Fall Schedule 2011
Posted: May 19th, 2011, 4:17 am
http://www.tvguide.com/special/fall-pre ... edule.aspx
Now that the four major networks have released their preliminary fall schedules, it's time to begin our pre-game analyses of which shows will dominate, which will merely stack up and which are doomed to an early exit.
Like last fall, I will be breaking them down one night at a time. For me, "prime time" lasts from 7pm-10pm, so if it's different in your time zone, please adjust accordingly.
I don't know what the best place to check out how a returning show's ratings are compared to past seasons. Perhaps someone (Boosh?) could enlighten me, as I am going to be doing this with no information in that regard.
MONDAY
Monday is easily one of the toughest nights to pick something to watch, depending on what you're into. ABC will take up the first two hours of their prime-time monday schedule with the 13th season of Dancing With the Stars which, if the last two seasons are any indication, is still one of the most-watched programs on TV. I applaud NBC for having the balls to send up The Sing-Off to compete with it. I watched both of the two seasons of this a capella singing competition, and it's really awesome. I just don't think it will hold a candle to DWTS, in the long run. But the season for The Sing-Off is considerably shorter than that of DWTS, so the likelihood that it'll get cancelled mid-season are next to nil. Both shows are two hours long.
FOX is debuting a new show, Terra Nova, which, based on what I've seen so far, looks intriguing. In the year 2149, Earth is dying, and the last-ditch effort to save humanity involves sending a human colony back in time, to an era long before humans fucked the Earth up... 85 million years, to be exact. Why exactly this era was chosen, I don't know... because dinos are cool, I guess. (Let's hope mankind evolves in the 20 million years before the big asteroid arrives that wipes out the dinos and starts the Ice Age. But I digress.) The show stars Jason O'Mara (star of the dead-before-its-time cop show Life On Mars), Stephen Lang (the evil warmonger from Avatar) and a host of other actors that I've never heard of. The preview makes it look like Lost meets Jurassic Park, which is more than reason enough for me to give it a try. Terra Nova will be the lead-in to the eighth - and likely final - season of House, which, it was just announced, will have to proceed without Lisa Edelstein. House is still a great show, but if it's time has come, so be it.
CBS's first two hours are a quartet of sitcoms: How I Met Your Mother will return at 7:00, while Ashton Kutcher and Two and a Half Men will lead off the 8:00 hour, followed by the surprise hit Mike and Molly at 8:30. At 7:30 is a new comedy called Two Broke Girls, starring Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs as Max and Caroline, "two girls who form an unlikely bond over having no money and no shame". This comes from veteran TV director James Burrows and exec prodcuer Michael Patrick King, creator of Sex and the City.
I'm not a fan of sitcoms, and Two Broke Girls could indeed thrive between two wily veterans. I'm not impressed with the pairing of the two main characters - one born filthy rich but now dirt poor and one street-smart, a theme that seems very cliched - but with a huge changing of the guard at Two and a Half Men, CBS may be in for a rough season. There's an awful lot of competition on this night.
The 9:00 hour is fairly evenly matched. I remember pegging CBS's Hawaii Five-O as being one of the first new dramas to get the ax, and boy, was I wrong. I tried getting into myself and couldn't, but I'm apparently in the minority. If it can avoid a sophomore slump, it could win its time slot. Going against it is ABC's Castle, which is entering its fourth season. Another show I never got into, but Nathan Fillion has apparently made it work. NBC counters with a new drama, The Playboy Club, which IMDb curiously has listed as a TV movie. Huh. Anyway, I've watched the preview of the show on NBC.com, and I still am unable to discern an actual plot. It takes place at the famous Playboy Club of Chicago in the early 1960's, and it stars Eddie Cibrian (Third Watch, CSI: Miami) as Nick Dalton, some kind of high society muckety-muck in the lead role. It also stars Amber Heard (Drive Angry), David Krumholtz (Numb3rs), Naturi Naughton (Notorious, Fame) and Wes Ramsey (also CSI: Miami). This show is tough to gauge at this early stage, but until I get some kind of sense about what the show is really about beyond its time period and setting, I'm going to peg it as an early flop. Nostalgia is not enough to make a hit.
