Eric McCandless/ABC

We started our discussion this week by talking about how Jason was able to see the embargoed season finale of Mike & Molly, and it spiraled from there:

• The big tornado in Oklahoma sent the news networks into a frenzy. We talk yet again about whether the constant over-covered bad news is giving us tragedy and disaster fatigue, what the line should be between covering a story and overcovering it, and then feeling like a-holes because we’re sounding completely insensitive to people who lost family members and homes (00:00 – 27:30),
• Then we talk about Sunday’s extremely strange episode of Mad Men and whether the repeated but shallower themes are being explored that way on purpose (27:30 – 42:00),
• Then we talk about the series finale of The Office and wonder if the critics who thought it was too saccharine realized that the cringe comedy disappeared from the show years ago (42:00 – 49:45),
• Then we talk about the great finale of Elementary, how much the show has grown in its first year, how it proved it’s not a pale imitation of Sherlock and how it’s set itself up to be CBS’s next big drama hit (49:45 – 57:00),
• Then we talk about one of the most live-tweeted and Facebooked show on TV: Scandal. We try to figure out why so many people watch it live, why Shonda Rhimes is so good at “WTF TV”, how long she can keep this up, and recall the heyday of Grey’s Anatomy, which was as “WTF” as Scandal (57:00 – 1:09:00),
• We then do a singing competition roundup, including talking about American Idol possibly making an all-alumni judging panel and the new panel on The X Factor. Then we talk about how The Voice‘s new coaches, Usher and Shakira, are getting slaughtered, why it’ll be good to see them back next spring, and what’s behind Blake Shelton’s decision to stack the deck with country artists on his team (1:09:00 – 1:33:30),
• Finally, we talk quickly about the upcoming Arrested Development frenzy, the rush to watch all the fall pilots, and the season finale of Doctor Who, and the fact that we’re not coming back for two weeks (1:33:30 – 1:45:02).

You can listen to the podcast above (if you don’t hear anything, fiddle with the volume slider), download it via this link, subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via iTunes. You can also find us on the Stitcher radio app for smartphones and iPads.

By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.

The CW

As long as there has been entertainment, there has been fanfic. And these days, fanfic means big business. As we all know, Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fanfic, and it turned into a best-selling book series. And now that same success can happen for you!

Sort of. OK, not really.

“Writer” E.L. James changed the character names in her Twilight fanfic to create Fifty Shades, but a new Amazon initiative is looking to offer fanfic creators a way to make money from their stories without having to change the character names. The online retailer (and recent content provider) established Kindle Worlds, which will publish fan-written work based on established properties. So far, they’ve got licenses for Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries.

(What? No Coach?! Seriously, I have this great story about Dauber getting bit by a vampire bat, and he thinks he’s turning into a vampire but really it’s just rabies. And then he dies.)

Amazon is currently in the process of securing more licenses; these first three are all from WB’s Alloy Entertainment. So far, the target demographic for this project is pretty damned narrow (as in teenaged girls), though that may be in line with the type of properties that get the most fan fiction written about them. There is another caveat, though, for those who are already getting excited by the thought of getting Amazon to pay them for their amateur hardcore porn.

AMAZON DOESN’T WANT YOUR HARDCORE PORN!

They’re not accepting NC-17 stories, or stories with excessive use of brand names, or stories with “offensive” content, which means all the -isms like racism, sexism … jism … You know what I’m getting at.

The CW

In many ways, this all feels a bit like The Voice for the written word. On singing competitions, contestants have to sing songs written and made famous by other people. They can only hope that their singular talent shines through. This is a similar format for writers, who can hope their own brilliance can shine through in stories about Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf. Oh, and the “judges” won’t be able to see what the authors look like either. Speaking on behalf of writers, this is more-often-than-not a good thing.

So what do you call a novelized version of a television show? It’s professional fan fiction. Maybe this is a cheaper way to find potential publishable novels. If someone is really good at coming up with a new way for Elena to waffle between the Salvatore brothers for a few months, they could even get an offer to pitch something to the show itself. Why go through the proper and tedious channels to find writing talent when you can just throw a wide net across the ‘net?

Or, if we’re going to be cynical bastards about it, we can look at the rights issues. As it stands, the author owns the rights to any original characters and concepts they put into the show (like Jeremy becoming a brain-hungry zombie, perhaps), but those concepts then become a part of the published “World.” That means you can write about Zombie Jeremy, too. Further, according to Amazon’s breakdown of this concept, “We will also give the World Licensor a license to use your new elements and incorporate them into other works without further compensation to you.”

In other words, Jeremy can show up as a zombie next season on The Vampire Diaries thanks to your brilliant idea and you won’t get any more scratch for it! This is a way for those properties to be rightfully “borrowed” and used by Alloy however they see fit. You’ve already agreed to their original terms (20-35% of sales based on length of story), so now they can do whatever they want with what you came up with and not have to pay you a dime more! That’s probably a lot cheaper than maintaining a writers’ room.

Now, get to work! I’ll help you get started. “Damon looked across the room into Stefan’s eyes. In that moment, they both forgot that Elena was even there–”

Oooh, that’s hot!

[NOTE: The above story beginning will probably get you rejected right away from Kindle Worlds, but have fun with it anyway.]

Netflix

If you’ve been listening to the Antenna Free TV Podcast for the last few months (And you should! It’s a great way to pass the time while pretending to work.), you’ve heard numerous conversations between myself and co-host Jason Hughes about the looming change in how online critics cover TV shows. With Netflix premiering every first-season episode of its original series House of Cards and Hemlock Grove on the same day, the streaming service has been a particularly aggressive force in helping to break the week-to-week viewing-and-reviewing pattern that has been a part of people’s TV watching and online reading routines for years.

But those shows have been mere undercards to the main event: the premiere of Arrested Development, which debuts all 15 of its season 4 episodes on Netflix this Sunday, May 26.

AD‘s return has been highly anticipated ever since … well, ever since the show left the air in 2006. For seven years, fans of the show — including me — have been pining away for the Bluths’ return, first latching onto any news of a possible movie then rejoicing every time executive producer Mitch Hurwitz announced the Netflix deal. Since then, BluthWatch has been in full force, and Netflix has done all it can to make sure people know the show is coming back, including sending the Bluth banana stand to venues like Yankee Stadium.

With all the attention AD is getting, it stands to reason that fans will be looking for episode reviews as of 12:01 AM on Sunday. And almost every entertainment site with a budget (and many without) will oblige. The question is: How will they do it?

This isn’t an easy one to answer. The trial balloon of House of Cards, which was anticipated enough that many sites decided to review the series, showed that our fellow soldiers in fonts and pixels have no idea how to handle the Netflix “give it to ‘em all at once” model. That model took all the viewing power out of the network’s hands and put it in the viewer’s hands. Because of this, the weekly viewing-and-reviewing cycle didn’t make much sense, as everyone was watching the show at his or her own pace.

Some sites just went “fuck it” and reviewed House of Cards week-to-week, as if they were covering a cable show like Game of Thrones. It wasn’t a particularly popular move, mainly because buzz on the show died down quickly after an initial blast in its first few weeks. Social media was an especially good gauge of that decline, as mentions of the show dipped by 86% two weeks after its February 1 debut.

And weekly reviews only made sense if you were watching the episodes at the same pace as the reviewer; for instance, there’s no reason to read a review of episode five, where the reviewer speculates on what might happen next, if you’ve already seen episodes six and seven and you already know what happens next. And, given the fact that Netflix makes it so easy to binge-watch shows, and the fact that HoC was built more like a long movie and not a series — they didn’t even have “previously on” teasers at the beginning of each episode — it would make sense that the majority of viewers were watching the show in blocks instead of one at a time.

Some sites figured that out and decided to attempt periodic HoC catch-ups, like critics have done for decades. That didn’t really work, because there was no telling if the critic and the viewer had arrived at the same spot in the series by the time the catch-up was published.

Other sites decided to wait until their critic watched every single HoC episode — whether it was the week after it came out or two months later — and just do a big spoiler-fest (that’s what Jason and I decided to do on the podcast). While that seems like a sound plan, reviewing the entire season in one chunk can’t provide the reader with same nuances that reviewing a show week-by-week can offer. Also, that community feeling of guessing what might happen next evaporates. (Add to that the fact that people may take months or years to complete the season, and you’ve got a story that might provide more long-term online traffic benefits than the initial hit you anticipate for a review the night an episode of a much-discussed show airs.)

Netflix

Which brings us back to Arrested Development. The demand for reviews and Internet buzz is going to make what happened to House of Cards look like a trickle in comparison. But, just as with HoC, people are going to watch at their own pace. I know for my part, I’m not done re-watching the first three seasons of the show, and for some reason I’m going to want to do that before moving on with AD season 4. Others will watch a few episodes per day throughout Memorial Day week. Still others will be done with the 15 episodes before they need to clean their grills for their holiday cookouts.

But as we’ve seen, entertainment sites don’t have any better handle on how to deal with this than they did three months ago. They’re going to each have to make an editorial decision that they hope gives them the best chance at more traffic, but it’s not going to be an easy one, because whatever model they go with is going to be a compromise, and the fans of AD are so unforgiving that any slip-up, be it an inadvertent spoiler or a too-slow pace in posting reviews, and they’re going to find somewhere else to get their fix, and they may not come back.

The only other model that hasn’t been attempted — having one or more reviewers write individual reviews of episodes for posting as soon as they are ready — will make for a lot of unhappy writers, and readers probably won’t appreciate the sloppy, inaccurate, typo-filled reviews that will result from this method.

Hurwitz was going to help the situation a bit with his initial plan to make the episodes watchable in any order. But that plan has been scuttled; he tweeted last week that viewers need to watch the episodes in order. So we’re back to the same conundrum.

What all this means is that this might spell the beginning of the end of the weekly episode review (Except in the headline, I’ve been avoiding using the standard internet parlance of “recap” because I’m not talking about a recitation of events, I’m talking about critical reviews. Though this might apply to both forms). While broadcast and cable networks, as well as some streaming services, will continue to dole out episodes on a week-to-week basis, biggies like Netflix and possibly Amazon will be pushing more product through the pipeline that’s designed for binge-watching. And the more they do that, the less demand there will be for that weekly review. Once people stop looking for that, they’ll likely stop looking for reviews of weekly shows like GoT, Girls or Homeland (Mad Men and Breaking Bad will be long over by the time this happens). And then what will all these sites do to fill the space?

Douglas Gorenstein/NBC

When Penn Jillette was throwing himself at the mercy of Donald Trump during last night’s live Celebrity Apprentice finale, one of the many words of praise he said about the show was that it was the “most honest” reality show on TV.

In a way, he’s right; while the marketing and fund-raising tasks the show’s b- through z-listers are forced to do are complete and utter bull plop, what goes on during the planning and execution of each task isn’t set up. Those moments genuinely feel like the true interactions of people working together and getting under each other’s skin.

But, in a way, Penn was also wrong; The Celebrity Apprentice is the fakest reality show in a sea of fake reality shows, because of two words: Donald Trump.

This is not the first time I’ve written words to this effect. In fact, it’s not even the second time. But Penn’s words rang true to me, because, the way the show’s currently structured, it feels like two different reality shows: the sometimes-boring, sometimes-explosive show that goes on while the task is being done, and the mostly-boring, often-predictable boardroom part. And one doesn’t have much to do with the other.

The finale is a case in point: While both Jillette and Trace Adkins did great work with their Walgreens ice cream presentations, Penn won the season by a large margin, at least if you take a look at the big picture. Penn has not only had great ideas all the way through the contest, but he’s been willing to give out his best ideas and work his contacts for tasks where he wasn’t the project manager, and money wasn’t on the line for his charity, Opportunity Village.

Douglas Gorenstein/NBC

Trace, on the other hand, checked out near the end of the season, rolling his eyes and generally being a pain in the ass during the same Foxwoods task where Penn managed to call in actual Foxwoods celebrities. In the South Africa task, Trace basically scoffed at everything suggested while Penn managed to bring in the actual South African musicians from Paul Simon’s Graceland album and a chef that specializes in South African cuisine.

The only advantage Trace had on Penn was money, as he managed to raise about $1.2 million for the American Red Cross. But the money margin for the final task was only about $65,000 because Tim Tebow’s $100,000 was late. But you knew from the beginning that Trump wanted the season to end with Trace’s redemption; he was the only runner-up to come back for the all-star season. It’s why Lil John never stood a chance to make the finals, even though he did a steadier job than Trace did this year. And it’s why Penn had no shot at winning, mainly because that story wasn’t as sweet to Trump as Trace getting the prize after losing to Piers Morgan in the first celebrity season (it’s also the reason why Bret Michaels was canned in the first week… Trump even admitted on air that he wouldn’t feel right if Bret won again).

Penn didn’t help his cause by ripping into Trump and the show in his memoir, published after he started shooting the All-Star season. And when Trump brought it up during the last part of the finale, and Penn fell on his sword in an attempt to win, it looked like it was just one more reason for Trump to lean towards Trace.

Trump has admitted that sometimes he chooses winners for odd reasons; during a conference call last week, he said he would have been “run out of town” if he had picked Holly Robinson Peete over Michaels after Bret came to New York soon after suffering a mini-stroke. And, while the celebrities sometimes dig their own graves — he would have fired Omarosa sooner if Claudia Jordan had the cajones to bring her back to the boardroom during her task — he’s definitely more than instrumental in shaping how the season turns out.

Douglas Gorenstein/NBC

Which is sort of a shame; there’s no way to script or manipulate the interactions we see during the tasks. Can you imagine a producer goading Meatloaf into confronting nutty ol’ Gary Busey during the season they were on together? Absolutely not. In fact, anyone who tried to control Busey during both his seasons often paid the price later on. No, the reactions were pretty real, even though they were created in a Petri dish of an environment instead of “real life.” But once everyone enters the boardroom, Trump takes control. And, as we’ve seen by what he’s tweeted over the past couple of years, that’s usually a pretty bad deal for everyone involved.

