Dance on over to 'Eli Stone'

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — "Eli Stone" built a core of dedicated (even obsessed) fans during its 13-episode run last spring. And the show's ratings were decent.

But they weren't great. And there was some question about whether it would return for a second season.

Not only did ABC renew "Eli," but it gave the show a gift. It was slotted on Tuesdays at 9 p.m., right after the results episode of "Dancing With the Stars."

That fact did not escape the attention of the people who produce "Eli Stone."

"This year, we have a sense of what our time slot is," said co-creator/executive producer Greg Berlanti. "We follow 'Dancing With the Stars,' and we happen to do musical numbers. So, definitely, the first couple of episodes in the first act we will be doing musical numbers.

"We're shameless like that," he said with a laugh. "We want people to stick around."

So it comes as no surprise that 18 seconds into tonight's second-season premiere of "Eli Stone" (9 p.m., Ch. 4), Patti (the fabulous Loretta Devine) is headlining a big production number of "Dancing in the Street." Although seeing Jonny Lee Miller (who stars as Eli) as one of the lead dancers is a bit of a surprise.

"Eli Stone" picks up six months after it left off in May. Eli — the attorney whose visions turned out to be startling true when an earthquake heavily damaged the Golden Gate Bridge — has recovered from surgery to remove his brain aneurysm. The aneurysm that might have been responsible for his visions.

Unless he was getting them from a higher power.

If you've never watched the show before, tonight is the perfect time to start.

"Because of the nature of where Eli was at the end of the first season — having the aneurysm removed — the season premiere really kind of plays like a second pilot," said co-creator/executive producer Marc Guggenheim. "So you can come into it totally cold if you hadn't seen the show back in the spring. It's designed to be new viewer-friendly, as it were."

And there are few shows any more viewer-friendly than "Eli Stone." There's a reason its fans are so devoted.

"We are really proud of where we kind of arrived with the show," Berlanti said. "And I actually feel like part of why it was put where it was put (Tuesdays at 9 p.m.) was because we kind of all had sort of found our footing and we were doing what we were doing.... So we try to do what we can in the first act to really hook people in."

In next week's episode, they wait almost a full minute before the musical number headlined by guest star Katie Holmes.

(Yes, that Katie Holmes. Mrs. Tom Cruise. Who, not coincidentally, starred in "Dawson's Creek," the first show Berlanti executive produced.)

"We're scary shameless," Guggenheim joked.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com