The Fall 2012 New TV Series Thread (starts 9/9)

Books, comics, TV, music
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I enjoyed doing this last year, so I’m repeating it: a rundown of this fall’s new network shows and a schedule to match.

Following this post is the full network grid and some random thoughts. Hope people find it useful. :)

(Apologies to the existing thread, but I didn’t want this to get buried in the middle of another thread).

WEEK OF SEP 10-16

Go On (Tue 9/11, NBC, 9PM)
Matthew Perry as a recently widowed radio host who joins an oddball support group. I keep waiting for someone to make a solid comedy for Perry, but I wasn’t blown away by the pilot.

The New Normal (Tue 9/11, NBC, 9:30)
A gay couple hires a single mom to be the surrogate for their baby. Co-created by Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story), NBC’s Modern Family riff has some buzz going.

Guys With Kids (Wed 9/12, NBC, 10PM; normal time slot is 8:30)
Three single dads in their 30s (including Jesse Bradford and Anthony Anderson) try to raise their kids. It’ll eventually move to 8:30 and get paired with Animal Practice. I’m curious, I guess?

Note: NBC is (re)airing pilots of several new shows outside their normal timeslots during the week: on Monday 9/10 at 10PM, The New Normal and Go On; on Wednesday 9/12 at 10PM, Guys With Kids and The New Normal pilot again.

WEEK OF SEP 17-23

The Mob Doctor (Mon 9/17, Fox, 9PM)
A drama about a Chicago surgeon who finds herself compromised by a family debt to the mob. This is Fox’s replacement for House, and sounds unremarkable. Wait, wouldn’t “Unremarkable” be a good name for a CBS procedural?

Revolution (Mon 9/17, NBC, 10PM)
JJ Abrams’ sci-fi drama set fifteen years after a strange event has disabled all the world’s technology. I haven’t liked anything I’ve seen of this yet and sense an Event-sized flop.

WEEK OF SEP 24-30

Partners (Mon 9/24, CBS, 8:30)
A vaguely Will & Grace-ish sounding sitcom about two guy friends, one straight (David Krumholtz), one gay (Michael Urie). CBS’s only new comedy of the season gets sandwiched between HIMYM and Kat Dennings’ breasts.

Ben and Kate (Tue 9/25, Fox, 8:30)
Goofball Ben moves in with his sister, single mom Kate as Fox tries to build out its Tuesday night comedy block.

The Mindy Project (Tue Sep 25, Fox, 9:30)
Mindy Kaling (The Office) created this show about a single OBGYN searching for romance. This gets New Girl’s lead-in slot, creating a Funny Girl Power Hour.

Vegas (Tue 9/25, CBS, 10PM)
It’s 1960s Vegas. Dennis Quaid is a sheriff facing off against gangster Michael Chiklis. Jason O’Mara and Carrie-Anne Moss are also in it. CBS will somehow screw it up.

Animal Practice (Wed 9/26, NBC, 8PM)
A wacky sitcom set in a veterinary hospital. Scrubs with animals? I’m going to need a lot of convincing.

The Neighbors (Wed 9/26, ABC, 10PM; regular time slot 8:30)
A Jersey family moves to a gated community populated by be aliens. It sounds so awful, I’m fascinated to see why ABC felt it was worth putting in the Wednesday lineup.

Last Resort (Thu 9/27, ABC, 8PM)
Andre Braugher commands a Navy submarine whose crew ends up renegades after refusing an order to fire its nuclear missiles. From the network and time slot that brought you Charlie’s Angels a year ago.

Elementary (Thu 9/27, CBS, 10PM)
A CBS procedural set in NYC with Jonny Lee Miller as a modernized Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu as “Dr. Joan Watson”. I assume it’ll succeed as far as the leads can carry it.

Made in Jersey (Fri, Sep 28, CBS, 9PM)
A legal drama about a Jersey lawyer who joins a fancy NYC law firm. It sounds like a USA show, but it’s just CBS looking for something to pair with Blue Bloods. Wait, it’s got Kyle MacLachlin and Stephanie March? What the hell?

666 Park Avenue (Sun 9/30, ABC, 10PM)
Terry O’Quinn and Vanessa Williams are the mysterious owners of an Upper East Side apartment whose residents may have metaphorically made a deal with the devil. And by “metaphorically,” I mean get your coat.

