While I originally situated this excessive ethnicity firmly within Mama Elsa (whose eccentricity did not disappoint us in the reunion), as the season progressed viewers were introduced to another figure that served the same purpose: Freda.  As the long-term maid of one of the show’s original cast members (Lea Black) this season was, surprisingly, the first time viewers saw any of this woman who is supposedly an integral part of the Black household.  What makes her entrance significant is not that she was absent from the first season, she is significant because she is a representation of Cuban latinidad that is not only based in African descent (a topic that warrants its own essay) but one that further aligns “Old” Miami with a racialized and excessive quality.  Freda is framed as both superstitious and highly religious and her unglamorous body and lifestyle was set is stark contrast to the aesthetically enhanced housewives.  In one scene, Lea (shown with both hair and makeup done, nicely dressed, with the required high heel) exasperated from calling for Freda, huffs up the stairs to her room where Freda is content to ignore her so that she may read her bible.  Lea speaks to her in broken Spanish, making a comment about Freda’s habit of listening to “that religious” music too frequently.  As just one of the many examples of the patronizing manner in which Lea interacted with her, Freda seemed entirely out of place among the cast.  Lea, who talked to her as if she were a child and suggested that she was responsible for styling Freda’s untreated natural hair, treats her domestic worker of many years more like a helpless rescue puppy than an employee.  The fact that Freda cannot (or chooses not to) speak English further Others her and suggests that she is truly a remnant of a Miami that is slowly fading away.  While there are numerous other examples of “Old” Miami’s excessive ethnicity throughout this season, it is the appearance of Freda that stands out most.  I contend that RHOM used Freda as a narrative device in order to make the primary cast members appear more beautiful, eloquent, and, well, white.

While Freda was the figure in the show most marked by difference, the same narrative device was deployed in the story arc concerning Daisy, Lisa Hochstein’s maid, who is one of the other housewives.  Daisy is treated by Lisa as though she were her sidekick and to reward her for being such a loyal friend, has her plastic surgeon husband give Daisy the ultimate makeover.  There is an observable affection towards Daisy from Lisa, but yet again, it is more similar to the affection doted on a pet than a companion.  While such a connection is comical, that is part of its cover.  Shari Roberts (see: “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” 1993), in her analysis of Carmen Miranda, suggests that such comical displays of excess render ethnic subjectivities as harmless and operate as what she terms a “spectacle of containment.”  Therefore, I assert that Freda, Daisy, and Mama Elsa are all deployed within the narrative framing of the show in order to let the producers continue to utilize discourses of the Latin spice while at the same time containing that spice within the bodies of a handful of figures with excessive ethnicity.  Such containment provides the means for a simultaneous indulgence and rejection of what is depicted as “Old” Miami while at the same time heralding the emergence of a newer, brighter, and whiter Miami.

How to be a Gentleman was a classic example of poor execution, and as a result, just utterly awful television. Audiences realized this, didn’t watch, and it was quickly removed from the schedule. I don’t think the concept was inherently worse than others, but this show was painful to watch, unfunny, not at all smart. No meaningful lessons about the state of men in this.

Man Up began airing a bit later than most and is just, well, … meh. The show offers glimpses of the inner lives of men, but never with much complexity. It is oddly cast and acted, so that the tone of the series is really unclear. The show isn’t offensive so much as uninspired and cliché. I’d categorize it as trying to ride the tide of interest in shifting constructions of masculinity, but not offering much to engage with, and doubtful to return for a second season.

The surprise of the supposed tidal wave of men in crisis shows, at least for me, has been Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing, which isn’t bad and actually a kind of sweet little show (not that “sweet” is a particularly critical assessment). Sitcom history is not being redefined here, but the show is nuanced in its working through of what it constructs as generational shifts in dominant masculinities. A direct link can be drawn from Allen’s “Tim the Tool Man Taylor” Home Improvement character, a character Robert Hanke excellently critiqued as exemplary of a “mock-macho” masculinity, to the one on offer here. Age has softened the patriarchal perspective that Allen’s Mike Baxter-character voices, and importantly, his boss, played by Hector Elizando, at Outdoor Man—a Cabela’s-like hunting/sporting good store that previously allowed Baxter to traverse the world on catalog photo shoots—more often plays the patriarchal heavy, although both are clearly men who are artifacts of a world gone by.

The show doesn’t harbor undue nostalgia toward a more patriarchal past; instead Mike tries to make sense of his sense of norms relative to a world he now lives in—a gyneco-centric home that he seems more a visitor in than master of. Mike shares his home with three adult/young adult daughters, his wife, and a toddler grandson, creating a very different dynamic than Home Improvement’s family of three rambunctious young sons.

My biggest complaint about the series is the simplicity of Mandy, the middle daughter, who so far seems a caricatured dumb, shopping-loving, female teen, while her sisters are more fascinating studies in the range of femininities now available to women. Despite this, I’ve appreciated the adultness of the parental relationship that, in what might be throwaway lines, acknowledges the process of a couple aging together. A recent episode featured Mike saying something about going “for ice cream” which his wife and the audience (as represented through laugh track) seem uncertain of as a possible double entendre. But no, he meant let’s go for ice cream.

Although Mike may huff and puff about as though he’s king of the roost, it is clear this is not the case, and the resolution of episodic tension often works subtly to critique some of the ways the world works now without supporting the view that Mike’s patriarchal old way is any better. If anything, this connects the series more with the father/adult son tensions evident in Parenthood, Rescue Me, Men of a Certain Age, or Sons of Anarchy, among others, than with sitcoms debuting this fall.

