Monday, August 21, 2006

Gearing up

It's late August and that means that two things are about to happen.

1) Fall is approaching and that means that new TV shows are going to start--which means that I will soon have to research and write my Fall TV Preview columns.

and

2) Sarah is beginning 1st Grade next Monday.

First Grade!

That will mean Lynda and I will slightly adjust our work schedule. At least one of us will be arriving at work around 7 am (gulp!) and leaving around 3. Getting up that early will be a challenge, not just for me and/or Lynda but also for Sarah.

- - -

and this has just become the most boring post I have ever written since my series on the air conditioner in our backyard.

Man, I'm just trying to find something to write about and it seems clear that I am failing miserably. I guess it's because I have no original thoughts of my own and am waiting impatiently for qualified journalists to do all the research on the new Fall shows and then I'll just parrot their words back to you.

However, I must try to be original. But it has been hard to get motivated lately (and I don't really know why.) I'll give it a try.

Maybe we'll start tonight with ABC.

The only new show on ABC Sunday Nights is called Brothers and Sisters. I don't know anything about it except that the headliner star is Calista Flockhart. Can she bring the same zeitgeist-stirring power that defined Ally McBeal during its hey day? And what about the presence of Sally Field? Does she have enough Q-rating to matter? I am intrigued by Ron Rifkin, however . . . but is he a bad guy or a good guy? (He'll always be Arvin Sloane to me.)

Monday Night is no longer Monday Night Football night on ABC, so that means for the first time in about 35 years, the network will fail miserably. It a vain attempt to make Monday's relevant to TV viewers, the alphabet network offers us two reality shows (Wife Swap, The Bachelor) and a retread (What About Brian). Will anyone care?

Tuesday Night's new shows are bookended by Dancing with the Stars and Boston Legal. The new sitcoms during the nine-o-clock hour are called The Knights of Prosperity and Help Me Help You. "Knights" is from the creators of Ed . . . and if that isn't exciting enough for you, well then how about this. The funny band of misfits the show centers around is planning to break into Mick Jagger's Central Park apartment to get the money to fund a bar. So, it's sort of like Oceans Eleven meets "Can't Get No Satisfaction." Help me Help You somehow involves Ted Danson and is therefore tainted by the stench of Becker. 'Nuff said.

Wednesday Night on ABC begins and ends with LOST at 9 pm. Incredibly, the 8 o'clock hour is devoted to the Dancing with the Stars Results Show. I've got to think that the producers of LOST are a bit cheesed off about the crappy lead-in they've got. At 10 pm, ABC offers something called The Nine.

The multi-gendered and multi-racial cast makes me think of LOST's ensemble cast a bit and the premise sounds influenced by it as well. A group of nine strangers is thrown together during a bank robbery and their lives will never be the same. There WILL be flashbacks! It all sounds a bit like Identity. (It might be good, I guess.)

Thursday Night features a show called Ugly Betty. Based upon the fifteen seconds that I spent reading the synopsis of the series, I would call it a cross between Less Than Perfect, Veronica's Closet, and Freaks and Geeks, with just a dash of Project Runway. The other show on Thursday Night at 10 pm is called 6 Degrees and its another show that features a set of strangers who's lives are intertwined in a mysterious way that will change their lives forever. Yeah, it's another LOST clone that plays off the Six Degrees of . . . theory. Now, if Kevin Bacon shows up . . .

No one cares what's on TV Friday night (at least no one who isn't watching Battlestar Galactica.But it's clear that ABC isn't devoting a whole lot of their budget on this night. The only new show is called Men in Trees. It seems to be a show about relationships . . . on a night when people who aren't in exciting relationships are sitting at home watching TV. Seems kind of sad, really.

2 comments:

Sven Golly said...

That's a difficult challenge indeed, to write something original about prime time television, the most derivative, imitative, incestuous product-line this side of the Readers Digest. For something REALLY innovative to analyze, how about Jim Tressel's game plan?

PS. I liked the part about getting up early to go to first grade.

flipper said...

First of all, how come the photo of the cast of "The Nine" has ten people in it? I'm confused already.

And "Men in Trees" . . . is that really the show's name? REALLY??? That's the worst name I've ever heard.

Finally, when you talk about "people who aren't in exciting relationships," do you mean people who are in boring relationships, or people who aren't in a relatinship at all? Once again, I'm confused.