In Which We Break Down The Slate of Fall TV

Fall TV Preview

by ELEANOR MORROW

June 10, 1991. It was the last day Twin Peaks aired new TV on broadcast television. Seinfeld had just replaced Night Court as NBC's Wednesday at 9 staple. Things were on their way up. Flash to whatever's left over from an era of televised brilliance.

We would never recover, and eventually we would drift from Must See TV into NBC boring us with Green Week and eliminating five hours of original programming.

NBC

Community with Joel McHale is at least one thing to be excited about on NBC's dreadful slate. They'll probably replace it at midseason with something starring Paul Rudd as a firefighter. How dreadful? The only thing they air in primetime during Tuesday is two full hours of The Biggest Loser. If I wanted to watch sad people struggle with their weight, I'd attend Rosh Hashanah with my family.

Although Joel McHale was probably better in The Informant, I am willing to watch him flick his eyes around no matter how bad the script is.

NBC is committing the cardinal sin in promoting a season by having two new shows with a similar name: Trauma and Mercy. Trauma looks hopeless, and Mercy not much better. Trauma at least appears to know how bad it is, while Mercy just features nurses working overtime in full makeup and looking like models.

traumaA kind of prologue to its long-running hit ‘E.R.’ in that it deals with young emergency medical technicians and the high-intensity medical cases they get involved in — before they reach the E.R. The show, set in San Francisco, features lots of helicopters and racing ambulances.

The Jay Leno Show could ruin as much as 10 percent of my aimless channel flipping. They should put this guy out to pasture like an old racehorse. One day there's a bullet in his hide and nobody's asking questions. This move was destined to fail because late night shows don't do primetime numbers, this is just a fact of the universe. Somewhere, Arsenio Hall is dead.

Day One won't appear until 2010, but it looks to be even more horrible than Heroes, if that is in fact possible.

ABC

ABC does a horrible job of promoting its comedies, which means there's really not any point in watching them because they are likely to die by midseason — their replacements are even listed on the schedule. It's better to roll shows out slowly instead of sticking eight programs on with a 15-person cast and hoping someone notices. Eastwick - based off a great Jack Nicholson movie - already made its premiere, and amazingly I hated it even more than Tom Shales did.

From what we can tell, Flash Forward consists of characters staring at each other from every discernible angle, often in mirrors. Furthermore it includes the actress Sonya Walger, who is now a world class surgeon. I hate to break it to you, but that's not accurate. Sonya Walger is Penny from Lost and that is all she will be. The show is based on a Robert J. Sawyer novel. It premiered on Thursday and had an OK premiere. The acting could be generously described as challenged.

Modern Family is probably the most offensive show on the network's fall schedule. It is also tremblingly unfunny. It will often be confused with Hank, which incredibly stars Kelsey Grammar as a middle class schlub, and The Middle, which airs right before it. No one but ABC knows anything about these shows. They are like theatrical productions where the actor's families are the only attending.

ABC is also premiering The Forgotten, which is amazingly not based on the movie of the same name, even those both products use the same title font. This show is ABC's attempt at a fall procedural. I am reminded of Don Draper's city mouse: "No one wants to think about forgetting when they're trying to remember to watch a show."

FOX

Fox extended a merciful stay of execution to a bunch of series that didn't deserve another chance including Dollhouse, Lie to Me, and Til' Death. At least there is hopefully no 24 in sight. In Fox's position, you should look to highlight television that is more experimental and different from the networks — seems like there would be a niche there. Go back to stretching boundaries rather than airing another half hour of Seth MacFarlane's diarrhea. My mother says Glee is good, but she also watches Dancing with the Stars.

CBS

CBS did the best job of balancing new programs with their existing slate, although it's not like there's anything to really look forward to here.

Juliana Margulies plays Eliot Spitzer's pathetic wife in The Good Wife. I would really hate to be Eliot Spitzer, although I guess he should be flattered they cast Chris Noth to play him. If my husband was Chris Noth, I'd put up with a lot more philandering than I would if my husband was Eliot Spitzer. In any case, this show was actually not terrible. Ultimately this show will struggle because no one is going to respect her for staying with Chris Noth despite his earthy good looks, and if you can't respect your protagonist, you have problems.

I still think The Good Wife will be a hit until she also cheats on her husband and everyone calls her a harlot.

I realize these procedurals make a lot of money, but I wouldn't trust these two to babysit my kids, let alone fight crime. Also, Chris O'Donnell is not even the best O'Donnell anymore.

In Jenna Elfman's Accidentally on Purpose she basically has the plot of Knocked Up, but everyone is slightly better-looking. At least CBS does a decent job introducing comedies — you should do it progressively and hype it on your central show, in this case they have the ratings dynamo of Two and a Half Men.

