The Fall Season
So there are lots of lists out there about the new fall season. (Here’s the schedule — various reviews here among other places) Are there any shows you are excited about? It seems to me that TV after nearly a decade of being ridiculously well done and exciting has lapsed into the doldrums. The only shows I’m actually excited about are old returning ones. (Justified: no premier date, Dexter: Oct 2)
The new shows are ones that sound intriguing like Terra Nova, but which I’m confident will suck. Couldn’t tell you why but they just do. The one I was most intrigued by, J. J. Abram’s Person of Interest, is getting pretty bad reviews. (It’s on some people’s “worst of fall” lists.) We’ll see if his Alcatraz does better. (That one didn’t look intriguing to me at all)
Some people were getting excited by Grimm which was supposed to be Grimm’s fairy tales come to life in a police procedural style. However it sounds like they went heavy for the “lack of continuity” with a focus on the procedural. While some like it I’m hearing bad things.
The ones that do sound at least somewhat intriguing to me are AMC’s Hell on Wheels. A quasi-western set after the Civil War surrounding the building of the transcontinental railway in the more eastern part of the country. This could be good if AMC gives them a half decent budget and doesn’t do what they did with Walking Dead.
The one bright spot on the horizon for me is the return of Fringe on Friday the 23rd. I thought last season was by far its best (with a couple of weak episodes) While I’d be surprise if it lasts much longer I really like the way they’ve taken the show.
Posted on September 13, 2011, in Television. Bookmark the permalink. 56 Comments.
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I was actually going to do a post on this as well, maybe I still will.
I’m still looking forward to Person of Interest though the simple fact that it’s on CBS makes me think it’s going to be more generic than original.
It sounds like AMC is about to come crashing down and I’ve actually read some not so great things about Hell on Wheels.
The show I’m most looking forward to is a mid-season replacement on NBC, Awake. I’m about ready to just give Jason Isaacs an Emmy based on the preview alone.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfCfTahy-dY&w=560&h=345
I should note that Awake is from the same guy that created last season’s Lone Star which, despite the fact nobody watched, received rave reviews.
I’m still waiting for season 2 of Justified to make an appearance on DVD…
Awake looks funky. I’ve never seen a promo for it before.
American Horror Story looks intriguing, if only because of the creepy commercials. I’ll check it out, but if it’s some sort of Dark Shadows-like soap, I’ll give up quickly on it.
I agree with Clark about Fringe – last season was superb, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they resolve the cliffhanger. I’ve been avoiding the tease videos on the ‘net, because I’d rather go into the season not knowing what’s coming up.
Nothing new looks really exciting to me. I’ll give Hell on Wheels a chance.
Looking forward to Always Sunny, a few fall episodes of Archer. CBS’s HIMYM and TBBT are good for a laugh.
I hope Dexter stays good, but every season I feel like the beginning threatens too much tinkering. Deb is constantly moving her boundary between black and white. I’m going to be disappointed if she is on board with Dexter’s M.O. when she does find out.
My wife and I will watch Psych together and look forward to the return of Justified.
I hope the following is in the spirit of this thread and not a thread jack:
Still no discussion of Doctor Who around here. Am I the only Mormon that watches it? Along with Breaking Bad, it’s one of the best shows to have ever been on TV. Have also enjoyed Louie this season. The episodes with the drive to the Poconos and the baby duck were so refreshing, other shows should be embarrassed.
A Google search reveals that BTD Greg likes Doctor Who and that I’ve become somewhat of a broken record in this aspect, so nevermind, and I apologize.
Also, community will be back with The Wire’s Omar as the study group’s biology teacher. That should be fun. What’s with everyone from the wire ending up on NBC shows? Stringer Bell did a stint on The Office, Beadie’s been on there for a while, now Omar to Community.
I have a list of about 12 shows premiering this Fall that I’ll give a shot, but I expect to be disappointed. Castle and Chuck are the 2 returning I’m most looking forward to.
I wonder if I can get a copy of EW’s Fall TV preview still. I miss my subscription.
Anyone seen The New Girl with Zooey Deschanel? The pilot is available on iTunes.
I’m looking forward to Ringer, because I watched all 7 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer this summer and fell in love with Sarah Michelle Gellar. I’m guessing Ringer will be pretty crappy, because it’s apparent no one can make a good tv show except a handful of people.
Looking forward to Community coming back.
