Greetings, tube addicts. Welcome to the first installment of the The Bad and Ugly Fall TV Preview. The Olympics have passed, setting a few “records” along the way, and now the DNC is going to swallow us whole with constant news TV coverage, but sooner or later, television is going to make its dramatic return.
After the writers’ strike basically killed off television half-way through last season, we’re looking forward to the re-emergence of excellence from America’s most-viewed artform. Will it live up to the hype?
Let’s check out what NBC has in store for us…
If you are into Heroes, than boy, this is going to be the fall for you. NBC is throwing whatever might they can behind the third season of the superhero franchise this September, starting on Monday the 22nd, NBC becomes Heroes-ville.
Just in case you missed the second season (or our near-constant griping about it), you’ll be bale to catch up with a clip show covering the story so far, from the origins of the main characters, or what we know of those origins, through “Save The Cheerleader, Save The World” and onward through the second-season virus plot, though much of that story was DOA. This clip retrospective will take up an hour on the 22nd, probably in the 8PM time slot before the 9PM two-hour season premiere that will include the first and second episodes (the first episode was shown at this years SDCC and is spoiled throughout the net, including the B&U’s spoilerish images).
Right on the heels of Heroes, debuting Monday September 29th, the new Christian Slater series, My Own Worst Enemy - which you probably saw endlessly plugged during the Olympics for some stupid reason. Just seems like if you have millions of people glued to your channel for exclusive sporting coverage, someone should have thought about maybe teasing a better show…
…oh wait. NBC doesn’t have a better premiere to tout.
So, let’s look at My Own Worst Enemy, officially described thusly:
Henry Spivey (Christian Slater, “Bobby”) is a middle-class efficiency expert living a humdrum life in the suburbs with a wife, two kids, a dog, and a minivan. Edward Albright is an operative who speaks 13 languages, runs a four-minute mile, and is trained to kill with his teeth. Henry and Edward are polar opposites who share only one thing in common — the same body. When the carefully constructed wall between them breaks down, Henry and Edward are thrust into unfamiliar territory where each man is dangerously out of his element. “My Own Worst Enemy” explores the duality of a man who is literally pitted against himself. And it raises the question: who can you trust when you can’t trust yourself? The series is produced by Universal Media Studios. Jason Smilovic (“Kidnapped”) is the executive producer; David Semel (director of the “American Dreams,” “Heroes” and “Life” pilots) is the director and executive producer.
It’s easy to see why the NBC suits are going to plop this broadcast version of United States Of Tara after Heroes: it’s sure to be action packed and dark with spatters of stuttering Christian Slater thrown in for good measure (take all his scenes from Interview With A Vampire and put them on loop – lots of stuttering). This pilot has a lot going for it: a “name” actor, beating Showtime’s multiple-personality show to the air, and – as already mentioned – ulta-Olympic plugging.
The bad and ugly of My Own Worst Enemy? First: the NBC 10PM time slot is cursed. Basically, it’s near impossible to beat CBS’ CSI: Miami, and many NBC shows have tried. The only show that even got close to unpacking and settling in was Journeyman, but it soon joined the corpses of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and The Black Donnellys.
Beating My Own Worst Enemy to premiere is the new Knight Rider with Val Kilmer as the voice of KITT. The Knight Rider movie obviously did well enough in stopping the bleeding around writers’ strike time, but it was crappy, and we give the American public about three weeks before it remembers how hungry it was for something – anything! – to watch during that dry spell. We say Knight Rider isn’t going to last, but NBC is going to roll it out Wednesdays at 8 starting on the 24th of September. And, just in case you have plans for Wednesdays, Knight Rider will get an prime-time encore block Saturdays at 9PM. Can you smell the desperation?
Other new shows you saw promo’d but really didn’t care about: America’s Toughest Jobs, the new reality competition series from the dudes who brought you The Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers. If you’re into this sort of thing, check it out when it premieres on September 12th at 8PM and let us know if we’re missing something. All we know is that, watching the commercials on NBC, we’d hear a contestant say: “This isn’t a game show!” and we’d reply, “Yes, actually that’s exactly what it is: a game show for suicidal, stupid people.”
Good news is that we won’t have to put up with America’s Toughest Job on Fridays at 8 for too long, as October will see the reality show pushed to 9PM for Crusoe, a “makeover” of the classic Daniel Dafoe novel. The only thing that raises eyebrows about Crusoe is that it includes flashbacks to Robinson Crusoe’s life before he was shipwrecked, which could be really awesome like Lost or really crappy like…uh…most flashback shows that aren’t Lost.
Last new show of the season: Kath & Kim with Selma Blair and Molly Shannon, two actresses we had forgotten about and thought might have been dead (we joke because we love). NBC saw they could pillage international programming when they adapted The Office, so now their going to adapt Kath & Kim from the Australian series of the same name. Someone in the NBC marketing department realized this and therefore, they’ve been toting this blatant lack-of-ideas in the promos, paraphrased: “We stole from another country once and did okay, so why not tune in to see if we can do it again?” Somewhat sadly, we do want to tune in. We’ll be watching in October when Kath & Kim leads into The Office.
The Office is back, Thursdays at 9PM, occasionally with extended episodes, no doubt. If you like The Office, there isn’t going to be much we can preview for you. BJ Novak has signed on to be in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, but he says we’ll know what happens to now-arrested Ryan in the first episode of the season (we’re guessing white-collar jail), and Toby is going to return? Not to mention the Dwight/Angela/Andy thing. Yeah, we’ll be watching this even if Jack Bauer is somehow moved to Thursdays in January.
30 Rock, probably at the peak of its television life, isn’t getting the treatment The Office is, even though NBC’s Ben Silverman thinks it is one of the best shows on television. Rather than booting up in September or October, 30 Rock’s timeslot (Thursdays at 9:30PM) will be given over to some Saturday Night Live election specials, since the Democratic Primary somehow convinced the real 30-Rockers that they were still on the cutting edge of political comedy. Maybe these specials will surprise us, but mostly we’re in for 30 Rock’s premiere on October 30th.
Unless you want to hear more about the final season of ER (Thursdays at 10, providing a dark closer to 2-hours of comedy), the continuing Law & Order: SVU (the best Law & Order on Tuesdays at 10PM), or Biggest Loser: Families (or just Biggest Loser Families for 2-hours on Tuesdays), that about wraps up NBC’s Fall TV preview.
You can read official statements about the new series’ HERE.
Happy watching!
Still to come: ABC, CBS, FOX and the soap-opera-loving CW.
