The Extratextuals

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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We all owe Jay Leno an apology. Many of us thought his show was awful. We also owe Jeff Zucker an apology, since we thought he had shown us the worst NBC could offer. But Zucker, it turns out, was just getting warmed up, and Leno’s inability to be funny seems kind of quaint and charming now that I have seen the horror that is The Marriage Ref.

It’s really hard to know where to begin with a review of something so utterly bad. I’d been led to believe that Seinfeld would be the host, but instead he sat there at the side like a creepy guy at a public park. The actual host was about as funny as a snuff film. The crowd were laughing, but I felt for their family members, who were clearly being held under duress elsewhere on the NBC lot, with threats of them being “disappeared” if the audience didn’t laugh, damn it, laugh.

As for the other celebrities, I didn’t know whether to feel more sad for Alec Baldwin or angry at him for agreeing to do this. I hope next time he’s up for an Emmy for Best Comic Performance, they discount this against him. Say what you will about According to Jim, but at least Belushi never did something like this (did he?). I note too that nobody outside the NBC/Universal family appeared on the show; indeed, if I ran any of the other networks, I’d be begging, cajoling, and pleading with my talent to stay away.

Despite those celebs, the whole affair was low budget, not in a fun and endearing way, but in a painful, bewildering way. NBC looks so broke, so destitute with this, and not just monetarily. The couples were rude, disinteresting, and entirely unbelievable (one of them wanted a stripper pole in his room, and NBC expects us to believe he’s earnest in thinking the judges would agree with him?), living proof of why the network will need to pay for real WGA writers, not just the hacks who created these scripts. The only thing that made it compelling was seeing how much worse it could get.

So, okay, the above’s a rant. You might be reading it and wondering what made me so grumpy today. But that’s the funny part. Nothing did: Canada won gold in men’s hockey. I couldn’t be happier. I’m riding Cloud Nine. And NBC gave me the win in full HD. So if ever there was a day in which NBC might’ve convinced me that something very, very bad was actually okay, it was today. Which makes me wonder: if this is how bad it is today, how much worse will it look when it starts for real?

When longtime television shows die, they’re said to have “jumped the shark,” courtesy of Happy Days’ dark days. Franchises can now be said to have “nuked the fridge” when they turn stupid as did Indiana Jones. In years to come, we may well find ourselves explaining to students that the by-then-well-known phrase for an entire network sinking into obscurity, “becoming a marriage ref,” came from February 28, 2010, when NBC announced that they really don’t care about quality any more.

new shows, reviews NBC, The Marriage Ref

Yes, Jay gets his own post, because NBC thinks it’s worth five other shows. Below the fold …
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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:

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I’ve been interested to see the Save Chuck campaign develop. The campaign, and the need for it, point to savvy strategies on the behalf of the fans, and potentially on behalf of NBC.

For the fans, one of the centerpieces of the campaign was a move to get fans to go buy a footlong sub at Subway, and fill out the comment card asking Subway to put pressure on NBC to keep the show around. Chuck’s had a few rather garishly obvious product placements from Subway this season, hence the idea.

“SOS objects” have become popular accompaniments to campaigns to save shows, as best evidenced by the thousands of nuts sent to CBS to encourage them to renew Jericho. Sending something to a network communicates that you like their show, but a continuing problem for such campaigns has been that the network usually doesn’t care if you like the show: they care if millions of others like the show. While there’s obviously the hope that the publicity surrounding the campaign will convince the network to keep the show around in the hopes that all that publicity attracts new viewers, it’s the publicity alone that seems effective here. Networks have long shown that they don’t particularly care about active fans, or even that they find them an annoyance, and while the nets are forced to care more in a post-net era, fans who send in nuts still risk annoying the network more than convincing them to renew. So the publicity part of the plan may work, but the rest is a little misguided.

By contrast, the Chuck campaign seems to have a lot more potential. Here, after all, the fans realize that their viewership alone clearly hasn’t been enough to impress NBC. NBC needs to monetize that fandom, and is currently unsure that they’re getting enough out of it; thus, the fans respond by giving NBC another metric by which they can monetize the fans. Namely, they send the message that “we will be really good for and to your sponsors.” They add value to themselves in NBC’s eyes, and provide a new way for NBC to monetize them. Meanwhile, the publicity is still there, and yet now that publicity has a multiplying effect, since every time a journalist or a blogger writes about the campaign, Subway is getting yet more publicity. Meanwhile, given the nature of the campaign, Subway and NBC can now envision yet more garish and obvious product placements for the show in the future, since now they’ll have the ironic tinge of being shout-outs to the fans who took part in the campaign.

Admittedly, there are ethical questions we should ponder here, given that we’re now involving fans directly in product placement deals. Subway sandwiches are relatively innocuous, but we could envision other placement-fan arrangements that might bother us more. Nevertheless, I’ve been impressed by the fans’ ability to up the ante in a way that shows they know how the business works.