HBO

As critics and comedy aficionados everywhere clamor over the arrival of HBO’s Family Tree, which accomplishes the seemingly impossible feat of bringing Christopher Guest to TV (and, yes, smartass, I know, “it’s not TV, it’s HBO,” but I also know it’s just an ad slogan), it’s worth noting that the famed mockumentarian has stepped behind the camera for small-screen work before. Indeed, this isn’t even his first time doing something for HBO, although the previous effort never made it past the pilot stage.

For anyone who didn’t see Guest’s 2006 film For Your Consideration, which focused on three actors—played by Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, and Harry Shearer—who are hotly tipped for Academy Award nominations for their performances in a movie they haven’t even finished filming yet, the title of Guest’s 1999 HBO pilot, D.O.A., may seem somewhat mysterious and certainly less than comedic. (Even half a decade on, confusion and uncertainty still reign on the IMDb message board for the production.) If you did see the aforementioned film, however, and you remember Eugene Levy’s character, Morley Orfkin, then the mystery suddenly begins to solve itself, albeit in a manner which may change what Guest fans thought they knew about For Your Consideration.

Although his character name isn’t provided within IMDb’s decidedly incomplete credits for the D.O.A. pilot, Levy, who was set to star, seems almost certainly to have been playing Orfkin, who, as is established in For Your Consideration, is a Hollywood agent of dubious merit as well as the co-founder of the Dorkman Orfkin Agency or—have you figured it out yet?—D.O.A. for short.

Here’s a glimpse of Orfkin in the film:

As you might imagine, it’s not the easiest thing to find details about a failed pilot called D.O.A., given the popularity of other topics sharing the same acronym (not to mention the fact that journalists tend to use those three letters to describe any failed pilot), but once I started figuring out which search terms pulled the greatest results, I started to piece together a bit more about it, starting with an article Paul Brownfield wrote for the L.A. Times back in 2001: after Carolyn Strauss, then HBO’s senior vice president of original programming, discusses series creators who have “the vision and voice and the means to execute it that works for us,” Brownfield observes, “Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy evidently didn’t have it; in 1999, the pair, who collaborated on the cult movie comedies Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, shot a pilot called DOA, about two B-list theatrical agents, that HBO passed on.”

Guest, it seems, would’ve played Levy’s fellow agent, or at least that’s what John Michael Higgins said in a 2009 interview with the website PopEntertainment.com:

“(Chris) and I first worked together on a pilot that he and Gene [Eugene Levy] were doing for HBO called DOA, which was the grain for For Your Consideration which would happen many years later. It was the Dorkman/Orfkin agency and he and Gene were two agents. Gene actually played the character he played in that pilot in For Your Consideration. I did that for Chris (in 1999, and) the show didn’t get picked up to go to series, but he called me shortly after and he said, ‘Well, we’re making this movie about dogs up in Canada. Would you like to do that?”

Others in the cast included Larry Miller and Bonnie McFarlane, and according to Variety, Jamie Lee Curtis did her husband (Mr. Guest, if you weren’t aware) a solid and made a cameo, as did Melanie Griffith.

Although D.O.A. never made it to series, it was apparently enough of a recognizable commodity in Hollywood circles that it warranted mention in the production notes for For Your Consideration as one of Karen Murphy’s previous credits. Or maybe it’s just because both the film and the pilot featured Guest and Levy. Who knows? Anyway, the bigger unsolved mystery is why the pilot for D.O.A. wasn’t added as a bonus feature to the DVD release of For Your Consideration. It might’ve been depressing in the long run, but Guest fans surely would’ve liked the opportunity to see what might’ve been.

HBO

It’s also worth noting another pilot-related effort which involved Guest, although he was only the director: The Thick of It, ABC’s 2007 attempt to Americanize a Brit-com that had been all the rage in the UK a few years prior. As if Guest didn’t offer the project enough street cred in and of himself, there are plenty of other reasons to wonder why the show never made it on the air, starting with the fact that it was executive-produced by Mr. Arrested Development himself, Mitchell Hurwitz, as well as Armando Iannucci, who went on to create Veep for HBO. And then there’s the cast, which featured Guest regulars Michael McKean and the aforementioned Mr. Higgins, along with Alex Borstein (Family Guy), Rhea Seehorn (Whitney), Oliver Platt (most recently of The Big C), and Parvesh Cheena (Outsourced).

So why wasn’t it picked up? Well, when Brian Ford Sullivan over at The Futon Critic gave it a look back in ’07, the key one-liner from his reflections was his observation that “it shouldn’t be surprising there are some solid laughs, but more surprising is just how few there are,” but as he continues, he upgrades his surprise to shock, actually describing it as a “limp noodle show” and wrapping up by stating outright that the whole affair was “just really disappointing.” Ouch.

In an effort to find out how the pilot felt to someone who was actually in it, I reached out to the aforementioned Mr. Cheena, who was kind enough to spend a few minutes reminiscing about the experience.

“I was so young and this was at the beginning of my TV career in LA,” recalled Cheena. “I did think that for the first post-Arrested Development thing that Mitch was doing, it’d be a slam dunk. For me, it was The West Wing meets Arrested Development. And, hello, Christopher Guest was directing it! He gave me notes, though, like, ‘Too much eyebrow, Parvesh,’ as in, relax your hairy furrowed look. I was so nervous, every day. Mitch was great. We just got back together, as I came and did a day on the new Arrested Development for Netflix. He is the best. Such a kind, funny man who truly just enjoys his job. Every one of the actors were so kind on The Thick of It: Michael McKean, John Michael Higgins, Carrie Aizley, Oliver Platt…

“The thing that burned even more was that ABC picked up the Cavemen show to series. You know, based on the Geico commercial about cavemen. Sigh. I had maybe three lines in The Thick of It, but to see such pros working was a great learning experience. That, and it was my first taste of how even a sure thing on paper and with that cast and producer could still could be a no go. But besides Mitch being able to bring back Arrested Development, I’m glad Armando Ianucci has got Veep on the air…and not just because my friends Timmy Simons and Matt Walsh are rocking it on that show. But they are.”

ABC

“Upfront” was the watchword in TV biz circles this week, which saw the broadcast networks releasing their new schedules and cramming new trailers and promos — and way too much footage of Robin Williams ad-libbing — down our throats. With the network’s new series announcements hogging the spotlight, it’s understandable if you failed to notice the quiet return of a great little show that was cancelled last January, Don’t Trust the B —- in Apartment 23.

The final eight unaired episodes of ABC’s weird and wonderful odd couple sitcom are scheduled to premiere on iTunes, Hulu and ABC.com today. And while many of you may remember Don’t Trust the B—- as “that show with the dumb name that had Dawson prancing around in tight jeans,” trust me when I tell you that the series had a lot more to offer than lazy B-list celeb jokes and cutesy puns.

Don’t Trust the B—- was a funny and original charmer that proved too quirky and too kinky for broadcast TV. (Maybe now it’ll find a rich second life on the Internet, the quirkiest, kinkiest place this side of Dollywood.) Much of the credit for the show’s creative success should go to its cast, lead by Krysten Ritter’s lushy, schemey but lovable borderline sociopath, Chloe, the show’s titular “B—-.”

Ritter always exudes charisma and confidence in everything she’s in (Yes, even Gravity), but there was something special that clicked whenever she slipped on Chloe’s ridiculously overpriced pumps and tight minidresses. She was perfect as the mad, impulsive, self-obsessed New York City party girl you couldn’t help but root for, despite the many horrible things she did throughout the course of the series (like sleeping with her roommate’s fiancee, dosing her friends with tranquilizers, and screwing Lenny Kravitz in the bushes … she is a “B—-,” after all).

Ritter, whose sharp comedic timing and gift for physical comedy were put to great use here, stole the show and made looking and acting unhinged and fabulous seem easy. And her co-stars, especially Dreama Walker (Chloe), Ray Ford (Luther) and, yes, James Van Der Beek (JVDB), matched Ritter’s confident comic performance at almost every turn.

Don’t Trust the B —- took what felt like a stale sitcom trope – a chaste Midwesterner moves to the Big Apple and shares an apartment with a lewd city slicker – and managed to squeeze enough sly humor, heart and personality out of the stock premise to create something truly cracked and original. Sadly, viewers largely stayed away from the show, and ABC’s inexplicable decision to air the second season episodes out of order, while mixing in previously unaired season one episodes, pretty much killed its chances of building a large audience.

Viewers who didn’t catch the show during its original 18-episode run missed out on a clever and offbeat comedy that was rarely off its game. And best of all – it was funny! Damn funny. Dawson cryface funny. And speaking of Dawson, this was one of the few shows that managed to successfully flesh out a “B-list celebrity plays a zany version of himself” character without skimping on the great jokes. Van Der Beek’s absurd tours through the B-list celeb culture club provided some of the show’s funniest moments.

Luckily, the unaired eight episodes that dropped online today are all from season two, instead of recut season one eps tossed in out of order. Seeing as Don’t Trust the B—- got better and more confident as it went on, these final half-hours should be pretty funny. Plus we’ll hopefully get to see Chloe and June’s ever-evolving relationship, which was the heart of the show, grow a little stronger. Part of what made ABC’s decision to intersperse season one eps into the second season so frustrating was how it interrupted the character’s relationship arcs, not to mention how it screwed with continuity. Now we’ll get to see Chloe, June, James and crew ride the crazy train to the bitter edge in the proper episode order, as nature, and series creator Nahnatchka Khan, intended.
Update: The order of the unaired episodes is screwed up on Hulu. There are season one eps mixed in with season 2 eps. Ugh. But on the bright side, JVDB rides a brood cycle, and we get the best Luther flashback ever.

Chris Haston/NBC

Most reviews for the series finale of The Office have been positive, but a couple of them have made me scratch my head. It’s not that the critics who didn’t enjoy the finale as much as I did aren’t entitled to their opinions, mind you, but their reasoning for disliking it seems a bit muddled.

Willa Paskin of Salon, for instance, thought the show was just too sweet, and ran against what the nature of the show, about the unrelenting boredom of office work paired with the cringing reality of being thrown in a room with people you are forced to be with for a third of your day, was all about. “In the finale, “The Office” was uncynical almost to the point of naivete: it spent its last ten minutes praising reality TV!” she exclaimed, citing the final scene where Pam (Jenna Fischer) made an impassioned speech about viewing the documentary and regretting being less than happy for so long.

My A.V. Club colleague Erik Adams wasn’t sure whether to wear his critic’s or fan’s hat when considering the finale, wondering if he’ll go back to the finale in a few years and notice that “it will appear too long, overly mawkish, and self-congratulatory in ways that will make me feel like a lazy critic for having smiled so widely and stupidly through my first viewing.”

I wasn’t having such complex thoughts. The only thing I was thinking, as a fan of both Ricky Gervais’ original and the U.S. version from day one, was that it was one of the most satisfying series finales I’ve ever seen, filled with touching and funny moments, and happy conclusions for characters I’ve been watching for nine years.

Yes, the finale was leaning more on the sweet side of life than the boring or cringeworthy. But it’s not the first time the American version of Gervais’ dyspeptic office comedy has gone for the sentimental. And it’s really not all that out of character for what goes on in a real life office.

Chris Haston/NBC

Think about what your experiences have been after you’ve left a job you’ve had for a number of years. Yes, you’re happy to be moving on to a new opportunity, glad to be rid of the nightmare of your idiot boss or the cubicle neighbor who cuts his nails at his desk (I’ve had both). But you’re also going to miss the guy down the aisle who had those wacky 9/11 conspiracy theories, or the guy who was on the project team with you and always sang Motown while doing his work. Heck, you may even miss the idiot boss, because, even if he was an idiot, you knew what he wanted after all these years and was able to get him to help you when you needed it. Remember, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know, right?

Which is why, a year after the Dunder-Mifflin documentary aired, it seemed like everyone at the Scranton branch was getting along with everyone else. Did it feel out of character to see Dwight (Rainn Wilson) miss Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) after firing him — probably years after it should have been done — for incompetence? Sure. He may have had contempt for Kevin’s work, but he probably liked having the lug around. Did it seem strange that Jim (John Krasinski) was Dwight’s “best mensch” for his wedding? Not really, especially after the previous episode, where Jim encouraged Dwight to follow his heart and go after Angela (Angela Kinsey).

Warm feelings develop when you’ve been around people for a certain amount of time. At a certain point, that group of weridos that “you share the same bit of carpet with,” as Gervais has put it, becomes like a second family. It’s why Michael Scott (Steve Carell) got serenaded by the staff when he proposed to Holly (Amy Ryan) two seasons ago and why the tears the actors were shedding in the “Goodbye, Michael” episode when Carell left weren’t that far off the mark in the DM world; they were happy for the guy, and they were going to miss him as a boss, quirks and all.

It’s why, when Carell came back as Michael, as one of Jim’s “good surprises” to Dwight the day of the wedding, it felt like a homecoming. Pam and Jim were especially happy to see Michael happy, with kids, leading the life he always wanted. And Carell’s guest spot struck the right tone; he needed to be in the finale at some point — it might have been more appropriate to see him in the post-documentary panel discussion, but that would have killed the drama — but I’m sure Carell didn’t want to take away from the bows everyone else was taking. So he let out a symbolic “that’s what she said,” had one very sweet talking head about how Dwight, Pam and Jim felt like “my kids,” and the rest of the time he was in the background. He had his finale, as Carell and Greg Daniels have been saying all along; it was time for the rest of the gang to have theirs.

Mostly everyone’s endings worked. We knew Pam was regretting Jim’s decision to leave Athlead (now Athleap after a merger) and go back to DM full-time in order to stabilize their marriage, so seeing her sell the house from under him and tell him that she’ll follow him while he pursued his dream made sense (why Athleap would have him back after so long, though, is anyone’s guess).

