The fall TV season is once again upon us! The few summer shows that have gotten me through the slow season (nearly entirely on the USA Network) have just wrapped up this past week, clearly programmed to avoid the onslaught of major network shows looming on the late September/early October horizon.

So what are you folks most interested in? I know there are several new shows I'm going to check out, like Person of Interest (starring Ben Linus ) and Ringer (starring Buffy).

Aside from those two I know there are a few I'll probably tune in for, but mostly I'm looking forward to the return of the shows I love. Supernatural can't air soon enough (so it's good that I only have a little over a week to wait), Fringe should be great and has some questions to answer (as it always does), and I always enjoy my silly NBC sitcoms like 30 Rock and Community. I'm also very eager to see the premiere of Castle next Monday, since it left off on a big cliffhanger.

If you're interested in seeing when certain shows premiere, I've come across a great one on the Tivo website.

Subscribed.

The only shows I'm really interested in are Castle and Game of Thrones (whenever Season Two starts), it seems like everything else I enjoyed got canceled.

Looking forward to Fringe and The Walking Dead. Will probably continue to watch CSI and House, though I have no idea how they are going to continue with House. It's really getting laughable that they continue to keep him staff . . .

Don't know anything about new shows, probably won't check any out unless some wildly good reviews appear in this thread.

At some point I might also catch up on Raising Hope, but I haven't been watching much TV at all. Oh, and I suppose the same goes for Chuck.

Some of the stuff I want to check out only starts in 2012, such as Alcatraz, Awake, Missing, The River, Napoleon Dynamite...

For this fall I've set up a number of favorites so I can watch the pilots and decide what I want to keep. I've even added Pan-Am and the PlayBoy club against my better judgement.

Outsourced, one of NBC's best new shows of last year won't return this season, instead we have a very white-bred comedy taking its place. They've also gone back to showing a drama after the two-hour comedy block on Thursday nights. IMO, they should have stayed with all comedies to better compete with the other networks. Especially since their comedies on that night were pretty solid.

Returning shows, Fringe, Dexter and Walking Dead are the three I'm most looking forward to. But I'm also really glad House is coming back, as it doesn't matter how off the wall some of the stunts have been, I really enjoy the show.

I'm also sad to see Outsourced go (and I thought I was the only one!) It started out a bit too cheesy, but really developed into a fun, lighth-hearted comedy with entertaining characters -- certainly better than anything The Office did last year -- but the anemic ratings still killed it. The show they're replacing it with ("Whitney") looks awful -- I can't imagine what studio exec thought Whitney Cummings was worthy of placement in a decent timeslot on network television, but I hope they're out of a job after it gets canceled in a few weeks.

In terms of new shows, my wife has insisted that we give "Up All Night" a shot, though my hopes aren't high -- I like Maya Rudolph a lot, but Will Arnett and Christina Applegate doesn't seem like a recipe for success to me.

We'll continue to watch the zombie corpses of The Office and 30 Rock, mainly out of habit, but those shows really stalled out last season. Community, Parks and Rec, How I Met Your Mother, and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" were all excellent last year, so we're looking forward to those.

It's not really a "Fall" show, but Breaking Bad continues to be the best drama on TV, and despite starting out a bit slow this season, has been flat-out phenomenal the last few weeks. Too bad the season will end in a month or so.

We also need to finish Season 2 of Archer so we can start watching in quasi-real time.

I haven't really talked to anyone else about this since everyone else I know that watches is still one or more seasons behind. I completely agree though. It's gotten back to great where it had been "meh" after the first episode of the season. I still think they could do with a little tightening of some scenes. The one a few eps back right at the start where Jesse was playing the shooter was a bit long. I know what the writers were going for, but it just made me feel impatient/bored. Likewise the episode where Jesse first started having the huge "parties" - I could see the point, but it was boring.

I'll also be tuning in to the new season of Hung and the premiere of Homeland (Damien Lewis and Claire Danes)



DAMN, I didn't now it was coming back already. Sweet.

Mad Men is another show that will only come back in 2012 - very much looking forward to it as well.

Does anyone watch Sons of Anarchy? Care to give a brief (non-spoiler) synopsis of what it's about and what shows one might compare it to?

