Minority Report (Premiered September 21 @ 9/8) trailer here

Since Almost Human did so well for them, why not try the dystopian future sci-fi procedural again, right? Trade out Michael Ealy, Karl Urban, and Minka Kelly for Meagan Good, Stark Sands, Nick Zano, Wilmer “Fez” Valderrama, and Laura Regan. It’s 2065 (ie: 15 years after the film’s action) and a decommissioned “precog” (clairvoyants) takes to helping a detective on the side. No Tom Cruise, but lots of air holograms will be pinched and swiped to remind you of the film.

*

Minority Report opens with a monologue that quickly explains the events of the 2002 film adaptation of the Phillip K. Dick short story. That version was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Tom Cruise and, although it was well received by critics, is certainly one of the deeper cuts from both their filmographies. The intro to the episode informs us that, for reasons I dare not attempt to consider here, the television show is a direct sequel to the movie and takes place 11 years after Tom Cruise’s character shut down the unit of the police force that used psychic humans to stop crimes before they happened. The assumption that anyone watching this pilot saw and/or remembers the movie vividly enough to care about continuity, if nothing else, highlights the absurd level to which the “shared universe” philosophy has come to dominate the media industry. The main problem with the show thus far, is that a lot of time is spent having characters explain what the pre-cog unit was, and how life was so much better when we arrested people before they committed crimes instead of cleaning up the aftermath; a sentiment which is antithetical to the moral of the film they are trying to connect to. These quibbles aside, and despite being delivered in stiff and heavy-handed fashion, there are some genuinely interesting ideas introduced in this first episode. I find the relationship between the pre-cog siblings to be ripe with tension and well worth exploring over a season. The show also contains some visually interesting set pieces, and the characters — although only shells here in the pilot — have some real potential to grow in interesting ways. In short, although perhaps leaning a bit too hard on its predecessor, there’s enough original schlocky sci-fi story potential to make this latest Fox procedural worthy of further investigation.

Nicholas Benson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a media and cultural studies scholar with a focus on production cultures, media franchising and failure.

*

It has been argued that finding the right elements—the chemistry of the lead actors, the cultural moment for a television show to land, the spark of creativity in the writing—is like magic. Arguably, our contemporary media-driven society is the perfect time to assemble a show about multi-cultural characters engaging in a highly developed and esoteric procedural world, making overt and prescient quotes about the issues of the day (surveillance, big data, social media, the police state), and debating the present day (re: retro) as a humorous curiosity amid a crushing techno-futurism. That show is here, and it is called Mr. Robot.

But this review is about Minority Report, a show that manages to neuter even the tepid Steven Spielberg film, which serves as the show’s direct antecedent. That film included an interesting analysis of the police state, but was a far cry from the bleak and anxiety-ridden vision of Philip K. Dick’s prophetic critique of surveillance society in the original short story.

Today’s Minority Report (also produced by Spielberg) is an orgy of techno-porn, a spectacular spectacle that wants to boggle the mind even as the eye merely ogles the screen. The complex backstory isn’t fleshed out very much and the plot to kill the candidate for mayor is so cockamamie it’s beyond unbelievable. But there are hints that the show might be able to make compelling arguments applicable to today’s data-driven society. Since “precrime” was outlawed after the events of the film (the future being pretty tricky to pin down), the Mayor mentions his new plan to fight crime—using surveillance, big data tracking, and algorithmic manipulation to detect when crimes would happen. These are some really perceptive and timely issues—if I were a precog, I’d say they were topics bound to be hotly debated during this election cycle. I just hope that the show knows that as well.

Paul Booth (DePaul University) studies fandom, time travel, and digital technology and is the author most recently of Playing Fans and Game Play.

*

I have a love-hate relationship with the film on which this series is based on: it’s a Philip K. Dick adaptation that doesn’t bear too close philosophical investigation; it’s a fun action movie with Tom Cruise; it’s an interesting premise and yet the world building seems lacking to me. So it isn’t the first film I’d expect to be adapted for a long term TV series.

And yet the idea of the precogs and their partial visions is certainly enticing. And the pilot offers both the basic setup (female cop and one of the male precogs who’s come back from his isolated retreat), the weekly story line (precog gets a vision of a crime to be committed and they need to prevent it), and the larger mythos (the threat to all three precogs to be taken back in).

However, the pilot felt more like a cable summer show than prime time FOX, and even there it’d have to quickly improve its chemistry between the characters, world building, and crime story to keep audiences. At the moment it’s too generic to really engage either with the potentials of the world or the philosophical impact of the Precrime premise and its non-stop surveillance replacement. And I have a feeling this is one show where FOX’s all too quick cancellation policy may indeed be a mercy.

Kristina Busse (independent scholar) studies fan fiction and fan communities and is co-editor of Transformative Works and Cultures.

Scream Queens (Premiered September 22 @ 8/7) trailer here

Ryan Murphy turns to the horror-comedy realm in what hopes to be an anthology series. The sisters and pledges at Kappa Kappa Tau will be picked off one a week, introducing something of a whodunit (Murphy has said it’s like Ten Little Indians). Emma Roberts, Lea Michele, and Abigail Breslin star with the dean of scream queens herself, Jamie Lee Curtis, as dean of the university.

*

When I set my DVR, I was excited about the idea of reviewing Scream Queens. I had binge-watched Popular in a week, almost made it to the very end of Glee, ranked American Horror Story seasons…..I knew what I was getting with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuck (the good and the uneven) and thought I liked it. Then I was hit with the phrase “white mammy” in the first 15 minutes and wondered what I had gotten into.

I don’t think it is fair to say Scream Queens isn’t smart or savvy but it is desperately in need of an editor, and of the standards department spoofed in yesterday’s Muppets episode. Scream Queens‘ greatest brutality, for better or worse, comes not from its gory murders but from its social machinations and humor. At its best Scream Queens satirizes privilege, exemplified when a group of sorority girls dance gleefully to socially critical song “Waterfalls” while letting another girl die upstairs. My favorite line of the night, “I’d love you a lot more if other people love you too,” had just enough restraint to hit true as a critique. At its worst, the episode leaned to the outrageous simply because it could, moving from cutting to tasteless.

By placing most of its worst lines in the mouth of abhorrent sorority girl Chanel #1, some might see it as “excused” but the joke is the lines not Chanel as the teller and worse yet isn’t funny. One of the episode’s most effectively winking moments, a recreation of a scene from Heathers, was weakened by a cringe-worthy ongoing joke about a deaf Taylor Swift fan. And yet…one line that offended me the most as an extreme lesbian stereotype I sat with for an hour and began to see as a jab at a common “subtly” homophobic refrain. At the end, I find myself oscillating between seeing the potential for camp and satire where cringe-worthy lines are occasion for thoughtfulness and seeing an offensive failed attempt to shock and spoof that fell flat. I am just curious enough which to stay tuned, but I doubt for long.

Kyra Hunting (University of Kentucky) studies genre, representation and children’s media.

*

Admittedly, my expectations were low when I tuned in to Scream Queens. The series, which centers on a sorority house at a fictitious university, took all of the actors I dislike from Glee (Lea Michele) and the American Horror Story franchise (Emma Roberts), and put them together on one show. Ryan Murphy as an auteur doesn’t seem to suffer from a lack of ideas for television series. However, Scream Queens, like some of the more recent entries in the American Horror Story franchise, reads as a half-baked idea masquerading as a television series pilot episode (and I have no idea why I had to sit through two hours of this crapfest).

Murphy seems to take the “check box” approach he took on Glee with Scream Queens featuring the popular guy and girl, the nerdy outcast girl, the gay guy and the sassy black girl. In fact, the characters seem to be drawn from the broad (and un/underdeveloped) caricatures in Glee. Jamie Lee Curtis’ Cathy Munsch is essentially Sue Sylvester 2.0, “Mean Girl” Chanel Oberlin (Roberts) is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of Santana. It all just feels stale, and surprisingly joyless.

Certainly Murphy has enjoyed a degree of success with Glee and the American Horror Story franchise, but Scream Queens is what happens when television auteurism runs amok. Murphy (I think) likes to imagine himself as a master of satire and parody, but it doesn’t work. Instead, Murphy scripting Chanel to call the Kappa Kappa Tau house cleaner a “white mammy” and a “white slave” before forcing her to say, “I don’t know nothing ‘bout birthin’ no babies” from Gone with the Wind, it just feels tone deaf. Additionally, when Murphy has Nick Jonas’ gay character Boone lust after alleged heterosexual heartthrob Chad, it feels forced and – as much as I loathe the word – stereotypical. Kiki Palmer’s Zayday Williams seems to be in the cast in order to provide the series with a sassy black girl. Unlike Sammy Davis Jr., I don’t have “high hopes” for the show. Scream Queen is what you get when auteur happens to bad show runners.

Alfred L. Martin, Jr. (The New School) studies race, gender and sexuality in American media as they intersect with production and audience reception.

*

If one of the marks of good satire is a tone we’ve come to recognize as “tongue-in-cheek,” Scream Queens, the newest series from small screen auteurs Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, has its tongue planted firmly in the next zip code, wagging at us in incessant defiance. Emma Roberts stars as Chanel Oberlin, ruling matriarch of Wallace University’s Kappa Kappa Tau sorority and adolescent adversary to Cathy Munsch (Jamie Lee Curtis), Dean of Students who would like nothing more than to see KKT’s club of pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking clones picked off campus one by one. Lucky for Ms. Munsch, a serial killer is stalking KKT and is only too happy to oblige.

To say that Scream Queens is intentionally offensive in its particular brand of off-color humor, (“That obese specimen of human filth scrubbing bulimia vomit out of the carpet is Ms. Bean…I call her ‘white mammy’ because she’s essentially a house slave”), would be a gross understatement. And while horror spoofs of the Scary Movie ilk often do depend on jabs of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., Murphy and Falchuk never let us come up for air, marathoning misanthropic mockeries one after the other. In attempting to create the perfect Mean Girls meets Scream mix tape, Scream Queens mostly comes off as just plain old mean.

But if there is a silver lining here, it’s surely Curtis, playing the rebel-turned-administrator with a healthy dose of selfie realness, channeling her own aged Laurie Strode of Halloween: H20.

Andrew Owens (Boston College) studies horror, gender, and queer media.

*

Did you ever watch Glee and catch yourself thinking, “Man, I really wish someone would just murder these kids?” Well you’re in luck! From a verbal description, the new horror television show by Glee creator Ryan Murphy, sounds thematically more closely related to his more macabre fare like Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story. But it is in many ways more evocative of the high school musical (not to be confused with High School Musical). Scream Queens‘ one-dimensional characters are overacted to the extreme. Its color schemes, in both set and costume design, are similarly loud. Its cinematography is overly stylized, jumping from too-perfectly-composed symmetry to discomfitingly unbalanced deep-focus shots.

