2011 fall TV thread

http://www.tvguide.com/special/fall-preview/fall-schedule.aspx

new network shows premiering over the next couple months:

ABC: Last Man Standing, Man Up, Suburgatory, Revenge, Charlie's Angels, Once Upon A Time, Pan Am

CBS: 2 Broke Girls, Unforgettable, How To Be A Gentleman, Person Of Interest, A Gifted Man

NBC: The Playboy Club, Up All Night, Free Agents, Whitney, Prime Suspect, Grimm

FOX: Terra Nova, New Girl, The X Factor, I Hate My Teenage Daughter, Allen Gregory

CW: Hart of Dixie, Ringer, H8R, The Secret Circle

not really sure if much is happening on cable in the fall, may have to look around for that, but this is a start

AMC: Hell on Wheels

FX: American Horror Story

Showtime: Homeland

ABC Family: lol j/k

i guess it's a midseason replacement, but Awake w/Jason Isaacs & BD Wong looks p cool. i'll probably watch that

Pan Am looks like someone decided to make a show out of the airport scenes from Catch Me If You Can. that and Playboy Club seem weird to me because it seems like they're going after a piece of the Mad Men zeitgeist, except... Mad Men isn't really particularly popular, is it? i was under the impression that it was more of a critical fave than a ratings success, anyway...

terra nova looks like a disaster-on-arrival considering the size and cost. i could see myself watching an ep for Stephen Lang

Awake is the one by Kyle Killen of Lone Star fame. Hmm..

This slew of NBC sitcoms coming in all look pre-cancelled.

iirc mad men is really popular w/ the sort of ppl advertisers care about

yeah i mean success is success, it doesn't matter if Mad Men is 'popular for cable' or a 'critics' show,' it's a big deal in TV period so it's going to influence programming.

This slew of NBC sitcoms coming in all look pre-cancelled.

Especially the Hank Azaria one. It fell into the present through some kind of 90s wormhole.

i kinda lol'd at the "armenian gangster's acquittal party" joke in the hank azaria promo

i am so sick of the fucking commercials for "whitney" that i just can't even

lol the Azaria promo was what inspired me to post that comment.

fine! but...i won this.

lol

yeah i mean success is success, it doesn't matter if Mad Men is 'popular for cable' or a 'critics' show,' it's a big deal in TV period so it's going to influence programming.

― some dude, Thursday, August 18, 2011 8:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

success isnt always success tbh, especially with broadcast tv. a lot has been made recently of how difficult networks are finding it to monetize certain types of success, they're finding themselves frustrated with certain shows that get great ratings but mostly with the wrong demos, making them poison to advertisers. even if what Lamp says is true the commercial pressures of broadcast are wayyy higher, which is why mad men-style serialized storytelling (and this is a really rough time for serial dramas, even on cable - the president of FX said earlier this year that he wouldn't dream of greenlighting a show like Damages today) mostly makes its home on cable today, where the standards for success are a lot lower. and i find it instructive that no cable networks are seeking to imitate mad men, because... they want shows that get ratings, i presume. so yeah this seems like a crummy idea imo

a lot has been made recently of how difficult networks are finding it to monetize certain types of success, they're finding themselves frustrated with certain shows that get great ratings but mostly with the wrong demos

curious about what shows you're taking about here - is it like cbs procedurals that tend to draw lots of older middle income viewers?

i mean i get what yr saying. like amc can sell a drama like mad men to advertisers by saying that it reliably delivers a 'high value' audience for commercials for luxury cars or imported beer or middlebrow awardsbait movies or w/e but the broadcast networks are in the business of delivering mass audiences so they cant sell themselves the same way to media buyers

The CBS procedural model is probably why the networks are desperate for the next Lost or even Glee. They want to ride the zeitgeist, even for a little while.

yeah cbs stuff, but every network's seemingly having the same problem - harry's law was one of nbc's few legitimate new hits last year, but its audience is mostly over-60. the good wife gets pretty good raw ratings, but again it skews really old. from an 18-49 perspective, it's on the bubble. advertisers really hate old people!

werthers originals and Buick can't buy all the ads u know

old people are on a very fixed income.

that new tim allen show (Man Up? How to Be a Gentlemen? idk) looks like the worst show to air on tv since Hank (w/ Kelsey Grammer). i'm gonna guess it's Man Up since Hank was on ABC and they seem to be willing to take a chance on these offensive right wing fantasy sitcoms

Will watch at least one ep of: 2 Broke Girls, The Playboy Club, New Girl, Grimm, Allen Gregory and Pan Am
Kinda excited for: Terra Nova
Don't know much about or care about: others
On cable, kinda interested in American Horror Story -- haven't heard about the others.

oh, i'll watch an episode of ringer too y? bc smg is still cute.

i also forgot about up all night which should be the perfect premise for me (about couple raising baby) starring ppl i enjoy watching (c applegate + arnett) but still looks totally forgettable. but i'll watch an ep or two of that too, i'm sure.

oh yeah i have to remember to watch ringer

American Horror Story bombed at the TCAs, which the network was not expecting at all. They're trying to rework it. Apparently it is nuts.

btw, xp to myself, apparently the tim allen show is last man standing which is a) an ABC show and b) one of two on the same theme they're running this fall???

i think they even had the same name at one point

Nancy Travis has a pretty good record of being on short-lived and/or killing longer-lived sitcoms (see Becker, Bill Engvall, and some others I'm sure). Tim Allen's show won't be around long.

btw, when did televisionwithoutpity become so terrible? i was glancing through their 'new shows preview' and they are wrong about pretty much everything!

when Bravo bought them out.

When Angel Cohn took over as editor.

it's terrible now

They've always been terrible.

True.

yeah i mean success is success, it doesn't matter if Mad Men is 'popular for cable' or a 'critics' show,' it's a big deal in TV period so it's going to influence programming.

― some dude, Thursday, August 18, 2011 8:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

success isnt always success tbh, especially with broadcast tv. a lot has been made recently of how difficult networks are finding it to monetize certain types of success, they're finding themselves frustrated with certain shows that get great ratings but mostly with the wrong demos, making them poison to advertisers. even if what Lamp says is true the commercial pressures of broadcast are wayyy higher, which is why mad men-style serialized storytelling (and this is a really rough time for serial dramas, even on cable - the president of FX said earlier this year that he wouldn't dream of greenlighting a show like Damages today) mostly makes its home on cable today, where the standards for success are a lot lower. and i find it instructive that no cable networks are seeking to imitate mad men, because... they want shows that get ratings, i presume. so yeah this seems like a crummy idea imo

― https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Thursday, August 18, 2011 11:06 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

you're not wrong with anything you're saying, but that wasn't my point. i just meant that "hey sexy '60s period dramas seem really HOT RIGHT NOW" isn't the kind of zeitgeisty showbiz mentality that's going to be held back by details like that the show that kickstarted that trend is not a ratings blockbuster. lots of trends get started with relatively minor successes that lead to bigger ones.

can't wait for the 'save grimm' campaign

lol

i also forgot about up all night which should be the perfect premise for me (about couple raising baby) starring ppl i enjoy watching (c applegate + arnett) but still looks totally forgettable. but i'll watch an ep or two of that too, i'm sure.

― Mordy, Friday, August 19, 2011 12:36 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

omg sneak dissing Maya Rudolph! on the real though i am looking forward to that show more now that it was supposedly retooled to feature MR more heavily after the success of Bridesmaids

so i don't have cable so i pretty much only know about shows when they get crazy hype/notoriety beforehand or when sepinwall gets around to writing about them. so all i know about this group is 1) networks trying to make sexier, dumber mad men (could be down w/ this)(suspect they'll succeed more at dumber than sexier though) 2) sitcoms based on laura ingraham monologues (pass) 3) some dumbed down sarah silverman (egads) has two new shows and there's a possibility i'll watch the kat dennings one 4) minka kelly

i'm not counting on any new community/parks must see tv out of this bunch but is there anything up there that looks like it could rise to 'happy endings' level of watchability?

i dont have an answer to that question but man did happy endings up end up being a p lol decent timefiller of a show huh

advertisers really hate old people!

I'm always interested in this fact, because I thought that the fixed ideas advertisers had about old people had been largely disproved in recent years: that they never switch brands, that they don't buy into new technologies or new ideas, that there's no point in marketing to them.

I wonder how much this will change as the recession deepens, given that the coveted 18-49 demographic will basically have no money to play with anymore, and only older people who are already drawing their fixed-benefit pensions will have any spare cash to throw around.

ime advertisers dont hate all old people so much as lower/middle income old people. also the spending patterns of old people are still p predictable and there are better/cheaper ways of reaching them if they are your target market than prime time television broadcasts. (i.e. try watching golf telecasts or sunday morning current event shows and youll realize advertisers do want to reach older people)

ok, this doesn't really belong here, but since I have very little enthusiasm for this immediate crop of newbies, let's look ahead to a potential future:

New Shawn Ryan pilot picked up

The Last Resort is described as a big swing and massive in scope. It is a thriller set in the near future when the country is very fractured and revolves around the crew of a U.S. nuclear submarine who become hunted after ignoring an order to shoot nuclear missiles. They escape to a NATO listening outpost where they publicly declare themselves to be the world's smallest nuclear nation with 24 nuclear warheads. The show will explore the society the fugitives create, the natives they meet and how what they've done affects the group and its unity.

I'm not interested in any of these shows, which is rare. I might watch the first couple episodes of the X-Factor to see how trainwrecky it is going to be.

xp that sounds really cool!

when does the new sorkin show come out?

NBC has just purchased a drama set in the “golden age” of the 1980s professional wrestling boom -- yes plz.

apparently there's a new episode of "Happy Endings" on tonight? are they starting the season really early or still burning off ones from the first season?

i watched "In The Flow with Affion Crockett," which is a FOX variety show starring a guy from Wild 'N Out who's basically one of those Aries Spears/Jay Pharoah-type black comics who's just really good at impersonating rappers and nothing else -- stupid show by the Drake sketch was hysterical

It's probably the 13th ep they never showed during the original run.

def. interested in that wrestling drama

AV Club Fall Preview!

http://www.avclub.com/articles/ah-screw-it-heres-a-bunch-of-shows-the-av-clubs-20,61296

Part 2!

re grimm

Best-case scenario: More self-contained, comic-like adventures that will make for an easy transition to a monthly comic book when the series inevitably fails to lure enough geeks away from their standing Friday-night appointments with Fringe or Supernatural.
Worst-case scenario: Giuntoli and Mitchell become the wisecracking stars of Law & Order: Supernatural Victims Unit.

