Ramblings of a TV Addict

By Josh Brown

Fall Brawl

The battle plans for viewership next season have been laid out. New shows are being prepared, old shows are continuing in their ways, and some shows are gone but won't be forgotten. This past week was the announcement of the networks fall schedules, so I'm here to tell you all about what was cut, what stayed, and what we have to look forward to. I will, of course, give you my opinions (for better or worse) on the upcoming season as we go along.

NBC remains pretty much intact next season with the addition of only five new shows and no changes to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday lineups. The new shows consist of three new comedies and two dramas. The shows cut were Weakest Link, UC: Undercover, Three Sisters, Watching Ellie, and Leap of Faith; while the shows added are American Dreams, Boomtown, Good Morning Miami, In-Laws, and Hidden Hills.

The two dramas, Boomtown and American Dream, don't sound very appealing. That isn't to say they won't be good, but I probably won't be watching them. I'll of course give them a chance and see where it goes from there. Boomtown is basically a show about Los Angeles cops, lawyers, reporters, politicians and paramedics. It sounds like all of NBC's dramas wrapped up into one. Won't that be fun for the whole family? And American Dream takes place in the sixties, following two teenage girls as they try to live up their dream of getting onto American Bandstand.

The comedies, well, let's just say, NBC made a good choice in keeping all the shows they already had last season. Cause personally I don't see any of the new shows coming in staying around for very long. Of course, I really don't like to judge comedies without seeing them. Usually their concepts don't come across as very appealing to me but watching them, I find some rather hilarious.

Over on ABC, Darma & Greg, Spin City, The Job, Philly, and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? were cancelled in order to make way for Dinotopia (the series); Push, Nevada (a reality show - enough said); 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter, Less Than Perfect, Life with Bonnie, Meds, and That Was Then. I really don't know what to say about most of these shows. Again the comedies don't really come across to me as anything special or different. Those really do come down to execution for me. Meds, a drama, is being described as a modern day M*A*S*H with the doctor's going head-to-head with HMOs and the like. That Was Then is about a thirty year old man who ends up travelling back in time to when he was in high school so he can fix things that turned his life to crap. This one sounds like it might be interesting; of course I'm a sucker for time travel shows (even though most of them suck).

The WB cancelled Raising Dad, Maybe It's Me, Popstars, Felicity (how can this show be from the same guy that makes Alias? Too weird!), and The Steve Harvey Show. Their replacements are Everwood, Family Affair (a remake), What I Like About You, Greetings from Tucson (all of these are the WB trademark shows - all about family; aww, how sweet), Birds of Prey (from the makers of Smallville and based on the DC Comic's Batgirl legend), and Do Over (a comedy, this will sound familiar, about a thirty something guy that travels back to his high school day to "do over" his mistakes).

FOX ended up canceling Dark Angel, as well as Titus (good show), That's 80's Show (please, like this show wasn't doomed before it was started), Undeclared (wasn't as funny as people seem to think), and sadly I must report they have also cancelled Greg the Bunny (we will miss you). Replacing them we have Firefly (they had to rewrite the pilot script, never a good sign but I have faith), Fastlane (some kind of Fast and the Furious take off), John Doe (interesting concept here: a man washes up from a river and discovers he knows everything knowable in the universe... except who he is), Cedric the Entertainer, Girls Club, and Oliver Beene. 24 will also be back for another day (one day wasn't bad enough, don't know if the poor guy will live through the next).

UPN picks up three new shows. I don't know what they cancelled besides Roswell (great show; stupid tv execs). Buffy is back for another season. The new shows are The Twilight Zone (new "updated" version - or what I like to call... future flop), Haunted (this one might be worth a look; it's about a private detective who can contact dead people that then help him solve crimes - like I said, worth a look but no guarantees), and a comedy called Half and Half (never seen a UPN comedy worth watching yet).

And over at CBS they cancelled The Education of Max Bickford (but not Baby Bob? Who is blackmailing them and with what?), Family Law, and First Monday. Taking over we have CSI: Miami (should be good, since it's a spin-off of CSI), Bram and Alice, and two police dramas (just what we need, more of these) Hack and RHD/LA.

All in all, it's pretty much like every year. I won't lie, I've often been a bad judge of shows (in terms of their lasting or not), but next season's new shows, overall, don't seem to have much to them. I will say that I'm basing that off of one-to-two sentence loglines and those can be very hard to judge shows from. I do hope some of these shows will make it, though with my luck, the ones I like will be the only ones cancelled!

Until next time.