Many, if not all (I don’t recall any significant Toland-influenced deep focus shots in Glee), of these techniques seem directly descended from Glee – a show whose tireless, noisy, hoopla grew very tired very fast. Where Scream Queens departs from its predecessor is that the kind of nervous energy built up by overcaffeinated television finds highly satisfying, humorous release in horrific murders. Whereas most horror builds tension by playing on fear, it seems that Scream Queens is more intent on raising the audience’s blood pressure with well-crafted annoyance before releasing the tension in violence.

It’s a horror-comedy whose comedy aspects take a strong cue from Tim and Eric. And although it functions as a kind of televisual double-negative, it is quite fun.

Philip Scepanski (Vassar College) studies comedy, trauma, and television.

Rosewood (Premiered September 23 @ 8/7) trailer here

Morris Chestnut is the best pathologist in a city that television has told us needs a lot of them, Miami. Jaina Lee Ortiz is the Miami PD officer who must work with him to solve murders aplenty.

*

It wouldn’t be a new TV season without a disposable generic procedural crime drama. Rosewood fits the bill perfectly.

Beaumont Rosewood (Morris Chestnut) is a hyper-intelligent, hyper-smug, and hyper-smarmy private pathologist in Miami with a quick tongue, cool clothes, a cool car, and a ridiculously cool office (a high-tech crime lab somehow crossed with a trendy design firm in a gentrifying neighborhood). As usual in this genre, he’s surrounded by grumpy, ill-equipped detectives who resent yet accept his genius, and he has “issues” (in this case, a ridiculous raft of debilitating yet conveniently invisible medical conditions). The acting is safe, but enjoyable and solid enough, despite the creakingly well-worn plot and trimmings, and the production exploits its Miami location for predictable, yet edge-less spectacle (blue skies and waters, palm trees, beautiful bodies in swimwear, and latin dance music, but minus the ominous atmosphere of Miami Vice). Basically, we’ve seen this all a million times before.

The only significant, and refreshing, difference this time is that Rosewood is black, his reluctant crime-solving partner is Latina, and white characters are thankfully scarce. Fox and the producers deserve some credit for the multicultural casting and worldbuilding, but it’s sad that this is still exceptional enough to merit notice. Sadder yet is the wasted opportunity with this cast and the general premise. I believe there’s still creative mileage to be had in crime TV, particularly with characters we rarely see in lead roles otherwise. It’s just too bad that material that’s neither pitch-dark and opaque (like True Detective) nor light and predictably bland (like Rosewood) rarely gets a chance on American TV.

Derek Kompare (Southern Methodist University) is the author of Rerun Nation (2005), CSI (2010), and many articles on television form and history.

*

It’s easy to spot the things that Rosewood thinks make it stand out amidst the other shows focused on a cop teaming up with a consultant to solve murders: the cop is a widow (that’s one), returning to her Miami hometown (that’s two), who gets an unwanted partner-in-crime-solving in the form of a private pathology consultant (that’s three), and who treats his patients like mysteries because he himself is dying (that’s four).

None of these are remarkable: the widow and terminal illness stories come via heavy-handed exposition, the Miami setting is established through every trope imaginable (with the generic Latin music somehow managing to sound even more generic than it is on other shows), and the novelty of a private medical examiner is erased the moment you realize it just means the show is glamorizing private medical practice and the fancy technology for-profit doctors have access to. Rosewood has nothing to add to the genre it belongs to, no matter how many it times it reminds us of these low-impact points of distinction.

What it has is an African-American lead in Morris Chesnutt, and a progressive view on inclusion that includes a no-big-deal lesbian couple (Rosewood’s sister and his assistant), both of which are meaningful in theory but meaningless in practice. It’s no shock that Fox’s marketing has barely focused on anything but Chesnutt’s star presence, as this is an almost impressively empty shell of a pilot. It’s not necessarily hard to imagine a second episode of the show, but I can’t imagine anyone finding much impulse to do so.

Myles McNutt (Old Dominion Univerity) studies the media industries and wrote a dissertation chapter about TV representations about Miami and he still had almost nothing to say about this show.

Grandfathered (Premieres September 29 @ 8/7) trailer here

Uncle Jesse is now Grandpa Jesse. Ageless “Can Work With Kids” John Stamos plays a recently divorced bachelor, restauranteur, player who discovers he has a son … and a granddaughter. Josh Peck, Paget Brewster, and Christina Millian co-star in this single-cam family sitcom.

*

Grandfathered has the perfect kind of high concept—selfish lothario discovers within the series’ opening minutes that he is not only a father, but also a, well, you get it—for a broadcast network sitcom, but tonal clashes drag the pilot down. If the last decade of cable television has taught us anything, it’s that it’s certainly not impossible to build a comedy around an unlikable lead. Where Grandfathered gets it wrong, though, is how hard it works to redeem Stamos’ character Jimmy by the premiere’s end in the most transparent ways possible.

Take the show’s soundtrack, for instance, which cues viewers’ emotions with all the subtlety of Google’s “Parisian Love” ad. Jimmy spends the first two acts indulging in the kind of unfunny enlightened racism and misogyny that usually begets comeuppance of some kind. Instead, we get Jimmy rushing his granddaughter to the hospital to the tune of the opening piano riff of The National’s “Fake Empire,” then celebrating later with his ad hoc family to Jamie Lidell’s “Another Day.”

The supporting cast turn in fine performances but don’t come anywhere near anything resembling a punchline. It’s the John Stamos show, for better or worse. If Grandfathered is to survive its first season, it will need to take a cue from The Grinder, the kindred spirit sitcom that leads it out. If building your series around an aren’t-Gen-X-playboys-with-Peter-Pan-complexes-crazy kind of appeal, go easy on the pathos.

Nick Marx (Colorado State University) is co-editor of Saturday Night Live and American TV and is currently editing a reader on comedy studies.

*

Grandfathered is not a funny show, which is disappointing because I expect more from Danny Chun. Although it is pleasurable to watch John Stamos run down the street holding a baby in a tailored suit. Hashtag ladyporn. If you are wondering where washed up teen idols go to die, look no further than Grandfathered, as this show boasts the acting talents of both Josh Peck and Christina Milian. Or rather, their cheesy overacting makes Stamos and Paget Brewster look like John Gielgud and Judy Dench. The premise is contrived, but show me a situation comedy that isn’t, and in theory, I really like the prospect of making a man raising a child and trying to balance work and home life visible on television. At the climax of this episode, Stamos’ character Jimmy is babysitting while working at his trendy restaurant, and not only is it impossible for him to work, but the baby gets sick and he needs to take her to the hospital. This trope has been used countless times in film and TV to convey the post-feminist consequences of being a working mom, and so perhaps Grandfathered can do some of the cultural work of re-gendered parental labor … if it gets picked up, and there might be enough Full House nostalgia to make that happen. However, Grandfathered recuperates hegemonic masculinity by characterizing Jimmy as a successful and wealthy metrosexual bachelor. In fact, we viewers are meant to believe that Gerald only really decided to seek out his father so Jimmy could teach him how to be a ladies’ man. So I’m not sure that any gender constructs are really going to be subverted here. Or if any humor is actually going to occur.

Eleanor Patterson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) studies the cultural politics of post-network broadcasting.

The Grinder (Premieres September 29 @ 8.30/7.30) trailer here

Fred Savage and Rob Lowe are brothers and both lawyers, kind of. Savage is an actual lawyer, brilliant but a horrible speaker, while Lowe is coming off years as a beloved TV lawyer. Lowe comes to work with his brother, to provide the pizzazz. Lowe is in three new shows this year, but trailers suggest he’s having all sorts of fun in this one.

*

Fred Savage, where were they gone, your Wonder Years? No fear, Rob Lowe, aka-twice The Grinder, is here! And the grind does not rest until “Grinder rests.”

Packing in a punch with his appealing persona of thin-lipped, everyday-smart superiority, sweetened by his role as the perennially-sunny Pawnee city manager in Parks and Recreation, Lowe brings nuance and serenity to his misleadingly outlandish character Dean Sanderson’s desire to help his brother, Savage’s Stewart Sanderson, get his Boise, ID lawyer groove back. Savage, in turn, excels (maybe even more) as straight family man aptly cutting his TV star-brother lines of doubt and incredulity.

The two actors play off of these conflicts with enjoyable chemistry, thanks to a keep-story-points-simple four-act structure. I was snickering throughout the pilot, and hope future episodes retain the meta plus ‘en famille’ commentary. The Grinder, at its heart, promises to be a show about two brothers who haven’t yet mapped out the ways they care for each other, while also being sophisticatedly self-reflexive and toasting-marshmallows-at-academic-retreat critical. Accepting that domains of culture are unrelentingly bound up in each other, the writers furnish several chuckle-worthy sketches upfront:

• Celebrity intertwined with lawyering (Lowe: “Right now, all this case is about is apartments, rents. What it should be about is… character”; Savage: “Oh sure, acting on a TV show is the equivalent of going to law school!”)
• Childhood in the shadow of adulthood (Savage Jr.: “I’ve been really coming into my own lately, and I think he’s picking up on that.”)
• Entertainment inseparable from justice (Plaintiff: “I feel like I’m in a Grinder episode right now”; Sanderson Sr.: “I love watching a transformation!”)

So, by the time the climactic court scene rolls around, we know how to read into even minor characters, such as Rose Abdoo’s stern yet star-struck judge or Kumail Nanjiani’s incredulous prosecutor. All in all, recommended, and hoping for something less tired than a case-every-week approach (although, writers, please look to 30 Rock for pro-tips on how to name South Asian characters. #Leonard?!?!).

Ritesh Mehta is a recent PhD in Communication, and studies popular entertainment and production culture.

*

Fred Savage has mainly been working behind the camera over the last few years, directing episodes of Garfunkel & Oats, Two Broke Girls, Modern Family and others. But I am happy to see him on a network comedy again, especially one as clever as The Grinder (we can all forget about Working now, right?). This show’s self-reflexive meta-humor is tightly written and the entire cast is fantastic. Kumail Nanjiani has a cameo in the pilot, need I say more? And Rob Lowe and Savage seem to evoke the chemistry of a leading pair that has been acting together for a while. Lowe seems to be channeling his Chris Traeger performance here, aloof, vain, although perhaps more selfish and superficial. But it works well. And Savage’s nebbish note card reading beta-male is hilarious. If the show seems familiar, it is because I would argue that The Grinder’s witty dialogue and premise owe much to Arrested Development and 30 Rock’s legacy. Savage’s Stewart is our Liz Lemon/Michael Bluth sardonic straight man to Lowe’s Dean, whose mentoring of Stewart, blind confidence and witty comebacks are reminiscent of Jack Donaghy. Lowe also channels the Bluth clan with his oblivious arrogance and narcissism. Sometimes the hyperbolic dialogue is overdone and misses the mark. And, really, the men folk go fishing after a day in court? But my main complaint is that the female characters have no substance. Stewart’s wife only seems to have dialogue when she is sitting in the marital bed supporting her husband. Meanwhile, we only get to know Stewart’s daughter in her role as sexbait to help her younger brother’s social status. However, this show made me laugh, and on that evidence, The Grinder rests.

