Fall TV: Mondays
I am a TV addict. I especially enjoy watching the pilot episodes of new shows to try to dissect what they were trying to accomplish and whether the show was really the best the networks received from the studios. So, I decided this year I would do something different: judge the new fall schedules based on trailers alone and tell you what I’ll be watching. There are a ton of new (Lucifer, for example) and returning shows (2 Broke Girls, for example) being held for mid-season that are also worth keeping an eye on, but for now, these are the shows the networks are most optimistic about.
Mondays used to have some cache with CBS comedies like How I Met Your Mother and competition shows like The Voice, but both genres have faltered and their replacements, procedural dramas, are underperforming. So what do the networks have for us?
8pm hour
NBC and ABC are sticking with their reality shows, The Voice and Dancing with the Stars. Yawn.
Fox is sticking with Gotham. That show has been mostly a disappointment, and not just because it has insisted on giving us knowing winks at future villains and not letting this prequel tell its own story. It’ll stay on my DVR for now, but it’s a tenuous hold.
The CW is trying new musical dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. It looks like what would happen to one of the Glee kids if they didn’t get their happy endings in that show’s finale. It’s not pretty, it’s not funny, and I expect an epic fail.
That leaves CBS, which is doing another head-fake this year by starting The Big Bang Theory here to lead into the new comedy Life in Pieces. TBBT remains a favorite of mine, but Life in Pieces is another entry in the “unfunny, light family dramedy” genre that brought us such gems as The Michael J. Fox show. But those are just the appetizers until NFL Thursday ends and those two shows move to Thursdays. After that, Supergirl leads off the night. A light, funny, entertaining kind of superheroine, Supergirl has some potential, even with the romcom elements, as it compares well to another hero, The Flash, over on The CW.
The 9pm hour
NBC and ABC continue their reality shows from the 8pm hour. The CW retains Jane the Virgin and CBS retains Scorpion; of the two, Scorpion did best and probably has a better chance of holding on given how CBS is trying to steer The Big Bang Theory’s audience toward the nerds-beating-terrorists show.
The only new show in the hour is Minority Report, Fox’s attempt to revive the decent sci-fi movie as a police procedural (by fast-forwarding 10 years and giving us new main characters). The trailer makes it look better than the premise sounded.
The 10pm hour
Neither Fox nor The CW air anything in the 10pm hour. CBS will continue with NCIS: Los Angeles and ABC will continue with Castle.
That leaves NBC trying to launch Blindspot in the same way they launched The Blacklist two years ago. This new show has a dash of The Blacklist (a MC with terrorist enemies), Memento (tattoos and memory loss), and Chuck (an assets whose special skills are a surprise even to themselves). It has potential.
Verdict
Definitely watching: The Big Bang Theory
Maybe continuing: Gotham, Scorpion
New shows I want to check out: Supergirl, Minority Report, Blindspot
