The Like Dark Brown, But Lighter Fall TV Preview

With the end of summer comes the best time of year for someone who tends to be more invested in the lives of fictional people than his own. The trials and tribulations of the humble civil servants in the Pawnee parks & recreation department or the antics of a bunch of asshole from Chicago who are in a fantasy football league are much more exciting than mine and my life doesn't have Aubrey Plaza or Taco in it. The last few months have been lousy with reruns and baseball games and except for Breaking Bad, it's been a pretty dry summer. Alas, autumn is here and with it a whole new crop of weird, one note, single concept detective shows that won't make it to Thanksgiving and sitcoms that won't make it to Halloween. However, along with the returning favorites is a new crop of shows that look promising or at least a halfway decent way to spend a half an hour. Let the unnecessary, un-asked-for, fall tv preview commence.

THE RETURNING FAVORITES AND THE NEW BATCH OF COMEDIES
I have very fond memories of Thursday night NBC comedies, however, that golden age is over. Where there once was Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey and Joel McHale (3 out of 4 ain't bad), there will be THE MICHAEL J. FOX SHOW, SEAN (Hayes) SAVES THE WORLD, a Mike O'Malley show that won't make it out of 2013 alive, and, thankfully, PARKS & RECREATION. Why there isn't just 2 hours of Ron Swanson and Leslie Knope every Thursday boggles the mind. The prodigal son returns to helm COMMUNITY which will return mid-season so that we can all get inside Dan Harmon's head even more than we already are. I can't wait. Fox has NEW GIRL which is probably the best sitcom on tv, THE MINDY PROJECT, and the impossibly casted BROOKLYN-9-9 with Andre Braugher, who was last seen nuking the United States from his stolen submarine in Last Resort, and Andy Samberg. Looks promising and humorous, there hasn't been a humorous cop show in a while. THE LEAGUE and IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA return on the extra-letter-titled Fxx network. The Show That I Always Say I Won't Keep Watching But Always Do award goes to MODERN FAMILY, which will have more of the same wacky family dynamics that people love (including my parents). And apparently Robin Williams has a new show. Will Arnett's yearly show that will get canceled is THE MILLERS this year. And Anna Faris has a new show called MOM that I will start watching in about a month when people online say that it is, in fact, halfway decent. Or not. And last but not least, we have Kenny Powers returning from the dead for the fourth season of EASTBOUND & DOWN. If I was even half the man Kenny Powers is, I would be better off. I'll be taking notes.

THE RETURNING DRAMAS AND THE NEW BATCH OF... UH, DRAMAS
I, like a number of people, am pretty excited about this MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D that is attempting to spread Marvel's worldwide domination plot to our TV screens each week with the guy that died in The Avengers and hopefully Cobie Smulders in one of those body-hugging jumpsuits. Sherlock Holmes will return in ELEMENTARY which is almost as good as the other Sherlock Holmes show aptly titled SHERLOCK which now that I am writing this sentence is clearly the better Holmes program. We have the return of Crazy-Ass-Carrie on HOMELAND which will feature more political intrigue and the My So-Called Life girl defending an American terrorist because she's got a boner for him. BOARDWALK EMPIRE has just returned for another violent, ho-hum season of Prohibition era liquor dealing and the drama of having a child go off to college who really just wants to stay in town and smoke cigarettes and be a gangster like his uncle. SONS OF ANARCHY started their penultimate season off strong with a school shooting which will definitely piss off a lot of people which is good for ratings, I'm sure, but has enough going on for it to remain interesting. IRONSIDE proves that a show can get made on a major network with the simple premise that is: Detective In A Wheelchair... and go. His Team. His Town. His Rules. Alrighty then. HOSTAGES asks if... actually nevermind, nobody will watch that show and it doesn't matter. CBS has a bunch of dramas that nobody I know has ever seen but are apparently the most popular shows on TV. THE GOOD WIFE? BLUE BLOODS? PERSON OF INTEREST? THE MENTALIST? Maybe later. HANNIBAL proved to be pretty good, and I will probably catch up on THE FOLLOWING eventually, which are the two shows who lead the league in grisly dead bodies per episode. And AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN will lead the league in crazy, shock value shit about witches per episode. A new show on NBC called THE BLACKLIST which has James Spader as a criminal mastermind who turns himself in to help a profiler catch other criminal masterminds looks... interesting. The new Showtime drama MASTERS OF SEX has Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan and even though I have no idea what it's about, I'll be there. Although, it probably has something to do with sex set in the world of a period piece around the same time as MAD MEN. And the award for most anticipated goes to TRUE DETECTIVE, a serial detective show that will feature Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as two existentially torn detectives in Louisiana who, from what it looks like in the trailer, go down an Apocalypse Now-like spiral into the recesses of the darkness of man. Or something like that. And remember that if none of these strike your fancy, TNT knows drama and USA has characters.

ODDS AND ENDS
Ricky Gervais has a strange new show on Netflix called DEREK where I wasn't sure if he was making fun of both the elderly and the mentally challenged, or proving that they're better than the rest of us and we should be ashamed for dumping them off in a nursing home. It made me cry and laugh equally though. On a related note, Stephen Merchant will finally be headlining his own show, HELLO LADIES on HBO which follows his attempts to date models in LA. Rebel Wilson who we all know and love will also be headlining her own show SUPER FUN NIGHT which could be good, unless Wilson is one of those actors who is better when she's supporting and providing the comedic value to something else. EPISODES and HOUSE OF LIES come back in a few months to carry the comedy flag for Showtime. Good news for the people who like to see Don Cheadle naked a lot. The immensely popular THE WALKING DEAD will return with yet another new showrunner and a new vision for a show where not a lot of different things can actually happen. But Robert Kirkman says it's the best yet so, we'll see. And on the heels of the announcement that Breaking Bad will have the BETTER CALL SAUL spinoff, The Walking Dead will have a spinoff next year that will feature characters and stories not related to the comic in any way. We're all just waiting for MAD MEN to come back, aren't we? And Rick & the gang bring in enough money for AMC to gamble on other shows like THE KILLING and LOW WINTER SUN that will ultimately fail but will provide some decent entertainment for us genre entertainment lovers. And finally, our beloved Pete Holmes, ol' Petey Pants himself will grace our television screens four nights a week with THE PETE HOLMES SHOW beginning October 28. The countdown has begun... A few of my favorites, LOUIE, a JUSTIFIED season dedicated to the memory of Elmore Leonard and the third season of GIRLS will also grace our screens next year. And hopefully there will be some pleasant surprises that will come out of nowhere when half of the shows I mentioned eventually get cancelled.