Eleanor Patterson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) studies the cultural politics of post-network broadcasting.

*

As a longtime fan of Castle, I’ll shamefully admit that I’m sometimes charmed by stories of charismatic people proving themselves inexplicably competent at jobs others have spent years training for. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the inherent problems in that setup, however – and that kind of recognition is what makes The Grinder such a delight. Rob Lowe’s character, Dean, is essentially Castle, a man whose experience with a particular fictional narrative (in this case, playing a lawyer on TV) leads him to believe he’s capable of performing that job in real life. The humor of the pilot largely stems from the ridiculous and inexplicable confidence both Dean and his fans have in his abilities, contrasted with the frustrated disbelief of Dean’s brother Stewart (Fred Savage), an actual lawyer. That parody plays to the strengths of both Lowe (drawing equally on his over-the-top Parks and Recreation character and an exaggeration of his 1980s heartthrob appeal) and Savage (who absolutely nails the sardonic, awkward, frustrated nebbish). Meanwhile, the show engages in an additional, and successful, layer of parody with scenes from Dean’s TV role as “The Grinder,” which are full of dramatic music cues, overwrought soliloquies to the jury, and other tropes of the legal procedural genre.

Beyond that, however, the show’s narrative successfully twists the Castle formula by presenting a more realistic account of the balance between charisma and knowledge. Ultimately, Dean’s acting experience does help his brother’s case, but it’s Stewart’s comprehensive knowledge of law that truly saves the day – and Dean’s attempts to study for the bar exam point to a recognition of the need for real training. I’m not sure where the show will go next – and it could very well fall into the traps it seeks to parody and overturn – but I’m cautiously optimistic.

Jennifer Margret Smith (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a PhD student with scholarly interests in the superhero comic book, production studies, and mediated representations of identity.

As the posts go up, we’ll add links to them here, should you wish for this page to be your gateway to all the reviews to ABC’s new shows, CBS’, The CW’s, FOX’s, NBC’s, and those on cable and at other venues.

In the meantime, we invite you to watch along with us. Towards that end, below are short descriptions (penned by our own inimitable Myles McNutt) of what’s coming your way, along with premiere times.

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Comic Book Drama

THE FLASH (The CW, Tues Oct 7 @ 8/7) – In this spinoff of Arrow, the DC Comics universe expands to Barry Gordon, who gains unexpected powers following a tragic explosion and wakes up with a new, motion-blurred view of the world, one that sheds light on tragic details from his childhood.

GOTHAM (FOX, Mon Sept 22 @ 8/7) – It’s a basic police corruption procedural starring Ben McKenzie and Donal Logue, but the city they’re patrolling will grow up to be Batman’s Gotham. In the meantime, your favorite caped crusader and his villain buddies—Penguin! Riddler! Catwoman! The gang’s all here!—are still living through what will eventually become their origin stories.

Crime Drama

FOREVER (ABC, Mon Sept 22 @ 10/9) – Ioan Gruffodd stars as an immortal medical examiner who knows death more intimately than anyone who’s alive, but whose inability to truly know the meaning of death continues to haunt him.

GRACEPOINT (FOX, Thurs Oct 2 @ 9/8) – If you haven’t seen Broadchurch, this tells the story of a Northern California town racked with tragedy following a young boy’s death, and the detectives and family members caught up in the pursuing investigation. For those who have seen Broadchurch, it’s an often shot-for-shot adaptation of that U.K. series, although they’re promising a different ending.

NCIS: NEW ORLEANS (CBS, Tues Sept 23 @ 9/8) – In this second spinoff from the highest-rated drama on television, and the first to be shot outside of Los Angeles, Scott Bakula stars as yet another specialist in Navy-related crimes, this time in the Big Easy: The Land of Mardi Gras and generous filming incentives.

SCORPION (CBS, Mon Sept 22 @ 9/8) – Based on a real-life genius who has done work with the government, it’s a high-octane—seriously, there’s a big car setpiece—procedural about a gang of anti-social geniuses who work alongside Homeland Security to solve high-tech problems while learning how to survive when life stops being high-tech and starts being real.

STALKER (CBS, Wed Oct 1 @ 10/9) – Maggie Q and Dylan McDermott star in this sensationalist drama from Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek, The Following), which focused on a stalking prevention unit of the LAPD where each member of the team has their own history—either as victim or perpetrator—with the crime in question.

Crime Dramedy

THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA (NBC, Wed Sept 17 @ 8/7) – Debra Messing stars in an hour-long comedy procedural about a mother of twin six-year old hellions who just also happens to be a great detective—the mystery is how she keeps it all together. Alternate title, per NPR’s Linda Holmes: MomCop, CopMom.

Family Drama

THE AFFAIR (Showtime, Sun Oct 12 @ 10/9) – Starring Dominic West and Ruth Wilson, it’s the story of an extramarital affair during a summer in Montauk, but told through a distinct structure that explores issues of class and gender intersecting with the affair itself.

KINGDOM (DirecTV, Wed Oct 8 @ 9/7) – A multi-generational family drama set in the world of Mixed Martial Arts, the series stars Frank Grillo as a the patriarch of a family on the wrong side of the law who work out their issues in and out of the ring in southern California.

Family Sitcom

BLACK-ISH (ABC, Wed Sept 24 @ 9:30/8:30) – Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis-Ross, and Laurence Fishburne star in this exploration of how race and identity are understood in the context of a 21^st century, upper middle class, multi-generational African American household. If this description made even the faint image of the word “Cosby” form in your brain, ABC has won.

CRISTELA (ABC, Fri Oct 10 @ 8:30/7:30) – A multi-camera family sitcom from Cristela Alonzo, the series focuses on a young law student struggling to get her life started, and her multi-generational Latin American Texas family whose love doesn’t always offer the kind of support she’s hoping for.

Family Dramedy

JANE THE VIRGIN (The CW, Mon Oct 13 @ 9/8) – What would happen if a twenty-something virgin was accidentally artificially inseminated? And what would happen if the sperm involved was attached to an absurdly contrived set of circumstances that create legitimate tension over whether or not the pregnancy should be terminated? Jane the Virgin is here to tell this story.

TRANSPARENT (Amazon, available Fri Sept 26) – The Jill Soloway-created family comedy focuses on Maura (Jeffrey Tambor), a transgendered patriarch beginning his transition from a man to a woman while his children confront their own identity crises and their changing relationship with their father.

Horror

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: FREAK SHOW (FX, Wed Oct 8 @ 10/9) – Pushing further into people’s most-common nightmares, Ryan Murphy and his collaborators return to explore the clown-riddled terror of the freak show in the series’ fourth installment of its seasonal anthology model.

Hospital Drama

RED BAND SOCIETY (FOX, Wed Sept 17 @ 9/8) – Octavia Spencer leads an ensemble cast of those who live and work in an extended youth hospital wing, where the diagnosis is hormones, pathos, and self-discovery as chronic illness mixes with adolescence.

Legal Comedy

BAD JUDGE (NBC, Thurs Oct 2 @ 9/8) Kate Walsh stars as a party-loving judge who lives the contradiction of being bad at living a healthy life but great at punishing those who break the law—I would tell you more, but it’s on its third showrunner, so other than this your guess is as good as anyone’s.

Legal Drama

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER (ABC, Thurs Sept 25 @ 10/9) – Viola Davis stars in the latest Shonda Rhimes-produced series, this one focused on a first year law school class that doubles as an internship competition for a prestigious law firm, and which may or may not have students exploring the series’ title by the time they earn their credits.

Other Sitcom

MULANEY (FOX, Sun Oct 5 @ 9:30/8:30) – Based on the standup of star/producer John Mulaney, it’s a throwback multi-camera sitcom about a comedy writer working for a difficult boss (Martin Short) and living life with his roommates.

Political Drama

MADAM SECRETARY (CBS, Sun Sept 21 @ 8/7) – Tea Leoni stars as a CIA Analyst turned university professor who’s called into service following the tragic death of the previous Secretary of State.

Reality

UTOPIA (FOX, already started) – What happens when Fox sends 15 strangers to live on their own without rules? What kind of society will they form? What kind of lives will they lead? What role with religion or government play? And will anyone actually be interested in the answers to these questions? Only time will tell.

Romantic Comedy

A To Z (NBC, Thurs Oct 2 @ 9:30/8:30) – Ben Feldman and Cristin Miloti play a couple who unexpectedly stumble into a relationship that might well be the product of fate, which the series’ frame narrative reveals may be more complicated than its alphabetical title would suggest.

MANHATTAN LOVE STORY (ABC, Tues Sept 30 @ 8:30/7:30) – The story of two young and attractive New Yorkers whose relationship gets off to a rough start, the show works to differentiate itself by having two internal voiceovers from both male and female leads. The results will surprise you (if you’re surprised by essentialist depictions of gender, which seems unlikely).

MARRY ME (NBC, Tues Oct 14 @ 9/8) – Happy Endings creator David Caspe returns with another irreverent comedy, this one focused on a couple (Casey Wilson, Ken Marino) whose delayed engagement creates tension between them and their friends and family following a proposal mishap.

SELFIE (ABC, Tues Sept 30 @ 8/7) – Karen Gillan and John Cho star in this social media-age Pygmalion riff, as Eliza must detox from her Instagrammed existence to confront her sense of identity with the help of an uptight but successful Henry.

Teen Dramedy

HAPPYLAND (MTV, Tues Sept 30 @ 11/10) – Set in a low rent Disneyland-style theme park, it follows a young woman who grew up in the park with her employee mother whose own time working at the park brings laughs, romance, and an episode-ending revelation that may or may not involve a Les Cousins Dangereux-esque situation.

Now television, struggling in the era of multiple platform viewing and increased time-shifting, is turning to the clay feet of the musical for a wallop of financial and “special event” adrenaline. After 18 million Americans (hate) watched NBC’s live airing of The Sound of Music, it took less than five months for both NBC and Fox to announce their upcoming live musical projects, Peter Pan and Grease respectively. Of course this practice of airing live musicals has precedent. The New York-based 1950s live television era was bejeweled with live musical events. NBC’s 1955 airing of Peter Pan with Mary Martin garnered 64 million viewers. (Take that Carrie Underwood!) For the first time, television was bringing Middle America (and everyone else) the elusive sights and sounds of Broadway.

Today, the networks are struggling to find some way—other than awards shows—to draw a 21^st century, distracted, i-device obsessed audience to their living rooms. The ratings success of The Sound of Music seems to have been just the encouragement needed to reproduce the tele-theatrical disaster that was Underwood’s performance. The selection of Grease by Fox seems to ignore a string of warning signs.

