Category: Musings

Fall Premieres – Trivial Teens and Leno’s “Retirement”

Tonight brings offerings that pose little to no threat to my precious DVR space with the return of two more dry dramas from The CW and the beginning of a new form of “late” night on NBC.

The CW seems to have cornered the market on telling tales of teen trials and tribulations, and while it’s sensational enough for a lot of viewers I’ve yet to find much enjoyment from their line-up both past and present (the snappy snark of Veronica Mars being the only exception). First up is the people-still-watch-this seventh season of One Tree Hill. Limping into the year it will be without breakout star Chad Michael Murray, which makes me speculate this could be the swan song season of the series.

Gossip Girl ad campaign for its second season

Still hot, with its trend-setting cast firmly at the center of the Young Hollywood set and getting constant media exposure, Gossip Girl begins its third season following the pampered prep school kids into their first year of college. Never a series to shy away from creating and embracing buzz (dig the ad campaign from last year) the big news going into this season is main moneyed douche Chuck Bass’s same-sex liplock by episode six. A truly less-than-scandalous story for anyone who finds the “shock” factor of a man-on-man kiss both parochial and passe – plus those who’ve read the GG books (or been conscious while watching any episode) knows the guy started out gay.

With The Tonight Show torch now firmly in the able hands of Conan (CoCo!), Jay Leno takes up his new post weeknights at 10/9pm that seems eerily like his old one (though official reports state that fans of Tonight should expect “big” changes). While Leno will abandon the traditional late-night host’s desk and act as a kind of roving emcee, introducing the work of a team of comics who have gone out in the field to tape pieces, each show will still have a monologue at the top of each show, a guest – Jerry Seinfeld is scheduled for the premiere – and close with his famous “Jaywalking” or headline segments, which will lead directly into local news.

Leno’s show will no doubt be watched heavily during its initial inception, considering his is an experiment for a network that has traditionally seen this timeslot deliver acclaimed scripted hits over the years (ER, Law & Order, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law), defining it as the gold standard of sophisticated programming. However with the business rapidly changing from what was seen in the ’80s and ’90s, this new approach to primetime is going to be closely monitored by NBC and competitors alike to see if a viable model to future programming has been found.

Not On My DVR, But If You Have Space

8/7c – One Tree Hill, The CW
9/8c – Gossip Girl, The CW
10/9c – The Jay Leno Show, NBC (series premiere)

Fall Premieres – What About the Weekend?

Even thought it’s Saturday that doesn’t mean you won’t find new episodes in the TV ether, you’ll just need to look a little further up the dial on an extended cable channel. For fellow anglophiles, tonight BBC America begins playing the third season of its motherland network’s modernized (i.e. more youthful, and without tights) retelling of the classic Robin Hood story.

Being a lover of the timeless “rob the rich to give to the poor” legend in all guises (God help me, I can even stomach Kevin Costner’s less-than-feeble attempts at a British accent), the first and second seasons, while not groundbreaking, were good fun with an enjoyablely passionate and cheeky Robin Hood, sassy/adventurous Maid Marian and comically evil (scene-stealing without being cartoonish) Sheriff of Nottingham.

Coming into the third season the show shows signs of maturing and appears to be delving into darker terrain than its previous light-hearted years, with events of the second season finale driving the hero towards all-consuming feelings of exacting vengeance on his enemies after losing all reason to care, an interesting place to put a character who is synonymus with the act of unconditional giving. Unfortunately this will be the final season for the archery ace and his merry men as the BBC announced earlier this summer they will not be bringing the series back for a fourth year.

In case you missed it, catch up with Seasons 1 and 2 available on iTunes, and watch the final 13 episodes every Saturday starting tonight on BBC America.

Set Your DVRs

9/8c – Robin Hood, BBC America

Bryan Fuller: Back from the Dead

Bryan Fuller, creator/producer of top-notch now-defunct series Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls, will be teaming with Bryan Singer (director of X-Men and Usual Suspects, and exec producer of FOX series House) to adapt the Augusten Burroughs novel “Sellevision,” whose previous memoir “Running With Scissors” was turned into a feature helmed by Glee and Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy and starred Alec Baldwin.

The hourlong comedy-drama for NBC will revolve around the inner workings at a fictional home shopping channel. Being a world rich with great metaphors of consumerism, buying happiness and chasing material things, Fuller stresses the show won’t satirize the home-shopping genre itself but instead will be a more grounded take on that sphere through the eyes of one player in it.

