All Sorts Of Back

Hank Stuever: Olbermann. You might have missed him, but rest assured, nobody missed him on television as much as he missed himself being on television. The steely stare, the Frankenstein shoulders, the grape necktie, the imperious certitude, the central vent unit strenuously set to blow at medium blast, the zings ricocheting back and forth in the echo chamber, which is now a much smaller echo chamber.

"As I was saying . . . ," the 52-year-old liberal commentator started off, in jest, as his barely rejiggered nightly "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" show returned Monday night on the seldom-seen Current TV network. Here, Olbermann gets to call all the shots — what gets covered, what gets said, who gets attacked. He will have to answer to no voice other than his own.