In trying to make a mainstream show that would appeal to everyone, they achieved the exact opposite with Accidentally On Purpose. This is a very strange world. Jenna Elfman and her friends (the incomparable Ashley Jensen and the weird-looking Lennon Parham) plot to get impregnated by a 23-year-old busboy who lives for Grand Theft Auto and weed. Then when she tells him about the baby he's totally cool with it and wants to go to her gyno appointment. I kept waiting for Judd Apatow to pop out of a box and scream, "Surprise!"

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

"Grey" — Ashley Monroe and Brendan Benson (mp3)

"Consider Me" — Ashley Monroe and Brendan Benson (mp3)

"Ballad of Pretty Baby" — Ashley Monroe and Brendan Benson (mp3)

In Which I Know You're Drunk, Come Sit Next To Me

I Felt The Floor Open Up Under Me

by ELEANOR MORROW

Although we will cry for Don Draper and even weep when Don Draper hurts our feelings, it is better when Don Draper makes us laugh. "This is good champagne," Peggy says to Don at the graceless British invasion that brought perishables and emergency room visits. "I don't think so," he tells her with all the gravitas of someone who is simultaneously at the Emmys.

It was better when we didn't think Jon Hamm was acting, when we didn't know he was being ordered around by his intractable pseudo-lesbian wife between seasons. But we do know he's acting, he mugs for the camera at every opportunity. Don is at his pretend best when he's muttering questionable analogies he stole from his British CFO's near trip to Bombay. I hope the snake charmer bought that truculent secretary a better glass of champagne for preventing his journey to his firm's overseas sector.

"He was a pure account man," murmured Maxwell Sheffield, Fran Drescher's boss on The Nanny about the dashing Brit who nearly bossed Don around. Unsurprisingly, it was one of Mad Men's female writers who staged the funniest episode since Sterling read poetry to his younger-than-thou girlfriend over strawberries and prenuptial agreements.

Roger Sterling now spends more time complaining than Joan, and he has a lot less to complain about. Imagine if he came home in the dark and told his significant other he'd lost his prestige and fortune — Sterling would have also lost the price of a plane ticket.

"We took their money, now we have to do what they say," agrees Bertram Cooper reasonably. It turns out they'll say anything to make Don Draper into their personal city mouse. Don's quiet romance with Conrad Hilton aside, his chief virtue for the company seems to be accepting whatever admirers the British send his way. It's a positive trait he shares with Price, whose bosses crow, "One of your major strengths is
that you always do what you're told!"

This valuable business asset strolls home to an unsuspecting family. The only way he knows it's actually his place he's found at the end of a long day is by the particular toy strewn about the yard. The best scene this week was Betty's maudlin sit-down with her daughter: "You're very important to me, too," Betty informs her first-born after handing her a ghoulish present from Eugene the baby.

Someone better keep an eye on Gene before Sally tosses him into a trash compactor just to find something to do. "Only boring people get bored," quips Betty, who has nothing better to do all day than smoke and yell at people for not liking the name of her baby.

When I meet drunk lonely old men at parties, they always want to give me their business, but not like they do Don Draper. Please have someone competent inscribe, "I don't think anyone wants to think about a mouse in a hotel" on my gravestone.

Sally's sleepless journey into the undead haunts of Grandpa Gene and lifeless barbies was most taxing. The set for her room looks like the inside of a woodshed, and the demands she makes on Don are roughly equivalent to a restructuring of personnel. Once the little sucker stops staring and starts asking you for money is when the kid is no longer cute. Exhibit One is resting on your shoulder, Don.

Even among all this show's childbearing and corporate restructuring ("You were the only one in the room who got a promotion"), Weiner still found time to shit on Joan Holloway. Quitting your favorite job for your beloved is a common slip — it rarely adds up on any ledger.

Joan can't bring herself to really confront Greg, or she'd utter those fateful words — "I strongly wish I had known you weren't a surgeon before I let you r me on the floor of my boss's office." All she had to do was follow that up with a MLIA and she'd know the pain most are suffering in '09 depression. The only thing to do with a drunk failure is undress him.

Indeed, all a person requires from the world is that someone be there to turn out the light for them and leave the door to their room closed an appropriate distance. Sleeping in utter darkness is for gollums and other failures at the day-to-day intercourse that mars the world, that broadcasts the subtle signs of our discontent. It is more important to appear to be happy than to actually be happy.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here. You can find her most recent Mad Men essays here and here.

