Friday nights have slowly become a barren landscape for television viewing.  While the night boasts the biggest DVR gains, live viewing on Friday night is dropping out of style a bit.  CBS has always managed to stay above the fold on Fridays, with Ghost Whisperer, Numbers, and now Medium pulling in great ratings for the night.  And now USA is jumping on board, posting impressive Friday night ratings on its new series White Collar.  Those ratings are beating most broadcast network shows that night and are blowing away cable numbers in their timeslot.

White Collar is only two episodes in and its already a success for USA.  The second episode of the season retained 94% of its premiere's total viewer audience, and still managed to pull in just over 5 million total viewers.  Fox's Dollhouse has only been pulling in just over 2 million viewers each week, and Smallville has been getting about 2.5 million viewers each week.  Granted, these shows are on at different times on Friday night, but that doesn't make it any less inspiring for USA.

This Friday marks the third episode of White Collar, "Book of Hours," and below is a brief synopsis, some promo images and a video clip of the episode.  Fringe fans will be excited to see that Kirk Acevedo guest stars in this episode of White Collar.  Tune in at 10/9 central to USA on Friday (or set your DVRs).

The disappearance of a precious bible creates an interesting union when a New York Mafia kingpin enlists the help of Peter and the FBI in tracking down his beloved artifact. But while rooting out the thief, Neal finds himself in a tango with a sexy female villain and must decide where his loyalty truly lies.

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WHITE COLLAR -- "Book of Hours" -- Pictured: (l-r) Tim DeKay as Peter Burke, James Rebhorn as Reese Hughes -- USA Network Photo: David Giesbrecht

[Show as slideshow]

White Collar Ratings and Episode 3 'Book of Hours' Preview

Lansdale, PA.  A construction crew works clearing drainage ditches and laying culverts on a gravel road beside a corn field, replete with scarecrows.  The radio is on in one of the work trucks; the local news announces that there are no new leads in the disappearance of six Lansdale residents.  One construction worker notices a crow sitting on the obviously faulty scarecrow.  He walks off the road into the corn, perhaps guided by the unheard-by-the-audience laughter of children.  He sees a blueish object half-buried in the soil.  He bends over to try to pull it out, but a hand erupts from the dirt, grabs him, and pulls him under, leaving no trace he was ever there.

New York City.  Olivia is being released from the Head Injury Institute after her amnesia-causing accident.   Peter is there to drive her home.  Not-Charlie watches from the shadows.  Peter feels eyes on him but doesn't spot the spy.

Somewhere under the cornfield of dreams and nightmares, Construction Worker Guy flicks his Bic and finds himself in an underground cavern, surrounded by rotting, half-eaten corpses.  He himself is covered in blood, and half of his leg is missing.  Gollum crawls out of a tunnel and drags off the screaming construction worker for a second course.

Boston.  Peter and Broyles talk.  The broken insta-disguise device from last week impressed the hell out of the committee.  Thanks to Peter, they've pretty much given Fringe Division a blank cheque.  Peter and Broyles got everything they wanted, except the jet.  Peter's been looking for cases that involve disappearances similar to Olivia's and has zeroed in on Lansdale, where seven people have vanished; four of them in front of witnesses.  Broyles gives him the go-ahead to investigate.

Meanwhile, back in the lab, Walter and Astrid (he even gets her name right!) are trying to recreate Olivia's accident.  Olivia was missing for at least an hour between the car crash and when she came flying through the windshield.  The general consensus is that she was in an alternate reality.  Walter has an emotional moment when he tries to explain how distraught he was upon learning of her death.  He also warns her that she will suffer side effects from the trip.

Lansdale, PA.  Walter continues to introduce himself to everyone he finds at a crime scene; such a polite man.  Sheriff Go-lightly doesn't want the F.B.I. horning in on his disappearances.  Personally, if seven people disappeared from my hometown, I'd be screaming for help.  I digress.    He does, however, allow Walter to keep the blueish object he found in the cornfield.  Eventually, Peter charms the sheriff by bonding over fishing lures - the night-of-desireable-object referred to in the title.  (I Googled it - no such thing, by the way.)  Sheriff Go-lightly eventually hands over the files.  While in his office, Olivia experiences her first flash of hyper-sensitivity when her hearing goes off the chart and she can hear the individual footfalls of a fly walking on the edge of the desk.

