NBC announced its new fall shows today. Here are mini-reviews of five of ‘em. Warning: they’re based solely on short clips provided by the network, so I (and you) reserve the right to adjust opinions of them, up or down, once full-length episodes are available. But that will be… in the fall. Who wants to wait to have an opinion until then?
• Parenthood Producer Ron Howard turns his movie into a TV series — again (the first one aired and flopped in 1990). This one is about four grown siblings and their different parenting styles. Peter Krause is a Little League-coach kinda dad (not sure that’s a good fit for Mr. Dirty Sexy Money.) ER’s Maura Tierney is a single mom with at least one really obnoxious teen daughter. (I like Tierney is almost anything, especially when she’s playing stressed-out.) It’s brought to you by writer and executive producer Jason Katims, who headed up Friday Night Lights, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt. (All grades based on clips only):
B
• Mercy A medical drama about tough nurses headed up by Veronica (Taylor Schilling), who knows tough-love from a recently-finished tour in Iraq, and says things like, nurses “know more than all your residents combined.” She’s married, but a cute doctor arrives at the hospital (in a wincing Grey’s Anatomy moment, he’s actually referred to as “hot doctor guy”). Hot doc proves to be a former lover of Veronica’s: ooh, complications ensue! Also starring Gossip Girl’s Michelle Trachtenberg as a wide-eyed rookie nurse. This show could be insufferable.
C
• Community Joel McHale heads up a sitcom cast about a community college full of misfit students and teachers. Co-starring Chevy Chase as a fatuous, out-of-it goofball (finally, Chase finds appropriate latterday casting) and The Daily Show’s John Oliver as McHale’s pal. There seem to be a lot of jokes about The Breakfast Club. McHale’s performance seems totally winning — funny, funny-smarmy, funny-smart — and the show is from a couple of guys who worked on Arrested Development. Looks good to me.
B+
•Trauma It’s one of those ultra-NBC, “pulse-pounding,” lives-in-danger-of-exploding shows in the tradition of ER and Third Watch, about a San Francisco trauma team. With dialogue like “That tanker’s gonna blow!” and “I can’t die!,” it all sounded way over the top, but its executive producer is Friday Night Lights‘ Peter Berg, so maybe it will be more exciting than the hyped-up clips looked. The ensemble includes Anatasia Griffith, sister of Rose Byrne’s murdered fiance in Damages. To paraphrase: This show might blow!
C
• 100 Questions Or, “Please Please Please Think We’re The New Friends!” About a group of young New York singles who are always on the prowl for love and/or sex. The title refers to the questions at least one member of the group, British girl Charlotte (Sophie Winkleman), answers for a meet-your-soulmate dating service. Comedy genius James Burrows — who directed many Friends, among quadrillions of other terrific sitcom half-hours, directed the pilot — which makes the rather lazy-sounding punchlines (supposedly so-bad-it’s-funny pick-up line: “Are you wearing space-pants, because your ass is out of this world!”) all the more dismaying. Unless the ensemble cast develops a sparky chemistry not discernible in the brief segments NBC has shown, this could be a dud.
C+
More clips after the jump.
For more on NBC’s new fall schedule: NBC unveils fall sked
Comments (1-30) of 35 Add your comment
Things doesn’t look promising for NBC. New shows that look like they’ve already been done, not to mention LENO 5 times a week.
oh NBC…how the mighty has fallen.
http://tvdonewright.com/2009/05/04/tv-tonight-monday-may-4th-2009/
I totally agree with your view of Community. I watched the preview and actually laughed out loud. It was downright hysterical. I hope that the rest of the show lives up to the preview.
I am so excited that John Oliver is going to be on NBC!! I hope he doesn’t leave the Daily Show!
Too bad “How I Met Your Mother” took the “new Friends” mantle of “hip ensemble comedy”, by not even trying to copy it, being different, and casting a great ensemble.
Community looks promising. Finally Chevy goes back to television.
Who cares about NBC’s “new shows?”
