K-Ville

The pilot of K-Ville (one of the new fall shows) has been posted to Yahoo.

Pilot first-impression: Pushing Daisies

With Nyanko out of the country for a while and me being the sad sad blogger than I am, there hasn't been much traffic here recently. However, thanks to Adia, I was able to get my hands on a few of the pilots for the upcoming Fall season. These were all briefly talked about in my earlier previews, but a full pilot theoretically should give more information.

Pushing Daisies is a quirky romantic comedy with a disturbing premise but hilarious execution and tone. It definitely has the Wonderfalls feel to it, as would be expected since this is also a Bryan Fuller creation. The premise is made pretty clear right at the beginning, and the pilot is an entertaining self-contained episode that sets up the rest of the series. Basically, our hero Ned discovers at an early age that he can bring dead things back to life by touching them. However, there are limitations and side-effects to this. If the person he brings back to life stays alive for more than a minute, then someone else in the vicinity will die. Also, if Ned ever touches the person he brought back again, they will also die for good.

He teams up with a private investigator (McBride) later on in life and they go around collecting bounties by finding dead people, asking them who killed them, and then letting them die again before the minute is up. One of the most hilarious things about this show is how all the dead people who get brought back to life are just cool with it. They don't go around trying to figure out HOW it happened, they're just like "hey, what's up." That is pretty much the tone for the show, and I love it. The two leads are pretty cute together and the show does a good job of mixing the feel-good warm fuzzies with the weird and disturbing. Anyway, this is on my must-watch list for next season and it should be on yours too.

Oh, the image above shows the cast in Ned's place of work, he makes pies for a living at a place called "The Pie Hole."

ABC - Fall 2007 Previews

Last of the 4 big networks is ABC and their Fall 2007 schedule. The big returners are Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives which has lost a huge amount from its initial viewership. ABC has a whopping 8 new Fall series with 3 more mid-season shows, and the really noticeable difference here is that all 11 of these shows are scripted, with no new reality shows in sight.

• Sam I Am - Christina Applegate has retrograde amnesia, and as she starts to reconnect with family and friends she realizes that she was (is?) really not a very nice person and was estranged from her parents. This is a half-hour comedy that seems to follow a familiar formula, and the clips I've seen make the show seem pretty generic. I am a slight fan of Christina for no apparent reason but even so I think this is going to have to be a pass.
  
• Cavemen - I never really even found the GEICO commercials all that amusing, so a full sitcom based on the premise of a few less-evolved sub-homo sapiens trying to get by in present-day Atlanta just seems like it's going to be full of pain.
  
• Carpoolers - I wasn't able to glean much from the trailer except that it seems to be about 4 men of varying personalities/lives carpooling together and, uh, talking? Jerry O'Connell is one of the guys, and another one of the guys seems to be the idealistic one that all the others make fun of. They really need to come out with better commercials before this could seem even remotely interesting.
  
• Pushing Daisies - This is probably one of the more original and quirky concepts I've seen among all the previews I've been watching. The main character discovers at an early age that he has the power to bring dead things/people back to life with a touch, but the catch is that if he touches them again then they die permanently. The execution and tone are amusing and quirky in a Wonderfalls/Dead Like Me kind of way (surprise, Bryan Fuller is involved in all 3 of these shows). The guy grows up and uses this power to solve murders by bringing back the victims to ask them who killed them, but then one day he finds his childhood love murdered and brings her back, but can never touch her again...
  
• Private Practice - Okay, we all know what this is, and we've probably mostly seen the "preview" in the form of parts of episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I'm honestly not sold on this yet, it has a star-studded cast, Addison is probably one of the most likable characters of more recent GA, and I am a fan of Tim Daly, so I'll probably have to watch at least the first few, especially with GA seemingly on the decline.
  
• Dirty Sexy Money - It was hard to tell what this was really about from the available clips, but it appears to be about a super-rich family headed by Donald Sutherland who has a bunch of spoiled brats (including William Baldwin and Samaire Armstrong (Anna!)) that need to have their various antics dealt with by Peter Krause (of Six Feet Under), their straight-man lawyer. There appears to be a lot of acting spoiled and yelling/complaining, so it does not look that interesting.
  
• Big Shots - Imagine 4 high-powered women sitting around gossiping/complaining about their various personal issues: cheating spouses, new love interests, having affairs, etc... Now replace the women with men (including Dylan McDermott from The Practice and Michael Vartan from Alias) and you've got what this show seems to be about. Dylan even says himself at the end "Men... we're the new women."
  
• Women's Murder Club - Angie Harmon is back... and this time she's a police detective who teams up with 3 other women (an Assistant DA, a CSI, and a reporter) and the four of them work together to catch criminals, each using their own particular expertise. Of course, they also chat about their personal lives when meeting together to figure out how to catch killers. I originally thought this was going to be about a club of women who go around killing people, which probably would've been more interesting. Even so, this could have some promise if you're into crime-solving shows.
  

Fox - Fall 2007 Previews

Fox's fall lineup is next, and the interesting thing is that the two remaining networks seem to have many more new series coming in for the next season, so either they are trying to play catch-up or there's just that much good stuff out there (or NBC/CBS just aren't showing everything yet). Fox is still running out its big hitters American Idol and 24 next season, but both of those are having steadily diminishing appeal. I've looked at clips/trailers from 7 new series for the coming season, although there are several more reality/game show types that are also coming up.

• Back To You - This seems to be like Frasier, only instead of Kelsey Grammar being a psychiatrist, he's a disgraced anchorman from a big market going back to his roots in the ever hilarious Pittsburgh. I never really even liked Frasier that much, so this is not happening for me.
  
