Standouts in the Fall Television Lineup:

The big broadcast networks have finalized their fall schedules and it looks as if America is in for a lot of new shows to watch. As with every season, half of these shows will probably disappear within a few weeks, one of the great ones will disappear with the crap, and a new favorite will fly. I’ve combed through the networks newest offerings, and the following is a list of some of the shows you probably should watch and at some point I’ll make a list of shows that should be avoided.

Watch these:

“Person of Interest” CBS

J.J. Abrams and CBS will be trying to fill the void that Lost has left in broadcast television. Many networks, including ABC, have tried really, really hard to create the next Lost, but all of them have failed up until this point. If J.J. Abrams himself can’t recreate the magic of Lost with CBS, then I think that everyone should stop trying. I encourage everyone to tune into Person of Interest because Abrams nearly always delivers quality product, and I doubt that this will be subpar to Abram’s latest work. Best case scenario for Abrams: he has an amazing summer with Super 8 and he starts the fall of with a smash hit on CBS. I’ll be rooting for him.

“Pan Am” ABC

The success of Mad Men has sparked a new interest on 1960s culture, but ABC has decided to explore a fabled world in the 1960s similar to the fabled world of advertising: airline travel. As my grandparents and their friends like to recollect: traveling in the 60s was not a casual affair; it was glamorous, classy, and not a usual means of getting someplace. Old films capture the glamor of air travel pretty well, and I’ve always wanted to know what it was like to travel in the 60s. The flight attendants were called stewardesses, and they were beautiful, single women dressed to the nines looking for their future husbands between LAX and JFK. The pilots seemed cooler, hotter, and heroic. And one couldn’t travel in just jeans and a shirt, people got dressed to get on a plane. With Pan Am, ABC is hoping to generate interest into a sector of the 1960s that is more or less forgotten now. For some reason, I think this will turn into escapist fare and has the potential to be a cult hit. And did I mention that Christina Ricci costars in this?

“Last Man Standing” ABC

Tim Allen is returning to prime time comedy and I can’t imagine why anyone would miss that.

“The Playboy Club” NBC

Keeping with the 1960’s theme, NBC is contributing The Playboy Club, based on the Chicago Playboy Club in the 60’s. At first, I was a little puzzled as to why this show would be necessary, I didn’ t know much about the Playboy Clubs that occurred back in that time, and assumed they were glorified gentleman’s clubs. But after an interesting chat with my grandmother, I learned that the Playboy Clubs were these classy places where my grandparents used to go have drinks on the weekends. My grandmother told me that she and my grandfather would dress up and meet their friends at the Playboy Club on a regular basis, and it was an exclusive place that was far from a glorified gentleman’s club. So naturally, I’m extremely curious to see what those clubs were like, and since I’ve read good things about the pilot, I think this show could possibly feed my curiosity. And since NBC is fighting hard to get out of their perpetual 4th place spot, I’m going to go ahead and assume that this show is one of their best, since it has been one of the most heavily talked about shows thus far.

“Smash” NBC

Smash is a musical drama about a Broadway company producing a show about Marilyn Monroe. What this show offers is veteran television actors like Debra Messing, original music, talented singers like Katherine McPhee, and an actual plot. Glee has indeed sparked an interest in musical television, but it now lacks depth, story, and originality, and Smash could swoop in and deliver what Glee fails to. This show looks extremely promising, and NBC is carefully planning its release in order to give the show a chance at a great reception. Smash will be a midseason premiere when it will receive less competition from other premiering shows, NBC is using a similar strategy to how they released The Voice, which had the biggest premiere of any show this season.

“Are You there Vodka? Its me, Chelsey” NBC

Based on the successful memoir of the same name by Chelsey Handler, this comedy centers Chelsey Hanson, a 20-something year old woman living in Los Angeles. Though this show is not a direct adaptation of the book, it is based on situations created in the book. Playing Chelsey Hanson is Laura Pepron from That 70’s Show, and Chelsey Handler herself as Sloane, Hanson’s polar opposite sister. I really, really like Chelsey Handler and I’m glad she is venturing out creatively because I believe she’s a hilarious woman with tons of talent. This show will be premiering midseason and will hopefully become extremely successful critically and commercially.

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I’m really, really rooting for NBC in the fall. This past spring television season was criticized for being devoid of female voices, but this upcoming fall is full of women centered shows,  female comedians, and great women actors. NBC has set the bar for ushering in women talent that is unfortunately ignored throughout Hollywood. I’m excited about the return of Debra Messing to network television, the addition of Chelsey Handler and Christina Ricci, and the amount of originality that I’ve seen so far that has been lacking in broadcast TV for a while now.

NBC has dumped ‘Wonder Woman’

Back in March, there was tons of buzz around the potential NBC show, Wonder Woman. There was controversy over her fetish/latex looking costume, so it was changed. There was controversy over the casting choice, but that wasn’t changed. But since Wonder Woman was so far out into the media, everyone assumed the show would be apart of NBC’s fall schedule.

But, it isn’t.

NBC has announced there fall lineup, and Wonder Woman isn’t on it. It isn’t particularly clear as to why NBC dumped the heroine show, they have said that it wasn’t because of the pilot or her costume issues. E!Online thinks there is a conspriacy against ‘Wonder Woman’ projects, since this is just apart of a large number of botched WW reboots. According to IMDB, there is a ‘Wonder Woman’ film in development slated to be released in 2015, but if history continues to repeat itself, that won’t come to pass either.

Why does Hollywood hate ‘Wonder Woman’? ‘Superman’ has gotten plenty of reboots, though the only good versions of  ‘Superman’ have been the Christopher Reeve films and the CW show Smallville. ‘Batman’ is loved by everyone and has had a plethora of television shows and films. But why the discrimination against ‘Wonder Woman’? What did she do to Hollywood to make them hate her? I could make it easy and say that Hollywood is just sexist and likes men centered shows better, but the fall TV lineup is actually full of female centered shows.

NBC could have dumped Wonder Woman to avoid a potential flop; they’ve been in 4th place for a long time, and their slate of 15 new shows has enough muscle (Deborah Messing, Chelsea Handler, Christina Applegate, and more) to potentially improve the Peacock’s ratings. There probably isn’t a conspiracy at all, but just NBC being smarter with their lineup. Which is fine, I guess.

But I still wanted to see Wonder Woman, and I really was looking forward to adding that show to my DVR. Maybe the movie will come out of development and come to a theater, one day. I’ll just keep the hope alive.

“Wonder Woman” gets a new costume

I am so glad that NBC changed Wonder Woman’s costume. The one on the right was the original, and the one on the left is the new and improved version.

The original costumed looked too much like one of those weirdo-porno costumes from an episode of CSI when they let the junior writers write a show, just wrong.

Most likely, I’m not going to see this show until its up on NetFlix or on VOD at my mother’s house because I’m terrible at keeping up with television shows. But when I do see it, I’m glad I won’t be seeing that horrid latex costume.

I hope this show ends up being good, its a good opportunity to shake up primetime television and their lack of creative show ideas.

The NBCU Logo gets Unneeded Plastic Surgury

The merge between Comcast and NBC Universal is nearly complete, and to show their new muscle, the head honchos over at Comcast debuted the new NBCU logo today (above image).

I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I like the former logo (below image).

I’m not a fan of the Comcast/NBCU merge. However, there is nothing I can do to stop it so I’m going to just bitterly protest it as I watch 30 Rock. (I’m curious to see how the next season of 30 Rock will incorporate the new Comcast merger.)

Comcast should have left the logo alone. I don’t like the new one.

At all.

(Or Comcast for that matter… but that’s a horse of a different color.)