Welcome back, kids! My in-depth look at the 2011 network upfronts continues today with this year's new selections from the former butt of many-a-Simpsons joke and current envy of almost all other networks, FOX!
Before I get to it, though, a quick reminder of what's coming up as the week progresses here at "Entertainment on Jeff's Terms":
- ABC, tomorrow (May 20)
- CBS/(maybe) The CW, Saturday (May 21)
- a comprehensive recap of the entire Fall schedule slate, Sunday (May 22)
We good?--Alright, let's get going. (Once again, new shows will be in ALL CAPS, and schedule changes will be denoted by italics.)
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MONDAY:
(pre-Midseason)
8-9pm - TERRA NOVA
9-10pm - House
(post-Midseason)
8-9pm - House
9-10pm - ALCATRAZ
TERRA NOVA: Perhaps the biggest financial gamble of the fall is this family sci-fi/drama from ELEVEN(!) executive producers that include Steven Spielberg, David Fury (best known for his work on Angel and Lost), Brannon Braga (who's been involved in pretty much every televised Star Trek production since The Next Generation), and Jon Cassar (the most-recurring director on FOX's former smash 24). With that hefty list of names comes a hefty budget: $16 Million on the pilot alone; and to take a look at that trailer, it comes as no surprise. Originally slated to premiere this month in a cushy post-American Idol timeslot--where it would have flourished, because let's face it; anything you put there will--this ambitious series moved its debut to September to allow for some finishing touches on its numerous CGI effects. The big question now: will it have been worth it? Its Fall follow-up, House has taken a pretty sizable hit in the ratings over the past two seasons; so much so that it was very nearly put to rest a few weeks ago (at which point, it almost went to NBC--how about that?). Will the viewers help balance out costs, and more pertinently, should they?--Well, let's see. We've got a fairly attractive cast of basically unknowns, time travel, CGI dinosaurs, guns, Stephen Lang pretty much reprising his role from Avatar...I mean...it's got some enticing facets for a pretty wide array of viewers...but does it do anything for me?--Well...
MY VERDICT: ...not really. A big budget doesn't always mean big rewards are a sure thing, and it also doesn't make up for a pretty uninteresting premise (beyond the initial burst of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey goodness). I'll certainly watch the pilot--because let's face it; it pretty much demands that we all do--but if there isn't anything to wow me once hour 1 is up...yeesh.
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ALCATRAZ: There are many of us for whom the words "From Executive Producer J.J. Abrams" are an immediate signal that shit is about to get REAL. Call me a little gun-shy after the blandness--sexy though it was--of his return to the spy game with last year's NBC flop Undercovers, but I might need a little more convincing on this one. To be fair, it just might be able to do it, because it's got the trappings of every great Bad Robot production that came before it: mysterious possibly (let's face it--definitely) supernatural elements that set the plot in motion, an amazing cast (SAM NEILL! HURLEY! HEY, WAS THAT MARTIN FREEMAN?--I'M NOT SURE BUT I'M STILL GOING TO TYPE IN CAPS ABOUT IT!), and even with just this trailer, LAYERS UPON LAYERS of questions to be answered. Plus, with the recent shocker renewal of his cult favorite Fringe, it seems J.J. and Co. may have shifted their loyalties away from ABC in favor of today's network du jour. In short, my friends...
MY VERDICT: ...I'll certainly give it a shot. I'm willing to believe Undercovers (like Six Degrees before it) was just a rare misstep for the folks at Bad Robot; and with Super 8 looking to be a true classic-in-the-making this summer, this could be the thing that makes me forget that time Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation played Marshall Flinkman for a season on NBC. Wow me, J.J. Wow me good. (SUGGESTIVE!)
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TUESDAY:
8-9pm - Glee
9-9:30pm - NEW GIRL
9:30-10pm - Raising Hope
NEW GIRL: Get out your Smiths mixtapes, kids! Zooey Deschanel's on the TV! ...Okay, now that I got that out of my system, I have to admit; that was INCREDIBLY charming. Because for all the snide comments we've ALL made about everyone's favorite hipster darling, I've been eagerly awaiting the moment when she would bust out of her quiet, mousy, jazz-crooning shell and give me something unexpected again. Casting her as--basically--an unemployed Liz Lemon in her late '20s definitely fits that bill. Admittedly, it's in the middle of a pretty worn premise with a cast of co-stars who I would swear in court are the entire male portion of the cast of ABC's inexplicably just-renewed Happy Endings (Damon Wayans, Jr., for certain) and what appears to be the exact same set to boot, but somehow that totally just worked for me. Hey, I freely admit it could stagnate immediately, but for now (believe it or not)...