Olivia calls Not-Charlie and gives him the names of all the missing people to run through the various F.B.I. databases.  He promises to get right on that after he runs an errand...

to the Selectric shop.  The typewriter-store owner doesn't recognize him, since Mystery Man is now wearing Charlie's face, but he hands over the key to the back room.  Not-Charlie, in some kind of intestinal distress, grabs the key and sits down in front of the inter-dimensional typewriter.

Not-Charlie:  Target trusts me completely.  She still believes I'm her partner. Awaiting your instructions.

Recap - Fringe 2.02 "Night of Desirable Objects"

New York City - A mystery man regains consciousness after crashing his car and immediately abandons the vehicle .  He stumbles through the streets, bleeding from a head wound.  He presses all the intercom buttons until someone buzzes him in without checking to see who it is (breaking rule # 1 of the Personal Security Book) where he meets a good Samaritan inside.  Mystery Man attacks the Samaritan and drags him into his apartment.  Mystery Man mashes up his face like it's made of plastercine and ends up looking like Frankenstein's monster's ugly brother.  He pulls a device out of his pocket and shoves what looks to be a three-pronged electrical plug into the Samaritan's upper palate.  Wow, that gives the term "internal USB port" a whole new meaning.  He jacks the other end of the device into the roof of his own mouth, turns it on, and his face shifts into that of the Samaritan's.  Mystery Man wipes the blood off his new, healed face.  Insta-disguise activated.

A dark-haired woman in an FBI jacket examines a different crashed car that has been abandoned in the street.  Oddly, it looks like a collision but there is no second vehicle.  She discovers that the missing driver is none other than Special Agent Olivia Dunham. 

Meanwhile, next to the dairy aisle, Peter Bishop and his father Dr. Walter Bishop are grocery shopping for the necessary ingredients to make Peter some cake and custard for his birthday.  Peter insists he doesn't like custard (that may have been Walter's other son Peter) but Walter insists.  After all, he was a sous-chef for the guy who invented ho-hos,  so the man knows his desserts.  Peter gets a mysterious phone call and they leave...

only to arrive at the second abandoned vehicle.  The dark-haired woman is Junior FBI Agent Jessup, who wants to know who Peter and Walter are.  Peter can't find any familiar faces to get an explanation for Olivia's absence.  He brushes of Junior Jessup, telling her that if she had clearance to know who they were she wouldn't have to ask why they were there.  Junior Jessup announces that the airbag was activated and the seatbelt done up, but there is no sign that anyone was actually in the seat at the time of impact.  Just as she finishes, Olivia (last seen in an alternate dimension speaking to Massive Dynamic founder William Bell) materializes in the empty vehicle and is ejected through the windshield of the parked car.

Outside the hospital, Special Agent Philip Broyles orders the junior agent to sign off  that the accident was a routine traffic accident.  She reluctantly does.  Inside the hospital, Peter and Walter are informed that Olivia could not be resuscitated because of her massive head trauma.  Because being launched through a windshield will do that.  

Peter takes off to drown his sorrows, leaving Astrid to babysit a self-medicated Walter, and is joined by Broyles, who add more bad news to the party: the bigshots in Washington are shutting down Fringe Division.  They toast to the demise of their department and to their down-for-the-count agent and friend.

Recap - Fringe 2.01 - A New Day in the Old Town

This article is taken from Walter's Lab, TVOvermind's sister site dedicated to all things Fringe. You can read the original article here.

For those of you thinking that Fringe's Kirk Acevedo, who plays Agent Charlie Francis, was lying about getting "fired," you're absolutely wrong. Earlier this year, the actor posted on his Facebook page that he'd been fired from his Fringe gig. And, in tonight's episode, we found out that he was telling the truth. We won't be seeing any more Charlie Francis -- but we'll be seeing a lot more Kirk Acevedo.

Confused yet?

