Rather than organize these by network, which would be a bit obvious and boring, how about instead I list them from least interesting (to me) to most interesting?

~

The Detritus

This means that we start with the tough, three-way battle for the title of Worst New Drama. Our contestants? NBC’s Love Bites, ABC’s My Generation, and The CW’s Hellcats. Love Bites has a horrible trailer, and whoever made it really should be embarrassed, since it left me deeply confused. I get that it’s an anthology romcom that promises to demean a new group of stars each week with trite dialogue and plots, but it’s unclear whether the women we meet at the beginning are part of a continuous frame, if Greg Grunberg is either, and if so how they relate to the other stories. It just shifts gears without explaining how or why. It also has a really bad voiceover and looked more like a tampon ad than a show; indeed, if you’ve seen the playful UbyKotex attack on the obnoxiousness of tampon ads, you’ve seen an effective satire of Love Bites. Oh, okay, we’ll give it the title, shall we?

That said, in terms of paint by numbers programming and obnoxiousness, My Generation is really throwing a hail Mary pass to the end zone. The premise is that a group of people who graduated together ten years ago are now being checked up on. Filmed documentary style, yet fictional (the fiction is evident from the patent stupidity and formulaic quality), it revels in its self-importance, as if this is this is the new Up Series, telling us all about aging, dreams, potential, realization, life, plans, and The Things That Matter. As an exercise, get out a piece of paper now, write down ten of the most formulaic, trite high school characters you could imagine; then, keeping with the theme of trite, imagine where they’ll be in ten years; and I guarantee you’ve now created something on par with the writing behind this show, at least if the trailer’s to be believed.

In third place for worst show is Hellcats. The title alone bugs me. With Cougar Town already on the air, did we really need another show whose title animalizes women? Apparently so. The show also perplexes me, since it seems a very small toggle of The Beautiful Life, a show that died a remarkably quick death last year for The CW. Only it’s cheerleaders now, not models. This seems a move in the wrong direction: surely the model’s life is more aspirational than that of a cheerleader? Perhaps that’s why our central character is a street-wise, edgy blond who is forced into cheerleading to get a scholarship to become a lawyer (‘cause we all know that nothing impresses a law firm more than cheerleading on the CV!), and yet who makes lots of critical comments about cheerleaders. She’s a character that The CW is specializing in – utter insiders who think they’re outsiders. I’m inclined to bemoan the creation of a generation who think they’re facing great struggles, and who want the sympathy for it, when they’re some of the planet’s most privileged individuals, but that way lies Grumpy Old Man territory, and I need to keep faith that the audience is more complex than what’s on the screen, lest I give up all hope in life. Suffice it to say, meanwhile, that Hellcats and I will not be BFFs. It’s only third worst since I’m least in its target demo, so I’ll give it a break.

~

Meh

Blue Bloods’ trailer made Tom Selleck look past his shelf-life. It also contains one of the more vapid promotional comments I’ve heard, from Selleck: “This show is very exciting. It’s got plots. It’s got action. It’s got all that stuff.” “All that stuff,” eh? Sounds like a great work of art to me! Anyways, it’s a family cop drama set in New York with an Irish family, from a pair of Sopranos scribes, and also starring Donnie Wahlberg. Magnum PI and the New Kid on the Block just ain’t doin’ it for me. It seemed a little more sophisticated than the average cop show, and I’ll leave room that it may rise to greatness, but at the moment, it’s just a big “Meh” from me.

I was disappointed by Undercovers, the new J. J. Abrams show. Maybe this is a case of the trailer hurting the show, or maybe it shows that the editor was really frisky when s/he made it, but it’s far too much sexual intrigue and not enough spy intrigue (or heck, not even enough family intrigue). I expect way more from the guy behind Alias, but when the show’s title is that cheesy, maybe my hopes are foolish. Chuck is a great, fun spy dramedy from a prominent showrunner, but it’s struggled in the ratings; I wonder how this one will do when it looks worse in almost every respect. I’m really excited to see network TV greenlight a drama with two African-Americans as the leads, but equally concerned that if it fails (because it’s not that good), some bonehead execs will see it as a sign of the unmarketability of such a casting model for a show.

~

Meh Plus

Nikita is the other new spy drama, with Maggie Q showing prowess as a hunter and killer, yet struggling with the ability to keep more than lingerie or underwear on at any given time. Again, I’m happy to see a non-white lead for such a show, especially on The CW, who came a very distant fifth out of the five major networks last year in terms of non-white series regulars. It feels like Alias with more contemporary music, and also looks more action-packed and plot-driven than Undercovers’ somewhat basic premise. It’ll need more going on in it than just a scowling Shane West, and I’m not underestimating The CW’s ability to disappoint me, but for now I’ll sign up for an episode or two.

When Flash Forward concluded with another blackout, I half expected for one of them to see “the event.” Certainly, the new serial show, The Event, has a similar visual style and cryptic “what’s happening, man?” element to it. It also has a really annoying trailer, showing us various fascinating incidences, only to tell us these are not “the event.” The suggestion, I get it, is that The Event is so monumental that all these other things (like an assassination attempt on a President in the over-theatrical form of flying a jumbo jet into him) are small potatoes, but it’s a tenuous, dangerous strategy for a trailer to take to deliberately withhold telling you what it’s all about (imagine: “Grey’s Anatomy is not about lawyers freeing the wrongly accused, it’s not about a loveable old man who moves in with his son to humorous consequences, and it’s not about enjoyable television”). And when the NBC press release announces, “Their futures are on a collision course in a global conspiracy that could ultimately change the fate of mankind,” I really should be checking out by now. But it’s high concept, it’s serial, and now that Lost’s gone, what am I gonna do with myself? Okay, NBC, I’ll check it out, but if it really is the V meets Flash Forward hybrid that your trailer suggests it is, I’m gone.

