(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last. Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.
These categories are:
1. Renewal – show gets renewed
2. 13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed
3. 12- – the show is cancelled before 13)
We’ll tackle CBS next, the ratings leaders behind their procedural powerhouses CSI and NCIS and unfortunate comedy stars Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. All their new shows start next week except for How to Be A Gentleman, which starts the week after.
2 Broke Girls – 9/19
No single preview has offended me more personally than that for 2 Broke Girls, in which Kat Dennings’s character makes a reference to Coldplay as a hipster band, amongst other things. What Big Bang Theory does for nerds, it looks like 2 Broke Girls will do for hipsters. Basically, it’s a show written to make fun of hipsters by people who don’t know what hipsters are, or it so it appears from the preview. On top of that, I’ve disliked Kat Dennings since I saw Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, one of the worst movies I’ve seen in the last five years.
Verdict. 13+ – For some reason people claim to be liking this, and because it’s on CBS, every show might be renewed because people over the age of 50 just leave the TV on CBS and throw away their remotes, but boy I just can’t pick a show that looks this terrible to succeed in good conscience
How to Be a Gentlemen – 9/29
Ah! Finally, a show that just looks really and truly terrible and has absolutely no reason to support it. Wait – it actually has cast members who I kind of like? David Hornsby, better known to me as Rickety Cricket from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia as the uptight Felix Unger roommate, and Kevin Dillon, or Johnny Drama from Entourage, as the crazy, slobbish, Oscar Madison roommate, along with Dave Foley, Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe from 24) and Rhys Darby (Murray from Flight of the Conchords). Cricket and Johnny Drama are roommates who are perfectly mismatched, have love-hate relationship, teach a little bit to each other, blah blah blah.
Verdict: 12- Boy, I like that cast, but boy that show sounds and looks terrible.
Person of Interest – 9/22
One of the more interesting sounding series of the new season, Person of Interest is something like Batman meets Minority Report. Michael Emerson, otherwise known as the uber-creepy Ben Linus from Lost, is a reclusive billionaire who has developed a program which can predict information about violent crimes in the future, but with limited detail. Linus hires an ex-CIA agent thought to be dead to do the legwork on stopping these crimes that his program picks up on. Add all this to the fact it’s created by Jonathan Nolan, Chris’s younger brother, who co-wrote the screenplays to The Prestige and The Dark Knight and it sounds pretty promising.
Verdict: Renewal – CBS is moving ratings giant CSI to get Person of Interest some viewers – if that’s not a sign of big-time network backing, then I don’t know what is. On top of that, it apparently got legendary approval ratings for its pilot.
A Gifted Man – 9/23
Patrick Wilson is quite literally a man constantly bringing gifts to small children. No, if only. This is actually far more insane. Wilsonis a materialistic, selfish, scrooge-ish but extraordinarily talented surgeon working and dabbling amongst the upper crust exclusively. That is, until his dead wife comes back in ghost form and starts trying to make him a better person, having him run the free clinic that she apparently ran before they died (how did they get along when they were both alive with such disparate interests?). Oh, and Julie Benz (Rita from Dexter) plays his sister.
Verdict: 13+ – Jonathan Demme directed the pilot, which is probably good news, but this seems like it could get awful predictable awful fast.
Unforgettable – 9/20
Gimmicky procedurals are right in CBS’s wheelhouse, and Unforgettable fits right in with The Mentalist. Unforgettable stars Poppy Montgomery as a woman with a rare medical condition, which means that she quite literally can not forget anything. A former detective before the show begins, her former boyfriend and ex-partner (the same person) ask her to come back to help solve cases using her rare ability. On top of that, we’ve got a long-term plot based on the only thing Miss Unforgettable can not remember: The mysterious circumstances behind the murder of her sister! Bum bum bum!
Verdict: 13+ – I’m sure it won’t be bad, but I have a hard time believing it will be that good either. It just sounds so unbelievably generic. On CBS, it’ll get viewers, but CBS expects more too, and one of these dramas has to not deliver
Television, the Drug of the Nation 
One Response to “Fall 2011 Preview and Predictions: CBS”