Looking Ahead at 2018-2019

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Well, it's been a summer. There was a whole lot of nothing on television, aside from the Bates Family, the Duggar Family, the Roloff Family, and the newer addition to my reality followings - the Busby Family. Technically, there was also Trial & Error, but I'm behind in that because Spectrum is awful and we're on our third DVR box in two months. But, I spent some time last night going through the new shows for the broadcast networks and made some selections. because, you know, there's more to TV life than

ABC came in high, CW isn't even on the board, and FOX tanked. CBS and NBC are surprisingly equal, but we'll see how that pans out. I picked more shows this year than I did last year, but a few of them I really don't think will make it to Thanksgiving, so not much is lost in giving them a try.

What made the cut?
For ABC, I'm going with the soon-to-premiere Single Parents (a bit too much exposure, already, I think), A Million Little Things (it better be better than Friends with Better Lives), plus the farther out The Rookie (Nathan Fillion, anyone?), The Conners, Schooled, and The Kids are Alright (it seems that we're on an every-other-year-there's-a-Catholic-family-show module). As two of those are spin-offs, I'm not really feeling like my ABC selections are as high as they appear.

For FOX, the only thing I'm going to bother with is Rel, which starts tonight. It's about a guy who has to rebuild his life after a divorce, so it'll be a rough start, but Sinbad plays the protagonist's father, so that could be fun.

On NBC, the start dates are mostly soon. In September alone, I'll be checking out New Amsterdam (I'm a sucker for medical shows), I Feel Bad (I need more "mom shows"), and Manifest (it's going to be awful or amazing), plus later on there's Gilded Age (period show!), Abby's (this looks like a hot mess), and The Village (which, really, I'm only in to see Daren Kagasoff act again).

Rounding it out on CBS, there's the crazy (unscripted) Million Dollar Mile, the unlikely-to-work Happy Together, the reboot of Murphy Brown, the too-much-like-Living-Biblically-from-last-season God Friended Me, the is-this-Timeless-again? Blood & Treasure, and the Beth-Behrs-is-back The Neighborhood.

The bigger, scarier thing (if you can believe it) is that I have a TON of returning shows, which I don't think I realized back in Spring!
ABC: Fresh off the Boat, American Housewife, Speechless, The Goldbergs, Black-ish, The Good Doctor [only one new thing from last year remaining]
FOX: Bob's Burgers, The Resident, Last Man Standing (I don't think it'll be that good this time around, though...) [only one new thing from last year remaining]
NBC: This is Us, Superstore, A.P. Bio, Will & Grace, The Good Place (which I discovered online over the summer) [only one new thing from last year remaining]
CBS: Man with a Plan, How to Get Away with Murder, The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon [only one new thing from last year remaining]
CW: Jane the Virgin, Dynasty [one old, one from last year]
Other Networks: South Park (Comedy Central), Grown-ish (Freeform), Good Trouble (the Freeform spin-off of The Fosters), plus the aforementioned follow-an-atypical-family shows I enjoy. 

And, at some point, I still do plan to check out The Mick and Good Girls. So... yeah, there's a lot of television entertainment to be enjoyed this year. 

2017-2018 Network Prospects: Why Not?

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Where have I been? Well, around the time of the last post, I excitedly became pregnant. Later that month I signed a large contract for my other occupation that kept me very busy, from that point until about five months after the babies were born. Then, we moved across the country, and I have been filling my days with everything that goes along with navigating a new area (while learning to parent twin toddlers).

I'm not entirely sure what my blogging plans are at this point (I'm not sure if I have any press contacts left out there), but I've been looking forward to the new television season for several months now, and want an outlet to talk about the prospects. I didn't really ease up on my viewing, and have largely stayed up-to-date with all of the series I followed before (both broadcast network and cable). I actually even began a post last year, planning to discuss those pilots, but I never got around to finishing/publishing it.

Anyway, let's dive in. Expect my thoughts to be scatterbrained, as I'm rather out of practice at this point, and am more in the mindset of having fun than editing.