And all my reality shows. Been enjoying Dance Moms (the insanity!) and the hoarding shows this summer (the grotesque insanity!). Also American Chopper has been interesting.
Thats funny Susan I started watching Dance Moms last weekend. The insanity of everybody (except those poor kids) is very entertaining.
We watched the pilot for The New Girl and I thought it was very funny. It’s definitely on my list of shows to watch so far.
We usually wait three or four weeks to see how things go so we don’t get attached to something that is going to get canceled before the season is over.
I think Zooey is awesome, but I don’t know about the rest of the show. It will be interesting to see if it gets an audience.
I thought last seasons’ Dexter was one of its best, despite a somewhat weak start. Normally Dexter’s endings are it’s weakest but last week wasn’t. So I’m really looking forward to it.
My problem with American Horror Story is that I think it could make a fantastic limited run series the way the BBC does. I can’t see how the concept will work with at 22 episode run on mainstream American network TV.
I wanted to like Chuck but somehow I had 20 episodes on my DVR unwatched until in a fit of passion I just deleted them all. I was pretty disappointed with the ones I did watch. The charming quality that made the first two seasons fun had slowly been seeping out until I just didn’t care anymore.
A fit of passion, haha.
The girls on Dance Moms are so sweet and nice, and their moms are insane.
Don’t think any new shows have caught my attention. One preview of Person of Interest looked good until I saw J. J.’s name attached. After the entire fiasco of LOST, I’ll watch his movies, but I’m going to wait on any series. I don’t have to have all the answers, but I’m not for plots to just randomly appear and/or disappear from the story.
Additionally, our satellite contract is up at the end of the month, I think we’re going to just cancel and go with over the air + Netflix + internet and see how it goes. Anyone else do that and happy with it?
I have no cable. I have a TiVo and Netflix streaming and used to rent shows on iTunes. I’m a bit upset that they or rid of the rental option. Makes my appletv a bit less useful.
I should add that we watch Colbert on laptops and the only thing I want to watch and can’t is Game of Thrones. Though I could BT it if I really wanted to.
We got rid of cable in July after battling with them over rate increases and lousy service. We do broadcast (which we rarely watch) plus netflix and hulu. Hulu is what we generally watch.
The nice thing about Hulu plus and Netflix is streaming stuff through Xbox 360 onto the bigscreen TV. That is truly awesome.
The only thing I miss about cable is live sports.
Broadcast isn’t bad if you can TiVo it, but TiVo has new pricing plans that suck. They’re selling the devices for less and the plans for more.
I was pleasantly surprised with “Wilfred” from F/X…thought it was a good mixture of dark comedy
I mostly like Wilfred too, although sometimes I thought it went too far.
I love wilfred. Self sabotage personified (dogified?!) is so hilarious. I may never be able to look at Ed Helms the same way again, though.
This looked good. Full pilot. Probably a bit too racy for me to watch regularly, plus no Showtime at my house.
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/first-look-watch-the-complete-pilot-for-showtimes-homeland
I notice Dish Network is now streaming all their shows for the week. If you have a channel subscribed (Starz, HBO, etc) then all of those are available. Then the last 5 episodes of most of the other network shows ala Hulu are available too. Now that Netflix is losing a lot of their shows you might want to check this out.
This season doesn’t look particularly exciting for new shows, especially for those who don’t care for most comedies. I have a feeling I’ll be relying on old favorites.
Falling Skies was a pretty good summer series–character-based action/sci-fi. Decent critic reviews, although the masses didn’t care for it (probably because they were looking for more action than it offered).
Ringer looks interesting. The first episode is available (through Hulu). A crazy and quite unbelievable premise, but it’s the best pilot I’ve seen this season and it looks like it could be an interesting series.
I know it will probably be terrible, but I’ll probably DVR Terra Nova just to see dinosaurs in prime time.
I’m glad that they are starting Parks and Rec in the fall this year.
I watched The New Girl last night and thought it was somewhere between”meh” and “okay,” though it showed some potential. At least so-so sitcoms have learned not to use laugh tracks and three cameras.
Darn I wanted to see that. Forgot about it.
Ringer is just OK so far. Very predictable. My husband’s favorite moment was when she picked up the saw, but I thought the whole hiding-a-dead-body-for-days thing was rather gross and disturbing.
The biggest problem with The New Girl is that the characters (aside from Deschanel’s adorable dork–typecasting?) are more like the types of people you meet in beer commercials than in actual life. Maybe the writers will be able to stretch these characters into something more interesting in time.
