NBC

Fall Premieres Bring Mixed Results To The Big 4

With fall premieres winding down (we’re down to the CW’s Reign, NBC’s Dracula, and whatever FOX has saved for after baseball), let’s take a moment and see how the major networks fared in a fall where every network (even CBS had question marks).

So how did the major networks fare this fall? Well it was mixed to say the least with each network having some success on their schedule, but also with a number of unanswered question marks in the schedule remaining that way, this will become quite apparent as we break things down network by network.

ABC: ABC seemed to have one of the more ambitious strategies for the new fall season, blowing up it’s Dancing with the Stars and Extreme Makeover Tuesdays in order to pave the way for new scripted material. The anchor show on that night, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been a success, holding down the number three drama slot in the ratings. The rest of the night, however, has been an unmitigated disaster with the comedy hour struggling, and Lucky 7 registering so nonexistently on everyone’s radar that the show got the dubious honor of being the first show axed of the year (two episodes in, typically reserved for the Do No Harms of the world). I wonder if part of this is scheduling related, as it seems weird to pair up a show that will likely do well with males 18-49 with a two family comedies and a slice of life drama and expect audiences to stay from your massively hyped lead in. Elsewhere on the schedule, ABC has had a number of flops including Once Upon A Time in Wonderland (doing horribly in the ratings) and Super Fun Night.

CBS: The last remaining network juggernaut maintains that position for another year, and does so again on the back of it’s veteran series. However, it too struggled with it’s newer offerings (almost all of which were comedies this year). We Are Men also received a two-and-out, The Crazy Ones is bleeding viewers week to week, and Mom’s numbers have not been particularly successful. There has been one new success story for CBS, however, and it comes in the form of the Will Arnett vehicle The Millers, which takes full advantage of its’ Big Bang Theory lead in. While the Tiffany network seems in very strong shape in the short term, it can not be pleased with its’ long term picture.

FOX: Fox continues what seems to be a major trend across all four networks this year: success on the drama front, with serious questions on the comedy side of the schedule. While Sundays continue to chug along with the Animation Domination block, we can already see that Seth McFarlane’s cache is starting to run out of steam with the network. American Dad is being scuttled off to TBS, The Cleveland Show saw the cancellation ax last year, and his new offering Dads feels like an unmitigated disaster. Unfortunately, that poison has run all the way through Fox’s Tuesday comedy block, as freshman Brooklyn Nine-Nine and sophomore The Mindy Project both also have sagging ratings on Tuesdays (this is a shame, as I particularly like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and feel it got hurt by drawing Agents as direct competition). However, Fox has succeeded in shoring up its’ dramas, adding Sleepy Hollow as a success story as it has already been renewed for a second season (no back-order however in order to make room for The Following).

NBC: Last year, NBC looked for success by following a strong two prong strategy: using The Voice to set up successful dramas, and making it’s comedy as lifeless and watered down as possible in order to reboot the line-up. The drama prong, succeeded, while the comedy side ended with every new show getting canceled and the network relying on decidedly not generic Community and Parks and Recreation to hold the fort for another year. This year, they went back to the same well– with the same results. The Blacklist, which followed The Voice on Mondays scored the first back-order of the year while the comedy block is once again in shambles. Parks and Recreation, thrown to the wolves against the Big Bang Goliath is down in the ratings, while The Michael J. Fox show is the only other show averaging above a 1.0. The biggest hole however, is at 8:30, where Welcome to the Family failed to be welcomed into America’s homes and is effectively on death watch until NBC can pull Community (which has quickly turned into NBC’s Rules of Engagement as a show that solely gets renewed to plug holes) from the bench to stabilize ratings. Regardless, after the past two years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see NBC try something new next year, possibly swapping it’s comedy Thursday with it’s drama Wednesday to hold the fort, because this is not a sustainable business model for the peacock.

