Without a Trace - gone without a trace. Cold Case - still warm. Medium - moved from NBC. The Unit marches off to oblivion. Nurse Hathaway gets a law degree and marries Mr. Big. Dharma becomes a baby mama, and NCIS gives birth, too.

Those are some of the highlights from CBS's fall schedule announcement yesterday, in which The Eye noted that it was bringing back a few old friends in its three new dramas and a comedy, and said it would be shuffling some shows, too.

The Mentalist gets what would seem to be a cushy slot, Thursdays at 10 after CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. But recent shows there, the canceled Eleventh Hour and the horror mystery Harper's Island, which ends in July, haven't had a lot of luck.

CBS keeps Monday as comedy night, but juggles The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother. Theory, which has evolved into one of the funniest shows on television, moves behind the popular - who knows why? - Two and a Half Men, the better to grab even more viewers.

Mother will lead the night at 8 p.m., followed by the new Accidentally on Purpose, in which Dharma and Greg's Jenna Elfman ponders motherhood as a newspaper film critic who gets pregnant during a one-night stand with a cute young guy and decides to hang onto the baby and the guy. There's a wacky girlfriend and a straight-laced younger sister, too, and can you possibly wait?

ER's Julianna Margulies is a mother in The Good Wife, a stay-at-home mom forced back to work as a lawyer when her husband, Law & Order and Sex and the City's Chris Noth, goes to jail in a humiliating sex and corruption scandal. Wisegal Christine Baranski and Josh Charles (In Treatment, Sports Night) provide support.

Wife airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m., following the new NCIS: Los Angeles. (Knowing a good thing when they see it, the CBS brain trust went to the CSI spin-off titling gambit, fiddling with the letters, adding an "N" and picking up a new city.) It's about a bunch of undercover agents with fancy gadgets.

CBS made it easy for NCIS fans to find the spin-off. It airs right after the original, offering two solid hours of naval contemplation.

The Eye has such a surplus of riches, it was able to cancel a Top 20 show (Without a Trace, which is 17th on the Nielsen ratings list this season) just because it was expensive to produce. The renewed Cold Case, a Philly fave because it's supposedly about death and detectives here, averages about 500,000 fewer viewers than Trace, but it may up its numbers, being moved to 10 p.m., where it won't have to battle ABC's Desperate Housewives.

CBS will have a mentalist and a medium, but it didn't take either one to see where the Medium series was headed. NBC made disparaging comments about the show, produced by CBS Studios. CBS Studios made disparaging comments about NBC. Now it's all in the family as the show will show up on the CBS network Fridays at 9 p.m. between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs.

At a news conference yesterday, CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler said, "If Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs had an offspring, it would be Medium." Not really. The Patricia Arquette starrer has twice as much honest family warmth as Whisperer, and way more spooky entertainment than Numb3rs.

CBS also announced the winter return of Rules of Engagement and four new winter shows - a workplace reality show and one that purports to show arranged marriages, and dramas about a Miami hospital and a police union leader.

Jonathan Storm: CBS Fall Lineup

New shows in bold. New times in italics.

Sunday

7 60 Minutes

8 The Amazing Race

9 Three Rivers

10 Cold Case

Monday