It's that time of year again! The light summer TV season is over, and in about a week and a half we'll be getting a slew of fall premieres. What are you most looking forward to?

Here's a list of pretty much all of the premiere dates, if you're interested. Below are the ones I'm interested in (and yes, there are at least a few guilty pleasures in there - and a few I watch with the wife):

Big Bang Theory (CBS) Sept. 23
Bones (Fox) Sept. 23
Castle (ABC) Sept. 20
Chuck (NBC) Sept. 20
Community (NBC) Sept. 23
Cougar Town (ABC) Sept. 22
Criminal Minds (CBS) Sept. 22
Dexter (Showtime) Sept. 26
Fringe (Fox) Sept. 23
House (Fox) Sept. 20
Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret (IFC) Oct. 1
Medium (CBS) Sept. 24
Modern Family (ABC) Sept. 22
Office (NBC) Sept. 23
Simpsons (Fox) Sept. 26
Smallville (The CW) Sept. 24
Supernatural (The CW) Sept. 24
Terriers (FX) Sept. 8 (forgot this was airing...)
30 Rock (NBC) Sept. 23
Two and a Half Men (CBS) Sept. 20
Walking Dead (AMC) Oct. 31

Smallville is still on? I fell out of watching it I think during the 5th season, is it worth watching at all still? (IE, should I put some money towards buying the DVDs?)

I'm definitely looking forward to Chuck coming back. I keep toying with getting a subscription to HBO, but I just can't justify the additional $20/month.

Easy answer: NO!

Smallville was fun for the first 2-4 seasons. Since then the soap opera quotient has gone up to a ridiculous level. Most of the time the characters are annoying in their decisions, and Clark basically has been spinning his wheels in his transition to become Superman for about 6 seasons (after all, I think he graduated from high school in season 3 or 4). As a matter of fact, I think Clark has spent more time living outside of Smallville than in it during the series, so the name of the show doesn't even apply any more. And here's a fun fact: Clark still doesn't fly. Apparently the mission statement put forth by the creators at the beginning of the series was "no flights, no tights." For the first season, nearly every episode was spent dealing with a new power Clark discovered he had. But still no flying. Clearly, I think this was mostly a budget issue.

So why do I still watch it? Believe me, I fully understand which of the shows I watch are bad, but sometimes I'm still compelled to watch them. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment when it comes to some of these series. The brief glimpses of actual superheroism get me through the stupid soap opera moments. And at this point, in what they've said will definitely be the last season, I've already put in 9 seasons, so I might as well finish it up. There's been talk that we'll see the Superman outfit this season, and Lois will refer to him as Superman.

Oh, I almost forgot one of the low points of the show: when Lana Lang, for some reason, moved to Paris and became possessed by an 18th century witch or something. Very stupid.

So, to sum up, I think getting out at the 5th season was perfect.

There are an insane number of shows coming back during the week of the 23rd. I can't remember such a premiere filled week in the past few years.

I can honestly say that I don't have any pilots on my mind right now. I know I've seen a few commercials for stuff I'd like to check out, but nothing that's caught my attention so much that I'm truly looking forward to it. Well, I suppose with the exception of Walking Dead. But that's a bit different and only premieres at the end of next month.

The network summer season was mostly a bust with only ABC doing anything at all interesting in terms of original programming. It's too bad that The Gates has ended up sucking pretty hard though. It's pretty much Desperate Housewives with vampires and werewolves. Obviously this doesn't include non-network such as True Blood or Breaking Bad. I haven't been watching much of Leverage or Burn Notice but will catch over the next few months.

I haven't watched Smallville in a couple of years, but Clark was flying then.

Clark has flown at several points during the series, but he has never been in control of it. When it's happened, he's been under the influence or control of something.

Basically, he wasn't himself

I watched a 5 minute or so trailer for the new NBC series "Outsourced" last night on PSN, and it looks like it has potential. Other than that, I'll probably just be watching the same shows I watched last year -- Community, Parks and Rec, The Office, 30 Rock, and How I Met Your Mother.