It was good to see Andy (Ed Helms) use his penchant for making an ass out of himself to his advantage for once, and that he’s working at Cornell — though I wonder if his speech about not knowing you’re in the “good old days” until you leave them was a bit much, considering how much humiliation the Narddog suffered at DM. Ryan (B.J. Novak) and Kelly (Mindy Kaling) came back to have a very Ryan-and-Kelly conclusion. I kind of wish we had seen Ed Begley, Jr. and Joan Cusack as Erin’s (Ellie Kemper) birth parents earlier in the season, because it would have been fun to see them display pieces of Erin for a few episodes, but that’s just a small quibble. But you’ve got to love Creed’s ending, as Creed Bratton’s real life past as a member of The Grass Roots was incorporated… and Creed the office weirdo’s past caught up with him. But his speech at the end about how all those random happenings when he got hired eventually became like home was pretty profound.

Chris Haston/NBC

But, for the most part, the finale rang true to me. In fact, it made me nearly come to tears, something that hasn’t happened since my wedding. Was the sweetness of The Office‘s send-off what we would have envisioned during the uncomfortable — and hilarious — first couple of seasons? Probably not. But the show stopped being that way three or four years ago, and I’d rather see everyone hug at this point than hate each other. Call me a sap, but the hugs are much more satisfying than the hate.

The CW

Look, she thinks she’s people! Isn’t that just the cutest thing!

The little network that could, The CW, keeps things pretty simple, as we’ve come to expect from it, while at the same time making a subtle shift in its programming strategy. Don’t worry, it’s still only five nights of programming, two hours per night. And it’s still all dramas. AND it’s still all dramas starring pretty young people. But the network’s emphasis seems to be straying further away from the female demographic it once so proudly coveted. Now, with its latest stable of new programming, The CW seems to be tapping into more of a niche market with fantasy and sci-fi shows — though these shows still offer plenty of eye candy for the ladies as well as the fellas. Don’t worry, Stephen Amell will take his shirt off all the time on Arrow. But now, maybe his cousin Robbie will also take his shirt off an hour later on The Tomorrow People.

While the overall feel of the network is similar, The CW did make a number of strategic moves to strengthen most nights. After The Carrie Diaries and 90210 both underperformed on Mondays this past year, The CW is offering up a new night. Shifting from Tuesdays at 8 PM ET, Hart of Dixie is now going to kick off Monday nights. The show is perhaps the last remnant in the traditional romantic drama genre on the network. It’ll be followed by Beauty and the Beast, moving from Thursdays at 9 PM to Mondays at 9 PM. This gives The CW two shows with strong female leads back-to-back. While neither show has done gangbusters, they can’t do worse than Carrie and 90210 did last season.

Tuesday’s plan is The CW’s most aggressive move of the week. Thursdays have been strong with The Vampire Diaries anchoring the night, and the network found ratings power with Arrow on Wednesdays. So they’re going for a trifecta in the middle of the week by launching The Vampire Diaries spin-off, The Originals, on Tuesdays at 8 PM. This series takes the original vampire family from TVD and drops them in New Orleans to see if über-baddie Klaus can get redemption. To shore up the night, the immortal Supernatural shifts up a day from Wednesdays, because it doesn’t need any ratings help from the breakout hit that is Arrow. That show is like Teflon. Its audience finds it no matter where The CW puts it, and I imagine it’ll be on the air as long as its stars are interested in doing it.

The CW

Arrow broke out big on Wednesdays at 8 PM, so it’s obviously staying put. And while Arrow only dabbles in the world of superheroes, The Tomorrow People at 9 PM dives fully into a world where people have extraordinary abilities. Robbie Amell leads the cast as a teenager who discovers he has the ability to teleport, and this discovery leads him to a small group of people who have similar abilities, including telekinesis and telepathy. It’s kind of a fun quirk of the night that both shows feature members of the extended Amell family in the lead roles, but it’s their similar thematic attributes that will probably help The Tomorrow People hang onto the sizable audience Arrow is going to hand it.

The Vampire Diaries is untouchable at 8 PM and has been used in recent years to try and launch a successful new series, but so far The CW hasn’t struck gold (though I don’t see why The Secret Circle got cancelled considering its ratings and potential). While last year’s entry did survive (and move to Mondays) it could hardly be considered a hit. The latest effort is apparently hoping that fans of the flashbacks on The Vampire Diaries would love a period piece. I’m not sure I see Reign as a logical companion (or even a series that make sense right now on The CW at all), but clearly the network sees a lot of potential in this historical drama about Mary, Queen of Scots. Oh, and in case you were worried, you needn’t. Mary and everyone else in the cast is young and beautiful. Is there any other kind of person on The CW? Even the adult characters are somehow young and beautiful on this network. Maybe they really ARE all vampires! I think I cracked the code!

Fridays becomes the new home for The Carrie Diaries, which surprised me with a second season pickup. This show was not performing well. Maybe The CW is hoping it’ll at least keep its meager audience in the move, as those numbers might be satisfactory on Friday. Or maybe the network sees some breakout potential. Or maybe series star AnnaSophia Robb has some dirt on CW execs. The more obvious situation is that The CW is trying some counterprogramming on the night. While the other networks are programming Friday more aggressively than they have in the past, — moving shows like Bones, Hawaii Five-0, Raising Hope and The Neighbors to join stalwarts Blue Bloods, Last Man Standing, Shark Tank and Undercover Boss – there’s a lack of programming there for those young women The CW used to be obsessed with. By giving them The Carrie Diaries at 8, followed by America’s Next Top Model at 9, The CW is clearly reaching out to an underrepresented demographic on the night. Plus, with Carrie’s emphasis on fashion (albeit the questionable styles of the 1980s), this is a far better companion for ANTM than Nikita. Speaking of the femme fatale, Nikita did get a 6-episode final-season pick-up, but when and where on the schedule it will air remains to be seen.

The CW

Waiting in the wings are a reality show and two science fiction shows, in case all that girl power fails (and I also hear that ANTM is only doing one cycle this year). Star-Crossed may play like a Romeo and Juliet story, but its plot of alien teens trying to integrate into a human high school amidst prejudice reads more like an allegory of the racial issues this country has faced. That there are a pair of star-crossed childhood friends who rekindle their relationship only feeds that correlation as their community can’t handle human/alien romance. The other sci-fi entry is The 100, which chronicles humanity nearly 100 years after a nuclear Armageddon. In an effort to see if Earth is habitable, they send 100 juvenile prisoners, which means good-looking young people who are also bad girls and bad boys. TMZ has their fingers in the reality series Famous in 12, which challenges one family to move to Los Angeles and become famous in 12 weeks. If they pull it off, how many more desperate losers will rush to the West Coast to try and be famous, too? I mean, more than already do, of course.

It’s kind of fun watching The CW try to play on the same field as the big guys. This year, the network surprised me by making some strategic moves that signal its desire to grow as a network and meet the Big Four on a more even playing field. Or, if it can wait long enough, the ratings on the Big Four might erode so much that they’ll come down to CW levels and they’ll all be even anyway. That’s called winning by losing, and broadcast television has been doing that for more than ten years now!

Ron P. Jaffe/CBS

There was so much news this week, we think we forgot a lot of stuff:

• We started with this week’s upfronts (except for the CW), talking about the networks’ scheduling decisions, the concepts and trailers for some of the new shows (Will Arnett may have struck out again with The Millers), why certain shows, like Mulaney, didn’t get picked up, and why all of this is pretty much a whole load of BS, especially in 2013 (00:00 – 1:10:00),
• There was a huge reveal on How I Met Your Mother‘s season finale, and we talk about why this feels like two seasons too late and how we think Bays and Thomas are going to let the final season play out, based on what they told reporters (1:10:00 – 1:26:45),
• Then we talk about the well-executed finale of an excellent season of New Girl, why it’s become the best comedy on broadcast TV, and what The Mindy Project can learn from its Tuesday schedule-mate (1:26:45 – 1:43:45),
• Then we talk about Seth Meyers being named host of Late Night, why it feels like a too-safe choice, what his (and other cast members’) departure means for SNL, and what, if anything, differentiates Seth from Jimmy Fallon (1:43:45 – 2:00:00),
• Finally, we talk ever so briefly about the finale of The Americans, mostly because Jason is caught up. We also speculate how long it’ll be before Margo Martindale comes back to the show after the inevitable quick cancellation of The Millers(2:00:00 – 2:02:34).

You can listen to the podcast above (if you don’t hear anything, fiddle with the volume slider), download it via this link, subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via iTunes. You can also find us on the Stitcher radio app for smartphones and iPads.

By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.

CBS

CBS has nabbed the lion’s share of viewer eyeballs for a long time now, but the joke has always been that those eyeballs are incredibly old. Well, things are changing; the network is emerging from the current TV season victorious in the coveted 18-49 demographic for the first time since the first Bush administration. In other words, CBS execs are pouring champagne and having a good time during upfront week. After all, the other networks are trying, and failing, to take them down. But uneasy is the head that wears the crown, and CBS should be aware that many of their most popular shows are also some of their oldest shows, leaving some to wonder how well the network can manage to grow and hang on to its large audience in upcoming seasons.

CBS has five shows that have been on the air for more than a decade, and that’s not even counting the newsmagazines like 60 Minutes. But it was clear, based on its recent upfront presentation, that CBS isn’t worrying about the age of its shows or about anything else these days. CBS is largely keeping things the way the are. The only major move the network seems to be making for the upcoming TV season is expanding its Thursday comedy block to two hours by slotting two new comedies between The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. Other than that, it’s business as usual … and business is good at CBS!

Mondays keeps How I Met Your Mother and 2 Broke Girls in the anchor positions of 8 PM ET and 9 PM respectively. Two new comedies will be wrapped around the returning shows. We Are Men is hoping to ride the ratings success (if it happens) of the final season of How I Met Your Mother, but it doesn’t really look like a compatible show. Judging by the trailer, We Are Men looks like a riff on TV Land’s The Exes, which features a strong comedic cast, but tends to waste their talents with weak material. Jerry O’Connel is joined by Tony Shalhoub and Kal Penn in Men, which means the show should be funny. But it’s not. (And why must Jerry O’Connell be half-naked in everything he does? I get that he’s a good-looking guy who’s in great shape, but he seems to lose his shirt a lot, and now they’ve got him in a Speedo!) The 9:30 PM timeslot brings Anna Faris to TV alongside Allison Janney, in the latest Chuck Lorre production, Mom. Lorre’s ability to make hits can’t be denied, so this three-generations-of-women comedy will probably be a hit.

The 10 PM hour on Mondays sees CBS jumping on the bandwagon of shorter seasons, as its sharing the timeslot between two shows. Hostages stars Dylan McDermott as a brave FBI Agent who’s also a terrorist of sorts who takes the President’s doctor’s family hostage and orders the doctor to kill the President. Toni Colette, who plays the doctor, is very talented, but this feels limited in scope, so it’s a good thing it’s only running for half a season. January will bring Intelligence, which sees Lost alum Josh Holloway as a hybrid of Chuck and The Six-Million Dollar Man. He’s an intelligence operative who’s wired directly into the information age. But the real draw is Holloway, who oozes charisma, charm and sex appeal. Hell, even I’m attracted to him!

CBS

Tuesdays are already the biggest night on television, with the two highest rated dramas airing back to back. Not wanting to mess with what’s working, CBS is keeping NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles at 8 PM and 9 PM, respectively. To make the night even more intimidating, CBS is placing its third-highest rated drama, Person of Interest, at 10 PM. This is going to be like the good old days when everyone else was scared shitless of FOX’s dominating American Idol.

Wednesdays remain largely unchanged as well, with Survivor leading off the night, followed by Criminal Minds and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. This is one of those nights that’s still effective, but definitely getting a little long in the tooth. How long can these shows remain hits?

With Person of Interest gone from the 9 PM slot on Thursdays, CBS is expanding its Thursday night comedy block to two hours. Considering The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men are the top-rated comedies on TV, CBS may have officially replaced NBC as the home of Thursday night comedy. “Must CBS TV” anybody? As expected, Big Bang stays put at 8 PM. Two and a Half Men, though, is shifting all the way back to 9:30 PM, meaning both new comedies on the night will be nestled between the big boys. While that makes sense in a way, it’s a little odd that Two and a Half Men wouldn’t anchor the 9PM hour. That’s what it did very successfully on Mondays for years. Maybe CBS doesn’t have that much faith in the show anymore. Or maybe the network just has more faith in Robin Williams. The manic comic is making a return to TV, alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar as his daughter, with The Crazy Ones. The show features the father-daughter duo running an ad agency together, but let’s face it, this is going to be about Robin Williams acting batshit insane, and it’s going to draw a lot of eyeballs. Plus, it’ll be fun to watch SMG trying to keep up with him. Not fun (AT ALL!) is The Millers. I would have rather seen Mom (or hell, We Are Men) land the sweet spot on CBS’s schedule after Big Bang. Instead, that Thursday night slot went to this comedy that looks like absolute garbage. Margo Martindale left The Americans for a laugh track and terrible material as a mother who gets dumped by her husband and moves in with her son, played by Will Arnett. I like Will Arnett, but this is not the follow-up to Up All Night he needed, and I doubt this will last a full season. Elementary stays put at 10 PM on Thursdays where it hopes to grow into an even bigger hit.

CBS

Just like the other networks, CBS is surprisingly committing to Fridays more and more. Blue Bloods has already become a surprise hit on Fridays, and now the network is shifting Hawaii Five-0 there as well. That’ll make it the second hit Monday show to be transplanted to Fridays, after Fox’s Bones. I’m just not sure what to think of this move yet. I’d like to be optimistic and say that the networks are starting to believe in Fridays again, but it could also be that they’re putting these shows out to pasture. Bones isn’t a young show anymore, and both it and Five-0 saw ratings erosion this past year. Is Friday the quiet place they can live out their golden years until they’re no longer of use to their networks? Undercover Boss stays put at 8 PM, where it’s become a surprise hit for the network, followed by Five-0 at 9 PM and Blue Bloods, standing tall at 10 PM.