I think they got their scenarios backwards. Would watch Law & Order: Supernatural Victims Unit every day.

So there's two new shows that rip off Fables? Bill Willingham must be pissed

i'm not counting on any new community/parks must see tv out of this bunch but is there anything up there that looks like it could rise to 'happy endings' level of watchability?

This is what I'm hoping for from "Once Upon A Time", "Up All Night", "Ringer", "Charlie's Angels"* and "Grimm". I couldn't possibly care less about any of the others listed. Maybe "Terra Nova".

* yes I know this will be beyond terrible, don't judge me

i am already obvs going to check out ringer because smg, but also logan echolls recently joined the cast!!!

i am kinda excited for the series where the girl from everwood plots revenge against rich old ppl

that show ("Revenge") strikes me as being the end of the world

like, I can't think of anything I want to watch less than the most annoying "sibling" from "Brothers and Sisters" be rich and revengy around other rich people

that show looks terrible but i like that actress (not super-familiar with Brothers and Sisters)

i think you underrate the pleasures of wealthy scheming

I'm kind of looking forward to Pan Am.

i think you underrate the pleasures of wealthy scheming

lol, I used to watch Savannah and TITANS

dirty sexy money was fun

didn't really live up to its name imo

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/introducting-the-fall-tv-season-ratings-pool/

New Girl pilot is circulating -- anyone seen it?

I downloaded it for some reason but i can't bring myself to watch it

Advertisers don't hate old people. They just know that they only need ads for The Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and Antique Roadshow or whatever it's called

antiqueS roadshow lorax for fuck's sake

its sad they were an old

Just watched The New Girl pilot. It's available On Demand, so I'm guessing this is the version they'll be airing, despite the fact that Damon Wayans Jr is in it and he won't be in anymore.

It's all over the place, and not particularly good. Every cut-away is embarrassingly forced. Zooey's character seems to be a younger Liz Lemon (totally awkward and a little aloof, but not nearly as self-aware and thus can't really pull it off), the three roommates and model friend are pretty stock. I did laugh once, so there's that.

Could be like Happy Endings, where it finds its groove and, though never reaching that high, can pull off its modest aims. They'll have to write it better and find the groove though.

Also this probably doesn't belong here but HBO has picked up Aaron Sorkin's Cable News show to series.

SWEET

i mean - ahem - that's cool. when is it supposed to air?

No date yet. I would guess the absolute earliest would be around this time next year, doubling up with Boardwalk Empire. If it takes more time, and I guess this will depend on how Luck does (whether it's a hit or even gets a second series), then January 2013 seems likely. Of course, they're starting to put original programming on Monday nights, so we'll have to see how that works out and if they would rather just use that for comedies. I'm just guessing at all of this and I really have no idea.

Show stars Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Allison Pill, Olivia Munn, Dev Patel and Sam Waterston.

btw totally not looking forward to it at all:

The series centers on a cable news anchor (Jeff Daniels), his new executive producer (Emily Mortimer), his newsroom staff (Alison Pill, John Gallagher, Jr., Olivia Munn, Dev Patel, Thomas Sadoski) and their boss (Sam Waterston). Together they set out on a patriotic and quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of corporate and commercial obstacles and their own personal entanglements.

Read more: http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/08/breaking-news-hbo-picks-up-sorkins-cable-news-series/#ixzz1XO0gO6NP

oh that's a whole bunch of ppl I like in something that sounds horribly boring

"boring" would be preferable to "outrageously condescending/preachy", which is what it will probably be. that mode will make more sense at a cable news show than at a live sketch comedy show though.

I saw an advert for "Ringer" last night and it looks like pretty much the worst thing ever. I also can't understand the huge push behind "Revenge", because I really don't see that being a thing at all.

"Ringer" is going to depend entirely on how well SMG is able to exert her natural charisma on the material; I have no doubt the writing will be terrible.

I saw an advert for "Ringer" last night and it looks like pretty much the worst thing ever.

It does. And I'm no SMG fan to begin with. BUT I'll probably tune in just because it starts its run earlier than most everything else.

I would like Revenge to succeed because a friend of mine is a member of the cast. But I'm just not sure about most of that cast with that particular premise. And I have no idea how they could possibly make it work for multiple seasons. A lot of shows this year seem to have that problem, though.

maybe it will be an escalating cycle of revenge

like, in season 1, B&S girl wrongs someone in her quest for vengeance, so season 2 is that wronged person's quest for vengeance, and then in season 3 the two of them realize someone else set them up to tear each other down so they team up for revenge on that person, and then season 4 is that person's comeback, and then season 5 is Montezuma

lol

Am I the only one here curious about Person of Interest? Ben Linus and Jesus solving pre-crimes!

Jesus is a dealbreaker.

jeez, now they're basing shows on defunct airlines.

Aaron Sorkin going back to TV (where he belongs) is always good news.

Sorkin's best work is The Social Network, where the director seems to be working against him in a good way. Running a show means ego-unleashed and it'll probably be insufferable.

btw totally not looking forward to it at all:

The series centers on a cable news anchor (Jeff Daniels), his new executive producer (Emily Mortimer), his newsroom staff (Alison Pill, John Gallagher, Jr., Olivia Munn, Dev Patel, Thomas Sadoski) and their boss (Sam Waterston). Together they set out on a patriotic and quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of corporate and commercial obstacles and their own personal entanglements.
Read more: http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2011/09/08/breaking-news-hbo-picks-up-sorkins-cable-news-series/#ixzz1XO0gO6NP

― Gukbe, Thursday, September 8, 2011 2:17 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh sorkinpaws

u guys are crazy. sorkin has an amazing track record w/ television shows with boring premises. even studio 60, which was a flop, was still more compelling than 90% of the other new shows that season.

olivia munn tho, that's legit worrying

"walk + talk w/ me"

http://blog.newsok.com/staticblog/files/2011/01/Olivia-Munn-31.jpg

It's not that it's a boring presence, it's that it feels like a platform for proselytizing.

I am trying to think of a Sorkin show that I liked.

... nope, coming up blank

(in fairness, I never saw "Sports Night" but if it was at all like "The West Wing" or "Studio 60" I'm not missing much)

Sorkin's best work is The Social Network, where the director seems to be working against him in a good way. Running a show means ego-unleashed and it'll probably be insufferable.

― Gukbe, Thursday, September 8, 2011 2:40 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

plus he actually had a STORY to tell, and had to tell the whole thing in ~2 hours. hes too undisciplined to leave to his own devices

also lol female characters

Huffman in Sports Night and Janney in West Wing were good, no?

Janney, like all of the West Wing characters, annoyed me intensely after two episodes.

If there was ever an enterprise for which Sorkin-smarm was appropriate and not eyerollingly offtm, a show about sports news anchors was it.

Sorkin has historically had some glitches writing female characters, and olivia munn makes a certain kind of sense for his male fantasy natalie on sports night/ainsley on west wing stock female character.

Dan, Sports Night is better than his other shows imo. a lot better than Studio 60, for sure.

and olivia munn makes a certain kind of sense for his male fantasy natalie on sports night/ainsley on west wing stock female character.

except i'm skeptical she's as good as either sabrina lloyd or emily proctor

most things in life are better than Studio 60, but I have a kind of grudging respect for a behind-the-scenes-of-a-sketch-comedy show that ends its one and only season with a 3 (or was it 4?) episode run that all took place over the course of one night and largely dealt with a raid in Afghanistan.

Huffman in Sports Night and Janney in West Wing were good, no?

― Gukbe, Thursday, September 8, 2011 3:14 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

they were both excellent in terms of the actresses' performance (huffman in particular, she was so goood, you guys). the way they were written was sometimes very sensitive and insightful and sometimes...not.

like, the episode where Dana taking off her underwear at dinner was treated like *an awakening* was just embarrassing.

My main memory of Studio 60 was that they kept talking about what a comedic genius Sarah Paulson's character was supposed to be, and then every time they cut to a 5 second clip of her doing a bit, it was awe-inspiring how painfully, blatantly unfunny it was. Also when they picked up that dude to be a writer after watching him bomb massively during a stand-up routine; once the show convinces you that none of these people understand comedy, it's difficult to take its premise seriously.

Also IIRC everyone seemed to be on the verge of tears in every episode, except for Matthew Perry, who seemed to be on the verge of snorting a fuckton of coke.

Oh and Amanda Peet, who seemed to just want to punch everyone and laugh at their pain.

I am making the show sound better than it actually was.

The problem w/ Studio 60 is that Sorkin isn't ha-ha funny. He's more like sardonic ILX US Politics funny. Which is great actually for stuff that doesn't require ha-ha funny (like a show about sketch comedy).

I admit that watching Nate Corddry and D.L. Hughley hold back tears of rage every episode was kind of funny

a 3 (or was it 4?) episode run that all took place over the course of one night and largely dealt with a raid in Afghanistan.

it was three parts with the following episode set the day after. but i kind of remember even the PRIOR episodes being continuous in time for an episode or two, which made the final 6 episodes they dumped after cancellation seem kind of like a massive one-shot writeoff.

plus earlier in the season there had already been TWO separate two-part episodes. that whole season had such weird timing. (and some of the episodes had BACKSTORY.)

sports night seems like it was good in my memories but i dont trust that it really was

sports night was good. a little relationshippy though. and a little joshua malina-y.

I tried to get through it last summer, maybe the one before, but couldn't really deal. Sorkin's "smart" and "clever" dialogue really rankles me though so ymmv.

My main memory of Studio 60 was that they kept talking about what a comedic genius Sarah Paulson's character was supposed to be, and then every time they cut to a 5 second clip of her doing a bit, it was awe-inspiring how painfully, blatantly unfunny it was. Also when they picked up that dude to be a writer after watching him bomb massively during a stand-up routine; once the show convinces you that none of these people understand comedy, it's difficult to take its premise seriously.