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER

Arrow (Wed 10/10, CW, 8PM)
Not set in the Smallville universe, the CW rolls out its Green Arrow reimagining. I want so bad for this to be awesome, but it seems like a longshot.

Chicago Fire (Wed Oct 10, 10PM, NBC)
A Dick Wolf joint focusing on a Chicago firehouse. ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz.

Nashville (Wed Oct 10, 10PM, ABC)
Connie Britton is an aging country star; Hayden Panetierre is the teen sensation. Drama ensues. Country Strong, The Series? I’d be pretty interested if you told me it was more than a soap and had actual music performances.

Beauty & The Beast (Thu Oct 11, CW, 9PM)
A remake (at least in spirit) of the 1987 show, starring Kristin Kreuk and a Jay Ryan whose “beast”ness is more in his actions than his looks.

Emily Owens, MD (Tue Oct 16, CW, 9PM)
Mamie Gunner – aka Meryl Streep’s daughter – is a recent med school graduate adjusting to life in a big hospital.

Malibu Country (Fri Nov 2, ABC, 8:30)
ABC goes TGIF with this Reba McIntire sitcom where she moves from Nashville to Malibu, with Lily Tomlin as her mom and Sara Rue as a neighbor. It’s being paired with Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing, which I guess cost ABC too much money to outright cancel.

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The Grid:

fall2012d.jpg867×777

Notes:

  • All Times Eastern/Pacific. (I believe Central/Mountain just subtract an hour.)
  • The Cleveland Show returns to Fox on Sun 10/7 at 7:30PM.
  • The DWTS Tuesday results show runs two hours until 10/23, when Happy Endings and Don’t Trust the B* return.
  • New Girl’s season 2 premiere is Tue Sep 25 at 8PM, before moving to its normal 9PM timeslot. Raising Hope returns the following week in its new 8PM slot.
  • The Middle’s Sep 26 premiere is one hour. The Neighbors premieres that night at 10PM, before moving to its normal 8:30 slot a week later.
  • Shark Tank moves to 9PM on Nov 2, when ABC slots Last Man Standing and Malibu Country at 8PM.
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Random thoughts:

I think the two things that jump out at me are (a) how few new shows there are this year, and (b) how uninteresting a lot of them seem. Some are possibly intriguing, like 666 Park Avenue, and I can only assume one or two of the comedies will be decent, but most won’t. It just doesn’t seem like a really exciting crop.

I get a really bad vibe off Revolution. I was a Lost fan and I’m huge on Fringe right now, so that kind of bums me out. But something about the trailers just turns me off, that it’s going to be more in the Terra Nova camp, that it never really knew what it wanted to be and ended up bad at everything.

I didn’t dedicate much space to cable premieres here, but I’m totally psyched for the return of Homeland. I worry that it might lose a little steam in its second season, but am looking forward to seeing where they take the story.

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So you’re saying there is no…electricity?

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I know! It’s… shocking!

/rimshot

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Thanks for setting this up, sluggo. It’s a great resource for lazy guys like me. And I agree with your overall assessment–there’s maybe 3 shows I have lukewarm interest in, and of those three, two will probably wind up being either bombs or early cancelations if history holds true.

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Browsing through this list just confirms why I have essentially forgetten about the existence of network television. Its just blah. Seeing whats shoved out by them compared to the quality of channels like HBO, AMC and FX really is stark.

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The pilots for The Mindy Show and Ben and Kate are streaming/on demand now. Caught both last week and they seem somewhat promising, particularly the latter.

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Er, really? I saw them on the plane back from PAX and I thought Ben and Kate looked pretty stupid.

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The uninteresting thing seems to be the order of the day. Maybe cable is getting all the interesting talent, but almost everything in the lineup seems incredibly lazy and / or safe. Jersey…plus courtroom! Scrubs…with animals! Sherlock…with a woman! Doctor…with the Mob! Procedurals have never felt so…procedural.

The New Normal feels especially egregious. Calling it a “riff” on Modern Family seems overly generous. To be fair though, they did also clone Lucille Bluth.