On the season two premiere of FOX's hit sci-fi drama, we dealt with someone with a shapeshifting ability as the monster of the week. However, at the end of the episode, it looks like he'll be more of a monster of the year. In the surprising plot twist I talked about earlier today, Acevedo's Charlie Francis was killed by the shapeshifter, who in turn took Francis' place, returning at the end of the episode to dump the deceased agent's body into a conveniently placed furnace. "Firing" him. Get it?

Of course, any really ardent watcher could have seen the twist coming from a mile away, especially after Charlie's bedside discussion with Olivia, where he told the story of gunshots that killed his partner, though he had initially believed the gunshots had killed the woman. My certaintly was even more cemented in this twist during the cutaways in the hospital basement, where Francis' encounter with the shapeshifter was forgone in order to focus on Peter running after the sounds.

So now, Charlie Francis is dead, but we still get to watch Kirk Acevedo, who now plays the shapeshifting agent from another world, taking orders from mirrored hands on a typewriter (a very cool scene if I say so myself). Thankfully, we are also rid of the shapeshifting storyline (a very cool one-trick-pony, but nothing more), because the spy's equipment has been destroyed and confiscated by the government.

Was Kirk Acevedo's Facebook teasing cruel? Absolutely. Was it also not fun to find out his little joke? Even more so. Glad we'll be seeing more of him in an expanded role throughout next season.

Fringe's Kirk Acevedo is a Punster

Fringe showrunner Jeff Pinkner (Alias) gave a statement to TVGuide yesterday concerning the very public  rumor that series star Kirk Acevedo has been fired.  Acevedo gave a status update on his Facebook account yesterday that proclaimed that he had been fired from Fringe.  Since then, more details have arisen, specifically that FOX had indeed passed on the option to sign Acevedo for a full season of Fringe.  In the interim, FOX has either had time to rethink that move or Acevedo spoke too soon.  According to Pinkner, Acevedo is still considered a part of the Fringe cast.

“like all things on Fringe, there is more to this story than meets the eye.  We have already seen two of him on the show, we have already met the second Charlie. He had a scar on his face.” Pinkner told TVGuide in response to questions about Acevedo's acidic announcement.

Only, Kirk's Facebook is not part of the Fringe universe, and one can't help but think that Pinkner's statement is an attempt to put a spin on a slightly more complicated situation.  None-the-less, Pinkner brings up a very good point: with Fringe going interdimensional, there are now two Charlies - how in the heck do you go about writing both of them out?

The Fringe / Kirk Acevedo Drama Thickens - Not Fired?

Hats off to Latina.com for taking the time to get the 'full' story on this latest controversy.  Fringe star Kirk Acevedo, who plays Charlie on the show, announced - in caps - that he had been fired from the show via his Facebook account. "Well boys and girls they done did yer boy wrong! They fired me off Fringe and I've never been fired in my life!!!!" Acevedo declared, setting a blogging firestorm into action.  So far, FOX has said nothing further about the supposed firing of the Fringe fan-favorite (pardon the alliteration).

My gut reaction is:  this sucks.  Charlie is one of my favorite characters on Fringe, and a big part of the chemistry of the show. He is the only face that brings a sense of history to Anna Torv's Olivia Dunham.  That said, though, and after reading what Latina.com got by digging a little deeper, I'm going to have to say that this whole outburst thing is bit too much Acevedo tantruming. Acevedo admitted to Latina.com that his option for renewal was not picked up.  In other words, he was passed over - not fired.   “It’s called not picking up my option. But at the end of the day, you got fired!" Acevedo told Latina.com. Again, a big mistake, but his reaction certainly does no service to the people on the show who will go on without him.

No doubt the production passed on Acevedo because of mounting pressure in the industry to bring budgets down.  Fringe has already moved its production to Vancouver, cutting a cast member or two seems like painfully natural next steps. I'm sure it is an emotional and disappointing time for Acevedo right now - but it is kind of sad that he has fallen into the same celebrity trap as so many others these days by shooting off about it on a social networking site.  Facebook and Twitter seem to be promoting unprofessionalism amongst the celebrities of the world.

Source: Latina.com

Kirk Acevedo Fired From Fringe? The Truth Comes Out