― Tal Berkowitz - Vaccine advocate (DJP), Thursday, September 8, 2011 4:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

yeah the biggest problem with that role is that it probably only could've been played convincingly by Kristin Chenoweth but since Sorkin created the character as a thinly veiled version of her after they dated and broke up that obv wasn't gonna happen, but yeah Paulson was just awful, i still kind of reflexively hate her character anytime i see her in something else

Paulson was just awful, i still kind of reflexively hate her character anytime i see her in something else

lol OTM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9iTOcEHkoo&feature=related

the instant I saw this I knew I was not in the demographic for this show

Liz Lemon: This is worse than that time we did that Gilbert and Sullivan parody.

the instant I heard that joke, I knew I was in the demographic for that show

Just watched The New Girl pilot. It's available On Demand, so I'm guessing this is the version they'll be airing, despite the fact that Damon Wayans Jr is in it and he won't be in anymore.

It's all over the place, and not particularly good. Every cut-away is embarrassingly forced. Zooey's character seems to be a younger Liz Lemon (totally awkward and a little aloof, but not nearly as self-aware and thus can't really pull it off), the three roommates and model friend are pretty stock. I did laugh once, so there's that.

Could be like Happy Endings, where it finds its groove and, though never reaching that high, can pull off its modest aims. They'll have to write it better and find the groove though.

― Gukbe, Thursday, September 8, 2011 1:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

apparently they didn't reshoot the pilot, so in episode 2 suddenly there's just a different black roommate with a different name, and presumably no comment on it (maybe they should change the name to The New Girl, The New Black Guy And A Pizza Place).

i was kind of relieved to learn Wayans was in the pilot because every time i saw an ad I'd go "is that Happy Endings? no wait no it isn't, and now I feel slightly racist for thinking whoever that is was Damon Wayans Jr." watching it right now, it's not quite as disastrously awful as i'd expected/hoped, but it's still pretty poor.

sports night is on netflix and it holds up surprisingly well! its weird watching that and west wing after a long time away--at first youre like, "i used to love this show? really?" and then next thing you know its 2 in the morning and youve watched 8 episodes in a row and youre going to go to bed but you _really_ need to see the episode where bartlett orders the hit at the shakespeare play first

i am a total Sports Night stan and rewatch the whole series ever 2-3 years or so, which probably isn't a very partial view of whether it 'holds up' but otm

From the wikipedia page:

In the second episode, Coach will be kicked out of the apartment and replaced by a new character named Winston, who will be returning from a professional basketball career in Croatia. The show will explain this change by stating that Winston's name is on the lease and Coach was subletting the apartment from him.

so a smooth, sensible transition

xposts

anyway the hbo show could be really good! i mean it sounds like... sports night + west wing

never really bought the felicity hoffman / william h macy romance (lol almost referred to him as John Wayne Gacy -- serial killer clowns you often confuse for actors) and when it turns out he's a member of the NRA & in favor of gun control laws (or whatever nonsense 'nuanced' gun position sorkin gave him) was classic sorkin mistaking his own bullshit for some insightful comment on ppl + politics. otherwise always loved sports night.

i tried rewatching 'the west wing' a couple of years ago and i didnt like it all that much, i liked the schoolboyish stuff (like the episode about resizing maps or eliminating the penny or w/e) but the show was sort of a loose baggy monster a lot of the time and the characters generally bland and smug

sorkins grasp of politics is really incredibly feeble for a guy who spent 5 years writing a show about politics

yeah i didn't MIND the politics of West Wing too much but i'm hoping against hope that this new show is more of a beind-the-scenes show business workplace thing like Sports Night was (and like Studio 60 should've been if he didn't have a bunch of leftover WW hobbyhorses he wanted to shoehorn in)

in particular there's this conciliatory gesture he likes to do (Aimes or whatever her name was from West Wing, Paulson character from Studio 60) where he tries to show the legitimacy of the other side so that he's not just framing a liberal position but it always seems to be his imagination of what a reasonable republican (or religious believer, or gun nut or whatever) might sound like but maybe he just doesn't actually know anyone like that! (well, kristen chenowitz, but i guess that's an example of him failing to be honest to himself about that relationship bc Paulson character seemed so phony).

we should have a betting pool on which male cast member of More As This Story Develops plays a character named "Danny"

is it really called 'more as this story develops' or are you being clever?

It was originally, but isn't anymore.

that's the working title that's still listed on his wiki page but if they've already decided to dump it then GOOD

I remember liking how Steven Weber's character developed over the course of Studio 60. iirc it was a rare occasion where Sorkin managed to take his simplistic bad guy and turn them into something more interesting. Most of his bad-guy strawmen never really went beyond the evil Republican Richard Dreyfuss in The American President, who just sits in his office drinking brandy and plotting evil, dastardly things.

One of my favourite episodes of TV ever is "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail", which is beautifully constructed, written, and acted. It's the opposite of subtle, but in a good way. That kind of melodrama is what Sorkin can do really well, and I'm not sure that HBO is the right place for him to do it.

yeah Weber was definitely one of the bright spots of that cast, i still feel like he's due for some great role that changes the way people look at him (not counting Ricky Sargulesh)

I don't really know anything at all about Whitney Cummings, but the show looks terrible. Is she good enough that I should look beyond the awful advertisement and that oddly annoying dress/sneaker combination she's wearing in all the internet ads?

no

noted!

i think she's funnier as a standup than the ads for the show give the impression of, but not by much, so i'll wait and see whether this at least becomes decent

when I saw her on the Chelsea Lately panel, I thought "there is a person who understands finding her competency level"

whitney cummings is also the showrunner for "whitney" and has no experience in behind-the-scenes television at all iirc so i wouldn't expect it to get any better (and it's in 30 Rocks' spot so the post-christmas cancellation seems pre-destined)

she's creator/producer but not showrunner (i don't know if it's even possible to be a star and showrunner at the same time)

i'd read somewhere that she was showrunning, which seemed insane to me, but you're probably right.

She's also one of the creators of 2 Broke Girls.

(i don't know if it's even possible to be a star and showrunner at the same time)

Tina Fey is co-showrunner

was denis leary showrunner at rescue me?

um, well there's Louis CK, but he's an odd duck.

and Larry David obv

also james gandolfini was the showrunner for the sopranos

Kermit was the showrunner of The Muppet Show.

mr. ed ran mr. ed

mrs. ed was really running it behind the scenes though. it was the age of horse sexism.

a piece of wire was the showrunner for the wire

^ great piece of trivia

handy for premiere dates: http://www.metacritic.com/feature/fall-tv-premiere-dates-2011

this week it's just Ringer for new shows for me, and returning Archer/Sunny

Archer only for 3 eps though

that's good actually since i'm only halfway through the last season

why would they only do 3 episodes?

"season preview", which I think means that they want to try to boost its profile by putting it after their biggest comedy for a few weeks.

A few minutes into Ringer and I'm just not up for this sort of thing.

Also threw up a little when I saw the CW tag at the corner of the screen say "Something to BING about"

Ringer is so crisply shot -- it's like the total opposite of the CSI shows which feel like you're watching them through a wine bottle. mind u i have the volume off so that's really the only insight i can give into it. also smg still looks pretty. doesn't seem like she's gained any new acting chops tho. at least -- again -- with the sound off.

The scenes with two SMGs were pretty awkward, so I'm glad that's dispensed with. You're lucky to have the sound off. The overbearing soundtrack of shitty music is full-on CW.

i also like that they shot that last scene in the museum of natural history w/ the elephants

Didn't make it that far. I'm out. I'm depending on this thread to tell me if it is worth catching up with sometime down the road. Dialogue was excruciating though.

she doesn't even have any new facial expressions. this could be buffy. except that she looks older and more beleaguered when she is upset.

now she's staring at a photo of herself with a kid and talking to herself while sobbing and i'm pretty sure that closet shot was used on an ep of all my children

i looked away and when i looked back mario lopez was smiling

it's pretty easy to get me to watch the pilot for almost anything but smg is just ugh no

i looked away and when i looked back mario lopez was smiling

Now that is a jump scare.

H8R

oh did that air tnite? did snookie beat up some 4channer yet?

i think it was just an advert for it that was seen on RInger. It premieres tomorrow, I think.

doh, forgot about ringer. i'll have to try to catch it this weekend sometime...

it's repeated on Friday

on constant loop in hell too

I was predisposed to like this because I love soapy stories, but it was predictable and the plot twists were telegraphed from a mile away. I want to give it another chance though, since some of these shows take a little while to develop.

this takedown of H8R makes me wish I watched it, which I know is the opposite of what the review wanted but wow.

Up all night is not 100% terrible

did "up all night" already air, or did you see an early copy?

It was on last night.

oh, i see it and that hank azaria show randomly showed up yesterday at 10, while i was expecting them to show up next week along with the thursday night comedies. an auspicious start to the fall schedule!

I got some laughs out of up all night and will tentatively watch episode two. still don't think anything new this year will be anything on my dvr schedule this time next year.

applegate and arnett had surprisingly good chemistry though!

Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at how believable they were.

I was also surprised that Azaria's cheap laughs got to me, but they did.

homegirl with the bazillion pictures of her fiance all over her apartment was pretty lol

Huffman in Sports Night and Janney in West Wing were good, no?

― Gukbe, Thursday, September 8, 2011 3:14 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark

Huffman got more "meh" over the course of the show with her stupid "WHY WILL SIX FEET UNDER GUY NO SHOW HIS LOVE FOR ME" nonsense. Also the plotline in season 2 wherein Josh Molina discovers his show-killing girlfriend Paula Marshall is a pornstar and can't deal with it is like Ground Zero for Sorkin's female characters.

lol i forgot about that.

Up All Night is on again tonight btw.

^^ thank you for this! watched it and free agents, both were enjoyable enough. in both cases it felt like the casting was there but the writing wasn't quite, so hopefully they'll get better as they go. a few too many strident "types" in the free agents supporting cast, tho.

happy to see anthony stewart head on american TV again, too

neither Up All Night nor Free Agents is great, but I was surprised to find myself enjoying the latter more.

I liked Up All Night quite a bit. Free Agents was decent.

Original version was just ok, iirc, although I can't remember anything that happened in it past the first ep?

yeah Free Agents > Up All Night imo, although both are just ok.

thought i'd love Up All Night but I only made it through 10 minutes before a) rl babby started crying and b) i got bored.