First, here are the pilots that interest me on each of the big five networks:
ABC: The Good Doctor, Kevin (Probably) Saves the World, Ten Days in the Valley, The Crossing, Deception.
CBS: 9JKL, Young Sheldon, Wisdom of the Crowd, By the Book, Me, Myself, and I.
The CW: Dynasty.
FOX: The Gifted, Ghosted, The Resident, LA to Vegas.
NBC: The Brave, Good Girls, Rise, A.P. Bio, and the return of Will & Grace (not really a pilot, per se).

That's 5 each on ABC, CBS, and NBC, with 4 on FOX and 1 on The CW. Technically, that makes perfect sense, when you look at the total airtime of each of those networks. It's actually not as simple as that, as the networks didn't all offer the same number of pilots, but moving on...

Looking at the programming schedule, those shows (save the ones that will begin in 2018) air as follows:
Sunday: 3
Monday: 5
Tuesday: 1
Wednesday: 2
Thursday: 1

I historically have huge conflicts with Monday shows, but generally don't have a lot on Sundays, so that's rather interesting. However, let's look at it in the scope of the returning network shows I'm tuning in to watch:
ABC: Fresh off the Boat, American Housewife, The Middle, Speechless, The Goldbergs, Black-ish.
CBS: Man with a Plan, Trial & Error, How to Get Away with Murder, Code Black, Scorpion, The Big Bang Theory.
The CW: Jane the Virgin.
FOX: Bob's Burgers.
NBC: Timeless, This is Us, Superstore.

Low on FOX, very heavy on CBS and ABC (I've been particularly drawn to ABC's programming as long as I can remember), average for NBC and The CW.

Add in the fall returns by day:
Sunday: 1
Monday: 1
Tuesday: 4
Wednesday: 3
Thursday: 3
Friday: 1

This is where I really start to get fired up and want to talk about the season! If we didn't have the technology to record multiple shows at once or to access them outside of the original broadcast, I'd be doomed. Not looking specifically at the different timeslots within primetime, I could be in some trouble. Four on Sunday night is weird (while four on Thursday night is expected), and six on each of Monday and Tuesday is insane! Five more on Wednesday means I would constantly be struggling to keep up at the water cooler by Thursday morning, but at least a measly one on Friday night would make it easier to plan movie nights to go see the latest soon-to-be-blockbuster. However, we're fortunate enough that we can watch three "hours" of television in just about two, thanks to the magic of fast-forwarding. And, in my own case, I don't see movies on their opening nights anymore; the amount of coordination that takes doubles when factoring in childcare!

If you're a longtime reader (not sure if any of those are left, honestly), you know that I always try out a large number of new shows in the fall, so a dozen does not scare me, but an additional 13 returning series really start to twist my mind a bit. 25 series to watch at least 2-3 episodes of (not factoring in which are sixty minutes rather than thirty!) makes for a bit of a daunting October (the fact that it's taking forever for shows to start is an entirely separate issue...). And that doesn't factor in which shows my husband will choose to watch with me (of the returning fall series, he's only a fan of Scorpion, Superstore, How to Get Away with Murder, Man with a Plan, and Bob's Burgers), and which he'll need time to view on his own (he really only picks three or four pilots each year, but they're generally different from my own choices).

Fortunately, my boys are phenomenal sleepers, so between their almost-three-hour nap and the eleven hours they sleep at night, I think I can fit it all in. I guess only time will tell.

Fall 2014 Network Viewing Schedule

So, now that we've looked at all of the network pick-ups for the 2014-2015 season, how does our nightly schedule look? We have 13 shows to factor in: six in the fall, and seven six later on... plus we have old favorites coming back as well. Of course, this doesn't include the many cable series we adore, but most of their seasons don't run the same way, so there's a variety of overlaps. For now, it looks like we have a total of three Monday series, one on Tuesdays, four Wednesdays, two Thursdays, and a Friday.

