies. Famous in this country barely a month, she was on hand to host an "executive" version of Weakest Link featuring Mr. Sassa, Mr. Zucker, sales vice president Marianne Gambelli and NBC's second-best Bill Clinton– Conan 's Robert Smigel's slightly ahead–played by Saturday Night Live 's Darrell Hammond.

"Whose executive elevator doesn't go all the way to the top?" Ms. Robinson asked the four. The mock Link was actually a bit discomfiting, considering the noise about Mr. Sassa. He took a zinger from Ms. Robinson about the demise of the XFL, the schlock-o-rama on which NBC blew $35 million, and which made you yearn for Johnny Carson just to hear his nightly Nebraskan recitation of those three initials– "X … F … L … doesn't that stand for my divorce settlements–Extra Free Lexus?"

At least nobody brought up The Michael Richards Show .

Still, Mr. Sassa survived the impolite interrogation, while Mr. Hammond, standing in for Mr. Clinton, took it in the chops as the weakest link. And despite some indications that the British import's audience is flagging–really, how long will America be berated?–Mr. Zucker has slapped two Links on the griddle next fall, back-to-back on Sunday and Monday nights. NBC, last to sip the reality and game-show champagne, was feeling no pain, and there was much crowing about the show's younger, disposable-income audience–all to contrast Ms. Robinson with the graying Regis-run Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on ABC.

It's always this way with NBC, of course. If they don't have the most viewers, they insist they have the right viewers. More and more, the network skews toward notebook-computing, second-home Bobos who guzzle Frappucinos and enroll the sprites in Stanley Kaplan; Audi-leasers who find gay humor acceptable and class jokes gauche. Mr. Sassa calls these viewers "upscale demos." Everybody else calls them "Nader voters." These viewers–who are, we're told, a new demographic–once loved Family Ties and Seinfeld , just as they now enjoy Frasier and Just Shoot Me and weep shamelessly to Providence after cutting off an ambulance speeding home on the Saw Mill.

The show of shows for this audience, of course, is The West Wing , the cast of which got a disturbingly reverential treatment Monday, as if Jesus and his disciples had risen and rolled into Radio City. Never mind that The West Wing is essentially power pornography from the mid-80's Steven Bochco playbook–multilayered plots, ensemble characters rattling off comeback speeches few actual humans could ever formulate–or that President Josiah Bartlet's Clintonian politics look passé in the Halliburtonized world of George W. (The West Wing would look better if they started drilling in Rob Lowe's office.) But to the true NBC acolyte, the West Wing press secretary, Allison Janney, occupies the same warm, fuzzy axis that David Brinkley once did, or as Tom Brokaw now does, along with MSNBC anchor Brian Williams and the company's socially acceptable loudmouth, Chris Matthews.

NBC cherishes this high-toned merger between the showbiz and the real; to them, it's a natural progression that the imaginary Bartlet administration should be celebrated as heroes. After all, it's only NBC that could, as it did on Monday, follow an old tape of Eleanor Roosevelt with a live speech by Kelsey Grammer. It's the network that acts as if Cheers had been created by Jonas Salk. It's the network that continues to announce its annual victim for the 8:30 p.m. Thursdays post- Friends time slot as if it were a Supreme Court nominee.

Mr. Zucker did the honors this year. "Here is what is different this time," he said. "I'm telling you, I know what we have put in this time slot hasn't lived up to 'Must See TV.' I'm admitting it. We have no bigger priority. And the winner is … Inside Schwartz , a romantic comedy featuring feature-film star Breckin Meyer as Adam Schwartz, a 24-year-old wannabe sportscaster. It's smart. It's original. It's innovative. And most of all, it's funny."

So Inside Schwartz was Stephen Breyer. Mr. Zucker referred to Breckin Meyer, who appeared in Road Trip and 54 , as a "feature-film star." Now, Marcello Mastroianni was a feature-film star. Even Alec Baldwin is a feature-film star. Neither is in Inside Schwartz .

Later, Mr. Zucker delivered some startling news about Law & Order.

Remember, earlier Mr. Sassa spoke about ignoring old TV rules: "We've never known those rules and we've never cared." Well, remember that old network rule that says you can only have two different Dick Wolf Law & Order dramas in a single fall schedule? NBC's got three different Law and Order s coming this fall: Law & Order classic, with dour A.D.A. Sam Waterston; downtown, slightly skeezier Law & Order Special Victims Unit ; and now, brand-new Law & Order: Criminal Intent, starring Vincent D'Onofrio– Full Metal Jacket , Ed Wood , Men In Black ; that's a feature-film star–which lets the viewer see how crimes go down.