Up All Night tests my Insane Levels of Privilege limits even more than the average sitcom.

not quite as bad as Hank but yeah -- it's pretty egregious

Up All Night hit a lot of familiar notes for me as someone who was dealing with a newborn not long ago but absolutely no 'wow they nailed it' belly laughs

except maybe the incessant cursing while talking about how cute the baby is, that was funny

yeah, i lol'd at that but really at nothing else. and i'm pretty tired of the feeling conflicted about working instead of staying home w/ babby trope

it seemed to me that the entire thrust of this episode was to draw the line between CA's work and home life; I don't know how much more of that we're going to get in future episodes

considering that they're pretty much permanently stuck with the "this is a show about parenthood but we want to cram Maya Rudolph in there as much as possible" issue, i'm guessing that's going to be the theme of most episodes.

i mean i love MR and look forward to her being ridiculous in this show but kind of dread them shoehorning her into their home life in increasingly stupid ways

Oh I have no doubt she's going to be overly intrusive and all, it's just that I think it's going to be more in the form of the extended karaoke debauch than "I want to change everything, cancel your plans and work all night with me", otherwise there wasn't much point to Maya's last speech re: choosing between yr ass and yr face.

yeah it would be a tragedy if they robbed that obvious thesis statement for the show of its resonance

yeah Free Agents > Up All Night imo, although both are just ok.

This. Although Free Agents kind of threw mw cuz it's supposedly set in Portland but it's like someone's idea of Portland if it were picked up and set down in LA.

Ha. 'Free Agents' threw *me* that is.

wait, that was Portland?

Oh, yeah. Big 'Made In Oregon' sign at the beginning. Shots of the Willamette with the Morrison and Hawthorne bridges between scenes. Apparently this company is based at Big Pink downtown but none of the exteriors match.

Y'know I don't expect these shows to do it 'Portlandia'-style and actually film at coffeeshops in BFE North Portland, but at least show some fucking rain.

Up All Night was OK and Will Arnett was less Arnetty than expected (I am also 'rescreening' all of Arrested Dev at the same time so actually quite a relief). But ime you should never judge sitcoms purely on the pilots; some of my favourite shows of all time had meh pilots, so I'm gonna give it a few weeks.

tbh i'm fine with Arnett never doing another egotistical whisper-talking douche/villain for the rest of his life

i dont know if its really a 'fall' show but 'alphas' on syfy is p rad imo

it has been pretty good, yeah

always good to see someone give Malik Yoba a job

okay well now I have to watch free agents to figure this portland thing out. It sounds so arbitrary!

my wife likes Alphas a lot but i still haven't really connected with it, feel like syfy has better and more fun shows at the moment (Haven and Warehouse 13, respectively)

tbch alphas isnt really all that good i just like the basic x-men style premise a lot and it moves along so quickly that i never really get bored

I also like that the secondary cast isn't safe.

yeah, true, that was such a great moment slightly spoiled by the fact that they aired the episodes out of order

i also think theyre building up a p cool roster of (hopefully) recurring characters

a lot of the gags (unfortunately ones that look like they'll be a constant) on 'new girl' were exactly the kind i hate in comedy, but the pilot still made me laugh and it seemed like it might have potential. maybe the writing had a voice to it.

'free agents' had good banter. good cast. very slick, uh, blocking or whatever in the office scenes. nice to see a john enbom show again even if it obviously can't be as awesome as 'party down'.

2 Broke Girls is actually pretty good! Kat Dennings is great. Thudding moments I'll write-off as pilot issues - I'm less convinced by the other girl and the whole babysitting thing - but it's got potential.

Verging on some pretty bad ethnic stereotype territory though.

yeah a lot of the little touches w/ certain jokes and characters is just ugh and Dennings, as much as i love her, just does not have great comic timing. but overall it was aight, better than i expected.

it def had some laughs!

Dennings had enough good moments (with good timing) that I think she just needs to find a rhythm to pull off the lesser bits.

yeah she was batting 50/50 with lines she nailed and ones that just kind of fell out

it was a good start! some of the "lol williamsburg" stuff and arcade fire name-dropping was cringey but kat dennings killed it

the race jokes are a bad look, i agree

this was like the worst show i have ever half listened to while i did school work

New Girl gave Fox it's highest rated comedy premiere in a decade.

Also, Unforgettable did reasonably well. lol

New Girl demographic reality check:

a girl I went to gradeschool with* posted to facebook "New Girl is my new favorite show! Hilarious"

*she is a former professional cheerleader

aight had a little tv binge tonite

up all night 7.5/10
new girl 5/10
free agents 3/10
2 broke girls 2.5/10

up all night too high but otherwise otm

i don't rly know what to say to the person who thinks free agents is not only vaguely comparable in quality to up all night but might actually even be superior to it. "get away from me you complete and utter lunatic" i guess?

i know up all night is no great shakes really and truly BUT i'd already seen the trailer and not expected much at all so i was really impressed with how the pace and rhythm of it made the same jokes pretty funny second time round. last scene aside it didnt particularly dwell on the cutesy stuff either. idk i liked it

yeah i liked it the best of the new sitcoms (didnt even bother w/ free agents tho) but mostly for the set designers yuppie grotesque than anything else, felt like it basically had 'no jokes'

did you fast forward through the "wicked hot ring sting" announcement, and in fact everything related to The Cleanse

no but funnily enough when she said "mug of butt" i thought of you and still managed to soldier thru it

the cleanse shit was like offbrand apatow forced catchphrase garbage

the only stuff approaching lulz was wil arnet tryna get laid and playing xbox

also that he was lawyer, i laughed at 'quit my firm' p hard

yeah the whole thing was apatowey really, fine by me when it's done ok though

the only one of these i watched was up all night, probably because i got sucked into it since i was already watching the channel. admittedly i'd had a couple cocktails, but it seemed...distractly fast paced. maybe this is just sitcom s.o.p. now idk.

think i shall now go with... RINGERRR

i don't get what people are down on about with 'free agents'.

saw part of 'unforgettable'. utterly boring and contentless, will probably run several seasons.

it did pretty well.

lol already a terrible first 60 seconds xxp

"Ringer" is a trainwreck in slow motion, I will probably follow it for four weeks and then go "oh fuck this"

as it stands i've laughed more at this than any of the four comedies upthread

SO EXTRA STUPID

tbh the double-dose of stupid (mixed in with TERRIBLE green screen work) made me really enjoy "Ringer"

bad motorboat greenscreening is like a meme or something right, surely that was a little bit on purpose

so many lols in this, I can't wait to discuss them with you once you've seen them

omg ringer wtf. i will basically watch forever bc smg but it is so terrible.

Up All Night is just kind of charmless and distant to me. i feel like all three stars are perpetually 5 minutes away from someone snapping their fingers and going "you don't have to do this anymore" and they go off and do something else just as funny or probably funnier.

free agents was all right imo, i was expecting it to be terrible but it kinda won me over by the end of the pilot

whitney more like shitney

holy hell i can't believe just how bad this is

but i'm going to watch Prime Suspect so I'm kind of stuck.

i miss Outsourced

"Laboratories of Innovation"

whoops wrong thread!

i miss Outsourced

― Gukbe, Thursday, September 22, 2011 9:38 PM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

::throws tomato::

That laugh track on Whitney...they are practically screaming "write-off".

After every fucking line!

fwiw, I only saw 2 episodes of Outsourced. It was bad, but it wasn't as bad as this.

Perfect Couples wasn't this bad...

but i'm going to watch Prime Suspect so I'm kind of stuck.

can i recommend switching to FX and watching IASIP + Archer instead?

maria bello's hat is funnier than both of those shows

haha, but no seriously if it weren't for whitney there'd be hilarious shit on TV from 8-11 every thursday nite!

I've got IASIP (which I'm only marginally a fan of) and Archer (which I do love) recording. Wanted to try Prime Suspect. This could be alright.

Also I was pretty meh on The Office tonight, so I might give up on it again, freeing up a lot of evening.

Prime Suspect was pretty enjoyable. Not sure how long I'll be able to stick to a case-of-the-week scenario.

There's a Whitney/Up All Night flier inside the Bridesmaids dvd case.

i really liked prime suspect

kinda mad they made the character married tho #teammirren

also the case they're on didn't get solved? it's gonna go on for a while i think

I might have missed a bit somewhere near the beginning then. The guy they caught at the end was the murderer and the area rapist. What's the bigger case?

oh ha, maybe i'm too conditioned by l&o, i figured collaring the guy wouldn't be the end

The exposition crutch that is the newsman voiceover explained that the guy was being charged with all the crimes.

ah ok. open and shut. i missed a couple of those, channel flipping

I just watched NBC all night (gonna catch up on the Ben Linus/Jesus Christ show on the dvr).

Community was an -okay- episode, but like I said in the Community thread I'm getting really tired of episodes that just focus on the group sorting out their own internal dynamic.

Parks was good, but I'll have to watch it a second time I think. "I have the toes I have" was ALL-TIME RON SWANSON though.

The Office...that's going to take some time to come together, but I like Andy as the boss and really like Spader as the CEO. The planking joke would've been funnier last season, but Meredith falling off the top of the bathroom stall was a good gag.

Whitney is the kind of sitcom USA would air if USA aired sitcoms. It's made for someone else who isn't me.

Prime Suspect was great, I thought. Sure, Bello's hat is ridiculous, but she owns her character from the pilot episode (which is hard to do). iirc The Closer was based on the original UK Prime Suspect too, but it has moments of sweetness and light. This appears to have hardly any. Score! (Not a slam on The Closer, btw...I really like that show.)

The Office...that's going to take some time to come together, but I like Andy as the boss and really like Spader as the CEO. The planking joke would've been funnier last season, but Meredith falling off the top of the bathroom stall was a good gag.

It's like Parkour V.2. I got a kick out of the small detail of the strip of parking lot grime running down the middle of Erin during her interview. Am interested to see how everything plays out, but perhaps this year should be the final act.

ugh I had to turn Prime Suspect off at the "deputising" scene. So lame.

Damn, that was early in the episode. You missed the best stuff.

The "Whitney" pilot reminded me of "The Room."

so prime suspect is okay?! has anyone who watched it seen the original?

the posters here have some kind of horrible tagline that makes me afraid

oh i didnt see that goole has seen it

the original is one of my favorite things and i am very wary, tho maria bello is a champ

saw "up all night" fucking shite on a bike this is dire. I feel for Will arnett.

Hank azaria thing - I don't care, no strong feelings

The new girl - as E. said "this gets a second episode viewing based on the existence of the douchebag jar" some potential there but it could eithe go in HIMYM (bad IMO) or Big Bang Theory (good IMO) directions.

