After a long, dry summer, Bobby ("Blue Eyes") Donnell and the crew from Donnell, Young, Dole & Frutt are back representing -- in the words of one of their opponents at trial this week -- "sick depraved murdering clients, like always." And those clients are back as well, with their amazingly bizarre sexual fetishes. Back too, like a bad habit, is George Vogelman with the perennial "did-he-or-didn't-he" question that will doubtless linger all season long.

In Sunday's season premiere, Henry Winkler guest starred as a dentist accused of strangling one of his female patients who is found in his dentist chair with grape jelly oozing out of her mouth. At the start of the show, I was convinced it would unfold that the patient had choked on one of those rubbery things dentists shove down your mouth while x-raying your teeth. I was way off base. Turns out the dentist and his patient had this sexual barter thing going twice each week. The patient got off on having her teeth cleaned and the dentist got off on watching women crush bugs underfoot.

It's a toss-up as to which of these fetishes is less believable.

Of course, no sooner does Donnell learn of his client's membership in these "crush clubs" ("squishing bugs for sexual satisfaction . . ., ") than he has an expert testifying as to the Oedipal roots of this behavior. An expert? C'mon. The Assistant District Attorney asked the question on my lips - - "You studied this?" If ever there were a case for which Daubert was written, this was it.

As every fan of "The Practice" could anticipate, the dentist was wrongly accused. Unfortunately, he was also wrongly convicted. He thought he was covering for his teenage son who had left the dentist office just before the patient was found strangled. How the dentist is to be extracted from this dilemma, the role grape jelly will play amid all this drama, and the relative fetishistic merits of beetles versus cicadas is left for future episodes.

Plot twists aside, one of the highlights of the season premiere was the new Assistant District Attorney character, "The Pipsqueak," who prosecuted the dentist. Frankly, the relationship between Bobby, Lindsay and Helen has been just too cozy. It's personal between Bobby and "The Pipsqueak" and it gets the adrenaline pumping.

The other story on Sunday's show surrounded the reappearance of George Vogelman - - the dreadfully nice, average guy who may well have been the one who stabbed Lindsay. His co-op board, in an amazing display of prescience, has thrown Vogelman out. Vogelman returns to the firm and begs Ellenor to sue the co-op association. She does. She loses.

Vogelman's real purpose in retaining Ellenor is to woo her. But Ellenor is woo-proof and that's probably a good thing.

As to whether Vogelman stabbed Lindsay, you may want to recall that Lindsay was stabbed by a man dressed as a nun. I'm guessing it's a sexual thing. And Vogelman was seen walking around at the end of last season dressed as a nun. Oh. And the nun's habit is hanging in his apartment. Lucy, oddly the voice of reason, notes that "George is weird." Whether Vogelman is a cold-blooded killer, a sexual pervert, or a very boring nice guy we can't yet tell. But none of these choices is particularly good.

Some nits:

Why does every lawyer show have to include a scene in which a Judge barks from the bench, "I want to see counsel in my chambers, now?" How about having the Judge crook a finger at the offending lawyer and silently beckon him into chambers? How about having a Judge literally throw a book at the lawyer? Anything other than the same line week in and week out.

Second, how in the world did the police investigation of the dentist's office after the murder uncover the fact that the floor of the office had been washed on the morning of the murder and had traces of semen on it; yet the same crack police team searching the dentist's home somehow overlooked fifty jars of grape jelly in his kitchen cabinets?

Why was there no mention of the pending nuptials of Bobby and Lindsay? Is there trouble in paradise? In the only scene they had together on Sunday night, they argued over whether to Plan B the dentist's wife. Don't count on this relationship working out. Successful television drama and riveting courtroom trials are born of conflict and hostility. Hopefully, this season of The Practice will be full of both.

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