Saturdays is all about the repeats, but in a change, the 8 PM hour will now be comedy repeats, followed by drama repeats at 9 PM. 48 Hours stays at 10 PM. Sundays follows suit, with no changes at all. 60 Minutes remains at 7 PM followed by The Amazing Race, The Good Wife and The Mentalist. When you’re on top, the job can be pretty easy. CBS made no changes on the weekends at all, and minimal changes throughout their schedule. And it’ll probably wind up on top again next year. We could all have it so good!

CBS only has two shows waiting in the wings: a drama and a comedy. Friends With Better Lives is a comedy about six friends who are in various relationship situations ranging from single to newly dating to married to divorced. And they’re all jealous of one another. This premise packs surprising promise, as it can explore our most intimate relationships from every angle. Reckless drops Anna Wood from the streets of south-side Chicago down south. It’s culture clash in the courtroom (as well as attraction) between her and the handsome city attorney. In other words, this sounds laaaaaame!

Beth Dubber/FOX

It’s not hard to figure out why FOX renewed The Mindy Project for a second season, even though the show had some of the lowest ratings the network has ever seen: They want to be in business with Mindy Kaling. It seems like FOX sees Kaling as their version of Tina Fey; a smart, funny actor/producer/writer who has the potential to become a star in her own right while helping turn other people on the network into stars as well. It’s the reason why FOX renewed Kaling’s sitcom but long ago canceled the equally low-rated Ben and Kate, which many critics thought was a better show.

I actually didn’t think B&K was demonstrably better than Mindy; both had some pretty glaring flaws. But for some reason, I kept watching Mindy every single week, while B&K piled up on my DVR until I deleted it after it got the ax. I stuck with Mindy mostly because of two people: Kaling and Chris Messina, who plays Mindy Lahiri’s uptight colleague and friend Danny Castellano.

In addition to the crackling comedic chemistry between them, Kaling and Messina’s characters were fully fleshed out, with shading and flaws and surprises at every turn. Mindy turned out to be a little stronger than the version of her we saw in the pilot, and Danny turned out to be more vulnerable than the jerk we met at the start. With some assistance from breakout supporting player Ike Barinholtz as ex-con nurse Morgan, the two of them carried the show on their backs. They propped up unfunny episodes with funny moments, and they made the really funny episodes pay off while giving us hope that that Mindy could be as good as New Girl got in its second season.

Here’s the problem, though: The rest of the show is DOA. And while New Girl had set itself up for its fantastic second season by the time it concluded its first, Mindy just isn’t at that point yet. And that may spell doom for the show as it gets another shot to grab people in its upcoming second season.

Last night’s season finale pointed out exactly why Mindy is about 60% of the way towards becoming what it should be: We saw Danny try to figure out whether he wanted to get re-married to his ex Christina (Chlöe Sevigny), and we watched as Mindy tried to figure out whether to go to Haiti with her minister boyfriend Casey (Anders Holm). Morgan rubbed some shoulders, hoped to see Mindy and Casey’s Skype sex, and he had other funny lines.

Jennifer Clasen/FOX

The rest of the cast? Nada. We still don’t know much about pretty boy Jeremy (Ed Weeks) or saintly receptionist Betsey (Zoe Jarman), even after watching the entire season; heck, perpetual guest stars Mark and Jay Duplass got meatier stories as midwives Brendan and Duncan than those two supposed “regulars” did. The show is either going to have to figure out what these characters are about — much like the folks at New Girl have been trying to give Winston more dimension this season — or drop them completely.

Another problem the show has is that it tries to pack way too much stuff into one episode. Wasn’t it enough that Mindy committed to Casey to the point that she not only agreed to go to Haiti, but to also cut her precious long hair so it could be more manageable in the heat? (Great line by Danny when he sees it: “Only three women can pull that off: Audrey Hepburn, Halle Berry and Ellen DeGeneres.”) Did we really need to see Danny lean in for that “moment” when the two of them see each other in a whole different way? We knew that was coming eventually; why not save that for season two? Yes, it gives Mindy something to think about as she preps to go away with Casey, but it just felt like Kaling and her writers were piling on cliffhangers on top of cliffhangers, as if the prospect of the show’s main, very high-maintenance character going off to Haiti wasn’t enough to keep viewers intrigued.

It’s the same reason why the half the episodes this season didn’t need to end in some sort of party and/or brawl: They’re not giving the characters any room to grow and breathe. If Mindy dropped one brawl or one party and, say, gave a meaty B-story to one of the supporting players that wasn’t Morgan, maybe the show would feel more complete than it does now. Then again, if the writers can’t think of any B-stories for those characters, then that has to tell them something about how useful they’re going to be going forward, doesn’t it?

Like I said, The Mindy Project is 60% of the way there, and if there’s anyone that has the capacity to make it into something special, it’s Kaling and her staff, a veteran group that includes her Office buddy B.J. Novak and 30 Rock alums Jack Burditt and Tracey Wingfield. But the same potential was there for a show like Go On, which slid so much from its Voice-aided debut that NBC gave it the pink slip this week. In other words, being 60% of the way there gets you nothing in network television these days, and Kaling needs to take advantage of the reprieve FOX gave her and make sure they don’t regret saving her show.

ABC

ABC isn’t making many changes to its schedule, but the network’s strategic moves seem well-designed to improve its fortunes. This season, ABC had the dubious honor of falling behind NBC (thanks to The Voice) and into fourth place. Since NBC is still the butt of all jokes, ABC has time to course correct in a big way before everyone figures out that it’s the new biggest loser! It’s a tough spot to be in, because some of ABC’s shows are actually performing well. It’s just that the network’s lineup was filled with gaping holes that weren’t helping court viewers. But by tapping in to familiar franchises, it’s hoping to reverse the trend and climb out of the broadcast basement for the upcoming season.

So let’s take a closer look at ABC’s upfront presentation. While there are no changes on Monday nights, there is a big change on ABC’s signature reality series. Realizing that the once-potent powerhouse, Dancing with the Stars, is losing momentum as the years pass, ABC is making a dramatic move to reinvigorate the show. Gone is the Tuesday night results show, meaning all the action will be happening on Monday nights at 8 PM ET. Fox did the same thing last year with So You Think You Can Dance, stemming the bleeding and prolonging the potential life of the show. (Here’s a idea: How about all those reality singing shows try the same thing? Two padded results shows per week is exhausting for fans of the format.) Castle stays put at 10 PM, too.

With the end of the DWTS results show and Private Practice, as well as the cancellation of everything else on Tuesdays, ABC has a blank slate, and the network has decided to fill it with all new programming, which worked on Wednesdays several years back. The night kicks off with what should be a slam dunk at 8 PM. Coming out of one of the largest film franchises in the world and featuring one of the most beloved characters from the Marvel movie universe, Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson takes charge in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Considering how huge the Marvel movies are, this should be a no-brainer. After Disney bought Marvel, it seemed inevitable that a Marvel Universe series would find its way to the alphabet network. By that logic, a Star Wars series should be on the air in the next year or two.

Despite bombing with comedy at 9 PM last season, ABC is trying again. The 1980s are the new era for nostalgia and The Goldbergs taps into that retro wave. Jeff Garlin, George Segal and Wendi McLendon-Covey head up this family drama that may just have enough heart and the cleverness to stand out from the crowd of new comedies. It’s followed by Trophy Wife, which is a title about as offensive to women as Cougar Town (Go, ABC!). This one marries Malin Akerman to Bradley Whitford where she has to contend with his kids and two ex-wives, played by Marcia Gay Harden and Michaela Watkins. So it’s like Modern Family if Gloria were the lead. Finally, the network is reviving Windfall at 10 PM. No, wait, that’s not right! Lucky 7 is a different story about a different group of people who pool together and win the lottery. Windfall made it through 13 episodes back in the summer of 2006 on NBC with a similar premise. What’s the over/under on Lucky 7 making 7?

ABC

Like NBC Thursdays in the ’90s, ABC has something special going with its two-hour Wednesday comedy block. And, like that classic “Must See TV” block, it’s anchored by two solid performers at the top of each hour. It’s what comes after those shows that’s been hit or miss over the past four seasons. The middle part of ABC’s Thursday nights is basically a shit sandwich, with Family Tools making up the shittiest part right now at 8:30 PM. In the fall, The Middle and Modern Family continue as the bread at 8 and 9 respectively. 8:30 gives way to Back in the Game, the story of a once-promising softball player who became a mom instead. She heads home and winds up coaching a team of rejects under the angry gaze of her father, played by James Caan. This sounds … terrible. Not as terrible as Rebel Wilson hosting the MTV Movie Awards, but then that wouldn’t be possible. ABC is hoping that was a blip for her as they’re banking on the Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids star to hit it big with Super Fun Night. Wilson’s stamp is all over this; she’s also the show’s writer and executive producer. She has a very particular brand of crude humor, so this one could go either way. She’s been very, very funny and she’s been very, very unfunny. It could make for a jarring transition into the backstabbing world of Nashville, back for a second go (don’t go all Smash on us now and fall apart, girls!)

Thursdays at 8 PM has been a wasteland for ABC for the past several seasons. Many high profile shows have launched there and died there (FlashForward, Last Resort, Zero Hour, etc.). Props to the network for being smart enough to go with an established property to try and break the curse. Not quite brave enough to shift Once Upon a Time from its hit Sunday slot, the next best thing is to drop its spin-off, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, into that slot. If it works, this could be ABC’s strongest Wednesday in a long time. The remainder of the lineup remains unchanged, with Grey’s Anatomy at 9 PM and Scandal at 10.

Fridays is another night that’s remaining largely unchanged. With Malibu Country cancelled, ABC simply shifted its only returning freshman comedy from last season into that slot. So now Last Man Standing leads into The Neighbors, followed by Shark Tank and 20/20. With Suburgatory renewed, but off the schedule, it’s safe to assume the network is holding it back in case part of that Wednesday night shit sandwich truly is shit. I can see The Neighbors heading back to Wednesdays as well. Saturdays is all about college football, and after that it’ll be all about … who gives a shit. It’s Saturday night. Apparently all the viewers the networks care about are out partying and drinking with their buddies that night, so fuck it! Let the stay-at-homes watch reruns.

Stability continues to be the name of the game on Sunday, with only one new entry on the night. America’s Funniest Home Videos leads things off at 7 PM, followed by Once Upon a Time and Revenge. Clearly, someone wanted a name that made sense to follow Revenge, because Betrayal almost feels like it could be the same show based on the title. This one, though, requires fans to get behind a man and a woman who are both cheating on their spouses. Theirs is the love story we’re supposed to support? I blame Scandal. It’s a tough balancing act, and one Lone Star tried to achieve in 2010, and that show failed with viewers despite stellar reviews. I’m not confident Betrayal can pull this off, though it’s always fun to see James Cromwell chewing through scenery like a rabid dog.

ABC

Other shows waiting in the wings for mid-season, or the inevitable crash-and-burn of some of these fall entries include Killer Woman, starring Tricia Helfer as the only female Texas Ranger, and Mind Games, which stars Steve Zahn and Christian Slater as two brothers who solve problems through psychological manipulation. In other words, it sounds like ABC’s got the tried-and-true procedural-with-a-twist ready to go if their other stuff proves too smart for most Americans. Resurrection, on the other hand, is anything but procedural. It chronicles a small town in Missouri as they react to the return of their deceased loved ones years and decades later. So it’s sort of like The 4400, only they were dead rather than abducted. The lone comedy not on the schedule is another high concept idea. Mixology follows ten people through a single night at the bar, culminating at the end of the season with the end of the night. That single night better be a hell of a lot more interesting than most nights I’ve had hanging out at bars. Will the final two episodes be about the ugly friends circling one another, trying to decide if they’re desperate enough to sleep with one another?

Depending on the budget, ABC’s new reality entry could either be epic or a huge fucking disaster. The Quest is trying to capitalize on the success of The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit and Game of Thrones, as well as World of Warcraft. The concept is to drop twelve-people into a world of fantasy and magic filled with mythical creatures. Then, like most reality shows, the competition will whittle it down to one winner. It’s a real-life MMORPG … so it’s a MMRTVRPG?

Fox

The Fox network is definitely going big with their new 2013-14 schedule announcement. While they’re not expanding their primetime slate to three hours (to match the other major networks), they’re almost making up for it by genuinely embracing a year-round schedule in a way that no major network has ever done before.

The proof in that comes from the most talked about part of their announcement: Jack Bauer will save the day again in a revived 12-episode run of 24 subtitled Live Another Day. What’s remarkable is that this launch is coming in Summer 2014. 24 is a proven ratings performer and they’re saving it for summer! Are they fucking insane? Or, in an ironic twist of fate, are they telling the cable networks they better watch out, ’cause competition is coming?

While Fox is still steering clear of Saturdays, they are making a more aggressive shift to Fridays, following the tepid leads of the other networks in recent years. But Fox is going all in, shifting their biggest drama to the night in something they’re calling “Late Fall” on their schedule. Bones kicks off the season on Monday nights at 8 PM ET, but only for a little while. Whenever “Late Fall” triggers, Bones is moving to Friday nights. When it’s gone, it’ll be new series Almost Human (from J.H. Wyman and J.J. Abrams) that takes over the leadoff slot. Human is kind of like Bones in that it features two partners and one is a robot, only in this case Karl Urban is a real robot in the near-future cop drama. While I might have preferred to see a grown up V.I.C.I. from Small Wonder kicking ass and folding the laundry, Karl Urban can channel his inner Dredd for this one.

Once Human kicks in, it’ll be a night of all new shows, as Fox is holding The Following until mid-season again. In the fall, 9 PM is the home to Sleepy Hollow, which pulls Ichabod Crane 250 years through time and into the present where he can help face off against the Headless Horsemen, and the other Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. With Almost Human and Sleepy Hollow, Fox is really going aggressively into genre programming on Mondays. It’s a long way from the powerhouse House/Bones combo of yore, but will it work?

The network is sticking with its night of live-action comedy on Tuesdays, and even leaving New Girl and The Mindy Project untouched in the 9 PM hour. Seth MacFarlane was clearly pissed that Fox has a comedy night that doesn’t feature ten of his shows, so he got started with his first entry on the night. Dads is about two successful friends (Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi) who are polar opposites and the dads who move in with them and drive them crazy. Brooklyn Nine-Nine comes next, which is easily one of the most annoying titles ever to grace a television show. Mike Schur (Parks & Recreation) presents this cop comedy starring Andy Samberg as a detective who clashes with his new captain, played by Andre Braugher. I can’t believe Samberg is in a show not being produced by Lorne Michaels. Doesn’t he own the souls of SNL alumnae for at least ten years after they leave his empire?

At any rate, it looks like Fox is giving the 8 PM hour to the guys and the 9 PM hour to the ladies! Yes, I know it’s not that black-and-white in the real world, but we’re not in the real world. We’re in network television land where two shows were named after their pitches last season (Guys With Kids and The Mob Doctor), and both were as terrible as they sounded. Smart isn’t always on the table.

Fox

Wednesday is locked in for The X Factor in the fall and American Idol at mid-season. But really, how long can this last? Do the networks really think we’re going to want four singing competitions a year (including two volumes of The Voice each season)? My money’s on this lasting maybe this season and the next before one or more of them just crashes and burns. Idol looks the weakest right now, while The X Factor has yet to find its *ahem* voice. Thursdays remain pretty stable as well, with X Factor and Idol results shows at 8 PM. Glee sticks around at 9 PM, but this year it’s got a scheduled hiatus in the middle of the season, so Fox can give a trial run to Greg Kinnear’s British import, Rake, in that slot. Kinnear plays slimy very well, so he should have no problem as a self-destructive but brilliant criminal defense lawyer. In other words, it’s “What if House was a lawyer?” The gambit is another indication of Fox’s commitment to year-round programming. Eliminating more reruns and dropping in limited run shows instead should only help increase their overall audience average.

As mentioned before, Fridays are interesting for Fox this season. In the fall, it kicks off with the latest Gordon Ramsay spin-off, Junior Masterchef at 8 PM. God, I hope he yells at kids. Please let him yell at the kids and curse at them until they cry! Sleepy Hollow repeats air at 9PM until that elusive “Late Fall” time comes. Then, Bones moves into the 8 PM slot WITH NEW EPISODES (WHAT?) (I KNOW!!), followed by a comedy block of Raising Hope and newcomer Enlisted. The military sitcom follows three brothers on a small Florida Army base and sounds like an even more boring Beetle Bailey. I am actually thrilled to see Fox making a real play on Friday nights this season. There was no reason for TV to abandon both Fridays and Saturdays when they used to be so viable, especially in this era of DVR viewing when it doesn’t matter so much what night shows are on. Just so long as it’s not wall-to-wall singing competitions!

Saturdays, however, remain a no-man’s land with basically nothing on the schedule at all, while Sundays are rock solid for Fox, so they’re not messing with what’s working (except for maybe giving The Cleveland Show the boot). Things may get a bit of a shake-up at mid-season when football wraps up, but for now the night starts at 8 PM with The Simpsons, followed by Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy and American Dad. Poor Seth MacFarlane is going to have to settle for three shows on the schedule if Cleveland really is cancelled. But this doesn’t mean you should try that variety show idea again, Seth. Please, for the love of God just let it go. Go host more awards shows if you have to to get it out of your system.

The network has a bunch more shows waiting in the wings for when most of these crash and burn on entry. Gang Related tells the story of a man with ties and commitments both to the LA Gang Task Force and to one of the largest LA gangs. Murder Police is an animated series that makes fun of cop shows like Gang Related. Surviving Jack, from Justin Halpern, is basically the prequel series to Shit My Dad Says. Replace William Shatner with Christopher Meloni as the dad and de-age the kid to his teenage years. Because this worked so well last time, right? Another British import, this time they felt the need to change the name. Us & Them is the US Gavin & Stacey, which was a great show about a couple meeting and falling in love. The US version will probably have more penis and vagina jokes because we gots class!

And then there’s the “event series,” which is just a fancy way of saying mini-series, Wayward Pines. This one features Matt Dillon tracking two missing Secret Service agents in a weird small town (think Twin Peaks) and then going missing himself. It’s adapted by M. Night Shyamalan from a book, so look for the twist!

NBC

NBC rolled out the red carpet to celebrate another in a string of disastrous seasons and to warn people that they’re going to do it again next year! Yep, it’s upfront season, which means it’s time for the networks to trot out the schedules for their new slates of shows that will all premiere in the same week in September (so there’s no way you can watch even half of them).

Sure, NBC may be hoping that next year will finally be the year they finally get their shit together, but they’ve been in freefall since Friends left the air. In fact, next season marks the 10-year anniversary of the final season of Friends, and the final year that anyone cared what was happening at NBC.

Fall 2013-14 Schedule

As the only thing on the network that is actually working (until they beat it into the ground completely), The Voice isn’t budging from its Monday night slot at 8 PM ET, but Revolution was booted from its post-Voice slot to make room for James Spader’s new drama, The Blacklist. He was such a huge disaster on The Office, the network is bringing him back as some kind of criminal mastermind.

On Tuesday, NBC is abandoning their dreams of a second comedy front, bringing The Biggest Loser back in the fall season at 8 PM. The once potent reality show appears to have lost some weight (ha ha), having been trimmed back to an hour so that The Voice results can slot in after it at 9 PM. Chicago Fire, which survived being a shitty show to earn a second season, takes the next-best slot on the schedule, meaning someone at NBC really likes boring firefighters. Or they just like that they take their shirts off a lot. Probably watching a lot of Arrow, too.

Revolution is going from Mondays at 10 PM to Wednesdays at 8 PM because it was one of their strongest shows, and maybe it can lead off a night … ? Law & Order: Special Victims Unit stays put at 9 PM, followed by a remake of a classic ’60s and ’70s series, Ironside. Like the original, the story follows a tough police detective who’s relegated to a wheelchair. Blair Underwood is in the lead for this remake that is a far more obvious companion to SVU than Revolution.

NBC

In a somewhat surprising move (albeit something that probably should have been done years ago), NBC is almost completely overhauling the former home of “Must See TV.” Only Parks & Recreation remains on the night, with Community renewed and waiting in the wings but not on the schedule at all yet. Parks kicks things off, followed by three new comedies and a transplanted Parenthood. Where new dramas have failed year after year on Thursdays at 10 PM, maybe an established semi-hit can survive.

After Parks comes Welcome to the Family (Mike O’Malley leads on a show that hopes it’s funny when white people and Latino people are forced to start hanging out because their kids are “star-crossed lovers” or some shit), Sean Saves the World (Sean Hayes is a gay father to a teenage daughter (this show is so NBC, but at least Hayes is funny)), and The Michael J. Fox Show at 9:30 PM. Scheduling Fox at 9:30 PM makes me think NBC’s forgotten who Michael J. Fox is. Why the hell isn’t this show at 8 or 9?It should be an anchor show on the night, far more than Sean. With three new comedies, there needs to be some familiarity there for fans. Fox’s name is in the show, so Parks and Fox are the clear anchors.

Furthermore, Fox is a television legend. And if we’re going to be completely crass, the curiosity factor of him incorporating his Parkinson’s disease into the show is going to drive a ton of viewers. Next time you’re waiting in traffic so people can look at the wreck five lanes over going the other direction, you tell me I’m wrong. More important, this is MICHAEL J. FOX. As in Family Ties, Spin City, Back to the Fucking Future! Leave Family at 8:30 and bump Sean to 9:30. There’s still time, NBC. Do it!

With success, of a sort, on Fridays with Grimm, NBC is sticking to the familiar script. Grimm moves back to Fridays after Dateline. Then, Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Dracula settles in for a short 10-episode run. Monsters and vampires and … news? … oh my! Saturdays, um, exist and Sundays is all about Sunday Night Football in the fall.

NBC

Midseason 2013-14 Schedule

The network has announced some changes for midseason as well, but once all these shows start tanking (okay, most of these shows) except some changes to happen sooner. Nevertheless, the plan right now is to dump Loser in the fall on Tuesdays, move The Voice up to 8 PM and try again with a fresh pair of comedies at 9 PM (About a Boy replaces Hugh Grant in a televised adaptation of the novel, while The Family Guide features J.K. Simmons as a blind guy whose divorce brings the family together). Guide is also narrated by Jason Bateman as the future version of Simmons’ son. If one of the new shows on Thursday fails terribly, expect one or both of these to be called up to the big leagues. My money’s on Guide (though it’ll be without Parker Posey, who left the show as soon as the pilot was picked up). On Fridays after Dracula ends, Crossbones is ready to take over with 10 episodes as well. It’s about Blackbeard and pirates!

After football, Sundays are currently planning a complete overhaul as well. Dateline stays at 7 PM, but the rest of the night is new dramas. At 8 comes American Dream Builders, a competitive home makeover show hosted by Nate Berkus. That’ll be followed by Believe, the story of a 10-year old telekinetic and her reluctant guardian as they travel the country and change lives (this one’s by J.J. Abrams). Finally at 10, Crisis brings Gillian Anderson back to series television, alongside Dermot Mulroney (or is that Dylan McDermott? Ha ha), in one of those high-concept political espionage series that either fall apart completely like Kidnapped or become Scandal.

Channel 4

It’s a well-established fact that American audiences and British audiences have different comedic sensibilities, but the most distinct difference between the two – at least for me – is the fact that British comedy isn’t afraid to get completely and totally weird. For the most part, American sitcoms tend to follow the same safe tropes, fearing to travel too far off the beaten path lest viewers freak out and run back to the comfort of predictability, whereas Brits…man, they will just get batshit crazy at the drop of a hat and not think twice about it, figuring, “Hey, either you’re with us or you’re not, but this is what’s happening, so hang on!” Not coincidentally, this is a pronouncement which would serve as the perfect prologue for someone making their initial descent into the world of the 2004 Channel 4 series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is a truly unique comedic creation which requires viewers to accept several different premises, the first of which is that there was, once upon a time, a reasonably successful horror writer named Garth Marenghi, played by Matthew Holness. At some point during the ’80s, Marenghi’s fame was such that he, along with his publisher/publicist, Dean Learner (Richard Ayoade, The I.T. Crowd), got the go-ahead to create, produce, and star in their own television series, the low-budget Darkplace, which was – not to put too fine a point on it – awful.

Or was it?

Well, yes, it was, actually. Brilliantly awful, but still awful nonetheless. In fact, it was so bad that it never saw the light of day in the UK. But thanks to what Marenghi describes as “the worst artistic drought in broadcast history,” the series is finally being granted the opportunity to be screened in Marenghi’s native country, and as a result, he’s gone back and surrounded the episodes with his recollections of the experience of filming the series, alongside reminiscences from Learner and their fellow collaborators on the series.

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is a brilliant parody of low-budget ’80s TV, with all the cheap special effects and highly dodgy acting you’d expect from a show of the era, but it all hangs on Holness’s portrayal of Marenghi, whose haughty tone in the documentary segments brings to mind a blend of Stephen King and Harlan Ellison, but with 10 times the ego, describing himself as “author, dream weaver…visionary.” How much he thinks of himself is even evident in the credits of Darkplace, where one of the few things not attributed to either Marenghi or Learner is that of music, which is purportedly by someone named Stig Baasvik…but just as you’re wondering who Stig Baasvik is, we’re informed that even the music is “based on melodies originally whistled by Garth Marenghi.” Unsurprisingly, given that he wrote the show as well, the egotism also carries over into Marenghi’s character on the show, Dr. Rick Dagless.

With his top-notch ‘stache, Ayoade is all but unrecognizable from his I.T. Crowd character, but he’s so hilarious that he actually ended up pulling a spinoff from the series: a faux interview show called Man to Man with Dean Learner. On Darkplace, however, he’s provided with the opportunity to reel off a seemingly infinite number of Hollywood cliches at top speed, his delivery generally earning a laugh whether the lines are actually funny or not.

Also in the cast is Matt Berry, who did time alongside Ayoade in The I.T. Crowd but may be better known to others from his work on The Mighty Boosh and Snuff Box. He’s not quite as in-your-face funny as Ayoade, but he provides one of the series’ greatest moments with a brilliant ’80s parody called “One Track Lover.” Makes you wish he’d done a full version of the track…

Although Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace did manage to get a Stateside airing on Adult Swim a few years back – I’ve still got all six episodes on my TiVo – it’s never earned a Region 1 DVD release. This is highly unjust, as a man of Marenghi’s obvious (and self-declared) brilliance deserves to be better known in the U.S.

Sundance Channel

We waited a half hour to record the podcast so we could watch the results show of The Voice, and while we were doing that, a little news broke: FOX announced the first new series pickups of upfront season.

