It’s a long way from the war in the Middle East to the Patuxent River. But that is where a number of our brave and wounded veterans found themselves on August 7. On that day, the U.S. Power Squadrons of Northern Virginia, Rockville and the Patuxent River hosted a Wounded Warrior Cruise for veterans who are recovering from their wounds at the Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir medical facilities.

Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian: TV’s Big Love) is palling around with a couple documentarians to film his confessional. The fast-talking evangelical minister from Baton Rouge is a sleight-of-hand exorcist standing on shaky faith, and he means to expose his own con by documenting one of his so-called exorcisms. But when he follows a handwritten plea to the Sweetzer farm in backwoods Louisiana, he discovers innocent child Nell (Ashley Bell: Stay Cool) is afflicted with something his placebo routine won’t fix.

The quiet waterscape flowing around us was only dimly illuminated by the first blush of a calm and breaking day as my son and I made our casts. Drifting slowly in our skiff on the fresh start of a gentle ebb, we were moving about 100 feet out and parallel to a long, weathered bulkhead, footed by heavy, barnacled stone piled along its base.

Jake’s Women, 2nd Star Productions’ fall season opener, presents an attractive setting for some fine local talent. But despite a valiant effort on the company’s part, this 1992 Neil Simon comedy fails to grab the audience by the collar and draw them back for more. It was a snoozer in the 1996 film adaptation, even with an all-star cast headed by Alan Alda, and it remains drowsy in this production.