New Series:
The McCarthys (Thursdays, 9:30pm, NBC)
Black-ish (Wednesday, 9:30pm, ABC)
Manhattan Love Story (Tuesdays, 8:30pm, ABC)
How to Get Away with Murder (Thursdays, 10pm, ABC)
Red Band Society (Wednesdays, 9pm, FOX)
Scorpion (Mondays, 9pm, CBS)

Returning Series:
The Big Bang Theory Mondays, 8pm (CBS) [later Thursdays]
2 Broke Girls Mondays, 8pm (CBS) [after TBBT moves]
The Middle, Wednesdays 8pm (ABC)
The Goldbergs, Wednesdays, 8:30pm (ABC)
Last Man Standing, Fridays, 8pm (ABC)

Popping up later:
The Odd Couple
Fresh Off the Boat
Hieroglyph [FOX canceled this project on 6/30/14]
Weird Loners
Mission Control
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Members Only
and, the returning Bob's Burgers

2014-2015 Season: ABC Comedy

ABC's comedy pilots for the 2014-2015 season don't look like the best bunch, even though I'll give half of them a shot. They ordered six this year, compared with five last year (only The Goldbergs is continuing on). Their round-up features a Hispanic family show, an Asian family show, a black single-woman show, a show that'll be dated in five years, a musical fantasy, and a couples' sitcom. The first three are bound to have jokes which will have white journalists tip-toeing around, fearing that they shouldn't be laughing, and two out of the last three may be lucky to have decent jokes at all, so I don't know if this was the best line-up, press-wise. However, the collection is diverse enough that something should stick for somebody, right?

Red titles I'm not interested in. Green titles I'm going to try out. "Who" covers actors, writers, creators, etc. "Where" covers the location of the series. "What" describes the basics of the premise.

First, the fall premieres:

Selfie
Who? from the creator of Suburgatory. Stars Karen Gillan (Amy from Doctor Who) and John Cho (Harold of Harold & Kumar).
Where? present day.
What? A woman has a huge online presence (hoping to be famous) but no real life. Based on My Fair Lady.
My Thoughts: This sounds like a CW show, what with the young demographic and all, but maybe it'll do okay. I can't imagine tuning in, but maybe the 18-29 crowd is into this... I kinda hope nobody my age is looking forward to it!

Black-ish
Who? Laurence Fishburne, Anthony Anderson (Gary from Guys with Kids)
Where? present day Los Angeles suburbs
What? A black man with a biracial wife and their four kids is living a good life, but Grandpa wonders if they’ve lost touch with their roots, so Dad decides it's time to focus on acting black.
My Thoughts: I feel like we've kinda seen this before on both the big and small screen, but it might be worth a laugh so I'll program it to the DVR for a trial.

Manhattan Love Story
Who? Kurt Fuller (the dad on Better with You, among other things)
Where? Present day Manhattan.
What? A couple has just started dating, and their thoughts are shared with viewers.
My Thoughts: I'll watch the pilot if for no other reason than to see how the concept is executed. I'm really curious as to how this specifically wound up on ABC, and whether it'll stand up to other couples' stories premiering this season.

Now, the mid-seasons: 

Galavant
Who? Alan Menken is among the EPs... but no big talent otherwise.
Where? Fairy-tale land. Yeah.
What? A knight lost the love of his life and is on a quest to win her back in this musical show.
My Thoughts: Many people peg me as the perfect demo for Once Upon a Time, but that show is not for me. Galavant is designed to be for that same demographic, so I'm probably going to pass here as well. 
 

Cristela
Who? Nobody recognizable, though it is named after the star.
Where? I'm guessing Texas, given where the actress is from.
What? A law student moves home to do an unpaid internship, as her family has various opinions about how she should live her life.
First Impression: I was semi-interested until I read that it's a semi-autobiographical piece and the lead is 35 years old. Not nearly as amusing as Made in Jersey could have been. Pass.

Fresh off the Boat
Who? Nobody recognizable. 
Where? Orlando (though it may start in Washington, DC) in the 90s.
What? A Taiwanese family struggles to assimilate to the US culture as they get a steak restaurant going. Dad wants the American dream, but Mom is more skeptical about the future.
My Thoughts: Also semi-autobiographical, I'm curious as to how many red flags will go up when stereotypes beyond the title pop up in the pilot. Still, I will check it out to see the depiction of Orlando in the 90s.