~

Consider Me Interested

David Lyons didn’t do much to impress me on ER, so I’m wary of The Cape, given that it’s centered on him. All the same, the Unbreakable fan in me finds it hard not to be drawn in by this tale of a man who must leave his family and assume the role of a superhero called The Cape, named after the hero in a comic he read to his son. Summer Glau also stars, which should ensure it some extra viewers, though personally I don’t know what the hoopla is all about with her. I like the world they set up – vaguely Gothamesque in its dysfunctionality and need for a hero. And thus while I’m aware it may just be a pastiche of other things that I like, and wholly unable to deliver when push comes to shove, for now I’m casually interested.

Terra Nova has no trailer, and only sketchy details, but there’s enough to hook me for now. A Steven Spielberg production, the show finds a family sent back in time as part of a mission, with others, to correct humankind due to the imminent death of the human species. If I set aside my skepticism that any well-funded entity would care enough about the species, not just their own selfish selves, to correct our course through time, this sounds kind of cool. Could be dumb, very dumb. But I’m eager to hear more.

No Ordinary Family is the second of the superhero stories to join television, and though he has experience as Ben Grimm / The Thing in the Fantastic Four movies, I’m especially fascinated by the somewhat odd casting of Michael Chiklis, and eager to see what he can do after The Shield. He’s the father of an Incredibles type family, who after exposure to something superhero-ish, all gain powers. Julie Benz (Dexter Morgan’s wife in Dexter, or Darla in Buffy, depending upon your preference) also stars. Smallville used to be interesting, before everyone started wearing PVC and Clark showed his ability to leap a shark in a single bound, and I’m hoping this could be an early season Smallville, yet with a little more adult grit, and with a family element. I’ll be watching.

And tied for most interesting-to-me is Lonestar. This show may be utter crap, but for now I pay homage to whoever made the trailer, since it really is quite excellent. We’re presented with a character who seemingly has two loving wives, each not knowing of the other’s existence. But before this seems like Big Love, we’re introduced to his nasty father who is the kingpin in a con he’s running with one or both. Except the son wants out. On paper or read on a computer screen, it sounds kind of dull, no? And yet the trailer had me really interested. He seemed like a fascinating, original character, and the trailer offered just enough pictures of the surroundings to suggest that it’ll be visually interesting too, examining the location as much as the characters, and situating one within the other. All this could be the product of very good editing, but kudos to the editor, since you got me in the door.

~

And that’s it. I’ll be back to discuss scheduling all this stuff later, but I hope some of this helps you decide what to watch and what not to watch this Fall. I’ll try to watch each pilot too, and be back with more in Fall.

Note to network TV: there are already enough procedurals. CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Criminal Minds, Law and Order: SVU, Bones, House, The Good Wife, Medium, The Mentalist, NCIS, NCIS: LA, and (debatably) Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice are enough. Really. CBS, I’m talking to you in particular.

Perhaps I should’ve sent out the note before the Upfronts, since procedurals are all the rage for next year, with 4.5 new lawyer procedurals, 5.5 new cop procedurals, and 2 new doctor procedurals.  Instead of breaking them down by network, let’s look at them in those terms:

~

“I Didn’t Do It!”: Lawyer Shows

Outlaw and Harry’s Law should both be treated together, since their trailers were clearly cut from the same cloth. Both star a biggish name talent (Jimmy Smits and Kathy Bates respectively) as successful individuals who tire of their regular job and hence who change gears to help a poor, innocent African-American in their first case. Both are serious with a touch of sass, both are transformed into better humans by their experiences, and both want their own Green Mile moments. Both shows count on the talents of their stars, but Smits was unable to pull the trick with Cane, even with Nestor Carbonell at his side, and Harry’s Law risks splitting the vote with The Good Wife or losing out to it since the latter is a better show by most appearances. Consider me bored on both accounts, though with David E. Kelley behind Harry’s Law, maybe it’ll do better than I think, and become more funny and charming than it seems at present?

The Defenders’ claim that few lawyer shows depict the defense seems somewhat amusing in the context of a season with these other shows, and as much as I will always love Stand By Me, Jerry O’Connell is no Jimmy Smits or Kathy Bates, and Jim Belushi delivered his best performance in K9, which isn’t saying much. Amusingly in the trailer, after Belushi notes O’Connell’s strength as a comedian, O’Connell deadpans that he signed on largely for the experience of working with Belushi – a great joke if ever I heard one. I’d schedule the wrap party for this one early in the season, though I would’ve said the same with According to Jim, so maybe the Belushi Protection Society will keep this one on a feeding tube for a while longer. It’s unclear if it means to be funny or serious, both or neither, so it’s tonally vapid … in addition to seeming boring.

The Whole Truth promises the seemingly bold move of offering both sides of a case. But we’ve seen this before, and if the trailer’s anything to go by, this will result in head-spinning and/or gimmicky back-and-forth editing that could wear thin by the end of the second episode. Rob Morrow stars, but his former affability seems lost in an attempt to be a big boy lawyer. Once again, I’m unimpressed.

And, crossing the cop/lawer boundary is Law and Order: Los Angeles. There’s no trailer here, just a CGI teaser, so it’s hard to judge. But perhaps the tired, dead, horse-kicking series needs the jolt of a new visual style and a new location. Alternately, perhaps we’ve all seen LA in way too many crime dramas and cop shows already. I refuse to judge at this point.

~

“Book ‘em, Danno!”: Cop Shows

After falling for Lost’s Jin and Sun something fierce, it’s hard not to be intrigued by Daniel Dae Kim’s latest outing, Hawaii Five-O. With Grace Park costarring, no less, it’s a perfect fan Lost/BSG collision. The trailer didn’t do much for me, and suggested little more than a regular cop show, without the CGI bells and whistles that the CSI franchise brought into the picture. But it’ll have the advantage of a great location in Hawaii, and if they use that location and film it half as well as the folks at Lost did, it might at least pull a CSI: Miami and look too beautiful to cancel. Meanwhile, I owe Daniel Dae Kim at least a couple of episodes of watching.