I adore Raising Hope. It has the same sensibilities as My Name is Earl, but even sweeter and more charming and without as much mocking of southerners as stupid people. Garret Dillahunt is fantastic on that show. He's a guy I'd only seen playing horrible, menacing characters (and playing them well), so I was shocked to see him play a part like this. Oh, and I love how Greg Garcia is from the D.C. area, so all of Dillahunt's shirts are Redskins and Capitals shirts.


Chuck seriously pissed me off last season by violating the rules of their own universe. I'm willing to accept a lot from a show as long as they follow their own rules, and I like Chuck's cartoony spy shtick which presupposes that an awfully high number of international terrorists happen to make their way through Burbank, CA. But the whole idea since the show began was that Chuck has a fairly unique mental acuity for pattern recognition or whatever, which allows him to absorb the Intersect into his head. Last season had three people also get the Intersect put into their heads (two agents and *SPOILER WARNING* Morgan). The season finale just pissed me off because now apparently Chuck isn't special at all, and they clearly abandoned that simply to have some way to bring more drama into the mix. Ah well, I think it's stupid.

Last season, Chuck was the only show I've ever been able to save up on my DVR. I had no urge to see it week to week, so I watched it all WELL after the season was over. I'll probably do the same this year.


I agree. It really doesn't make any sense. And now I can't imagine any possible way we're going to see the show carry on the way it has in the past. There's no way he can stay at the hospital now. Hell, can he even be a doctor anymore?


Goodness gracious, the trailer for Awake was one of the most moving things I've seen in recent memory! I really hope the show is as good. I can't emphasize how much I liked that trailer. I urge anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out.


Haha, oh you mean the "we've moved on from the Lost clones and now we're moving on to the Mad Men clones" shows?


I'm very concerned that Walking Dead is going to go bad. AMC is really putting the hurt on that show. Well, technically Matthew Weiner is helping, but AMC is at least as much to blame.



I never liked Outsourced, but that Whitney show looks like garbage. Completely unfunny.


I can't stand Maya Rudolph in almost everything I've ever seen her in (haven't seen Bridesmaids yet, though). I continue to be a huge Will Arnet fan, despite an atrocious track record for everything he's done since Arrested Development. That said, simply for his work as Gob he gets a lifetime pass for me I could take or leave Christina Applegate.

I also have no clue how they're going to make a show out of the experience of raising a baby. I mean, I haven't had a kid yet, but as far as I understand the specific kind of lack of sleep they're talking about kind of goes away after a certain amount of time, doesn't it? What does the show do once the baby sleeps through the night?


Ugh, The Office is just tired, but I only have myself (and my wife) to blame for helping to keep it on the air by watching it every week. At least 30 Rock still has great moments.


Community remains my biggest surprise from the last five years of TV. I had LOW expectations for that show, but it continues to shock me how good it is. Parks and Rec, on the other hand, I really disliked in the beginning. When that show started all the ads for it said "from the creators of the Office," and I said, "well...yeah! It's exactly the same as the Office." Fortunately after the first season they stopped making Leslie Knope the exact female duplicate of Michael Scott and actually made her a competent person. That's a lot more fun. They improved all the other characters as well, and I think Ron Swanson is one of my favorite characters on TV ("I love the Food 'N Stuff, it's where I get all of my food...and most of my stuff")


I definitely plan to get back into that show. I stopped watching because, frankly, it was a little too good at portraying what it's like for a father to go through a battle with cancer, and that was a little too much for me at the time. I'm going to start again, though.


Anyway, sorry for the long post. I just get into TV a little too much

Just found out that Archer will only air 3 episodes and the remaining ones will only be on in the spring. Dang.

I really could not get into Archer. The whole style of the show bugs me, particularly the voice acting and stiff animation style. I've never liked that guy who voices Archer (and I intensely disliked Dr Katz as a show). Oh well, I know lots of people love it and that's cool. It's just not my thing. I also couldn't get into Venture Brothers, which seems like a terrible sin given how much love is out there for that show.

