2013 Fall TV Thread: Previews, Evaluations, Ridicule and Mourning

only sitcom pilot i actually liked was mom - alison janney was great and there was some pretty great ensemble work in the last half (including badger from breaking bad!). strong, refreshing subject matter (reminds you chuck lorre worked on roseanne). though I doubt I'll go out of my way to watch it, i hope it lasts. while i don't hope they last I can see The Crazy Ones and The Goldbergs surviving (esp if they tone down the wonder years bullshit - that little perv is no kevin arnold) as I doubt america will care as much as about its historical laziness (pretty sure it's just set in "the '80s" rather than a specific year) as I did.

Only drama that's come out I'm remotely rooting for Sleepy Hollow.

anna faris is so likable that i'll probably continue to watch mom but i thought the writing was generally dire (if not quite as bad as 2 broke girls)

patton oswalt was straight up doing daniel stern in the narration too, presumably while looking at his check

xpost re goldbergs, obv

i was trying to figure out what year it could possibly be in the goldbergs - has to be at least '87 if the older brother shouts out "flavor flav," but stopped when i realized they clearly hadn't put in even that much work

i didn't watch the goldbergs pilot yet but i'm gonna guess it has got nothing on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goldbergs_(broadcast_series)

i haven't watched Mom yet, should check that out. besides Fox, i think Brooklyn Nine-Nine at least has potential -- imperfect right now but i feel like as long as there's a strong cast to start with, the writing and everything else can come into focus with time.

i watched the Hostage and Lucky 7 pilots but man speaking of 'low stakes,' i don't necessarily think that every network show now has to play keep up with cable like The Following or Hannibal and be as graphic and edgy as it can get away with, but so many network dramas just feel incredibly tame and defanged now.

oh right, forgot about nine-nine! i like the cast but they need to get over this "samberg refuses to grow up for some not particularly clear reason" bit NOW.

and yeah, couldn't finish lucky 7 or hostages (rating-wise, few started them). loved how every character on the other one had to have a secret - bet the brother owning a grand to a drug dealer's really gonna pay off in episode 4 if it airs.

andre braugher and alison janney are the mvps of the new shows imo, no shock there

ugh typos out the ass, there. take two:

"loved how every character on hostages had to have a secret - bet the brother owing a grand to a drug dealer's really gonna pay off in episode 4 if it airs."

the blacklist is highly recommend to people who want to watch a sassy tortoise annoy federal agents

hahah!

i kinda like blacklist. a nice replacement for my required 'spy cheese' viewing, since Burn Notice has finished

I need at least one show where things explode

cmon, person of interest! now starting s03.

I couldn't get into that - jim caviezel has dead eyes, it creeps me out

that show gets the "what is burn notice?" trophy now that burn notice is on. All I've ever known about it is that two guys, one from lost, are...agents of some kind.

for three years, every ad has just been them...looking at you, perhaps gauging your degree of interest.

it's an 'outsiders intervene in the lives of people who need help' show.

with michael emerson as a dude who made a 24/7 surveillance computer for the government and then had second thoughts

it also has taraji henson and enrico colantoni and robert burke and sarah shahi and amy acker and an nypd corruption ring and a russian mob turf war

and a TIMELINE

ah that's where sarah shahi went to

she just showed up as an antagonist that turned into (i think) a regular, right about after her quirky lawyer show got cancelled

I really miss that pretty broad

of all the things i hated about 'the crazy ones' i think the worst was editing robin williams to shreds. they bring in someone who's known for his raw energy and they slice it to pieces. i don't get it.

Getting a better off ted vibe from krazy ones. Except it sucks

first ep was like five ads rolled into one pretense of a show.

moms was good, are all chuck lorre shows zingfests like that

yes

Dharma and Greg was slightly zingy.

I haven't watched any of the later ones.

big bang gets way more grief than it deserves but isn't anywhere near good enough to deserve defending from that grief

ugh brooklyn 99 was really bad, didnt seem even vaguely 'promising' either. like p much just a really contorted way of making ppl appreciate new girl if they didnt already

blacklist... eh, just about got on the watchable trash list but i doubt for very long

michael j fox show was... weird? fast-paced is good but this was kinda machinegunning lines and characters without really knowing what it was doing, i'd say i was losing my footing but i'm not sure i ever had one to begin with. def not how i expected a walt jr and marie spinoff to play out

oh also re mjf show, i know character actors and all that but you can't just have bunk in your show... bunk is bunk, end of story

w/ brooklyn 99 i keep telling myself that the office took awhile and parks definitely took awhile but this feels different - there they were figuring out the characters and getting the tone just right and getting away from the shadow of another show (the office uk w/ the office, the office us w/ parks). this just feels like a bad sitcom so far, like they're aiming low and just trying to make a hit show and not a cult show that critics will like but will barely stay on the air.

trying to make a hit show and not a cult show that critics will like but will barely stay on the air.

I think this is correct

yeah idk i often feel a little confused when i see ppl (seemingly quite frequently) say stuff like "oh but x got good around halfway through the second season". if it's not at least okay to begin with it's pretty much dead forever in my book

suburgatory is probably the one recent show i can think of where i genuinely wasn't certain if i liked it for ages

well there's a middle ground between "dead forever" and "stick with it" - "go back when you hear it gets better." did that with parks & rec and the new girl myself.

oh, 30 rock too.

man apparently i need to avoid ever watching early community or 30 rock again cuz those are two shows i loved from day one that the consensus seems to be didn't actually get good until a little while into their runs

i enjoyed community from the get go (gets "even better" halfway through s1), but 30 rock season 1 (which i revisited recently) def has a simpsons season 1 vibe just in the relatively slack pace of jokes.

30 rock season one was so great from maybe two episodes in.

even if you enjoy it, i have a hard time believing you can't detect the change in editing/joke density

well there's a middle ground between "dead forever" and "stick with it" - "go back when you hear it gets better." did that with parks & rec and the new girl myself.

― da croupier, Tuesday, 1 October 2013 02:38 (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this was... the whole point? talking about the unlikelihood of full-on miracle lazarus jobs not shows that were very watchable to begin with (personally i never did like parks and rec though)

30 rock seems kind of an odd one, i also rewatched some of season 1 recently and found it hard going but i def loved it at the time

s1 started rough though

iirc it didn't hit its straps until about halfway through that series

Fringe was a rare show that was pretty dire in the beginning and then became amazing from around midway through season 2 (it was also a rare sci-fi/mythology show that actually had a relatively satisfying finale). Combination of the actors settling into their roles + writers finding their groove.

haha figures that Fringe got good right after I completely gave up on it and refused to go back

lol I gave up after the third episode, and caught up with it later on. Ended up becoming one of my all-time favourite shows - who knew?

I dropped Fringe when it went on holiday break in its first year. I've heard ever since that it got really good when it came back. tbh I didn't care about the premise enough to go back, but you never know. It's on netflix and I might get curious one day.

Fringe definitely got better but it also often posed the argument that not every dramatic series can or should sustain a 60-minute episode length.