MY VERDICT: ...I'm in. Let's see where this goes.
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WEDNESDAY:
(pre-Midseason)
8-9:30pm - THE X FACTOR*
9:30-10pm - I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER
(post-Midseason)
8-9:30pm - American Idol
9:30-10pm - I Hate My Teenage Daughter
*I won't be covering The X Factor because (1) I certainly won't be watching it and (2) we all know EXACTLY what we're getting into with that, so what's the point?
I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER: ...Yikes. Here's the thing. I'm only 24 and I already pretty heartily despise the under-18 set. I don't need painful pseudo-comical misadventures with, albeit, a pretty likable cast to remind me of that every week. The fact of the matter is though, this show will be HUGE; and it'll be 100% a matter of timeslot. If you put something after American Idol (or in this case, the new but exactly the same The X Factor), it WILL be a hit. Past examples include House, Raising Hope, and (God help us) Glee. Now, I'll try to be fair. There is a slim chance that I'd off-handedly give this a shot, and once again, it's all about cast. Jamie Pressly spent four years on My Name Is Earl proving herself a great undiscovered comedic talent and came away with an Emmy for her troubles. This Katie Finneran lady...I've never heard of her, but she was responsible for the vast majority of genuine laughs I got from this trailer. She seems to have the broad comic timing of a slightly less off-putting Ana Gasteyer, and I dig that. So, where do I stand?
MY VERDICT: I certainly won't make a big point of seeking it out, but I can see where this show could be enjoyable. Maybe I'll stumble on it out of boredom one day on Hulu and get a few chuckles, but other than that, we're good right here.
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THURSDAY:
(pre-Midseason)
8-9pm - The X Factor
9-10pm - Bones
(post-Midseason)
8-9pm - American Idol
9-10pm - THE FINDER (with Bones returning in late Spring)
THE FINDER: So, let me just get this out of the way. I've never seen a single episode of Bones and I REALLY don't care for Geoff Stults...so right there, for me, this show already has a pretty big handicap to overcome. From what I understand though, its got another hurdle to jump in a pretty fair number of Bones fans who have been so vocally uninterested in this show, The A.V. Club has taken to referring to it as "the spinoff NO ONE asked for". I mean, I know I've got my "verdict" to give a few sentences from now, but I'll go ahead and tell you: there's very little chance I'll be watching this show. Not that it doesn't look charming (it does) and not that I don't love me some Michael Clarke Duncan (because let's face it; we all do), but I just have no stakes in this show at all. If you do, God bless, but for me...
MY VERDICT: ...no thanks. No thanks.
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FRIDAY:
8-9pm - Kitchen Nightmares
9-10pm - Fringe
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SATURDAY:
8-8:30pm - Cops
8:30-9pm - Cops
9-10pm - Encores/America's Most Wanted specials
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SUNDAY:
(pre-Midseason)
7-7:30pm - The OT (Fox's NFL post-game show)
7:30-8pm - The Cleveland Show
8-8:30pm - The Simpsons
8:30-9pm - ALLEN GREGORY
9-9:30pm - Family Guy
9:30-10pm - American Dad!
(post-Midseason)
7-7:30pm - Animated Encores
7:30-8pm - The Cleveland Show
8pm-8:30pm - The Simpsons
8:30-9pm - NAPOLEON DYNAMITE
9pm-9:30pm - Family Guy
9:30-10pm - Bob's Burgers
ALLEN GREGORY: I can definitely see where people might disagree, but that TOTALLY worked for me. I dig the animation style. I dig the sense of humor. I dig the cast (Jonah Hill, Will Forte, Leslie Mann, etc.)...but once again, I can completely see where people would be turned off by this. The fact is Jonah Hill is--to more and more people, it seems--the poor man's pre-Green Hornet-physique Seth Rogen; he's a tad overexposed and has his fingers in a lot of proverbial pies right now. I don't mind him, and I think his voice suits this character very well. To be fair, he DID co-create this show, so he knew what he was doing, but still, I dig it. I won't deny it; there's a pretty decent chance this will be another Sit Down, Shut Up, where a few promising names and a humorous trailer belied what was a pretty damned unfunny show, but for right now, come September...
MY VERDICT: ...I'm in...or I should say, I'm certainly more in for this than what you're about to see next.
