It’s time once again for another sparkling, fresh TV season.
Brand-new shows. Brand-new stars. Brand-new progress on old
cliffhangers. Can’t you feel the excitement?
It’s time once again for another sparkling, fresh TV season. Brand-new shows. Brand-new stars. Brand-new progress on old cliffhangers. Can’t you feel the excitement?
Or not.
A new TV season is still a good thing, but it’s not the huge event it once was, so let’s get right to the point. These days, it’s all about the shows. Are there any good ones?
Some, but not the shows you’ve probably heard about. ABC’s “Cavemen?” Seriously awful. Every bit as awful as you’d expect from a series based on an insurance commercial.
CBS’ “Viva Laughlin,” the hour with Hugh Jackman and characters who burst out in song? It’ll give “Cavemen” a run for the worst-new-show crown, and the songs aren’t even the biggest problem.
NBC’s “Bionic Woman?” All in all, fairly grim and dark. That new Jamie Summers is one ticked-off lady. The action sequences aren’t bad, but NBC has some kinks to iron out here.
So as we welcome in the 2007 fall TV season, we’ve hit the first theme of the year: Everyone is ironing out the kinks. The networks have been recasting and rewriting pilots like crazy all summer. Usually, that doesn’t work out, but you never know.
Which brings up theme No. 2: Potential. There is, at least, lots of potential this fall, particularly in the shows about nerds and geeks saving the world, and, you know, getting out of the house – CW’s “Reaper” and NBC’s “Chuck” are the best of that lot and among the best of the whole season.
There are also a handful of other dramas that are quirky or cheerful or crammed full of witty ironic detachment that could grow into bona fide hits. There are a couple of soaps, one for grownups, one for teens, with enough despicable people to make them fun little spectacles. There are even – and you hate to jinx it by saying it out loud – four comedies that seem to have the chops.
That’s not bad. Laughs, irony, despicable people. Sounds like a TV season with possibilities. So we’re not going all bad-TV-gloomy here. Things might turn out fine.
But with one exception, there are no dazzlers this fall, no shows that you absolutely have to watch because they’ll spin the culture around, like, say, a “Heroes” or a “Lost.”
And the exception, the one major TV event, comes from PBS. That would be “The War,” Ken Burns’ documentary about World War II that starts Sept. 23. Like Burns’ “The Civil War,” “Baseball” and “Jazz” before it, “The War” is really a mini series, though this one is nearly 15 hours spread over two weeks.
As for the commercial broadcasters, the disappointing thing is that no one really reached for the moon this year.
There are 28 new series – 22 of them using scripts – and only two are really out of the ordinary. One of them is ABC’s “Pushing Daisies,” a “fantasy procedural,” as the network calls it, that’s a cheeky, original fairy tale of sorts. But it’s a quiet pleasure, not a “you-have-to-see-this” show. The other is “Viva Laughlin,” CBS’ semi-musical born from the much better BBC miniseries, “Viva Blackpool.” It is, simply, a mess.
Compare those with some of the launches last season: “Heroes,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” “Kidnapped,” “The Nine,” “Smith,” “The Knights of Prosperity.”
These were all cinematic or bold. Few worked out, but you had to give the nets points for trying.
However, because so many of those big-effort and big-money shows crashed and burned – and quickly – the networks overreacted this season, as is their way. This fall, the motto could be: Don’t overreach.
The nets combined that with the medium’s permanent operating guideline – imitation is the purest form of television – and they came up with lots of nerds, lots of special powers and lots of nerds with special powers.
That connects back to the two breakout characters from the most high-profile successes last fall, the nerdy Hiro Nakamura (Masi Oka) from “Heroes,” and the nearly-as-nerdy Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) from “Ugly Betty.”
What made them break out was that they were identifiable and likeable and, most of all, original. That last point got ignored, as it always does in Hollywood, so we’ll be meeting new nerds in CW’s “Aliens in America” and “Reaper,” CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory” and NBC’s “Chuck.” Plus the lead guy in “Pushing Daisies” is pretty geeky, and more are coming midseason.
And since “Heroes” was also about superpowers, this fall we’re getting a guy who travels through time, a vampire, a woman with bionic parts, and those world-saving nerds. Maybe the cavemen count as both superpowered and nerdy, but the show is so bad, that, really, never mind.