Well, the season has started. I actually have only watched Criminal Minds so far because my wife and I are catching up on other shows (more on one of them in a post later).

One show that isn't from the fall but I'm in the middle of is Leverage. It took some getting used to the quirkiness of it, but I'm really digging the show now.

Okay, I got suckered into watching the smoochy "UnderCovers" pilot (on CityTV-HD), and liked it.

Arggg!!!

Actually, the lead male character reminds me a lot of a fellow I worked with near L.A. a few years ago.

Cheers

Matt, see, I told you Leverage was good. I mean if you like Burn Notice I figured you'd like that too.

Outsourced was pretty good, hopefully it doesn't end up being too ethnic for an American audience. I'm a little disappointed that Parks and Rec has been pushed to mid-season, but then again, NBC's comedy block is already pretty full and they've really kicked it up a few notches in programming for other days as well. After wisely getting rid of Leno's show, they had to do something.

It's not that I didn't believe you. Have you seen how much TV I watch! It just took a while to get around to it, even during the summer. For some reason I decided to pick up Criminal Minds, and I watched all 5 seasons in about three weeks. That's FAR from my record**, but not bad considering I was pretty busy.


(** my record is all 12 seasons of Angel and Buffy in 2.5 weeks)

That's about 60% of your waking time watching Buffy and Angel. I'm guessing you were unemployed?

Only new shows we are watching is what we can download off of iTunes (I've been too lazy to set up an antenna thus far- when I have a real need I'll set one up). So here's our small list:

-CSI (Yes, I know Just Bieber has a reoccuring role this season and we're still watching- I guess it's just . . . comfortable?)

-House

-Fringe (Actually, I'm still catching up, but my wife is in love with the show and will be watching the new episodes as they come out).

As soon as Chuck is available we'll be watching that one- it's the one I'm anticipating the most, but actually I'm glad it will be available later as I can hardly handle the number of shows we are watching now given my work schedule.

We also may start watching Community- but if we do we'll be starting with older episodes and catching up.

And you would be correct, sir! That meant for many days where I'd watch an entire season in one day, only stopping for meals (or eating them while watching). It was basically the perfect storm of unemployed, headed back to DC (from Williamsburg, VA), and all my friends and my girlfriend were studying for their midterm exams (I'd graduated the year before and was hanging around the area). Oh, and I had no money, so going out was not an option Good times!


As for this season, I've come to a conclusion: I'm a TV masochist. There's no other explanation for why I still watch Medium, considering the things that drive me absolutely insane about the show. Many of these Bitt and I have discussed before on the board, but not only did last night's episode have all the things that annoy me about the show (other than Lee's wife), but it had one thing that annoys me more than any other but they've only done a handful of times: the entire episode only had one piece of music in it.

No, I don't mean that there was only one moment in the show that had music, I mean that they used one snippet of a song repeatedly, about 12 times, throughout the entire show. They've done this about four times before, and it drives me insane. It's only made worse by the fact that the musical snippets they seem to choose for these are the most annoying parts of the most annoying songs. ARGH! Never before have I so wanted to grab a showrunner by the collar and shake them and ask them what the hell they were thinking!

But I still watch it...


At least we watched an actually-good show afterwards in Fringe. I hate deceptive storylines like the current "Olivia-switch" (they just bother me emotionally), but at least the show is good.

Somehow I screwed up transferring my Medium season pass when it changed networks, and I never bothered to fix it. I haven't been too worried about it.

My wife is so annoyed by the show she's vowed to stop watching it...I haven't decided yet

I still prefer Medium to all the CSI spin-offs, even if it does have its annoyances.

The Event on NBC looks extremely derivative so far, but I'm liking it after two episodes - it's still at 50/50 odds for me though.

Lone Star on Fox has also been pretty good. I suppose those are the two stand-out new shows I've seen a this point.

EDIT: New comedy on Fox, Running Wilde is also a hit for me after 2 episodes. I'm not remotely interested in their other comedy about the baby though. They should have kept Sons of Tucson as it was great.