The CW: It seems weird that the network I have to most to say positively about is the CW. While this may in fact be because they do not have a single comedy on their fall schedule (did I mention this has been a particularly atrocious year for comedy?), I think it’s predominantly because they know what they’re aiming for and one of the stronger premieres of the season in The Tomorrow People. Their other big debut, Reign hits Thursday (i’ll be reviewing it here at Manhattan Digest, likely will be up Friday afternoon), so theoretically the CW gets an incomplete, but is already miles ahead of where they were last spring when they stuck us with Cult.

Sean Saves The World, But the World Needs Polishing

by Michael Tyminski

Sean Saves the World: Thursdays at 9 Eastern On NBC

In prior reviews, I’ve looked that the networks’ focus for the returning hero, and mentioned that no network was more all-in on this than NBC. For NBC, this is a trend that stretches back to last year when it was clear that they were originally grooming the Matthew Perry vehicle Go On for big things. It’s with this reason that when NBC put out it’s schedule for this fall that I was clamoring to find out what was going to get the 9 p.m crown jewel slot. Was it going to be a long-standing show like the critically acclaimed Parks and Recreation? Was it going to be The Michael J. Fox Show, which got a full season vote of confidence from NBC? Needless to say, I was somewhat surprised when I found out it would be devoted to the return of Will and Grace’s Sean Hayes in Sean Saves the World.

Sean Saves the World follows the titular character, a divorced dad who is thrust back into full-time parenting when his high school aged daughter Ellie (Samantha Isler) moves in. However, it’s not just his home life that gets thrown into upheaval. Sean also has to deal with a new boss (the always funny Thomas Lennon) whose tighter regime requires that his team at work put in more hours. The end result, like I’ve written oh so many times in the past two weeks, is our protagonist being forced to juggle both duties at home with work around the office.

The first thing that I noticed, above all else, is the omnipresent laugh track. While I’m not particularly biased to the single camera set-up, it feels like the laugh track disrupts the fairly rapid fire dialogue, often leading to an overblown reaction, which doesn’t jibe well with the subtle, sarcastic back and forth that dominates the dialogue (and that the cast clearly excels in).

The writing suffers at points, often due to the cardboard nature of some of the characters. In particular, Sean’s mother Lorna seems like a less alcohol drenched Lucille Bluth, while both of his co-workers felt pretty one dimensional. Similarly, the plot felt way too direct in forcing Sean to literally juggle home and work. I can understand establishing a premise strongly in a pilot, but this time around it felt too single-minded, often shoehorning Ellie and Lorna into what felt predominantly like a workplace sitcom plot.

Still there are many positives to be found in the show for it to show no promise. First and foremost, the cast as a whole is spectacular. Thomas Lennon in particular shines as evil boss Max, effortlessly acting as a thorn in people’s side. Additionally, while everything felt simplistic and forced, enough of the jokes landed, which for a sitcom really is priority number one (and as mentioned above, would have landed much better without a soundtrack).

The Final Verdict: Sean Saves the World feels very much like a work in progress, pairing a fairly interesting workplace sitcom (the show’s best comedic pairing is very clearly Hayes and Lennon) with a very pedestrian family comedy. Luckily, the tone and the humor is there and there have been successful comedies with worse pilots (and for that matter first seasons). Furthermore, the track record of the staff both behind and in front of the camera seems way too good for this show to truly tank. I’d wait and see on this one, possibly checking out an episode on a re-run laden Thursday night.

Fox Makes A Triumphant Return To TV in His New Show

by Michael Tyminski

The Michael J. Fox Show: Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. Eastern on NBC

So far many of the comedies I’ve reviewed in the fall season have followed one trend (that of parents and their adult children forced together by circumstances), however, there’s also a second key trend that’s floating around: after a weak 2012-13, it’s very clear that the big four are reaching back for big names from the 80’s and 90’s in the hopes of bolstering their network’s success. CBS goes to this well tonight with Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s The Crazy Ones, but it’s NBC who goes all in on this concept, dragging James Spader out for The Blacklist, and Michael J. Fox for tonight’s offering: The Michael J. Fox Show.

