Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Patrick Wilson's "A Gifted Man" may not have made the cut for another season, but the CBS drama is poised to go out on a high note. They're about to shoot the final episode, according to Executive Producer Neal Baer. And, he lets us know, the last two episodes should be especially satisfying for those viewers who've embraced the ambitious series that's attempted to meld medicine and spirituality.

Expect Broadway's Tammy Blanchard to make an important appearance — and Eriq LaSalle's role to be key.

Baer says the show will revisit questions about the nature of surgeon Michael Holt's (Wilson) late ex-wife, Anna (Jennifer Ehle). Is she a ghost? His conscience? Why is she there?

"Then you're going to see something pretty emotionally moving involving the character," Baer says. "Patrick has a big scene, a wonderful scene. We've been very careful, up till now, that nobody ever sees him in conversation with Anna, other than a word or two, but Eriq La Salle catches him in a screaming match with her, and from his point of view, Patrick is just yelling in the air."

That will lead to issues being addressed, explains the distinguished writer/pediatrician, whose credits include "ER" and "Law & Order: SVU."

He adds, "I love doing this through Eriq La Salle. It's a wonderful deja vu. He hasn't aged in 18 years. He looks the same as when I first saw him in 1994. I said, 'Eriq, have I been here before?'"

However, Baer stresses that La Salle's current character, psychiatrist Edward "E-Mo" Morris, is nothing like his former TV doctor. When Baer talked to La Salle about "A Gifted Man," the actor said, "'Don't make him anything like Peter Benton.'" La Salle also directed an episode of "A Gifted Man," featuring Christina Milian, that will mark its timeslot change to the 9 o'clock hour Friday, Feb. 17.

MEANWHILE: Baer's dividing his time right now between multiple writing chores. His and Jonathan Greene's just-released "Kill Switch" page-turner is already earmarked for the big-screen with Katherine Heigl attached to play as the heroine, forensic psychiatrist Claire Waters.

Baer says, "We're working on it. Kevin McCormick, who just finished a film ("Gangster Squad") with Sean Penn and Emma Stone, is going to produce. It's going out to studios and companies. The movie business takes time, you know. That's what I like about TV. A script I wrote last week is going to be shot next week, and it will be on in February."

Ironically, Baer and Greene originally wrote "Kill Switch" as a movie, "about 10 years ago.

We wrote about a 35-page outline and worked on it for a couple of months." Time passed. "I was busy doing 'SVU' and life ... a couple of kids were born ..." The outline literally sat at the bottom of a desk drawer until Baer's literary agent let him know she was looking for a medical thriller. Now he and Greene are into writing the second book of their three-book deal.

This is the second time Baer's been involved in a project that lay dormant for a decade before coming to life. The first was a drama Michael Crichton had written based on his experiences while a med student at Harvard in 1969 that "was in a trunk in Steven Spielberg's office for 10 years, as I heard the story," relates Baer. Baer, a later Harvard Med grad, wound up updating that script — "ER."

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: USA Network's "Psych" returns Feb. 29, resuming its sixth season with the episode "Indiana Shawn and the Temple of the Kinda Crappy, Rusty Old Dagger" — with guest stars Cary Elwes and Madchen Amick. Ahead on the James Roday/Dule Hill dramedy are guestings by Wayne Brady, Cheech Marin and Mekhi Phifer, to name a few.

Costar Corbin Bernsen tells us "Psych" shows no signs of losing steam. "In your sixth season, typically, you start to run out of gas. The actors and writers are a little tired. But not on our show," he insists. "It's a funny thing with cable. People have had to find our show a little bit. It hasn't had massive exposure. So there are people who are just discovering it now, in its sixth season, and — I've never heard of this before — we have all this new energy." Bernsen knows a thing or two about long-running shows. His last hit, "L.A. Law," ran eight years.

STICKING TO HIS GUN: Luke Perry says that he was so impressed by Canadian actor Teach Grant's audition to play the bad guy in "Goodnight for Justice: The Measure of a Man" that he decided on the spot to hire him. "I knew immediately he was the one. They had these quote-unquote 'name' actors they wanted to get. But I said, 'You know what? You can't do that. This guy hit a home run.' His performance was exactly what I was looking for," says Perry, who created his Old West circuit judge character, John Goodnight, and produces the TV movie franchise.

The cast of the "Measure of a Man" movie, premiering tomorrow (Jan. 28) on the Hallmark Movie Channel, includes several other Canadian actors as well. It shot in British Columbia, necessitating north-of-the-border hires. That's fine with Perry, who also shot a third "Goodnight" picture there. "There's a great talent base in Canada," he points out.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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