They will all be canceled before you even have a chance to know what they are about. And heaven forbid that you get suckered into watching one of the shows regulary, only to have them pull the plug halfway through the season.
Community is gonna be awesome. I just hope Joel McHale doesn’t leave The Soup. But seriously – some of these shows instead of Chuck (so far)? Come on
Joel McHale on Community!!! Parenthood looks good, but with Law & Order up in the air, good luck, NBC!!
Don’t forget the “CHUCKOUT” on the week of May 11. BOYCOTT all NBC shows on the week of May 11 to protest Chuck’s removal from the fall schedule. Let’s show them that we can do more than buy Subway sandwiches.
wow those look…great…yea, really, nbc…you know what you’re doing…
I’ll give Trauma a chance maybe after the melodramatic pilot the show will settle with good character development and writing. We’ll see.
And of course I have to support our Damages alum.
The only reason I would give Parenthood a glance would be for Peter Krause. I still only think of him as Nate Fisher, so I’d be curious to see him in this.
Also, any show that has writers of Arrested Development attached definitely has my attention.
Uh – reviewing 3 to 4 minute trailers for an entire pilot seems a bit knee jerk but I think 100 Questions and Community BOTH look funny. Let’s all try and give any new show a chance to breathe.
Am I the only one for whom Community looks lame? I love Joel but that clip package was kind of obnoxious. Though, it does look better than 100 Questions which seems too desperate for words and has a very blandly pretty leading lady with no substantial character. I’m also bummed about Parenthood. I want to love it because of Katims and Krause but that didn’t sell me at all. It may be overblown, but Trauma actually looked the most interesting to me (to my surprise). I could see it on a nice night of color-inside-the-lines pseuo-procedurals with Southland.
they all sound lame!
100 questions will last a week or two if it makes it to air. EPIC FAIL.
“Too bad “How I Met Your Mother” took the “new Friends” mantle of “hip ensemble comedy”, by not even trying to copy it, being different, and casting a great ensemble.”
John, you are 100% right. 100 Questions looks bad. Remember “Coupling” from a few years back? I think it started the year after Friends ended. It was terrible, and it only lasted a few episodes. And from the look of those clips, 100 Questions doesn’t seem to be any better. If NBC execs replace My Name Is Earl with this crappy Friends-wannabe, they will truly show how stupid they are. At least Community looks decent.
Why, oh why would NBC pickup two medical dramas? With 1/3 of NBC’s primetime schedule going to Leno, there was no need to pick up 2 new similarly-themed hour long shows. I think the world would manage fine with just one of them. For 15 years, NBC got along fine with just ER. Guaranteed, both of those shows will not succeed. It’s going to be one or the other. Sadly, one of those spots could have gone to Chuck.
Well, Trauma does have the delicious kiwi Cliff Curtis (the dad from Whale Rider), but the trailer does not entrall. But I am a fan of Peter Berg as well, so I will probably give it a shot.
It just seems like NBC decided, oops, ER is gone, must have minimum medical drama quota, lets throw a couple of things at the wall and see what sticks.
Personally I think that every show but Trauma and 100 Questions will make it through their first season. I would really love to see a show live Friends again on NBC but 100 Questions is just trying way too hard using almost the exact same formula…maybe the Spring lineup will bring another Parks & Recreation, but a sitcom? We’ll just have to see… :]
on paper these shows look like we have seen them all before. It may not be a bad thing (Chuck fans go see Jake 2.0, exactly the same formula but i would say Chuck is better), but how many medical dramas can we have?! I don’t mind them cancelling some shows if they replace it with something better, but these doesnt look better!
“Community” is the only one that seems interesting, but that’s because i’m a big Chevy Chase fan.
Thank you for paying someone to rate these NBC.com promo clips, EW.com! With just thirty seconds of reading, I saved two minutes of watching the free video underneath the article copy, and STILL found out that Joel McHale’s show “looks like it has breakfast club jokes!” Roll over, Roger Ebert! There’s new thumbs in town!