CBS, ever mindful of their need to program 80% procedurals, has also commissioned an as-yet-unnamed Criminal Minds spinoff, which just seems wrong. No network should be allowed more than two cop show franchises. Surely there are only so many 50 year-old guys in the country and eventually their supply as viewers will run out? No trailer, just a premise, and an uninspiring one at that.

Bound to have more edge is FOX’s Ride-Along, from The Shield’s Shawn Ryan. Set in Chicago with a distinct Southland feel to it, it might be a good test of whether NBC just flubbed the delivery with Southland or whether it was the audience’s fault all along. At the same time, ABC’s Detroit 1-8-7 tries to offer a similarly gritty, NYPD Blue meets The Wire image of Detroit, starring Michael Imperioli. Both shows clearly have pretensions of being life-like, cutting-edge, and finger-on-the-pulse, and the latter in particular has an appealing visual style. Whether network TV can pull off this level of realism remains to be seen, and I’d rather hold judgment till I’ve seen more.

Finally, Chase follows a team of US Marshals led by a tough, kickass woman. Jerry Bruckheimer produced, yet penned by Jennifer Johnson. It’s a reasonably well-edited trailer, promising intrigue, action, and tough cookies, but see the note that opens this post to see why I’m unlikely to care.

~

“Ouch!”: Doctor Shows

After NBC’s Mercy and Trauma were tossed from their steeds this year, ABC is offering its own pair of medical dramas, no doubt buoyed by its success with Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, and hence sure that it can do better.

Body of Proof seems to have been made by the same team who did the Harry’s Law and Outlaw trailers, or at least written by the same machine. Many years after leaving China Beach, Dana Delany’s back headlining her own medical drama, as a neurosurgeon who has to leave her job and become a medical examiner. The former automaton now finds her humanity with corpses. If that irony sounds too heavy-handed to you, you’re not alone, so I propose that if the first four episodes repeat the irony more than twice, the show is dead to me.

Off the Map is the more intriguing offering, from ABC’s own Shonda Rhimes and co-writers, starring Wonderfalls’ Caroline Dharvernas, yet set in the South American jungle in a Medicins Sans Frontiers set-up. I repeat my interest in shows filmed and set outside the US, and hence hope that it works, but as with Outsourced, I worry about the significant potential for it to reel out stereotype after Othering after boneheaded prejudice. Let’s hope it pulls it off and avoids those ailments. It’s also interesting to see a trailer for a Rhimes production that doesn’t put the sexual intrigue first and foremost. I’m still skeptical, but at least I’m curious too.

~

And those are the procedurals. For our last installment, I’ll discuss other dramas (and dramedies).

If one was inclined to read genres like tealeaves, one might find it interesting to see that 13 new sitcoms have been announced for Fall, while only 3 reality television shows are planned. Is The Age of Unscripted Television over? Granted, each network already has its tent-pole reality shows (Idol for FOX, Survivor and Amazing Race for CBS, Biggest Loser for NBC, Dancing with the Stars for ABC, and America’s Next Top Model for The CW), but it’s relevant that they’re not trying to triple up with many more.

Perhaps they’ve run out of ideas? Of course, many more objectionable, offensive, and crazy niche ideas exist for the conceiving and the making, but it may be that they’re being farmed out to the cable channels, lest ABC, for instance, need to explain how a dating show for pre-teens, or America’s Next Top Moving Company fits with its brand identity.

In the meantime, this leaves us with a small entering class.

School Pride is basically Extreme Makeover: School Edition, though the trailer made it unclear if the crew would do a different school each week or stay with the same school for a season. For the sake of seeing a wide variety of change, many viewers might hope for the former, but for the sake of dealing with due complexity and perhaps even analyzing root causes, I favor the latter. In terms of originality, the show seems uninspired, and it certainly seems to prove Laurie Ouellette and James Hay’s point in their excellent book Better Living Through Reality TV that reality TV has replaced the welfare state in our neoliberal times. But it’s hard to begrudge a program that promises to overhaul an entire school. It’s also impressive to see NBC up the ante on ABC’s EM:HE in grand style, and if ABC’s wunderkind can get the waterworks going in houses across the US, literally and figuratively, just wait to see what the School Edition can do. I’ve been very wrong before, but I can’t see this one failing.

NBC’s second newbie is America’s Next Great Restaurant. Their reality TV strategy seems quite simple: (1) Spinoff NBC’s only reality hit (hence Losing It With Jillian this summer), (2) Shamelessly copy, yet one-up, another network’s success (hence School Pride), and (3) Shamelessly copy a cable channel’s success. Here, the help comes in the form of Bobby Flay, one of the more watchable chefs on television. I have no trailer to go on, just the concept and the title. My concern is with regards location (as with School Pride, albeit to a lesser degree). Most of the other cooking shows succeed by putting the focus on the individuals, wherein place becomes unimportant. FOX’s Kitchen Nightmares roves from location to location, as does Flay’s own Throwdown. But if all the restaurant contenders are in one city, it might be hard to win the identification of viewers elsewhere, especially if that city is the big, bad New York. Personally, I’d rather watch Food Network and see the pros do it than watch NBC copy it, so consider me a skeptic.

Finally, there’s The CW’s Biggest Loser format twist, Shedding for the Wedding. Again, no trailer, just the concept – couples compete to lose weight so that they’re skinny for the wedding, and along the way they compete in challenges to win other things for the wedding (“Congratulations, you win a reprieve from having to invite all your mother’s great aunt’s bridge partners! We’re sending invitations to the wrong address for them!!” “Oh, honey, it’s just what we’ve always wanted!”). Biggest Loser already bothers me, given my suspicions that some seriously unhealthy weight loss is happening on “The Campus” (btw, isn’t that a Japanese horror film?), but once we add the fact that they’re doing it all in a manic attempt to have a “fairytale wedding” (so fairytale that nobody there will recognize them), I congratulate The CW on once again finding a show that actively encourages me to watch something else. With all that’s on television, and all that I need to catch up on, I appreciate such gestures.