The Michael J. Fox Show follows Mike Henry (Michael J. Fox), a retired reporter with Parkinson’s disease who happens to want to jump back in to the fray after being bored at home. Luckily, his old boss Harris (Wendell Pierce) needs Mike as much as Mike needs NBC (it’s meta, get it?). Now with him back at work, he’ll have to juggle all of the usual day-to-day activities at work and at home while also dealing with his ailment.

In a lot of ways, The Michael J. Fox Show feels like a throwback to other things, synthesizing many surface elements of sitcoms past: works as a newscaster, a loving wife and 2.5 kids, doting in-laws (who double as the wacky next door neighbors), even sibling rivalries! However, where in most cases such tropes would be called cliché, the true beauty in this show lies in the way that these stock tropes deal with the obvious elephant in the room: Fox’s very real health condition. The first episode aired tonight deals with that head-on, but the second episode allows it to slip into the background, allaying fears that it would be dropped like an anvil.

The show maintains a certain sweetness, and that’s courtesy of the dynamic of the show’s central pairing: Mike and his wife Annie (Betsy Brandt), both perfectly nail the married dynamic, driving each other crazy while still showing a clear love for each other. A large amount of that is courtesy of the writing, which could have easily veered into the maudlin, but ultimately aims straight for establishing each of its’ characters (and particularly Mike’s) flaws early on (particularly his vanity, though it also pops up in every character but Annie by the middle of the second episode) and letting those drive the plot.

I think there are a few minor flaws with the show, as there tend to be with many sitcoms coming out of the gate. First and foremost, while the talking heads are often funny, they feel out of place in a show that seems to have a classic feel. This is made worse by the fact that the cutaways are explained away and plot-relevant in the first episode, only to persist in the second. Secondly, it seems like many of the secondary characters don’t have much to do at times, with both Kay (his assistant), and Leigh (his sister) both feeling very ancillary to the first two episodes.

The Final Verdict: In a lot of ways, The Michael J. Fox Show feels like a throwback, but it adds a few wrinkles here or there to keep the show from feeling truly cliché. Additionally, while sitcoms tend to not truly find their voice until midway through the first season, it seems like the show has found it’s voice very early on, looking for a healthy mix of both heartwarming with a little bit of sass to keep it from venturing too far into saccharine territory. Check it out, there’s pretty strong odds this is the best new sitcom of the season.

Million Second Quiz Ratchets Up the Intensity

by Michael Tyminski

Million Second Quiz: 8p.m. Eastern this and next week on NBC

Since 1999, when Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? made it’s way across the pond to America, we have seen a fundamental shift in the way that the game show has been presented over the airwaves. Once built to be cheap staples of daytime (often morning) television, the genre often is now home to seven-digit grand prizes, prime-time specials, and typically treated closer to sporting events with cutaway interviews. No network has leaned harder on the genre since its’ revival than NBC, which has had considerable success with Deal or No Deal, 1 vs. 100, and The Weakest Link. It is with those three shows in mind that they launch their new big money quizzer: Million Second Quiz

Million Second Quiz is a test of both general knowledge and endurance. One lucky contestant is placed in the money chair inside a giant hourglass set in Manhattan’s Rockerfeller Center. Here, the contestant earns $10 for every second they survive in the chair while being bombarded by questions and challenges from across the country. Once unseated from they money chair, they spend time in winner’s row, hoping that their winnings will hold out. Once the clock hits zero (estimated to be sometime next Friday afternoon), the top four will battle it out for the top cash prize. Hosting the proceedings is veteran emcee Ryan Seacrest (Click, Wild Animal Games, Mid-days on Z-100, he also did some show on Fox for a few years but I don’t think anyone’s ever heard of it).

The quiz battles are interesting, mixing elements of the ABC show Duel, the dare mechanics from Double Dare (though sadly not the physical challenges), and the speed round mechanics of just about hard quizzer ever (albeit with increasing point values as the battle goes on). Seacrest does a surprisingly strong job handling the question reader side of the show, nimbly adapting between asking questions, kicking to a video screen for video questions, and dealing with the Doubler (which admittedly was not explained before the first bout) and even managing to interrupt a battle for commercials (right before the big final third).

