Hope Springs Anew

Well its September 20^th, and as we all know that means fall is less than 3 days away (it’s on the 23^rd according to Google). What else does that mean? Fall tv shows premiere this week, including some ugly ones last night.

This year, like every year, I’m hopeful there will be a new show that I can add into my stable of tv I don’t watch live, but instead the day after on the Internet; since I have a job, I may actually start watching these shows live now.

Last night had the premieres of the perennially good How I Met Your Mother, as well as new shows 2 Broke Girls and the Playboy Club. The more likely to succeed of these two will be 2 Broke Girls. It has a name actress in Kat Dennings (40 Year-Old Virgin, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) in one of the lead roles and more importantly it’s on CBS. The fact it’s on CBS leads me to believe it will be a marginally funny show, and run for 7-9 years because that’s what most CBS tv shows do (eg CSI, NCIS, Two and a Half Men).  

The Playboy Club looks to be one of the many NBC shows that get cancelled in their first year, no matter how well intentioned they are.  The premise of the show is to follow the lives of girls working at the Playboy Club in the 60s and there is a murder mystery plot and maybe the mob is involved. I tried to watch the show, but couldn’t get interested in it. You’ll feel like it’s a rip-off of Mad Men because it wishes it were Mad Men.  More likely to succeed will be the other Mad Men rip off called Pan-Am about the stewardesses and a pilot or two in the 60s. It has Christina Ricci and will likely be more amusing and better attended to by the people at ABC.  

Like all of you, I’m most excited for the return of the shows I’ve grown to loved, or have loved from day 1. Among the shows returning this week are Community, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, and The Office (I’m excited to see what they do without Steve Carell) and dramas like House. Community I can’t recommend to everyone because its comedy can be so off the wall, but its cast is perfect for the show, and its meta and entertainment referencing jokes frequently require some thought. It’s ambitious and doesn’t play to the lowest common denominator of humor, and I love it for it.  Parks and Rec and Modern Family are the two best network comedies on tv right now and The Office and House are just classic shows that you don’t feel bad on checking in on, even if they aren’t must watch live anymore (there are few of these left anyway).

Sadly for me, there are some shows I really wish would start now but wont be until midseason or later: Awake, Mad Men, and 30 Rock. The drama I’m most excited to watch this year won’t show up until midseason. It is Awake and is about a cop who loses half his wife or son in an accident, but doesn’t know which because in his dreams one lives and in reality the other is alive. He’s clearly got some psychological issues so it should be neat to watch.  Mad Men just won best drama series at the Emmys Sunday so get on Netflix and stream it already, its superb.  30 Rock, I feel, is starting its decline in quality, so this may be its last solid season and that’s reason enough to me to watch it weekly

I’m sure I’ve missed some shows, and that we’ll come back to them in the future.

Matt Brickell is a staff writer and thinks he’d make a great extra, you’d certainly see him in the background towering over everyone else