Oh, and Bruno, I've only watched the first couple episodes of Sons of Anarchy. I may try it again but it wasn't really my thing. I have no interest in the biker culture, really, so I don't care about a show that glorifies it. It looks very well made, seems to have some compelling drama, and the acting seems good, but it just didn't do anything for me. Maybe there weren't enough fantasy elements I'm drawing a blank on what to compare it to, but I'm sure there's something...

I forgot to add Community in there. I forgot they started filming Season 3 some time back.

Saw the first episode of Whitney... Can't believe NBC placed an old-fashioned sitcom into the same programming block as its other successful modern comedies. It just seems very out of place. I'm not a fan of filming in front of an audience or laugh tracks - it's a little painful when the cast waits for the laugh after making a joke. Which was the other problem with the show - it was, for the most part, a giant collection of one liners. The other NBC shows are funny without characters cracking a joke with every sentence.

I won't be watching it again. My guess is it won't make it past the mid-season, but then again, Two and a Half Men (the worst show on TV) is going into season 9. So who knows, maybe it will be a huge hit - it wold be a better fit on CBS, except for the sexual content/innuendo.

Ugh. Well, I'd pretty much written it off anyway. The ads for it made me cringe, and I'd already developed an impression that it was exactly the show you describe it to be. No big deal, I'll pass.

So the first big TV week of the season has come and gone. What did everyone watch? Any standouts? Any new shows that you liked? I still haven't watched that Sarah Michelle Gellar show, but I've heard mixed things.

The new shows my wife and I tuned into this week were "2 Broke Girls", "Free Agents, and "The New Girl." (She also watched "The Playboy Club", but she said it was a train wreck, and won't be watching it again.)

Of the shows we've seen, I think Free Agents has the most going for it. I'm not sure any of them will make it past this season, but if they can tone down the annoying factor of a couple of the supporting characters a bit, Free Agents could be an entertaining comedy. It seems to be the kind of show that, like Parks and Rec, is going to need a half a season or so to really develop the characters, but if they do that right, I think it could be a winner.

"2 Broke Girls" was definitely the weakest of the three. The first episode had its moments, but I just don't know if there's enough to make an entertaining show week after week. It's right after How I Met Your Mother, and I suspect CBS will do what they can to keep it alive, but unless the next couple episodes are singificantly better, we'll stop recording.

"The New Girl" fell somewhere in-between. Zooey Deschanel is a fine actress, of course, but I think they're aiming for a quirky, nerdy off-beat lead character, and instead, she just comes off as unbelievably stupid. If they can dial that down a bit and develop some of the supporting cast, it could be fun to watch, but again, I think it's going to need more than a half a dozen episodes to come into its own.

I'll check it out. The Office started off surprisingly well this week -- still not sold on James Spader in that role, but I'm not sure the show needs to focus on the boss as much now. Parks and Rec and Community are still the best two shows on TV. And, after a medicore start to the season, this week's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia was hysterical -- maybe the best episode in years.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I did also check out Playboy Club. Heavily derivative, below average acting and it wasn't believable at all as a period piece. Weak.

So today my wife and I watched Person of Interest and Ringer. If you'd asked me beforehand which show I thought might have been better, I would have guessed Person of Interest, but I would have been completely wrong.

Good Lord, that show had a terrible pilot. It was just awful. The writing was stilted and cliched. It seemed like the CBS execs were breathing down the writers' necks, telling them "okay, make sure you always explain in simple detail exactly what's going on so our 90 year old viewers can follow it." There was just cliche after cliche, and the acting didn't help matters. Jim Caviezel was surprisingly bad, delivering all his lines under his breath. The only redeeming aspect of the entire show is Micheal Emerson. His dialog was just as terrible as everyone else's, but I'll be damned if that man isn't a lot of fun to watch on screen.

But sadly, even Ben Linus couldn't save this show. I will be giving it two more episodes, and my wife has already gone into "tell me if it gets better" mode, meaning she's probably done with it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention my disappointment that they explain away the method for how they get the information for who's in danger.