• We talk about the new FOX dramas (more info on the rest of the pickups, renewals and cancellations next week), along with some info on the new CBS comedy produced by Chuck Lorre and the FOX comedy produced by Seth MacFarlane (00:00 – 16:30),
• We then talked about the “voting inconsistencies” on The Voice, and have a long discussion about whether any of the top 12 have the chance to be a star. Also, given the show’s poor track record, Joel wonders if people will stop watching the show if they know none of the contestants have a shot at a real career after the season ends (16:30 – 44:30),
• Then we talk about Simon Cowell’s mandate for chemistry over big stars on next season’s X-Factor judging panel, and why the original Idol panel worked so well, despite being filled with relative nobodies at the time (or in the case of Paula, a reclamation project) (44:30 – 52:15),
• MacFarlane is going to be a guest voice on the 24th season finale of The Simpsons. We talk about how stunt voice casting seems to be the only thing we hear about regarding The Simpsons these days, and how long the show will go (52:15 – 1:01:45),
• We then talk briefly about the super-sized Office finale and how well the show’s been wrapping things up (1:01:45 – 1:05:00),
• Speaking of long-running shows, we talk about how HIMYM seems to be spinning the relationship merry-go-round again, how this feels like a waste of time as we enter the show’s final season, and if this final season is going to be satisfying or frustrating (1:05:00 – 1:09:00),
• Then we talk about the finale of Top of the Lake (albeit a few weeks late), and how a quirky but well-done show like Rectify is so perfect for cable (1:09:00 – 1:19:15),
• Finally, we wrap up with some odds and ends. Jason isn’t caught up on The Americans, so we bail on that, but talk about the cast promotions. We talk about the season finales of Parks and Rec and Happy Endings, correctly speculating that Parks was going to be renewed based on its open ended finale. We talk about how dumb Family Tools is. Finally, Joel grumps about absurd mother/child casting on TV, where every mom seems to be only 15 years (or less!) older than their TV kids (1:19:15 – 1:46:02).

You can listen to the podcast above (if you don’t hear anything, fiddle with the volume slider), download it via this link, subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via iTunes. You can also find us on the Stitcher radio app for smartphones and iPads.

By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.

FOX/CBS

Ah, the “hangout” sitcom. You know the format: a bunch of twentysomethings or early-thirtysomethings hang together in a shockingly close-knit group, cracking jokes and sleeping with each other. It seems that the second part of this equation has been a part of the hangout sitcom for close to two decades, ever since Ross laid eyes on runaway bride Rachel in the pilot of Friends.

It’s a problem that most of these kinds of sitcoms tend to do a poor job of handling, even classics like Friends; eventually, all the combinations of people who could sleep together have been attempted — or at least contemplated — and the friendship group gets so tight that few outsiders fit well, leaving the writers no choice but to circle back to relationships that failed the first time around.

New Girl is starting down that road as it closes its second season, with the simmering attraction between Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and Nick (Jake Johnson) finally boiling over last week; the episode ended with the two of them in bed together after having sex, looks of glee and fear crossing their faces simultaneously. They both know the havoc this is going to cause in their little group, so much so that we hear Jess let out a giggly Astro-esque “Ruh roh!” over one of the production vanity cards.

It was a funny moment that showed that Elizabeth Meriwether and company have gotten the whole ‘shipper thing right so far; they’re aware of how this drama can change a show and are trying to acknowledge it. But all they had to do was sit down and watch Monday night’s episode of another hangout show, How I Met Your Mother, to see how it can all go wrong without them even realizing it.

In the episode, Robin (Cobie Smulders) digs for a locket she buried in Central Park when she was a teenager, with the hope that she can use it as a “something old” when she marries Barney (Neil Patrick Harris). When she can’t find it, and calls Barney for help, he is too busy playing Laser Tag with Robin’s dad to even pick up the message.

Then she sends the same message to Ted (Josh Radnor), who blows off an important meeting and comes right over. Ted makes a speech about not worrying about fate, as Robin has suddenly started to do, the skies open up, and all of a sudden, Robin reaches for Ted’s hand as the rain comes down, realizing that she might be ready to reciprocate the feelings for Ted that Ted has had for her ever since they broke up at the end of the second season.

Instead of thinking “Aw, that’s nice!” or rooting for the Robin-Ted ‘ship to sail once again, as showrunners Carter Bays and Craig Thomas likely expected from the show’s fans, all I could think of was, “Ugh, this again?” It just felt like a rehash of a rehash, with my feeling no happier that this happened than I did when Robin and Barney finally got engaged earlier this season.

The reason why I felt so unmoved by this, despite being a fan of the show since day one, is that long ago HIMYM established that no one from outside the group was going to even have a hope of being established as a character people liked and wanted to see more of. With few exceptions, the chemistry when one of the gang has an outside boyfriend or girlfriend has never worked, and Bays and Thomas generally bail on those characters, either by making them one-dimensional or hastening their exits with silly plot contrivances.

This is a show that couldn’t integrate good actors like Kal Penn, Sarah Chalke, Abby Elliott, Jennifer Morrison and Becki Newton into the ensemble during their acrs; they all felt like interlopers trying to break into an exclusive club. Even Ashley Williams, who played Victoria, Ted’s season one girlfriend and the gold standard of HIMYM outsiders, couldn’t make a go of it when she returned to the show this season and was written out quickly.

Because Bays and Thomas can’t break that chemistry code, they keep having to return to the Ted-Robin and Robin-Barney wells over and over. And, as the show closes its eighth season and goes into a final season where Ted will finally meet the love of his life, it just feels like they’re laying complications upon complications on the way to that inevitable ending.

Patrick McElhenney/FOX

New Girl, though, has done a great job in its short life of creating arcs for guest girlfriends and boyfriends, with the guests blending in well with the four loft roomies (and Cece (Hannah Simone), who’s an honorary loftee). Remember Dermot Mulroney playing “True American” with the gang? It was a drunken, silly made up game, but his character, Jess’ wealthy older boyfriend Russell, played it like a champ. David Walton also did a great job on the show earlier this year.

Nick has been given a Murders Row of girlfriends, each being able to interact with the gang as if they’ve been on the show since the beginning — Lizzy Caplan and Olivia Munn are the standouts. Even now, I have full confidence that Merritt Wever will do a great job as Elizabeth, a former girlfriend Schmidt (Max Greenfield) had when he was fat and has gone back to after a long, skinny, player period.

It’s essential that these guests are given meaty material and funny things to do along with the Big Four and Cece, and that Meriwether and the writers keep that momentum going. Having them play straight men and women to the gang won’t do the show any good; that’s what happened after the first season of HIMYM, and the show has been suffering because of it ever since.

Also, New Girl needs to keep the self-aware-fest going for a little while longer; the more awkward Jess and Nick are about this turn of events, and the more its played up for laughs, the better off the show will be when they eventually, inevitably decide to become just friends again. Pining only works for so long, and leads to viewer fatigue.

If Robin had decided on Barney three seasons ago, HIMYM would have moved on from the drama and fans would be enjoying the “March to the Mother.” But now, it feels like a slog, because they’ve toyed with our emotions so much, it’s made us numb. Bays and Thomas are the “Boys Who Cried Love,” and they’ve done it so many times, it’s hard for us to figure out what’s real love on the show and what’s a plot complication. If the folks at New Girl are smart, they’ll take a cue from this; less love, more laughs, and this show will be just fine.

Fox

So we’re a week into the latest sweeps period, TV. How’s that going for you? Here, let me answer. It’s going fucking terrible, that’s how it’s going. Let me back that up for a minute with some cold, hard facts.

1. New series lows this past week, according to TVLine: American Idol, Hannibal, Once Upon a Time, NCIS: Los Angeles, Golden Boy, Dancing with the Stars (results), Survivor, Criminal Minds, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
2. Family Tools marked ABC’s lowest-ever rated comedy premiere – now granted, it was fucking awful, but that was during sweeps and in the middle of their Wednesday comedy block!

For that Wednesday night, only one show (Chicago Fire) saw any gains at all. Every other show was down week-to-week, so clearly sweeps isn’t working anymore, but then what is working on broadcast television? You really want to use some of your lowest ratings ever to negotiate ad rates? That’s sound business right there!

To trump up ratings during these valuable sweeps periods (May, August, November, February), the networks used to trot out guest stars, kill off main characters and generally try and make every single show must-see television. Now that American Idol is crashing and burning, the era of must-see television is over. Forever! Its dead, and Million Second Quiz isn’t going to bring it back, NBC!

What you, the broadcast networks, need to do is get your heads out of your collective asses and stop only paying attention to what each other is doing. The whole entertainment industry was evolving and changing while you were watching how many viewers Fox was getting with American Idol throughout the 2000s.

Does it really mean shit that NBC has pulled ahead of ABC this season if Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead are smoking both of them? The gap between cable and broadcast ratings continues to shrink, and yet you continue to do the same thing you’ve been doing for more than sixty years, oblivious to the changing landscape of the industry you created.

Sweeps is just another archaic concept the broadcast networks can’t let go of, like premiering all of their new shows to coincide with when the new car lines were launched in the 1950s. Who gives a fuck?! Stop competing once a year every September for ALL the viewers and start competing every week of every year.

Sweeps months are starting to feel like PBS pledge drives. “Please watch and save your favorite programming like 2 Broke Girls and Family Guy! We can’t do this without you!” Except that we won’t. We like that we can take control and we’re not going to give it back. Besides, we all live in our own cellular worlds now, so nobody really knows what sweeps is anymore. If they knew it mattered for the future of their shows, all those shows above might not have hit series lows in the first week of May sweeps this year.

You did television your way for years, and the world changed. Now you’re dying and still clinging to the old ways — kind of like newspapers, and look how great they’re doing! Adapt or die.

And if I know you like I think I know you … well, I guess I’ll see you soon at your funeral.

Patrick McElhenney/FOX

We spent the first twenty or so minutes of the podcast addressing a note we got from a listener, telling us about our mistakes. It was a good way to start talking about some of the interesting news of the week:

• During the talk about the mistakes we made, we discussed all the mumbling on Mad Men and how they handled the MLK assassination, why Alexander Skarsgard and Peter Sarsgaard may be the new version of “Bill Pullman or Bill Paxton?”, and why we don’t always know the entire careers of the actors we see (00:00 – 24:50),
• NBC renewed a bunch of shows, including Grimm, Parenthood and Revolution. We talk about these renewals, and if Parks and Rec and Community will be next (24:50 – 40:45),
• Then we talk about other renewals: Dallas, Rectify and Veep, along with the shows renewed by the CW (40:45 – 49:15),
• Arrested Development is about to hit Netflix, and we talk briefly about how the hype machine is gearing up for it (49:15 – 55:00),
• Speaking of Netflix, they eliminated a couple of thousand movies off their streaming site this week, and we talk about why the service is becoming more about watching TV episodes than it is about watching movies (55:00 – 1:05:00),
• Then we discuss the return of All My Children and One Life To Live, speculate if audiences will watch soaps online every day, and talk about why the timing is more than perfect for these soaps to start up again online (1:05:00 – 1:13:45),
• Then we talk for a little while about the music on reality shows, how it makes boring scenes interesting, and how little you pay attention to the music unless it’s not there (Joel equates it to shopping at Target, where they don’t play any background music) (1:13:45 – 1:24:15),
• Finally, we talk about the big hook-up on New Girl and why we think this connection will work better than other TV “will they/won’t they” scenarios, including the vaunted Ross and Rachel. In this discussion, Jason waxes poetic on why the Pam-Jim story on The Office‘s last season isn’t a distraction and is actually handled pretty well (1:24:15 – 1:49:06).

You can listen to the podcast above (if you don’t hear anything, fiddle with the volume slider), download it via this link, subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via iTunes. You can also find us on the Stitcher radio app for smartphones and iPads.

By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.

Michael Yarish/AMC

[Slight Mad Men spoilers ahead. Do not read on if you haven't watched the last two episodes...]

After last week’s podcast, we got a helpful comment from a loyal listener named George. In the comment, he noted that Jason and I got a pivotal scene in that week’s Mad Men wrong; we thought that Ted Chaough and Peggy Olson had sold their pitch to Heinz, right after Don and SCDP made their pitch.

Apparently, that’s not right; another firm made the sale, which is why both Peggy and Ted looked so glum (I had figured at least Peggy looked glum because she felt guilty for leaking the information her former SCDP colleague Stan gave her). But I really think I should be excused for not getting that important detail. Why? Because this is likely what I heard when I watched that episode:

“garblemumblegarble. Sold it in the room.”

The same thing happened on the most recent Men episode, when everyone at the awards dinner Don and Megan were attending found out about the assassination of Martin Luther King. As a fictionalized Paul Newman was speaking in the distance, rattling on about supporting Eugene McCarthy for president, someone in the crowd shouted something like “Excuse me, Mr. Newman! Did you know that Martin Luther King has been killed?” (Don’t quote me on this…), sending shockwaves of disbelief throughout the banquet hall.

Of course, the first time I heard it, I had no idea what the hell the guy had just said. I had to rewind my DVR four times, turning the volume up each time, to even discern what the guy was saying. My wife wanted to kill me, but I just couldn’t go on until I heard that garbled sentence, because it seemed like it was coming at a pivotal point in the episode.

It makes me wonder: Are all the characters in Mad Men mumbling… or am I just getting old?

Here’s the MLK scene. You tell me how well you can hear it:

To be fair, it seems like Matt Weiner set up that MLK assassination scene that way on purpose; he wanted to give the audience the same sense of “What’s happening? What did that guy say? Why is everyone reacting that way?” that the characters at the SCDP and CGC tables, stationed far from the stage, had. He wanted the viewer to have the same disconcerted, ominous feeling.

But here’s the problem with that: I didn’t feel disconcerted. I was just annoyed. For the second week in a row, I felt like an idiot for missing what was an important piece of information in a Men episode, mainly because the refrigerator was running and I didn’t have the volume high enough to blast away my neighbors. Last week’s garble completely changed the complexion of that bar scene — though Stan giving the finger to Peggy as he goes to take a whiz is priceless either way — and made it more understandable when Don let bygones be bygones and took Peggy home after the assassination was announced, her boyfriend Abe went to cover the anticipated riots in Harlem, and she was left without a ride.

