20 Thoughts On Navigating The New TV Season

Let’s do an exercise together. Imagine you’re looking at a big board, and on that board are the primetime lineups of all five major television networks. You can see all their shows, from Monday to Sunday. Scan over the names, making sure to take a moment to refresh yourself with the history of each. Done? OK, now, tell me if you can name just one hour long drama that’s past its fourth year of existence right now, and that doesn’t involve a CSI, NCIS, L&O or Keifer Sutherland. Take your time, I’ll wait. Still thinking? Alright stop, I’m going to save you the time. There’s only three of them, and they’re all on The CW: 7th Heaven, Gilmore Girls and Smallville. One stole a timeslot from a far superior show (Everwood), one needs to be put down like a sick goat (suck on that, Lorelai!) and the other is only still on because Kristin Kreuk is really REALLY pretty. Basically, none of them remain on television because of some undying loyalty to quality; the CW needed a few flagships for their underwhelming puke green-infused launch, end of story.

Here’s the point of the exercise: don’t believe the hype that television has gotten exceedingly better. It hasn’t.

Reality shows ravaged the industry. The immediate and intense success of a slew of cheap to produce reality shows (The Bachelor, Survivor, Joe Millionaire, et al) caused the premature and merciless cancellation of countless network primetime shows. When the networks saw they could retain their ratings and shares but at nearly half the cost they didn’t think twice about axing the clever, yet rating challenged budget behemoth on Tuesday nights at 9pm. And while the dumber parts of the American viewing public made away like bandits in this arrangement, the people that hope and pray for just a few hours of quality television each week were slapped in the face and made to look elsewhere. I was one of those slapees.

I tried Spike and The Shield. I watched FX and Nip/Tuck (though not Rescue Me. I can’t watch Denis Leary as a serious actor. He will always be Edgar Friendly from Demolition Man to me. Which reminds me, mmmm ratburger!). I attempted to sit through the Comedy Central rotation of mediocrity (Hey Drawn Together! What’s up? Cool. Later. P.S. You suck.). I slogged my way through the “high brow” reality crapola (basically anything on Bravo). Nothing I watched was ever as good as the top of the heap primetime dramas that reigned in the pre-Reality era. I’m talking Clooney and Goose-era ER, Franz’s ass-era NYPD Blue, Sorkin-era West Wing, anything David E. Kelly made before Calista Flockhart turned to stone, Buffy before UPN got their mitts on it, hell, even Dawson’s Creek for a little while. Good shows were all over the place back then.

And they stayed on long enough to build their worlds and attract an audience. Shows premiering today get two episodes tops before the networks pull the plug. This last spring, you couldn’t trip over a tranny on Santa Monica Blvd. without seeing Heather Graham’s smiling face blonding back at you. I didn’t even see her show and I love me some Rollergirl. Why didn’t I watch it? Cause ABC canceled it after one airing. One! Pilots suck in general. By design they’re not meant to be the best episode of the series. So how can you judge a show based on its rookie twenty-two minutes? I’m tired of getting hyped up all summer only to tune in and have my time wasted when Wonderfalls, The Inside, Karen Sisco, Surface, Threshold, Jack and Bobby, Skin, Night Stalker, Miss Match, Miracles, Lyon’s Den, Line of Fire, Life As We Know It, John Doe, Boomtown, etc get yanked almost immediately.

Yes, there is a lot of good television. HBO still makes great stuff. Two out of the three Law and Order’s are quality. House, 24, Veronica Mars, Lost, and Boston Legal all get my attention week in and week out. The networks are too gun shy right now. Remember, ABC originally gave Grey’s Anatomy a midseason nine episode run, and it’s only because they followed the first season Desperate Housewives phenomenon that the show even attracted an audience. Veronica Mars was the best show on television two years ago. Today they have a thirteen episode commitment from a network that has absolutely NOTHING to run its place should it be canceled. House is fading, nobody likes Desperate Housewives anymore, 24 is only on for half the season, NBC relegated the flagship L&O to the wasteland of Friday’s (where they’re not sure the show can even compete with Rob Morrow and the menschy jewish kid from Addams Family Values), The Sopranos is done, and ER is a mess that won’t go away.

