Deadly Furniture

Last season, Elizabeth and I probably watched one or two new pilots altogether. I don’t know if just nothing sounded very interesting or if we were too invested in old television shows to bother with new ones, but whatever the case I’m pretty sure we watched the pilot of The Event (that turned out well) and then called everything else a bust. (To be fair, we picked up Parks & Recreation which was perhaps the best move we have made in the history of our television watching). This year promises to be different--or at least that’s what the networks have promised me and they have bombarded the internets with clips, enticing spoilers, and previews to make me root for their shows.

Take, for example, Charlies Angels. Because Wonder Woman mercifully failed to get a pick-up by NBC, this ABC show will haunt our commercial breaks until the end of time. ABC really wants us all to remember how popular the original show was and those two movies, and also wants us to know that their version is going to be much better. I’m less than optimistic. With so much emphasis being put on the brand and how hot the main characters are, it seems like scripts and interesting/exciting/unexpected storytelling could become second/third/low priority. Will I watch the pilot? Sure. Why not? Do I expect to be watching much more? Nah.

This season is also the season of “pairs.” NBC and ABC are both putting up fairy-tale shows and period shows and it promises to all end in an epic showdown that the press will make a huge deal of and then we’ll all forget about in a year or two. ABC has Once Upon A Time, the story of what happens when fairy-tale characters have to survive in the real world. NBC has Grimm, the story of a police officer, last name Grimm, who realizes that he’s one of the few people who can see that the world is populated by evil fairy-tale characters. Having seen clips for both of them, and had the entire first episode of Grimm spoiled in the process (thanks NBC), I can’t say that I’m impressed by either. Sure, it may have something to do with the very sub-par special effects that grace the opening of Once Upon A Time, or it may be that Grimm looks sorta boring. However, I’m pretty sure it’s that both of these got picked up, and Ron Moore’s promising magic-themed pilot (with three, THREE Battlestar Galactica veterans) failed to get a pick-up. I mean, how could either of these even hope to compare?

Since it’s been announced that Mad Men is off our screens for what seems like eleven years (WHY!?!?! WHY?!?!?!) NBC and ABC are hoping to capitalize on AMC’s loss by giving us The Playboy Club and Pan Am. They’re both what you would expect from their titles and I can already tell that I’ll watch both of their pilots. That being said, I’m pretty sure only one of these is going to last the season and, because I actually liked the clips of The Playboy Club more than Pan Am, my bets are on Pan Am surviving.

Into the mix of this season’s pilot season then comes the shows that you watch merely for the people that are in them. Michael Emerson’s (of Lost fame) role in CBS’s Person of Interest means that Elizabeth and I will both watch a show that we would never have tuned into anyways, Jason Issacs in the mid-season Awake (he’s a GOOD guy) is going to be great, and Sam Neill and Jorge Garcia in Alcatraz gives us even more reason to watch the sci-fi thriller besides the fact that it’s a sci-fi thriller. And, while we’re talking about sci-fi thrillers, ABC’s mid-season show The River is either going to be great or horrible. Here’s hoping great.

And now, to wrap it all up in a nice and convenient way, a list!

This Year’s Chase: Prime Suspect

This Year’s Obvious Glee Copy-Cat: Smash!

This Year’s Most-Anticipated Mid-Season Show: Awake

This Year’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Ringer

This Year’s Sure-to-Be First Cancellation: Unforgettable (‘cause it’s forgettable. Get it?)

This Year’s O.C: Revenge (now with more Marc Blucas)

This Year’s Rebecca’s Most Anticipated Show: The River