On the other hand, Ringer has some interesting stuff going on for it. It's not the best show I've seen but it was good enough to stick with (for me, at least, YMMV). There were some definite issues with direction, editing, and pacing, but the acting seemed to hold up and the writing/dialog was acceptable. The primary issue I had was that pacing issue I mentioned. There's a scene early on with the two sisters that had me going "wait, why are they on a boat now? Why is one of them waking up now, when I never saw her go to sleep? Why is she already in her sister's place? Did I miss a minute or two from every scene?" They would just cut to whatever they wanted to go to next with little to no transition. It ended up with a very weird feel, one of those slightly intangible elements that you need to make a show feel like the people behind it really know what they're doing.

But still, I liked it. Perhaps the bar had been set low for the day after Person of Interest, or perhaps it's just seeing SMG on TV again, but I liked Ringer.

I've been rewatching Arrested Development and Firefly while waiting for hockey's regular season to start. I guess TV execs follow the same rule as most other places and people get promoted to their level of incompetence.

I think that Ringer was trying to use those cuts to make the audience feel the disorientation of the character. I don't know that it worked, but it's trying very hard to be noir, and that feels like a noir trope, whether or not it actually is.

That said, could the greenscreen speedboat scene have been produced any more laughably?

Now that you say that I guess I can kind of see it, but on the other hand perhaps you're giving them too much credit? I think I just felt that considering it was the scene that sets up the entire series, they seemed to handle it so oddly and it was over before I knew what the deal was.

I think the second episode has more to support my theory that it's just bad editing:



Oh wow, that was terrible. Everything had this blurry edge around it. It's like the SFX people had their minds blown when they had to combine a fake background AND having two SMG's on screen at the same time. I'm sure it's not easy, but it looked awful

It had some problems, but thumbs up for Terra Nova.

Favorite new premiere: Homeland

I want to check that one out. It has almost no visibility but it's getting some decent buzz. I like the main guy in it, too. I watched all of Life, the last show he starred in (I think), and enjoyed it. He's an odd duck but I like him.

Homeland looked promising from the previews, but there's just not enough else on Showtime to justify coughing up the $15 or whatever it is now.

Sadly, it looks like Free Agents, the one new comedy we sorta liked, is not long for this world. I hope Hank Azaria can land on his feet once it and The Zombie Simpsons are canceled. Poor guy can't catch a break.

My wife insists Pan Am is worth watching, and maybe I'll pay attention to it once the baseball playoffs are over.

Why don't you just download episodes of that show from download sites or torrents? In my trademark thread you seemed to indicate that you didn't value or believe in intellectual property rights.

No he didn't. He said the guy was using it legitimately, and that you should leave him alone. That's way, way different from not valuing or believing in IP rights.

Right - What canuckInOR said.

I'll give you a pass on the cheap shot, as you're probably just upset that nobody supports your efforts to seize a person's Twitter handle because you think you own a phrase, so you're taking it out on me in a completely unrelated thread.

My advice would be to take your licks on this one and drop the issue.

Looks like Free Agents is done. It's been replaced with Whitney. Go figure. As usual, NBC execs have their heads up their asses. Free Agents should have been moved or initially premiered on Thursday nights instead of Whitney, where it would have had a much better shot and found a much more receptive audience, the same people watching the Office, Parks & Rec, etc.

Seems like they axed Playboy club as well. NBC looks like it's below the bottom of the barrel when it comes to TV. They've only got 4 shows I'm interested in left, and only three of those are currently on and only two am I watching at the moment: Parks and Rec and The Office. The other two are Community and 30 Rock which I'll watch someday.

Yeah, I was kinda bummed about Free Agents. It wasn't a great show by any means, but it was at least as good as the slop that 30 Rock threw out there last season, and given enough (read: any) support from NBC/Kabletown, could have blossomed into a really entertaining show.

I agree that Free Agents would have been a better fit for the Thursday 9:30 slot. "Whitney" is obviously in the "Two and a Half Men" category of dreadful shows that idiot Americans rot their brains with, and would have probably gotten good ratings on any night.

Whitney's other creation, "2 Broke Girls", is a complete nightmare, with terrible one-liners punctuated by a laugh track, cringe-inducing cheap racial humor, and all-around bad acting from most of the cast. Of course that one will probably survive, too.

