a) "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"
This show is better than early ads made it look but not as good as its cast deserves; hell, I'd love to see a comedy about just Andre Braugher and Terry Crews so much that I almost kind of resent Andy Samberg for getting in the way. And I generally like him, at least in Hot Rod and on Lonely Island records, but his character in this is the kind of thing that would wear thin over the course of a 10-minute SNL sketch, nevermind as the lead of a series. With each episode they seem to sand off his annoying edges and figure out the ensemble's strengths, though. They just need to keep giving Chelsea Peretti as many great lines as she had in the pilot.

b) "The Michael J. Fox Show"
So far this is my favorite new show of the fall, which makes sense since Will Gluck co-created it and directed the pilot, and his movies (Fired Up, Easy A, Friends With Benefits) are some of my favorite comedy flicks of the past few years. This show retains some of the sensibility and comic rhythms of those movies but also does a great job of steering around the inevitable sentimentality surround Fox's return to TV, using it as grist for satire, and actually doing something useful with showbiz meta unlike most shows that just kind of do it for its own sake.

c) "Masters Of Sex"
Another favorite of the new season, partly because I love Lizzy Caplan and the premise is intrinsically interesting. But with Showtime, there's always an uncanny knack to take a good idea and a good cast and dumb it down until it's useless, and so far this hasn't come off the rails after three whole episodes so I'm optimistic. Obviously, they're milking the concept for titillation beyond what probably really happened, but it's still interesting to look at that chapter of history and what we know now and think about how sex was looked at back then, and they've mostly held back from too much heavy-handed Mad Men-style historical irony.

d) "The Millers"
Beau Bridges is on both "Masters Of Sex" and this, and it's weird to think of one actor being in two new shows the same fall, especially one that good and one this bad. This is also a waste of Will Arnett, and Margo Martindale, who's been just straight killing it in guest roles on "Justified" and a ton of other cable dramas over the past few years and could suddenly be trapped in a lame CBS sitcom now. May cancellation come swiftly to this one.

e) "Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D."
Setting aside that this show was always going to feel pre-downsized, taking place in the Avengers universe without its big stars or effects budget, this still just feels kinda cheap and half-assed. Clark Gregg even seems to be missing something of what his character had in the movie. Always nice to see Ming-Na Wen on TV, though, and the Skye character is cute and entertaining. The stories of the week just seem to pose no threat of ever being thrilling or entertaining or anything at all, though.

f) "The Blacklist"
This is pretty ridiculous and James Spader is having fun with it, don't feel like it has much long term potential but for the moment it's amusing enough, and I like that they've demonstrated a willingness to go a little over-the-top with the plots already.

g) "Hello Ladies"
I think I quite like Stephen Merchant but so rarely get a chance to see him not be the Ricky Gervais sidekick that it's nice to see him have a proper starring vehicle. This feels kinda threadbare, though, like a single guy trying to get laid is not much of a show, and so far they haven't populated his universe enough to make it feel like one. It's amiable enough, though, it could get better.

h) "Dads"
This pilot was so incredibly slimy and foul but I somehow missed until after watching it that it was a Seth MacFarlane joint, which of course seemed obvious in retrospect. I was okay with Ted but that dude just continues to be the worst, and I hate to say this show might actually be more tolerable if there were some talking animals in it.

i) "Sleepy Hollow"
My wife likes this show a lot, but I dunno. I liked "Grimm" more and I couldn't even stick with that for very long, these fantasy-type shows need some kind of edge of humor or horror or something to be interesting to me.

j) "Lucky 7"
Watched the first episode of this, it was just too dumb, all the lining the ducks in a row for future drama involving characters I could never care about.

k) "Hostage"
Another pretty dire new drama. I think I'm incapable of watching anything with Dylan McDermott. I wish Toni Collette was in a better new show, though, I've always liked her and she just finally got out of that "United States of Tara" ordeal.

l) "Sean Saves The World"
Shows that kind of throw a threadbare family premise around a familiar star never seem to do great (I'm pulling for "The Michael J. Fox Show" to beat the odds), including this one. It's not bad, though, and I like that Megan Hilty is in it -- I worked with her for a few minutes at my job last year, and she had a great sense of humor and was really cool, so it's good to see her on a comedy after "Smash" didn't really allow her much room to be funny, plus maybe there's something about her being on shows with "Will & Grace" alumni.

m) "The Mindy Project"
This show still bears a lot of the symptoms of being this new show that doesn't know what it wants to be yet, but it's still pretty consistently funny, and the big disorganized ensemble seems to finally be finding a groove. Glad to see Adam Pally getting a recurring role so soon after the cancellation of "Happy Endings," though, it'd be great if he became a cast member on this.

n) "The Newsroom"
I feel like once a week I get into an argument with someone who thinks this show is great television and I either badger them for not having seen "Sports Night" or for having seen it and daring to think "The Newsroom" is half as good. And most of those arguments are with my dad. But I've gotten pretty good at just picking out the handful of incredibly well written scenes that are in each episode and kind of politely ignoring that they never add up to a consistent or satisfying whole.

o) "The Daily Show"
Over the summer, John Oliver kept seeming to get all these funny stories that John Stewart probably would've enjoyed working on, but now it feels like perfect timing for Stewart to come back and bring a little bit more anger to the show in time for the government shutdown, so I've been enjoying that. It's been a while since the show had a chance to just completely rip into the GOP night after night, and I have to admit, I enjoy it. And I love Jessica Williams right now, I always wanna see more of her.

p) "Saturday Night Live"
As much as I hate to see Hader and Sudeikis go, and acknowledge that Armisen brought a lot to the show even though I'd gotten well sick of him, it's nice to have a lot of space open up in the cast this year for other people to shine. Kate McKinnon is destroying, Bobby Moynihan has fully come into his own to a degree that never seemed possible early on, and Cecily Strong is such an inspired choice for Weekend Update, I'm curious to see if they let her fly solo after Seth leaves or pair her up with someone. Of the new people, I like Kyle Mooney a lot, but more for the stuff he's already done on YouTube and Norm MacDonald's short-lived Comedy Central show than what he's done on "SNL" so far. The show is still patchy as ever, but as a 'rebuilding year' goes I feel like it's off to a pretty promising start.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 15, 2013 at 12:43 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.