Couch potatoes unite! The most time consuming season of the
year is upon us. No, not football season, although that’s certainly important
to a lot of folks. And not Autumn, either. Colorful leaves are great, but that
would require getting out every once in a while. Who needs that?
No, it’s fall television season. The major networks are
predictably pulling out all of the stops and greenlighting a bunch of new
shows. Some will make the network execs look brilliant, some will go down in
flames.
NBC, Fox and CBS are playing it conservatively and only
offering a handful of new shows (NBC has 4 plus a few midseason replacements,
Fox has 5 plus a whopping 6 midseason replacements and CBS has 5 plus midseason
callups). ABC is looking at serious TV overhaul with 8 new Fall shows plus one
show that premieres in December and two other midseason shows. So, what do you
watch for and what do you avoid like the plague? Here’s a list of the three
best and three worst new shows of the season.
Five Best (in no particular order)
Pushing Daisies is getting all of the early buzz. Probably
because it is feels just a little bit off, which is to be expected considering
it is produced by Barry Sonnenfeld and the producers of Big Fish. Ned (Lee Pace) is a baker with the ability to bring
things back to life briefly by touching them. He uses this gift on crime
victims to get them to tell him who killed them. Eventually he teams up with a
private investigator and a series is born. The twist is the mix of crime drama
and funky fantasy. Pushing Daisies is definitely getting great reviews, but
beware of a Freaks & Geeks style cult-following-but-not-mainstream-enough
early demise. Maybe Ned will have the ability to keep the show alive.
There are a few shows that bring familiar characters into
new stories. Fox has The Sarah Connor Chronicles, based on the character from
the Terminator movies (not a new fall show, more likely a midseason
replacement), ABC has Caveman (more on that later) and NBC has The Bionic
Woman. After last year’s successful superhero show, NBC attempts to recapture
lightning in a bottle with a reimagining (as opposed to strict retelling) of
The Bionic Woman. This time around the show is darker and edgier. Jaime Sommers
(Michelle Ryan) receives a top-secret procedure to bring her back from the
brink of death after a car accident. The procedure comes with a price and she
is forced to work through her own issues while trying to use her new abilities
for good. Plus, there’s an “original bionic woman" villain. It looks like NBC may
have found it’s niche with heroes. Maybe next season we’ll see the New
Adventures of Plastic Man?
What NBC is to heroes, ABC is to sleaze (the good kind).
With the void left by the series ending of Grey’s Anatomy, ABC had to do some
work. It looks like they found a winner to replace it with Dirty, Sexy Money
(even the name sounds wrong …). Think Dynasty without all of the big hair.
Peter Krause leads a big time ensemble cast which includes Donald Sutherland
and one of the Baldwin brothers. The Darling family is where it’s at on
Wednsdays.
Five Worst (maybe in order …)
I’ll admit, I like the Geico caveman commercials. I like
most of the Geico commercials, Geckos are cute, cavemen are funny (especially
Phil Hartman), but ABC’s Caveman just feels really forced. The themes explored
are admirable, race relations, stereotypes, whether to eat your meat straight
off the bone or cook it first. But laughs are likely to be hard to come by. Do
shows based on commercials ever work?
Remember Cop Rock? Ever think someone would look on that
fondly and think, “We should do something like that again, but put it in a
casino in Nevada!" It happened. OK, maybe Cop Rock wasn’t even on the minds of
the creators of Viva Laughlin, but it sure should have been. After all, aren’t
we supposed to learn from the sins of our fathers? Id’ include a synopsis, but
the shows not even worth that much. Just know it’s a drama and there is
singing. That shold be enough to dissuade you.
And finally, how about all of the new formula dramas coming
out. There is a definite trend away from sitcoms lately. Unfortunately the
trend is shifting to crime/law/corporate dramas with either a bunch of guys
with crummy family lives (Big Shots) or a bunch of women with crummy family
lives (Women’s Murder Club) or a single person with a crummy family life and
some weird ability (Journeyman). I’m sure there will be a hidden gem or two in
the bunch, but who wants to wade through them all to find it? I’ll wait for
Heroes:Origins next Spring, thank you!
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