In between these bouts, we get to look in on the various larger aspects of the Million Second Quiz, including meeting the “line jumper” a strong performing online player whom is flown in to play for the money chair. We also check in on Winner’s Row, where the four top performing players try to survive long enough to make it to the final battle for the big prize. We also learn about “the winner’s defense”, where the winner’s circle send of their own in a risk to add to their total. If the Winner fails however, they are out of the game.

If there is one glaring issue with the show, it’s the relentless cross promotion that occurs during the course of the episode. Our winner’s row is sponsored by Subway. Our line jumper gets an interview on NBC’s Today Show. We get guest appearances by Blake Shelton of The Voice and Heidi Klum of America’s Got Talent. Multiple questions referenced NBC’s two football games over the past week. While I get that promotion has long been a part of the show, it feels very blunt and inelegant on Million Second Quiz.

The Final Verdict: It’s a large expansive game with it’s tentacles everywhere, and I think I can safely say that Million Second Quiz is the next evolution of one of television’s oldest formats, mixing truly interactive at home play seamlessly with the on-air show. Seacrest has the chops to host, the format is both very simple and strategically deep, and the format allows for the tension to mount over the course of the game. Watch it, it’s a solid event show and a great way to spend the 8 p.m. hour before the fall season kicks into full gear.

Fall Preview: NBC

by Michael Tyminski

Last Year: It was the best of times for NBC (when it had The Voice and football), it was the worst of times for NBC (when it didn’t). While the peacock didn’t leave the basement, it gained a little bit of ground on it’s competitors. Unfortunately, the network’s new shows (especially on the comedy side) didn’t quite pan out as planned, so NBC was forced to fill a ton of holes on it’s schedule.

This Year: For the second straight year on NBC, we see a large number of new comedy options. Coming off of a year in which two of it’s flagship series (in 30 Rock and The Office) left the airwaves, NBC was really relying on some of it’s new shows to slip right in. So when NBC canceled every new comedy (and put Community on the bench in order to stabilize should one of it’s newer shows flop), we knew it was going to be a chaotic fall.

This is most seen in its’ Thursday comedy lineup. Parks and Recreation, the last holdout from last year, opens the night (starting 9/26). From there, we get three newcomers: Welcome to the Family (10/3), focused around two teenagers who find out they’re having a kid, and their families whom have to deal with the consequences, Sean Saves The World (10/3), a Sean Hayes vehicle, and NBC’s most hyped comedy option: The Michael J. Fox Show. The former “Must See” lineup is rounded out by network darling “Parenthood”.

Mondays and Tuesdays remain the purview of The Voice, and again the post-Voice slots go to shows that the network wishes to push, with newcomer The Blacklist and the returning Chicago Fire getting the Monday and Tuesday 10p.m. slots respectively. Leading into the results show on Tuesdays is the returning Biggest Loser, now in its’ 15^th season. All of the aforementioned shows start the week of September 23^rd.

Wednesday remains NBC’s big drama night, and unlike other networks, the Peacock tends to draw from a variety of genres for its’ dramas, putting long-running procedural Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (9/25), with sophomore drama Revolution (9/25) and debuting naval drama Ironsides (10/2). It should be interesting to see how Revolution fares, as last year it struggled without its’ Voice lead in and seems to be on a night where it doesn’t necessarily share the same audience as its’ lead-in.

We get an interesting mash-up of shows on Fridays this fall as well, with news-magazine Dateline flowing into NBC’s Friday night horror block of Grimm and newcomer Dracula. The block comes well after premiere week, debuting on 10/25. Personally, I am surprised to not see Hannibal mixed in there, as a Hannibal-Grimm-Dracula line up seems like a thriller fans murderer’s row (no pun intended).

Weekends on NBC are the domain of football, with the NFL taking the entirety of Sunday Nights for the fall and college sports slowly creeping into that Saturday slot. One interesting wrinkle is that the only show definitively programmed for Saturdays are reruns of SNL in the 10p.m. slot, a move that must be designed to get viewers to tune in after the cast overhauls of the last few seasons.