Jordin Althaus/AMC

This isn’t the first time I’ve missed key dialogue on Mad Men because it was mumbled. I often find myself rewinding the DVR at least once per episode because we (let’s face it, though, mostly it’s me) couldn’t understand what someone was saying. It’s either said way too fast, or under someone’s breath, or when there’s a lot of other stuff going on. But for a show as dissected as this one is, with everyone and his cousin weighing in on the symbolism of buttons on suits and how something someone says can call back to something else and open up your understanding of what’s happening on that dreaded “deeper level,” I feel that it’s imperative to not miss any dialogue. And it seems like Weiner is making that more difficult for viewers by asking his actors to toss lines out like they’re coughing up a ball of phlegm.

I get it; that’s how people talk. Which makes me sit back and wonder if I’m just getting old. My hearing has never been great, damaged by years of live music enjoyed without earplugs, working in loud computer rooms without protection, and blasting cassettes and CDs in my car. I don’t clean the darn things as much as I should. Maybe people like our commenter friend George, with perfect hearing, can hear every bit of nuanced dialogue.

But other quality shows have actors who speak quite clearly, or at least clear enough that I don’t have to wear out my rewind button. I perfectly understand everything being said on Homeland and The Americans, for instance, and nobody has accused anyone on those shows of playing to the cheap seats.

And it feels like I’m not the only one who has trouble hearing shows. I took solace in the fact that a large number of commenters to The A.V. Club‘s review of the finale of Top of the Lake conceded that they could only understand about 65% of what everyone (except for Elisabeth Moss and Holly Hunter) was saying, given the thick New Zealand accents and relatively quick way they were speaking. I thought I was going crazy; I was even temped to turn on the closed captioning, something I haven’t needed to do since I rented The Full Monty on VHS. I didn’t, but if you read those comments, some people gave in, and I applaud the fact that they were able to admit to their weakness in an open forum.

So, maybe I need to make an open request to all producers out there (including comedies — I’m looking at you, Happy Endings team!): Please, please, please make sure your characters are speaking in a manner that people who have stood next to too many speaker stacks in shitty little clubs can understand. Sure, having your characters mumble their dialogue is more “real” and “cool” and “edgy.” But we are fans of your show, and we don’t want to be penalized because we cleaned our ears with one too many Q-tips over the years. Believe it or not, there’s more of us out there than you realize.

FX

Fans of FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia have been enjoying the comedic foibles of Charlie, Dennis, and Mac since 2005, but when they’re not otherwise occupied in front of the camera, the gentlemen who play those particular roles—Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, and Rob McElhenney, respectively—have stayed busy behind the scenes as well, serving as executive producers and writers on the show. Meanwhile, they’ve also tried to get a few other shows on the air, but it would be fair to say that they, uh, haven’t quite managed to duplicate the success of Sunny just yet:

• The underrated animated series Unsupervised, which they executive-produced, barely survived a single 13-episode season on FX.
• How to Be a Gentleman—where they served as consulting producers for their buddy David Hornsby (a.k.a. Cricket on Sunny), who created and starred in the series—got two Thursday-night airings by CBS, was shuffled off to the no-man’s-land of Saturday nights, and lasted a single week its new location before the network shut down production on the series altogether.
• Boldly Going Nowhere, the sci-fi sitcom which they created for FOX, never even made it past the pilot.

The story of Boldly Going Nowhere began more than half a decade ago, when McElhenney, Day, and Howerton signed a two-year deal with 20^th Century Fox Television in 2008 which also gave them the green light to move forward with a pilot written by Adam Stein, another Sunny alum. Described by TheFutonCritic.com in their first mention of the series as “a single-camera comedy for FOX set in the future about the mundane world of a spaceship captain when he’s not on a mission,” Boldly Going Nowhere was to focus on Ron Teague, commander of the Rock Collector 7, and his crew—including bipolar pilot Joyce, head of security Cobalt, first officer Lt. Lance Brigsby, communications officer Startemis, a half-man, half-fish mechanic named Pete, and a robot intelligence officer named Robot—as they deal with a new arrival on their vessel: Lt. Zander Centari, who’s been assigned to report back to Alliance Headquarters about whether or not the Rock Collector 7 is shipshape.

As a sci-fi geek and a fan of both Quark and Red Dwarf, it sounds pretty awesome to me, but the pilot script must have left the network execs somewhere closer to tentatively intrigued, as they also asked for five further scripts. Yes, an optimist could view this request simply as a sign of their excitement about where the series might be headed, but based on Brian Ford Sullivan’s examination of the pilot script, it seems far more likely that FOX was scared that, based on what they’d read thus far, the Sunny crew’s sensibilities might not be ready for prime-time.

“Imagine what would happen then if you put Sunny-esque characters in a Star Trek setting, and the comedy dominoes all start to fall into place. There’s crew members waiting in line wearing nothing but towels to use the holo-deck for ‘training.’ There’s a security officer who frequently jails people for ‘being punk ass bitches.’ There’s the use of the phrase ‘baby dick.’ There’s brow beating innocent people (‘I will come to your home and photon the shit out of it!’).”

In the end, Sullivan’s take on the script was one which would be echoed by many (though certainly not all) who were fortunate enough to read it: first he says, “I literally lost count how many times I laughed out loud reading this script,” then he admits, “I don’t see how FOX could actually air a show like this,” but he closes by declaring, “I will be the first in line if they do.”

When McElhenney, Day, and Howerton attended the 2008 Comic-Con in San Diego later that month, they were unafraid to try to build on the buzz surrounding the pilot, cheerily talking up the series to an IGN correspondent:

By September, Jonathan M. Goldstein, who would go on to write the screenplays for Horrible Bosses and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, had signed on as an executive producer alongside Michael Rotenberg and Nick Frenkel, who—you guessed it—also came from the Sunny camp. A few weeks later, Wayne McClammy, hot on the heels of having helmed “I’m Fucking Matt Damon,” was hired to direct the pilot. Attempts to hire Will Arnett for the cast came to naught, but they did manage to secure another ex-Arrested Development actor: Tony Hale.

In a Random Roles interview with the Onion AV Club (okay, fine, it was with me), Hale reflected on his experience on the pilot:

“I was really, really stoked. And I’ve gotta tell you, I had the best time on that pilot. I had an absolute blast. Also, someone I worked with on that was Lennon Parham (Best Friends Forever), and she is just so hilarious. In addition to being just a great cast, I remember that the whole time, it was just so fun. I mean, here you are, you’re in a spaceship, and… it was like The Office in space. It was just great. And I’m playing an android who’s got a silver face, and… I don’t have hardly any hair on top, but I had to shave it back to a point, and then they darkened it. I just looked like a freak. And then I had this relationship with a microwave… The whole thing was just so crazy, but it was such a blast.”

Okay, so now we know who played Robot, and if you’re wondering, Lennon Parham played Joyce the pilot, but who else in was the cast? Well, Benjamin Koldyke—who went on to start in ABC’s Work It, the poor bastard—was assigned as the aforementioned Captain Teague, alongside Chad Coleman (Cobalt), David Hornsby (Lt. Lance Brigsby), and Artemis Pebdani (Startemis). Sadly, IMDb’s listing for the pilot offers no clue as to who would’ve taken on the roles of Pete the mechanic or Lt. Zander Centari, but Natalie Morales (The Middleman) and Yara Martinez (The Lying Game) both playing characters named Ruby. Were they twins? Were they clones? Given the sci-fi premise, I think you have to play the odds and go with the latter.

As of late 2008, The Hollywood Reporter was suggesting that both Boldly Going Nowhere and Glee both appeared “close to series pickups.” We know what happened to Glee, obviously, but clearly the rumors of FOX’s enthusiasm were somewhat exaggerated. So when did Boldly Going Nowhere begin to boldly go nowhere? Things started looking sketchy in January 2009, when FOX ordered a new pilot, presumably to address the less family-friendly aspects. By the time March had rolled around, Hale had signed on to a different FOX pilot called Cop House (which, ironically, also went nowhere) while Parham had switched networks and joined CBS’s Accidentally on Purpose, but in August, Howerton did an interview with Sci-Fi Wire where he made assurances that the pilot script was simply being retooled, with an eye toward adding more sci-fi to the sci-fi sitcom. Even better, he revealed that they’d added a new collaborator to the mix: Larry Charles, best known at the time for his work on Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Borat. Alas, one can only presume that the collaboration died on the vine, as it’s never been mentioned again.

But is Boldly Going Nowhere truly dead? Uh, yeah, let’s not kid ourselves: at this point, I think it’s fair to say that it is, especially since we just celebrated the two-year anniversary of Glenn Howerton Tweeting to a still-optimistic fan that the series had been “shelved for now.” But don’t worry: if there’s any chance that the shelf in question is likely to become unoccupied in the future, rest assured that we’ll let you know.

IFC

Marc Maron fans are teetering on the brink of Maron overload these days. His WTF podcast is more popular than ever, he’s seemingly always on the road doing stand-up, and IFC has been airing funny promos for his new TV show, Maron, non-stop for weeks. Hell, there’s even a pretty good Marc Maron parody video series, Maron in Space, streaming on IFC.com, not to mention the guy’s Twitter feed, which offers a ceaseless stream of sharp and bitter barbs that obsessive comedy nerds like yours truly tend to gobble up like gospel.

But despite the non-stop Marc Maron circus that’s pitched its tent outside my front door, I’m still anticipating the May 3 premiere of Maron on IFC. If you’ve seen the promos for the new show — and if you’re a WTF fan, it’s likely you’ve watched them all at least twice and have probably forced friends to watch them while screaming, “He’s funny, right? Right? Fucking right?” – you’re aware that Maron is a half-hour scripted comedy based on the man’s life as a comedian and podcaster. You’re also aware that Mr. Maron seems to have made the jump to TV with his trademark blend of wit, cynicism, self-loathing and relatable bitterness intact.

We’re celebrating the premiere of Maron by bringing you a list of my ten favorite WTF with Marc Maron podcast episodes. I think the list represents some of the man’s best work, and I think listening to these 10 episodes will help WTF newbies get a pretty good feel for Maron’s unique point of view and intimate interviewing style. Again, these are my favorites; they’re not necessarily the best WTF episodes ever produced. Feel free to list your favorites in the comments section if they didn’t make the list. (Please note that many of these are premium episodes, which require a paid WTF subscription to download.) OK, let’s do this, people.

10. Ben Stiller – Episode 79
I’ve been a huge Ben Stiller fan since the early ’90s when The Ben Stiller Show was pushing the boundaries of sketch comedy and inspiring a new generation of writers and comedians. Despite the Focker situation, Stiller is still one of the most talented and interesting comedic actors in the business. It was a treat to get inside his head for an hour and to listen to Maron, who sounded a little nervous during one of his first sit downs with a huge movie star, ask Stiller about everything from the influence his famous parents had on his comedy to his workout regimen for Greenberg.

9. Janeane Garofalo – Episode 25
Yeah, I love Janeane too. I even bought that book she wrote with Stiller years ago (Yeah, I’m the one), so there was no way Ben and Janeane weren’t gonna end up on this list. During her chat with Maron, Garofalo opened up about several delicate issues, like losing acting jobs because of her passion for politics, and the time she cried all the way through a cross-country flight after experiencing some harsh crowd criticism. This episode, like many of Maron’s best, acknowledges and then sidelines cultural preconceptions about the guest to help reveal the genuine and vulnerable person living underneath the pop culture icon sheath.

8. Fiona Apple – Episode 297
You gotta hand it to Maron for guiding a fragile and erratic spirit like Fiona Apple through a rewarding interview that touched on her childhood, her well-documented on stage breakdown, and her neurosis. It was surprising to hear Apple drop her defenses and speak so openly about such deep and personal issues. Again, Maron manages, by being so candid himself, to create a safe environment where a normally guarded creative person can feel comfortable enough to share her secrets.

7. Dick Van Dyke – Episode 370
Maron recorded popular WTF episodes with comedy legends Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner earlier this year, and he completed his “showbiz greats” trilogy of sorts with a delightful conversation with Dick Van Dyke in March. The fact that I enjoyed the Van Dyke episode more than the Brooks or the Reiner episode probably has more to do with my love of Van Dyke’s work, especially The Dick Van Dyke Show, than anything else. But this episode was full of great stuff, touching on Van Dyke’s entire career as well as his battle with alcoholism. Van Dyke, ever the song and dance man, ended the conversation by singing the never-used lyrics for the Dick Van Dyke Show theme song. I’d be lying if I said that moment didn’t tug at my heart a little.

6. Gallagher – Episode 145
Perhaps Maron should have known better than to try and engage Gallagher, a prop comic best known for smashing watermelons on stage with a sledgehammer, on a deep and personal level about his “reputation for being racist.” An enraged and befuddled Gallagher stormed out of the room during the interview, but not before revealing himself to be a bitter and irritable hack with a personality that borders on repulsive. This was great radio. Uncomfortable, but great.

Max. S. Gerber/IFC

5. Judd Apatow – Episodes 103 and 104
This special two-part episode serves as a fantastic comedy history lesson of sorts. Not only does it offer a great and entertaining chat with the man behind The 40-year-Old Virgin, Freaks & Geeks, and Undeclared, but this episode also features rare audio clips of a young Judd Apatow interviewing people like Jerry Seinfeld and Gary Shandling about comedy well before they became huge stars. Apatow shares his Almost Famous-esque recordings, which he made in the early ’80s, with the WTF audience, providing an intimate look at some of comedy’s brightest personalities while they were still slugging it out in the clubs.

4. Robin Williams – Episode 67
This is an early one that helped put Maron and WTF on the cultural map in a big way. The Robin Williams episode helped establish the tone of WTF, with Williams mostly tempering his bombastic persona to speak quietly and candidly about his serious health issues, his past drug abuse, plus his failed marriage and his bout with depression. Maron’s conversation with Williams sounds almost like a therapy session, and that “on the couch” style has permeated the podcast ever since.

