The Back Nine: Any Other Keepers?
ABC's
Brothers & Sisters has joined the charmed, and so far rather tiny, circle of new fall series rewarded with what is known as "the back nine," as in a full-series renewal taking the original order of 13 episodes to 22 (sometimes expanded further for true breakthrough shows). At the moment, only three other shows have this honor: ABC's delightful
Ugly Betty and two speculative fantasies that defied the odds to capture an early following: NBC's intriguing
Heroes and, to the surprise of many skeptics (including this one), CBS's dark-hued
Jericho.
Over the next few weeks, we'll find out which other newbies will get the full-season order and which will bite the dust in 13, if they even get that far. Here's my educated guess, by network.
CBS
The network with the most solid and consistent schedule was the first to cancel a show (
Smith), and has only two other new series to decide upon.
While
Shark on Thursdays has been a bit of a disappointment, relative to its
CSI lead-in by being upstaged by the resurgent
ER (now no longer taking a midseason hiatus, thankfully), I'm betting CBS will give it a full year to grow, and
James Woods more time to grow on you.
I'm less certain about
The Class, the overpopulated Monday sitcom that appears to have dipped this week in the hammock between
How I Met Your Mother and
Two and a Half Men. (Last week, when it first flipped with
Mother, it grew a bit.) I still think there's promise in many of
The Class's characters and actors, nothing a little tinkering couldn't fix. But CBS is doing so well these days, it may not feel the need to show such patience. Besides, judging from the mail I get, if CBS were to return
The King of Queens to the night, that would give the lineup another boost.
ABC
The first network to give two shows a vote of confidence, in
Betty and
Brothers, ABC is probably going to give the nod to Anne Heche's
Men in Trees, which has been holding up reasonably well in an impossible Friday time period. Moving it to Mondays or even to Thursdays after
Grey's Anatomy to try to boost this romantic comedy's profile is not out of the question.
The one show that looks like a sure-fire loser is
Six Degrees on Thursday, squandering its
Grey's lead-in and attracting no critical or fan buzz that I've noticed. Despite some strong New York-based performers in the cast, the show's pretentious premise and so-far-ludicrous execution makes it look like the wrong show on the wrong night.
Question marks: The middling Ted Danson comedy
Help Me Help You, which looks like it will stick around at least long enough to see how it plays alongside another comedy: the similarly single-camera
Big Day, scheduled to premiere Nov. 28. The future's also cloudy for
The Nine, whose brilliant pilot opened to disappointing numbers after
Lost. Despite outstanding production values and casting, with sharply drawn characters reeling from a trauma whose details will only slowly (perhaps too slowly) come into focus, this tricky set-up may just be too much for many viewers. Though it's still very early days for this acclaimed series, not enough of the
Lost audience appears willing to sit still for a second dense hour of character-driven intrigue. And that's a shame. But maybe ABC will stick it out, as it did for a full season with
Invasion. Or maybe not.
NBC
Kidnapped already has been shuttled to Saturdays, starting this weekend, to burn off the remainder of its original 13-episode order, giving closure to the fans of this slickly produced mystery. That's NBC's first official casualty, and it's too early yet to say if or when the critically reviled comedy
Twenty Good Years, which lost audience from the so-so launch of
30 Rock, will join it. (I imagine
30 Rock will be a keeper for a while; NBC should at least give it a chance to play alongside
Scrubs, whenever it returns, before ditching
Tina Fey's sharp-witted but uneven work in progress.)
The real heartbreaker here is the non-performance of the superb
Friday Night Lights, which has ascended in its first three weeks to the status of my favorite new drama of the season. I know the network believes in it, but it will be a real leap of faith if NBC even allows the show to stay on the schedule through November sweeps. (A vanishing act during that crucial ratings period is almost always a sign of lost confidence.)
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a trickier animal: launched amid great hype because of its starry cast and creator (
The West Wing's
Aaron Sorkin), the show has lost audience by the week, even as the show itself has ramped up its sense of self-importance to a level that even a fan (I'm speaking of me) can't help but cringe.
This week's episode of
Studio 60, though still dazzling in many respects (the acting, mainly), was especially tough to swallow. Sorkin's gratuitous swipe at reality TV (reprising the "bad crack in the schoolyard" line he used during a TCA press conference this summer) fell flat, because the mock
Mark Burnett pitch was of a despicable sort of reality programming that even Fox has mostly turned away from.
Temptation Island was so '90s. This diatribe felt outdated and out of touch, not to mention annoyingly self-righteous. And then there was the young playwright selling a show about the U.N. (shades of Sorkin and
The West Wing?), who was prompted by Danny (just where did he get his "street cred?") to choose NBS (read NBC) over HBO. We won't even get into how this show is looking ever more like therapy for a writer who appears to be reliving his past relationships with figures like Jamie Tarses (Jordan McDeere),
Kristin Chenoweth (Harriet Hayes) and
Maureen Dowd (
Christine Lahti's Martha O'Dell, the rare reporter who uses neither pen nor tape recorder). In so many ways, you can't help thinking: Get over yourself, Aaron.
Mind you, I'm not giving up on the show. But I'm becoming more aware of why it's a turnoff for so many. Which makes me rethink my former belief that NBC would never jettison such a prestige project this early in its run. I still think it will get the full season, if only to save face and to send a signal that NBC is committed to quality (even when flawed) TV. But if it doesn't make it to May for whatever reason, I won't exactly be shocked.
Fox
A real mixed bag here. No cancellations yet, but the clock is certainly ticking on Thursday's mirthless
Happy Hour and on Friday's transplanted fiasco
Vanished.
The first few weeks post-World Series will be make or break for
Justice (moved to Mondays after
Prison Break) and
Standoff, which will have to survive against
Dancing With the Stars and
NCIS in the killer Tuesday time period that torpedoed
Friday Night Lights. Both shows have been given additional script orders, but whether that will translate to a full season run remains to be seen. I'd try to wager some odds here, but I find it hard to care about either.
The Brad Garrett comedy
'Til Death hasn't had much of a chance on Thursdays. And while it may not deserve one, couldn't Fox give it a try in place of the truly unwatchable
The War at Home and see if it couldn't find a home on Sundays? Regardless, I'm thinking this star vehicle may be given the benefit of the doubt in hopes of finding a niche during
American Idol season.
CW
Last and definitely least, this fledgling hybrid network of WB/UPN titles has made no impression with its new series.
Runaway was DOA on Mondays and Sundays, and
The Game will make it only by riding
Girlfriends' coattails. Whatever happens, we have to hope CW has something brewing for midseason or its first year will have been a wash.