Tomorrow: It’s time to take a cursory glance at that other network, the CW.

You’ll Get Out Alive, Doing So Awake Is The Hard Part

by Michael Tyminski

Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls: Mondays at 9 p.m. Eastern on NBC

Last week, NBC debuted Siberia, a drama set in inhospitable terrain with extreme circumstances about a reality show that can went horribly wrong. This week, in a rare piece of internal consistency for NBC in the past couple of years, they launch a new reality series set in inhospitable terrain with extreme circumstances and a title that implies anything can go horribly wrong.

Get Out Alive stars survival guru Bear Grylls in a competition to see which teams can make it through the diverse New Zealand wilderness. Teams are paired up and given simple survival tasks, such as procuring food, building shelter, making fire or navigating an obstacle to a new place. After each step of the way, the weakest team is eliminated until there is only one team left who makes it the entire way to civilization. The show, much it’s companion is built less around getting from point A to point B faster or backbiting politics, and more around endurance, teamwork, and a survivalist spirit.

We open on a rapid fire series of shots (including a cool series of shots of Grylls skydiving into the fray) and introductory talking heads explaining our contestants motivations. From here our obstacle team took over, having to navigate our team down a swift moving glacial river bank towards a camp of dry land. After a relatively uneventful run through the river, our food team was sent bushwhacking up to a cavern where Bear left food for the contestants, only for it to be found in a freezing cold creek.

After procuring food, our team is forced to navigate down to a safer overnight camp, a task made considerably more difficult when carrying a deer carcass and with two men on the verge of hypothermia. Ultimately, they make it to the camp, where the shelter and fire teams must rush against the falling sun. Bear emerges from the wild, and prods the contestants to move faster before giving the contestants fish eyes and telling them to procure urine.

The urine was ultimately used for their next challenge, which had the contestants making urine and mud water acceptable for drinking. This challenge plays much like the immunity challenges in Survivor, with the winners getting to eat a large feast and get some peace of mind, while the others have a small amount of rice and beans to sustain themselves for the day, before heading off to Bear’s camp to stave off elimination.

It’s pretty commendable that Get Out Alive manages to create a purely cooperative format that doesn’t encourage the usual backbiting that comes with the genre, it also tends to suffer from a lack of drama. Part of this seems to be the result of pacing, as any particular conflict tends to end up glossed over in a matter of seconds, even though there were clear opportunities for the contestants to get into disagreements (many of which revolve around food). The largest reason for this, however, seems to be due to an elimination process where the sole judge, jury, and eliminator is Grylls himself – and his major criteria are hard work, intelligence, and enthusiasm, not gamesmanship and sniping.

The truly most frustrating aspect of Get Out Alive, however, is the fact that in spite of some truly stunning camera work, the show is over-narrated, often telling in lieu of showing. The end result is a show that spends more time in talking heads and less time playing to its strengths. Weirdly enough, the one person whom seems reduced to five second sound bites is Bear himself, whose observations become increasingly redundant as the hour wears on. This is a shame, as whenever Grylls is allowed to explain something at length, he lights up the screen in a way that few others can.

The Final Verdict: Get Out Alive wants to be a positive, and heartwarming alternative to Survivor in the worst way. But weirdly enough, its’ formula of quick cuts, tons of narration, and lack of emphasis on anything besides a linear navigation of survival and the contest create a fairly boring hour of television. I could however, see this show becoming better as the season wears on and the number of contestants (and hopefully cutaways) dwindles, allowing the show to avoid talking us to death. I’d probably wait and see for that reason, but if you’re looking for inoffensive and non-challenging TV fare, you could do much worse.

Siberia Looks To Break New Ground

by Michael Tyminski

Siberia: Mondays at 10 p.m. Eastern on NBC

(As a heads-up: due to the nature of this show, it is basically impossible not to spoil it’s major conceit, as a result I should advise you that if you want to check out the show with a completely open mind, you should probably watch it before you go any further into this review – Mike)

In retrospect I find this pretty ironic: I spend a disproportionate amount of time railing against the obviously fake aspects of reality TV but I genuinely enjoy a lot of the fake shows that skewer the conventions of said shows. Tonight NBC blurs the lines between “reality” and “drama” to an unprecedented degree with it’s newest summer series: Siberia.

