CW FALL 2012: Schedule and Pilot Trailers

Not sure why, but neither NBC nor the CW offered up full trailers for their new shows when they unveiled their fall schedules.  Clips, sure, but no full trailers.  Ugh.  Well, the CW is finally starting to roll out actual trailers for their new offerings, but not all.  As such, this is a little incomplete.

Anyhow, the slowness with with they can assemble a trailer is the least of the CW's woes.  Aside from having the worst ratings on network TV (their ratings pale in comparison to most cable shows, in fact), their development slate last season was almost entirely a disaster.  Seriously, when a supernatural show penned by one of the writers of the most successful show on the network is terrible, you know you're in trouble.  Indeed, even with The Vampire Diaries as a lead-in, and Kevin Williamson at the helm, The Secret Circle was a truly awful show.  I spent the better part of the first season thinking that it might turn around ( the way TVD did), but it most certainly didn't.  The writing was bad, the concept was mishandled, and more than anything, the two leads had about as much successful chemistry as a pre-Walter White Jesse Pinkman (which, for you non-Breaking Bad people out there, is code for "none").  Seriously, I'm no fan of Britt Robertson OR Thomas Dekker, but even I thought they'd have more chemistry together than they did.  What a disaster.  Furthermore, rather than the writers of the show noticing  this and changing course, they kept on keeping on with the "they're destined for each other" storyline.  Long story short, even TSC couldn't survive and summarily cancelled.  Ringer, the other much-hyped pilot from last fall, was deservedly cancelled as well.

Here's the long and the short of the fall season:

MONDAY
8/7c 90210
9 pm Gossip Girl  (THE CARRIE DIARIES takes over in January)

TUESDAY
8 pm Hart of Dixie
9 pm EMILY OWENS, M.D. (formerly known as First Cut)

WEDNESDAY
8 pm ARROW
9 pm Supernatural

THURSDAY
8 pm The Vampire Diaries
9 pm BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

FRIDAY
8 pm America’s Next Top Model
9 pm Nikita

NOT RETURNING NEXT SEASON:  Ringer, The Secret Circle, One Tree Hill (sweet jesus, finally), H8R, Remodeled, and The LA Complex.

The CW still hasn't put out a trailer for The Carrie Diaries, but I'm already scared.  Gossip Girl is ending it's run midseason when The Carrie Diaries takes over, so odds are a trailer won't be forthcoming for a while.  Can't say I'm too heartbroken... 

Here are the trailers/clips that are available at this point:

ARROW

My Take: Well, this show has more than a few fairly overt Dark Knight elements and overtones, but hey, if you're going to copy something outright, may as well draw from the well of awesomeness.  I'm honestly not too familiar with the mythology of the Green Arrow comics, but it appears to borrow heavily from Batman lore.  Again, a fine choice of influences, but it also means that it'll be compared to it's predecessor.  A lot.  And it probably won't measure up.  Taking Arrow for what it is and trying to divorce it from The Dark Knight, this looks like a solid action adventure show with an interesting central mystery and modified mythology of its own.  Generally speaking, comic book heroes appeal to me greatly, but when translating to live-action, it has to be done right.  From the trailer alone, Arrow appears to have taken the concept from the comics (and other iterations) and transmuted it into episodic television successfully in terms of tone, cinematography, costuming, etc.  How well that will work in the long run is anyone's guess, but at least right now I'm not cringing at the cheesiness of his outfit or the absurdity of  the setting (*cough* The Cape *cough*).  That said, all I could think toward the end of the trailer was, "Awh hell, looks like someone brought a bow and arrow to a gun fight."  As far as weapons go, the bow and arrow have always been on the cool end of  the spectrum, but in a modern, urban setting it comes across as a bit silly.  Not as silly as I would have expected though, so that's a big plus.  I'm sure it's the kind of thing you'd get used to, but as ever with the bow and arrow, there's only so much one can do.  What happens when he runs out of arrows?  It's a pretty useless weapon at close range...   Anyway, it's derivative, to be sure, but if it's done well, it should be enjoyable.  It has a slightly different bent in terms of his origin story with the shipwreck and I think the writers could do a lot with that.  If they can present a compelling reason he's fighting for the little guy and if they play their cards right, this could be a serviceable superhero show.  All in all, it's more up my alley than most of the new pilots for fall and it looks to be well made and well cast.  Thievery aside, I must say, I'm kind of excited for this one.  It's certainly exceeds my expectations so far and even allays a few fears.

