This is outside the scope of my blog, but will certainly make me feel as though I have not entirely wasted the last couple weeks. Fall TV season is the greatest time of year. I love pilots – I love seeing new stories and new characters and potential. Half the fun of entertainment is the potential, and in the Fall season you get the noble failures as well as the inexplicable successes.
I’ve been thinking about the best way to present this and decided by weekday could be simplest. The shows in bold are the ones I am currently watching. This grid on Yahoo seems to be the easiest to read. There’s a lot of shows so I’m only going to mention returning ones that I watch or used to watch.
One final note – this thing will likely be long enough without an explanation of the show. I’m writing this assuming the reader knows the basic premise – if you do not it can be found through the link above.
Monday:
New:
Chuck – Easily one of my new favorite shows this year. It’s a very funny spy show with an extremely likeable lead. The two bickering CIA / NSA handlers are terrific (Adam Baldwin of the much lamented Firefly in particular). I’m not sure if they can keep up the dopey savant aspect, and so far the only long-term story arcs revolve around the standard will they / won’t they for the main couple and Chuck’s moderately mysterious past but I’m certainly in for now. NBC also just announced they ordered 12 more scripts for the show which is an excellent sign.
Samantha Who? – I watched the premiere and there were a few good chuckles but I am so far not impressed. I’ll probably move over to this once a slot on my Tivo opens up. Mostly I just don’t know how much mileage we can get out of a former Mean Girl trying to mend her ways. For the supporting cast, I never really liked Jennifer Esposito, but the friend from Gilmore Girls is usually pretty funny. I think I remember the boyfriend from 7th Heaven and What About Brian – and the less said about those the better.
K-Ville – Anthony Anderson rocked the house guesting on The Shield so much it almost made me forgive Kangaroo Jack. I’ve liked Cole Hauser since Dazed and Confused. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities. The plots and story arcs deal with the aftermath of Katrina and we always need a good buddy cop show. How in the hell is this so forgettable? I’m watching just because I know it’ll get cancelled in about a month and apparently I enjoy lack of closure in my televised entertainment.
The Big Bang Theory – Brought to you by the guy behind Two and a Half Men. Damn – if there was anything to make me LESS likely to watch a show I can’t decide what it might be. However, Fox was showing baseball this week, which opened up this slot. It…it…it…was funny. It was the best traditional sitcom I’ve seen in a long time. The two leads were good and the nerd jokes were realistic. I’m still skeptical people will keep watching this as the premise seems limited, but it was funny.
Aliens in America – The timeslot pretty much ensures I’ll never see this, although people seem to like it.
Journyman – This is a classic 80’s show structure all done up in pretty new lipstick, and for me that’s a good thing. Each week our protagonist jumps (or you might say Leaps) into a different time period and has to save someone. The 80’s were full of this: Knight Rider, A-Team, Kung Fu, The Incredible Hulk, and others. Most hour long adventure shows have a “mystery of the week” but this particular sub-genre adds in changing locales to which the character must adjust and this show is clearly of that lineage. They add in the recurring story arcs today’s audiences demand by also showing the current-day life of Dan (the main character) and how to deal with his random time-hopping. Add in the fact that his dead ex-girlfriend is also in the past helping him out and his brother is a suspicious cop who used to date Dan’s wife and the weekly person-to-be-helped ends up taking a bit of a back seat. My biggest problem is I can’t seem to look at Kevin McKidd (Dan) without thinking of him slaughtering people.
Returning:
How I Met Your Mother – Or as I like to refer to it, “The Neil Patrick Harris Show.” Someone obviously saw him in Harold and Kumar and realized Doogie needed some work. The unique premise of looking “back” on 2005 got me to watch because I am a sucker for nonconventional narrative devices. The fact that all the relationships and situations felt so familiar, yet funnier, got me hooked.
Prison Break - A really smart guy going to prison just to help his death row convict brother escape using elaborately constructed pre-planning and quick thinking? Hell yes. Two brothers on the run, trying to expose a powerful government conspiracy while being tracked by a guy just as smart as the brother? I’m there. Back in prison in Central America because the ever more random conspiracy wants him to do something, possibly including breaking out yet another guy? Really? I was sitting there watching last week realizing I didn’t care one whit for anyone on the screen except T-bag because he is a magnificent bastard in the grandest sense. Also, people sure do mumble a lot on this show. I think I’m done with it. Now I can watch How I met Your Mother again.
Heroes – Tim Kring the creator claims he doesn’t know anything about the X-Men. Excuse me for a moment while I chuckle. The first season managed the enviable feat of maintaining interest in a dozen characters while bringing everyone together for a battle to save New York. We were introduced to cool super powers, learning about them as the characters did. The show combined angst and comedy and sci-fi and mysterious evildoers. The season finale wasn’t quite as exciting as everyone hoped, but then again it was just Chapter 1. At the beginning of this season most heroes were spread to the wind and are only now starting to cooperate again. Claire whined a lot. I don’t care at all about the couple coming up from Mexico. Hiro is stuck in a Feudal Japan plot that had best seriously pay off. It’s still holding on as one of my most anticipated scripted shows, but I really hope the writers get their grounding again as the season progresses.
C.S.I. Miami – I don’t know anyone else who actually watches this show, but it is the only one of the franchise I continue to tune in for. It is quite simply the most slickly produced, cheesiest thing on TV. This clip pretty much sums it up:
