Afternoon News: September 21, 2011

Sorry for the late post, lets get to it ...

1.  Season/Series Premieres! Premiere week madness continues with the always fun Wednesday night lineups.  First, ABC kicks off the season premieres of The Middle and Modern Family, each with hour long helpings! it ends the night with the series premiere of Revenge (which looks decidedly unfunny).  Fox is launching its next reality show juggernaut, X Factor, with a two-hour premiere.  Welcome back Simon and Paula! CBS premieres new seasons of Criminal Minds and CSI (Original Flavor). NBC has Up All Night and Free Agents settling into their normal lead-off timeslots, followed by season premieres of Harry's Law and Law & Order: SVU.

2.  Ratings!  Overnights for Tuesday are in and New Girl was the big draw of the new shows with 10 million viewers and a winning 4.7 share in the 18-49 time slot (though Dancing With the Stars - Results and NCIS: LA had move overall viewers (i.e., old people)). CBS owned the overall night with strong numbers from NCIS, NCIS: LA and a decent start for Unforgettable. Interestingly, Glee was down 32% from its second season premiere a year ago.  That shows has a hill to climb to get back into people's good graces.

3.  For The Standing Blogger at least, the reasons to watch Prime Suspect just increased by one, former Friday Night Lights executive producer, Peter Berg, just signed on to play Maria Bello's love interest.  SB will watch at least that episode ...

4.  Metta World Peace (nee Ron Artest) was the first dancetestant thrown off Dancing With the Stars. Yeah, pretty sure it was the stupid name.

5.  I LOVE Gordon Ramsay. He's smart, he curses like a British sailor, his shows are fun and he clearly knows what he's talking about. Now, he's taking that winning combination to another arena; Fox has greenlighted another new Ramsay joint to be called Hotel Hell. If you have seen Kitchen Nightmares, you know what this show will be about ... except, you know, it'll be about hotels instead of restaurants. 

6.  this came out a couple of days ago but I forgot to mention it. If you were missing Chord Overstreet on Glee last night, no fears, the ousted actor will be headed to The Middle in this season's second episode as Brick's new teacher.  I can't wait to see Brick say "Trouty Mouth" under his breath.

Keep or Delete: The Revamped Two and a Half Men

I was one of the 28 million people that tuned in last night for the Charlie Sheen/Harper-less debut of Two and a Half Men. I have been a fan of the show for years, it appeals perfectly to the raunchy adolescent boy that lives within me.  Charlie Sheen's boozy, misogynistic mimbo was a LARGE part of that attraction. Jon Cryer's ability to play off of and react to Charlie Sheen made up the rest. Angus is also a funny kid, but not enough reason to watch a show.  Like much of the television watching portion of America, I was curious to see how well the show would fare with Cryer now having to now play off of Ashton Kutcher.   I can respond with a resounding, "eh." 

HIMYM: Victoria, you are NOT the Mother!

I watched HIMYM last night and basically enjoyed both episodes, although I know a lot of other people didn't. My issue is with the whole Victoria thing. She cannot be the mother. Sorry folks. I've seen a lot of speculation on the blogs, but they are throwing another red herring at us. Among other things in the show's mythology we know that: (i) the mother was in the econ class that Ted mistook for his architecture class, (ii) she was Rachel Bilson's roommate, and (iii) Ted meets her at Barney's wedding. This has led to a lot of speculation that the mother is Barney's half-sister (the one that John Lithgow references at the dinner that Barney comes to...). If you take these three things we know, Victoria cannot be the mother. Oh well. Sound off below!

Morning News: September 20, 2011

1.  Season/Series Premieres.  Kickoff week continues with new shows debuting and favorite shows returning.  CBS offers up the ninth season premiere of NCIS; its little brother that could, NCIS: Los Angeles and finishes the night with the series premiere of Unforgettable (or the Remembererrrrrr as we call it here at OMD headquarters). NBC has the season 12 premiere of The Biggest Loser (no more Jillian? Then, no more TV Watcher!). Fox finally gets in the season premiere action with Glee and Raising Hope with the most anticipated comedy of the new season, The New Girl, nestled between them. Meanwhile ABC offers us the second season premiere of the Dana Delany vehicle, Body of Proof. 