(1) As was the case with The Sound of Music, Grease is an iconic text. Just as most Americans can only imagine Julie Andrews descending the Alps, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are Grease to most. As many of the press announcements note, Grease is the highest grossing movie musical of all time. Casting is going to be a bear. (2) The Broadway version—even the latest incarnation that hybridized the Broadway and film versions—is not the 1978 Paramount film. The energy is different. The songs are different. This means something when one is trying to capitalize on an audience’s existing emotional attachment to a property. It is nearly impossible to deliver on such a promise when millions are saddled with memories of specific choreography, inflections, phrasing, etc. Overcoming this is no easy feat. (3) Television viewers have already chimed in on Grease and they did not emit a rousing “we go together.” NBC’s 2006 reality show Grease: You’re the One That I Want served as a televised audition for the 2007 Broadway revival’s Danny and Sandy and ranked 75^th in annual Nielsens, garnering about a quarter the number of American Idol’s “hopelessly devoted” viewers. Fox’s Glee also took a shot at the musical with its own “Glease,” one of the lowest rated episodes of its drooping fourth season. (And let’s not even get started on Smash.)

As a devoted fan and scholar of the musical, I always try to root for the genre’s triumph over the jaded sensibilities of contemporary audiences, producers, and ticket buyers. (Although the lasting wounds from viewing 7^th Heaven’s musical episode may never heal.) That said, I often find myself disappointed by the nasty effects a network’s or producer’s hope for commercial appeal has on the musical product itself. Although Paramount TV President Amy Powell sounds like a latter day Sylvester “Pat” Weaver (NBC 1950’s head of programming/chairman of the board and cheerleader for the “spectacular”) as she states, “Fox’s passion for engaging audiences with bold storytelling and live musical formats make it a perfect home for this special broadcast,” perhaps NBC’s current chairman Bob Greenblatt was a bit more honest and on point in his response to the Sound of Music, “We own it so we can repeat it every year for the next 10 years…Even if it does just a small fraction of what it did, it’s free to repeat it.” Who knows, maybe this new trend will catch fire and save the networks and produce a whole new generation of musical fans, or just maybe we’ll all get a real treat and Stockard Channing—high on Good Wife street cred—will reprise her role of Rizzo, only slightly more age inappropriate now than in 1978.

Almost Human [Premiered 11/17/2013]

Karl Urban stars as John Kennex, a no-nonsense cop in a future where every cop is paired with an android partner. Re-entering the force after a personal tragedy, he’s paired with Dorian (Michael Ealy), a rejected android model whose emotional capacities are heightened. They form an uneasy partnership to confront a corrupt world, one case at a time.

Kit Hughes [University of Wisconsin-Madison]

This is a show that wants its viewers to ask, “ah, but which one of them is ‘almost human’?”

I have other questions.

1. Why should we care about anything in this future, which seems to be populated only by abusive cops, robots with weird cheekbones, and crime/“the syndicate”?
   1. Is it because there are allegedly some good noodles places and that one pale, creepy science guy who’s in every procedural (you know, to shore up the masculinity of the protagonist) still listens to Depeche Mode?
   2. How do we distinguish allusion from cliché writing?
      1. Fake epithets (“synthetics”) and underground medicine (“Recollectionists”); seriously?
      2. Is AH’s characterization of its villains lazier for ripping off the masks in V for Vendetta or for simply calling them “the syndicate”?
      3. Why can’t people leave Blade Runner alone?
      4. Could this show actually have something interesting to say about the monstrosity of bureaucratic records-keeping systems, data collection, and the politics of access?
         1. Could it move past its gleeful focus on surveillance?
         2. Why was their evidence locker so bright? Doesn’t the future care about preservation storage conditions?
         3. Will any show ever recapture the delightful chemistry of Perfect Strangers?

Jenna Stoeber [University of Wisconsin-Madison]

A set up so classic it seems like something from a satire; technology/crime/drugs are out of control. John (Karl Urban), a renegade human police officer with a mysteriously disappeared ex-girlfriend, memory problems, a pill addiction, and a synthetic leg, loses his partner in a tragic-heroic accident. The majority of the episode takes place post-recovery, when he is partnered up with Dorian (Michael Ealy), an emotional, buggy android. The set-up is a classic buddy-cop odd-couple formula.

Like much cyberpunk media, it features a vaguely pan-Asian design-skin that looks like it was ripped from Blade Runner. The morality and characters are pure I, Robot, and there’s even a dash of the Saw franchise mixed in for flavor; The whole episode has a cinematic feel to it, perhaps due to the high production value and well executed design. And yet, there’s something distinctly uncomfortable with watching Urban rampage through the episode, alternatively harassing and assaulting people, and being generally unbearably unpleasant. I suppose his aggressive interactions with Ealy are meant to be read as social commentary, but lack the follow through to be anything other than bizarrely offensive. Luckily, after roughly 20 minutes of being partners, they bond over synthetic body parts, and, gee, discrimination is solved!

Brooklyn Nine-Nine [Premiere 09/17/2013]

A workplace comedy that happens to be set at a police station, Andy Samberg stars as a typically immature—for Samberg—detective, Jake Peralta, whose ecosystem is threatened by the presence of new chief Ray Holt, played by Andre Braugher. Surrounded by supporting players not dissimilar to those found on co-creator Mike Schur’s Parks and Recreation, including Melissa Fumero’s eager detective who looks to Holt as a mentor figure, the two cops must balance their respective career goals with the new comic situation in front of them.

Alyx Vesey [University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine brings law enforcement back to the workplace sitcom. But it’s also a comment on the buddy cop genre. Molly Eichel signposted the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” video. I’d add The Heat, which referenced Lethal Weapon to foreground women’s professional friendships. This parallels Andy Samberg’s roast of James Franco, which mocked the “tradition” of capitulating to racist, sexist, and homophobic insult humor. Jake Peralta riffs on an archetype, trading Martin Riggs’ self-destruction for arrested development.

What is most promising about the pilot’s commentary on heteromasculinity is its pervasiveness. Take Andre Braugher’s authoritative performance as Ray Holt, precinct 99’s new no-nonsense commanding officer. Toward the end of the pilot, Holt reveals that it took so long to become captain because the NYPD was uncomfortable with his homosexuality. I like Melissa Fumero as Detective Amy Santiago, a focused, unsentimental woman who won’t back down from a challenge, even if she’s dousing sandwiches in hot sauce. I appreciated the wink to Cagney and Lacey, after whom Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) named his daughters. I’m also intrigued by the tentative connection between detective Rose Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), detective Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio) and administrator Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti), as I’d like to see gifted physical comedian Lo Truglio (the muffin scene!) play romance.

Some jokes rubbed me the wrong way. Peralta and Santiago compete to see who can arrest more people because filtering citizens through the prison industrial complex is hilarious? The Disco Strangler brandished a yo-yo, ha? But the runner of older women going about their day while the team nabs criminals tickled me. I’ll take another coffee break with this crew.

Evan Elkins [University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Newsradio remains the gold standard against which I judge all ensemble television comedies. This is patently unfair, but it’s how my brain works. To my mind, the flawless cast (yes, even Joe Rogan. But seriously, take another look at that Newsradio cast) and ingenious, multi-cam-meets-Jacques-Tati staging still haven’t been matched. There are other contenders, some of which can be traced back through the lineage of Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-creator Michael Schur, but it’s Newsradio that, above all others, shows me the heights that the ensemble comedy genre can reach.

One episode in, Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t wither under my harsh, Newsradio-comparing gaze as much as most programs do. In fact, it might be the funniest cop-comedy pilot since Poochinski. While it’s nothing special formally—it sticks to a now-familiar, unremarkable single-cam format, in part to half-heartedly invoke the look of a cop drama when it needs to—the cast is pretty terrific. In particular, I’m always happy to encounter Jo Lo Truglio, who can play a middle-aged sad sack better than anyone at this point (though I imagine his character’s quirks will be significantly less weird than they wound up being in the second season of Burning Love.)

Anyway, once it finds its footing—and it’s already quite a bit further along than most comedy pilots—it could contribute to a pretty solid Fox Tuesday night lineup. Just pretend Dads doesn’t exist.

Jennifer Smith [Independent Scholar]

“The only puzzle he hasn’t solved is how to grow up.” This description of protagonist Jake Peralta (at the conclusion of an awkwardly expository list of character summaries delivered by the squad’s captain early in the pilot) perfectly summarizes the central problem with Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Andy Samberg’s man-child persona. In a cast as diverse as this one, the central focus on one of the only straight white men – and a petulant, obnoxious one at that – is disappointing, if sadly unsurprising.

Creator Michael Schur’s Parks and Recreation works so well because Leslie Knope, overwhelming as she may sometimes be, is both inherently likable and unique in the current television landscape. But here, in a world (a police precinct) where the stakes are high and the supporting cast is full of complex, interesting individuals, the focus rests on the same irritating, immature, sexually-harassing schlub found at the center of any Chuck Lorre sitcom.

I’d love to keep watching for the sake of the other characters, especially the brilliant Andre Braugher’s older, gay, black police captain (the polar opposite of a stock character). But unless Peralta quickly solves the aforementioned puzzle, I’m not sure how long I can stick around.

Anne Gilbert [Rutgers University]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a lot going for it from the start – the writers crib effectively from police procedurals to shorthand all the crime solving, the cast has an easy sense of camaraderie, and Andre Braugher’s knowing, poker-faced delivery is comedy gold. But before I can get on board, the show needs to get to know its tone; the pilot is balancing in a no man’s land between “quirky” and “downright absurd.”

There will be inevitable comparisons to Scrubs, which juggled a similar serious content/wacky delivery approach, but Brooklyn Nine-Nine hasn’t yet made the commitment to a similar level of weird. Instead, it has a pervasive wry and offbeat tone that genuinely works, but gets thrown off-kilter with, for instance, the flashback of the Disco Strangler going after a victim with a blinking yo-yo, or Samberg’s Detective Peralta sporting a garish Speedo swimsuit in an attempt to prove a point – or, honestly, every attempt to tell me, again and again, that Peralta is actually meant to be a good detective.

As of now, it’s a fun show that, if it is able to find its feet and develop its characters, could eventually be really funny.

~ ~ ~

Sleepy Hollow [Premiered 09/16/2013]

A time-traveling Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) wakes up in modern day Sleepy Hollow to discover his nemesis the Headless Horseman is still wreaking havoc; he also informs the Sheriff’s deputy who discovers him (Nicole Beharie) that the Headless Horseman is actually one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death. Death also has a machine gun. And he wants his head back. Thus begins a journey into a mythology rife with presidential bibles, witches, and fated connections between an odd-couple male/female pairing from the minds of Phillip Iscove and producers Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and director Len Wiseman.

