What the... Hey! - Premiere Week starts

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Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Premiere Week starts

While the days of a single “premiere week” for network television are long gone, this week comes closest. After the drought of the summer, we have new shows starting this week right and left, mostly on CBS. Here’s last night’s recap, based upon what I watched:

CBS Comedies: CBS has pretty much taken over the first two hours of Monday night with comedies. This year, we have three returnees and one newbee.

The Class: This is the only new show on CBS’s Monday schedule. A bunch of third-grade classmates get re-acquainted. The show’s been described as a “Friends-style” show, and it has a lot in common with that one, including a really bad start (for those that don’t remember, Friends was pretty solidly panned when it started as a “Sienfeld rip-off”). The show has some potential. We’ll see where it goes.

How I Met Your Mother: It’s pretty obvious by now, that the “mother” isn’t going to be making an entrance into this show anytime soon. The title of the show should be more like “What my friends and I did before your mother met me and straightened me out”. It remains an okay show, but nowhere near as funny as the critics would like you to think.

Two and a Half Men: Here we go, series re-start. Last season ended with Alan (the nebbish brother) getting married to his girlfriend, Kandi. So, of course, this season Charlie has gone back to his partying ways (the likes of which we never saw before), and (like clockwork) Alan gets dumped by Kandi. Yawn. As an aside, I’m going to miss Kandi. I thought she was a great character. However, I’m hoping this season we’ll see more of Rose, the next door neighbor stalker with the psych degree (another great character). Also, more of Jake, Alan’s son. You know, the show is definitely best when Charlie and Alan play straight man to the rest of the cast. Here’s hoping.

The New Adventures of Old Christine: I continue to have mixed feelings about this show (Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Emmy notwithstanding). Her character is amazingly funny and way more non-PC than is usually allowed on network television, but the plots of the show are incredibly tedious and boring. I hear that Wanda Sykes will have a bigger part this season. That should liven things up a bit.

No shining start in the CBS comedy lineup. But, on to the big fish on the new Monday lineup: Studio 60!

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: This show’s gotten a lot of hype, thanks to the identities of the producers: Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme. They’re the creative force behind Sports Night (for those that remember) and West Wing. Likewise, I’ve been looking forward to this show, since I’m a big Aaron Sorkin fan. The show turned out to be a bit of a surprise, mostly pleasant. It’s a lot darker than Aaron’s previous two shows. There’s a definite “sinister” quality to the show; most of the sets are downright dark. The scenes of the show seemed to say “dramedy”, a la Ally McBeal or Boston Legal. The reality (at least from the pilot) is that this show is much more serious than even West Wing was. Yes, there are funny parts (Matthew Perry plays a comedy writer after all), but it comes across as more “comedy relief” than part of the main plot. I thought that it was also interesting that, while the show has an ensemble cast, it seems to center around Matthew’s and Bradley Whitford’s characters. I expected this. What I didn’t expect was that Matthew’s character would be the “lead” between the two. In West Wing, there was originally a similar arrangement with Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman) and Rob Lowe (Sam Seaborn), but it was Bradley that ended up being the main guy there, with Rob playing “straight man”. Somehow, I expected the same in Studio 60. Instead, its Matthew who takes the lead. And, by the way, this is terrific. I think Matthew Perry will be showing us just how good a dramatic actor he can be. He was probably the best in the pilot, followed closely by Sarah Paulson. Also, its great to see Amanda Peet back on television. I was a big Jack and Jill fan, and have loved her various screen parts. Steven Weber is also terrific as the slimy executive responsible for much of the trouble on the show that Matthew and Bradley have stepped in to save. All in all, if Aaron and company can keep the quality as high as the pilot, this will be the Emmy winner for best drama next year.

9/19/2006 10:04:48 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)