2.  Ratings! TV by the Numbers has the early overnights in and the season premiere of Two and a Half Men, to no one's surprise, was the huge winner (28 million viewers with a 10.3 in the 18-49 category). In the  "somewhat of a surprise" category, The Playboy Club only pulled a 1.6 in the 18-49 category, shedding about 500K viewers from the already underwatched Sing Off premiere.  I fully expected The Playboy Club to be a flop but I thought a lot of people would tune in for the first episode.  In other news, CBS was the easy winner of the night (though the season premiere of Castle narrowly beat out the Hawaii Five-O premiere, which kicked ass BTW, in total viewers but with Hawaii Five-O taking a.1 lead in the 18-49 category). Dancing with the Stars pulled in about 18 million viewers for the premiere of the season of Chaz and no one continued to watch H8R or The Ringer.

3.  Fresh off her Emmy win, Melissa McCarthy is in talks to create a new show focusing around a woman going through a midlife crisis.  She's the new it girl so if she strikes while the Emmy is hot, she can't lose.

4.  Can't wait for tonight's premiere, catch this sit down TV Line did with NCIS showrunner Gary Glasberg, here.

Morning News: September 19, 2011

A lot is going on today with premiere week kicking off in earnest and last night's Emmy's. So, Morning News is running a little longer than usual.

1. So the Emmy's were last night and they were satisfying ... for the most part. Standing Blogger will have the complete run down later today but the highlights (for me) were that (i) Julie Bowen and Ty Burell won for their respective supporting role in Modern Family; (ii) Kyle Chandler won for his final season of work on Friday Night Lights (TEXAS FOREVER!); (iii) Peter Dinklage won for his work on Game of Thrones as the loveable and hateable imp (imp is fun to say and write) Tyrion; (iv) Melissa McCarthy, in the most sincere feel good speech of the night, won for lead actress in a comedy for her work in Mike and Molly; (v)Julianna Margulies for lead actress on The Good Wife; (vi) Jim Parsons for Big Bang Theory; and (vii) Mad Men and Modern Family won for best drama and comedy, respectively.

2. Season/Series Premieres. We are loaded to bear this week as the real networks (sorry CW, but I just don't like you like that) role out their newest offerings. CBS kicks of their season with 2 new episodes of How I Met Your Mother, followed by the much anticipated ninth season premiere of Two and a Half Men (did you hear, Charlie Sheen's not the show anymore; I wonder what happened?!?), then the series premiere of 2 Broke Girls and ending the night with the sophomore season premiere of Hawaii Five-O. NBC serves up the debut of the now regular season program, The Sing-Off and ends the night with the series premiere of the sure to be milk toast Playboy Club (I'll be watching but I don't have high hopes). ABC will be spending the night trying to explain why we shouldn't be scared of Chaz Bono when it debuts its 13th installment of Dancing with the "Stars" (that should always be in quotations). I, personally, am waiting for Nancy Grace to sensationalize the whole show and spending an hour after the results explaining the dark, deep seeded reasons for why certain danctestants were thrown off. Castle premieres its fourth season after the dancing is over. Fox only has the finale of Hell's Kitchen, nothing new premiering.

3. Lion King (3-D) "roared" (sorry, I couldn't resist) to first place this weekend at the box office with $29.3 million. Its good to be the king ...

4. I'm pulling for Glee this season, this seems promising.

5. In case you had been holding your breath waiting for a disposition, Matthew Fox will not be charged beating up the bus lady. She probably worked for the Dharma Initiative and deserved it.

6. Aaron Sorkin broke his nose this week when he got too close to a mirror and head butted himself. For someone with his history, he should know to keep a rolled dollar bill- or straw-length distance from the mirror's surface.

I Cheered and I Laughed (sort of) - The 63rd Emmys

Last night's Emmy awards. I missed the beginning, but I watched most of the rest of telecast (mostly On My DVR, so I skipped the boring bits, which were numerous). I know alot of people find Modern Family very funny, and I've seen a few episodes, but I don't watch it, so while I'm happy for them, I'm not going to say much about the show. For a complete summary of the nominees and winners, check out TWOP's list here http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/telefile/2011/09/emmy-awards-2011-the-winners.php

So, here's my take on last night's awards.
First, the presenters were awful. The writers tried to be funny, but the jokes were so forced and wooden that it was almost painful to listen to. I thought Gwenyth Paltrow was the funniest when she presented the award for best comedy. She came out and said "the prompters are down, so I'm going to wing it, here are the nominees for Outstanding Comedy series". Excellent. While gorgeous to look at, Rob Lowe and Sophia Vergara sounded lame. Jane Lynch had a few funny lines, but most of what she said sounded forced too. Oh well.