At it’s core Siberia is a psuedo-reality drama set in the titular location – a place known for being as inhospitable as possible. Contestants are forced to live in a village that was seemingly abandoned in place 100 years ago due to mysterious circumstances. It is here that the contestants must fight to survive not only the harsh Siberian winter, but also themselves and the inhospitable and unnatural occurrences around them.

Sixteen contestants arrive blindfolded in the Siberian Forest, with our host, the Jonathon Buckley, arriving to explain the rules of our game (which he calls a social experiment) in which the winner receives a half-million dollars. We then learn the premise of our show: stick 16 people in the Siberian wilderness with no modern conveniences and make them survive until the end of winter. Jonathon then discusses the history of this middle-of-nowhere outpost whose settlers disappeared with no explanation in 1908.

Our contestants then end up on a two mile race through the forest and swamps to run to our tiny settlement. While many of the contestants arrive in a large pack, we are down to two groups of two vying for the last two slots in the settlement (the last two to arrive would be eliminated): an injured player and the bleeding heart who carried him through the forest, and a journalist who leads herself and another contestant down the wrong path. After they’re eliminated we get our next little bit of information: This is a contest of sheer endurance and is about the ability of our contestants to band together. There is a large box that will occasionally grant mystery items and a gate that once passed through eliminates a contestant. Otherwise there are no rules.

Immediately our contestants squabble off over the fact that there are 12 cots for 14 people. The box then signals mentioning the possibility of mushrooms, and the group goes off to find mushrooms and water. They find water but not mushrooms and have a kumbaya moment around the fire only to be interrupted by a nightmarish growl. The next morning, Tommy goes missing while looking for mushrooms, and a cameraman runs into the village bleeding from the head. After the cameraman is whisked away, Jonathon appears to tell us that Tommy died from a fatal accident.

While the plot synopsis feels very mundane, it’s that attention to mundane detail that lets this show shine. For the first three fourths of the episode, this shows plays out like a near perfect reality show to the T: surprise eliminations, squabbles over insignificant issues, the paint-by-numbers casting that every reality show uses, and even the very convincing testimonial inserts they use. The show even manages to ape the visual cues from reality TV: tons of cheap time lapse footage and reused stock shots can be found (the ax into stump shot in particular is used about a dozen times).

However, from the start of that horrifying growl during the camp-fire, the show then picks up into full blown horror mode. Things seem amiss, but very subtly so: a five legged frog, a mysterious shed that’s padlocked shut, Tommy deciding to go deeper into the woods leaving his group (and having a funny exchange with the girls he’s left behind). Unfortunately, the show elects to take it’s horror cues from the Blair Witch school of cinematography which means that many of our most direct horror moments occur off of the camera.

For what it’s worth, our cast more than holds up their end of the bargain. Many reality show participants come off as B-grade actors, and as a result it is no real shock that our unknown actors do an equally solid job sending up reality archetypes. Most of all, for all of the precious little screen time he gets, Jonathon Buckley truly steals the show as the obnoxious reality host in the most Probstian of molds.

The Final Verdict: Siberia is incredibly entertaining as a mash-up of two of pop cultures most renowned and cheapest entities: the reality show, and the horror flick. Our pilot did an excellent job of lulling the viewer into the calm before the storm, and slowly hinting that things are amiss, taking its’ time as if it were a long form horror film. Hopefully it will eventually deliver on this horror and not rely solely on Blair Witch type shots in lieu of occasionally showing the viewer what the contestants are up against. Check it out, it’s a pretty fun ride, though I could also see this show better suited as a binge watching experience.