Later, Mr. D'Onofrio was sitting near a fountain with a colleague at the post-upfront party in the Rockefeller Center Summer Garden, smoking Camels, not bothering anybody.

Mr. D'Onofrio was asked what a guy like him was doing here, in television, in 2001.

"Basically," he began, "a lot of people came up to me last year: David Chase, Dick Wolf–who's the guy that does Ally McBeal ? That guy, he's like the Steven Spielberg of television?"

"David E. Kelley?"

"Yeah," Mr. D'Onofrio said. "A lot of people came to me, but Dick [Wolf] had the best things to say. His stuff is less … soapy. I like that. I don't like soap."

Mr. D'Onofrio said his movie-business colleagues had warned him about television, told him it was grueling work. They were right, he said. "It is fucking grueling, you know?" he said. "We're talking 12 to 15 hours a day."

Still, there were upsides. Mr. D'Onofrio got to be with his wife and family, who live in Manhattan. As for the TV stuff–who gets picked up, time slots–the actor said he was leaving that to other people. "I came into this show with a film career, and I'll leave this show with a film career," he said.

But Mr. D'Onofrio said he was signed up to do Law & Order: Criminal Intent for a long time. He declined to say how long.

"It's going to cost them a hell of a lot of fucking money, but they've got me for a while," Mr. D'Onofrio said. "I'm totally 100 per cent committed for as long as they've got me."

Aren't we all? Tonight on NBC, watch Vice President Tim Matheson call conservation a sign of personal virtue on The West Wing . [WNBC, 4, 9 P.M.]

Thursday, May 17

The WB's upfront presentation on Tuesday, May 15, at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers was like every big, awkward pep rally you went to in high school: bumping music, colored spotlights and smiley young faces that were very, very excited about stuff you couldn't exactly relate to.

As the lights dimmed, a video played. The WB's motto is "The Night Is Young," and from the looks of it, the night is not even old enough for pierced ears or PG-13 movies, much less Charmed . Major prepubescent props were accorded to Eden's Crush, the stars of Pop Stars , the network's bubbly, Britney-Spears-meets-Backstreet-Boys music confection, as well as Gilmore Girls , the surprisingly addictive (and zipped-jeans wholesome) mom-daughter drama.

Sure, there were some old coots huffing around: Keri Russell of Felicity and James Van Der Beek from Dawson's Creek ; David Boreanaz from Angel; even the comic Bob Saget, liberated from funny videos and Full House to star in a new WB sitcom called Raising Dad . (Mr. Saget plays Dad.)

Of course, there was no Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the WB hit that had fled to those bloodsuckers at the UPN. The absence of Buffy's skinny keeper, Sarah Michelle Gellar, was almost palpable, but the hormone cases soldiered on. "This is definitely not the UPN," said Angel 's hunky Mr. Boreanaz, a former Buffy squeeze who now finds himself in the bizarre situation of helming a spinoff of a show no longer on his network.

WB chief executive Jamie Keller, who now also runs Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta, had also switched networks, in a way. Mr. Keller assured the gang that he'll still be around–"I'll be at the WB twice a month," he said–but he couldn't resist yammering about his new gig, lauding CNN's camera crews for "protecting civilian populations all around the world." As the WB's audience might say, Whatever!

–Rebecca Traister

Tonight on the WB, a twofer of Charmed . Say goodbye to Shannen Doherty: She's gonzo! [WB, 11, 8 p.m.]

Friday, May 18

Hey, it's Barbara Walters, hosting 20/20 at 10 p.m. on Fridays! Why do we get the feeling that, years from now, we'll see the indestructible Ms. Walters in this very slot and ask ourselves, "Remember that time they pissed off Barbara by moving her for Once & Again ? And where is Billy Campbell these days, anyway?" [WABC, 7, 10 p.m.]

Saturday, May 19

Christopher Walken hosts Saturday Night Live 's season finale, making sure the cast puts in a full night's work before they head off to film their crappy movies. [WNBC, 4, 11:30 p.m.]

Sunday, May 20

Golly, this Kimes case just gets creepier by the day. Tonight, the inevitable TV movie, Like Mother, Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes , with the part of Sante Kimes going to … Mary Tyler Moore! [WCBS, 2, 9 p.m.]

Monday, May 21

VH1 examines Genesis in tonight's installment of Behind the Music . See if they can explain "Invisible Touch." [VH1, 19, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday, May 22

Tonight, NBC proffers a double-dip of Frasier . Boy, that Kelsey Grammer sure was chipper at the NBC upfront on Monday, considering he was so miffed last year, when the network bumped him off Thursday nights in favor of Will & Grace . [WNBC, 4, 9 p.m.]