Fuller also has a second script — his first stab at a half-hour comedy — in the works at the Peacock. No Kill is a workplace laffer set inside a no-kill animal shelter. Fuller, a self-described “animal lover,” believes that there is humor in people who identify more with animals than other humans, and that his show will be a comedy about “becoming human.”

In between these two scripts, Fuller is still working on a comicbook adaptation of his late ABC series Pushing Daisies, and remains hopeful that the 12 issues of the comicbook will eventually serve as a blueprint for a Pushing Daisies movie.

Fall Premieres – Of Glampires and Ghosties

Tonight the fifth network presents a too-obviously-themed two-hour block of otherworldliness with the return of Supernatural and the unveiling of The Vampire Diaries. Finding myself at a crossroads – one being the road I’ve been traveling down, with a pre-disposition to avoid most things on The CW; the other being one that leads me towards a natural attraction to stories involving spooks, spectres and all things supernatural, particularly ones having the creative talent with a resume that includes working alongside Joss Whedon – this one-two punch seems tailor-made for me to enjoy. Unfortunately I’m at a loss in my commitment to either offering served up for my viewing pleasure, especially on Thursdays, a night that already has a number of contenders vying for coveted DVR space.

The Vampire Diaries will grace the small screen for the first time with the hopes to lure those who can’t get enough of glamourous, gorgeous creatures of the night…or rather the not-direct-sunlight. Taking a cue from the popularity in adapting young adult novels featuring beautiful, blood-sucking fiends, Vampire Diaries is based on a series of books first published in the early-’90s. The premise (small-town girl in a love triangle with two brothers) reads very similar to any number of teen dramas so it’s fitting that Dawson’s Creek creator Kevin Williamson is at the helm of this sexy sudser. Being a Creek geek back in the day (although my attention waned in the latter part of the series) I enjoy the idea of Dawson with fangs, but also having a high bar set from other well-played, vampire-centric TV I’ll need more than just a little sexual tension (which I’ll consider chaste in comparison to anything-goes-on-HBO True Blood) and teen angst to retain my viewership.

With Supernatural, I’ve already got a big handicap to overcome: not having kept up with the previous four seasons worth of exploits from the (hot!) demon- and all-other-manner-of-evil-hunting Winchester brothers. Not wanting to completely discard a show that sees frequent episodes written by the amazing Ben Edlund (he behind one of the single best hours of television ever with Angel‘s fifth season puppet-filled masterpiece “Smile Time”), all seasons are sitting at a comfortable place on the queue, but after reading the synopsis for the latest season’s opener, “Sympathy for the Devil,” intrigue might get the better of me and they’ll quickly be moved to the top. While the first couple of years concentrated more on monster-of-the-week stories, a canny creative took the reins mid-way through and started to really develop a strong mythology, which any genre aficionado will attest is the backbone of these types of series.

SET YOUR DVRs

8/7c – The Vampire Diaries, The CW (series premiere)
9/8c – Supernatural, The CW

Fall Premieres – “Glee”king Out on the “Dance”floor

Tonight’s premieres need little to no introduction from me – if you’re an avid reader of TVOYOT you’ll already know where my loyalties lie on Wednesday nights, so it’s no surprise that I’ll be watching FOX’s two-hour block of singing and dancing, So You Think You Can Dance and Glee.

First up with their inaugural fall cycle, SYTYCD returns for a sixth season with a premiere episode promising yet more thrills (and the always-entertaining spills) found during the multi-city audition process to find the Top 20 dancers.

Counting on carry-over from the massive lead-in audience of the popular dance competition, but also carrying considerable critical acclaim and massive amounts of word-of-mouth from the not one, not two but three airings of its pilot, Glee will be debuting its first new episode since that pilot initially previewed in May. The satirical high school musical series has received positive buzz from almost every major media news source and is sure to be an instant hit.

Not to begrudge those who enjoy the trainwreck that is Tyra, the 13th cycle of America’s Next Top Model will have its 2-hour premiere tonight on The CW. Trying a new gimmick this season, the cast of model wanna-bes are all under the typical 5’7″ catwalk height.

SET YOUR DVRs

8/7c – America’s Next Top Model, The CW
8/7c – So You Think You Can Dance, FOX
9/8c – Glee, FOX (series premiere)

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