What new shows lie ahead? Last week’s Upfronts gave us the answer. The allure of so many new shows is impossible for me to resist, and thus this is the first in a four part series discussing the new network shows for Fall. I’m not discussing summer additions, since most of those have already offered previews and various trailers or other promotional materials, so they’re more established, and since I have to cut it off somewhere. I’m also not discussing new cable shows, despite the cable channels being part of the Upfronts this year (as Amanda Lotz describes here), since there are so many channels that it becomes impossible to know when to stop.

Those warnings, offered, let’s begin.

And I start with the large crop of new comedies, 13 between the Big Four to be exact (The CW doesn’t believe in [intentional] comedy anymore, so it seems). This is a huge freshman class, and it suggests the degree to which all that crap about sitcoms being dead was so very wrong. Indeed, and as the third installment in this series suggests too, 2010-2011 promises to be just as full of procedurals and comedies as any point in television history.

The problem with evaluating new sitcoms is that the trailers must establish the sit(uation) in the sitcom, and to do so they nearly always create little more than archetypes and stereotypes. The challenge for any comedy is to live and breathe beyond those types, to play with and around them, and to be original in doing so, and sometimes none of that happens until the pilot is done and dusted. So I’m hesitant to crown any of these excellent at this point. But I’m more than happy to crown some of them as horrific.

~

Let’s start with NBC (see their trailers here), who as Derek Kompare notes here in his post on the network’s attempts to change its brand identity as Erstwhile Loser at these Upfronts, has a lot to prove and a lot to play for.

• Friends with Benefits looks painfully bad, and if nothing is scheduled against it that you like, please take up a hobby because it could hurt you. Luckily, its title is bad enough to warn you away, I hope. It reeks of the network trying to announce that it’s cool and hip, but that hip is the broken hip on the cool cadaver of comedy. I don’t really get who they’re pitching this at: in an age of CW and Internet porn, surely anyone who wants titillation can find it elsewhere, so what’s left in this tepid looking show but a badly-executed would-be romcom? I don’t plan on finding out. Though I will give points for the Yo-Yo Ma gag.
• The Paul Reiser Show doesn’t look as puke-drenched, but it is a bit sad to see Reiser once more riding the Seinfeld coattails (Mad About You being the original Kenny Bania), this time trying to do something Curb Your Enthusiasm-like. It’s meta and it’s singlecam, and but he’s Paul Reiser, not Larry David (and as Seinfeld told us, listening to Bania is like being beaten with a bag of oranges). This is the kind of format that cable will always do way better, which makes me wonder if someone in the NBC-Universal cable division was filling in for an NBC exec the day this one got greenlit. Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine unobjectionable, blah comedy, but I’d like something more.
• Perfect Couples, which focuses on three different young couples, is only meh for me – not bad, not good. Best case scenario: it learns from How I Met Your Mother how to do funny couples humor and delivers to the same audience. Worst case scenario: it looks like a really bad hybrid of HIMYM and Friends that burns out after the he says/she says humor runs dry. The tester: if they make jokes about men and women’s different reactions to the prospect of going shopping in the first three episodes, it’s gonna be bad (‘cause they already did the “she takes all the space in the bed” joke in the trailer, so thin ice has been courted already).
• Outsourced is a clear example of what I mention above, regarding pilots and types. Set in a call center in India, this show’s potential to peddle endless Indian stereotypes uncritically and moronically is vast. But it’s also a very rare beast in being an American show (a sitcom, no less!) set outside America with predominantly non-American characters, so the upside is worth tuning in for. I’m not getting my hopes up, but it would be nice if it works.

Overall, then, I just don’t see NBC returning to greatness with these comedies, though with The Office, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, and Community, that’s not their problem, so tune in later for discussion of their dramas.

~

ABC has three new comedies of its own (see all their trailers here), stoked on by the success of Modern Family and Cougar Town (and the impressiveness of The Middle, albeit to middling ratings):

• Mr. Sunshine, starring Matthew Perry as the manager of a sports arena, has me very excited. Why? Allison Janney. I looooove Allison Janney. CJ Cregg was one of the very best characters on television, and Janney is brilliant in all things. She also has history opposite Perry. This looks like it could be a smart comedy, and it’s certainly something different (a manager of a sports arena? Pa Brady never did that!), which may doom it on network TV, and maybe I’m letting my love of Janney carry this too far, but a person has to believe in something, and I believe in Allison Janney. The trailer looks like Sports Night meets The Larry Sanders Show.
• Happy Endings, however, looks to be in competition with Friends with Benefits for lamest new comedy. Elisha Cuthbert stars as … oh, I don’t care, and neither should you. She is close to a polar opposite to Janney in terms of acting skills. Trailers for comedies risk taking the only funny bits in the show, but here there are none, a sadly telling indicator of the horror that lies ahead. Don’t get me wrong – romcoms can be good, but this isn’t.
• Better Together strikes me as a very conventional sitcom. Kind of like Perfect Couples, it offers three couples, here a sister and her recent fiancé, a longtime unmarried couple, and their parents. With a fairly decent cast of sitcom-ready actors, it looks competent, if unspectacular, the kind of show I might find amusing yet not feel I need to follow. Dharma and Greg for the 2010s.

~

In terms of branding, I give the gold star to FOX (see all their clips here), who are launching four new comedies, three of which are exactly the kind of comedies you’d expect from the network.

