"Prison's great," I hear, getting off the elevator and trudging into the (former) House of Merv for the last day of TCA.

Have I ever explained what this TCA thing is? Probably not, because it is, in a weird way, hard to explain. OK, it's at this hotel, the Hilton (not every year, it's been rotating in recent years, but that's not important). Anyway, it's a ballroom at the Hilton, off the lobby, and each day, all day, you (I) sit there at your (my) computer while onstage the network shows clips of a new series (or sometimes a still-publicity-seeking returning one, e.g. "House"), and then the stars and producers come out onstage to sit in chairs and take questions (between all of this, they feed you, to keep you here, although I realize much of the press here is out-of-town, and thus has less flexibility).

Behind the press at each panel, in the back of the room, there's a rooting section of follow-the-money people (from the studio, the network, the publicity office, the outpatient treatment center). They'll laugh helpfully, say, at something a child actor says, and generally sit there appearing to be highly interested). While onstage it's a collection of the writer and/or producers with the young and pretty and not-yet-known cast, some of whom have been here before with another show that didn't make it, in addition to some Hollywood vet or two.

And it's the Hollywood vet and the writer and/or producers who end up doing most of the talking. And you're sitting there and you can't tell who's who among the pretty ones and soon one "session" blends into the next, and the one before it, and you don't know if you can listen to another actor talk. Although I bet some of what they said you will read waiting in a supermarket check-out line soon, if not online, where you can get it sooner.

Many people in the press, by the way, have been here much longer than I. They've sat through all this with the cable networks, too.

So "Invasion" and "Inconceivable" and "Related" and "Reunion." This last one is a show on Fox about, uhm, a group of six friends from a high school class of '86, who endure a very memorable summer of drama together, which we see in flashback. Except that the show begins in present time, at the funeral of one of them. And then apparently each episode will tell you about a year in their lives, from '86 on up.

Phew. This brings me to a buzzword at this TCA -- serialized. As in shows nowadays-thanks to the success of "Lost," you keep hearing, with its layered plotlines and mystery-are more heavily serialized. Other things ringing in my ears after two weeks here: TV is cyclical. Our episodes will be self-contained. You know, I really don't watch "Desperate Housewives." Quality is quality. The script was amazing. The script was compelling. The script was amazing and compelling. Question: How do you get your head into this character? Question: How is your character like you? Question: What was it like, going from that movie you did to the TV show you're now doing?

So tell me, what's been happening in the world? No, I'm asking you. You. Because I've been in this black hole of TV series creation and wonderfulness and risk for two weeks, and I think the networks put something in the sandwiches to keep you coming back into the ballroom.

So anyway "Prison's great" is what I overheard someone tell Dominic Purcell this morning. He is the co-star of Fox's big-next-hope "Prison Break," so the comment should read " 'Prison's' great." It's about a prison break, sort of, uhm-hey, I know, it's heavily serialized! Which means not self-contained. And I've heard the pilot's amazing. Because quality is quality.

By the way, Purcell was onstage, in jeans and T-shirt and flip-flops. And this is very OK in Hollywood nowadays, although every time an actor came onstage (to meet the press representing, after all, our nation) looking like he'd just flippedy flopped over to Starbucks before taking a shower and calling his agent I thought: What would someone like Clark Gable say about this, the way these kids dress, the way they look?

Something happened this morning at the "Prison Break" panel that tends to happen at a panel if there's a genuine Hollywood actor onstage, a throwback person. So Stacy Keach, who plays a warden in "Prison Break," starts talking about the difference between shooting a TV show at the old Joliet Prison and his own stint in prison in England ("Joliet is -- compared to Reading jail, where I was in 1984, I guess it was, it's a very different environment in one respect," he was saying. "And that is that it's a much more open environment. As despairing as prisons are, the jail cells at Reading were different in the sense that they had steel doors rather than open bars, a slit in the window as opposed to the ability to see what's going on outside. There were no toilets in the cells. There were just buckets. And you were greeted in the morning with the words 'Slop out.' That was 'good morning,' as the keys went into the lock and opened the cell doors...")

And suddenly, you realized that you were actually listening, because you were in the hands of a grown-up Hollywood person, who has, you know, lived a life.

It happened too when Don Johnson was up there for the WB, and Max Gail for ABC and...well, admittedly they're harder to find in TV, people who've lived, especially people who've lived who happen to be women.

But who knows. Maybe it's cyclical.