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

Well, yes. I don't know about 666 (I assume that it wasn't anywhere near finished on account of the storm effed up one of its sets and that was news), but Last Resort was still in production, which is TV-speak for "not done filming yet." I suspect that each will tie up nicely, given the current state of things (though Ryan may be tempted to leave at least a hook or two in play, as, of the two, his is the show with a snowball's chance in hell of returning, unless Connie Britton explodes or eats T-Bone Burnett or something). I'm honestly not sure at this point how either one of them expected to extend its current story with its current cast beyond a single season anyway (though I guess Park Ave. could have kept John Locke and Radio Shack and just cycled out the other two leads).

Eventually I'll do one of these for the Winter season. There's a fair amount of stuff coming on. Off the top of my head, The Following, The Americans, that thing on NBC that totally isn't Revenge we promise, theoretically Hannibal, some other stuff....I've just been waiting on a critical mass of debut dates to get set. I suspect there's also a Dallas news story that I need to catch up on as well to see how they're going to handle the unfortunate untimely departure of the show's two best performers (Larry Hagman and Larry Hagman's Eyebrows).

Hey - remember Moral Orel? There was a special. It's called Beforel Orel. That show still kind of makes me want to be dead. You'd think that Starburns would have lost some of the knack for that over the past couple of years, but nope. On the plus side, I didn't cry and I didn't feel like it would be better if I just laid down in traffic, but christ that show is still the most depressing thing in the universe. If you liked the third season, you should like the special. If you only liked the first six episodes and thought that the rest of the series was an elaborate plot to thin out the population of stoners through induced suicide, it's kind of more of that, so just, you know, be aware. If you've never seen the show before, don't start here - at a bare minimum the dynamic between Orel's dad and his grandfather will be something of a mystery.

Dear Jennifer Beals,

Look. You're beautiful. You want to go out some time? I'm totally down. But here's the thing. I'm afraid you only get to do one crime show based in Chicago having to do with the mob on Fox before I get confused. Please never to appear on The Mob Doctor again as not the police chief. Come to think of it, why isn't this show canceled already? It's graduated from being an innocuous failure to actively harming my mind. I gotta learn how to delete shows out of my PVR.

Seiler

Has any show launched this year earned a renewal yet? Is Arrow going to be the only new show to survive? That would be scary.

I did? Huh. I figured that wouldn't make it in, both for being a terrible question and also for having been sent in yesterday morning. I guess I missed my calling. I'll plan to be flattered on Monday when I get back to processing podcasts.

HBO and early AMC may have spoiled you a touch in the renewal department. Those don't generally happen until the Spring at the earliest. A number of series have been extended to full length (Vegas, Elementary, Revolution, Arrow, and some other stuff), but you won't hear about renewals until everything has debuted, and there's a kind of ridiculous number of shows that are being held for the second half.

So, Arrow. I'm finding it to be consistently awesome, even if it's basically Batman Who Kills People With A Bow. I'm still trying to figure out how they're going to work Laurel into the Black Canary, because she doesn't seem to have any martial arts expertise or, well, the Canary Cry. Best guess is that Tommy gets killed, she loses her shit, we get a montage of her training, and then she gets some sort of sonic device from Q Corp. I don't see the actual Canary Cry from the comics working in this series, as they've veered away from any magical aspects at all. It's crazy how different from Smallville this is.

I do appreciate the training montages at the beginning of each episode; the ep before the last where it showed Diggle training with Oliver using rebar was pretty satisfying. It showed that Oliver doesn't fuck around and Dig needed to learn that. Good writing, acting, and keeping Laurel's giant boobs tucked safely away under modest sweaters until she dons the Canary costume is just smart TV. I'm baffled that my favorite new show is actually on the CW.

Bummed about Last Resort, though. I've craved a submarine TV show forever. Well, I hope they wrap it up nicely.

Person of Interest: fuck yes.

Hawaii Five-O: formulaic but still fun. Without Scott Caan I wouldn't watch it. Seriously, though: the Microsoft pimping is approaching Chuck/Subway levels of annoying. STOP

Others, I'm holding out on an opinion. Revolution has the possibility of being much better, but I like Miles enough to keep watching. Monroe is horribly miscast, and others are questionable, but I really want to know the backstory to the blackout. It's the usual Abrams carrot, but whatever. Hopefully Kripke can keep the narrative sane.

Apparently.

I like it. And the original had no sonic powers.

A few episodes ago, briefly, in the foreground of a long shot in Oliver's club, was a go-go dancer wearing the Black Canary outfit Which is nice foreshadowing.

Well that's something! I'd forgotten his last name was Merlyn.

Guessing we probably won't see a jet pack quiver, though.

That isn't necessarily out of the question. Let us not forget that there's an entire Q-Corp full of technology to be had, though I expect there are other, higher priorities (like making a sonic weapon for Black Canary). If this goes as long as Smallville did, I'll be surprised if stuff like that doesn't happen.

News time. Turns out there still is some this late, though not necessarily for fall shows.

Under the Dome will be on CBS this coming summer. So there's a new failure. I do hope it's a good thirteen episodes, but is there even a snowball's chance in hell that this doesn't crash and burn on broadcast?

Emily Owens, M.D. is not receiving an extension. I guess Meryl's going to have to pin her hopes on her other daughter's series.

The Inbetweeners won't be picked up. That's....meh. It wasn't the worst show. It would have been okay paired with Awkward.. But okay.

The Knob Proctor won't be picked up. Amazement. Glub.

AMC pilot orders. They've got to order something with all of their shows outside of Walking Dead either sitting on end dates or up in the air. If I had to guess, I'd say the goddamn Culper Ring show is a lock (why do these things move in waves? I can remember that White Collar episode from this season). The techy DFW show seems like less of a safe bet, but mostly because I can't figure what movie marathon the network would promote with that.