• When people said that My Name is Earl should’ve gone to FOX, where it would’ve been a better tonal fit, clearly Greg Garcia listened and took Raising Hope there. Once more offering a seriously messed up hero and supporting characters, the show follows the arrival of a new baby in the lead’s life. Suitably irreverent, edgy, and very funny, this show looks quite good, I must admit, and it will nicely fit the Earl-sized hole in my viewing schedule. Any show with a flashback scene of a baby riding down a street with his head sticking out the bottom of a car must be good, right?
• Running Wilde also brings back a great talent to the small box, in the form of Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, with Will Arnett starring no less. Arnett is so fun to watch on screen, and the plot seems suitably ludicrous that I will definitely be watching when it starts. Offbeat, strange, and overdone in fun ways, it could be very good.
• Mixed Signals is another Friends/HIMYM-type show in a year with many of them. It seems fairly adept, perhaps the best of the bunch, yet I’m not sure the market analysis that’s told all these execs that people really, really want more of these types of shows is right, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see most fall my the wayside. Perhaps the studios are simply moving romcoms to TV and away from film since they don’t think they’ll succeed in 3D.
• Bob’s Burgers is another animated sitcom, but miraculously NOT from Seth McFarlane. The bits I saw seemed resolutely Adult Swim-y in their bit-ishness and low grade visual style. I’m guessing this is too cheap looking for network TV, and I give it a short life, especially if it’s as ho-hum as the clips suggest.

~

CBS only has two new comedies (see them here):

• Shit My Dad Says promised to be amusing if only to hear how people read the title on network TV. And it stars William Shatner as an irascible, opinionated old guy. So I expected a lot more, but the trailer is resolutely unfunny. Wow, who would’ve thought that a Twitter feed wasn’t enough to build a show off? At this point, studios should be more respectful of The Shat – don’t let this be his last role, CBS!
• Mike and Molly bothers me, since it seems entirely premised on the fact that its stars are heavy (even the title graphics, at present, are of a scale). Fat jokes are fine for five minute segments in a stand-up routine (or for Twitter feeds?), but as the basis of a show, the format seems too doomed to the bi-polar swing between self-loathing and inspirational “we’re all beautiful” platitudes. I’d rather a show like Roseanne where the stars are heavy but just get on with being funny about a variety of topics. I’d hold out more hope that they move away from that premise in due time, but it’s from Chuck Lorre, so comic genius and sophistication don’t seem to be in the cards.

~

And those are the comedies. Next up: reality television.

Continuing with the reviews, after the fold …

Community

Community has gotten relatively good buzz, as a bunch of critics have hailed its witty, smart, quick humor. Hmmmm. Really? I found it largely unfunny, offering the occasional smirk but no deep laughs. The humor was largely recycled or predictable. For example, since the situation of the sitcom here is a study group at a community college, with a rag tag group of people who seem like they’d rather be elsewhere, you can set your stop-watch until the first Breakfast Club reference and you might even beat Usain Bolt’s 100m record.

I should note, however, that I am perhaps an unrepresentative viewer in that I am remained impervious to the massive aura that surrounds Joel McHale, and I’ve always found Chevy Chase to be acceptable at best, but often much less than that. So I did not see Community’s arrival on the horizon as a sign of the second coming, as have some. The question is, then, what these folk will think after a few episodes. Take How I Met Your Mother: the fact that it brought together Willow, NPH, and Nick Antropolis had me excited about the premier, but it took me a few episodes till I could actually judge it free of that excitement (and, for the record, I think it’s very good).

Unrepresentative or not, I won’t be circling the timeslot on my calendar. It’s not bad per se, but I don’t think it’s smart, witty, or quick. It seemed more like Dear John than Breakfast Club, both in being not all that funny, and in being based on a downer of a situation that produces unhappy, anxious characters. I can deal with such characters if a show dedicates itself to being cringe comedy, but Community doesn’t, and thus felt kind of depressing.

The Beautiful Life

Whereas Melrose Place was just horrific, and Vampire Diaries had a small bit of promise (albeit small), The Beautiful Life (or, as we’re already being encouraged to call it, “TBL”) strikes me as pretty run of the mill CW meh programming. A show about young models in New York, it’s got guilty pleasure possibility wrapped all over it, and most importantly of all for teen TV (or so the rules seem to say), it centers around young people who we’re meant to believe have problems being accepted yet who don’t look like any of the social outcasts I’ve ever met. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see it last.

For myself, though, I found it boring. The opening runway scene has an endless, repetitive loop of a background song playing that makes the average Barney song seem interesting and multi-layered. And somehow that song came to represent the show for me – just doing the same thing as the last few seconds, and designed more to help you sing along, secure with what’s about to happen, than watch and listen with intrigue.

Stylistically, it’s a little odd, too, as it’s trying to be both CW glossy, with lavish camerawork and sets and beautiful people, and somewhat edgy, as it occasionally throws in fast-paced, and fast-edited handheld shots of New York City. The NYPD Blue look might work for procedurals or documentaries, but I found a hard time accepting its implicit bid for grit and authenticity when the rest of the show seemed so outlandish, as if Gossip Girl attempted the same trick.

And yet I’m not blind to the fact that the show isn’t intended for me or other guys my age. Indeed, its casting ages it quite precisely, with Sarah Paxton (formerly of the Discovery Kids show Darcy’s Wildlife) and Corbin Bleu (of Discovery Kids’ Flight 29 Down, and more famously of High School Musical) doing “big kid” roles, and with The OC’s Mischa Barton (laughably posited as overweight at the start of the premier!!) as the older, worldly-wise veteran model. (And yet, I found myself amused by the inclusion of Dexter Season 2’s Lila, Jaime Murray, and kept deviously wondering if she was going to burn the whole thing down, true to Lila form). So I’ll save my breath. It’s not bad, but like Community, it ain’t my cup of tea.

Flash Forward

I’m cheating somewhat here, since I’m basing this review on only the 18 minute sneak preview available on Hulu. I promise to return to comment on the full premier later.

But this was the one new show I’ve been anticipating most eagerly this Fall season. The concept is intriguing – the entire world blacks out for a few minutes, waking up to the complete chaos caused by a world that was asleep at the wheel (in many cases literally) for a few minutes.

It didn’t disappoint. I am somewhat worried about what comes next, and I realize its potential to be like The Nine, a spectacular, gripping premier and a rather ho-hum follow-through. But it’s very J. J. Abrams-esque in offering a great Act One. There’s also something refreshingly original about its concept. In Spring, we’ll see another post-apocalyptic show, Day One, and Jericho went there too. Meanwhile, we’re also going to get 2012, an apocalyptic movie. But I like how the “apocalypse” here, when it comes, isn’t a tidal wave, comet, terrorist strike, or nuclear winter – it’s something as seemingly simple as everyone blacking out.

