Meg Wood

Déjà vu can be a cruel experience. If you've ever walked into a place or a situation and had a sharp stab of recollection, you can understand what a hard experience it can be. That unsettling feeling of familiarity; that sometimes vague yet profound sense of loss or, even worse, disconnection. Now, think how déjà vu must feel to a 200 year old man. Perhaps, if you're in those old shoes, it's time to start letting go of the past.

Tonight's episode starts with a scene that could have come right out of an Agatha Christie novel. An opulent party at a ritzy museum. The glitter of gowns. The shimmer of champagne. Magnificent objects of art all around. The venom of a vicious old woman as she belittles the city's elite. But this is no ordinary old woman; this is Gloria Carlisle, a blue-blooded billionairess and matriarch of the most prominent family of Manhattan. So everyone, from the mayor down to the curator of the museum, is more than willing to stomach her nastiness. Except, of course, for the person who murdered Gloria on the elegant marble staircase.

The show about everyone's favorite immortal coroner really embraces its subject matter this week. This week's episode purportedly revolves around an “anti-aging” concoction that has the unfortunate side effect of eating holes into the user's brain. But the real theme is Henry Morgan's slow realization that there's more to life than just not dying.

The series about an immortal coroner and the bereaved detective who plays Watson to his Sherlock has a second go around this week. The pilot aired as a special yesterday and episode two premiered tonight in its regular time slot.

Immortality cannot be an easy thing. All your friends and loved ones are going to die and leave you. The droning on of eternity becomes pure drudgery. You will survive to see mullets and leisure suits back in style. Such is the fate of Dr. Henry Morgan, New York City Coroner.

When we last saw our hero, Harry Houdini was trapped under the ice of the Mississippi River, a death-defying trick gone a bit off. As Part II of The History Channel's miniseries HOUDINI begins, he's still trapped and it's looking bad. Then, he sees what appears to be a mermaid with his mother's face. This vision leads him to safety. In this manner, the show's tone and purpose shifts. We have left the saga of a man compelled by his need to escape and laugh in the face of death. On we go to the story of a man haunted by loss, the afterlife and the supernatural.

Harry Houdini – America's premier Escape Artist, Showman extraordinaire, potentially a template for that most American of literary creations, the Superhero, and, if you believe the premise of the current miniseries on The History Channel, a person psychologically addicted to running away from his own person and reality. HOUDINI, the two-parter that began Monday night and concludes on Tuesday on the History Channel, is based on a psychiatrist's biography of the great performer, which was subtitled “A Mind in Chains.” However, from the show and from its star Adrien Brody's, portrayal, he was less a man in chains than a man on the run.

Greetings! I am thrilled to join you here at BWW to recap the new series “Forever.” The premise of the show is that Dr. Henry Morgan, an N.Y.P.D. coroner, has a small secret: He's about 200 years old and cannot die. Shows about immortality have always intrigued me, mostly because they have rarely been very successful. That's odd. Everyone has a fantasy of immortality, at least at times one is not rebalancing one's retirement account. It seems immortality shows should exercise a lure to viewers. That does not appear to be the case.

This week's episode picks up on the heels of the last, with Claire and her Highlander captors entering the courtyard of the Castle Leoch. If Claire had any lingering doubts as to her whereabouts, or, rather, timeabouts, she can have them no longer, as the castle she and Frank last saw and toured as a ruin, stands before her, intact and alive and rather intimidating.