Playboy club - good plotting, terrible terrible dialogue, will this get cancelled or will my interest fade first?

Homeland - Again good set up SPOILER led character's mental illness is not credible and seems like an unnecessary plot device in an otherwise good set up.

saw "up all night" fucking shite on a bike this is dire.

Couldn't disagree with this more, its not as consistently funny as I'd hoped but still pretty good. The pilot wasn't too great, but this week's with the new neighbors was really good. When Arnett's Train ringtone went off at the party I was dying. I'm sure a big part of the reason I'm feeling kind to this show is because my wife and I are also new first-time parents, but I think the show has a lot of promise. Of course seeing that you think Big Bang Theory is a good direction for a sitcom, I can tell our tastes aren't really going to align.

Whitney did very well. Prime Suspect, not so much.

Person of Interest is pretty fun in a Quantum Leap meets Human Target sorta way.

The New Girl is watchable.

Whitney Exec Producer Betsy Thomas: "There's a comedy snobbery around the Thursday night lineup folks that I find incredibly irritating...It's like somehow it became cool to stop trying to be funny."

i think what she's trying to say is "NBC should embrace the multi-camera, laugh-track, broad-strokes humor that is so successful on CBS," it just came out horrible and presumptuous

Betsy Thomas seems like a moron. This show and her previous show My Boys are both awful.

Did My Boys have an audience/canned laughs? I don't remember that, but I only saw it two or three times.

thought my boys was ok actually - just kinda boring, but maybe just because of jordana spiro

whitney was not as bad as i thought it would be - i'll give it a chance. just realize it's very intentionally trying to be Mad About You and roll with it

My Boys was a black hole of awful with a likable cast, THAT show was the perfect example of a comedy that didn't even try to be funny

ok so any one thing worth watching so far? You guys really screwed me last time by making me watch Running Wilde.

Also I gave Pan Am its own thread. Why because I say so

Good things you guys, you ILX tv guys, whoever you are have given me - EASTBOUND AND DOWN, Breaking Bad

I am looking forward to new WORK OF ART

ok so any one thing worth watching so far?

There's some decent timekiller stuff but nothing you've gotta see.

thank you

prime suspect was surprisingly decent, not a patch on the original but not really even trying to be the same show so

i think revenge is trying to be damages, except nobody has a job. it was not terrible.

haha yeah i didn't think about it but you're totally right that thematically it was much like Damages. thought it was maybe terrible, though.

i have a high tolerance for soapy tbf

also i think ringer has recalibrated my standards for terrible

Revenge was seriously soapy and enjoyable -- kind of like what I was hoping Ringer would be.

yeah exactly! poor smg.

Prime Suspect was great, I thought. Sure, Bello's hat is ridiculous, but she owns her character from the pilot episode (which is hard to do). iirc The Closer was based on the original UK Prime Suspect too, but it has moments of sweetness and light. This appears to have hardly any. Score! (Not a slam on The Closer, btw...I really like that show.)

yeah, i thought this was pretty riveting. maybe because bello is playing it almost tic-y. i read a review complaining about how unlikeable her character was - which i also noticed but thought was awesome. like in the obvious rongness of how she pressed the boy witness.

good to hear the phrase 'throw a hump into' on a network cop show again. and the rest of the cast looks great.

yeah her character is refreshingly unlikeable

dont know why they changed "tennyson" to "timony"... i guess so she can be "irish"?

What's the word on people who haven't seen the OG Prime Suspect watching the new one?

go ahead, it wont ruin anything for you

if you havent seen the oridge you should though, one of the best tv shows ever

I am watching THE SHADOW LINE now, I know a bit late (or maybe not because it is on BBC America?). Interesting enough to keep watching, lots of scenery chewing and bad dialogue though appropriately "cinematic". Makes me appreciate how well shows like Sopranos/Breaking Bad/The Wire weave dialogue and character. In those shows there is never a moment where you would even think that you are hearing a writer's voice instead of a dramatic character's voice.

yeah the shadow line was one of those shows where everything seemed to be in the right place for it to be great and then it just... wasnt. at all.

anyone watch Person of Interest? forgot to bother with it last week

Yeah, I did (obviously, to anyone that knows me - the premise is the kind of ridiculous shit I love, plus it has Ben Linus).
Wasn't great, the the two leads don't gel well at all. But I don't judge stuff on pilots, so I'll give it a bit more time. Veered a bit close into 'The Event'/ 'Flashforward' territory for my liking, but if it gets over the mystery-of-the-week format it could be OK.

yeah i thought it was decent, will try to keep watching it

The laughter track on 2 Broke Girls MUST GO.

it's a very laugh track-y show, though, would just feel awkward w/o it

i used to hate laugh tracks too and then i realized they have nothing to do with deriding the intelligence of the viewers by telling them where the jokes are and i no longer hate them.

http://www.suck.com/daily/99/06/21/

Canned laughter was developed to assuage the deep sense of loneliness people felt sitting at home alone listening to noises come out of furniture.

otm (nb edited for form bc no one wants to read an essay written in haiku form)

suck.com!

Dan Harmon talked a bit about this in his AV Club interview (http://www.avclub.com/articles/community-creator-dan-harmon,45508/):

AVC: A lot of shows like Community—30 Rock, Arrested Development, these kind of movie-style, single-camera comedies—struggle in the ratings. They’re great shows, but they’re shows that people seem to catch up with on DVD. Why do you think that is?

DH: I can speculate as to why it is. I think the answer is somewhere in primatology. We are really, really, really most comfortable feeling like we’re hanging out with about a hundred or so people, experiencing something with them, and it’s just the most comfortable thing in the world to watch a sitcom, a multi-camera one, to just slip your foot into this warm slipper that’s been molded to fit your foot after a hard day’s work. Going back to Jackie Gleason, we have that format down. That industry has now made a science out of finding the funniest, most charming people who can pull off that weird combination of Broadway performance and fourth-wall acting, even though they’re pausing for these gigantic laughs that you can hear. If you were describing it to a Martian it would sound absolutely insane, you would have no way of logically explaining why. But the answer is, it’s more comfortable. I can attest to it. I watch reruns of Seinfeld. I mean, it’s perfect. It’s just like drinking a nice cup of tea before bed. Maybe that’s a bad idea. It just feels appropriate and good.

I think that hearing people laugh at the end of a long, hard day, if you cut that out of your life… Some of us can afford to do that because our jobs aren’t as hard. And we get to think about TV for a living. We want more of a challenge. We value the TV actively, ever so slightly asking us to do a little bit of the work in our head. And I don’t want to slip into bagging on it like it’s a base craft, because obviously the good stuff is satisfying, richly satisfying to everybody. Smart people, dumb people, who cares. You’re going to catch more brains with this sort of thing that fundamentally has that going for it. It just makes people comfortable. Single-camera suggests to people that you’re a fly on the wall. You’re floating around in space; you’ve got to keep your eyes peeled for story and lessons and things. I wish there was a bigger secret to it, but I think we just like to howl at the moon with a hundred of our pack.

semi-interested in watching terra nova tonight but why does it have to be a 2-hour premier? don't really want to commit the bulk of my free post-work time to something that looks fun but so cheezy

yeah, that's a lot of time i can't be bothered giving to it. still, feel like i should try. i guess when you spend that much money, you need to make it 2-hours to seem as "EVENT" as possible. I really can see it tanking though.

btw i said the same about Avatar so

yeah i'm seriously tired of every 'ambitious' sci-fi/genre-y show having a 2 hour pilot now (Falling Skies, The Cape, etc.), i guess we can blame Lost?

yeah. but that pilot was awes, so don't be too hard on it.

did it not used to be a thing to hold two-hour pilots? i remember a number of shows having their pilots split apart in syndication (though i can't remember any recent ones, right now).

i'm sure there were 2 hour pilots before Lost but they seem more common now, at least for certain types of shows

so is "terra nova" just a bigger budget "primeval" or what? bear in mind i've never seen more than commercials for "primeval."

Primeval involves dinosaurs/beasties coming into modern society via portals of some sort. Terra Nova is about humans from the future going back in time to settle in prehistoric times to save the human race or something.

fyi i think 'revenge' is going to be p hilarious/enjoyable cant wait for her to poison literally dozens more middle aged rich ppl

Lamp, did you see the pilot? i kind of loved it!

haha i did kinda want to see revenge after seeing the commercials

OOH THAT EVIL MADELEINE STOWE

also lol:

Revenge is an American television drama billed as an adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo

Lamp, did you see the pilot? i kind of loved it!

yeah! i think it had just the right amount of cheesy foreboding and pointlessly unexplained plot threads while still managing to play the whole revenge thing p cool and smart. probably needed like half the # of montages set to girls-with-jettas rock but otherwise a solid b+ imo

gabriel mann, who played the internet startup savant weirdo, was insane and hilarious

madeleine stowe has had some work done

can i say that one of my favorite things abt the pilot is that gabriel mann didnt notice that one of his biggest shareholders was at this fancy party until six hours later when he was reviewing his crappy 'last nights gala' snaps on his iPAD 2

so who on ILX will be the Hart of Dixie guinea pig to let us all know how it is?

jason street is on that show so it's going to be me. i can't believe i admitted that btw.

i like how the premise of that show is omg the south!!!

Pan Am? I haven't seen it yet

basically anything with a "heart is a word and hart is a common surname" pun title can burn in hell is how i break it down to an extent

that is otm but i am powerless against jason street

he should star in a show call "street to streets" where he is in a wheelchair and helps homeless kids and listens to nirvana

^ already a better show than hart of dixie

would watch and swoon

basically anything with a "heart is a word and hart is a common surname" pun title can burn in hell is how i break it down to an extent

she is also a heart surgeon btw

arghhhhh

haha

My passion for dumb puns in titles is the only reason I watched five minutes of Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye, so I'll give Hart of Dixie a shot.

h3art of d1x13

yeah report back on terra nova, i am waay too lazy to watch a 2 hour premiere with my backlog

My wife's grad mentor works on HELL ON WHEELS. Is it on yet? What is it?

haha revenge is actually reven8e which made me think of that ethan thread, but it turns out it's not an 8 it's the symbol for infinity because that show is deep.

Hell on Wheels starts in 3 or 4 weeks on AMC. I think it's on with The Walking Dead.