But of course, they don’t just black out. They all have visions, in theory of the future. It’s all quite Lost-like: visions and close-ups of people’s retinas, moving forward and backward in time, a premier that begins with a crash and a hero scouring through the wreckage, and plenty of occasions to ask what the heck is going on. Echoing Charlie’s “Guys, where are we?” as the clincher line of the Lost pilot is Joseph Fiennes’ kid – called, wait for it … Charlie – reporting a bad dream in which “there were no more good days” (poor thing dreamed she was forced to watch a Samantha Who? marathon). Maybe a little too Lost-y for some, but I like Lost, so I’m happy to see the homage as long as they make the show their own.

The cast is quite impressive too – Shakespeare in Love himself, Joseph Fiennes; Lost’s Penny, Sonya Walger; Harold and Kumar’s John Cho; Law and Order: Criminal Intent’s Courtney Vance; Mad Men’s Peyton List (Sterling’s new wife); Coupling’s (the real one, not the American one) Jack Davenport; and others.

So sign me up – it was filmed well, it seems mystery-laden in a good way, and its characters interested me enough to come back for more.

I’m variously annoyed, depressed, and amused by spam. Annoyed because, well, it’s annoying. Depressed because it can only exist because some doofuses actually click through (“Do I wish I had a ‘trouser beast’? Why, damn it, I do! I’d better click through and buy me some of those pills, so that tomorrow I wake up with one that will, as this ad promises, ‘scare the neighbors’”) and thus it reminds me both of how stupid some people are and of how stupid many people think we all are. Amused when its inappropriateness can only be met with laughter.

Part of running a blog involves dealing with spam. There’s the whacked out spam that reads like clothing I’d often see when I lived in Hong Kong, peppered with English phrases yet designed by non-English speakers (“crazy pilot home run go anaphylactic shock heroes live for the best why Friends dig it barroom brawl cheese town tank boy”), and then there’s the stuff posing as real messages (a recent one is “I have been searching everywhere on the internet for this specific information. Finally I find it here! Thanks.” Maybe I’d believe it more if there was information in the post on which it commented, not just opinion/rambling). Both just want you to click through.

But around this time of year, I always get some new show / returning show spam that doesn’t want you to click through, but that wants to sell a show. It rarely goes into the filter, and seems not to have been delivered by a ‘bot. Rather, some poor intern somewhere seems to have the job of trawling through Google, and replying to all blogs that mention a specific show with enthusiastic plans to watch the new season. More after the fold:

Example: I recently received a comment on a two year-old post about CW’s ill-fated Life is Wild. In that post, I made some comments about various other shows, including Gossip Girl, about which I wrote:

To The CW, if you must keep the Kristen Bell voiceover for Gossip Girl, try to limit her reference to herself (“Who loves you? Gossip Girl,” “Gossip Girl here,” “Where will you find out? Gossip Girl”) to once per episode. Mimicking Elmo isn’t a strategy for being cool

That inspired this comment:

Wow! You are right! Gossip girl really rocks! The new episode season 3 is going to air in less than 30 days. Let’s watch it man

Note that I didn’t say it rocks. And, as an aside, I find the “Let’s watch it man” (emphasis added) hilarious, since it poses the writer as a dude speaking to another dude, which doesn’t seem to match the gendering of the show (“bro, let’s get some Buds, kick back and watch the GG”). But observe its sly attempt to use my blog to let you, the reading public (yes, you, Mum!), know when the show starts up again, and to encourage you to watch it.

And herein lies my ultimate beef with spam. It’s lazy. I’m not naïve enough to think that we could just wave a magic wand and make advertising go away. I’m also not silly enough to think that all advertising is Hell incarnate – some advertising serves an informational role. But would they at least put some effort and some thought into it? I think that this is the hard line for many people when it comes to advertising, product placement, spinoff merchandising, etc. The Simpsons, for instance, has videogames that capture the show’s feel and attitude, it has talking bottle openers that someone put some thought into, and it has Krusty Seal of Approval stickers. They’re all intelligent, and I can appreciate the effort both to extend the text meaningfully and to actually think about the audience member. But it also has cups with a generic image of Homer on. Boring. Similarly, I’ve seen advertising campaigns that are intelligent and thoughtful, and I’ve seen others that are lazy and stupid.

As I noted above, I’m sure the stupid stuff works with some people. Lazy paratexts sell and lazy ads can work. And yes, this Gossip Girl ad made me laugh, but otherwise it annoyed me. Which means the show’s playing a risky game, since I now see Gossip Girl as undifferentiated from the “grow yourself a trouser beast” ads that litter my Hotmail account. So too might my reader(s) (that’s two shoutouts for you in one post, Mom! Sorry that last one came in a rude sentence) if I let the comment be published. And as I type this, I’m aware of the irony that some GG intern will likely reply to this post with a similar peppy encouragement to watch the show. But, “man,” all I’m asking for is a little effort.

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.

CBS’s turn to unveil their schedule came yesterday. But first, fellow Extratextual Ivan Askwith just posted some neat thoughts about serial television, and I’d hate for them to be swallowed amidst my upfront posts, so please scroll down to read those too.

As for CBS, there’s no eleventh hour reprieve for The Eleventh Hour, Without a Trace vanished, The Ex List is now on the ex-show list, Worst Week certainly had its worst week, The Unit got a bullet between the eyes, Harper’s Island experienced a horrific end too, and Game Show in My Head will remain in the head.

However, Patricia Arquette went from speaking to the dead to reincarnating the dead, as her Medium, just a day after getting tossed by NBC, is now on CBS. It will be on a new Women Who Talk to Dead People Friday, along with Ghost Whisperer.