CW is moving forward with the Wonder Woman show. This has turned bad before, but on paper that looks like the very prescription for a show on that network. Well, one of them, but there could still be lots and lots of slutty teenage sex drama here too.

It's Revenge with more people getting arrowed.

Yeah, Emily Owens looked like the least interesting medical show I'd ever seen. The promo commercial/trailer/snippet for it was awful, if that was the best it had, it was really doomed.

wtf, Cartoon Network? You stop showing Young Justice back in June, then you randomly throw out two episodes in October and then there's nothing else scheduled until January? What is that?

Nobody knows. For real. Everybody's a little bit baffled as to what happened with the DC block. I mean, they sent out screeners of the next episode. If you've got super duper blue balls and don't give a shit about the law, you can totally find them online. It's just....weird.

Totally separate subject - Elementary. You know, I really like this show. I do. But there's one problem. You have to stop introducing this character to people. Or, really, using his first name at all. Because it's been a bunch of episodes now and it still shakes me up every single time somebody calls him that, because this is apparently supposed to be some sort of weird universe where Arthur Conan Doyle got run over by a carriage or something and literally nothing else changed.

I'd be okay with Elementary if the lead just stopped Turtle Facing. Dude, just take a shit already so we can watch some detective goodness. I mean, you're no Benedict Cumberbatch, and you'll have to get over that, but stop reminding me how shitty you are compared to his Sherlock. That is all.

I don't think he's trying to do Benedict's Sherlock, although the two actors are good friends IRL.

What in the holy hell is going on with summer television? ABC just picked up a new X-Files type of show for summer 2013. This goes with Under the Dome on CBS in the weird ass bin, but I hope this is good as well. It'd be neat if it was

I'm still not a big fan of elementary. I keep wanting it to be the BBC version of the show. :( It could be I'm just conditioned by House and then the BBC Sherlock to view Holmes as a misanthropic jerk.

Leverage is playing like they're not going to get a renewal. Christmas episode is allegedly going to be the originally intended series finale. Which is weird, because the first season finale sure seemed like the original series finale, but there you go.

And in really old television news - I didn't expect The Shield to be this funny. I'm on the third episode. If only this show hadn't started while I was too busy to support a new series.

Okay. I'll admit it. I made a mistake. The Shield is really pretty damn good. I mean, sure - they took the most manipulative way there they possibly could, but they got me twice in the tenth episode. So I guess I'm in for the whole rest of the series.

For news, I actually just have one bit of reassurance for anybody who happens to watch Royal Pains. In a rare show of understanding how technology works, a cable network has actually scheduled their little one off special event thing in a manner that doesn't break DVRs. The wedding thing that the show is doing will air Sunday night, and it's just booked as a two hour episode, so you shouldn't have to update your DVRs.

Oh yeah, and I guess I should probably bitch about Sasha Alexander once again making a mockery of actual science in her role as Head Science Type Person on Rizzolli and Isles, but I just don't know if I have the energy anymore. So, whatever. Middle finger, fart sound, you're still hot, and cetera and cetera.

Is there anything you don't watch, Brian?

The Shield is pretty good, I ended up just losing track of the series, missed a few episodes, and didn't have a DVR etc, to bother trying to catch up and figure out what was going on. Streaming and DVR definitely make following serial shows much easier.

There's stuff. No reality. Had to give up sports because there's just no way that I can fit 80+ games of basketball/hockey/whatever into my schedule. I've never seen Oz (that one's a ways down the list - probably never get to it) or The Wire (that one is waiting for maybe Summer, because I tried to watch it once before, when I hadn't split out the episodes, and ended up falling off after about four or five episodes because it required too much attention, so I want a block where I can chew through multiple episodes without having to worry about anything else getting in the way). For new shows I generally won't watch anything in an existing CBS brand, sitcoms that don't get constant buzz, or the CW shows that are only slutty teenage drama without any sort of genre or drama hook beyond that (90210, Gossip Girl, etc.). Also never stated Sons of Anarchy, but since it turns out that I like The Shield and that's where Kurt Sutter came from, I may have to get current on that.

So there's some stuff.

And as we close out the season, two notes:

Bad - 666 Park Ave. is completely off the schedule. If the unaired episodes make it out, expect it closer to Summer.

Good - Vegas seems to have swept up hell of genre actresses. In addition to Carrie Anne Moss, they've added Aimee Garcia (Dexter's Babysitter) and Sarah Jones (lead from Alcatraz).

Edit:

Other - Leverage is officially done after Christmas. Which I'm okay with. I mean, I loved the first season, but ever since they started trotting out their invented jargon character class assignments, it's been headed on a gentle downslope. Maybe now all of the performers that I like can go find something more interesting to do. Hell - Beth Riesgraf already got a recurring part on Criminal Minds.

Agreed with your Leverage assessment, but I still liked it, so will be mildly sad to see it go. What's the reasoning for its cancellation, by the way?

Not particularly clear at this point, but Tim Hutton isn't cheap, it's got a pretty large cast, it's been creatively weak, and there are new shows coming in that need someplace to go, so it's basically just time for Leverage to go. Monday Mornings (David E. Kelly doctor show about some sort of meeting that the hospital holds on Monday Morning to go over all the crap they whizzed down their collective leg in the days prior - most notable person I've seen on it thus far is Jamie Bamber) will show up in January and L.A. Noir (Darabont created, with Shane from Walking Dead) will be on at some point, so I doubt they're hurting for programming. The producers also seem to have had some sense that this was coming, as the episode on Christmas is the intended series finale as originally envisioned.

Bimbo Bag Man -- Sociopathic, undercover gun moll working her way up the food chain and into the hearts of the 5 Families. A skoit witta agenda.