Save Me is Stuffed Past Its’ Metaphysical Limit

by Michael Tyminski

Save Me: Thursdays at 8pm Eastern on NBC

It’s been a rough 2013 for NBC. After a fall where things were finally turning around courtesy of The Voice, NBC plummeted hard in the ratings, ultimately falling behind even spanish-language Univision in terms of ratings share. Additionally, many of it’s mid-season offerings (Do Not Harm, Deception, 1600 Penn, Next Caller, and Ready For Love) were somewhere between bland, mediocre, and in the case of Do Not Harm, Next Caller (which didn’t even make it to air) and Ready For Love, unmitigated disaster. Now it’s May, and NBC finally gets to the end of its’ bench, with the executives at 30 Rock praying for some divine intervention in their newest Anne Heche vehicle Save Me.

Save Me is about housewife Beth Harper (Anne Heche), whom receives a direct line to God after nearly choking to death on a hero sandwich. Taking advantage of that second chance in life, Harper looks to do right by her friends and neighbors with some divine help.

The show opens with Beth having said near-death experience before waking up the next morning and immediately starts making all of the healthy changes one usually makes mid-life: she gives up drinking, starts running, and reveals her talking from God in the form of being able to know all of our daughter’s happenings. Her husband Tom (Michael Landis) then enters the room and asks for a divorce so he would be freed up to marry his mistress, Carly McKenna (Alexis Breckinridge). Tom pushes for Beth to get a CAT scan, as he’s skeptical of her now prophetic state.

We return to the Doctor’s Office, where a CAT scan reveals that the near-death experience activated a part of her brain “only used by Tibetan monks”. Carly then tries to push Tom further down the divorce road before being concerned that Beth has the potential to profit off of her new life. Beth then tries to make nice with her friends before inadvertently stumbling upon the core of her friends’ problems. Beth’s new attitude and divine intervention fixes almost everyone’s problems in a clean fashion. This leads to Carly throwing a drink in Tom’s face after finding out he rekindled things with Beth. Carly then leaves for Beth’s house only to find her driving into a pole and getting struck by lightning.

So…What to make of this show? Well, like many domestic comedies, it doesn’t seem to rock the comedic boat, often settling for the safe harbor of jokes coming from familial relations and Anne Heche’s trademark spaciness. While Heche does a great job playing the crazy person who believes God is talking to her (and the crazy drunk she was before that), she struggles when the show has to hit a real emotional moment, particularly when playing the mother figure to her daughter.

There also seems to be a tendency for all actions to have the absolute minimum of consequences, no matter how insane or potentially serious. This is particularly notable in the cornball ending of our pilot where Carly is struck by lightning, which is shrugged off pretty easily by Beth (outside of a small mention of it in a prayer– and even then she’s back to invoking the God floor show by the end of the episode).

Save Me also seems to move a little too fast, often being forced to juggle four story lines with three of them revolving around Beth (often with her husband, then her daughter, and her friends), with the fourth often dealing with Tom’s affair. While shows like 30 Rock and Arrested Development can often bring the chaos into one happy and wild ending, Save Me often ties these story lines together with a whimper and not a bang (considering the show’s heavy use of pyrotechnics and special effects, that’s saying a lot.)

The Final Verdict: Save Me is emblematic of the Greenblatt-ian approach to saving the Peacock: It’s safe, a little goofy, and it involves divine intervention. It’s pretty middle of the road, however on a network that whiffed on every last risk it took this year, it’s nice to see something that isn’t a flaming disaster on NBC (even if a flaming disaster would have made writing a punny headline easier). That being said, even in context, it’s hard for me to really endorse mediocrity. Check it out if you’re looking for a light, goofy, and bubbly dom-com, but if you’re expecting some appointment viewing, you’re better off looking elsewhere.

Monday Upfronts Update: NBC and FOX

by Michael Tyminski

NBC’s primetime schedule for next year featured a ton of shuffling, as every surviving series except for flagship The Voice and Friday night mainstay Grimm ended up at new timeslots.

Amongst the moves, we see:

The Thursday night lineup maintains its 2 hours of comedy to 1 hour of drama ratio, however the block seems to be considerably less focused on workplace comedies. Parks and Recreation now bats leadoff instead of its 9:30pm slot for this year while 10pm becomes the new home of fifth-season network darling Parenthood.