The singing intros to the overall categories - the "Emmytones" - was bizarre and totally pointless and I felt bad for Colbie Smulders, Joel McHale, Wilmer Valderrama, Zachery Levi and other people for having to sing those stupid songs. Anyway, onto the awards.

First of all, congrats to Friday Night Lights for two extremely well-deserved awards. The award for best writing couldn't have gone to anyone else. What a show! And a win for Kyle Chandler - we all cheered in my house when he won. Poor guy was totally not expecting it and didn't prepare a speech. He was so thrown that he didn't thank either of his wives. Oops.

While I am sad that Connie Britton didn't win for Best Actress, I am a big Good Wife fan, so a Julianna Marguilies win was good for me too. Same goes for Best Drama. I love Mad Men and by just being nominated in the category, FNL was proclaimed to be one of the best dramas on TV, and deservedly so.

Melissa McCarthy won for the most heart-felt acceptance speech. The bit with the nominees standing together, ala Miss America, was cute. But Melissa was so happy to have won and was so gracious that I really felt like the academy got it right.

Charlie Sheen continued his mea culpa tour with a very boring "tribute" to his old show. I'm guess they only let him do this because the Emmys aired on Fox, and not CBS.

TV Watcher was happy with Peter Dinklage's [He's the bestest Imp in all the land - TV Watcher] best supporting actor win and I was happy with Jim Parson's best actor in a comedy win. Kudos to him for his shout-out to cast-mate Johnny Galecki.

I'm a big Jon Stewart fan and I'm always happy to see him win (for the 9th year in a row), but I was even more impressed by his raving about Colbert. It'll be a long time before someone else wins this category, so it was nice that Stephen got some love too (he is very funny!).

I was thoroughly bored by the mini-series categories and wished that I had been able to fast-forward through them (but couldn't since I caught up), but since they led up to one of Jane Lynch's funnier comments of the night after Kate Winslet won, at least something good came out of them.

With some surprises, but mostly on target wins, the Emmys were spot-on this year from an awards perspective, which was great, but I could have done without the awkward presenters. Obviously letting them wing it is dangerous, but I would have preferred if they hadn't tried to make them funny. And now that the Emmys are over, it's time to turn our attention to the new season, enjoy the ride!

Keep or Delete: Up All Night/Free Agents

I think NBC's new series Up All Night is smart, well written, amusing and features a strong core cast with great chemistry. I will likely not watch another episode.  I know that seems contradictory but its not, not when you think a little about the subject matter at hand and my particular circumstances. I am a father of a young boy; I am Will Arnett three years later.  I understand not being able to find the right cheese in the supermarket and creepy old ladies that appear everywhere and ogle your child.  My body is more "Body by Dunking Donuts" than "by Nordic Track" but in almost every other way -- I am Will Arnett.  And, my wife is Christina Applegate (metaphorically, not literally).  So, I don't want to watch an accurate depiction of the more horrible parts of early parenthood, not when I went through the real thing such a short time ago. I think other people are going to agree with me.  The show is DEAD-ON accurate in how it handles the first few months of caregiving for new life ... what person in their right mind would want to relive that so soon thereafter. And, if you don't have kids, I think you're going to find the show boring, or at the least unrelateable. So, who is the audience here?  Standing Blogger and I decided its people with older children who remember vaguely what it was like to have an infant but that enough time has passed to find others suffering through it, funny. Like sadistic grandparents or co-workers with kids about to go off to college.  A niche audience to be sure but I hope it succeeds ... because in 15 years, I'll be ready to watch reruns of the show and laugh.

Free Agents is a hot mess. It wants to be a raunchy workplace comedy with a river of heart and sentiment.  Except, its on broadcast TV and once in its regular time slot, it'll be on before the kids are asleep so how edgy will it be?  Can it be?  If Up All Night is too realistic, Free Agents is its bizzarro world opposite. I work in a fairly relaxed environment and I can tell you, we have never had a full company meeting where Agenda Item #1 was all of the sexual positions I employed the night before.  That's not to say that on a pay-for-cable channel, they couldn't have gone further and made it outrageously funny .. but , that's not the circumstance.  It has to be either edgy or not, brash or not. You can't wink and nod at the audience expecting them to use their imagination to fill in the blanks of debauchery that might have been, if only it weren't for the damn corporate censors and/or sponsors.  Move it SkineMax and unleash the show for what it wants to be. Or else, cancel it.