The CW Upfronts
Finishing our tour through this Fall’s TV schedule, let’s look at the CW.
Remember when The WB network began and it had a fair amount of African American programming, but then it went for wealthy young white women? Then UPN also programmed a lot of African American content. Then the two merged, and African American shows were ghettoized into one night so that the wealthy young white women could hold court for the other nights. Well, with the cancellation of The Game and Everybody Hates Chris, the CW can now boldly announce that CW stands for Completely White. (Okay, there’s Tyra and there’s the kid on 90210, but not much else.)
Gone, too, are 13: Fear is Real, 4Real, Easy Money, In Harm’s Way, Privileged, Reaper, and Valentine.
What’s new? After the fold …
Inspired by the relative success of 90210, the CW is now bringing us a reboot of Melrose Place. I encourage you to watch the clips below, so that you too can revel in how completely bad this show looks.
Indeed, I must interject here and note that either the CW is just really crap and/or I am finally an old person, because there’s very little on this network that I find stomachable.
Exhibit B here is The Beautiful Life, a show all about the glamorous life of scheming, conniving, catty models. How empowering! The preview clips suggest that the CW has found an innovative way to cut their production budget – by filming a half-hour show, yet filling in the extra hour with close ups of runway models walking. I feel I know the actresses’ calf muscles and cheekbones better than their characters after watching this, though maybe that’s as deep as the characters get?
The third new show for Fall, The Vampire Diaries, clearly aims to capitalize on the Twilight buzz by adapting the Vampire Diaries books. But who knew vampires could be so utterly boring? The clips are entirely yawn-worthy, proving why the nets should spring for real trailers, not just crappy scenes seemingly picked at random.
Midseason, we’ll have Parental Discretion Advised added, a drama centered on a young woman who has bounced around between foster parents but now finds her biological parents. It’s from a Brothers and Sisters producer, and though the clip drips sap at points, I actually found it rather intriguing, and narratively engaging.
The schedule is paired down, partly because CW only have two hours a night, partly because they’ve ceased broadcasting networked content on Sundays, leaving the affiliates to their own devices. Anyways, it looks like this:
- Monday wisely keeps the winning pair of Gossip Girl at 8 and One Tree Hill at 9.
- Tuesday is 90s flashback night, with 90210 then Melrose Place.
- Wednesday starts with America’s Next Top Model, then stays model-centered with The Beautiful Life.
- Thursday goes gothic, with Vampire Diaries replacing Smallville at 8, then Supernatural staying put.
- Smallville begins its new life on Friday at 8, followed by an encore of America’s Next Top Model.
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