Tue, March 9, 2004

You can feel it in the air – it's that time of year again. The mid-season. And, as fun as it is in theory for TiVo and I to watch and review all the new shows for you, in practice it leaves something to be desired. A few somethings, actually, but chief among them is "a point." So, this time, I'm previewing the new shows for you – sight more or less unseen – in order that you can actually tune into them if the whim should catch you. No sniggering; some of TV's greatest series were mid-season replacements, among them NewsRadio, Seinfeld, and Family Guy.

Want to really freak out? NBC isn't offering any mid-season shows! Unless you count January's Tracy Morgan Show, which, again, I don't. They'll roll out some reality shows I guess, and they'll have an "event" or two, including the Charlie's Angels TV movie, but they're not starting any real shows. No, instead, they'll be airing old episodes of Friends in just about any time slot they can wedge them into. It reminds me of an old SNL where they aired a fake NBC promo that was just a listing of Friends and Wings for every single night of the week. Since there are already up to five Friends reruns a night in syndication, one would hope that at least the prime time NBC Friends reruns would be the uncut pre-syndication versions, but one would have to be pretty insane to actually expect that to happen.

Next up is the WB, which really shouldn't count as a network, but in this day and age there are a lot of things happening that are more unusual, so let's roll with it. The WB is debuting one new sitcom this mid-season, which says to me "our heart's not really in it." Ah, well...

The Help

(9:30 Fridays, starting 3/12)

All I know about this show is what I see in the last eight seconds of its promo, which I see roughly three times per Smallville episode, due to miscalculations in my fast-forwarding. It consists of a maid making her employer uncomfortable by treating him to an impromptu lap-dance type thing. Based on the lighting, set design, and laugh track present in this cliplet, I am betting that The Help is positioning itself as a bawdier The Nanny. Despite childhood favorite Mindy Cohn's triumphant return to the screen, and despite Brenda Strong, who's been awesome on everything from Seinfeld to Sports Night to even The Lyon's Den, I'm afraid this one will have to be skipped. (Counterweighting Cohn and Strong, there's Tori Spelling and David Faustino. Seriously.)

Call them crazy, CBS is trotting out a sitcom and a drama series. Oh, the humanity!

The Stones

(9:30 Wednesdays, starting 3/17)

I'm guessing that CBS noted the runaway success of Happy Family with John Larroquette and decided to fast-track The Stones with Robert Klein before someone had the decency to tell them that the phrase "runaway success" was being used sarcastically. For all intents and purposes, the plotlines and punch lines seem to be pretty much identical here. Oh, maybe the kids are messed up in Happy Family and the parents are messed up in The Stones. How do those wacky TV writers come up with such twists? (On the plus side, apparently nobody moves in.) Throw in Judith "Tony, no!" Light and Lindsay Sloane (Big Red from Bring it On) and you've got... well, essentially the same bad sitcom.

Century City

(9:00 Tuesdays, starting 3/16)

For the longest time, I couldn't tell if the title Century City merely referred to that part of Los Angeles's west side, so named because some of its acreage was originally part of the 20th Century Fox lot (which still exists there, in shrunken form) or whether it was also intended to be a pun on the futuristic setting of the show. From the ads (which I viewed exclusively in TiVo's triple fast-forward), I couldn't tell if the show was actually set in the future, or if it was just lit very blue. (Maybe they got a good deal on a lot of cyan gels!) So, I checked the CBS website, and it's the latter. It refers to the town and makes a trite pun with the fact that the show is set in 2030. Which is technically not another century anyway. Whatever. They're lawyers of the future, which – so far as I can tell – means lawyers of today plus holograms. Why is it that everyone thinks the big idea of the future will be seeing through things? These holograms never look lifelike; they always have those striated "video noise" glitches like R2D2's Princess Leia clip in Star Wars. Am I the only one who thinks that the technology would have to perfect itself a little more before it achieved such widespread adoption? Anyway, this show has a tiny smidgeon of potential because it stars Hector Elizondo, and I haven't checked yet so potentially his character is named Hector Belizondo. Which is How It Should Be.

Fox is on my list with two new shows as well, since I don't count their reality offerings. (Forever Eden and The Swan) Reality shows don't really have "seasons" anyway, so they aren't mid-season replacements in my mind, they're just starting up at odd times like they always do. This is why I didn't count Average Joe 3 on NBC's list either – in case you're keeping score.

