ABC FALL 2012: Schedule and Pilot Trailers

Still struggling with Blogger.  Bear with me.

While NBC is clearly the bottom of the Big Four barrel, ABC has been nipping at their heels for some time now.  Last season seemed to be a turn in the tide  though with the successes of Once Upon a Time, Revenge, Happy Endings, Scandal, etc.  As such, they don't have as many shows coming this fall, but they have a hell of a lot slated for midseason (a bridge which will be crossed at a later date). 

In a season where there have been hardly any surprise pick-ups or unjust cancellations, ABC is right in the middle, once again.  The only real note of interest is that Cougar Town was cancelled by ABC, only to be picked up by TBS, which should prove a much better fit.  That said, looking at the horror that is ABC's new comedy slate, they should have held onto Cougar Town with both hands and a foot.  In  terms of scheduling, the biggest news is that Revenge is moving to Sundays.  I think that's a better fit in terms of tone, but in terms of being opposite The Good Wife, I'm less than thrilled.

Here's the full fall schedule:

MONDAY
8/7c Dancing With the Stars/The Bachelor (in January)
10 pm Castle

TUESDAY
8 pm DWTS Results
9 Happy Endings
9:30 pm Don’t Trust the B—– In Apartment 23
10 pm Private Practice

In January
8 pm HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
8:30 THE FAMILY TOOLS

WEDNESDAY

8 pm The Middle
8:30 pm Suburgatory
9 pm Modern Family
9:30 THE NEIGHBORS
10 pm NASHVILLE

THURSDAY
8 pm LAST RESORT
9 pm Grey’s Anatomy
10 pm Scandal

FRIDAY
8 pm Shark Tank
9 pm Primetime: What Would You Do?
10 pm 20/20

In November
8 pm Last Man Standing
8:30 pm MALIBU COUNTRY
9 pm Shark Tank
10 pm Primetime: What Would You Do?

SUNDAY

8 pm Once Upon a Time 

9 pm Revenge
10 pm 666 PARK AVENUE

NOT RETURNING NEXT SEASON: Charlie’s Angels, TBS-bound Cougar Town, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, GCB, Man Up, Missing, Pan Am, The River and Work It

THE NEIGHBORS 

My Take:  Oh my holy god, are you effing kidding me?!  Wow.  Just wow.  This looks like a really bad idea for a family-friendly Disney made-for-TV movie that somehow got turned into a comedy on ABC.  I… have no words.  Seriously, how on earth is this going to be an ongoing series?  The 2 minute trailer was painful on its own.  I’m sure ABC is banking on Modern Family to buoy the show’s ratings (as they’ve banked on for every other comedy to have debuted in the last 3 years), but I don’t think there’s anything that can save this.  If I had to actually assess the show (and it pains me to do so), I’d say the cast is charmless and the conceit is oppressive.  There is no possible way to have any real heart or story arc in a show that revolves around a family that moved into a neighborhood full of aliens.  The gags employed in the 2 minute trailer will undoubtedly be employed every few minutes during every single episode because there’s really nothing else there.  I can’t believe this got picked up and I really can’t believe ABC is wasting the plum post-Modern Family slot on this.  I’m almost morbidly curious here.  Surely there was something ABC saw in this, right?
Potential-O-Meter:  About 10 points south of “If I had to watch this show on a regular basis, I’d shoot myself”.


NASHVILLE 


My Take:  For as off-putting and unappealing as country music and Hayden Panettiere are, this actually looks like a pretty solid production with a good base conceit and a great cast (cheerleader notwithstanding).  I adore Connie Britton and I have a feeling she could carry just about any show, even if its basic concept doesn’t really speak to me.  It’s a serial, to be sure, so that wins it some points, but again… Hayden Panettiere…  [insert cold shudder]  To be fair, she’s playing an utterly loathsome character, so it shouldn’t be too hard to translate my hatred into even more hatred.  My main concern is that the show will want me to love her at some point and I’m just not sure I can do that.  For the better part of Heroes, I was more than happy with letting the world explode or melt or whatever it was going to do if it meant that we could stop saving the effing cheerleader.  Anyhow, aside from some conceptual aspects that don’t really get me salivating, it looks like it could be an excellent drama.  Again, Connie Britton can pretty much do no wrong and I’m excited to see her back on TV, doing something other than giving birth to a demon.  In my heart of hearts, I’m hoping the approach of this show will be a lot like The Good Wife in terms of focus.  Connie is the star and the rest of the actors are peripheral.  Should they try to skew younger and make Hayden more central, I might just have to tune out.  Given that it will be premiering after the abomination that is The Neighbors, I suspect I won’t be the only one.  That’s a nasty timeslot and I think the show will suffer for it.
Potential-O-Meter:  6.5


