ABC hit is back in top form with mysterious tale of Bolen family

Who exactly is Danny Bolen? How did his mom, Angie, get that terrible scar? And what does the crime she’s running from have to do with terrorism? These questions are keeping “Desperate Housewives” fans tuning in, which means the ABC show is back in top form, with a mystery compelling enough to keep everyone guessing.

“Desperate Housewives” is at its juiciest when it toes the line between pleasing fans and trying to appeal to its pickier viewers, critics. When the show goes too far into ratings-grabbing stunts (killing off Edie, or the recent plane crash), it usually winds up letting audiences down. The show can end up losing what should always remain the core of the show: a rock-solid, season-long mystery.

This season is on a roll on that front, with mostly solid episodes (minus the ratings-grab plane crash) wrapped snugly around the main mystery. The new family on the block, the Bolens,  quickly became involved in everyone’s lives without revealing much about themselves. Piece by piece, viewers have learned that Bolen isn’t their real last name; that Nick was having an affair with Susan’s daughter, Julie, who was attacked in the season premiere to kick off the mystery arc; that Angie has a horrendous scar on her back; and that she killed a man, sending the family on the lam.

This season’s mystery has yet to play out or wrap up, of course, so it could all go downhill. But, if what we’ve seen so far is any indication, this is the first season since the first that has all the right elements for an addictive Wisteria mystery.

Involvement of principal characters
What audiences learned from season two’s Betty Applewhite storyline was that it’s hard to care about a new mystery if there isn’t major involvement of a character we already know and love. The season-five mystery had the same problem. Sure, Dave was married to Edie, but that wasn’t enough to make us feel invested in his story. And, yes, he wanted to kill Susan and Mike’s son MJ, but viewers didn’t even know MJ before that season.

This season started off with a delightful shock, though, when Julie, Susan’s well-liked daughter, was attacked to end the season premiere. Viewers who weren’t already curious about the Bolens’ mystery were automatically invested because a longtime character might have been murdered. She wasn’t of course, but the stakes were already raised.

There’s a reason Orson and Katherine (Dana Delaney) stayed on as principals after their mysteries were wrapped up. It was because they were likeable enough to make the audience feel invested, even if they might be bad guys (and, let’s face it, Katherine might turn out to be this season’s strangler). That wasn’t true for Betty Applewhite or Dave Williams. No disrespect to the actors, instead, the flaws were in the way those characters were written — without enough sympathy or spark to make viewers or critics care.

This season, Emmy winner Drea de Matteo, as Angie Bolen, has been excellent at maintaining enough distance that she could still end up being the villain, but still making viewers care about her. It’s obvious she loves her son, has enough passion to be pissed at her cheating husband but enough compassion to forgive him, and the vulnerability to offer up her wedding ring to protect herself and her family. Viewers are surely coming up with off-the-wall theories as to how she could have killed someone in any way remotely related to terrorism, and still be the good guy that audiences want her to be.

Keep the mystery in focus
Some seasons there are so many standalone episodes that have no tie-in to the main mystery that it’s easy to forget what the point of the season is. It’s surely hard to sustain a mystery over the course of a season, but the Bolen mystery has made an appearance in every episode. Sometimes it’s in the background, but it’s always there.

Tease out details
Shrewd viewers want clues, doled out over the course of the season, to help them try and solve the mystery on their own. This season, the mystery started with Julie’s attack in the premiere, and has provided more details each week.

First there was Angie’s scar, then the revelation that she killed a man, that Danny’s real first name is Tyler, and that their complex history has something to do with terrorism. Show creator Marc Cherry’s earlier comments that it’s an homage to “Dallas” might help — although the season better not be a dream.

Brooke Mueller wants to remove restrictions on her ability to meet with husband Charlie Sheen following his Christmas Day arrest for alleged domestic violence.

Mueller has hired celebrity lawyer Yale Galanter, who for years represented O.J. Simpson, to file papers with the Aspen court asking the judge to allow Brooke and Charlie to resume contact with each other “so they can work on resolving the conflicts in their marriage,” according to TMZ.com.

Galanter told TMZ that Mueller and Sheen still love each other, and called the Christmas incident “one bad night.”

Sheen, 44, was arrested on Christmas Day in Aspen, Colorado, while the couple was on vacation. Mueller, 32, told police he threatened her with a knife during an argument.

Mueller’s lawyer told TMZ he was specifically hired to make sure prosecutors don’t “overreact” and charge Mueller with lying to police during later questioning after her husband’s arrest.

Galanter told the site that Mueller, like many women in similar circumstances, played down her story to a female officer hours after her 911 call, but added she did not recant her statement.

The filing of papers to modify a restraining order placed on Sheen will need to be reviewed by a judge during a future hearing date.

Sheen was charged with assault, menacing with a deadly weapon and criminal mischief. He posted $8,500 bond and was released the same day.