• Canterbury's Law - Julianna Margulies as a hard-hitting attorney, I am so not interested.
  
• K-ville - Anthony Anderson as a hero cop in post-Katrina New Orleans. More zzzz, but I never watched The Shield, which is probably the kind of audience this is trying to appeal to (I believe Anderson also appeared in several episodes of The Shield).
  
• New Amsterdam - A guy does a heroic act a long time ago and gets blessed with immortality with a catch, he cannot die until he finds his true love. Aww. At least he's not a vampire or anything, but of course he does good deeds with all his experience and long-living as a police detective. Dialogue does not appear to be witty.
  
• The Return of Jezebel James - Parker Posey doing her thing, only this time her thing is going back to an estranged sister to ask for a surrogacy. I haven't been a fan of Parker for quite some time so her doing her usual insanely shrill thing is not particularly attractive.
  
• The Rules for Starting Over - Farrelly Brothers comedy about 4 friends who are newly single in their 30s, hilarity supposedly ensues as they all look for their perfect mates at this "ancient" age. I'm not a fan of most things Farrelly but people who are would probably consider this. The clips I've seen support my decision to skip this, as we have a monkey, a guy in a leprechaun suit, and fart jokes. Oh, and come on, 30 is totally young.
  
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles - !!! I saved this for last because this is probably the only one on this whole list that I'm actually going to watch. We've got Zach from Heroes (Claire's friend - Thomas Dekker) as John Connor, Lena Headey (the wife from 300) as Sarah, and Summer Glau (River from Firefly) as their protective Terminator model. This could be good, although from the clips that I've seen, they really need John to stop being so whiny. It's likely that this will play out like an extended Terminator movie, which should be a good thing. I'm hoping we're going to see lots of terminators running around and Sarah and River kicking ass. For people who are familiar with the movies, this is set between Terminator 2 and 3.
  

NBC - Fall 2007 Previews

Now that I've watched previews on each of the 4 major stations, I'd have to say that CBS appears to be the real loser. There is not a single show on CBS that really appeals to me, but then again when you have the CSI Empire then who needs new shows.

NBC's new Fall shows are up next, they're sticking strong with My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, The Office, Scrubs, and ER (this is still going?) on Thursday nights but we've got 4 new shows spread out on M-W, almost all of which are more appealing to me than CBS's lineup.

• Journeyman - Drama that seems a lot like The Time Traveler's Wife, which was a pretty decent book. We've got a guy who travels back in time involuntarily which causes trouble in the present, since he disappears randomly, and in the past, since now he can change the future even though he never has any idea when he is. Overarching storyline appears to be whether or not he decides to or is capable of saving his old girlfriend who died many years ago. This appears meh but I may watch a few.
  
• Chuck - Comedy (that will probably have some drama) about a guy who works at the local Nerd Herd (which is like the Best Buy Geek Squad) who happens to somehow be the recipient of some email that contains all the crazy secrets of the government, except he doesn't know it of course. This results in a secret agent girl whose job it is to control/kill him, except they go on a date and of course she decides she likes him and is now his bodyguard, hilarity ensues. I am probably going to watch this, but I worry about the cheez.
  
• Bionic Woman - Huge hype on this one, it's a remake of the old series. In this one, the woman is guardian to her deaf sister who seems to hate her, then she gets in a really bad car accident and is saved by having various parts of her body replaced with crazy super-sekrit technology. She is now super, and after the initial freakout this becomes kind of like Dark Angel. She tries to figure out what to do with all the powah, people are chasing her down, etc etc... Of note: Starbuck from BSG shows up as her enemy in the trailer, I'll probably watch the first few just for this.
  
• Life - Cop gets sent away for life for a crime he didn't commit, he eventually gets out when they realize they put the wrong guy there. In his settlement, he gets a lot of money and his old job back, because he loves being a cop. His new partner is a sassy woman (omg tension) and instead of making it all about his angst/bitterness, he shows everyone what a good detective he is and makes wisecracks the whole time. I will probably pass on this, but if they can keep the funny up along with some decent crime-solving/catching bad guys and work the angle of him being a hardened veteran of 12 years in jail... this'll probably be decent.
  

CBS - Fall 2007 Previews

I've been making my rounds through the various major network sites watching their Fall 2007 preview trailers, so in an effort to get my post count up, I'll drop some tidbits in here that might interest our reader(s).

First up is CBS, note that this will not cover all of their new shows, just the ones that had reasonable-length previews available to stream from their site. I am ignoring reality shows.

• Cane - Drama about a family that runs a drug cartel, except it's not drugs, it's sugar cane. Jimmy Smits is the kingpin.
  
• Big Bang Theory - Comedy about two science nerds who discover that they live next door to a hot blonde. A little bit of Beauty & the Geek here with the ditzy beauty and the socially inept nerds who are in love with her. I didn't recognize anyone from the trailer.
  
• Moonlight - Probably the most interesting trailer I saw on the CBS site, this is about a vampire who likes to do good (Blade??) but does it in the form of a Private Investigator. It looks ridiculously cheesy and stars Lindsay from The O.C. as the female lead. I didn't recognize her until the end of the trailer when she does her shocked/sad look.
  
• Swingtown - I slept through most of the 2 min of this one, it has something to do with people in the 70's and what they do as they, uh, live in the 70's. Trailer made it seem like a drama version of That 70's Show. Just to clarify, this appears to be a midseason show instead... not that anyone's going to watch.
  

Other networks to come...