It's here!!! It's the most wonderful, and second busiest time of my year. This is my 16th new television season. I had seen every WB pilot back in May, but because of my job, I cannot release any information about the new TV shows until now....
Despite a lack of truly original ideas for TV shows, there are some good shows out there. The following is my list of shows not be missed and why (silent mental drum roll please....)
NEW ON MY DVR
1. FLASH FORWARD is the drama series I am most looking forward to. I'll write more after I see it, but it looks to be the most compelling drama of the new season.
2. If you liked Popular back in 1999 on the WB, then you will as thrilled as I am that writer/director Ryan Murphy is going back to high school with his songbook in GLEE. GLEE is a very funny show with a dark, biting sense of humor that has a laugh in almost every scene and is without a doubt the only TV show ever to work that features singing in it.
3. VAMPIRE DIARIES is my guilty pleasure show of the new season. Yeah, it's Twilight the TV series, and yes, both vampires are incredibly hot, but what I really like is the return of Kevin Williamson to network television. Dawson's Creek was one of my favorite shows of the late 90's/early 2000's. I tell you, no one writes good female dialogue that actually sounds like dialogue women would actually say. Women are very difficult to write for and write realistic female dialogue versus dialogue that a man writes that he thinks women would say are two very different types of dialogue. (Stay with me on this, it's a writer's thing....). Needless to say, the women in Kevin Williamson's shows are never victims, and they're always smart, insightful, witty, and romantic.
4. The funniest new show of the season is Modern Family. If the producers can keep up the sheer volume of laughs from the pilot into the rest of the episodes, this show is the new Arrested Development. It's getting a huge pitch from ABC and is anchoring their new 2 hour Wednesday comedy block.
And finally, my favorite TV show of the 1990's is back! MELROSE PLACE returns!!! So how is the reboot? It's still a little too soon to tell. I'm really not hooked into any of the new characters (except the bitchy blonde publicist), but I LOVED seeing Michael & Sydney in the pilot. Plus they're bringing back Jane and Jo, and the rest of the original cast that hasn't worked since MP went off the air in 1999. (Kimberly would be back too if it wasn't for Desperate Housewives - DAMMIT!).
But I'm definitely sticking with the new MP, since Heather Locklear will be back as the awesome Amanda Woodward. Mandy's back to rule the roost and LA will never be the same again! I hope she took D&D public, made a killing in the stock market and is a multi-millionairees.
You know what I was thinking about the other day.....how I used to get together with 6 or 7 friends on a weeknight, go over someone's apartment and drink while we were watching a TV show! Back in the day, there was only a VCR if you missed a TV show, otherwise you had to catch it in repeats later in the season. And FOX didn't repeat MP, because primetime soaps had terrible in repeats. My friend Tom would have a viewing party starting at 8PM on a Wednesday (where we would all talk and catch up while the original 90210 was on) and then we were all buzzed an hour later for MP at 9. The show would end at 10, we would chat for another hour and then either go out or go home. And Melrose Place wasn't the only show, we drank to Absolutely Fabulous, South Park, Popular......Ah, when I was young and living in LA in the 90's......
MAYBE, MAYBE NOT
I will definitley check out The Cleveland Show to see if it's as funny as Family Guy. I will watch a few episodes of The Good Wife, since I'm a huge fan of Juliana Marguiles acting. She's a major talent and definitely deserves her own show. I was surprisingly impressed with NCIS Los Angeles, so I'll watch a few episodes and add a procedural since I'm dropping C.S.I Miami from my playlist (it's too sad to see Miami every week when I'm not living there and they're running out of interesting cases).
SO OTHER THOUGHTS ON THE NEW SEASON
Jay Leno's move into primetime - a complete non-story. The most underreported story of the new season is the vacuum created when ER ended, leaving no hospital series in primetime. There are 3 new shows all trying to be the next ER are: Trauma on NBC, Three Rivers and Miami Trauma both on CBS (MIAMI TRAUMA is midseason).
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