It is a western that deals with the building of the railroad.

xpost

thank you

Terra Nova update: 45 minutes in and I'm really really struggling.

so glad i'm not watching then!

maybe i'll watch Terra Nova later, i'm sticking with CBS comedies tonight (and am currently appalled that 2 Broke Girls ripped a bunch of nanny-for-a-rich-twit jokes from last season's crappy CBS comedy Mad Love)

Pan Am was fucking TERRIBLE holy shit. Every fucking scene was like, "are you feeling the WONDER AND FREEDOM OF PAN AM AIR TRAVEL YET?"

Revenge is completely stupid but about 100 times more entertaining than Pan Snooze

terra nova was the worst thing i had ever seen until matt a. posted a video of naked spider dances on the nsfw website, and now it is only the second worst thing i have ever seen

good things about terra nova: rival camp could be interesting maybe

bad things about terra nova: everything else. effects don't look good, action scenes are absolutely fucking terrible, central family is boring and full of cliche conflict and ugh this is fucking awful

a lot of this is an easy fix though. devote a full episode to watching a "Slasher" slowly chew on the teenage son bit by bit, preferably while he's still alive and screaming and crying.

i kinda wish the major networks would just stop trying to do sci-fi, it's just a waste of time. even syfy's original series are better.

i only made it to the 1 hr mark. i couldn't stand the boring white people actors playing a boring white people family in a (somehow boring) mileau w/ dinosaurs. and omg the swelling orchestral score. i wd. totally watch a show about time-travelers who got sent to live with the plymouth pilgrims, tho.

also okay this is a different 'time stream' so the butterfly effect doesn't really matter but they know that there is a cataclysmic plate shift and ice age coming up, right?

The premiere of 'Homeland' is knocking about online - I watched it not realising it hasn't aired yet (this weekend, I think). It was pretty good!

i watched the first 45 minutes or so of terra nova, my feelings weren't quite as vitriolic as remy's but yeah it was pretty mediocre. so much boring stereotypical spielberg strained family drama. i thought the adult actors were fine, but the kids were all annoying, and there were tons of plot loopholes or just blank spots (good job glossing over the dad actually escaping from jail, which had the potential to be exciting). it could get better if it focuses more on the action but i don't see that happening.

Pan Am was good fun!

I haven't seen it yet, but I heard it was all eye candy and little else.

Yeah, but zippy, fun eye candy.

i dunno if i can watch a show with creepy unrecognizable christina ricci for 'eye candy'

although i did make it through the 2nd episode of the playboy club last night

oh wait kelli garner is in pan am? ok maybe i will watch it for eye candy

It's a got a nice lightness to it. Cast seems likeable. As long as it doesn't try to hard, it could be some goofy soap fun.

i am trying with the deschanel show and it is like way bad

ho god blind melon

yeah i hate myself for leaving this on while waiting for Raising Hope to start

ok the guys on this show are kind of funny?

who is this other woman?

blind melon seemed to be a joke tbf but yeah, this needs to gel fast or i'm out.

i think it's sadtimes when i'm really hoping that we'll get a least one new show on the level of Happy Endings.

is the concept of this raising hope show that everyone is stupid

not really

raising hope is pretty good, except for the ukelele lady

it's like the better parts of earl

I agree with everything n/a said about terra nova even if he only saw the first 45 minutes

But shooting shockwaves at dinosaurs you guys

The kids were terrible but Zoey was cute as a button

a show about a redhead in a tanktop with a photographic memory...

whose name is poppy!

she's wearing the same tanktop in the next episode clips. come on.

someone with a meant-to-be-realistic super power like super memory needs a weakness like terrible headaches or hallucinations or being really annoying or something

ha not "annoying" either

the ads where she describes how she can replay her memories "like a DVD" crack me up so much

New Girl looking like a genuine hit now.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HyHI_rBhN-A/TnwxC_ILI-I/AAAAAAAABH4/y3TJN3KRdNA/s1600/553.jpg

probably should've saved that for someone praising BBT but that could be a long time coming

it has its own thread full of supporters.

and New Girl is the first official full season pick-up, getting 24 episodes.

Even though I think Happy Endings is the funnier show, it looks like DM Jr. is going to regret his decision, huh?

Well, a lot will depend on tonight. Modern Family is bigger than ever, so Happy Endings should do alright.

If it does fail, I'm sure the new guy can always go back to Latvia to play basketball.

lol

dane cook sitcom on nbc.

that is all.

They can put it back-to-back with Whitney on Saturday!

If Whitney sticks around in the ratings, this could be bad.

lol apparently he's had two failed pilots in the past, both called "Cooked"

They have raised the bar on risible sitcoms.

I have a bad feeling that this will replace Community.

Thankfully it isn't until next Fall, but if they catch on that People have shitty taste in sitcoms, and are cool with crappy comedians, they might try to shift their image. If this is 30 Rock's last year, then I think we're in trouble.

Whitney/Cooked/Outsourced/???

We need one more show.

A Jeff Dunham show where he works in an office but all of his officemates are puppets that he does the voices for?

Somebody is scrambling to fit Tosh.0 into a narrative setup

Yeah,I fear that guy making the leap to a broadcast network sitcom.

lol apparently he's had two failed pilots in the past, both called "Cooked"

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/Themes/Vertex-Theme2-0/images/vertex_image/banner_logo.png

i can't picture Tosh even wanting to do a sitcom

maybe it's just the low bar that's already been set for new comedies but Suburgatory is seeming kinda good

man I can't figure out Suburgatory at all

I liked it (I only saw the last half of it tho). Happy Endings was in top form.

I'm now watching Reven8e for the first time (will catch up on the pilot soon). I LIKE THIS!

yeah Happy Endings is hitting the ground running

I just watched the second ep of Whitney and it really wasn't that bad

I noticed that the Whitney people had their star front hard in the opening credits about being filmed "in front of a live studio audience".

...in a very annoying way

actually i kinda dug that - they put their cards on the table, more or less

It's not like it proves anything. The audience laugh maniacally after every single line.

ok, I know this should have been in a summer thread, and excuse me if there is a thread for this sort of thing elsewhere, but Awkward. is kind of great.

"Remember, God sold out his only son to die on a stick."

yeah Happy Endings is hitting the ground running

otm, I'm excited for this season

Awkward. has moments of wit and charm but it's depressing to feel like every fictional teenage girl now has to talk like Juno, and also seems like MTV is kind of deliberately trying to horrify parents with a show where '15 year old girl has sex with a guy over and over in hopes of him someday going out on a real date with her' is treated like the hero's intrepid journey.

Just went back and caught up on Revenge via ondemand. Consider me hooked.

I was only paying half-attention to Whitney last night while waiting for Prime Suspect, and couldn't determine and noticeable rise or fall in quality. This show is designed for someone who isn't me. As for Prime Suspect, I really hope it doesn't get its plug pulled. She only wore the hat one time last night. Progress!

Still want to catch up on Person of Interest, but can't pull the trigger just yet. Someone tell me it's better than the average CBS drama, plz.

Person of Interest is a little silly, but it has its moments. Revenge is imo the single most boring new show of the season.

No way. Boring? Maybe a little stiff at times, but I really like how it's unfolding at a deliberate pace.

plotwise boring probably isn't the right word but nobody in the cast holds my attention at all, a lot of new dramas are bland but at least have a charismatic or compelling lead

Oh, I think Emily Vancamp is doing a great job as the lead. There's something about her eyes that's a little devious. She does seem a little like an automaton so far, but I think that's what the story calls for this early. If she's still this way at the end of the season, I'd feel a little betrayed by the casting choice.

(I used "little" three times.)

Person of Interest is weird, the whole thing just kind of sleepwalks. It seems to want to be comic booky but... isn't, although once you watch it from that point of view, it improves slightly. And so far everything relies on tons of coincidences/lucky breaks that are p much just handwaved away by the magic machine. I'm quite disappointed, but will watch another couple.

Ok, 2nd episode of New Girl won me over, at least enough to give more episodes a shot. The show is incredibly stupid, but just rolling with it + the early 90s cheesy nostalgia refs works. Fuckin' Newsies.

I'm doing the right thing by ignoring Whitney, right

Your life will be no better or worse for ignoring it.

I have a lot of stuff on tape:

Pan Am, Up All Night, Whitney (I see your maybe Johnny), 2 Broke Girls, A Gifted Man (missing 2nd episode), Person of Interest (missing 2nd episode), Revenge (missing 2nd episode)

I'm definitely going to skip The Secret Circle, Free Agents and Ringer because I'm missing 2nd and 3rd episodes

So, are any of these a "maybe worth watching" or "yes worth watching"?

you must watch them all

Person of Interest kind of reminded me of an 80s action show.

This is literally the only way I will ever watch Whitney again:

http://schoolworkhelper.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/clockwork_orange-treatment.jpg

i have enjoyed the first two episodes of prime suspect in a kind of "man i wish this was law and order but i guess its close enough" way

I really liked the first episode and enjoyed the bejeezus out of the ads for the second

its not really anything like the original series but its a little bit of this and that from the last 10 years of network police procedurals

i think theres a lot of southland in it, even though its only about one cop and its set in nyc. but it shares a tone & style

that's pretty high praise actually -- maybe i'll have to check it out

southland is probably the recent network copshow that's at least comparably shitty to women cops, yeah?

i think a real question about prime suspect is going to be whether they allow timony to screw up really bad along the way, or if they take the easy route and just make her the know-it-all can-do detective who gradually wins over the haters.

southland is probably the recent network copshow that's at least comparably shitty to women cops, yeah?

yeah i think so. (arguably SVU is pretty good to its women cops/attorneys? though the did fire novak for no reason)

fwiw i ~definitely~ dont think prime suspect is as good as southland (yet)! and it misses out on the whole ensemble-cast-beat-cop-gang-cop-detective-interwoven-stories thing, which is southlands big strength. but its still doing that kind of...slice-of-life mysteries + washed out photography + cops balancing home and work life thing. i suppose its partly an nypd blue thing too.

id love to see an actual "southland in nyc" show that had stories about the beat cops too

Some of the overhead shots of Manhattan between scenes make me motion sick.

Homeland is good.

Whitney and Up All Night get full-season pick-ups.

Oh wow, already? No word on Prime Suspect yet I guess.

Not yet. Cancellation seems inevitable though.

I can't think of anything they have to put in the 10pm hour on Thursday nights (which was their anchor drama slot for a couple decades). I honestly think if they'd give Prime Suspect time to build (and build an audience), it will do okay. It won't beat ABC or CBS, but no show they ever put there will.

