[Its that time again! The leaves are failing to change color and the sweaters are staying firmly packed away because its still 90 degrees because I live in Texas now, but I have it on good authority that it is fall. That means Jim and I will be talking some fall TV turkey this week. Here's part one.]From: Jesse
To: Jim
Subject: Once again foretelling the death of prime time television
Jim, I came home from a hard day at the engineering mines last Thursday,
settled into my plaster-cast ass groove on my sofa, and powered up the
television to find that I had to watch either The Office or CSI. When
your television watching options become limited because you're already
recording two shows at once, it can mean only one thing: the fall TV
season is back in session.
When we had our
fall TV roundup talk last year,
the dominant theme was the effect of the Great Writers Strike of
Aught-Eight. Remember that? Remember when writers thought they mattered
enough that they could go on strike?
Adorable. Anyway, I think we can
sum up the importance of writers to the modern network TV landscape
with four words: "The Jay Leno Show."
The fact that NBC felt comfortable abandoning fully one-third of
prime airtime in favor of Jay Leno's Hour of Fail, or whatever he's calling it, is the most glaring example of the decline of scripted
shows, but its certainly not the only one. Fox has moved summer hit "So
You Think You Can Dance" to its fall schedule to eat up three hours of
airtime. ABC has expanded "Dancing With The Stars" to three hours a
week. The CW is apparently just airing reruns of 90s staples "Melrose Place" and
"90210" on Tuesdays (I assume that's what the existence of those two
shows mean on the schedule, what else could it be?) The network with
the most (air-quotes) original (/air-quotes) programming is CBS, and that includes "CSI", "CSI:
Miami", "CSI: New York", "NCIS", and "NCIS: Los Angeles". That's not
even like a hilarious joke I'm making. Those are all actual programs.
What does it all mean, Jim? It means this: there is one show that
is new this fall that I'm watching (two if you count "Mad Men" which is
in its third season but I'm just picking up now). I'm watching
"Community", starring The Soup's Joel McHale and the reanimated corpse
of Chevy Chase.
Jim, make me feel better about all this. Say that this is just a
lull in the creative cycle caused by the strike, or solar flares, or
the distractingly chaste sexuality of the Jonas Brothers. Because it
kind of feels like the beginning of the end.
---
From: Jim
To: Jesse
Subject: Take a deep breath
What do you mine for at the engineering mines? Engineering? Engineers? Engines? FIRE ENGINES? Tell me it's fire engines.
I
don't think you have anything to worry about. We're witnessing an
experiment by the networks, and that experiment is failing. Leno is
tanking in the ratings, as is the fall version of So You Think You Can
Dance. And even if the networks decide to devote hours of their primetime
Fall programming to reality crap and the zombie corpse of Jay Leno,
there is always cable.
You've got South Park coming back in a week or so,
FX seems to be always running a show that, while it might not
groundbreaking TV (see: The Shield), is actually good television (see:
Sons of Anarchy). AMC has stepped up to be a player in original
programming with Mad Men and Breaking Bad (which I still need to
watch). HBO and Showtime, well, we've got Curb Your Enthusiasm and
Dexter this fall -- no complaints there.
Oh, and shame on you for not trying to make an NCIS: LA LL Cool J acronym joke of some kind. Shame, shame, shame.
I'd like to start by talking about what new shows I'm picking up this season. And I'm going to start with motherfucking Glee.
You've already chastised me in private for watching
Glee. "Oh, you like midget serial killers? Because that's what Ryan
Murphy did on Nip/Tuck." Well, I do like midgets -- especially when
they're standing next to smart cars, because that makes them clever.
And I do like serial killers, as we'll discuss when we get to Dexter...
sadly, Glee has had neither.
That doesn't stop it from being an amazingly
awesome show. I had mentioned to you that this was on a short leash. I
really enjoyed the first few episodes, but the third episode left me
cold. It just seems to be going in a lot of different directions, with
the Judge Reinhold-esque actor who plays the Glee club teacher
concentrating on creating an all-male a cappella group (naturally, the
Acafellas), and the Reese Witherspoon/Jennifer Love Hewitt-esque female
singing student splintering off on her own to try and find a Patton
Oswalt-esque (crossed with a midget, but not midget enough to qualify
as a midget per the previous paragraph) choreographer. The episode was,
in a word, a mess.
Thankfully, the show bounced back. A week after
Kanye made headlines for being crazy, Glee stormed onto the scene with
its Single Ladies episode. I don't know what the episode was actually
named, but GOD DAMN was it good. You had the gay Glee joining the
football team to try and make his father proud of him, and the
quarterback-Glee singer convincing the whole football team to take
dance lessons because that's what Walter Payton did for the '86 Bears,
which turned into the inspiration for the Super Bowl Shuffle. Oh, and
Jane Lynch and a very gay Stephen Tobolowsky plotting evilly against
the Glee Club.
Awesome.
Next
up on the new shows, one which we're both tuning into, but which I may
soon be tuning out -- Community. The Joel McHale/Chevy Chase vehicle
just isn't doing it for me after two episodes. Aside from one brilliant
shout-out to The Breakfast Club, the pilot was flat for me. The
follow-up episode didn't do much to improve my opinion of the show. A
few laughs, but overall a weak premise, I'd be surprised if this thing
has the legs to be a success.
The Vampire Diaries. Ok, laugh. Yup, you're
laughing. Elisa really liked the premiere, but told me I'd probably
hate it. I gave it an hour of my life, and that's all it's getting.
It's kind of this awful combination of Buffy, Angel, and True Blood,
crossed with Saved by the Bell. If that sounds awesome, then you may be
deranged. One and done.
Rounding out the new programming is HBO's Bored to
Death, starring Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), Sam Malone (Ted
Danson), and the guy from the Hangover who says 'reh-TARD' (Zack
Galafanakas). I really enjoyed the premiere, although Schwartzman
doesn't seem too far removed from his Rushmore character (not that this
is a bad thing), kind of unaware of reality and simply making things up
as he goes along. He's an incompetent version of Magnum,
PI, but with the Internet. His girlfriend leaves him at the beginning
of the show, and, having read too many Dashel Hammet novels, he puts an
ad up on craigslist billing himself as an unlicensed private
investigator. Hilarity ensues.
So, any new pickles on your plate, college boy?