Below the fold are CBS’ new shows, and that whole “rescued from death” theme is prevalent:

First, Accidentally on Purpose brings Jenna Elfman back to TV, as a newly pregnant and single movie critic. Hearing about it made me wonder why she was away for that long, given that she totally drove Dharma and Greg, and then I watched the clip and found it about as funny as someone lancing my eye with a hot poker, so there’s your answer.

Next, with ER dead and therefore her chances of holding out for yet more guest appearances, Julianna Marguiles stars in The Good Wife, a drama about a woman whose politician husband gets chucked in jail, leading to her returning to her career as a defense attorney. The trailer is very savvy in drawing upon our fascination with how Mrs. Spitzer or Elizabeth Edwards feel when their husbands are disgraced to create interest in her character. The clip’s somewhat interesting, and Marguiles does a reasonably good job, so who knows?

Three Rivers joins the medical drama fervor (Mercy, Trauma, Nurse Jackie, Grey’s, Private Practice, House, and probably some others I’m forgetting), with a bunch of transplant doctors bringing new life to those needing a spare liver, kidney, or other such organ. The trailer’s on the cheesy side, waxing long and sappy about the value of second chances and the importance of hero-doctors, but aren’t all medical shows sold with such junk around them? It seemed relatively well done aside from that, so if that “aside from that” component is more prevalent than the sap, it might be interesting.

And if you can’t ever get enough of those medical dramas, good news, since you’ll be getting another one from CBS midseason, Miami Trauma.

Meanwhile, CBS’s other key addition to its Fall line-up is NCIS: Los Angeles. It stars LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell, which has to be one of the funnier pairings I’ve heard of in a long while. When LL rapped about coming back to rule the rap world in “It’s Time for War,” who knew he intended to do so with an NCIS spinoff as his beachhead? The clip tries to make itself look as much 24 as NCIS, but when both O’Donnell and LL tell us the show is “hot,” I’m not convinced.

And midseason will also bring another Canadian-American coproduction (“another” since Flashpoint is returning in Summer 2010), The Bridge, starring BSG’s Aaron Douglas as a cop who becomes head of the police union. I love this Canadianization of American TV: first a sniper show in which you root for nobody to get shot, and then a show where the protagonist is a union head. When the US finally gets universal health care, you can thank CBS for allowing our Canadian thoughts access to the American mind.

Midseason also brings Arranged Marriage, a reality show, in which unlucky, perhaps undesirable, individuals let their friends arrange marriages for them. The show will follow their lives post-marriage (yes, the marriage will be real). Oh dear. Has it come to this?

Undercover Boss is another midseason reality show, placing bosses in low-level jobs at their businesses, yet in disguise so they can hear what people really think of them and maybe learn a bit about life at the bottom. It’s based on a UK version, which puts the boss in the job for at least 10 days, and occasionally ends up with people getting due change or recognition, but also results in people getting in trouble. Charming. I think I’m washing my hair that night (and, yes, for the record, I am mostly bald).

I can’t find embeddable clips at the moment, so just go here instead to see NCIS: LA, Three Rivers, The Good Wife, and Accidentally on Purpose.

Meanwhile, the Fall schedule for CBS looks like this:

• Monday is comedy night with How I Met Your Mother at 8, Accidentally on Purpose at 8.30, Two and a Half Men at 9, then Big Bang Theory at 9.30. And, because Horatio Caine’s always a barrel of laughs, CSI: Miami follows them at 10
• Tuesday is NCIS night, with NCIS at 8, NCIS: LA at 9, then The Good Wife coming in at 10 as a very odd thematic pairing
• Wednesday gives us The New Adventures of Old Christine at 8, Gary Unmarried at 8.30, Criminal Minds at 9, and CSI: New York at 10
• Thursday offers Survivor at 8, CSI at 9, and The Mentalist at 10
• Friday is, as said, Women Who Speak to Dead People Night, with Ghost Whisperer then Medium, followed by Numb3rs, which promises to use more ouija boards this season
• Saturday offers crime dramas, then 48 Hours at 10
• Sunday has stalwart 60 Minutes (can they cancel Andy Rooney, though, or at least spin him off to his own angry old man show called Another Thing I Don’t Like About Life After the Great War) at 7, then Amazing Race at 8, Three Rivers at 9, and Cold Case at 10

I’ll try and get to The CW soon, then will be back to discuss the dead pool, and also the head to head battles in the schedule (because, lest you and your TiVo/DVR be so wrapped up in each other’s company, a huge number of people still watch when the shows are actually played).

ABC’s upfronts were on Tuesday, but here’s what happened:

Many of the cancelled shows were announced earlier, and I’ll discuss the dead pool in a later post, but let me say with joy that both According to Jim and Samantha Who? are no more. ABC killed Pushing Daisies this year and also yanked Boston Legal, so they have a lot to make up for; this is a start. Kill Grey’s Anatomy, ABC, and we’ll call it even. Alas, Grey’s and its negative effect on undergrads’ ability to spell my name carries on. Also gone though are Cupid, Dirty Sexy Money, Eli Stone, Homeland Security USA, In the Motherhood, Life on Mars, Opportunity Knocks, and The Unusuals (wow, that last one was quick! I guess Joan and God ain’t talkin’ no more).

There are also a whole bunch of new shows, especially on Wednesdays. Comments, embedded clips, and schedule below the fold.

ABC has been advertising Flash Forward for a while now, as anyone watching Lost ads who saw oblique “What Did You See?” ads knows. The set-up is that the entire world blacks out for a couple of minutes, then realize that they all “flashed forward” to an image of their lives six months in the future. Starring Joseph Fiennes, about time travel, and on ABC, I’m surprised it’s not called Damon Lindelof in Love. Lost’s Penny (Sonya Walger) and Mr. Sulu, John Cho, also star. I’m suitably intrigued and impressed with the clip, so I’ll be watching.

I also found the clip for The Middle promising. I’m not mad about Patricia Heaton, but love the janitor from Scrubs and am happy to see him with meaningful work, especially if the script is this good.