That's *hilarious*, because this weekend, while I was swapping hard drives in my empeg, my wife was watching that episode, or at least, I assume it's the same one -- the one where the mom and daughter switch bodies -- real original plot, there, guys!

Anyway, I"m sitting there working on my empeg, and the show is in the background, and I'm about ready to throw my screwdriver through the television because of that annoying goddamn song -- or, as you said, that same annoying ten seconds of that song.

I can't think of a show on TV I hate more than Medium. I think I'd rather watch Dancing with the Stars.

It's sad, because Medium had/has lots of potential. But for some reason they have never really advanced any sort of ongoing plot, everyone acts like the main character is crazy in every single episode, and they do stuff like the annoying music. And that's just the start of the problems with the show.


Looks like you know how to pick 'em. That was really fast, no?

Yeah, what do I know. I think every comedy on CBS other than How I Met Your Mother is absolutely unwatchable, I didn't want to even bother with Hawaii Five-O and apparently it's off to a great start.

That same article mentioned House is in Trouble, thanks again to Dancing with the Stars. Great.

NBC's the Defenders has been good in its two first episodes and I didn't mind that new ABC No Ordinary Family last night - though I cant say I liked the ending. I fear it could be going Heroes 2.

Not surprised about House- last season seemed a bit like they've taken the characters as far as they can go and the latest plot line could easily be seen as shark jumping. That being said, we're still enjoying it and I thought this weeks episode handled a tricky plot line pretty well. It was touching seeing House affected the way he was, though they can't take that too far, as we don't watch House to be touched

Sort of "The Incredibles" meets serial TV.

Except the powers are selected to be TV production friendly.

I assume you're talking about No Ordinary Family?

Yeah, it sure seems that way. They certainly picked the absolute simplest powers to reproduce on TV. I don't mind, though. One of my complaints about Heroes is that the show would avoid showing the characters using their powers. It was a show about superheroes and it didn't have superpowers.

Yep, NOF as mentioned in the revised subject line.

The one thing that I didn't expect (should have) was finding that the bad guy was a jumper. "What you didn't really think you were the only ones." or something like that anyway.

Simple or not, they're already doing a better job at effects than Heroes did. Of course it was the pilot, so things may very well go downhill from here. And the characters' use and reaction to their powers are more believable. No one in Heroes wanted anything to do with their powers (for a long time) except Sylar. And really only Peter did anything remotely hero-like for any extended period of time.

I really do hope something else better will be on opposite No Ordinary Family.

Fox seems to have already pulled Lonestar from its schedule - at least it's not scheduled for the next two weeks. But here's where thing get strange...

Lie to Me is back on after House, taking Lonestar's place. The only timeslots they could conceivably make open are one hour on Wednesday nights - they'd need to stop showing double episodes of Hell's Kitchen, and the 8pm timeslot on Friday nights, which so far is empty, showing a repeat of House - but was supposed to be home to the new season of Human Target (which seems to have been pushed to November). The Human Target move is good, because it means a Wednesday night timeslot starting in November (when Hell's Kitchen winds down).

So, did Fox not previously have plans to bring Lie to Me back so early?

They were running many ads for the Human Target premiere which was suppose to air this Friday, but I haven't seen any ads announcing the bump to November. Seems like that network is all about the snap decisions lately.

Speaking of Hells Kitchen, can anyone explain its appeal?

Seems to me it's about an overbearing taskmaster boss who presents his employees with an impossible goal, gives them staggeringly inadequate levels of training, then berates them in front of their coworkers when they don't live up to his overexact standards. Then he fires them publicly in the most embarrassing and humiliating way possible. All the while making them stroke his ego by speaking to him as if he were some sort of God.

Dude, I can get that just by going to work. Why would I want to relive it in the evenings?

Even if it were supposed to be a BDSM thing, I can't see how it fits that mold in a pleasurable way.

I'm surprised Human Target was renewed, maybe because it is a show that I actually watch.

I'm pretty sure Lie to Me was always scheduled to run last night. The 4th was the date that they advertised after the season finale (I remember it because I was suppose to be out of town on that date).