As long as we’re talking strategy, though, I also wonder whether NBC has full plans to renew, and is manufacturing a little extra publicity for the show in the process. If so, they’re smartly capitalizing on fan labor, letting Facebook, television critics’ articles and daily updates, blog renamings such as Give My My Remote’s temporary change to Give Me My Chuck, and so forth do the job of promoting their show. Even if this wasn’t their original plan, they’d be foolish not to let it play out a bit at this point, and so I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’ve made the decision to keep it, but figure their relationship with Subway and with both fans and potential new viewers will only improve. In this case, the campaign would give us not just an example of smart fan strategy, but also of smart network promotional strategy.

Of course, the show could still be cancelled, so Chuck may not live to see the fruits of the fan’s labor, but it poses an interesting model for future campaigns one way or the other

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It’s upfront time. Or, NBC is calling theirs “infronts.” I don’t know why and don’t plan to find out – it sounds about as cute as adding “N’ Stuff” in a store title, so let’s leave it there. [EDIT: okay, I lie, I did go looking, and it turns out they're still having an upfront; they just want to get a headstart with this. Still a silly title]. Indeed, I’m mad at NBC. They haven’t renewed Chuck. In theory, this could happen latter, though with a third of primetime given up to Jay Leno (!), and with renewals already announced for many other shows (yay, 30 Rock and The Office!), real estate is in high demand.

In this supposedly DVR-filled world, schedule still matters a heck of a lot. Try telling any creator whose show got a Friday night slot that it doesn’t. I’m particularly interested, though, in how a show’s competition frames one’s view of it, not just when one is asked to pick sides when shows are on opposing channels at the same time, but also when an axed-yet-beloved show is replaced. Right now, I look at the proposed additions and say, “hmmm… not Chuck,” and if it’s culled, whichever show gets its slot will suffer a dark aura.

Nevertheless, below the fold I introduce you to the contenders:

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This is the first in a series of posts I hope to write, evaluating and discussing not the recent spate of new shows per se, but rather their promos, both on air and online. A good promo shouldn’t just get one turning on the television, but it should also start the text, telling us what to expect, creating characters, introducing themes, and so forth, and a good website should do likewise, while also reinforcing central themes and frames for those who visit after seeing the promo or the show itself.

I start with NBC’s Southland

While the clip above is an extended promo, many of the smaller ones underlined similar points, pushing three key points:

1. It stars Ryan Atwood, of The OC fame
2. It’s an edgy, gritty, warts and all depiction of the tough job of policing LA’s streets that promises to tell us what it’s “really” like for the city’s cops. Think Training Day meets Colors for television
3. It comes to us from the folks behind ER

More after the fold …

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By now, you’ve likely heard that Jay Leno will be taking over a third of NBC primetime next year. Most of the reaction I’ve read is along the lines of David Bianculli’s, that this will be “good for business, bad for TV.” I disagree.

The “good for business” line looks at the relative cost of production. Jay himself costs a lot, but the show is dead cheap in Hollywood terms. The “good for business” line also counts on Jay being able to bring his Nielsen audience to NBC primetime. Bianculli adds that this helps NBC keep Jay (though at what price?). And Derek Kompare speculates that NBC could lock down an older audience rather than chasing a fickle younger one with various scripted options.

But, as I said, I’m not convinced. Why? More below …

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Through much of the nineties, two television programs sustained me: The Simpsons and Seinfeld. Others came and went, but not only did those two shows consistently hold my interest, but their many repeats would too. One of my roommates would even record the evening reruns of Seinfeld while watching them, and watch them again first thing the next morning, and I’d often join him. So Jerry and Homer are close to me. I don’t spend as much time with them now as I used to, but I like to check in on them every once in a while, since they are old friends.

Recently, the Jerry Seinfeld and Simpsons franchises have been doing interesting transmedia jigs. Seinfeld’s Bee Movie is coming out on Friday, and television is all abuzz with cross-promotion: Seinfeld appeared on 30 Rock (and through that episode, he appeared on most other NBC shows too), he has an HP ad that refers to the movie, and he’s filmed a seemingly endless number of shorts that are filling ad breaks. He’s ubiquitous, so much so that I’m sure I’m missing about 453 other venues where he’s hawking his movie (I could’ve sworn the dude behind the counter at McDonalds looked familiar today), and in the time it takes me to type this, Seinfeld will have appeared in 58 more venues. The Simpsons meanwhile have a forthcoming video game, based on the film (so, yes, it’s the game of the film of the television show), with some ads on television, and a particularly innovative and fun official website. In case it’s not evident yet, I find the Seinfeld transmedia jig annoying, and the Simpsons one exemplary. More below the fold…

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NBC sure loves superpowers: first Heroes last year, now the time-traveling Journeyman (though don’t expect much similarity between Kevin McKidd and Hiro), the new Bionic Woman, the supposed super-cop in Life, and super agent Chuck. Maybe Dwight from The Office is next in line for powers? Below the fold, I continue with my fall pilot reviews. Read more…

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