Monday, September 05, 2005

That's Fall, Folks!

I wanted to write this entry a thousand lifetimes ago, back before we lost the 24th largest city in the United States. But I procrastinated, and now I'm writing it and my heart is only half way in it. But, hey, if the rest of the television world can simply ignore there's a problem, I can too. I mean, we must remain entertained, no? Of course we must. We've got priorities in the good ol' U S of A, ya know. (Yes. This post may have some bitterness to it.)

So. The new Fall TV Season is fast approaching us (in fact, Fox jumped the gun and started airing Prison Break last Monday). And that means lots of new series, along with new episodes of returning favorites. (Finally! New episodes of Nanny 911! God Bless America!!) I'm going to give you my thoughts on some of these shows based solely on the promos I've seen for them.

First, the returning shows I'll be watching. Let's see...there's The Bimpsons, of course. And Lost. And then there's the fact that on Thursdays the networks have decided to be a pain in the ASS.
ASS. Alias, Smallville, and Survivor will all be on at the same time.
Alias and Smallville are both entering their 5th seasons. I didn't watch either season completely last year - Smallville started off interesting, then decided to become Charmed, and Alias ...I don't know. It's just hard to care anymore. They screwed up the show during season 3, and started season 4 way too late. I watched the finale of Alias, though, and I'm semi-intrigued in watching the new one. And Smallville sounds like it MIGHT be back on track this year. Which isn't saying much, it's never been an extremely well-written show, but they're bringing on Brainiac! Yay! Although it's Spike who's going to be playing him. Um!
And then there's Survivor. The show I really SHOULDN'T watch, but last season got us hooked at some point - about halfway - and this year's location involves Mayans. So...I don't know. Thursdays might be a tough call this year.

As for new shows - there's a new comedy on CBS entitled, How I Met Your Mother. It has Doogie Howser in it, along with Willow. Neither of those are reason enough for me to want to watch it. The promo, though, has Doogie Howser say, "This is totally going in my blog!" which cracked Steph and I up.

CBS is also premiering a new show entitled Ghost Whisperer. Yeah. It looks as lame as it sounds. Based on the promo, Jennifer Love Hewitt sees dead people. And she ...um...helps them talk to their families or something? It's like Touched by a Party of Five Angels.

What else is on CBS this year? Close to Home which appears to be Law & Order: Domestic Violence Cases. Also, Criminal Minds, which is CSI but with Mandy Patinkin.

The 1st three networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) also each decided that they needed an alien invasion series. (!!?? My conspiracy theory sense is tingling) The one on CBS is called Threshold. I don't know how I feel about seeing that. It looks like it might be good, but it (along with a bunch of other shows coming out this season) also looks like it's very ...serialized. And that if you miss an episode or two, you'll be lost. (You know, like Lost.)

NBC doesn't have much to offer. The alien invasion series it has is entitled Surface, and like Steph said, it might not even necessarily be aliens in it. Just some weird water-based new species. But even so, they've been promoting the hell out of it, and it's having a backlash effect on me.

The peacock network also has My Name is Earl which looks really stupid.

Um. If there's anything else NBC is running, I haven't seen the promos for it. I guess we don't watch NBC much.

Oh! Wait! NBC also has Three Wishes with Amy Grant. It looks horrific. But I just gotta know - how many potential hosts did they have to go through to find someone with a name that correlates to wishes?
NBC also has some crap looking drama called Inconceivable. (I do not think that words what you think it means.) It's pretty much ER, but set in a fertility clinic. [rolleyes]

AND! One more NBC show - called E-ring. It's about the Pentagon, but I'm not interested since it'll undoubtably being portraying them as good guys.

It's funny how many NBC shows I've attempted to block out of my mind...

Moving on to ABC, and their alien show...

It's called Invasion and looks the most promising of the 3 programs with the alien motif. Although I haven't seen a promo for it since Katrina, so I don't know if it'll air. Invasion, you see, starts off with a hurricane hitting a small town.
I'm actually amazed that ABC has had the sense of mind to stop promoting it during the coverage of Katrina.

Also on ABC is Commander in Chief which has Geena Davis as the first female president of the US. And Donald Sutherland as one of the many men who oppose her.
Yawn.
But! The promo has the single funniest thing ever said EVER. Donald Sutherland says, "You want to be President so you have the power to control the universe."
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!!

Hee. "Control the universe"

Then, of course, there's the shows that the WB is premiering. Just Legal and Supernatural being the biggies, but neither looks "must see-able", ya know?
And Fox, as already mentioned, has Prison Break, but I watched the first half hour of the first episode and wasn't overly drawn in, so all in all, I think we'll be watching a lot less television this season. Yay! Besides, why bother watching the actual shows when the promos are so much more entertaining?

3 comments:

Amy said...

I don't plan on watching any of those shows. Except, maybe Invasion had good print ads? I haven't seen any ads on television, which isn't surprising.

I did, however, see a commercial for My Name Is Earl *at the movie theater* today, to which I can only shake my head and sadly say, "Why Jason Lee why."

I hadn't heard about the Amy Grant thing, but it sounds hilarious. And I'm sure the name connection will be exploited to the fullest by tv-magazine articles. First up: Grant's Wishes.

Amanda said...

I am so completely hooked on Prison Break. I'm giving up Las Vegas for it, though who in the world knows why I was watching Las Vegas. I think I'm choosing Survivor over Alias, and I gave up on Smallville a couple seasons ago, I think when it was up against Angel. I'm very distraught over Wednesdays, though. How am I supposed to choose between Lost and Veronica Mars?!?

Networks should be consulting me on scheduling. This is very inconvenient.

Simon said...

You have a conspiracy theory sense? That rocks!

*nearly typed as "conspiracy sense theory" due to tiredness*