LAST RESORT 

My Take:  When the trailer began, I was fully expecting a “we’re the best of the best and we take no prisoners” blah, blah, blah, but it actually turned in a direction I didn’t expect (a fairly ridiculous direction, to be sure, but still different).  It really sounds a bit more like a summer movie than a series at this point, but it really depends on where they take it.  If the show focuses on the reasons behind the attempted sinking of the submarine, looks at the people and the politics that make such decisions, etc, I think this could be more grounded and interesting than the Michael Bay overtones would suggest.  If nothing else, it’s not very often you run across a show about the crew of a submarine, so at least it’s something off the beaten path (although it seems they’ll be creating a new society on an island, or something, so who the hell knows).  The cast is entirely too young and pretty to be believable as nuclear submarine anythings, really, but so it goes in Hollywood.  The cast and production look pretty solid, even if the story is up for grabs.  It all had a not-so-vague resemblance to The Rock, but that’s all part and parcel of the whole action show gig. All in all, I think this one could go either way.  I’m not exactly chomping at the bit, but if the writers really focus on the drama and politics of their situation rather than the promise of explosions and gun play, this could be a viable contender (or total guilty pleasure).
Potential-O-Meter:  5.5

MALIBU COUNTRY

My Take:  Okay, seriously, what the hell is ABC thinking with their new comedies this season?!  Good lord, this looks painful.  I never watched Reba for a number of reasons, and now they seem to have taken all those reasons, multiplied them by 37 and made a new sitcom out of them.  Ugh.  Well, I guarantee that this piece of shit isn’t my cup of tea, but I can see where any number of people might enjoy it.  It’s being paired with Last Man Standing, which is also horrendous, so odds are they’ll share a fair bit of the same kinds of viewers.  It’s a sub-par family sitcom with a painfully abused laugh track that will probably pair splendidly with a show like Last Man Standing.  The only point of interest in the trailer was the nearly unrecognizable Sara Rue, for whom blondness and weight loss seem to be in direct correlation.  At the end of the day, this looks like a low-budget, poorly produced steaming pile of cliché that I’ll be avoiding at all costs.  Surely there were better comedy pilots out there.  Surely.
Potential-O-Meter:  The theoretical temperature at which entropy reaches its minimum value.

666 PARK AVENUE

My Take:  I honestly have no idea what this show is actually about.  At the same time, I think it easily has the most potential of any of ABC’s fall offerings.  My sensibilities tend more toward supernatural than horror, but it looks like this show might have a nice blend.  The trailer doesn’t really tell me much about what to really expect on an episode to episode basis, but I think they’ve left a lot of room for the show to explore and a great basis for their own mythology.  The “haunted house/mansion/hotel” is a mainstay of fiction that doesn’t generally appeal to me much, but 666 Park Avenue has a great look to it and a captivating visual language.  I’m not really sure what I’ll be getting myself into with this one, but I’m pretty intrigued to give it a shot.  Depending on the narrative approach and main focus of the show, it could be a fine or illogical pairing for Revenge, which has been moved to Sundays (aka the day it should have been on all along), but only time will tell.  Even though I have pretty much nothing to go on but a few vague notions, my interest is piqued.
Potential-O-Meter:  7.5

There you have it, kiddies.  It's a pretty mixed bag for ABC.  I don't know who is in charge of their comedy development department, but sweet Jesus, they need to be fired immediately.  The dramas have some potential, but that's about it.  I'm guessing both comedies will come and go quickly, which might be why they have so much in store for midseason.  Fearing the worst.