Tip of the cap to Playboy Club, the first show canceled this season.

lol @ Eddie Cibrian

HURRAY!

I will admit tho that the "I kicked a mobster to death" subplot was really, really, really funny

Is it sad that the only season premiere that wasn't disappointing to me to one degree or another was My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?

yes

I think that was rhetorical.

aw

So is anyone else really happy about the full-season pick-up of Up All Night? Probably my favorite new sitcom of the season (though thats really not hard to be given this year's crop), mostly because I'm an all-time Maya Rudolph and Will Arnett stan.

I like it a lot, there's a lot I relate to. The Train joke was A+++.

Well, yeah, my wife and I are pretty much the exact center of the target demographic for this show, but I'd like to think I'd love it even if I was single and childless. Yeah, the Train thing was A+++, actually the whole running "ironic" joke was pretty lol to me. Every time I play Hall & Oates at our house my wife accuses me of liking them ironically and I always have to reiterate my sincere love.

There's lot of great stuff tucked in here and there in Up All Night, but it's not coming together tonally for me at the moment. Maya Rudolph character seems too cartoonish at times for one. I've got hopes that it will find its rhythm though.

If the ad for this week's show is any indication, they've already started mining tropes. (Couple frantically loads car for daytrip, leaves baby on front steps)

Yeah I saw that ad, but, tbh, at this point its pretty hard not to dig up tropes when it comes to writing a sitcom centered around kids or families. Its what they do with those tropes that makes the show, look at Modern Family.

So is anyone else really happy about the full-season pick-up of Up All Night? Probably my favorite new sitcom of the season (though thats really not hard to be given this year's crop), mostly because I'm an all-time Maya Rudolph and Will Arnett stan.

I haven't seen this show yet, but my wife will be very happy about this. She hasn't seen the show, either, but she really wants Will Arnett to catch a break.

I'm just waiting for the Maya Rudolph retooling to gel.

I find that when it comes to sitcoms I gravitate towards hour-blocks, so I'm much more willing to give a show a chance if it can be paired with something else in that hour. I'm still watching 2 Broke Girls, partly because of a morbid fascination, but mostly because I'm still watching HIMYM, which is a show I've been on the verge of giving up on for a few years now. Up All Night is pairing with Suburgatory now, though I can see losing complete interest in one of those and then ditching the both of them. I'm sticking with Modern Family solely because of Happy Endings, which I never would have expected 6 months ago. I think I'm going to give up on The Office (again) because Whitney is just not worth it.

is will forte a regular on up all night or was he just on the one episode i saw part of?

I hope there's more of him. I think at most he'll be recurring.

I think that was just a guest spot, but he may recur I guess?

I'll admit they haven't really figured out just what to do with Maya yet, but I'm hoping it comes together because she can really be hilarious.

He's only been on that one ep so far.

UAN is so uninspired imo, the sooner all the leads get freed up to do something else the better

it has jokes about facebook in it

it's "current"

lol seriously

y'all tv ppl watch this show @ 1030 tonight on comedy central or elsewhere & then post abt it on my thread, ty

will anyone watch workaholics w/ me?

btw everyone, brad neely is a singular talent + u should all watch his new toon network show ohio, il

wow natasha lyonne on new girl -- i guess good for her to be working again

+ waitress

?

from iasip

stop making me tuomas myself dude

sry, typing while holding baby. from sunny in philly

oh ok. hi baby!

she was also on Perfect Couples

and the New Girl pilot!

btw everyone, brad neely is a singular talent + u should all watch his new toon network show ohio, il

― Mordy, Tuesday, October 4, 2011 9:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

tell me more.

it is by brad neely and starring the professor bros and babycakes. need i say more?

the first episode is about a time traveling reagan

it has jokes about facebook in it

― remy bean, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 12:58 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's "current"

― remy bean, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 12:58 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

If references to Facebook are enough to turn you away from watching a television show, then I guess its period pieces for you until 2015.

johnny crunch: my household is a Workaholics-friendly household. That and Suits are my favourite new TV shows of ...lately.

^knows whats up

*high five*

I had planned on watching/lolling @ the first episode of American Horror Story, but as the hour approaches my resolve has diminished.

creepy redheads w/ baseball bats. i like this already

it's a little lynchian

boy, is it lousy! Connie Britton deserves better.

surely nothing has ever tried & failed harder to be lynchian

this is really exactly what you expect from ryan murphy tho, no? like, dude is good at delivering provocative/shocking titillation consistently no matter the genre

Connie Britton deserves better.

She was the only reason I'd even entertained the idea of watching. Now I might not even bother.

so ryan murphyan, not lynchian?

well, but obviously you could tell what he was going for. he claimed this was inspired by rosemary's baby, but this was much more crazy alienating shit than slow tense buildup

this is really exactly what you expect from ryan murphy tho, no? like, dude is good at delivering provocative/shocking titillation consistently no matter the genre

which does not at all make for good television. I suppose it was at least bonkers enough to be entertaining, even if it was awful (which is basically exactly how I feel about everything Ryan Murphy has ever made)

that one scene with Britton and McDermot yelling at each other was like...I felt like I saw Britton think, "You, sir, are no Kyle Chandler."

as a serious horror stan american horror story was just laughably awful, serves those dicks right for all that "reinventing the genre" promo nonsense. lots of man ass and use of the word shit tho, which was kinda surprising.

re: surprising man ass, have you never seen "Nip/Tuck"

at times I thought it should be called "Butt/Cheeks"

whole story is also a total mess, kids cant act (esp the blonde suicidal dude), and the ripoffs are everywhere (most glaringly the use of a downs syndrome kid to stand in for the concept of creepy which is A) insulting and B) jacked from the kingdom). i will probably stick in for a few more episodes purely because its as close as i am going to get my wife to watching horror stuff, but unless something radically changes this show is the lowest level of dreck, and not campy enough to save itself.

xpost yeah i managed to watch about 2 episodes of nip/tuck and it had some goofy ass serial killer storyline and was about as awful as this. is that by the same dude/s?

yes, also same person as "Glee"

i knew about the glee thing. so basically he is a guy that makes things that i hate, suddenly this is all so much less surprising.

i was kinda hoping that he was just riding the money train and would leave the actual writing and show-running to someone else but it appears that is not the case

I mean I know people on TV never sound real but the dialogue in this was just tremendously bad (esp since McDermot only knows how to SHOUT A LOT). Also I don't know what Jessica Lange is supposed to be doing.

generally I enjoy dude's shows for like a season before they just become overwhelmingly grating

(btw I didn't see AHS but I plan to, just because it sounds hilarious)

in other news, "Revenge" continues to be stupid and entertaining

you will laugh and laugh and laugh, or at least I did

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/10/ryan_murphy.html

ha, that is very OTM

dan you will be glad to know that "the cape" is now available on netflix streaming, speaking of terrible things

omg yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

we should do a FaceTime session and watch some of them while drinking (JJ and DJP Watch It Thanks To TECHNOLOGY!)

in other news, "Revenge" continues to be stupid and entertaining

I keep having to watch this via ondemand because my brain hasn't adjusted to "new season" mode yet and I keep forgetting when everything besides NBC's Thursday night shows actually airs.

I really can't wait for all of this to blow up in revenge girl's face, it's going to be awesomely funny

"Free Agents" cancelled, may be replaced w/"Whitney" repeats.

Love Revenge, it's got all the dumb rich people scheming that gossip girl used to be good at.

Also it cracks me up everytime revenge girl watches those courtroom videos on her laptop - the camera angles alone are a treat.

at some point, aren't they going to be all "hey, how come all of this bad stuff started happening when the new girl moved in, and why does she seem to know all of the people involved, and why are they all connected to the case of the dude who used to live there whom we destroyed"

also I had a hearty lol at "hmmm, do I know you...? oh yeah, we were on a committee together, and I bought your house, and I found you a girlfriend"

lol yeah that scene was all kinds of wtf

find it hard to believe control freak mom wouldn't have been keeping tabs on the whereabouts of poor little amanda clarke even after all this time though but whatevs - the stupidity is partly what makes it so fun

RIP H8R

rip free agents, i will miss kathryn hahn being an attractive version of ana gasteyer

She really does look like AG.

they're hot/not hot twins! like erika christensen and julia stiles!

Wait, which one of those is hot and which supposedly isn't?

HitFix on the ball:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v622/thingummy99/Picture1-9.png

christensen is hot, stiles is not

er, okay.

Anyway, best episode yet of Prime Suspect (although the hat/trenchcoat thing is starting to play a little bit Columbo, which I imagine is partly intentional).

Prime Suspect repeats are going to take over the Playboy Club spot, so hopefully that will help it garner some viewers.

How To Be a Gentleman has been pushed to Saturdays and presumably left to die.

I don't even know what HTBAG is, so I presume a lot of other people don't either.

CBS sitcom on after BBT. Kevin Dillon teaches some effete intellectual how to be a man.

Oh right! I saw a commercial for that once, and then promptly forgot it even exists.

Just saw that Lizzy Caplan is going to do a guest run on New Girl. Will be weird to see Zooey and the alt-better-Zooey in the same place at the same time.

^^maybe they will go all out and throw in a Katy Perry performance, thus making 1/4 of their audiences, er, heads explode.

Caught up on Revenge and Happy Endings. Revenge just keeps getting better. Happy Endings is the funniest sitcom on broadcast tv that doesn't air between 8-9 on Thursday night on NBC.

When Damon Jr. dropped trou and we saw the whole shirt-dress, I choked on my soda.

I am an unabashed fan of New Girl, Revenge and Happy Endings. Damon Wayans Jr is just as funny as his dad.

I think if Happy Endings can keep this up for another week, it deserves to graduate to its own thread.

I still need to check out New Girl. Haven't watched it at all yet.

the alibi-checking scene in the last 'prime suspect' was hilarious.

although i don't know why jane couldn't run it! she's running in the first episode.

Not very well! Remember, she just quit smoking.

oh right. no gum-talk in this episode.

to no one's surprise, How to Be a Gentleman has been cancelled.

what's crazy to me is:

Though it was recently banished from its plum, post-Big Bang Theory spot to Saturday nights, it was still pulling in a 7.8 million share in its last outing—numbers that, were they for an NBC sitcom, would be cause for a full-page congratulatory ad in Variety.

i wonder if they aired and then cancelled the show just to wave it from NBC's face. to show them just how easy it was for them.