Global warming isn’t the only reason why Antarctic ice is crumbling

Slow tsunami-like waves are rolling into the waters off Antarctica. Generated by storms churning as near as the Patagonia coast and as far away as the Gulf of Alaska, these waves jostle the continent’s giant floating ice shelves.

According to a new study appearing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the rumbling may account for some of the decade’s most dramatic ice breakups, which may only get worse as the planet’s climate changes.

In 2002 the Larsen B ice shelf, a lid of ice the size of Rhode Island, disintegrated, a shocking example of the environmental change under way in the waters around Antarctica. As if to underscore that this phenomenon was no fluke, a small portion of the giant Wilkins shelf collapsed in March 2008 off the west coast of the Antarctic peninsula.

Warming ocean waters play a major role in these dramatic events. But a new study has found that what scientists call “infragravity waves” could be the triggers behind the breakups, rumbling in underneath shelves and lifting them up to an inch (2.54 centimeters) or so with each swell.

That may not sound like much, but ice shelves can be well over 1,000 feet (300 meters) thick. The ice shelves are essentially immune to the effects of ocean waves. Infragravity waves are another animal, though. They form when waves from a large oceangoing storm crash into shallow waters. Energy from the waves is warped, elongated and cast back out to sea, and can echo for thousands of miles.

“Regular sea swell chips off little icebergs from the edges,” Peter Bromirski of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography said. “Infragravity waves could be affecting a much greater part of the ice shelf.”

Bromirski led a team of researchers who examined seismic rumblings on Antarctica’s biggest shelf, the France-sized Ross Ice Shelf during the southern summer of 2005-2006.

The Ross Ice Shelf is stable, but the team found that winter storms in the north Pacific Ocean sent infragravity waves all the way to Antarctica. The ice rattled noticeably as each wave rolled underneath.

“The key thing is we are not at a position yet to say, ‘Oh my God, infragravity waves are the proximal cause of ice shelf breakup,’” team member Douglas MacAyeal of the University of Chicago cautioned.

Movie fans have mixed feelings about this year’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

On one hand, the action-packed sequel, which grossed more than $830 million in ticket sales worldwide, was voted the worst movie of the year by readers of the Web site Moviefone.com.

But in a bout of what can only be described as voter schizophrenia, “Transformers” won out in the poll’s category for best action movie, beating “Star Trek,” “Avatar” and “District 9.”

“Transformers” leading lady Megan Fox was voted the sexiest star of 2009, but was also voted the actress who gave the worst performance.

This poll leads me to believe that moviegoers would have been just as happy if “Transformers” just had action-packed scenes of stuff blowing up along with Megan Fox in a non-speaking part. (Make your own joke here – ed.)

Fans offered no such ambivalence when it came to their love affair with “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” The vampire romance won out for the best movie of the year and best chick flick and piqued the interest of future movie-goers.

And the movie folks are most excited to see in 2010? “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.”

A suicide bomber attacked a base in Khost province, an

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing Wednesday that killed eight Americans believed to be CIA employees.

In a message posted on its Web site, the Taliban said an Afghan National Army soldier detonated his explosives-packed vest, killing 20 people and injuring 25 others.

A spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force’s (ISAF) Joint Command would not comment on the claim that a soldier was involved, saying the force was still gathering information.

The Taliban routinely offers a higher casualty count, accounting for the discrepancy in their claim and the official death toll.

Earlier, a senior U.S. official said information suggested a bomber walked into a gym facility at Forward Operating Base Chapman and detonated a suicide vest. It’s not known how the bomber got past security.

In addition to the eight deaths, the blast wounded six Americans, the official said.

A U.S. military source said that FOB Chapman was originally a base for the Khost Provincial Construction Team, but the team left some time ago.

Authorities believe that perhaps the suicide bomber attacked just after a convoy was ending or beginning, which would account for high number of casualties.

Also Wednesday, five Canadians — four soldiers and a journalist — were killed when a roadside bomb hit their armored vehicle in southern Afghanistan, Canada’s defense ministry said.

The attack happened about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) south of Kandahar, where the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan is headquartered.

“The soldiers were conducting a community security patrol in order to gather information on the pattern of life and maintain security in the area,” Brig. Gen. Daniel Menard, the commander of the 2,800-member Canadian contingent, told reporters. “The journalist was traveling with them to tell the story of what Canada’s soldiers are doing in Afghanistan.”

Four other Canadian troops and a civilian official also were injured in the attack, he said.

The Calgary Herald identified the reporter as Michelle Lang, 34, who had been with the paper since 2002. Lang is the first Canadian journalist killed in the Afghan war and is believed to be the first Herald reporter killed while on the job.

The deaths bring the number of Canadian military fatalities in Afghanistan to 138. The names of the troops were not immediately released.

The deaths are the most Canadians killed in a single incident in Afghanistan since six Canadian soldiers died in a bombing on July 4, 2007.