Gone are the days when a Third Watch can survive on Mondays for six seasons. Felicity would never last today. Double that for Boston Public, Angel, Providence, Judging Amy, Charmed and Alias. The current best shows on television are in their third seasons at best. We’re only now seeing a rebirth in series loyalty and longevity. While this fall has the best new slate of shows in nearly a decade, let’s hold off announcing the awesomeness of network television until at least one of them makes it past Christmas. I refuse to get attached to another show only to see it go weakly into the May sweeps night, fading into network obscurity like so many I’ve loved before (R.I.P Undeclared).

But I think I have a solution to my problem…

I’m going to watch everything. Every single new show. I’m going to try them all once. If it doesn’t make me throw up a little in my mouth, it gets a second chance. If it never gets better I won’t watch past the third episode (peace out Justice, Happy Hour, Vanished and Til Death). But I will watch everything. And by watching everything I’ll truly know what’s worth spending my time on. The goal is to catch all 26 new shows and do a sweep of all 55 returning shows and then eventually whittle it down by quality until I’m only watching 10 on a weekly basis. Ten would seem like a lot, but I have presets built in – I’m required to watch Lost, Grey’s, House, Veronica Mars, How I Met Your Mother and in the Spring, Scrubs – so I’m really only looking to five slots. By loyalty to Aaron Sorkin I will follow Studio 60 (even though it hasn’t yet risen above the level of average). Now I’m down to four slots. I’m combining My Name Is Earl and The Office into one big mega-sitcom, so now I’m only down to three slots. Three new shows out of seventy-five choices. My TiVo is gonna get a run for its money.

It’s time for the new fall TV season and I couldn’t be more excited to crap on all the new shows. As the NPH might say on my favorite CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother: “Suit Up!” Here are twenty thoughts on how I’m going to navigate my three show search.

1. When choosing which of two shows to watch that are on opposite each other, always choose the serial over the procedural (i.e. Grey’s over CSI). You don’t want to fall behind on a Lost or a Prison Break or a Veronica Mars just so you can watch William Petersen shine a mini-flashlight on an overly lit, green-lens tinted dead body.

2. If you just HAVE to watch Lost, do so with a large group of people. That way, when the show ends up being predictably frustrating and disappointing (Oh, did they not explain the black smoke monster? Tell me again what the Other are up to? Did Kate not choose a boyfriend yet? They didn’t tell you anything? Well, at least we got to see another flashback of Jack’s life as a doctor. New information there.), at least you’re hanging out with cool people. So start drinking to dull the pain.

3. Any pilot that features Amy Smart ripping open her blouse and tasering a helpless woman deserves your viewing attention for at least a couple episodes (regardless of how creepy and unentertaining it is to watch Ray Liotta for forty-two minutes each week).

4. Tape or TiVo Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. It’s going to be much easier to sit through all the fast paced, oh so precious Sorkinese if you can bloop bloop through the commercials.

5. Just because Qualen from Cliffhanger and Hank Kingsley from The Larry Sander Show decide to do a sitcom together, doesn’t mean it’s going to be funny. And in this case, it means the opposite.

6. Stay away from My Network TV. A shitty soap opera is stilll a shitty soap opera, even if it has Bo Derek fighting in a public fountain (who, by the way, hasn’t been worth watching since she banged Jeff Fahey on a motorcycle in the Skinemax classic “Woman Of Desire”).

7. Remember, it may seem like a cool casting choice but NOBODY likes James Woods. He’s made a career out of playing sleazy douche bags; “lovable scoundrel” isn’t exactly in his wheelhouse. Unless he’s trying to convince Louis Gossett Jr. to fight ten guys in one night, menacing Sly Stallone, or slapping Michael J. Fox around, he’s not giving me the good times.

8. There’s nothing wrong with the philosophy of “one and done”. If you don’t like a show, stop watching immediately. There’s far too much interesting television on this fall for you to get hooked into finishing a suck ass installment of Vanished or Till Death (Hey Brad Garrett, Michael Richards is on the line, he wants me to deliver a message: “Welcome to TV Hell. Hope the house is paid off.”).