I think there is a little animosity between them, but I doubt that's the reason it got canceled.

'bleep my dad says' got cancelled with good-for-any-other-network ratings too

want to say something about cbs having more quality control and self respect than people give them credit for, but '2 broke girls' is on right now and ugh looking at kat dennings is almost not worth listening to kat dennings step on punchlines left and right

people give CBS credit for quality control? I thought everyone agreed that, The Good Wife and (some of) HIMYM, they generally churn out cheap, lazy shit.

Good Wife and HIMYM aside*

i think you misread my post gukbe

'how to be a gentleman' was weak but i wanted it to stay on the air if only to help dave foley stay out of debtors prison. if networks are going to make stupid johnny drama shows they should make 'viking quest' or 'five towns' into a reality.

oh right, i totally misread that. my bad. xpost

i've had what i understand to be a "terranova" rerun on for about five full minutes. where are the goddamned dinosaurs??

they actually don't skimp on the dinosaurs that much, at least in the first 2 episodes, last week was wall to wall pterodactyls

surely they're going to have to at some point. if they're running behind schedule, i'll be they've got the 'everyone is stuck in a cave' episode.

there are some people stuck in a cave with a disease that is giving them amnesia

wait for real?

it's pretty dumm

how terrible 'terra nova' and 'falling skies' are just kind of makes me realize that there has probably never been a spielberg movie with characters you'd actually want to spend time with every week

raiders of the lost ark?!

ok yeah indie -- still, these shows are in the mold of his other movies that are mostly 'people you follow for a few days of their life while they experience something incredible but would never want to watch in any long term way'

I am enjoying Homeland but somehow Clare Danes' face has morphed into that of George Michael Bluth, mannerisms included, and now I can't un-see it.

oh man. Like that period in the 90s where I could barely tell Lindsay Lohan and Frankie Muniz apart.

Revenge is so over the top I can barely handle it, yet I'm compelled to keep watching.

i don't get the whole Revenge being outrageous thing, it's so bland that every time i try to watch it my attention wanders

i've only watched the first episode of My So-Called Spy so far but i liked it. Danes went through a phase a few years ago of being kind of unpleasantly skeletal-looking but she's a bit better now.

episode 2 is good. probably the best new show of the fall.

Revenge and Suburgatory got full season pick-ups. Happy Endings got 6 additional scripts (as did Prime Suspect and Harry's Law on NBC).

Hm, surprised Happy Endings didn't follow suit. Script orders are so wishy-washy.

Ratings haven't been amazing, but they increased this week so it's a good sign. Considering they were originally placing the show to just burn it off it's not bad.

yeah a scripted show premiering in APRIL and having any success at all is rare, so they're already surpassing expectations

RIP Charlie's Angels

aw, I never even got the chance to see how terrible that was

I think they're going to continue airing it, but they've shut down production. So you still have a chance!

wtf were they thinking with Bosley

Yeah, Bosley is supposed to be old and ugly and THINK he's young and sexy. That's the essence of his character. If you just make him young and sexy, then WTF.

Mind, I only know that via a commercial. I never watched it.

The remake, that is.

I got through like 15 minutes. The characters were indistinguishable.

i don't get the whole Revenge being outrageous thing, it's so bland that every time i try to watch it my attention wanders

― some dude, Thursday, 13 October 2011 04:14 (Yesterday) Bookmark

i'm quite liking this show so far on a slowburn tip but yeah this supposed ott side of it is completely eluding me too. dudes never watched trash tv before or what?

then again i'm finding american horror story super entertaining and happy endings pretty wack so idk why i'm even getting involved here

s|b|r|t|c

Revenge is just amazingly dumb in a funny, entertaining way. It's not that it's shockingly OTT, it's the bazillion massive plot holes every 5 minutes.

charlie's angels was so low rent it reminded me of syndicated sexy lady action shows from the 90's like pam anderson's VIP. like aside from minka kelly being supposedly famous there was zero difference.

sigh, VIP.

homeland is probably my favorite new show! i think danes is still skeletal, but i was pleased to find patinkin less annoying than usual.
whitney: ugh, no.
new girl; i wanna like it, i really do. it has moments. and zoe! will keep trying.

i watched 'new girl' after the pilot - it actually made me laugh! the banter-writing seems pretty well-done.

i can't decide. it's like, i laugh at some jokes but at the same time i'm just so turned off by the show as a whole.

I couldn't get into Revenge. It reminded me of Sucker Punch.

Well, not really, but in a way.

I'm still hoping that New Girl finds a groove, but I'm not sure it will.

Homeland easily the best new show of the fall so far. Missed Last Man Standing though. lol.

Revenge is just amazingly dumb in a funny, entertaining way. It's not that it's shockingly OTT, it's the bazillion massive plot holes every 5 minutes.

You know this is the only new television show I love, right?

last night's Revenge continued the massive hilarity stakes

It's ridiculous, but my interest in the show is genuine somehow. I make no excuses.

Also, FUCK YES Larry Wilmore was on Happy Endings last night!

I like how Emily VanCamp swings back and forth between the innocuous Care Bear character she played on "Brothers and Sisters" and a total robot bitch at the drop of a hat. Also how come no one noticed her open smirking at all of the crazy downfalls?

xp: "Happy Endings" is going all in now, it's amazing.

Lol yes, you would think the smug smirk of satisfaction would have been a dead giveaway by now. But then no one would be playing by soap conventions!

I do appreciate, though, that the main reason why she appears to be so successful is because she's the only character not rolling up on a nemesis and detailing the exact method she's going to use to bring about their downfall. You have to wonder how half these people made any money.

robot bitch is exactly the vibe of emily vancamp's performance. she and gabriel mann continue to be awesome/hilarious imo. also that DRESS amber valletta wore to her death. everyone else on this show is dressed terribly, though.

in a way i think the plotting and pacing of the show is sort of good but the dialogue is so hilariously terrible. what was that nonsensical voiceover about guilt in last nights episode?

I think they couldn't license a song hip/on-the-nose enough to play under the boning scene so they just threw together that monologue at the last minute, either that or someone found a rejected SATC Carrie monologue and said "oh this is DELICIOUS"

haha it was like, "words...i love my guilt i don't run from my guilt i run toward my guilt guilty guilt guilt words words words"

I was far more interested in Nolan getting the footage of the kinda-sorta murder there than I was the monologue/sex. This is why I FAIL at soaps.

I also liked how the elite hacker left her a wholly incriminating voicemail

Just caught up with last night's Happy Endings and even though I think they're pushing Elisha Cuthbert into the "Joey" role too fast I think it is very good and probably now deserves its own thread.

Person of Interest and Unforgettalol get full seasons.

I'm still enjoying Up All Night. Applegate was so good in the hospital scenes in the birth episode.

Yeah, that was the best Up All Night yet. Still, sometimes Maya is a little TOO over the top for my liking.

I quit watching Person of Interest. Kind of sad because it had potential, but on the other hand it got really really really really really really shite.

kind of liking Grimm!

halloween happy endings episode is fantastic

yeah. really needs its own thread.

man, prime suspect is good

'you wanted to know what a padiddle is, that's what it is.'

yeah, best new show of the season for me

that week that nbc ran it like almost every night i kept trying to watch it, and my attention would wander and i'd put on headphones and listen to some music. which is my pattern with most other new network dramas, actually (Unforgettable, A Gifted Man, etc.)

watched Once Upon A Time and i thought it'd be silly and not nearly as good as Grimm but it's pretty decent too!

the rongness of being no more interested in prime suspect than in unforgettable is like, uh

i'm not equating them fwiw i'm saying my disinterest is across the board and kind of undisctiminating

yes it sounds to me like when someone says 'i just listen to whatever's on' when you ask them what music they like. except the opposite, obv.

i don't think you can blame anyone in 2011 for not being interested in yet another network procedural.

also, whatever happened to the huge pans Grimm was getting? did they just skip the pilot or something?

Unforgettable is the highest rated new show of the season though.

the people love poppy

Bleurgh

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A CRIME WHEN THE CIMRE SCENE HAS BEEN DESTROYED?

"Don't worry, I saw it before."

*applause*

people love shows where people stand in the middle of re-enactments of past crimes, for some reason

the ads where she describes how she can replay her memories "like a DVD" crack me up so much

― sock2transparent (some dude), Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:05 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

like an .avi

http://www.gasolinealleyantiques.com/images/Optical%20Toys/viewer-orangebutton.JPG

Grimm did really, really well (for a Friday). How long before it gets moved to a more lucrative night and then tanks?

http://www.deadline.com/2011/11/fox-cancels-sketch-comedy-series-in-the-flow-with-affion-crockett/

Can anyone confirm that "In the Flow with Affion Crockett" was a real television show, or is this a November Fools joke?

In the what with who?

a guy from Nick Cannon's Wild'n Out who almost exclusively does impressions of rappers who had a sketch show for a while in the summer. pretty dumb show but the Drake impression was hilarious.

someone was mentioning that in living color is supposed to be coming back!?

ok if i had clicked the link above i would have seen it is true. carry on.

New Girl continues to be hilarious in spite of Zooey Deschanel (who, in fairness, is funny even when she is really irritating). I feel like the reviews decrying the presence of Winston and calling him unfunny are remarkably stupid.

I watched it and thought it all felt really dead. "it's no Happy Endings..." etc etc

well no, it's no Happy Endings by dint of being a completely different show/premise

light hangout comedy with similar 20-something characters. close enough.

however it is basically the same exact premise as My Boys

however it is basically the same exact premise as My Boys

I guess I missed the part of New Girl where she monologues endlessly about how dating/life/relationships are like a baseball game.

she was too busy trying to say 'penis' iirc

New Girl continues to be hilarious in spite of Zooey Deschanel (who, in fairness, is funny even when she is really irritating). I feel like the reviews decrying the presence of Winston and calling him unfunny are remarkably stupid.

winston's good. all the guys are funny, but he's probably got the best zings?

i thought the hot bartender gag - about how impossible it was to tell if she was serious - was pretty great.

deschanel still worst part tho.

She's like a female Urkel.

it's how we know her wins low

also is anyone else persisting in 2 Broke Girls? because hoo-boy New Girl is awesome compared to that one.

if kat dennings is on tv i am watching it, yes