The Fall 2012 New TV Series Thread (starts 9/9)

At some point, I might find some time to post longer thoughts on MBL (short version: I thought it was OK, not great), but I watched the original a ton as a kid, and while they completely reimagined some characters here (I liked Jerry O'Connell's sensitive Frankenstein), some of my favorite parts of this one-off were nods to the original show.

Obviously, they had the theme running throughout, which was cool. But my favorite nod to the original was when they first go inside the new house and hit the button that raised the stairs, which in the original, was where Grandpa kept a pet dragon named Spot, which they never showed onscreen but they'd occasionally raise the stairs and have fire and smoke pop out when they needed a punchline. So just the stairs raising was kind of a cool callback, but having the big Spot reveal at the end, even with mediocre CGI, was really, really cool to me.

I'm getting lazy - here's some news:

That Office spinoff won't happen. Maybe NBC is sane after all.

Hell on Wheels renewed. What's left of it, anyway.

Dan Harmon's first officially ordered project is a cartoon for Adult Swim.

Mockingbird Lane did....weird. It's not as dead as you might think, but it's not a cold pickup for something as expensive as that.

S.H.I.E.L.D. casting. I don't hate it.

Finally got around to watching some of the new shows. Vegas is a keeper, like Longmire in the city. Last Resort got purged before the third episode, we just couldn't muster any desire to watch it. Revolution, good lord that show is terrible, I don't think we made it to the second commercial break. Everything from the opening scene where the guy is presumably downloading the internet onto a thumbdrive to guard against the permanent loss of electricity, to the kid with asthma, to the horrendous standoff scene, just actively made me hate the show. So congrats NBC, you've successfully dumbed down your network to the point I can't stand to watch.

Get used to it. It's arguably the most successful new show this season. I don't know if it's winning outright (CBS is hard to beat), but it's a legitimate hit for them. For what it's worth, if you can turn off some of your critical capacities and watch it like a regular action/adventure show, it gets better. You gotta be able to do that, though. If you can't do that, you're going to be very unhappy with that show. Fortunately, unlike Last Resort (which is a little more cerebral), this is a show that clearly does not want you to waste time thinking.

I already have Walking Dead piling up, I don't need another stupid and horrible show to yell at.

Ok so I started back watching Revolution last night. I was 2 behind and yeah it is silly, full of holes and well kinda dumb. But that said, as a guilty pleasure, I am enjoying it.

Not so much Last Resort. It is just so ... ugh I don't know but I feel stupid after watching it. Not sure if I will go back to it.

Old stuff- I am liking Fringe (not sure about that last episode- I mean I know this is the last season but man, that sucked). Alphas is so sneaky- I just loved the finale. Anyone watching Haven? Great characters, but story, eh, sometimes it seems to flounder but again, for the the characters make up for a lot of its shortcomings. My daughter loves Arrow- not sure I will.

Oh and Walking Dead- why can't all shows on TV be this good?

revolution had side boob and whores, so that makes me happy. No fear of this turning into a kid friendly show.

Happy Endings is knocking it out of the park. The first episode was a little rocky, but at one point Wayans is playing with his puppet, cracks a joke and then shouts, "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHSNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!" and the delivery of the line had me dying. Also, Eliza Coupe just straight up nude. In my imagination. The latest episode was just as good and did a great job of splitting up the cast and giving everyone something to do. It was all B-plots.

The New Girl continues to be the show that endears itself to me despite having a main character (the titular New Girl) who could disappear and I wouldn't mind. If the show was called Three Ungainly Manchildren and Cici, I think I'd like it just as much, if not more. I think Nick could be my favorite individual sitcom character. They give him all the best lines and his interactions with Winston and Schmidt are always great.

I honestly don't know why I keep watching 2 Broke Girls. I think I might stop. In fact, I just stopped. No more episodes.

I love New Girl. It's my favourite series out of everything in a long time. Well... since Justified and Community. Nick does get all the best lines but I think that Zooey's character is working a lot better now that they aren't hanging episodes on just how quirky she is and just rolling with how weird everyone but Winston is.

I also really like Ben and Kate. Dakota Johnson is ridiculously cute in it, and Lucy Punch is hilariously crazy. It's got this sweet, optimistic vibe going for it that makes me happy just hanging out with them for half an hour a week. I'm kinda worried that it won't be sticking around after this season.

