Fall 2010

I hope to have more stuff to post in the Fall when the new season starts. I have no interest in what's on broadcast TV during the summer so I'll just post randomly on movies and TV shows I'm catching up with on DVD.

But here are some Fall shows I'm interested in seeing back or seeing for the first time. I'm not sure which I will be recapping.

Returning Faves:
How I Met Your Mother
Neil Patrick Harris. That's all that needs to be said. Though, can we finally meet your wife, Ted?

Castle
I have to catch up with the rest of season 2. I missed so many episodes being a good little student but what I love about the show is that it's well written, smart, funny, and I can't get enough of Nathan Fillion. There are so many cop dramas on TV these days and the whole forensic thing bores me. That seems to dominate the cop shows so Castle is a fresh spin on a trite genre.

Gossip Girl
I know what you think if you haven't seen this show but it's actually pretty good and if nothing else, it's a guilty pleasure. What I hope to get from the next season is a solid focus on the characters again. After they graduated high school, the show kind of fell apart. Everyone was doing their own thing, acting out of character, and just being boring. But I know that show that I was embarrassed to like is still somewhere in there so I hope they can fix the weaknesses. And dammit, I don't want to see Jenny Humphrey again. Unless she's in a body bag.

Glee
The musical numbers on this show are always great but the plot isn't always up to par with the songs. Season 2 better be about more than just going to sectionals and the battle against the school for support. That's what the first half AND the second half of season 1 were about. It's a strong show, no doubt, but there is room for improvement.

Modern Family
My goodness this show took me by surprise when it premiered last year. It is consistently hilarious and brilliantly acted. It's done in a mockumentary style ala Arrested Development and it has a similar dead-pan humor. I expect great things from season 2 and you should definitely check it out if you haven't seen it. Don't let the name fool you. It's not a typical sitcom.

Hopeful Newcomers:
Running Wilde
This new comedy was created by some folks behind Arrested Development and stars Will Arnett, who you will remember as the magic obsessed idiot brother from AD. It's an odd-couple kind of show about a rich self-obsessed  guy and the humanitarian girl he's in love with. Check out the trailer.



Outsourced
I saw the movie Outsourced a few years ago and I remember it being funny but also romantic. I don't know if the show version will have any romance but it does look pretty funny. It's a fish out of water story about an American guy in charge of a call center in India. Some people don't think that a show about outsourcing jobs is funny but you know, this is the reality of our world. We want to complain about the loss of American jobs but we also don't want to pay higher prices for goods and services made and supported in the US. It's the economic trade off so I don't look at a show like Outsourced as something to make us sad or angry. It exposes us, through comedy, to a culture unlike ours and the kind of global economic system that's in place because of our American consumer habits. I mean, c'mon, they're selling novelty crap!



What I don't want to see are the shows that are obviously out trying to take the place of Lost. As a big fan of Lost, I don't think you can recreate something like it or pan handle to the Losties with promises of mysteries and sci-fi. A Lost kind of show needs to happen organically and if you force it, we'll know. Ahem, Flash Forward, how did that work out for you? I'm specifically skeptical of The Event and No Ordinary Family.