From the vantage of a few months into the season, it seems the trend pieces—that also included men in Free Agents (cancelled) and Up All Night with what were termed “wimpy,” “emasculated,” or “loser” depictions of men—overestimated the phenomenon. ABC’s Work It, featuring victims of the “mancession” dressing as women, is scheduled for a January 3^rd debut. Stay tuned, but my suspicion is that its tenure might not match How to be a Gentleman.

*Update: Since submission of this post, Man Up has been pulled from the ABC schedule.*

Let me start by focusing only on basic cable—premium cable is a different beast, and I’m not sure the argument holds there, certainly if Boardwalk Empire is any indication. So far this summer I’ve watched a handful of episodes of The Glades, Rizzoli and Isles, Covert Affairs, and Memphis Beat, and none have left me curious for more. I’ve got the formula, I can probably tell you what is going to happen for the next 12 episodes, if they all make it that long. None, except for a bit of play with characters in Memphis Beat, feature much I could note as exceptional. Admittedly, my viewing has fallen off from other cable originals such as Psych and Leverage that I once watched regularly; here too, the episodic-caper-of-the-week leaves me with little return on my investment of weekly viewing.

There isn’t a Shield, Battlestar, or Mad Men among these new shows. In the past, other cable originals seemed at least somewhat unconventional—Monk had his neuroses, Psych its generationally-specific banter and references, and Burn Notice—okay, I can’t completely explain my continued interest in Burn Notice, except for its function as climate porn during the Michigan winter. Anyway, cable originals have tended to have some quality or characteristic that made them seem unlikely to succeed on a generally-branded broadcast network. In contrast, Rizzoli and Isles seems a minor twist on Crossing Jordan (which debuted nearly a decade ago) and Covert Affairs is an Alias knock-off (also debuted in 2001) which only serves to remind of the writing and acting skill of the “original.”

Notably, the summer’s new offerings haven’t all been unexceptional. Many of the cable shows that most aspire to be different, exceptional, or both are on FX, and FX’s new summer offering Louie remained on brand (Terriers debuts September 8). AMC’s Breaking Bad went to amazing places this summer and Rubicon seems to be a tremendous new conspiracy thriller. And with the return of Mad Men, this summer’s cable offerings have not all disappointed. Perhaps what I thought was an “original cable” distinction, is really just a matter of the brand of FX and AMC.

Instead of “cable” and “broadcast” being in anyway meaningful descriptors of the artistry or accomplishment of series, maybe we are entering an era in which both broadcast and cable channels feature schedules divided between “branding programs” and “schedule-fillers.” In facing distinctive algorithms of budgets, subscription fees, audiences, advertising dollars, and aspiration, both types of television outlets tend to this calculation in specific ways. What seems odd about this move toward filling out a schedule by cable channels, is that they’ve never needed to—the year-round originals on one night a week seemed a viable strategy (at least from the arm chair). Do we really need more marginal programming—it seems so contrary to the emerging technological and distribution environment. Perhaps the schedule expansion that has led to a focus on quantity over distinction is a strategy to argue parity and draw more dollars from advertisers’ broadcast budgets? I think I recall a TNT executive noting the cable channel featured more hours of new original programming this winter than NBC—which suggests it is on decision-makers’ minds. I have some other theories—more posts to come.

What else can be said of the upfronts? At this time of year, forecasts are a dime a dozen—whether about the likely success of programs or about how much different networks are likely to get in advertising commitments. In regard to the prognostications, I’ll snarkily note that there never seems to be much reporting on who was right or wrong, so I’ll pass on offering one more armchair programming/buying perspective: But a couple more observations

Something Different: As The New York Times noted in “Cable Takes a Front-Row Seat at Upfront Week,” in years past, cable channels made their programming announcements in March and April and steered clear of Manhattan in May, letting it be a broadcast show. But this year cable came to the big dance with programming announcements and events by many of the major channels. In the big picture, I’m not sure how much this matters—just further evidence of the industrial blurring of a distinction that has grown ever more negligible in terms of the viewing experience of many. While perhaps more notable this year with the Comcast buyout of NBC, the selling lines within conglomerates have been blurry for awhile now. Even further blurriness is added by the selling of advertising in digital content.

Read with Caution: All of this blurriness is about more than how buyers may feel after a network’s cocktail reception. The genre of industry article that follows the stream of prognostications is the genre that hypes the size of the deals that get made once the buying begins. Read these with caution. It only gets more and more difficult each year to decipher what is actually going on relative to other years. Rarely do articles make clear distinctions about what kind of add-ons are part of deals—sure, a network may be up 3% over last year, but did they have to sell/throw in some online, product placement, or cable to get there? Handicapping the fall schedules is a fun game, one I’m far better at than fantasy football, but so little of what is written about the upfronts really means anything substantial (other than industry posturing—which admittedly, has a role, but isn’t industry journalism’s finest contribution).

An Upfront Aside: As a television viewer I’ve been struggling to figure out why I have been wholly uninterested in the upfronts this year when in years past I would pour over the new grids with the glee of a child on Christmas morning. First, I realized the schedule has long ceased to matter to me. It all goes in the DVR (thanks to multiple tuners) and comes out whenever I decide. Given I’m no longer among a handful of early adopters and we’re in an era of Live+ measurement, analyzing the schedule no longer holds hidden meaning about what might succeed or fail because of its schedule position. Second, as a drama maven and reality avoider (at least in terms of my viewing preferences), I’m stunned by the minimal role broadcast programming plays in my life—(do I still even watch anything on CBS?). Finally, with all the constant reporting that has become part of the coverage of TV, from the aggregation at tv.tattle.com to constant updating of even only rumored developments by the trades online and newcomers like Deadline Hollywood, I’m fully appraised of the status of all shows and the factors likely to contribute to their return or passing.