Anything New This Season That Warrants Viewing?

[Invader_quirk]

i maintain the fact that i enjoy both of those shows currently and have seen them in their entirety. they don't fall, they just change over time.

Hey, change is fine. The problem for most is not a tonal shift, it's that it's not funny to them anymore.

[shodan]

you see that's weird to me, i laugh my ass off at  most of the new episodes.

[D.B. Barnes]

I lost interest in Hawaii 5-0 when they reveal Alex Mack as a traitor working with The Crow.

That was just...weird. They throw some HUGE twist at you out of nowhere and they've had zero follow-up ever since. It's almost as if the writers forgot they ever wrote it.

But he is off solving crime on Hawaii Five-o

Aha! So, I'm not the only one watching.

It's worth it just for the occasional flying tackle into the side of a dumpster.

Flying tackles are the order of day. The flying tackle off the boat deck into the barrels is my favorite so far.

In an UNrelated note, the 'real-life/police/war/subversive-/invasive-whatever' of 'Homeland' is beginning to outweigh my enjoyment of watching Morena Baccarin, and I may quit watching it.  There, too, there's very little happening to take up so much of my time and concentration.

Related to that, I'm still on the fence about continuing 'Person of Interest'.  There's been seven episodes, and little indication that they'll ever explore anything bigger than the Bill Bixby/Hulk 'person in crisis of the week' show.  And not having a 'bigger picture' bores me to tears (well, 'bores me to change channels'  ).

On Homeland, I'm being pretty patient as the acting and intense atmosphere have kept me locked into each episode. I'm really caught up in the drama of this one.

I really hope Person of Interest delves deeper into the subplot so it can be a much more important and meaningful aspect of the show.

[D.B. Barnes]

Officially done with Allen Gregory after two episodes. This show is trying too hard and the majority of it falls flat on its face. It's just not funny.

[Bob]

Finally saw last week's Once Upon a Time...........ugh.    Terrible episode.    Hopefully that was just a mistep.

[D.B. Barnes]

Parkman and Hiro reunited on Hawaii Five-O! Complete with whimsical "get it?" music. Kinda made me miss early season Heroes. And seeing Jin on the show every week makes me miss LOST. Seeing actors from your favorite cancelled shows can give you pangs of nostalgia.

[D.B. Barnes]

NBC Orders 2 More Eps. Of ‘Up All Night’

NBC has added 2 more episodes to the Back 9 order of freshman comedy Up All Night, bringing the series’ total first-season order to 24 episodes. This is the latest vote of confidence by NBC for the show starring Christina Applegate, following the early full-season pickup and the recent time slot upgrade. Beginning Jan. 12, Up All Night is moving from its current Wednesday 8 PM slot to the cushy post-The Office 9:30 PM berth on Thursday. With Up All Night prominently factoring into NBC’s scheduling plans for the rest of the season, the network has opted to up its order, something normally reserved for top performers, like NBC’s flagship comedy series The Office, whose last 3 seasons spanned between 24-26 episodes.

This seems like a good news/foreboding news scenario. I've been enjoying Up All Night and am rooting for it to succeed, but not at the expense of Community. Moving this to Thursdays seems like a pretty bad sign. Why the fuck can't NBC leave Thursday alone and just shove one their development shows in behind Up All Night. How lame is it that The Biggest Loser eats up two-thirds of the prime-time schedule on Wednesdays while shows like Community are pulled?

 

NBC Buys Jim Henson Co’s Hybrid Human-Puppet Family Comedy

On the eve of the new Muppets movie opening on Wednesday, the Jim Henson Co. has set up another hybrid human-puppet project, this time on primetime TV. NBC has closed a script deal for The New Nabors, a comedy about a human family and the repercussions they encounter living next door to a family of puppets. NBC, of course, had success in the human-puppet family sitcom arena with Alf in the late 1980s. Feature writer John Hoffman (Fox 2000′s Afterlife) and 30 Rock executive producer John Riggi will write the script for The New Nabors, which they developed with Lisa Henson and The Jim Henson Co. (I hear the spelling of the show’s title is an homage to actor-singer Jim Nabors.) Lisa Henson, Hoffman and Riggi are executive producing, with longtime Henson producer Alex Rockwell also attached. CAA-repped Hoffman and UTA-repped Riggi are managed by Anonymous. Puppets have been off the major broadcast networks for awhile, with Fox’s underrated single-camera comedy Greg The Bunny as the most recent example.