3. Carlos Mencia – Episodes 75 and 76
Here’s another one that helped put WTF on the map. Maron blurred the line between host, journalist and cultural critic with a compelling two-parter about comedian (and I’m using that term generously here) Carlos Mencia. In the first episode, Maron confronted Mencia about the criticism he’s received for reportedly stealing jokes from other comics. Maron remained tough throughout the interview, grilling Mencia on the issue when the comic repeatedly denies stealing bits outright from greats like Bill Cosby, despite compelling video and audio evidence to the contrary. Things get tense, and they don’t end well; Mencia begrudgingly admits to being a bit of an egomaniac, and in a follow-up interview, he mostly comes off as a selfish, ambitious hack with serious emotional issues. Maron also interviews comics who have worked with Mencia, and they paint a damning portrait of a duplicitous man who would step on anyone to get ahead. Maron ends the episode by discussing how the Internet has, to a degree, hurt stand-up comedy by making public certain beefs between comics that may be best kept out of the public eye.

2. Todd Hanson – Episode 190
This in an incredibly powerful and emotional episode with Todd Hanson, one of the original scribes for The Onion, discussing his suicide attempt and his crippling battle with depression. It’s clear that Maron relates to Hanson’s struggle, and the compelling two-part conversation offers sobering stories of mental illness and despair. The first part of the interview takes place at the hotel where Hanson had planned to take his life, a fact Maron learned after Hanson showed up for the interview. Hanson’s struggle isn’t directly addressed in the first interview, but he opens up about the darker parts of his journey, as well as his healing process, in the challenging and unforgettable second interview.

1. Louis C.K. – Episodes 111 and 112
There are many compelling arcs in this famous two–part talk between Maron and Louis C.K., with Maron beginning the chat from an angry and bitter place, and the always-honest Louis matching his contentious tone from the start. The two old friends mostly heal old wounds and end their WTF chats with laughs and a better understanding of one another, but the road to that comfy place doesn’t come quick or easy. As Maron has stated before, these episodes helped create part of the cultural conversation about Louis C.K., but they also reveal a lot about Maron and his own insecurities, personal struggles, and how he often approaches other successful comedians (especially the ones he calls friends) with an air of aggression and resentment.

Get a head start on the self-loathing and stream an episode of IFC’s Maron now, before Friday’s season premiere:

BBC America

Doctor Who leads BBC America’s new geek-friendly “Supernatural Saturday” programming block, and while Who has been a favorite in the Moody house for years, it’s the superb meta-noir thriller Orphan Black that I find myself looking forward to watching on BBCA every Saturday night.

While not nearly as high-spirited or family friendly as The Doctor’s weekly adventures, Orphan Black makes a fine adults-only companion series to the darker and sexier new Who. BBCA’s latest is an ingeniously constructed psychological mystery serial that, like Doctor Who, never forgets to mix plenty of fun and surprises into its peculiar pulpy brew.

BBC America

Orphan Black, which is currently in the middle of its first season, follows the increasingly dangerous and bizarre life of Sarah (Tatiana Maslany), a floundering grifter who discovers what appears to be her identical twin living in an unnamed city. It’s a challenge to praise the show without giving too much away — it’s best to jump into Orphan Black from the beginning and know as little as possible about its twisty plot — so I’ll try to keep from spoiling too much here. For starters, let’s just say that much of the fun comes from watching Sarah fight or negotiate her way out of one impossible situation after another. When the strange stuff starts to happen – and it happens fast and often – Sarah’s life goes from bad to crazy bad. But the unsettling and perilous path she’s forced to walk also brings out the best in Sarah.

Many of the show’s most thrilling scenes involve Sarah’s formidable survival instinct kicking in. When we first meet her, she’s a wanton girl desperately looking for a way out of a bad situation. Halfway through the pilot episode, she starts to become a crafty rebel who fights hard to forge her own path. That the evolution doesn’t feel forced is a testament to the series’ solid writing, compelling storytelling style and Maslany’s incredibly strong performance.

Maslany’s co-stars – Jordan Gavaris, Dylan Bruce and Kevin Hanchard – do an exceptional job, whether they’re providing pitch perfect comic relief or acting as an obstacle to Sarah’s goals, but it’s Maslany who dazzles (and I don’t use that word often). The show requires her to be a chameleon, morphing from UK “punk rock ho” to all-American soccer mom and half a dozen other identities sometimes all in the same episode. She pulls it off without hitting one false note. Maslany makes her frequent quick changes look easy and feel credible, which helps keep the show grounded as the weirdness piles on.

Orphan Black’s plot is reasonably complex, but the storytelling style, which hinges on Sarah’s journey into the unknown, makes it surprisingly easy to grasp. This is tightly structured storytelling that manages to balance dark drama and suspense with humor, charming character work and geeky sci-fi elements.

Every episode usually ends with a cliffhanger or a creepy revelation that promises to push us deeper into the shaky and haunting ground that Sarah treads. So if you haven’t started watching week-to-week, marathoning the first batch of suspenseful episodes won’t be a chore. Orphan Black is as serial as serial gets, with each episode normally picking up right where the last one left off, in terms of place and tone.

It’s a little hard to imagine Orphan Black keeping up its breakneck pace and tight structure for several seasons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the show won’t stick around for years to come. Hopefully it will continue to impress and entertain in surprising new ways as the seasons tick on.

Here’s a trailer for the series, and I’ve also posted the promo for this Saturday’s episode (for those who are caught up) at the bottom of this post. Orphan Black airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET on BBC America.

Michael Yarish/AMC

Jason’s house almost got flooded last week, so he didn’t watch any of the Boston manhunt coverage last week; he was too busy moving all of his belongings to his bedroom. We talk about the news coverage and other topics of the week:

• The Boston manhunt coverage was strange because it had a lot of nothing going on, but a very satisfying ending. We talk about who got the coverage right (NBC) and who got it wrong (CNN, of course), and why it was so compelling. We also talk about NBC pulling last week’s Hannibal even though the violence had nothing to do with a bombing, and why it’s getting cut into webisodes (00:00 – 18:15),
• NBC announced that they’re going to be airing an epic game show called Million Second Quiz. We talk about how absurd this show is (even more absurd than Bet On Your Baby), and if this is a desperate ratings grab for NBC or the absolute right thing to do (18:15 – 27:35),
• Then we talk about the reported almost-switch on American Idol, where the producers were going to swap Mariah Carey for Jennifer Lopez in midseason. Part of the discussion is why the ratings or Idol are sinking so much (boring judges, most likely) (27:35 – 40:00),
• We then talk about the supposed “controversial” steal on The Voice and why their coach switch has gone without a hitch while Idol and other shows have problems. Jason’s theory: competition (40:00 – 45:00),
• We then talk about the Amazon comedy pilots, and why MSN might reboot Heroes for XBOX Live (45:10 – 1:11:00),
• Then we discuss the premiere of Eli Roth’s Hemlock Grove on Netflix. Jason says if you’re a horror fan, you’ll like it (1:11:00 – 1:22:00),
• Then we talk in vague terms about two Sundance shows: the finale of Top of the Lake and the premiere of Rectify (Jason hasn’t seen the former, Joel hasn’t seen the latter) (1:22:00 – 1:27:00),
• Finally, riffing off the sentiments of Ken Levine and others, we talk about why the characters from Mad Men have become so unredeemingly nasty, and if the cracks are finally starting to show on “TVs best drama” (1:27:00 – 1:51:00).

You can listen to the podcast above (if you don’t hear anything, fiddle with the volume slider), download it via this link, subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via iTunes. You can also find us on the Stitcher radio app for smartphones and iPads.

By the way, the bumper music is “Trevor Trailer Trash” from the late, great band Cropduster.

E!

In January, during the Television Critics Association press tour, the critics were treated to a semi-working luncheon by the folks from E! where we had members of the all-girl pop group The Saturdays – the stars of the network’s new series Chasing the Saturdays - moving from table to table for interview ops. But before we started chatting up those lovely ladies, we were graced with a sneak preview of the next big series on the horizon: What Would Ryan Lochte Do? It was…interesting. And by “interesting,” I mean that. Although I don’t claim to speak for everyone who had been assembled at the lunch table that day, I’m pretty sure the majority of us were left wondering what the hell we’d just seen.

I’m not sure that this is the precise clip that was shown to us, but if not, it’s pretty darned close:

Now, it isn’t as though E! doesn’t have a history of presenting viewers with some of the most vapid series on the airwaves – indeed, that’s effectively their stock and trade – but watching the trailer for What Would Ryan Lochte Do? just left me wondering, “Why does this series even exist?”

Yes, he’s an Olympic athlete and an undeniably handsome and fit young man, and reality shows have been built around people far less worthy, so it’s not that he doesn’t deserve such a show (inasmuch as anyone does), at least on the surface, but the resulting show paints Lochte as such a complete and total moron that one wonders why on earth he or anyone else thought this was the best angle from which to approach the guy.

The best guess is that E! signed a deal to do the series before actually seeing what they had on their hands with Lochte, and once they realized that one’s skill at swimming does not immediately translate into a compelling onscreen presence, their options were limited as far as what they could do with him. So they said, “Let’s play up the fact that he’s a big, dumb galoot!” As you have seen above, they did this in a big, big way.

What they clearly did not anticipate, however, was that What Would Ryan Lochte Do? - and, indeed, Ryan Lochte himself – would be so roundly ridiculed not only by the critics (okay, that they probably figured) but even by the hosts of the shows on which Lochte has gone to promote his series. And, no, we’re not just talking about Joel McHale, although his coverage on The Soup certainly does help illustrate just how terrible a trainwreck this series is.

A few seasons ago, when Kelsey Grammer found himself on an ABC sitcom (Hank) that started out unfunny and clearly wasn’t going to get any better, he famously called the network and asked, “How do we put a bullet in this thing?” Given the way What Would Ryan Lochte Do? has been received both by critics and by viewers – only 807K people tuned in for the first episode – one has to believe that the suits at E! are currently echoing Grammer’s sentiment.

MTV/ABC Family

On last week’s AFT Podcast, Jason and I talked about the differences between two shows that seem very similar on the surface: ABC’s Suburgatory and MTV’s Awkward. It seemed like a natural comparison to make; after all, both are about high school girls who are smart, quirky and not all that popular. The main characters had similar names, Tessa and Jenna. Both of the shows featured prominent narration by the main character. And both talked about the specific teenage angst that kids of the ’10s worry about, which is where and when to have sex, and how open they can be with each other about the sex they’re having. (Yes, this is my get off my lawn, you whippersnappers! moment. It’ll be the last one, though.)

But at some point, the two shows diverged. Suburgatory became much more about the adults in Chatswin than the kids, and Awkward devolved from a story about an unpopular girl sleeping with the popular boy into more of a latter-day version of ABC’s Afterschool Specials. Two episodes into the show’s third season, we’ve already dealt with Jenna and Matty’s pregnancy scare, horny classmate Ricky Schwartz’ death, and Sadie’s stress-induced bulimia.

So, as its third season continues, Awkward has become a show that’s firmly serving the 12-24 demographic. But the show has plenty of old fart fans like myself, because the first two seasons featured smart humor and well-drawn characters that people who remember the ’70s could identify with. It feels like a better comparison can be made between Awkward. and ABC Family’s Bunheads, even though the two shows couldn’t be more different in tone.

And in that contest, Awkward loses. Each and every time.

Why? Because there’s a maturity factor with Bunheads that Awkward doesn’t have. Amy Sherman-Palladino has managed, over Bunheads‘ two-part first season, to create four teenage characters that have all the same problems the girls from Awkward. have — Sasha’s parents are a mess, Boo wants to have sex with her nice boyfriend sooner rather than later, Mel tries to find herself, and Ginny had sex with a boy who might not care about her.

But in Bunheads, the girls’ issues are dealt with in a manner that doesn’t pass judgement on them, but also doesn’t say that what they’re doing is 100% consequence-free. Sure, there’s drama, but it’s more in how the girls deal with each other, and how they rely on the guidance of Sutton Foster’s character Michelle, who wonders if her guidance is doing more harm than good. Are the girls a little more worldly and wordy than the average teenager? Perhaps; after all, they are speaking Sherman-Palladino’s words. But don’t tell me that you don’t know teens who are as wise-beyond-their-years as this quartet are.

On the other hand, Lauren Iungerich has been making Awkward‘s teens act more and more like caricatures that would make the characters from Saved By The Bell cringe. From the latter half of season two until now, most of the tension has come from relationship drama; will Jenna choose Jake or Matty? Will Matty get mad when he finds out about the pregnancy scare? Will Jake come between Tamara and Jenna?

It feels undeveloped and immature. Tamara seems to have been reduced to her catchphrases, acronyms, and shortened words. Jenna seems to be reduced to having dramatic conversations with the boys in her life. And don’t get me started on Ming (fun fact: the actress who plays her, Jessica Lu, just turned 28. 28!); her war with the school’s Asian Mafia gave me the biggest laughs last season, but now her battles just come down to who she’s having sex with in the school’s under-the-bleachers sanctuary. It’s so annoying, it makes me want to go back to the school and see what’s going on with damaged and co-dependent guidance counselor Val or examine Jenna’s mom’s ongoing search to figure out what kind of person she is.

If you’re about to go to Twitter and type out something like “This a-hole calls a show for teenagers immature. Well, duh!” and provide a link to this piece, first of all, thank you; we always appreciate the linkage. But before you do that, hear me out. Yes, Awkward is for teens. But so is Bunheads, which treats its teenage characters like the young adults they are, not like fuck machines who get so caught up in relationship drama they think of little else.

Iungerich has said that she hung out with high schoolers to make sure the dialogue in Awkward was right, but it feels like in making sure how they spoke was accurate, something got lost in translation. The ballerinas in Bunheads may talk like 40-year-olds, but they feel more like real teenagers. And isn’t that what you’re looking for from a show for teens?