I’m confused: is Ken Tucker “watching TV” or is he evaluating it? If he’s watching it, why do we care what he has to say? Don’t we have this job covered, right here, in the comments section? We’re all watching, too. Why do I want to read something written by another TV viewer? I want my TV shows made by TV show makers and I want my articles about TV shows written by people who write, or who make TV. Maybe even someone with a degree in writing or a passion for entertainment or something. I don’t think we’re going to recover from this financial crisis. I think this is the face of a dying America. A witless, directionless, soulless middle aged man punching a clock to watch TV…and patting himself on the back for it.
I totally disagree with the previous comments, which seem to imply that EW.com’s Ken Tucker is somehow less than qualified to grade advertisements for future television programs reposted from other websites. I believe that grading advertisements for future television programs reposted from other websites is not only well within his scope of abilities, but is, in fact, the purpose for which God designed him. I base this primarily on the photo of him at the top of this page. Look at the expression on his face. Is that the expression of a guy that’s needed promptly in the O.R. for brain surgery? No. Let’s call a spade a spade. He looks like Larry David after a hit of salvia. By the way, I did not write the previous two comments. I’m a third, totally different person.
As Gabe Tipton’s parole officer, Marcia Tipton, I’m required by law to inform the readers of this comment section that Gabe Tipton, Ken Tucker’s best friend, is a registered sex offender. This should in no way reflect upon Ken Tucker, who is not a sex offender. However, because Gabe Tipton IS, although you are not legally required to do so, as somewhat of an expert in these matters, I do recommend you take any of Gabe Tipton’s judgments with a grain of salt. I need to further disclaim this comment due to my unrelated relationship with Gabe Tipton as his ex-wife. A word of explanation may be in order. First, I married Gabe Tipton. Then we got divorced – NOT BECAUSE HE WAS A SEX OFFENDER, but because we weren’t compatible. THEN I joined the police academy and eventually became a parole officer, while, simultaneously and unbeknownst to me, my ex-husband, Gabe, became a sex offender, which, after a short prison term, landed him in my care. There is more to this story but I’m out of
I am CBS President Carly Nichols, announcing that this fall, CBS.com will be presenting an exclusive mini-series event based on the true story of sex offender Gabe Tipton and his former spouse/parole officer Marcia, as told through the eyes of passionate television promotional video web critic Ken Tucker. Entitled “Dinosaur Wars 2070 AD, The Ken Tucker Story,” it will premiere at our site, but then be re-posted here at EW.com, within the framework of Ken Tucker’s patented and absolutely indispensable grading system. It all starts this October, right here at EW.com, by way of CBS.com, sponsored, on both sites, by General Motors. General Motors: Why just motors, when you can General Motors?
NBC: You are dead to me. You killed “Life” and “Chuck” is hanging out there. I will not watch any new shows on NBC.
Ken Tucker still has a job here?
After all the doggy-poop he wrote about American Idol, who even CARES what this d-bag thinks.
Judging from the trailers I saw on Hulu, only Community and Parenthood could turn out at least decent. The rest are tired old formulas with so-so, if not downright unappealing casts. House, Mentalist, Lie to Me, Chuck – what all these recent good shows have in common are an appealing lead character or an appealing character couple. What NBC is offering are mostly ensemble shows with casts of barely knowns who do not appear to have any chemistry. And the lead girl from 100 Questions is absolutely horrible – her English accent sounds fake and very annoying (which is weird since she is British), with a diction of someone with mouth full of pebbles. This show reminds me of the previous attempt to remake Coupling in US. If I am not mistaken, one of the actors on 100 Questions actually was in that stinker too… Not a good sign
These so-called “mini” reviews are too long and don’t give me a clear idea of what these promotional clips for upcoming shows look like they are about.
A better approach would be to review the NBC one sentence summaries of the clips so that I know if I should read the summaries of the video clips and then move on to watching the video clips themselves, assuming the summaries interest me.
As is, these paragraphs are too long and I lose interest well before I get to the convoluted letter grade system below.
Looks like I’ll find another way to tide myself over until next fall, when I’ll certainly be watching TV, but not reading “Watching TV.”