[LucasM]

Puppets have been off the major broadcast networks for awhile....

The only reason they can say this is because of the qualifier "broadcast".  Because they couldn't possibly ignore all the presenters on FOX News.

[k1]

Up All Night is one of those shows that kinda... I dunno.  It's occasionally really funny & I can relate to parts of it being an exhausted parent which makes some parts even funnier.  But for the most part the show isn't really doing anything for me.  I want to like it, but I keep finding myself really hardly paying attention while I'm watching it.

[D.B. Barnes]

Up All Night is one of those shows that kinda... I dunno.  It's occasionally really funny & I can relate to parts of it being an exhausted parent which makes some parts even funnier.  But for the most part the show isn't really doing anything for me.  I want to like it, but I keep finding myself really hardly paying attention while I'm watching it.

I would agree to a certain extent. It's not great, but it's good for some laughs and genuine moments. Granted, when it comes to television comedy, my standards have been significantly whittled down over the years, which makes me watch shows like this and wonder why on earth NBC would pull a brilliant show like Community in favor of a completely unwatchable show like Whitney. I mean, Up All Night is tens times better that Whitney. The shit just doesn't make sense to me.

[Nunyerbiz]

oh god... Whitney was beyond awful... even for my wife, who tends to be very forgiving when it comes to sitcoms. We watched the first three, because lots of pilot episodes don't quite click.. but it just kept getting worse. My wife tells me "Up All Night" has hit a decent little stride, but I haven't seen anything past the pilot.

Another show that has it's moments, but is probably already cancelled, is "Man Up!" on ABC. Probably not worth seeking out, as I'm pretty sure it's going nowhere as far as renewal. We were looking for Modern Family on the ABC on-demand channel, and watched it when we realized Modern Family was above such commoner slums as the ABC on-demand channel....

[D.B. Barnes]

oh god... Whitney was beyond awful... even for my wife, who tends to be very forgiving when it comes to sitcoms. We watched the first three, because lots of pilot episodes don't quite click.. but it just kept getting worse. My wife tells me "Up All Night" has hit a decent little stride, but I haven't seen anything past the pilot.

Another show that has it's moments, but is probably already cancelled, is "Man Up!" on ABC. Probably not worth seeking out, as I'm pretty sure it's going nowhere as far as renewal. We were looking for Modern Family on the ABC on-demand channel, and watched it when we realized Modern Family was above such commoner slums as the ABC on-demand channel....

Whitney is worthless barge garbage. The fact that NBC would even consider keeping this pathetic showcase for a hack comic on in favor of Community is so far beyond my capacity for reason. But enough about Community. Modern Family is so many levels above any other comedy on ABC that I sometimes forget it's an ABC show. Suburgatory hangs in there but suffers from some formulaic traps and doesn't deliver on anywhere near the levels of Modern Family.

[Raefire]

Grimm just got a full season order too (whoo! Go Portland!), and apparently they're testing it on Thursday @ 10:00 (at least, on December 8th - dunno about after that.)

Sounds like they're confident in that show. I know I'm enjoying it so far, even though it's still finding its footing.

Whitney still befuddles me, like Workaholics on Comedy Central. I mean, I like Whitney Cummings on Chelsea Lately and such, but the sitcom...Ugh. I'm still wondering how both those shows are still on the air.

[k1]

Man Up has some pretty funny moments.  But I agree that it probably won't be around for very long.

[mrbasehart]

The reason why Whitney is being considered over Community isn't because of the relative qualities of the show, it's mostly down to its ratings.  Community gets a 1.6, which would've gotten it cancelled in its first season on any other network, but NBC kept it around because a) the people who like it, really like it and b) they had nothing else.  Whitney, with Community's terrible lead-in pulls a 1.9.  Not much better, but when you consider that everyone who's going to give Community a chance has had 3 years to do do, while Whitney still has a chance to break through, it's not hard to see the arguments made by TV executives. 

We shouldn't be mad at NBC - I'm sure they'd love to see Community succeed more than we do, it's just a pity that more viewers don't feel the same way.