I’m somewhat confused by the ad for Happy Town. It starts by boasting that this is from the network that brought us Twin Peaks, but I wonder if the trailer editor ever watched that show. Yes, there’s a murder, but I don’t see the rich characters, quirkiness, and/or thematic play of Twin Peaks. It seems more Harper’s Island, and not suitably interesting to grab me.

Shark Tank is ABC’s new reality show, and seems to be aiming to mix The Apprentice and American Inventor. I don’t see it working, though: it seems too mean (and hence hardly a good fit for ABC’s warm fuzzy brand). And I’m not sure people want to watch shows about failing in the business world in this environment.

Modern Family seems to be the network’s attempt to give the Office treatment to family life, with a domesticom mockumentary. Ed O’Neill returns to TV, though without a clip to watch, I have little else to comment upon.

Ditto with The Forgotten, which is yet another procedural, Cold Case meets Without a Trace. I’m at capacity with my procedural viewing, so I’ll pass.

Eastwick is also lacking a clip at present, though ABC’s marketing team suggest that it is “a devilish blend of Desperate Housewives and Charmed that explores the hidden depths of women,” “brimming with romance, mystery and wicked charm.” Hmmmm. Insert disinterested look here.

Keeping with the girl power theme, ABC is also bringing together Courtney Cox, Busy Phillips, and Jordan from Scrubs in Cougar Town. The title alone hardly promises respect for the women, and the clip is full of angry neurotic women clichés. The young man seems so much more composed and comfortably in his skin, giving us yet another pathetic female lead. This show seems to be exactly what I found disempowering about a certain brand of postfeminism.

Kelsey Grammar takes another swing at primetime comedy with Hank, and if the clip’s anything to go by, this one’s another strike out. Not funny.

The Deep End steps into risky territory. Buoyed by the strength of the Law and Order franchise, and with a spunoff character, NBC’s Conviction didn’t last long with the young hotshot lawyer premise, so The Deep End is, well, jumping in at the deep end. Populated with actors from failed WB/CW shows, it looks okay, but only okay.

Finally, Lost’s Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) headlines the rebirth of V. I haven’t seen a clip, so I’ll withhold comment, but it better be more than a camp 80s product with lizard people.

Anyways, ABC gave us an incomplete Fall schedule, without telling us where Happy Town, The Deep End, and V fit, no less (or where Lost will go when it returns in 2010). Nevertheless:

• Monday kicks off with Dancing with the Stars at 8 (to be replaced by The Bachelor when it’s over). Nathan Fillian fans keep their beloved Castle at 10
• Tuesday offers a mixed bag, with Shark Tank at 8, then the Dancing with the Stars results show at 9 (or Scrubs at 9 and Better Off Ted at 9.30, when the show’s done). From entrepreneurial competition to either dancing or offbeat comedy, we then segue to procedural at 10, with The Forgotten
• Wednesday is all new, with Hank at 8, The Middle at 8.30, Modern Family at 9, Cougar Town at 9.30, and Eastwick at 10.
• Thursday brings us Flash Forward at 8. Then Grey’s Anatomy comes on at 9 (though since Lost seems like it’d be a good fit with Flash Forward, and FF’s ads played during Lost, let’s hope this means Grey’s will be gone by the new year), and Private Practice at 10
• Friday starts with Supernanny at 8, then Ugly Betty has apparently been banished to Fridays at 9, followed by 20/20 at 10
• Saturday is College Football
• Sunday is wholly familiar: America’s Funniest Home Videos at 7, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition at 8, Desperate Housewives at 9, and Brothers & Sisters at 10

I’ve already discussed NBC’s new shows, since they already announced them. But the big news of the day, for me, is that Chuck was renewed. And in talks with journalists, Ben Silverman drew the line directly back to the fans’ and Subway’s campaign to keep the show around (see my post on the campaign here).

Law and Order was the other lucky survivor of the day, though Medium, Life, and My Name is Earl weren’t so lucky. Apparently, CBS might pick up Medium, and My Name is Earl’s Greg Garcia is also hoping to shop his show around. Garcia wasn’t a happy man, firing back at NBC that “It’s hard to be too upset about being thrown off the Titanic.” Ouch. I hope the show finds a new home, since I really like it (what’s not to like about Randy and/or Crab Man?), and it seems like it might be a good fit with FOX.

As for the schedule, more after the fold:

We already know that Jay Leno owns a huge chunk of it. Ben Silverman talked a big game of not showing repeats, though if Leno tanks, it’s hard to see how NBC won’t just play everything multiple times over. Indeed, I couldn’t read the schedule without thinking about what will happen when Leno tanks. Any thoughts?

Anyways, the schedule looks like this in Fall:

• Monday, Heroes at 8, and Trauma at 9
• Tuesday is still Biggest Loser night
• Wednesday begins with Parenthood at 8, then Law and Order: SVU takes over
• Thursday night comedy kicks off with SNL Weekend Update on Thursday (memo to NBC: you are not The Daily Show; please stop trying), then The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Community
• Law and Order ends up in the Friday slot, which could be its death, but it has a good thematic pairing in Southland at 9, so though I’m sure neither show’s staffs are too happy about their timeslot, it might actually work for them
• Saturday brings Dateline at 8, then encore performances of Trauma at 9, and SVU at 10
• Sunday is football

The Olympics will interrupt proceedings, and it seems as though some changes will happen before The Olympics, some after, but the above schedule undergoes the following changes at some point:

• On Monday, Chuck will replace Heroes, and Day One follows Trauma
• On Tuesday, 100 Questions cuts into a slimmed down Biggest Loser at 9.30
• Mercy replaces Parenthood on Wednesday
• On Thursday, Community will replace SNL, and 30 Rock will take its regular spot at 9.30
• Friday stays the same
• Saturday sees Southland encores replace Trauma’s
• Sunday starts with Dateline at 7, then Seinfeld’s Marriage Ref moves in at 8, while Celebrity Apprentice takes the 9 slot

Is it just me, or does Spring look like it’s shaping up to be the much better season? Chuck, Lost, Day One, 30 Rock