New Fall TV Season-to-date Report

I know it’s late, but I’ve been busy.

I was finally motivated to write when the Cartoon Network’s “Super Hero Squad” started its new season the same week as the new animated “Avengers” super-hero saga debuted on Disney XD. And this was in addition to new episodes of “Batman, The Brave and the Bold,” “Ben 10,” Generator Rex” and another new show that quickly won over our hearts, “Symbiotic Titan,” after a seemingly interminable summer of reruns. All we need now is for the ultra-cool “Iron Man” animated series to return with new episodes and we will be in cartoon superhero nirvana! (“Star Wars The Clone Wars” also returned, but we don’t watch that.)

Anyhow, I still don’t have a lot of time. “Super Hero Squad” and “Brave and the Bold” are the best of the bunch. The Boy thinks they’re hilarious and exciting and stoned adults can enjoy throw-away gags like one villain referring to another as an asteroid-hat. And if one happens to be an adult fan of the silver age of comics, these shows just keep giving and giving. They actually reward the requisite repeat viewings.

What’s going on in adult TV… Well, I’ve chucked “Chuck” under the bus. The blonde is still insanely hot, but there is a stupidity about the show that has irritated me from Day One. The main characters, all CIA field operatives, constantly and exclusively refer to themselves, their colleagues and their foes as “spies.” It’s just so fucking unnecessarily dumb—and as I’ve mentioned, the demands on my time so many and great—I’ve just decided this is an hour of TV a week I can live without.

I’m embarrassed to report I actually watch “Law & Order, SVU,” but they pack more plot twists into 44 minutes than your average big-screen thriller does in two hours. Oh, and they don’t lovingly dwell on the mutilated remains of corpses the way “Bones” and the “CSI” shows do.

“Bluebloods.” Tried it. Another cop show, so what?

“Detroit 187.” Like it. Another cop show. Who knew? The kid from “The Sopranos” (“Christophah!!”) has toned his act down considerably and both he and show are extremely watchable.

Oh God, that horrible show on ABC about the family who gets super-powers? Like somebody watched every episode of “Heroes,” drew all the wrong conclusions from its demise and sat down and wrote this show. What the hell is it called? (Googling it would be cheating!) “No Ordinary Family,” I believe. No ordinary show, either. Sub-sub-sub-ordinary. They took a potentially very cool premise and dumbed it down into oblivion. The super-hero genre is going to die aborning on TV and this show will be one reason why.

“The Event” has kept me hanging on by a thread. Do I really care, or even know what’s going on from week to week? No, I do not. I think the eponymous event was the President’s airplane being teleported to safety just before it crashed, but the whole show is a lot more “X-Files” than “Lost,” which isn’t, I think, what they were probably going for. It’s kind of caught up in its own cleverness, but at least it doesn’t talk down to me.

“The Defenders” was a tough call to make, but one episode proved that Jerry O’Connell’s odiousness easily overwhelmed Jim Belushi’s considerable likeability.

I tried the new “Hawaii Five-Oh” but found it to be just another cop show, too. Whoever they have playing Jack Lord is really no Jack Lord. He’s like a charisma vacuum. Pass.

“Law & Order, L.A.?” Just another cop show. Yawn.

Still watching “House” but only while I work. House and Cuddy? Ew. Bring back 13!! And focus more on characters who aren’t Cuddy. She’s shrewish and old and working the former sex kitten thing way too hard.

The Britney episode of “Glee” made me so sick to my stomach I haven’t gone back yet. And if they do the Bruce Springsteen episode I’ve read about, I think it’ll be even worse. I really don’t want to see a road-show version of “West Side Story” meets “Thunder Road.” It’s welcome to exist, I just don’t want to see it.

On the comedy front, I’m liking both “Modern Family” and “30 Rock.” I tried “Shit My Dad Says,” but the sitcom formula doesn’t work for me any more. The ‘sweetened’ studio laughter especially grates. I can take between three and five minutes of laugh-track comedies. The M*A*S*H DVD sets are great, because they give you the option of laugh-track on or off. It’s a much smarter show with the laugh-track off.

“Dexter” is too early in its season to tell how it’s gonna go, but it’s got a pretty solid track record. Ditto “Weeds.”

“Boardwalk Empire” is another new HBO period spectacle—this time Prohibition in Atlantic City—that’s just good enough to keep me from deleting it before watching it. Looks gorgeous and is plenty smart, but for one, I’m overly familiar with the material already and so far, this show hasn’t offered any new insights. But it’s a class production, and in case it’s headed somewhere, I might as well come along for the ride as long as it’s convenient. Fortunately, it’s not exactly a water-cooler kind of show; I’m not worried about stumbling across spoilers in the geek chat rooms I troll if I don’t watch Sunday’s episode till Thursday.

“Fringe” is having a great season. Can’t wait for it to come back in November. It went from being meh last year to really involving this year, mostly as a result of a serialized plotline involving one of the government operatives (not a ‘spy,’ “Chuck!”) trapped in a world she never made, and her doppelganger secretly taking her place in the ‘real’ world of the show. I would vote this show Most Improved.

Then there’s “Medium.” Its format—psychic mom of three consults with the Phoenix D.A. on murder cases dead people give her insight into—is so flexible, and so outlandish, that almost any deviation or variation on it works. I’ve always liked this show and I’m glad CBS rescued it after NBC dumped it to accommodate Jay Leno’s 10 o’clock fiasco a while back.

“Smallville.” Oh, “Smallville.” Another show that began with boundless promise that was pissed away for its middle eight seasons. This tenth season, its last, the show-runners are finally getting down to some serious myth-building. Young Clark, now a sprightly 40-year-old in real life, is putting his reservations aside and looks like he may seriously be considering taking his first flight. Seriously. Ten years in and Superboy hasn’t flown once yet. That’s a perfect microcosm of what’s been wrong with this show. But it looks like they’re going to try to scratch all the fanboy itches and bitches this season, so I reckon I might as well stick it out for another twenty-or-so episodes.

I’m glad it’s been a lackluster season, new shows-wise. I have a lot of shit to get done and watching just-passable TV doesn’t have the appeal it used to. This seems like an incongruous lot of typing to come to the conclusion that the new TV season has been a disappointment, but a lot of the time I don’t have involves not writing about shows I don’t watch anymore.