Chicago Fire gains a Voice lead in slot (Tuesdays at 10pm), while Revolution loses its’ moving to Wednesdays at 8pm.

Speaking of The Voice, its’ one hour Tuesday episode will switch spots with The Biggest Loser, occupying the 9pm hour.

NBC seems to be taking a page from Fox’s book, creating a fantasy oriented night on Fridays, with Grimm and Dracula back-to-back. If Hannibal gets a second season, I would not be surprised to see it parked into this lineup.

Finally, in the late night front, it’s been confirmed that Seth Meyers will be taking Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night chair when the latter becomes host of the tonight show in 2014.

Fox on the other hand, while ordering a large number of new shows seems to have stuck fairly well to it’s guns with no real changes to its’ core schedule of Sunday Cartoons, Monday Drama, Tuesday Comedy and Wednesday/Thursday Idol.

The big news coming from the Fox camp however is the return of hit drama series 24, which ran for nine seasons from 2001-2010. I think such a move is an overreaction as Fox desperately tries to cling to its’ stronger years, where it built its entire lineup around The Simpsons, Family Guy, Idol and 24.

NBC Saves Parks and Rec, Cancels Four Other Comedies

by Michael Tyminski

Last night I rifled off a story to my editor about up-fronts and taking wild guesses about how NBC was going to handle its’ once vaunted comedy lineup with intentions of posting it today. Between then and now, NBC took a lot of the mystery out by renewing Parks and Recreation for a sixth season and canning Guys with Kids, 1600 Penn, Whitney, and Up All Night.

Needless to say, I wasn’t shocked with any of these decisions. Parks and Rec is the closest thing NBC has to veteran hit right now, going into its’ sixth season and drawing a moderate viewership (Oh how the mighty have fallen). One could also see the network realizing how weak their slate was when they got a back nine tacked on their order this year (the season was originally supposed to be a 13 episode order like Community and 30 Rock).

Similarly, three of the four cancellations I had as inevitabilities.

1600 Penn had all the signs of a show that wasn’t going to outlive its’ first 13 episodes. It’s ratings consistently plummeted in it’s post-Office time slot, it came in at mid-season and had its’ season finale in March, it stuck out like a sore thumb in the same lineup as Community, Parks and Recreation and The Office, and last but not least it would be eventually bumped so that network favorite Go On could close out after The Office.

Up All Night, was not nearly as weak a show as 1600 Penn, but after much of the backstage turmoil you couldn’t help but think this show was going to get mercy-killed in May. Between the stars’ departures, the show runners’ departure, and an anticipated shift from single-camera to multi camera that got axed, it was tough to imagine Up All Night surviving to a third season.

Guys with Kids is the sort of show that most people were surprised made it out of its’ first six episodes, let alone a full season. It was one of those shows that existed as a way of NBC signaling its’ turn away from fairly intelligent comedy into the Lorre-esque dreck that pervades CBS.

Whitney, however, came as a little more of a surprise to me. While many people have reacted to most cancellations with a variation of “but they kept Whitney?” the impression I always got of the show was that it was the sort of show that the Peacock was never going to let die if only because it was a key part of network head Bob Greenblatt’s vision of a couple of years ago.

This leaves Go On (which I think will be renewed) and Community (which is a coin toss) as shows whose fates are to be determined, though it also signals that regardless of the situation that NBC needed to look in a new direction for its’ comedy lineup after a disastrous 2012-13 season.

UPDATE 4:20 PM: I was horribly wrong about Go On. The sitcom was just cancelled by NBC. This one surprises me a lot at it fits NBC’s strategy of bringing it’s “must-see TV” stars out of the mothballs and this series always seemed disproportionately adored by the network. I’m not sure whether this increases Community’s chances of survival (in a two similar shows one could survive sort of way) or is a potential foreboding doom (NBC manages to cancel just about anything with the intent of getting laughs from its’ schedule).

Next week is upfronts week: Keep posted to Manhattan Digest for more news and opinions!

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