So, for my first Zero Expectation post I thought I’d do a fairly broad summary of the new shows I intend to try in the coming months, and the shows I’ll be criticising right here on this site. I’ll be going crazy for the Lost finale next week and you might be lucky enough to get a post about “What They Died For” between now and Sunday/Monday but for now, cast your privileged eyes over my picks for the fall season.
I haven’t watched Firefly…
But I think I’m going to, mainly down to the Internet’s unbearable love for Summer Glau. I’m sure she was in the shocking second season of Dollhouse wasn’t she? Well, she wasn’t great in that. In fact nobody was great in that so maybe I shouldn’t judge. The main reason I’ve been looking into her is her upcoming ABC show The Cape, featuring Miss Glau as a blogger! See how it all comes full circle? The show’s far-fetched plot involves a cop being framed for a crime, left for dead and regenerated as his son’s favourite superhero “The CAPE”. Summer’s blogger becomes his ally, apparently she fights crime and corruption from her keyboard and so makes a perfect ally for a superhero… yeah, I’m not too sure either. This all sounds well and good in a cheesy, B-Movie sort of way so I may as well give it a shot. The premier airs, er, sometime this year, I think…
What J.J. Abrams is doing after Lost and Star Trek…
His new show for the season is Undercovers; it’s essentially Mr. And Mrs. Smith for the TV viewing crowd. Steven and Samantha Bloom used to be top CIA agents, fell in love on the job and retired to settle down and start a family, but former colleague Nash goes missing on a job and they’re thrust back into the world of espionage to try and rescue him. So far, so vanilla, this is the kind of premise any GCSE level Media Studies student could come up with, but it’s where they go with it that counts. I can see this show having a big overblown premier (ala Fringe) and then settling down into a weekly routine of the couple juggling new assignments with their normal lives (ala Fringe). There’s nothing immediately wrong with that but its hardly original. If they take a different route and maybe focus more on an overall story, this could be pretty good. There’s potential here and some big/ reliable names are involved in Abrams and his Alias, Fringe and Lost partner Bryan Burk. Mark this one down as a maybe.
Shawn Ryan’s new show (who??? I hear you ask)
Well, I’ll tell you: he created the best TV show ever made – The Shield. He also had a hand in The Unit, a good show but not quite as good as The Shield. This season he heads a new show titled Ride-Along chronicling the lives of Chicago cops dealing with the worst the city has to offer, besides the gales I suppose. There doesn’t seem to be much more info on it knocking about the interweb other than the stars, a decent list: Jason Clarke from Brotherhood, Jennifer Beals, obviously of Flashdance fame but more recently from Lie To Me and Delroy Lindo from Kidnapped and loads of films like Gone in 60 Seconds and The Cider House Rules. A good cast then and the creator of The Shield, this sounds immensely promising, this is one to watch.
Finally, my most anticipated pick of the season…
Largely down to Michael Chiklis being the star (if you haven’t watched The Shield, my blogs are going to be insufferable) and then partially down to Julie Benz (Dexter, Angel) also taking a starring role, the one to watch this season above all others is No Ordinary Family. The premise: Jim and Stephanie Powell are stuck in a marriage lacking any real spark, juggling work and 2 children makes for a hectic and restless life. In an attempt to bring the family together, Jim takes them on a holiday to the Amazon, but their plane crashes into the river and they emerge with supernatural powers. Yeah, it sounds silly, it could quite easily be laughably bad and I’m basing this recommendation mainly on the fact that I really like the two main stars. Hell, that’ll probably be enough to keep me watching even if I’m the only one left. This could quite easily take the Heroes route and introduce a hundred new characters each season until it seems like everyone in the world must surely have some sort of power but this show seems to have more grounding. Where Heroes tries to ape comic-books, this show seems to be trying to do the superhero story from a more mundane perspective, something I personally haven’t seen much of. With Lost ending this weekend, I desperately need something new and I really hope this is it.
Not a brilliant line-up to be honest, some potential in all of the shows I talked about but even then, there’s no guarantees. At least we can rely on some great returning shows like Dexter to keep us entertained this year. Also feel free to list recommendations for me in the comments section, I haven’t watched everything and I’m always willing to give any show a go. I will warn you that I didn’t like The Wire so don’t be recommending me that J. For now thanks for reading and happy viewing!
Kyle Davey