Breaking Bad is done for the season. It was a very strong season with a rather weak finale, in my opinion. Looks like I'll have some free time to make a dent in my Netflix queue now.

The second half of Breaking Bad's season was definitely stronger than the first. All in all I quite liked the season and would probably have only significantly altered 2 episodes, one of which I already mentioned (the Jesse party episode).

I saw some speculation on TV.com about what this finale could possibly be leading up to for next season. If it pans out, it makes some sense to end on a somewhat low key. It's been pretty much some type of cliff hanger at the end of previous seasons. We'll see how it goes next fall as it's supposedly going to be the last.

I'm going to check out Grimm on NBC, but it's obvious that at least one fairy-tale based show is going to be axed before the season is out - the other show which I can't even remember the name for ATM, premieres on ABC next week.

Oh, BTW, I didn't know (until tonight) that Free Agents was a remake of a UK original (which only aired a single 6 episode series in 2009): http://www.channel4.com/programmes/free-agents

And lastly, does anyone happen to know the name of the song (and performer) of the song used in the last scene of episode 4? The scene before the last commercial break and credits, not the mini-scene after the credits that NBC is so fond of using in the comedies.

Ok, so not trying any new shows yet- nothing looks compelling to me.

Fringe I've been really enjoying (though I still haven't seen the latest episode). I like Lincoln and it's cool that he's been more involved. I liked the whole "Profiler tries to catch himself as a serial killer" plot, though the execution was weaker than the idea promised. Still, fun episodes. Will be nice when they get the Peter stuff resolved though.

Saw the first episode of "The Walking Dead"- other than ending on an obvious emotional sucker punch, I thought it was excellent and am really enjoying the show.

House I'm enjoying more this season than I have the last two- I never minded Cuddy, but I think the show may be stronger with her gone?

And I'm still watching CSI. And actually, I like Ted Danson on it. Maybe I'm just crazy, but his quirkiness seems to fit a lot better than Lawrence Fishburn's brooding. Grissom was quirky- I just think it fits the show better.

By the way- on Netflix I caught the 3 episode show "Sherlock" (I assume it was British). Did anyone else catch this? I thought it was pretty awesome and hope they make more.

Sherlock was indeed awesome, and they are doing 3 more:

http://cultfix.co.uk/sherlock-series-2-sneak-peek-13871.htm

Last I heard was "early Spring 2012" for a release date.

I would love to see Tony Danza on a show like CSI. I think that's the only way I'd watch.

But Ted Danson, on the other hand, was incredible on Damages.

Whoops!

Fixed

What can I say- a procedural can be a nice way to spend a few minutes when you don't want to get too involved. I also admit I'm a sucker for Law and Order and have been rewatching them from the beginning on Netflix. I just try not to go overboard and watch all of the copycats/spinoffs.

For what it's worth, I think that L&O:Criminal Intent is significantly different from and better than the others.

Oh, I'm all for procedurals, and watch several myself (House, Criminal Minds, and Bones come to mind), but I've just never been interested in the CSI franchise (or NCIS, or the Law & Orders). I guess I either gravitate to a different spin on a procedural (House is medical, Bones is forensic anthropology), or I have to really like the actor(s) involved. I started watching Criminal Minds mostly because I really like Mandy Patinkin.

For the most part, I prefer serial storytelling, though, and most procedurals treat overall plots as afterthoughts. It took House something like 5-6 seasons to get a good plot going.


So far my favorite new show this season is definitely American Horror Story. It's very unsettling, creative, and the acting is great.

Fringe is definitely still going well. I was concerned that it would have trouble keeping the momentum going after the show's entire plot seemed to culminate in last season's finale.

By the way, I just thought of something the other day about Fringe and Alias, for people who watched that show:

That's a perfect example, because it's the only one I've been tempted to watch. The reason: Vincent D'Onofrio.

I like L&O because I thought the half police/ half law stuff was a different approach and it worked well.

I originalyl liked CSI because of Grissom's character, and I kept watching out of habit.

As for CI- we watched a lot of it, and I like D'Onofrio, but when we were watching it it was a time when we were watching a lot of trash procedurals so it kind of faded into the background. I may go back and revisit it some day.