William Proctor [University of Sunderland]

The synopsis of Sleepy Hollow sounds deliciously absurd: take the principle character of the Washington Irving novel, Ichabod Crane, and his nemesis, the Headless Horseman, throw in a dose of temporal mayhem and, like other contemporary myth translations, bring it kicking and screaming – and slicing – into the 21^st century. The pilot episode begins to develop the show’s mythos and world-building with economy and panache. There is plenty of potential here and, despite the derivative nature of the narrative – it could be a season-long arc of Supernatural, for instance – the chemistry between protagonists Ichabod and his cop side-kick is satisfying enough to warrant interest. One gets the feeling that the writers have their tongue firmly rooted in their cheek and set out to have fun. Clancy Brown, who played the Kurgan in 1980s cult classic Highlander with demonic delight, provides a cameo and is summarily decapitated early in the episode – the irony of which will not be lost on avid connoisseurs of pop culture and fans of Highlander (remember the tag-line and accompanying Queen song? ‘Don’t lose your head’). Some of the humour is in bad taste (asking a black police officer if she is ‘emancipated from slavery’ misses the mark somewhat), but the overall tone of the show is breezy and full of joie de vivre, a palliative to the sombre atmosphere of this post-Dark Knight world.

Taylor Cole Miller [University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Last week before class, I showed my students some trailers for fall premieres, among them FOX’s Sleepy Hollow. While I introduced the title, a few scooted up in their seats, excitedly anticipating what might’ve been Downton Abbey meets American Horror Story–a period scare-piece to relish in the ever-earlier, ever-colder Wisconsin darkness. After a few scenes, though, most lost interest, preferring instead to relish their last few minutes of cellular freedom. If a 1790s Sleepy Hollow was too boring for Hollywood, a 2013 “modern-day retelling” with guns was too boring for them–and for me, too.

I hesitate to be so cynical, especially because Sleepy Hollow is really more like the homely lovechild of two very capable parents: The X Files and Hocus Pocus. Perhaps I’d be quick to forgive, then, because I really want to love it. But the pilot is burdened by the weight of a new mythology that it data-dumps on us while confronting its ancient protagonist with his “enlightened” racism (“Nay, I do not support slavery!”), baffling technology, a gun-wielding redcoat, and a George-Washington Jesus.

But ultimately, I AM pessimistic. The pilot isn’t even fully invested in itself–the humor is as tentative as the horror. I’ll be unlikely to follow Sleepy Hollow as it stomps around searching for purpose–sometimes for humor, sometimes for pity–not all together unlike its infamous headless horseman himself.

C. Lee Harrington [Miami University]

Me likey! With “Sympathy for the Devil” and two beheadings in the first ten minutes, count me in. I don’t remember enough about the original story to be bothered by inconsistencies so this was pure fun: respectable acting, nice atmospheric touches, acceptable evocation of the supernatural (excepting the horse’s eyes, whaaat?), packed full of backstory, a bit of humor, and pretty much what a premiere should be.

I didn’t much go for the romantic subtext between Abby and Ichabod given everything the characters had gone through but I understand the point from a production perspective. And I didn’t much go for Ichabod’s ease with finding himself in the 21^st century: he never asks what year it is, is more bemused over a car’s power windows than freaked out that something like cars even exist, and finds the trappings of mass commercial culture only mildly interesting.

The premiere sets up interesting questions for the series as a whole: What does Andy know and how does he know it? For that matter, what did George Washington know and how did he know it? Who all is part of the coven? What’s with that bird?  I’ll definitely watch next week.

Jenna Stoeber (University of Wisconsin – Madison)

The series premiere of Sleepy Hollow starts out with a rough recounting of Washington Irving’s famous story; it has to start this way, otherwise the audience would spend the rest of the episode struggling to connect the premise of the show with the legend. The plot seems to be taking a something-for-everyone approach, offering up magic, historical fantasy, biblical prophecy, hints of an Illuminati conspiracy theory, and a guest appearance by George Washington. However, this is a minor complaint. Aside from the scattershot of plot threads and the heaps of exposition, very little about the episode feels like a premiere – in a good way. The story doesn’t dwell on the mundane aspects of the urban fantasy genre, namely the laborious magic-is-real coping that often drags down such shows. The writing is clever and entertaining, and the plot moves along at a brisk pace. Nicole Beharie, playing lieutenant Abbie Mills, performs her role like she’s been doing it for years, and the interactions between her and Tom Mison, playing Ichabod Crane, are captivating. The episode wasn’t without cheesiness – the image of the headless horseman with a bandolier and a shotgun is certainly a wake-up call – but the absurdity is grounded in Beharie’s exceptional performance. I look forward to seeing which plot threads they pick up in next week’s episode.

MasterChef Junior [Premiered 09/27/2013]

In this spinoff, Chef Gordon Ramsay invites us to remember American Juniors with a pint-size take on his successful MasterChef series, toning down the vindictive to walk talented young chefs through the competition.

R. Colin Tait [Texas Christian University]

With Friday’s release of his sixth show for the FOX network, super-chef Gordon Ramsay scores a homerun with the junior version of MasterChef. By tweaking the formula so that restaurateur Joe Bastianich and celebrity chef Gordon Eliot can praise, rather than cut down, the contestants, the creative team has created a rarity on TV – a reality show that concentrates on celebrating and supporting its competitors, rather than berating them for their lack of talent. Of course, it helps that these contestants are adorable and precocious children.

By focusing on children rather than adults, the show stacks the equation for audiences too, making it nearly impossible not to root for them, especially when they collapse into tears of joy or sadness, as they often do. These would-be chefs also bring out the soft side in the normally abrasive hosts, who are not only on their best behavior here, but whose personas actually seem charming in comparison to the adult version of the show. This is especially true of Ramsay and co-host Bastianich, whose sunny dispositions are a welcome change.

My only complaint is that these would-be-amateurs seem to come exclusively from society’s upper crust and come complete with refined palettes of the cultural elite. But, otherwise, this show is guaranteed to please parents and their children alike.

Karen Petruska [University of California – Santa Barbara]

The main reasons to watch MasterChef—both the grown-up version and the new tiny human spinoff featuring kids 8-13 years old—are the charming and charismatic chef judges (fathers all), from Gordon Ramsay of Hell’s Kitchen fame, Graham Elliot as the “nice” judge, and my personal favorite culinary crush, Joe Bastianich, know for his steely stare and for smelling food before tasting it. While this version of the program sticks closely to the tested formula established by the adult version, the series nevertheless continues to find success in mining for food-oriented tension. It also features some pretty cute kids who reveal a remarkable level of self-possession and self-confidence.

They prepare dishes from French macaroons to homemade pasta, and the judges agree that every single dish is very good, even though a few kids receive gentle critiques about dry shortcake or overcooked pasta. Ramsay is best known for his cursing, but what he really does well (especially on Hell’s Kitchen) is teach. So far it seems we won’t get contestant cattiness, always an element of the adult version, but I will be interested to see if the kids form friendships and if the program lets us see them suffer inevitable disappointment (their parents, off on the sidelines, never speak but are there to offer a hug for those who do not advance). If the program maintains its current tone of constant, consistent inspiration for the love of food, it is something I’d encourage my own nieces to watch. Maybe they’ll be inspired, too.

1) Rupert Murdoch has had an eventful few weeks following the announcement of his divorce. First the good news, as the splitting of News Corp. into publishing and entertainment arms has led to big business for the newly named 21st Century Fox, which will hold onto the film and television studios as well as their cable channels. The immediate result was 21st Century Fox getting one of the highest valuations over Disney and Viacom with a growth in shares over 2%.

2) Now for Murdoch’s bad news, as reports this past week allege Murdoch was caught on a secret audio recording admitting to bribery of police officials, stemming from the investigations into News Corp. tabloids hacking into phones in Britain. Murdoch belittles police and the hacking inquiry, while giving support to his staff for their known behaviors. Scotland Yard has already requested access to the tapes, while Parliament member and Labour Party politician Chris Bryant has requested the FBI take action and press corporate corruption charges against News Corp.

3) Major shake-ups in Warner Bros. executive management structure, starting with the ousting of Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov.   Rather than simply replace Robinov, Warner Bros. instead has created a new three-person team to lead the division, made up of Greg Silverman, Sue Kroll, and Toby Emmerich, all promoted from within. However, the three will all be reporting directly to Warner CEO Kevin Tsujihara, giving him more direct power over the film studio, in addition to his increased control of the television side.

4) Sticking with Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures is officially no longer tied to Warner, with talks ending and Legendary’s Thomas Tullmoving onto talks with others studios, such as Fox and NBCUniversal, with the latter seeming the most promising.

5) One more story for Warner Bros., as the studio has clashed with The Weinstein Co. over the title of TWC’s upcoming film “The Butler.” Warner won an arbitration over the title after asserting their rights to the title due to a 1916 comedy short of the same name (Of course!). TWC’s attorney David Boies plans to appeal and possibly file a lawsuit challenging the MPAA’s ruling, citing the claim of a confusion over the films as having “no plausible basis.” Warner Bros. responded, citing past TWC “rules violations.” This should move fast, as the film (Whatever it will be named) is currently scheduled for an August 16 release in the U.S.

6) Jim Carrey has come out against the violence in “Kick-Ass 2,” the upcoming sequel that Carrey himself co-stars in and features heavy violence involving an 11-year hold vigilante. A tweet referencing Sandy Hook had Carrey saying he couldn’t support the level of violence in the film. Executive producer and original comic writer Mark Millar responded with surprise, noting how Carrey approached them about appearing in the sequel after enjoying the original.

7) The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy Awards folks) has extended an invitation to 276 film professionals to join the Academy, an unusually large number. The list of names is markedly younger than in years past, as well as more diverse with several invitations to Latinos and an expansion of the documentary branch.

8) Just months after he helped reveal the XBox One, Microsoft’s president of Interactive Entertainment Business Don Mattrick has left the company to become CEO of social gaming giant Zynga, best known for Facebook games like Farmville. Mattrick was lured away with a compensation package from Zynga of over $50 million in cash and stock.

9) Two of the largest book publishers in the world have merged, with the newly formed Penguin-Random House becoming the undisputed king in publishing and a possible competition to Amazon. Penguin-Random House now controls about 30% of trade book sales.

10) Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail will not have its official retail release until tomorrow, but after partnering with Samsung that saw the company purchase one million copies for its smartphone and tablet users to download via a free app, the album will likely be certified platinum immediately upon its release. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) changed their rules for certification to allow those pre-release digital sales to Samsung to count towards its total immediately, rather than waiting the normal 30 days for digital sales. Billboard, however, will not count the one million Samsung sales towards its total for ranking on its Billboard 200 chart. So… we may never know if Jay-Z’s new record is actually popular.

The Following is a new Fox show starring Kevin Bacon as the rugged white law enforcement dude—traumatized, retired, and all but broken–who is pulled back into his old world when asked to consult, because he is simply the best and the FBI desperately need him to catch the bad guy. The bad guy, played by James Purefoy, is a charismatic psychopathic killer who was bested by Bacon once and clearly can only be caught again by him. The setup sounds and feels like a thousand film premises and not a few TV shows we’ve already seen. In fact, watching the pilot, I had to check my watch, because it felt like an entire movie’s worth of plot was crammed into those 45 minutes, starting with Purefoy’s dramatic escape and ending with his capture and the final showdown of the two antagonists.