I want 666 Park Avenue to be good, but I know it won’t be. (Isn’t American Horror Story coming back with a different cast? That’s kind of a new show.) Admittedly, The Last Resort is pretty gonzo crazy, even if it will be terrible.

Also, it may be worth mentioning that Community, while not new, is going to be newly undead, this being the first season without creator Dan Harmon.

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Yeah. . . Community’s back sans half the writing staff and Mentalist may finally be running low on its fun concept, so my TV season is looking pretty much like those two–tentatively–and Doctor Who at the moment.

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Exactly how I feel. All of my show watching comes from channels other than the traditional networks. HBO, AMC, and a few others seem to have filled the serialized drama gap that was left when the regular channels migrated to singing and dancing contests and cheapo sitcoms.

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/slowclap ;-)

I am really not enamoured of any of the new fall stuff. I will give Revolution a look, but as others have said I expect it will be another Terra Nova-style one-and-done. Last Resort seems interesting, but it’s difficult to imagine what the ongoing premise will be. Is it an action show or will it morph into some kind of political thriller or even a soap opera? I really want Go On to be funny and showcase Perry’s talents, but the ads I’ve seen so far are not inspiring confidence. Too many of the new dramas smack of copycat procedurals and medical dramas, and the new comedies are all just more of the same. Even “Arrow” will likely end up feeling the backlash of superhero oversaturation.

As for Cable : I’m enjoying BBCA’s “Copper” and the return of AMC’s “Hell on Wheels”. I also look forward to a new season of “Sons of Anarchy” on FX (seems like forever since the last season) and the start of “Walking Dead” again on AMC. “Doctor Who” is back, and I need say no more on that account.

There is also Syfy’s “Defiance”, the post-apocalyptic TV-show and shooter MMO crossover that probably won’t be ready in time for “fall”, but could debut in early 2013.

Speaking of crossovers, whatever happend to the “Star Wars” live action TV show that was supposedly in the works alongside the excellent Clone Wars animated series?

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Dammit, I didn’t even realize I did that! :)

I agree with you on Last Resort. Granted, I haven’t seen one minute of the actual show, but based on the premise, I’m not sure what the show is week to week. I’m curious to watch the first few episodes and find out.

The reason I used that comparison is that it seems to have this feel-good extended-family vibe that Modern Family introduced. But I think it’ll be pretty tough to replicate.

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Hmm…not sure if you took it the right way…I meant that The New Normal seems to be trying so hard to ape Modern Family that it’s more of a clone than a proper riff of its own. At least it was in the commercials I saw. Something about the lighting and tone, etc.

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Ah, gotcha. I haven’t seen the pilot yet, so it’s hard for me to say much about it. At the least, it doesn’t take the faux-doc approach, right?

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I saw the Revolution pilot on Hulu. No spoilers, however I will say two things. It is uncomfortably like Terra Nova but without dinosaurs…then again Terra Nova itself was mostly devoid of dinosaurs, so it’s even MORE like Terra Nova than it seems. It also has a bit of Jericho sprinkled in there.

There is potential here though. There’s what could be an interesting dynamic between the main characters. I have lots more to say about this show but I’ll wait till the premiere.

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I watched about 10 minutes of it and found a lot of things bothering me, mainly little details. Mainly stuff that looked too good and too new when it should have looked aged and weathered. And people that looked too clean. It may be something that has to grow on you once you get beyond the details they don’t get right.

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Yeah. I watched the whole Revolution pilot and wasn’t fond of the production design. The concept may just be too much to do justice to in a network television budget. A lot of the new shows this year seem to have an off-putting, overly slick look to them. The best way I can describe it is the costumes and sets look like they belong in an E3 booth.

I’m also not a fan of the upfront conspiracy bullshit. I get the feeling we’re going to get a pretty regimented, Lost-style present day + flashback story telling structure. I like the idea, but I’m doubtful they’ll actually do something meaningful with it, and I think making a restoration of electricity a macguffin for the series is a terrible idea.

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The Last Resort pilot is now online at Yahoo TV. Unfortunately it’s in 4:3 for some unknowable reason. Couldn’t hold out for broadcast on a Shawn Ryan joint, though. So far it’s pretty damn good.