Up next: Tuesday.
Now that the four major networks have released their preliminary fall schedules, it's time to begin our pre-game analyses of which shows will dominate, which will merely stack up and which are doomed to an early exit.
Like last fall, I will be breaking them down one night at a time. For me, "prime time" lasts from 7pm-10pm, so if it's different in your time zone, please adjust accordingly.
I don't know what the best place to check out how a returning show's ratings are compared to past seasons. Perhaps someone (Boosh?) could enlighten me, as I am going to be doing this with no information in that regard.
MONDAY
Monday is easily one of the toughest nights to pick something to watch, depending on what you're into. ABC will take up the first two hours of their prime-time monday schedule with the 13th season of Dancing With the Stars which, if the last two seasons are any indication, is still one of the most-watched programs on TV. I applaud NBC for having the balls to send up The Sing-Off to compete with it. I watched both of the two seasons of this a capella singing competition, and it's really awesome. I just don't think it will hold a candle to DWTS, in the long run. But the season for The Sing-Off is considerably shorter than that of DWTS, so the likelihood that it'll get cancelled mid-season are next to nil. Both shows are two hours long.
FOX is debuting a new show, Terra Nova, which, based on what I've seen so far, looks intriguing. In the year 2149, Earth is dying, and the last-ditch effort to save humanity involves sending a human colony back in time, to an era long before humans fucked the Earth up... 85 million years, to be exact. Why exactly this era was chosen, I don't know... because dinos are cool, I guess. (Let's hope mankind evolves in the 20 million years before the big asteroid arrives that wipes out the dinos and starts the Ice Age. But I digress.) The show stars Jason O'Mara (star of the dead-before-its-time cop show Life On Mars), Stephen Lang (the evil warmonger from Avatar) and a host of other actors that I've never heard of. The preview makes it look like Lost meets Jurassic Park, which is more than reason enough for me to give it a try. Terra Nova will be the lead-in to the eighth - and likely final - season of House, which, it was just announced, will have to proceed without Lisa Edelstein. House is still a great show, but if it's time has come, so be it.
CBS's first two hours are a quartet of sitcoms: How I Met Your Mother will return at 7:00, while Ashton Kutcher and Two and a Half Men will lead off the 8:00 hour, followed by the surprise hit Mike and Molly at 8:30. At 7:30 is a new comedy called Two Broke Girls, starring Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs as Max and Caroline, "two girls who form an unlikely bond over having no money and no shame". This comes from veteran TV director James Burrows and exec prodcuer Michael Patrick King, creator of Sex and the City.
I'm not a fan of sitcoms, and Two Broke Girls could indeed thrive between two wily veterans. I'm not impressed with the pairing of the two main characters - one born filthy rich but now dirt poor and one street-smart, a theme that seems very cliched - but with a huge changing of the guard at Two and a Half Men, CBS may be in for a rough season. There's an awful lot of competition on this night.
The 9:00 hour is fairly evenly matched. I remember pegging CBS's Hawaii Five-O as being one of the first new dramas to get the ax, and boy, was I wrong. I tried getting into myself and couldn't, but I'm apparently in the minority. If it can avoid a sophomore slump, it could win its time slot. Going against it is ABC's Castle, which is entering its fourth season. Another show I never got into, but Nathan Fillion has apparently made it work. NBC counters with a new drama, The Playboy Club, which IMDb curiously has listed as a TV movie. Huh. Anyway, I've watched the preview of the show on NBC.com, and I still am unable to discern an actual plot. It takes place at the famous Playboy Club of Chicago in the early 1960's, and it stars Eddie Cibrian (Third Watch, CSI: Miami) as Nick Dalton, some kind of high society muckety-muck in the lead role. It also stars Amber Heard (Drive Angry), David Krumholtz (Numb3rs), Naturi Naughton (Notorious, Fame) and Wes Ramsey (also CSI: Miami). This show is tough to gauge at this early stage, but until I get some kind of sense about what the show is really about beyond its time period and setting, I'm going to peg it as an early flop. Nostalgia is not enough to make a hit.
Up next: Tuesday.