The latest It's Always Sunny took a turn for the incredibly hilarious and awesome.

Alright Grimm... look, I'm buying the Wesen and I'm into your whole mythology. But what I'm not buying is that Nick and Juliette's house doesn't have a guest room. I mean, it's got two floors. I've never been in a two story home that had only a single room upstairs. Maybe Portland is full of one bedroom two story houses, I've never been there...

Sunny was interesting. I quite enjoy when Charlie gets to be competent, and that was one of the funnier episodes of the season yet.

Grimm was.....ehhhhh. I'm pretty sure that Caprica has rendered me incapable of reading Sasha Roiz as anything other than gay. I also read him as intrinsically intimidating, but I don't buy him and Juliet to the extent that this show wants me to. As for the bedroom, my guess would be that it's been converted into something other than a bedroom. I have a three bedroom house with exactly one bedroom in it, and I'm honestly starting to think it might not be the worst idea to convert that one as well.

So. Things.

NBC is going to be completely reformatting Up All Night. It'll go from single camera to multi-camera. With a studio audience. This is the weirdest decision.

Jenny Wade is on a show now. It's called Wedding Band and it's on TBS and I haven't watched it yet, but it has Jenny Wade, so I'm pretty well doomed to it because I would watch Jenny Wade sit on the couch and watch a different show on television quietly from the hedges outside her window. That's normal, right? But, yeah - I'll give it a shot and report back once I remember to actually put it into the system.

Jenny Wade was the reason to keep watching Reaper after the show-runners decided that the best decision would be to make every character loathesome. I will watch a Jenny Wade show. But Jenny Wade, let it be known that I have ceased watching 2 Broke Girls, so I will not watch the worst of the worst just for a glimpse of a sweet lady's massive jugs lovely face. SO YOUR SHOW BEST NOT BE TERRIBLE!

Yeah, Jenny Wade made The Good Guys even more watchable. And it was already fairly good.

So. I asked a question and Firewall and Iceberg answered it, so I'll bring the answer to here, in case anybody was interested. I asked if there was any chance whatsoever that Mockingbird Lane could survive since it didn't do the worst. And they agreed - it didn't do the worst. It marginally tweaked Grimm up and did alright for its timeslot. They do not, however, think that the show will be back because 1) the show is still too goddamned expensive for the ratings it did; and 2) neither Bryan Fuller nor NBC has floated anything whatsoever to the news. Like, at all. And Deadline loves to run their leaked stories. So I am sad.

That's not the only news, however. I wasn't going to bring it here until it got finished one way or the other, but since it came up there, shit has gotten weird at AMC. Specifically, Hell on Wheels was renewed, but the showrunners all quit, so the network is still casting about for something to do there, and, as a result, The Killing might be revived from the dead. Mirelle Enos is, after all, prominently featured in the World War Z trailer (and looking like she actually has makeup on, which I like because she is much, much prettier than The Killing deliberately makes her look) and Joel Kinnaman is going to be Robocop. This would be a joint venture with Netflix, so AMC wouldn't have to fit the whole bill, and it's not like the network doesn't have all manner of slots to fill (Breaking Bad is gone after next year, Mad Men is probably gone after two years, and that only leaves the network with one show in hand right now that can't realistically do even a full broadcast season).

Why did the Hell on Wheels showrunners quit?

Current guy - personal reasons. I suspect that the Gaytons were scheduled to be out anyway. I also have to admit that I wouldn't want to be responsible for the next season of that show either, since there's so little left over to pick up and run with.

In television news, Nashville and Beauty in the Beast have both gotten full seasons. For the record, the latter hasn't improved, and my patience is wearing mighty thin. Last Resort is said to be teetering on the edge of a full pickup, despite its performance. 666 Park Ave. is doing terribly, but since it's posting similar numbers to Resort and none of the midseason shows seem like particularly spectacular fits for its spot (whereas Zero Hour is exactly the show you would expect to replace Last Resort) it could end up getting an order as well. It has, at the very least, found its floor.

I hope 666 gets picked up if only because one of my best friends is the stand-in for Locke.

Any reason why? It works pretty well as-is IMO.

It doesn't. Ratings are godawful and only getting worse. This will be the third major rework the show has gone through - it started out with Ava as a publicist, then they went with the talk show premise, then they kicked that this year, and now they'll be going from single camera to multi camera, all in an effort to keep Lorne Michaels happy seek a solution for the show's terrible ratings.