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NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: I have a pretty unique relationship with Napoleon Dynamite (the 2004 film). When I first saw ads for it during the 2004 MTV Movie Awards, I knew I'd love it. It was just the right amount of indie weird for my tastes. It took until late October of that year for it to finally show up at a SINGLE theatre in my local area, and I had a memorable Saturday night laughing my ass off at the citizens of Preston, Idaho. (The milk scene at the 4-H event still slays me.) The following week, I returned to school RAVING about this unique and hilarious film I'd seen the weekend before, only for people to scoff and dismiss me. (I had yet to have developed a reputation--not to incorrectly toot my own horn--as a tastemaker.) Three months later, the movie hit DVD, and after Christmas Break...FUCK. I walked into a sea of "Vote for Pedro" t-shirts and a cacophony of people indignantly scoffing, "GOSH! IDIOT! EAT THE FOOD!". ...It was a shitty time. I stand by my story to this day that I was the first person in my high school to see the film, and moreover, I'd still be willing to bet that over half of the people wearing those shirts and yelling those quotes had NEVER FUCKING SEEN IT. Over the years, my sour grapes at that whole experience have weakened my relationship with the film, and only very recently have I found myself watching re-airings of it on Comedy Central with the same kind of delight I had that fateful October night in 2004. ALL OF THAT BEING SAID...I've known there was an animated series in the works for about two years now, and to be fair, it doesn't look all that bad...BUT(!), I--like a lot of people out there--just don't see the point of all this. It will have been EIGHT YEARS since the film's release by the time this show hits the airwaves. Near as I can tell--in that time--it's either been forgotten or lost a lot of goodwill from people who started to see through the bullshit, like I did all those years ago. Granted, it's still feels slightly less unnecessary than the oft-threatened TBS animated series based on Joe Dirt, but it all still feels very wrong somehow.
MY VERDICT: I--like a lot of people out there--will watch the pilot out of pure morbid curiosity, and you know, I won't dispute that I might end up enjoying it...but still...wow. Just fucking wow.
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FINAL THOUGHTS:
I won't lie to you, folks. I haven't really had a big stake in the FOX Network's output in some time now. There are no shows I watch regularly on it (not even DVRed), and what we've just seen doesn't look like it's really going to challenge that. In the interest of fairness however, let's break it down by genre.
In terms of live-action comedy, I'm giving the edge to New Girl. I've spent the past few years--particularly after realizing how much I fucking despised 500 Days of Summer--like a lot of people, on the Zooey Deschanel Hate Train. It's been a pretty sad experience, considering I'd enjoyed her for many years in things like Almost Famous, Big Trouble, and Elf, but I did and still do see exactly where we were/are all coming from. She basically fell into the trap of being the female Michael Cera for a while and I really believe this could be her Scott Pilgrim; the thing that breaks her from that stigma and gets her back in the good graces of the more stodgy of my fellow nerds. It certainly looks better than I Hate My Teenage Daughter, that's for damned sure.
On the animated front, I want to give the advantage to Allen Gregory but I know--despite all our hand-wringing--that Napoleon Dynamite is going to attract a far bigger audience than any of us think it will/should. The t-shirts may be gone, but I think morbid curiosity, coupled with a generation who often completely miss the point are going to make it a mainstay of FOX's Sunday night line-up...for a while at least. I'll keep my fingers crossed that Allen wins the day, though.
Lastly, we come to drama. I stand by my prediction that Terra Nova has the potential to take a very notable (and expensive) shit in the ratings. I actually quite enjoy being proven wrong, but it just seems too cut-and-dried/procedural--CGI dinosaurs notwithstanding--to keep the audiences coming, especially with that timeslot. Once again, The Finder means nothing to me, so it comes down to Alcatraz. It'll have a steep ratings battle on its hands too, but J.J. Abrams and the folks at Bad Robot have surprised us all before, and I look forward to them pulling it off again.
...and one final note. The cancellation--save for a few alleged "quarterly specials"--of America's Most Wanted saddens me deeply. When a show has made such a commendable difference to our society, has ZERO competition in the ratings, and has been a consistent mainstay of your network since (pretty much) its very inception, there is no logic in cutting it loose; ESPECIALLY when you have NOTHING to put in its place. Bad form, FOX. Bad fucking form.
...and that'll do it for today, kids. I made a point of starting this last night, so my brain isn't quite as fried as it was yesterday. I want to thank those of you who've sent me your comments; they are greatly appreciated. Keep 'em coming and please, TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
Join me tomorrow as I tackle the plentiful (and plenty-awful) Fall output from the folks over at ABC.
Until then, this one tastes like the cow got into an onion patch.
GOODBYE! HAVE A GOO' TIME!
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