But this wasn’t a closed story as much as the beginning of a television show, and the final dialog tells us exactly what this show will be about. Purefoy’s character, incidentally, is an English professor (Poe aficionado, though, frankly, I’ve always felt Poe’s a bit like the USian version of Conan Doyle: literature that has captured the imagination of many yet is studied very little beyond secondary school), whose obsession tips over into a ritualistic killing spree with obligatory literary references. And Bacon’s hero himself has penned a bestseller: at the beginning of the show, he captured the bad guy, saved the damsel-in-distress, got almost killed doing so, fucked the professor’s wife, and wrote a book about it.

And yet it still came as a surprise to me when the show explicitly spelled out how it was to be structured. Purefoy reveals to Bacon in a climactic prison confrontation that he has built a cult of followers who will commit murders at his behest, crimes that he expects Bacon to solve. His first literary novel was a flop, but he has learned from that failure, and the formerly lonely artist plans to collaborate with an unwilling Bacon: “I need a strong protagonist, one in whom the reader can truly invest, a flawed broken man, searching for redemption. And that is *you*! You are my flawed hero.”

The show thus literally spells out the very tropes it plan to use, letting us in on its postmodern joke where the plotting criminal is aware that he is creating a literary plot as well (Moriarty, of course, did just that in BBC’s Sherlock, but neither Sherlock nor the audience were aware of that throughout the course of the first season). This move changes what seems to be a fairly generic show into something more interesting. The show is pretty much psychopathic crimes and the dude who solves them by numbers: drunk traumatized white dude, who’s the only one with real insight, female character for whom we just care enough to make it hurt when she gets fridged, a contingent of less-competent FBI agents, and the love interest to both antagonists: former wife of the evil killer and short-term lover of Kevin Bacon.

So far so good. But then there’s the mad professor, who directs his network of “followers” like puppets from his prison cell. When he and Bacon face off in prison, he all but drafts the entire series as a story of which he is in charge and in which Bacon stars as the lead. Or, maybe, he is writer, director, producer, and main character all rolled into one in this real-life drama that he knows will capture an audience. He’s playing to the crowd of appalled yet pruriently curious spectators. Or, stated differently, by pitching his plot (in both senses of the word!) to Bacon, he counts on the public’s desire for gruesome stories and makes Bacon his victim and co-perpetrator. However, whereas within the show this audience includes everyone who read Bacon’s book, everyone who followed the news of the villain’s escape and consequent recapture, everyone who gets a guilty thrill when reading the details of the murders, outside of the show it is *us*, the television audience, whom he is targeting. This is the show’s ultimate sales pitch, and it is geared straight at us. Without an audience, Purefoy suggests, there wouldn’t be any crimes, and as the ultimate audience for whom the spectacle of bloodshed is executed, we are all but put in the place of perpetrator as spectators.

Of course, I am well aware that no actual people were harmed in the making of this show. And I’m not trying to suggest a facile conflation of reality and fiction. I do suggest, however, that this direct pitch at us and our desire for ever more bloody murders, ever more outrageous scenarios, ever more insane psychopaths, addresses how and why we crave excessive and extreme narratives—whether in reality or fiction. Purefoy very clearly uses fiction as a model for reality and then wants his reality turned back into fiction, challenging the clarity of that border within the text at the same time as the setup makes us question the structural relationship between the two.

In fact, the way the show implicates the viewers, both within the narrative and without, reminds me of the concerns I have when viewing disaster reports, where the very act of reporting the news makes the audience potentially partial perpetrators by gaining something out of listening to the suffering. The public within the show is an audience for Bacon’s potential second book, which Purefoy is in the process of drafting. And we as the outside audience are reminded quite uncomfortably what it actually is we get out of both fictional and real crime stories in gory detail. Why do we want (need?) to hear the recounting of anyone’s horrific experiences? Are we witnessing or merely spectating? And at what point does the audience become culpable?

The Mob Doctor (Premiered 09/17/2012)

As a surgical resident, Grace Devlin (Jordana Spiro) has to live up to the expectations of her direct superiors, her patients, and their families, in addition to balancing the rest of her life (which includes dating Matt Saracen M.D.). Unlike most television doctors, though, the rest of her life also involves a debt to the mob, and the show promises to follow her struggle to use her doctoring skills to save the lives of her patients, her brother, and herself. [Myles McNutt]

Myles McNutt – University of Wisconsin-Madison

It’s easy to armchair develop The Mob Doctor after it debuted to disastrous ratings, vaulting to the front of the line in terms of “Shows Destined to be Cancelled” to the point that we’re already discussing its replacement.  I discussed its low ratings with my students, and I learned two things: that its title welcomes a certain degree of ridicule in and of itself, and that almost none of my students seemed to know it existed.

Perhaps that’s because it’s not exactly clear whom this show is for. The medical procedural element seems undercooked, while the mob element is more interesting but enters the story at the wrong point. Rather than showing us what Grace’s brother did to get in trouble with the mafia, giving us the connection necessary to care about his fate and invested in Grace’s decision, we join her arrangement in media res. While the arrangement is “new” by the end of the episode, with Grace’s debt passed on from the deceased Moretti, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t need to see the beginning.

Lone Star, the last FOX series to debut to such low ratings (although with a stronger lead-in), had the same problem. The idea of a man living a double life may be a compelling structure for a series, but people won’t care about—and may in fact actively avoid—the show if they don’t understand why he made this decision. Capturing Grace’s turning point with the mafia—with her arrangement evolving from screwdrivers in the head to murdering a key prosecution witness on the operating table—may offer a more suspenseful narrative “event” for a pilot, but it doesn’t offer the development necessary to make me invested in any of the characters or the larger situation.

You can see the show laying the groundwork for serial mysteries, and the cast has a number of actors—Spiro, Zach Gilford, Zjelko Ivanek—that I feel are good here. It’s hard to talk potential, though, in light of the show’s imminent cancellation; I guess that’s the peril of joining a ratings narrative already in progress.

The Mindy Project (Premiered 09/25/2012)

The Mindy Project finds series creator/star Mindy Kaling in the world of medicine as she plays a “quirky” OB/GYN with a penchant for romantic comedies. While she attempts to find the ‘perfect man,’ she may just overlook plenty of connections with her hot-headed (and hot-bodied) co-worker (Chris Messina). [Drew Zolides]

Linde Murugan – Northwestern University

Despite her successful career as an OB/GYN, Mindy Lahiri is a bit of a mess. Rather than being bitter and single, though, she aims to get her life together by battling her penchants for casual sex and fantasies of ‘90s Meg Ryan.

Notably, this show is one of few network programs created by and starring a woman of color, the only precedents being Margaret Cho’s All American Girl and Wanda Sykes’s Wanda At Large. It is also one of the few recent comedies that star a woman of color as a leading character. Wanda at Large, Whoopi, and Ugly Betty are the only to do so since 2000, at least of the offerings by the four major broadcast networks. Yet, within this context, there is a complete absence of people of color in the supporting cast. Hopefully this changes as the season progresses, as it seems a little unbelievable that no co-worker, close friend, or love interest involved with Mindy would be of color.

Still, Kaling holds her own with a deadpan delivery and biting comebacks that convey a woman who is smart, sexy, wry, successful, and confident, if even a little frustrated and vulnerable at times. Like other ‘working girl’ shows, from That Girl to Ugly Betty, pleasure is found in watching the various costume changes. Though the lighting design downplays whatever medical seriousness the show could claim, the warm glows work to highlight Mindy’s dark brown skin as opposed to ‘whitewashing’ it out. This is quite refreshing, given the politics of shadism within the US but also in South Asia and throughout its diaspora.

In the absence of any explicit racial politics then, The Mindy Project offers us to imagine what Bridget Jones’s Diary would be like with a self-described “chubby” South Asian-American woman in the lead. Does it dismantle romantic comedies’ unproblematized championing of heteronormativity? No. In fact, every character is straight and cisgender, something that will also hopefully change. Yet, if this show means stylish outfits on a woman who I can actually relate to and looks like me and hearing M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls,” well, I can get behind that­­—at least enough to tune in to more episodes. Perhaps that sounds like shallow identity politics, but considering how the resurgence of young women on television has been wholly white (i.e. Girls, 2 Broke Girls, New Girl, Whitney), The Mindy Project is a welcome indulgence.

Liz Ellcessor – Indiana University

With the departure of The Office‘s Kelly Kapoor for Miami University (in Ohio), writer-producer-actress Mindy Kaling turns full time to her own sitcom. Developed for NBC, rejected, and then picked up and produced for FOX, the titular project would seem to be advancing our protagonist’s career and romantic life, as she recovers from a breakup, goes on a date (with a man played by Office co-star Ed Helms), and engages in push-and-pull banter and some friends-with-benefits antics with her two male coworkers.

Alternately, of course, the “project” appears to be Kaling’s. Leaving The Office, where she did excellent work writing episodes like “The Dundies” and “Niagara,” Kaling is now in the spotlight as star and producer of her own series, and is a rare woman of color to take that position in television comedy. Kaling’s character addresses her reputation among South Asian immigrants, and people without insurance, in the first episode, telling her staff she needs “more white patients?” in order to stay in practice. Yet, she continues to work with those who need but may not have the resources for medical care. Such attention to race, ethnicity, and the politics of health care are hardly par for the sitcom course, and are somewhat refreshing. Additionally, The Mindy Project carries over Kaling’s investment in the romantic comedy genre, and her smart-yet-silly voice as established through her social media use, 2011 memoir, and the numerous profiles of her that preceded this premiere. Kaling regularly veers between the frivolous and the serious, merging bravado and insecurity in ways that may result in the development of unusually three-dimensional and diverse characters on The Mindy Project.

Finally, watching the premiere, I was struck by a rare sense of recognition: from the tensions of career and romance to the incorporation of M.I.A. and Le Tigre on the soundtrack, The Mindy Project seems to directly hail an audience that resembles Kaling’s on- and off-screen personas – educated, female, and torn between life directions. I’ll be interested to see if such an audience emerges, and how The Mindy Project might shift in future episodes; either way, I’m on board.

Shilpa Davé – Brandeis University

Mindy Kaling is the first Indian American woman to headline her own show, The Mindy Project. The last Asian American woman to star in her own network comedy was Margaret Cho in All American-Girl (1994) and her show was cancelled after one year. Kaling’s experience in television should help her show, as she made great inroads in dispelling Indian stereotypes as the self absorbed, boy-crazy, customer relations’ representative Kelly Kapoor on The Office (2005-2012). Kaling has shown in her deft writing in her book and on The Office that diversity stereotypes are made to laughed at and made to be broken. Her new character is an OB/GYN physician, a professional woman more akin to comedians Mary Tyler Moore and Tina Fey (30 Rock). Her show and her character revolve around her work and her personal life, and has the ability to propel Kaling into a new category where her Indian-ness is not an exotic accent in a script but instead part of an everyday American narrative linked to working women comedies and television history.