It would be more biologically accurate to call it Beast in the Beauty.

Sadtrombone.com .... 666 and Last Resort both canceled.

I already canceled both of them from my PVR, so... indifferentoboe.com?

I liked Last Resort, but the show wasn't particularly gung ho go go America in an age where newscasters unironically use the term 'jingoistic' as a compliment. So this doesn't surprise me much.

Well, there's an important linguistic distinction here. Neither show was canceled. They simply didn't get a full season order, which means that ABC retains the right to order more at any point in time (think Pan Am last year, or, for a more optimistic alternative, Unforgettable). Usually, that means that the show is off the air, but given the fact that Zero Hour (the show that will almost undoubtedly end up in the 8:00 Thursday slot come the new year) is allegedly just the worst, there might end up being room for one of them next year. Sort of depends on what ABC wants to do with S.H.I.E.L.D., which is all but guaranteed at this point, but if the network tries to put it in that Thursday slot, I'm prepared to bet it does, at best, maybe medium better than any of the other shows they've tried there. Maybe. I'm even more comfortable betting that Zero Hour will do noticeably worse. I have no guess about Red Widow - the pitch doesn't sound soapy enough for Sunday, but whatever. This could also be a The River/Missing situation.

Also, as if it needed any more certainty for its fate, Mockingbird Lane is even more dead now. Bryan Fuller - the creator - cast Eddie Izzard - Grampa - in Hannibal.

Oh - and American Horror Story will be schizophrenically shouting the weirdest shit directly into your input chutes for another year.

For existing shows - Beauty and the Beast is pretty damn insipid at this point. Chun Li there is supposed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of her thirties (she seemed to have been tending bar seven years ago in the pilot) and the sort of juvenile high school bullshit that this writing is expecting me to buy into is a little much to ask. Kristen could slip on the sidewalk and accidentally fall onto an entire pile of eager dicks, skeevy British dude that's being played as the romantic foil could easily James Bond himself some strange, and whoever Beast is could sell himself for money to supermodels - I'm not really eager to believe that all three of these people are this fundamentally inept at human interaction, if only as an a survival skill.

Revolution has something to do with Led Zeppelin's Kashmir? What?

Clearly us fans of Last Resort need to let ABC know that we want a full order. Quick, everyone mail a nuclear submarine to ABC HQ!

So, there's a lot about Chicago Fire that's not ideal, but I feel like I should at least give it some credit for getting one thing right. When Doctor Chase was being hectored by that dirty cop to retract his statement with respect to the dirty cop's son's drunkenness at the time of an accident, the default television reaction for his fiance would have been terrified hysterical hectoring that he do the wrong thing. The show didn't do that. Rather than immediately cranking her dial all the way to Insane, Amoral, Shrill, Shrewish, Doesn't Give a Fuck About Doing the Right Thing Bitch mode like any other show, she actually supported his call, despite the fact that it put her in some danger. It might be sad that this was notable enough to merit giving them any credit for it, but it's a nice move.

I would, however, just once like to see a show where the villain is abusing his position to do something wrong and the victim just zergs out and actually shoots the worthless mother fucker right in his head at the earliest opportunity, because, let's face it - the only thing that keeps somebody from clocking him over the head with a shovel about half of the time is the degree to which the victim gives a shit about the consequences. And then there's consequences or whatever, but it seems like that would at least be something new. I'm a couple of weeks behind on Arrow - maybe that show will pull a trick like that at some point. I think Burn Notice might have tried that a couple of times, but they always milk it for a little while beforehand.

I JUST found out this thing existed and I almost completely agree with you. I think the make up effects could be toned down a bit on Eddie Izzard and the vampire CGI was completely unnecessary but, with a larger over arching plot I could really get into this show (LIKE EVERYTHING FULLER DOES THAT GETS CANCELED GOD DAMMIT)
The Fuller style dialog doesn't exactly work for little kids, but Izzard chewed it up and spit it out with gusto while everyone else does a good job as well.
It reminded me of "Wicked", they took a silly goofy 2D little world and fleshed it out into an actual 3D world.
Mostly I just really want Fuller and Izzard to have something long running, both are terrifically entertaining but everything either of them does is canceled WAY too soon >:(

Well, in that case, you'll be happy (?) to know that Fuller has cast Izzard on Hannibal, which has a full series order because of its financing deal (similar to The Firm last year) but no premiere date yet.

