What My Fat Ass Will Be Plopped in Front of Next Year: Part 1

Thought I'd briefly opine on the new Fall TV schedules as they're announced. To paint a brief picture of where I stand currently, TV-wise, that is, here's a quick look at what I currently watch:

Monday:
Not much. I was a big, unabashed, Everybody Loves Raymond fan, but that's gone now. The Charlie Sheen/Jon Cryer sitcom that follows it, Two and a Half Men, is much better than reputed, with a kind of gleeful lack of sentimentality, which is hard to do when you center a sitcom around a kid. And I love that they've decided to portray the kid as a real kid--he's not witty, or precocious, or even all that cute. He's an overweight, fairly dull, very lazy, and from all available evidence not-very-bright kid, much like many, many real kids. Not a great sitcom, by any means, but funny enough.

Tuesday:
I've only just this year jumped on the Gilmore Girls bandwagon. I've caught up with the first two seasons on DVD, and will soon dive into the third, and have loved this fifth season, which ends tonight. I'll watch American Idol if GG is a rerun, but haven't seem most of this season.

Wednesday:
Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost. My newest TV addiction, and the series I most look forward to each week.

Thursday:
Joey is very much on the same wavelength as Two and a Half Men--better than reported but not great. Still, I watch it, and have hopes for the next season. I would expect to see some Friends guest stars next year too, now that the show has a full, Friends-less season under it's belt. And I'm ashamed to admit that I will usually watch The Apprentice, much against my better judgment. It's not that I like it, it's just that, you know, it's on. And I still like ER a whole lot. The medical stuff continues to hold interest for me, and I think they've done a very good job over the years of juggling old and new characters to keep the show fresh.

Friday. Saturday.
Thpt.

Sunday.
I'm an unreconstructed Simpsons fan, which means that I still think it's funny, unlike legions of hard-core fans out on the 'net.

So that's the TV I try to watch, at least fairly regularly.

OK, so now NBC, which was first out of the gate, yesterday. Their schedule for the Fall,with new shows in red. (Taken from Aint it Cool News's report)

Monday
8 p.m. Fathom
9 p.m. Las Vegas
10 p.m. Medium

Fathom is a new drama about some kind of mysterious and creepy sea creature that suddenly appears in the world's oceans . From the blah-marketing description it sounds uninteresting, but who knows.

Tuesday
8 p.m. The Biggest Loser
9 p.m. My Name Is Earl
9:30 p.m. The Office
10 p.m. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

The one or two eps of The Office I caught were pretty good; I've never seen the BBC original. The new show is a sitcom about a loser who wins the lottery. Kevin Smith regular Jason Lee (who I never quite understood as an actor; he seems just really, really bad to me) stars. Can't tell anything from the description. Special Victims Unit was pretty good last year, at least the handful of eps I caught. Less boilerplate Law and Order stuff, and more interesting cases. The (albeit small) entry they've allowed into the main character's lives and heads have also done a lot.

Wednesday
8 p.m. The Apprentice: Martha Stewart
9 p.m. E-Ring
10 p.m. Law & Order

None of these hold any real interest. The Martha Stewart Apprentice spin-off sounds even worse than its inspiration, and E-Ring, a Pentagon-based military drama just isn't in my wheelhouse.

Thursday
8 p.m. Joey
8:30 p.m. Will & Grace
9 p.m. The Apprentice
10 p.m. ER

Status quo.

Friday
8 p.m. Three Wishes
9 p.m. Dateline NBC
10 p.m. Inconceivable

Three Wishes is a very treacly-sounding reality show in which Amy Grant travels the country bringing medical miracles to sick people. All of the schmaltz of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with none of the cool, if silly, redesigns. Inconceivable is a drama set at an infertility clinic. Sounds pretty limiting story-wise--how many infertility stories are there? Of course, it may be more Desperate Housewives than ER, for that very reason.

Saturday
8 p.m. Movie

The networks have called uncle on Saturday, huh?

Sunday
7 p.m. Dateline NBC
8 p.m. The West Wing
9 p.m. Law & Order: Criminal Intent
10 p.m. Crossing Jordan

I love The West Wing but could never catch it reliably enough early on, so I'm a DVD watcher here. Criminal Intent can be good, but it's nothing I'm really compelled to watch.

So overall, nothing really impressive-looking here--not sure they've done enough to start climbing up out of the basement they crashed into this year.

Until Whenever