Jeff, your post didn't really include spoilers. JJ didn't have anything to do with the ending of Lost though. He didn't have much to do with the series beyond its inception as far as I know.

Alias was a total write off starting from some time in Season 2. I don't know how much involvement JJ had with it at that point but it went down-hill very fast and the ending was no worse nor better than the rest of that season, let alone the few before it. That might be because I was already expecting the worst possible outcome.

How much is JJ involved with Fringe day to day? At all? That guy is attached to a ton of projects, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a machine of some sort running Fringe.

I know- I was just trying to be over-sensitive, since i was responding to a spoiler tag

The bottom line is- I'm not super trusting that JJ projects are going to end well. At least the quality of Fringe has held up despite some drastic changes in the show (unlike Alias which was clearly off the rails by the end, so much so that I think we didn't even finish the last season, despite buying it on DVD).

But as I said- I don't expect Fringe to have some awesome ending- just as long as it has something I'll be good. It's been fun along the way.

BTW, apparently The Walking Dead season 2 premire had the best numbers ever for a basic cable drama- pretty impressive, and well deserved.

I don't really care for horror in general or zombies in particular, but I really like TWD a lot. I think the human drama is both interesting and realistic, and that really makes me care about the characters.

Haha! That's hilarious, because my wife and I did the exact same thing! Season 5 of Alias is sitting in our DVD bookshelf, and we only watched about 4 episodes of it, despite the addition of Amy Acker to the show. We just thought,"why is this show still going? They wrapped everything up last season!"

I liked the show a great deal right up until the end of the the fourth season. I loved that they plotted out a course that slowly added more of the "mystical" stuff, eventually going all out with it. I felt that they did a good job of building everything to a head, but then it ended up VERY anti-climactically.

And yes, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out the similarities I guess it's because I haven't really thought about Alias since I last watched it about five years ago!

Anyone know why some programs are already into repeats? Fox seems to be doing it along with NBC...

Fringe, House, The Office, Parks & Rec, etc.

The most likely reason for Fox is the World Series. They usually make room for it in their schedule every year. I don't know about NBC.

NBC probably just didn't want to lose all those viewers to the baseball game. I would have been one of them if my team had shown up in the divisional series. *sniff*

Is baseball on both Friday AND Monday? I thought I'd checked the schedule for Friday and simply saw a Fringe rerun.

I think they clear the schedule for the entire run just in case. They don't want to mess with rain delays, and you never know how many games the series will go to.

Old show that I just discovered and am enjoying: Bored to Death. Starring Jason Schwartzman, Ted Danson and Zach Galifianakis. Debuted in 2009 and it's in its third season (8 eps per season).

I keep meaning to check that out, I like Ted Danson and I LOVE Zach, but for some reason, I'm just not a Jason Schwartzman. I can't stand Rushmore, for example. He wasn't too bad in Scott Pilgrim, but he wouldn't have been my choice for the role.

What kind of show is it? What would you compare it to?

I can't immediately compare it to anything else, but I will say that Schwartzman is very good in the role and if it's not simply the sight of him that puts you off, you shouldn't have a problem with him in this. Very subdued and not particularly annoying like he character in Rushmore (which I did like).

The premise is that he's a writer for Ted Danson's magazine, working on his second book which is coming close to being due, but not yet close to being started. His girlfriend breaks up with him and he decides to start offering his services as a private investigator on Craigslist, with no experience or realized talent. Galifianakis is his best friend, though Danson as his boss is also very much his close friend. All three are pot smokers and that plays a bit in a few episodes.

The performances are all really good and there are guest appearances by quite a few other actors you'll immediately recognize (and may like).

Neat, I'll check that one out. Sounds like I'd like Schwartzman more in that. And no, it's not just the sight of him. I just don't like the types of characters he seems to always play.

I'll watch anything that Galifianakis is in, though. I've been a huge fan since his utterly failed late night talk show on VH1, and my wife and I have seen him live about three times, though he seems to tour less since the Hangover made him big.

Has anyone else watched American Horror Story? I'm curious to hear what others think of it.

Some friends and my wife are loving American Horror Story. They all say it's scary as hell. I haven't started it yet myself.