Wonderfalls

(9:00 Fridays, starting 3/12)

In a shameless attempt to cash in on the overwhelming viewership that ABC's Wonderland gathered in just two airings four years ago, Fox is naming their show Wonderfalls. (Or maybe they're piggybacking on Val Kilmer's pornstar murder spree Wonderland from last year – or Johnny Mathis's "Wonderful, Wonderful"?) Actually, if anything, Wonderfalls is a pale imitation of Joan of Arcadia, gone over quickly with the Eerie, Indiana brush. See, instead of some almighty deity communicating with our heroine, this time it's inanimate objects. (For the "I think my computer hates me" crowd, I guess.) The quirkiness factor will either make it cute and watchable or miserably unbearable. I'm leaning towards the latter. Prove me wrong, Fox!

Cracking Up

(9:30 Tuesdays, starting 3/9) (That's tonight, people!)

As much as I hate to throw Molly Shannon a bone, this show has a little potential. I'll definitely watch at least two episodes, because the special-time-slot Wednesday night episode this week features guest star Zooey (yum!) Deschanel. Molly Shannon and Christopher "I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast" McDonald are Mom and Dad, and Jason Schwartzman (of Rushmore and Phantom Planet) is the psychology student who moves in to try to fix their zany family. For lightning to strike twice and give Fox another offbeat sitcom hit after Arrested Development so won my heart – well, I'm not holding my breath. Although if Fox's comedy future were to rest on the shoulders of two Jasons, well that would be kind of cute.

And, finally, ABC. Besides the miniseries event Kingdom Hospital, they've got a whopping three new series bowing this mid-season. Does this mean the end of According to Jim? Will someone ever break that show's stranglehold on me and restore what's left of my dignity? (Not likely; Jim Belushi is what's known as a "heavy hitter" relative to ABC's current galaxy of stars. He'll probably break Kelsey Grammer's record.)

The Big House

(8:30 Fridays, starting April 2)

I'm not trying to be insensitive here, but how is this different from The Hughleys and My Wife and Kids? My point is, it's the same in the eyes of ABC's marketing and programming departments, which is why it's presented as the same to me which is why I can't bring myself to care about it.

Line of Fire

(10:00 Tuesdays, starting ?)

Oo! When is it gonna start? I don't know! What a scintillating mystery! There's about five pages of required reading on ABC's website to understand this show's premise, so suffice it to say I don't. It has David Paymer (as a villain!) and it seems like it's Skin except instead of showing us the D.A.'s office and the porn king, it'll be showing us the FBI office and a mob boss. Or something.

The D.A.

(10:00 Fridays, starting 3/19)

This show features Steven Weber, who I like no matter what. Also, I have to guess that it is about a district attorney (sadly, not a particularly shaggy one), which means that we get three new law enforcements shows, as if cops/doctors/lawyers were ever going to go out of style... J.K. Simmons is in this, and I have to like him because in the Spider-Man movies, he's responsible for this line appearing in the closing credits:

J. Jonah Jameson - J.K. Simmons

which is about as close as I'll ever get to seeing "Jameson Simmons" on the silver screen. Also featured, Sarah Paulson, who headlined Leap of Faith on NBC a while back. (A show so quickly forgotten that I actually forget it when I'm trying to think of a bad, quickly forgotten sitcom – I end up using Daddio.) Great quips all, but they don't add up to me caring about this show one bit. Bring back Karen Sisco! (I mean, they are, but bring it back for good!)

Also, HBO is starting the penultimate season of The Sopranos which only qualifies as mid-season because of the timing. I finally quit watching The Sopranos a long time ago, because I realized that – as fantastic as it may be for its devotees – it just doesn't do anything for me. I started hearing a lot of good things about the upcoming season, so I thought I might consider checking it out, although I was disappointed that I'd be dealing with a gap. Then I realized that, due to HBO's enormous "off-season" periods, even though I swore off The Sopranos a full 18 months ago, I haven't missed a single new episode in the interim. Maybe that's why they time it that way! I kind of feel like someone who quit smoking and then relapsed a year later, although being HBO's chump is wildly preferable to being Philip Morris's chump. I mean, I feel like a sucker for giving The Sopranos the time of day, but at least I never took up smoking!

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