9. Ali Larter is the next big TV hottie, so make sure you’re watching Heroes. There’s always a better than average chance that an enterprising staff writer got wasted and watched Varsity Blues and the next thing we know Larter’s in a whipped cream bikini and strutting all over NBC. Unfortunately, the potential ramifications of this might be a cameo from asshat James Van Der Beek. Although if the producers decide to invent a character named Giant Forehead Boy, the Beek would be perfect casting.

10. It is OK for men to watch Grey’s Anatomy, so long as they’re doing it for one of two reasons. 1. Katherine’s giant Heigl’s, and 2. They’ve been supporting Patrick Dempsey since he nailed Carrie Fisher in Loverboy, and want to remain loyal.

11. Great shows always have a great opening credits sequence, so choosing what to watch based solely on the credits may be a better bet than banking on the acting ability of Skeet Ulrich.

12. Speaking of Skeet, if TV isn’t the most redemptive medium on the planet than nothing is. Keven Federline is guesting on CSI after ruining a beloved underage sex icon. Jon Cryer has the most popular sitcom on the planet, and he was profit poison for twenty years. Hell, Ally McBeal gave Robert Downey Jr. a job before his first parole hearing. He was still showering with clenched cheeks when he got the role. You gotta love how forgiving a medium television is. After all, the following actors are now carrying their own primetime television shows: Charlie “Bullshit! Cause I wasn’t with a hooker today! Ha Ha!” Sheen, Skeet Ulrich, Erica “Swimfan” Christensen, Taye “Kevin Hill can not come to the phone right now, on account of he sucks and his show is canceled” Diggs, Joey Lawrence, and “Don’t Call Me Celestia” Anne Heche. So if you don’t think Paris Hilton is getting her own sitcom sometime in the next two years, you’re insane. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael Jackson did a six episode arc on The O.C.

13. Just as a reminder, Alabama Worley still has her own show on NBC (Medium). I think, after all the wonderful things she’s done for us (getting naked in Lost Highway, fighting James Gandolfini in True Romance, dumping Nicolas Cage, sweetly romancing Dule Hill in Holes), we owe her a viewing or two.

14. Another reminder: in accordance with the national vote taken this summer, we are all to ignore ER until it finally gets the point and goes away.

15. For pure cheesy terrificness, nothing beats The Shatner, The Spader and Murphy Brown fighting for scenery scraps on Boston Legal. NOTHING!

16. When an actor made famous from a now cancelled TV show decides to star in a new series your allegiance should depend solely on how much you liked their previous show. For example, Bradley Whitford ruled on The West Wing, therefore we should give Studio 60 a fair shot. Or take Scott Wolf, who gave us hours of unintentional comedy as Bailey on Party of Five (and also gave rise to the awesomeness that is the Jennifer Love Hewitt chestal region), and as such, we should do the honorable thing and tune in for his new show The Nine. However, by the end of Ally McBeal’s torturous run Calista Flockhart had become about as appealing as a penis eating banshee, so no, we’re not required to watch her new show Brothers and Sisters. In fact, as retribution for having to endure Vonda Sheppard closing out each episode, we should all avoid Brothers and Sister like a spinach-based plague.

17. Protesting 7th Heaven because its renewal caused the cancellation of Everwood and the further employment of Haylie Duff isn’t just allowed, it’s strongly encouraged.

18. Jamie Pressley has gotten naked in over three movies, did a sweet layout in Playboy, made out on camera with Tiffani Amber-Thiessen in a hot tub, viciously spoofed Kirsten Dunst in Not Another Teen Movie, AND once described Howard Stern’s looks by saying “You got slapped with a yarmulke”. I think it’s high time we reward her for her unending public service and start tuning in to My Name Is Earl (Not to mention she’s actually really funny).

19. J.J. Abrams’ name does not necessarily equal quality. Alias declined RAPIDLY in quality after a promising post-Super Bowl episode. Felicity was on The WB, so nuff said there. And he doesn’t, has not, and will never run Lost. My point here is this: Be very wary of Six Degrees. Just because Campbell Scott and the Swimfan star, it does not mean the show doesn’t royally blow (which it kinda does).

20. Trust the NPH. He won’t let you down. And on that note, the only sitcom truly worth your time is How I Met Your Mother (at least until Scrubs comes back in January). Snap a doo!

My early bet on the three shows that will round on my slate is: The Class, Heroes and Shark.

Bangarang!