"Not Made for Love (Astronomer remix)" — Metronomy (mp3)

"Not Made for Love (Leo Zero remix)" — Metronomy (mp3)

"Not Made for Love (Alalal remix)" — Metronomy (mp3)

In Which We Enter A Mad Rage

Voices Carry

by ELEANOR MORROW

Mad Men is a drama that takes itself seriously. Even an innocent morning drive portends something more forboding. Don's daughter Sally hears the grownups laughing it up on a sad day, and the poor girl takes offense to her family's lack of grief. "He's gone, don't you understand?" she tells them, and goes into the television room to learn how to most pleasantly deal with her pain.

The implied guilt parents bestow on their children is on full display in this third season of Mad Men. Between closet homosexuality, abortion, rape, incest, World War II flashbacks, gender confusion, and jai alai, Sterling Cooper has its hands full.

Don Draper has never stopped reliving the heartbreak of that childhood. Don wakes up every night, and the dream's the same. He's basically the Terminator, who also didn't come onto the scene until the end of the world was nigh. Don stares longingly at old photographs and sobs over his lost youth. He's like the Monopoly man but even less convincing.

Mr. Weiner's show comes alive when Don runs headlong against something. The mercurial ad wizard took a leave of absence in Los Angeles last season, and when he came back he should have found a new brilliant British mind to contend with his creative loneliness. Instead it's the same old DD: Don slyly reassuring the employees he trusts by patting them on the back even when they've failed. Don follows a credo that I salute in full: when someone most expects you to destroy them, show mercy.

What exactly was wrong with Sal's Bye Bye Birdie ad for Patio? "She's not Ann-Margaret," was Roger's considered opinion. Thanks for showing up to work, Roger, that appears to be the first meeting you'd made it to where someone wasn't fired in the last year. But yet, the ad itself was off — creeping, pleading. The ad lacked the unbridled natural enthusiasm of the original. It felt like pretend.

I don't know whether to be impressed that Sal's paramour figured out her husband was a flaming homosexual, or feel bad for her. At least she knows the truth for herself. Sal's reliable and trustworthy, one of the few characters in Mad Men's milieu that we do believe.

Jude Law will soon pop up on Broadway as Hamlet, an inspired version where everything the Dane says will obviously be total horseshit. What is Hamlet if we can't be convinced the ghost is real? Mad Men is composed of moments that would be more disconcerting if Jon Hamm and Vincent Kartheiser weren't snickering in delight. Mad Men, with its 21st century tongue and tenous grasp of historical events, seems no more real than ABC's Mad Men counter-programming, Defying Gravity.

Airing in about sixteen different timeslots on ABC before it's thankfully canceled, Defying Gravity amazes me in its utter preposterousness and lack of charm. Astronauts are hurtling across the solar system, and yet all they can think about is what to wear for their interstellar vampire ball (really). This was an actual plot line from Sunday's Defying Gravity. Pitched to ABC execs as "Grey's Anatomy in space", hopefully God will smite every single person involved in the creation of this show, beginning with former Office Space drone Ron Livingston plays the strikingly handsome astronaut Maddux Donner.

Defying Gravity has taken the meaningless soap opera nonsense perfected by The Sopranos and viciously murdered it. The Sopranos proved that dozens of unlike, occasionally connected events could be a new kind of drama; Gravity takes that same formula and ruins it. Matthew Weiner (with David Chase when the latter was sober) basically invented the subtle plot twist where the wrong slip kills a man while he's standing in line at A&P...and they don't even show it. Subtlety is wasted on the young.

Sincerity in human drama staged or fake isn't easy to come by. That our most convincingly heroic actors became our statesmen is tossed over by Don, Pete and the prince of jai alai, that the son must bear the burden of the father. Later, the heads of Sterling Cooper debate whether or not to accept the money of a trust fund baby.

Things aren't so easy in the other borough. A mother demands a 27-inch television and tells her second daughter that she'll be raped in Manhattan. Peggy's reaction was remarkably understated — children always have a slight hesitance in trusting their parents' change of minds.

Last week, Christina Hendricks had to eat huge snausages and play accordion for her husband's doctor buddies. This week she's Miss Manners telling Peggy how to be exciting and fun. "When he has you on the floor," she tells Peggy, "whimper slightly." There's so much the young can learn from the old.

I fear for Bobby Draper — he's not even protected from the vicissitudes of American violence when his father sits mere feet away next to the family's frightening animatronic dog.

"My son lives in the shadow of my success," a client tells Don. He can't help but think of his own son, who barely notices that he lives in the same shadow.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here. You can find Molly Lambert's review of last week's Mad Men here.

"Stockades" — Frog Eyes (mp3)

"Bushels" — Frog Eyes (mp3)

"Reform the Countryside" — Frog Eyes (mp3)