So I still watch CSI, I’m not really sure what to think about Ted Danson cast as the new boss. I was caught off guard since I hadn’t paid any attention to Fishburn leaving or someone else being brought in.
I thought last night’s CSI was entertaining, even though I am not Ted Danson’s biggest fan. I’ll watch for a few more episodes and see if it holds up.
I enjoyed the pilot for Person of Interest.
Me too. Thought it was quite interesting. Question is always being able to maintain the initial interest while not letting it get stale.
I forgot about Person of Interest last night. I’d heard a few not so good things but still was going to tape it. Fringe came on tonight but I’ve not watched it yet.
Anyone watch Prime Suspect? My favorite new show of the season so far. Maria Bello is awesome and it’s really cool to see Aidan Quinn again too. Very cool show.
Prime Suspect and Person of Interest both have pilots available on or through (free) Hulu. I’m more intrigued by Person of Interest, but I’ll probably watch both for at least a couple more episodes.
Prime Suspect was blah. I’m sick of the tough-cop-barely-keeping-it-together-in-the-face-of-adversity-from-within-and-without theme…
A lot of people have noted that it’s kind of dated. What worked when Helen Mirrin did it years ago doesn’t quite fit the world and concern of today.
I just can’t imagine Maria Bello pulling off a role created for Helen Mirren.
Prime Suspect was not blah. I’ve seen a lot of cop shows. I used to watch Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue almost religiously. I was also a big fan of the Hellen Mirren show. Still, I think this is a bit different. So far, I like it, maybe just because of the acting, especially Bello and Quinn, but I find the characters believable.
I caught the last half hour of Person of Interest when it was re-run last night. I’m a little confused about what/who the main character is supposed to be, but I really like that actor. I had to look up where I knew him from–Passion of the Christ!
He also starred in “Frequency.”
If you were worried about the Lost mythology in Person of Interest: don’t be. They pretty much tell you how the predictor works by the end of the episode. I doubt we’ll get more info on “the Machine”, but probably a bit more of the character back stories. I was sure it would have quite the “Human Target” vibe, and it does, but it’s different enough. (I do miss Jackie Earl Hailey, though.)
Unforgettable is a fine procedural – not quite as entertaining as the Mentalist. We’ll give it a couple more episodes before we decide.
The surprising comedy that we’ve picked up is Free Agents with Hank Azaria and Kathryn Hahn. They are extremely fun to watch and it has great writing, too. (We’ll have to give the British version a try, when that becomes available.)
Up All Night had some funny moments, but I think it may hit too close to home to really enjoy.
One tiny little Doctor Who parody and the whole pop-culture space-time continuum collapses in on itself.
Excellent.
The latest episode of Free Agents also has a Dr. Who reference. Here’s another reason why those preseason “worst shows” lists are stupid: Free Agents is good.
Anyone bother watching the dinosaurs on Monday night? I forgot.
Community also had a Dr Who reference. And a Downton Abbey reference. And I forget what else, but it was funny.
That’s what Greg was talking about in #46.
Not sure how much it’s been mentioned here, but Downton Abbey is a really great show. A friend managed to get me the first couple of episodes of season 2, which are airing in England right now (and will come here in January), and it’s just as good as the first season. Picks up right where it left off.
Terra Nova: great concept, looks great, but the dialogue needs some serious work. Sci-fi fans might still enjoy it.
Watched the first episode of Homeland–looks pretty good. First episode of it is free at the Showtimes website (along with the first episode of the new season of Dexter); both free episodes are edited to PG-13.
House was great this week. I’ve really been liking Fringe too.
I sae the first House and liked it but really? He’s in prison now?
After watching a few episodes now, i just want to repeat that Prime Suspect is really good. Really, really good. If you’re not watching it you’re missing out.
I just finished the fourth season of BREAKING BAD. It’s easily the best show on television. Rather than watch any more episodes of any other show TV fans should just get caught up with BREAKING BAD.
I heard Walking Dead was pretty lame – more of the same. Interesting when dealing with the zombies. Implausible actions by the characters along with soap opera quality drama. I gave up on it after the season finale.
House has been really good, as I said. I’ve not seen Dexter yet. People who hated last season say they love this season. Personally I loved last season and thought the previous two seasons had gone down hill somewhat.
American Horror- Seen the first two episodes now… That’s just not right