The Extratextuals

As described over on Jason Mittell’s Just TV blog, Jason, Ivan, Derek, and I recently set up a Fantasy Television League draft. The draftees were the new primetime network shows (with Don’t Forget the Lyrics and The Singing Bee dropped from contention due to early starts, and CW Now and Online Nation dropped since, well, they’re different). Each of us got six picks, and as the season progresses, we’ll get 1 point if the show lives to the November sweeps, 2 for February sweeps, 3 for May sweeps, and 4 for renewal. In addition, we could each dub one of our picks a Designated Stinker, and whoever’s stinker is around the least before its network parent kills it, gets 5 points. Obviously, this competition could take a while to decide. But following Jason’s explanation of his picks on his blog, and in the spirit of our blog crossover, Crisis on Infinite Blogs, I’m now explaining my own picks.

First, I should explain how the ordering went. Since I’d seen most of the pilots at the Paley Center, it seemed fair that I pick last. Ivan had seen 8 pilots with me, so he was third. Then, randomly we picked Derek to go first, a pick he squandered with youthful naivety on Bionic Woman. Draft order reversed each round.

I’ve already blogged about my reactions to the pilots, but let me add a few words on my strategery of picking here. In likely contrast to my draft opponents, I’ll probably only watch one of my six shows (Reaper), but I’m happy enough with these as predicted survivors. When Kidnapped can get canned yet The War at Home gets a full season, or when Freaks and Geeks gets the boot, yet Ghost Whisperer (and, indeed, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s career) continues to linger on television like a stubborn fart, one learns quickly not to pick by quality.More below the foldI put a lot of faith in my reading of The CW, and hence picked Reaper and Gossip Girl (as the 4th and 5th picks) and Life is Wild as the Designated Stinker. The CW seemed fond last year of replaying both America’s Next Top Model and Beauty and the Geek, and I’m convinced they’d happily do so this year too. AMTM already has a dedicated Sunday replay spot, and the CW’s other shows are returning (or the half hour Aliens in America), which leaves Reaper, Gossip Girl, and Life is Wild the only shows that could move over for Beauty and the Geek. No such luck with the first two. Gossip Girl already commanded a fairly impressive (for CW) 3.65 Million premier audience, winning its slot for the obviously intended demo of women 18-34, and bettering One Tree Hill’s audience for last year in the same time slot, and has all the ingredients needed to keep the youth audience (which, after all, is all CW and their advertisers care about) against the boring Bionic Woman, “Grey’s Anatomy with some wrinkles” Private Practice, older guy’s show Criminal Minds, and Kitchen Nightmares. Plus, now that it’s my pick, I’m going to aggressively sell it to my students Reaper should also command a strong youth audience, and others, since it’s funny.

Pride’s an issue that I’m banking on, too: just as CBS can’t admit that Katie Couric is a disaster, this is The CW’s first real year of new programming, and all accounts suggest they really like Gossip Girl and Reaper. Even if audience numbers flag, they need to prove that they can bring people into the new tent, and so I’d expect to see them aggressively stand by the two shows most likely to work for them. If the network lets its first freshman class die on the vine, they send a message that they’re a crappy vineyard (though I don’t know why I’m using a wine metaphor for a network that pitches stuff at many who are underage, or drinking silly fruity drinks with names like Strawbreeze).

Life is Wild, however, could easily be the sacrificial lion. First, let’s be straight that it’s bad. Maybe not “watch with a slop bucket” bad, but bad. No stars to keep happy or honor deals with (which might be true with Samantha Who? or Viva Laughlin), no stars to bank on, and, come to think of it, no professional acting in most scenes. I’m predicting The Simpsons will experience a momentary, post-film bump. Viva Laughlin, as Jason notes, is junk, but it’s also junk likely to grab a few early curious looks, as might a child with four heads at the carnival. Mix those with football stealing a bunch of guys, and resulting in a bunch of dads or brothers, and some sisters, hogging the remote, and family viewing megalith Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and I can see Life is Wild’s ratings flatlining fast. It’s pitched at tweens who rarely get the remote. And it’s not the kind of show that needs time to get into either, so unless it grabs audiences with speed, these missionaries to Africa are coming home.

As for the non-CW picks, Cane is not great television. But it could be a sleeper hit. And it’s got big names to keep happy and to attract viewers. And CBS’s Kid Nation is being attacked on all sides, its Big Bang Theory and Viva Laughlin are crap, and Moonlight has received bad buzz, so if the reigning Nielsen king is going to keep something around, it may just be Cane. For what its worth, too, I’ve seen about five times as many ads for Cane around New York than for any other CBS show (quite disconcertingly, a lot of buses carry Jimmy Smits’ face on the front, like a spectral battering ram), telling me that CBS are behind it. There may be an imperative too to actually give one of network television’s only predominantly Latino/a cast dramas around, to give it a shot. So it’ll stay for a while.

Kitchen Nightmares is risky. It’s loud and brash and I can see many people turning the television off rather than watching. FOX, however, is loud and brash, and has succeeded as such. The critics have liked it, too, and its premier bettered FOX’s ratings for the same timeslot last year, hence leading journalists to call it a success. Reality is cheap, so as long as it pulls in a mediocre audience, it could stick around.

Which leaves Life. My earlier pilot review says what I think about it. This was my and the group’s last pick before the round of Designated Stinkers, so its more a space filler than a great hope. It’s not as bad as that placement suggests, though, and has a reasonable timeslot, going up against the uninspiring Dirty Sexy Money and CSI: New York. Through many years of watching shows live and die, I’ve learned never to underestimate procedurals – there may be 615 of them available on primetime television every night, yet they all seem to just keep on going.

So there are my picks. I’ll be watching my competitors’ shows for the most part, but then again, I don’t have a Nielsen box in my house, which means that in the world of American television, my watching counts for nothing anyway.

draft draft, pilots