Potential-O-Meter:  7.5


EMILY OWENS, M.D.



My Take:  Speaking of borrowing liberally from other shows, good lord, seriously?  Seriously.  And no, that wasn't actually supposed to be a straight-up Grey's Anatomy reference, but hey, when in Rome.  This is pretty patently derivative and I'm not sure there's any way around that fact when reviewing.  Man alive, it's even the same specialty front and center.  What few elements aren't specifically Grey's in nature are cliches from every other medical drama you've ever seen, plus a dash of Mean Girls for good measure.  You've got the spate of new surgical residents who don't know what they're doing, the obvious budding romantic situation between resident and attending, the uber-competiveness, the Baily-esque Nazi, the voice-over, etc.  There are only a few minor differences and tweaks, but they're appreciated and will be the key to this show hopefully becoming it's own show at some point.  I like that our lead was a losery geek back in the day and the theme that we never really leave high school.  It's not much of a departure from other shows out there, but with Mamie Gummer in the role, it's pretty charming.  Mamie is delightful, so even with overly-familiar storylines, this might be an enjoyable little medical drama where you totally know what's going to happen, but you like watching it anyway.  The cast in general seems likeable enough, but I'm not sure anyone will really be able to stand out among the crowd of pretty people.  I think the show will be banking on the central love triangle with some random medical stuff thrown in here and there, which to be honest, doesn't have me chomping at the bit.  That said, I really enjoyed the first few seasons of Grey's, so many this show can capture some of that appeal.  In pretty much every respect, this is the same old thing, but it's an old thing that usually does pretty well on mainstream TV.  I review medical research proposals for a living, so seeing different specialties described in terms of different high school cliques made me smile, so with any luck, the show will find a way to integrate the "life is high school and high school sucked" theme in a new and fresh way.  Can't say I'm holding out too much hope for that, but that's the element that most appealed to me in the trailer.

Potential-O-Meter:  5    


BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

 My Take:  Oh dear god, SO cheesy.  Like, eye-rollingly, wince-inducingly cheesy.  Apparently this is very loosely based on the '80s series starring Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman in lion make-up.  The beast for the modern era is basically a Calvin Klein model with a bit of a scar and a lot more brooding.  Ugh.  Yikes.  Wow.  This show is clearly hoping to tap into the tween girl fantasy zeitgeist of the past several years, taking a healthy dollop of Twilight and adding a sexy detective.  For a specific audience, this show could work, but as far as broader appeal is concerned, I'm already groaning and I've only seen 5 minutes of the show.  First and foremost, they seem to be pushing the romance between the two leads WAY too soon.  Again, tapping into the conventions of YA teen girl fiction, there's no build-up, only immediate pay-off.  Which, when the pay-off is immediate, there is no pay-off.  I think I'll have a hard time caring about these characters even in the long run, let alone the pilot.  This show has been paired with The Vampire Diaries on Thursday nights, and while I think there's a sizable segment of TVD's audience that falls into the very specific demo that Beauty and the Beast is aiming for, there's just as sizable a segment that won't care about this show one iddy bit.  Perhaps this show is hoping to do just what TVD did, taking a seemingly contrived tween love story and turning it into a kickass supernatural show, but as with The Secret Circle before it, I seriously doubt Beauty and the Beast will succeed.  I don't know.  I guess it's possible, and I'll certainly give it a few episodes to try, but TVD set the bar pretty high here.  On the plus side, the production looks good and it at least has some semblance of an over-arching mythology to cling to.  How well it will use said mythology is up for grabs, but I'm going to err on the "mostly disappointing" end of the spectrum.  The only aspect that really caught my eye was the fight scene when blood spatter hit the camera.  That was a nice touch and certainly against the grain for a show like this.  The damsely crap that followed was less impressive.  I'm sorry, why didn't she get her own ass off the railroad tracks?  Because the big strong man needed to feel useful, I guess.  Put her in actual, logical peril and it's fine to have some help.  Make her look like a dumbass who thinks she can outrun a train and we have a problem.

Potential-O-Meter:  4      


And that's it so far for the CW.  A mixed bag of mostly very familiar concepts and unnecessary voiceovers.  Yay.  Of these, Arrow is far and away the most promising, but as an anchor with no lead-in, on a struggling network, it's got its work cut out for it.