South Asians have been appearing on American television programs with increasing frequency, but the characters are mostly young men who are a variation of Apu, such as the smart, foreign-looking, out-of-place, emasculated nerd who is always the sidekick and never the leader. Although Indian and Indian American women have appeared on television, their characters are often defined by their sexual desirability and exotic appeal. Kaling’s character acts as if being Indian is natural and part of her everyday life rather than emphasizing significant cultural traits. She does not speak with a foreign accent but ironically her rival/colleague physicians do— Dr. Jeremy Reed (British actor Ed Weeks) plays a Hugh Grant-like playboy physician with an English accent and Dr. Danny Castellano (Chris Messina) is the blunt rugged physician who speaks in a New Jersey tough guy inflected accent. Instead Dr. Mindy Lahiri is a talented and compassionate physician who dreams of love just like in the romantic comedies of Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts. Her miscues with dating and romance make her lovable and form the basis of the pilot but the first show also has comic moments that reference healthcare, race, and immigration. In The Mindy Project, the hope is that Kaling will continue to clear the way for women of color on television that move beyond sexual objects and exotic sidekicks, showcasing Indian Americans and Asian Americans in a variety of roles in American culture.

Ben and Kate (Premiered 09/25/2012)

Deadbeat parents fostered Ben and Kate’s sibling bond at an early age, but two decades later Kate’s become a responsible parent while Ben’s stuck in an extended adolescence. Hijinks ensue when Ben decides to move in and resume his big brother role, pledging to help raise Kate’s five year old daughter. Two hilarious best friend sidekicks complete this relatively unknown cast of five in a Fox comedy that comes from the producers and director of New Girl. [Sarah Murray]

Sarah Murray – University of Wisconsin-Madison

The richness with which a sibling relationship can imbue a text makes it a tried-and-true narrative formula, while failure to translate the banality of a sibling relationship always stands to threaten storytelling’s vitality. Ben and Kate, Fox’s half-hour single cam comedy from the producers and director of New Girl, straddles an amiable in-between space that encourages watching beyond the pilot. Not quite mundane, not quite nuanced, the show nevertheless manages to tap into the uneasy hilarity that comes with the permanence of family. It’s easy to relate to Kate’s (Dakota Johnson) resistance to her brother’s (Ben, played by Nat Faxon) kind-hearted foolishness because we’re working just as hard to resist the charm of this show’s refusal to take itself too seriously. While the shenanigans are predictable, the vague familiarity of the underexposed cast gives the show an open, inviting feel (you might know Nat Faxon from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story or for his Oscar award winning adapted screenplay of The Descendants, and Dakota Johnson from 21 Jump Street). Beyond the show’s graceful display of life’s clumsiness, it’s actually funny. Kate’s best friend BJ (Lucy Punch) has a bulldozing brand of literal comedy that is smartly written into her scenes with Kate’s earnest five-year-old daughter, Maddie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). Time will tell on whether Ben’s best friend Tommy (Echo Kellum) will be given dimension, although there are hints that he’ll play a role in a romantic subplot with Kate. Contrary to the will-they-won’t-they narrative arc that lives and dies on sexual tension, the beauty of the sibling duo lies in its potential for longevity. If the showrunners can manage to differentiate Ben from New Girl‘s Jess (Zooey Deschanel), Ben and Kate may leave a dent, although it’s unlikely it will manage to imprint on us the way a sibling does.

Phil Scepanski – Northwestern University

Ben and Kate bases its central dynamic around a pair who are forced together despite seemingly incompatible personalities. Impulsive, emotional, and living in the short term, Ben represents the Oscar/Laverne/Id archetype while his comparatively level-headed sister Kate plays the complementary Felix/Shirley/Ego. Drifting into town to romantically but haplessly disrupt his ex-girlfriend’s wedding, Ben stumbles into his sister’s more sensible attempt to negotiate a budding long-term relationship. Of course, the long-term sibling relationship demonstrates its true value over romantic ones and provides a setup for more weekly conflicts and resolutions.

But formula is in the genre’s nature. Gags, performances, and other more varied elements often make or break sitcoms. To this end, Ben and Kate does well. Ben’s childishness is a vulnerable—rather than psychopathic—one, and Nat Faxon’s expressive performance balances the goofy and pathetic elements of his character well. Similarly, while more strictly rule-bound versions of the Odd Couple dynamic would make Kate distant and unresponsive, Dakota Johnson does extremely well playing a frazzled character who aspires to, but cannot fully perform, a type A personality. Supporting characters vary more widely, with somewhat broadly-drawn wacky sidekicks played with varying comic abilities and a deadpan child seemingly drawn from the ranks of Wes Anderson films.

I enjoyed the show, but other than that Ben was moving in with Kate and her daughter, it was not clear precisely where the series was headed. This episode seemed to address some rather big crises in both main character’s lives, and it is difficult to imagine Ben interrupting a wedding every week. But if it focuses too much on daily minutiae, it may rob these actors of the reason to continue their quality performances. I plan to keep watching, but we shall see whether the promise of this first episode proves unsustainable.

Accents – Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock in Elementary would lead the way in any other year, but Made in Jersey doubles down with a promo trailer ever-so proud of Janet Mongomery’s transformation from her native British to Jersey (aw, it’s so cute that Hollywood just discovered the existence of voice coaches).

Bows – Hot off their co-starring role in summer blockbusters The Hunger Games and The Avengers, bows will appear in The CW’s adaptation of The Green Arrow, Arrow.

Crazed beasts – From Do No Harm’s Jekyll and Hyde tale to Beauty and the Beast’s noble, Kristin-Kreuk-saving beast, beasts are in.

DJs and radio hosts – Perhaps nostalgic for the early days of radio when they actually had an audience, NBC has two new shows (Go On, Next Caller) with radio hosts. Don’t tell Louis CK, but the latter stars Dane Cook.

Executive Producer of GI Joe – Anyone see that movie? Anyone like it? Zero Hour boasts of this famed auteur in its advertising, perhaps because “a bland Da Vinci Code wannabe” doesn’t sound as good?

Fava bean aficionados – Hannibal starts mid-season, and with Bryan Fuller behind it, I’m intrigued. If Fuller’s signature magic realist whimsical style proves an odd fit for the franchise, FOX also aims to cover all your psycho stalker serial killer needs with The Following.

Gay friends – The New Normal sees a gay couple hire and fall in love with a single mother who offers to be their surrogate, while CBS’ Partners focuses on best friends and business partners, one of whom is gay (and while the trailer isn’t promising, wouldn’t it be nice if CBS could convince their audience of 60-something men not to be scared of gay men?).

Housewives, desperate – You thought the show was over? And that it had spawned enough failed copies already? Think again, as I introduce you to ABC’s Mistresses.

Investigations – ‘Cause there just aren’t enough of these already on TV, Elementary, The Following, Zero Hour, Red Widow, Made in Jersey, Hannibal, and Revolution will all feature bold acts of getting to the bottom of things.

Jack Black wannabe – 1600 Penn recasts Bill Pullman as President, but far from his heroic, alien-killing Independence Day-self, he’s now pudged out a bit and is plagued by a college-age son trying so very hard to be Jack Black.

Kid named Butt-Kiss – ABC’s The Neighbors features a kid named after Dick Butkus, and hence pronounced “Butt-Kiss.” Apparently it was written by the two 11 year-old boys on my bus home the other day who spent the entire time thinking up names for farts. And Butkus is an alien. I present to you the runaway winner of next year’s Emmys.

Locke – Imagine if Season 6 Locke from Lost owned a fancy yet haunted apartment building in Manhattan (not in De Forest, WI, as Google suggested when I typed the show title in just now!), and there’s the premise of 666 Park Ave. However, the trailer suggests we’ll need to wage through lots and lots of scenes of Rachael Taylor getting changed before we get to see Terry O’Quinn.

Mysterious monochrome monitors (and yes, I get 3 points on Scattergories for this one) – Speaking of Locke, his favorite sidekick appears to be back in NBC’s Revolution. A JJ Abrams / Eric Kripke / Jon Favreau (gee, I wonder if it’ll have a built-in fan following?) production set fifteen years after the world loses electricity, apparently someone in this world still has their Commodore 64 up and running.

Nuclear submarines – For most original premise for a television show, I’m giving some cred to The Last Resort, ABC’s show about a nuclear submarine that refuses to fire on Pakistan and instead goes rogue and sets up a principality on a small island, while facing down the US that gave it the orders.

Operating rooms – it’s American primetime, so there must be doctors, and lots of them. More on Animal Practice in a second, The Mindy Project gives the titular Kaling her own vehicle, Mob Doctor is kind of self-explanatory (albeit perhaps with less ORs and more dark parking lot operations), Do No Harm has a doctor with a double life, and Emily Owens, MD wins the “most out of my demo” award for its interest in how hospitals are just like high school (wasn’t that Grey’s Anatomy?).

Primate surgeons – … but isn’t it time that primetime TV had a monkey who scrubs in? Poor Justin Kirk, finally and deservedly gets his own show only to be doomed to be upstaged by a monkey.

Quirky families – I bet you’ve never seen one of these on TV? Lucky for you, there’s Family Tools, Malibu County, The Neighbors, Mistresses, Made in Jersey, Mob Doctor, Ben and Kate, The Goodwin Games (trying to be The Royal Tenenbaums meets Running Wilde), Save Me, The New Normal, Guys with Kids, and How to Live with your Parents and Have a Title that’s Way too Humanly Long for Any TV Critic or Fan to Ever Bother With.

Re-Reba – Reba was cancelled, yes, but ABC’s market analysis clearly suggests that all that was missing was palm trees, since it’s back, in Malibu County. Supposedly the premise is different too.

Snuglis – Guys with Kids is one of the most aggressively not funny trailers of this upfront season. And I even watched it wearing my baby in a Snugli. So I should like it, right? No.

Tami Taylor – We all need more Tami Taylor in our lives. She’s now an aging country singer who is forced to tour with the annoying Hayden Pannettiere. There is nothing about the plot that interests me. But it is Tami, so I will watch Nashville. All hail Connie Britton.

Unhappy people – Go On sees can’t-find-a-new-show-that-sticks Matthew Perry leading a support group with Chandlerisms and bracketology. Many of these shows, though, will create even more unhappiness in the world.

Very well-toned men – Pecs and six packs are out in force. The trailers for both Chicago Fire and Arrow remind me how very unfit I am. Maybe I should watch 1600 Penn instead?

