Fall TV Previews

I have been slacking on my blog lately... This is a fact that has been brought to my attention several times and by several people (as long as all those people are Flavia). :) As anyone who works within 20 feet of my cubicle can attest, I've been all sorts of out of sorts lately and have hardly been able to get through each day, let alone compose a blogpost when I get home. It is a regretable situation and I'm hoping it changes. Very soon. Like, I just might start wearing teal velour jumpsuits if it doesn't let up soon.

Along with the overall craziness of late, I opted not to read the fourth installment of the Twilight series (no, it's not a saga--bite me, Meyer), so I've had very little to mock. I think I'm actually starting to miss that daily dose of unholy torture... Remember the time she tried to seduce him...? Awww, memories. Wait, no, that didn't have quite the proper inflection. Ah-he-hem. AHHHHH, the memories!! Make it stop! Therrrre we go. Just right. Anyway, I've been reading the completely kick-ass Watchmen lately instead, and as there's pretty much nothing to mock, my well of snark has all but run dry of late.

Adding another level of disconcertion to my current situation, the fall premiere line-up is sad, sorry, and underwhelming this year. Fall is usually my season! I'm the MVP of pilots! This is usually the time when I play the TV stockmarket, making picks, dodging bad investments, and going all in on shows I think are going to succeed. But, thanks in VERY large part to the writers' strike, my options are looking pretty meager this year. (Annie, I may need you to help me with my stock-related jargon, because clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about--it just struck me as the most viable metaphor...) The TV season is in the depths of a bear market (that's right, right? Annie? Little help?). The strike cut most (well, practically all) shows short last season, and even more tragically, all but decimated pilot season. Typically, countless shows are pitched to the networks and only a handful of what they believe to be the best actually make it to air. Well, with crapitude like Cavemen and Bionic Woman making it on the air when there was a bull market, I'm not sure I even want to know what kind of dreck is going to make it on the air in the coming weeks.

Fortunately (and most unfortunately), whatever kind of dreck it is, it will be very, VERY limited. In all my years of being a TV aficionado (well that didn't sound too granny at all now did it--"You know, back to days when we had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow. Get off my lawn, ya whippernsappers!"), I have never seen such a slim slate (the alliteration sale comes twice a year) of new programming to play with. Last year was a bountious (huh, I thought there was an "e" in there somewhere, but no) feast of shows, most of which I at very least gave a shot to. AND, most importantly, I walked away from last season with a near-perfect record. The shows I gave up on got axed, the shows I stuck with got picked up. Take THAT...you, TV... programmer...people. Okay, so I'm not sure who I beat, but reverting back to my weak-ass stockmarket metaphor, last season I totally scored like 50 million points! Dollars? Chips? ALF Pogs? Nas-snacks? Annnnd, I'm out of my depth. The stockmarket is a bit of a mystery to me... I basically think of it as a noisy game of keno. Hey, little blip on a screen for little blip on a screen, they could seriously be cousins.

Anyway, in an effort to be a better blogger and tap into my passion for TV as best I can with such a craptastic slate to work with, I'm offering a Fall TV Preview that will give you all the dish I have on new shows and whether or not they're worth giving a chance (which most often, they aren't). If I'm going to be the major league TV watcher that I've dreamt of being since I was a little girl, I'm going to have to step up to the plate (oh, whoa, you thought my stockmarket metaphor was bad, just wait till I tackle baseball... which I don't think I will...).

I think I'll start off with a little show called My Own Worst Enemy starring the late (well, close enough) Christian Slater.





Wow. I tell ya what wow. This little gem is an obvious Jekyll and Hyde take-off and as far as basic premises go, it could be worse. As far as execution goes, I'm not so sure it could. Now, I try not to judge a show too harshly before I've actually scene it, but those two promos alone were just about enough for me. I don't think it would be pysically possible for them to be trying harder to be cool. I fully expect at least one ofChristian Slater's personas to be sporting 4 popped collars at some point in the pilot.

The voice-over cracked me up. I particularly liked the line about him having the perfect family given that the wife has already been re-cast with Madchen Amick whom you may recognize from her role as Sherry (Christopher's wife) on Gilmore Girls. Perfect wife, indeed. Both of them. Hey, maybe she's got a double personality thing going as well... Or, more likely this soon-to-be train wreck just can't decide whose career they'd like to destroy.

He's a regular guy. Who's also -- wait for it -- a highly trained government operative! Wow! Cool! A government operative?! How novel! Yeah, no. Seriously, who isn't a highly trained government operative? There must be a serious glut in the market for secret government operatives these days, I tell ya what. If The Golden Girls had premiered in the past 10 years, you can be certain Betty White would be packing heat and Rue McClanahan could speak Farsi and Mandarin fluently while taking down security guards at the old folks' home with her Brazillian jiu jitsu training.

Then the voice-over gets stuck in a full-on, Milli Vanilli-style loop of, "This is Henry. This is Edward."

This is cheesy. This is lame.

Oh, trying so hard to be dynamic and captivating and cool, and falling so very, very short.

Awww, but the piece de resistance, the be all and end all of "we're trying so hard to be badass, puh-lease think we're badass!" is the totally hackneyed, overdone, thoroughly cheesetastic shot of Hedward tossing the cell phone and walking away from the explosion. Only thing is, the sound effect used was that of an old forensic camera, not a detonator (or a cell phone). Yeah, I'm pretty sure they plucked that sound wholesale from Silence of the Lambs. It's a cool sound and all, but I have to assume that the cell phone was a camera phone and he was documenting the blast as evidence.

The VERDICT: It looks pretty bad, folks. I'd suggest My Own Worst Enemy start getting its affairs in order and saying goodbye to its loved ones (meaning however many wives get cast in the role). I'll be checking out the pilot, but it'll be for comedic reasons. I expect NBC will keep this precious little nugget around for the whole season, but mainly because NBC doesn't have much else going for it. This show will get sub-par ratings, but won't completely tank. It's a decent premise, but I have no confidence whatsoever that they'll pull it off.

Oh, and Hedward's last name is Spivey. Seriously, writers? You can choose any last name in the whole wide world for your protagonist and you pick Spivey? It makes me wonder about other decisions the writers may have made.

Annnnd finally, the big bad guy will be played by the sweet old man from Babe. Not exactly enough to strike terror into the hearts of viewers.

That'll do, Hedward. That'll do.