Fall Television 2010 – What We Picked

In my extended exam of the reviews of new television shows this season, I ran out of space to track what we actually decided to watch. I made a list and we then cut it down to 8 shows – 6 1/2 hours a week.

  1. How I Met Your Mother
  2. The Event
  3. Castle
  4. Glee
  5. NCIS
  6. Modern Family
  7. 30 Rock (and mid-season, Parks and Recreation)
  8. Desperate Housewives

I think The Event is going to be replaced pretty quickly by one of the shows that was on the bubble – NCIS: Los Angeles, Fringe, and Human Target were all candidates. The Office was iffy – Stephanie was for keeping it but I’ve been bored the last couple of seasons and when we missed an episode here and there we weren’t heartbroken.

I’ve just found The Event to be really irritating – I’m not intrigued by any of the characters, and I could tell from the moment that the water rescue happened that it was a con job designed to separate the young couple. I know I must irritate the crap out of Stephanie when I constantly announce “here’s what’s going to happen…” and fifteen minutes later that’s exactly what happens, but I really can’t help it. They may as well put a big flashing arrow on screen that says “Look, a plot point! Guess what it’s there for!” I was a heck of a lot more interested in FlashForward than in the Event, and they did this all the time, but at least had some interesting ideas behind it sometimes.

The first episode of The Event also had so many flashbacks and time jumps that I couldn’t track the time line – “Ten days later”? Ten days from what? The first flashback, or the second, or the third? And I think as Lost proved – just chopping your storyline up and jumbling the pieces may mask that fact that you have no coherent narrative for 7 seasons, but you’ll win no friends when the whole thing comes out. If the producers of Lost came to me with a proposal for a new show, I’d make them tell me the story from beginning to end in order before I let them craft me a pilot, just to prove that they could do it for once. Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice…

I’m sure a mystery-driven thriller storyline will succeed in capturing the Lost mystique sometime, but I’ll bet money it will need to be a linear narrative when it does.

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