Westerns set in old Vegas – It’s like Mad Men meets Bonanza! CBS’s Vegas aims to look at early Vegas, with Dennis Quaid as the horse-riding sheriff trying to instill justice, and Michael Chiklis as the East coast mobster on the other side.

X-treme measures – People pushed to the edge. What will they do? Tune in to Revolution (fighting The Man), Red Widow (with an avenging Widow who isn’t Natasha Romonoff), Vegas (see above), The Mob Doctor (trading appendectomies for protection), Arrow (super hero by night!), 666 Park Avenue (“what’s Evil Locke doing to us, honey?”), Last Resort (see Nuclear Submarines), Do No Harm (fighting the beast within), and Infamous (a Revenge wannabe) to find out.

Young Carrie Bradshaw – At first I thought The Carrie Diaries was a CW spinoff of The Vampire Diaries with an even scarier supernatural beast at its core, but apparently it’s actually about Carrie in the Eighties.

Zealots – Prepping us for November’s next wave of Tea Party candidates, network tv is giving us cults (Zero Hour, CW’s Cult) and people who speak to God (Anne Heche in Save Me).

A half hour later, I re-read the scene as an intertextual jab at the second episode of Allen Gregory, a new animated series following The Simpsons. The title character (voiced by series creator Jonah Hill) is a precocious seven-year-old with two dads. His parents are a study in gay stereotypes: Richard (French Stewart) is natty, nasty, gossipy, and shallow; Jeremy (Nat Faxon) is a sweet if hapless hunk. Allen Gregory harbors a desperate crush on Principal Gottlieb, a gruff and gray-haired woman who towers, buxomly zaftig, over the boy in their scenes together.

Allen Gregory announces over the school’s public address system that he has a sex tape featuring the principal and himself. While the claim goes over classmates’ heads, back at home, Richard gleefully counsels his son on PR tactics. At school, the mousy guidance counselor, who turns out to be Gottlieb’s husband, becomes more concerned that the tape might be real than he is with the boy’s hypersexualization. Meanwhile, Richard banishes friends of their adopted daughter that he finds insufficiently attractive. Jeremy coaxes him to respect the girl’s choices, and the girls are invited back only to be subjected to more of Richard’s mockery.

In short, the series is as invested in humiliation as the cattiest zones of reality TV, and I struggled to find the comedy in Allen Gregory situations. According to the philosopher Simon Critchley, one of many who have offered such a definition, “humour is produced by a disjunction between the way things are and the way they are represented in the joke, between expectation and actuality.” Not any old expectation; not just any actuality. “The genius of jokes,” he writes, “is that they light up the common features of our world.”[1] But there is a paper-thin line around comedy. When an attempted joke obscures rather than “lights up” the machinations of power, that line is breached, and sidesplitting laughter may turn to gut-wrenching disgust.

The pairing of The Simpsons’ scene of fleeting pedophilic wordplay with Allen Gregory came on a day in which, already, a lot of ink had been spilled and bandwidth consumed regarding news emerging from State College, PA. On November 4, a grand jury had indicted a former defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team on forty counts related to sexual abuse of minors. (I resist naming him here, despite how frequently his name and picture are appearing in the press, in deference to his legal right to enjoy the presumption of innocence.) On November 5, the suspect was arrested, and the story dominated the weekend’s news, occupying front pages and sports pages alike. Two other university officials were charged with perjury in connection to the grand jury. Allegations emerged suggesting that the beloved coach Joe Paterno, who had led the Nittany Lions since 1966, also may not have responded adequately to an assistant coach’s report that he witnessed the retired coordinator sexually assault a young boy in team facilities.

For days afterwards, I found myself mulling over the ongoing newsflow from Penn State against the backdrop of Fox’s Sunday night “Animation Domination” block of purportedly “edgy” programming, which has (as much as I hate to admit it) become less innovative vanguard than regressive curmudgeonry. (McFarlane’s October 31 Family Guy episode, “Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q,” stirred up critique from several quarters for trivializing domestic violence — and for lacking almost entirely in humor.) I was reminded of Janet Malcolm’s In the Freud Archives (1983), which recounts a battle over the legacy of the founder of psychoanalysis. In brief, a renegade psychoanalyst suggested that, in defiance of data accrued in his daily practice, Freud prematurely abandoned his original seduction theory, which identified the all-too-common trauma of childhood sexual abuse as source of adult neuroses. If the allegation was correct, Freud purposefully displaced evidence of the uncomfortable actuality of the sexual exploitation of children with fabulized Oedipal fantasies locating incestuous desire in the child’s imagination and normalizing it as a developmental stage. Established figures in control of the Freud Archives took issue, and drove the young upstart from their ranks, protecting the founder of psychoanalysis from criticism.

Likewise, even as alleged victims in the Penn State debacle continue to come forward, Allen Gregory grabs the microphone, and propositions the principal. For a time, it appears that it is children that abuse adults, sexually and otherwise. Recalling Critchley, we might say that “expectations and actuality” are disjoined, relations between “the way things are and the way they are represented” are upended. But the joke falls flat. Instead of illuminating “the common features,” however distressing, “of our world,” Fox has, in this instance, rolled out only obfuscating, acid unfunniness that stings a little bit more in light of still unfolding events.

Terra Nova (Premiered 9/27/2011)

Guys, where are we? The pilot for Terra Nova felt remarkably Lost-like. I almost imagine the show being born when a Lost fan said, “remember that moment in the pilot when we hear a primordial noise in the jungle, and you sort of expect it to be a dinosaur? Well, what if it was a dinosaur?” After all, we’ve got the settlers in a lush environment, the fear of what lies outside the camp, the Others, daddy issues run amok, a lone renegade individual out there somewhere, scary creatures, a colonial outfit with unclear motives run by an untrustworthy guy with a long history with the place, an interest in do-overs, second chances, and destiny, time travel and the prospect for as many flash-forwards, flash-backs, and alternate realities as you care to imagine, and to top it all off, Allison Miller’s hair specialist seems to have consulted the same How to Make Your Hair Look Great in the Jungle specialist as did Evangeline Lilly’s. On the downside, the cast isn’t as strong (Michael Emerson > Stephen Lang anyday), nor is the writing as tight. And most of all, especially when compared to Lost, Terra Nova’s pilot suffered from being in such a rush. Too many issues, divisions, and fault-lines were introduced at once. All in all, I found the show intriguing, and I’m more captivated and keen to watch the next episode than I am to watch the next episode of any of the other new shows. I guess they couldn’t draw so heavily from the Lost creative pool without picking me up in the bucket at some point. And perhaps in time it will seem silly to compare this to Lost (the British Primeval seems just as obvious a forerunner in some ways). But right now, it’s teetering on the edge for me, and I’d like to see it slow down and trust itself, before (yes, a review about a dinosaur show must have the obligatory stupid dino joke) it finds itself extinct.

New Girl (Premiered 9/20/2011)

Erin Copple Smith, Denison University

I  have only one complaint about The New Girl: virtually every moment of the pilot made an appearance in the promos for the show, making me feel like I’d seen the whole thing before, albeit out of order. That being said, I liked the episode just as much as I’d hoped I would. I know what the
detractors are going to say: it’s too predictable, too enamored with Zooey Deschanel playing herself. It’s true–Deschanel is playing according to type as a goofy-but-beautiful misfit. But she does it so well, her fans in this house (both the humans, and at least one of the cats) didn’t mind. The supporting cast was also good, if playing toward common 20-something guy character types (bro, muscle head, lovable loser). But the acting was adept enough that I look forward to their continuing development as the series
progresses. So was The New Girl a bit predictable? Yes (particularly considering the seen-it-all-before-in-the-promos issue). But it was also refreshingly quirky and cute, much like Deschanel herself. The closing moments of the episode, when Jess’s roommates rescue her from being stood up by doing a group-sing of “(I Had) The Time of My Life,” exemplify the series’ tone as a successful balance of silly and sweet. In a sea of sitcoms exemplified by “edge”, I find that sweetness more than welcome. Will some folks complain that it’s too predictable, too saccharine, too…whatever? Definitely. But I thought it lived up to its promise. Zooey & Co., (I had) the time of my life…and I owe it all to FOX.

Alyx Vesey, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Zooey Deschanel’s voice is the aural equivalent to a photo taken in Hipstamatic. Its graininess simulates a superficial, imagined vintage aesthetic. Deschanel co-wrote and performs the theme to her new sitcom, The New Girl. Inspired by John Sebastian’s theme for Welcome Back, Kotter, it intends to present the actress and lead character as “adorkable”. Perhaps it was once a curious move for a film actress to star in a network sitcom. But The New Girl is another platform for Deschanel to assert herself as an indie pop star. If not Cotton ads, her lifestyle site Hello Giggles, or films where she plays the manic pixie dream girl, why not a sitcom with Glee as its lead-in?

Protagonist Jess Day often breaks into song, indicating the twenty-something’s supposed charm. The key difference between this free-spirited kindergarten teacher and Deschanel’s previous roles is that Day is considered ugly and repellent to men. Day impulsively moves in with three guys she met on Craigslist following a breakup. Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), and Coach (Damon Wayans Jr., who is returning to ABC’s Happy Endings) mentor Day on their definition of being sexy. Day’s best friend, model Cece Meyers (Hannah Simone, one of the few cast members of color), disapproves of this arrangement. However, she really wants Day to have a boyfriend. So she lends Day clothes for a date, even though she has a closet full of frilly dresses.

Creator and Fempire member Elizabeth Meriwether explored similar terrain in No Strings Attached, a comedy about Los Angelenos who hate their romantic prospects and seemingly each other. The New Girl has similar contempt for its characters. Worse, it also perpetuates the idea that young women are infantile co-dependents who need nerd glasses, insipid affectations, and male mentors to fashion an identity built entirely around men.

The X Factor (Premiered 9/21/2011)

Amber Watts, Texas Christian University

So, hey, remember back, like, 7 years ago when you still liked American Idol?  When Simon and Paula fought so adorably, and we thought Randy Jackson might actually have real words to say?  This is the same show, except the stage lighting is red (not blue), the judges have Pepsi cups (blue, not red), and Simon Cowell is doing Verizon (not AT&T) commercials.  Yes, there are other differences—contestant ages can range from 12 to senile, vocal groups are allowed, the judges will eventually coach contestants, and LA Reid has thoughts beyond “dawg” and “a’ight.”  Also, with a $5 million prize, the stakes of winning have been raised significantly.  The lack of an upper age limit further opens the range of tragic backstories—last night’s “Susan Boyle” was a 42-year-old single mom with a heart-wrenching “dream deferred thanks to an abusive relationship” tale (although the consensus in my house was that she was pitchy)—which gives us more possible reasons a reality show winner deserves $5 million.  In the end, though, I’m not sure if it will offer anything new, except, perhaps, exhausting the Fox-singing-competition audience before American Idol starts in January… That said, you should watch tonight’s episode; I was in the audience for the Dallas auditions, and the James-Brown-looking guy was pretty epic.