Grimm continues to be fucking awful. It's so contrived I want to set all the characters on fire. Everyone is all OH NO JULIET IS HAVING AN AFFAIR but OH WAIT, Monroe knows the captain came in saying that he was under a spell and was bringing in the other party that was also under said spell that needed breaking. He knows Juliet had a cat scratch spell. But HE NEVER ACTUALLY FUCKING MENTIONS THAT TO NOT-SUPERMAN. He just tells him that his girl is cheating on her and it might not be her fault cause she can't remember him.

Later, when Juliet is having coffee with a dangerous criminal, guy never mentions that on the phone. When dangerous criminal gets arrested in front of her, she's all "What is happening?!" and he's all "She might have been involved in her mother's death and I was worried about you!" and she's like "DON'T BE!"

How about: HANK IS IN THE FUCKING HOSPITAL BECAUSE OF THIS WHORE.

Jesus Christ.

I'm calling it, by the way, that as soon as Monroe ever shows her his fucking scary face she remembers shit. But who knows if the show will ever get there, cause they are jumping through every retarded hoop they can to make sure the characters are ridiculously stupid and never say anything that might make sense.

IT MAKES ME ANGRY! And I honestly can never remember the main character's name. He's so awful.

In order, I seem to be pulling back Not-Brandon-Roth, Italian Superman, and Peter Giuntolli, none of which are his character's name. Nick? Seems as good as anything.

Juliette is frustrating me at this point mostly because 1) nobody seems to be willing to broach the subject of magic with her, despite the fact that she's totally horny for a gay extraterrestrial monster hit man for no perceptible reason (and you'd think that Sasha would bring it up - it's not like he can't immediately substantiate the issue of magical beasts by making his M-face at her, and that should also pretty much cut off that whole impulse to make out at the pass too); and 2) she's becoming an impediment to the plot in entirely uninteresting ways. I mean, Jesus, Nick - this woman woke up with her memory selectively wiped of basically just you, she clearly remembers your monster buddy, and you've got a completely clean slate wherein she seems to be taking it on faith that she was totally into you and you're not immediately diving into the subject of "I see hairy people?" You're not going to find a more receptive audience, unless you decide to switch positions and go for Hank. And how stupid is Monroe at this point? He knows that he was supposed to be mixing up something to help cure Sasha and some entity to which he is attracted against his wishes and he pops out of the stockroom to find those two sucking face and it doesn't occur to him to put two and two together? If the next episode doesn't include him coming to the realization that she might be hexed, I might have a problem with that. I mean, he's been maybe a little dumb in the past, so I'm willing to cut him a little slack, but if he can't figure this out, he probably needs some in-home help.

And, as an aside, don't sign people as regulars and put them in the cast if you're not going to use them, show. I've just about had it with Foxxy Brown's one and a half phone call scenes every episode because you had to split her time with god only knows what, or had to write her in at the last minute, or whatever other ridiculous reason you have for putting her in a bottle and flushing it down the toilet.

I watched an episode of the X-Factor a few weeks ago and it was odd. Demi Lovato obviously has no experience producing or coaching successful music acts. And she picks bad songs and produces bad performances for her acts. Which is to be expected. But then Simon Cowell, who presumably had some input into picking judges, just repeatedly rips her on how bad she is. Maybe she was forced down his throat by FOX to appeal to a younger demo, but the interaction between the two of them is bizarre.

Does the fire in Chicago Fire produce smoke?

Everything about X-Factor is awful this year. Who the fuck is Demi Lovato anyway. She looks and acts like an ex-gf that I broke up with because she was too god damn annoying and her voice...ahhh her voice.... I hate this show for making me like Brittany more than Demi, and I think Brit is a complete mess of a woman and can't believe anyone thought she'd be a good coach for adolescents!

When they're actually having the contestants sing, the song choices are so boring. How many god damn times do I have to hear "I have nothing" by whitney houston.... on one talent show!! Besides the production quality which is the pits. A few episodes I couldn't hear the singers over the teeny boppers in the audience screaming next to the stage. What a mess.

The Voice is such a better show. It's really something else in comparison to X-Factor.

Well, I was all set to pass on Hannibal but I just found out that Scott Thompson is in it. Well played, Fuller.