Fall TV Preview 2008: Part II (Thursday Through Sunday)

...And thus continues and concludes our two-part coverage on the impending glory of this year's Fall TV schedule, this time with no mention of Jerry O'Connell.

Thursdays
Once the best night of television of the week, I'll take a full hour off of television during the 7:00 hour. However, the 8:00 hour belongs to The Office and 30 Rock (8:00 and 8:30, NBC). The Office is coming off its weakest season yet, and will be running hour-long episodes until October, when NBC fills the 8:30 slot with half-hour segments of SNL's "Weekend Update", but it still remains one of the few watchable sitcoms on television. 30 Rock, meanwhile, gave us a fantastic second season and has no reason to let up this fall. I'll top the night off with some ER (9:00, NBC), which is mercifully ending its 14-year run this year and reportedly will bring back a lot of characters from the past to give proper endings. I stopped watching this before Dr. Mark Greene died, so this will probably be a horrible decision. But OMG, can we please get an update on Nurse Hathaway and Doug "Hey, I'm Clooney now" Ross? Either that, or I can use this opportunity to watch the first four seasons of LOST with Brigitte to catch up for its midseason start...
-Qualler

Yes, Qualler! Lost FTW! Forget ER, there's no way that could be (darts eyes, smirks) remedied. Gotta say, you've left out some real winners for this night of TV. The imported Japanese game show Hole in the Wall (7:00 pm, FOX), also known to YouTubers as Human Tetris, will definitely get watched by me at least once, because I am happily a part of mankind's devolution. Kath & Kim (7:30 pm, NBC) will surely be wretched, but Selma Blair makes me feel funny down there if you catch my drift, so I have to give it a chance. And then of course, 30 Rock will continue to prove that The Office is a cesspool of caricatures of what used to be a fine show. But I must admit, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (9:00 pm, FX) will blow both out of the water. Their new blog is an excellent timesuck, so this new season will undoubtedly inspire me to be even more of a conceited hilarious jerk than I already am. I also have slight hopes for the terribly titled Testees (9:30 pm, FX), starring the two acclaimed Canadians behind the cult hit Kenny vs. Spenny (never seen it). I also plan on giving chances to the time-travel cop show Life on Mars (9:00 pm, ABC), if only because the British original was much buzzed and Harvey Effing Keitel is in the American one, and Eleventh Hour (9:00 pm, CBS), which is another spooky investigation show, this time with Dark City's Rufus Sewell, who I've been waiting to do something respectable again as he's a fine actor.
-ChrisFridays
When I first read the new TV schedule, I assumed Crusoe (7:00 pm, NBC) was some kind of cop / detective / serial killer drama probably featuring a central character named Crusoe (probably Jimmy Smits, Scott Bakula, or Luke Perry) who was totally into Robinson Crusoe and solved crimes in that style. No, this is ACTUALLY a COSTUME PERIOD DRAMA ACTION thing, that is LITERALLY an ADAPTATION of the book Robinson Crusoe. In the words of Gossip Girls, OMFG! Seemingly made to fill schedules for high school teachers teaching their Crusoe unit, it seems unlikely that NBC would cancel a show midseason that is only 13 episodes and probably can't go more than one season, right? I'll save myself the pain of watching chickfests The Ex List (8:00 pm, CBS) and The Starter Wife (9:00 pm, USA) by going out and buying season one of LOST on DVD today and using that time to continue to catch up. Yep, I'm jumping on the bandwagon. Later in the evening, naturally I'll catch the best non-scripted show on television today, The Soup (9:00 pm E!) and top it off with Real Time with Bill Maher (10:00, HBO) at least until the election is over.
-Qualler

I can't wait for NBC to oversimplify one of the most fascinating and offensive pieces of American Literature. However, if there were any way to do the book justice, it would be to do it as a 13-hour single season series, so who knows what could happen. But I might just check out Sanctuary (8:00 pm, SCI-FI) instead. I'm thinking with all the Battlestar mania in the past year, they maybe (just maybe) have invested in a show about the protection of the world's monsters that could be intelligent, socially conscious, and spooky fun. But I'm not holding my breath. Other than that, I'll also catch my beloved Life when it is killed off by moving to the dead zone of television, Friday night. Joel McHale makes me so happy, but Bill Maher makes me want to castrate myself, so I will join Qualler for The Soup but leave immediately afterward.
-Chris
Saturdays
Nothing new or good is on Saturdays on the networks, but the DVR catches episodes of Deadwood and Oz (8:00 and 9:00 pm, HBO2) which I've only caught the first two and first episodes of, respectively, but love how they hearken back to a day when HBO wasn't afraid to take chances on dark series like these. News that the network's pulled the plug on the promising-sounding Preacher doesn't bode well for future programming of this ilk. Yeah, I'm a fan of Big Love and In Treatment but will be missing this kind of darkness if they can't get their act together. When the rest of the Blogulator contingent ends up at the Qualler family household, we'll watch Saturday Night Live (10:30, NBC) on DVR and hope it builds on the promise of last season's very funny moments.
-Qualler

Woo boy, I can't wait to get into Oz and Deadwood with Qualler. If he invites me over, that is. I also will stay for SNL, but in between I might have to persuade him to let us check out Crimetime Saturday (8:00 pm, CBS) if it really is what I think it is: two solid hours of real crime news stories where the person on trial is always demonized and hilariously overwrought transition shots and cheesy mood music fill the entire deal. Other than that, on Saturday I just may have to do this thing called "going out."
-Chris

Sundays
At 7:00 I'll catch yet another CW new series Valentine (7:00, CW). Seems like a lot of high concept series this Fall, this time about a family of Greek gods that live among us. Speaking of beings living among us, the next hour brings True Blood (8:00, HBO) about vampires that live among us thanks to synthetic blood. Buzz has been wildly all over the charts for this one but at least it's not another HBO series about a therapist. I'll set the DVR to tape me some Dexter (8:00, Showtime). I have yet to see the second season, but if the DVDs prove that season three is a must, I'll pony up the cash to get Showtime for three months while Dexter airs. I'll catch some of the new pay cable series after all is done like Little Britain USA and The Life and Times of Tim (9:30 and 10:00, HBO) which both look potentially intermittently funny (though not as funny as the potentially soon to be finished Flight of the Conchords. ) Then I'll get to sleep to get ready for another week of wasting away in front of the boob tube. I love Fall!
-Qualler

I have strong reservations about all the new HBO shows, but I cannot deny that I'm excited to try them all out, especially a vampire-related one to quench my thirst for all things vampiric after watching a multitude of bloodsucker-themed X Files eps on DVD. Speaking of Muldor, even though last year's series premiere of Californication (9:00 pm, Showtime) made me feel icky inside, I really love me some Duchovny, so maybe I'll give it another shot on DVD. Otherwise, the only other Sunday I'm looking forward to this fall is November 23rd, when the TV movie 24: Exile (7:00 pm, 11/23, FOX) premieres. Jack Bauer in Africa, less torture, a sneak peek at Tony Almeda coming back to life, oh my! It will most assuredly be a train wreck, but what a nostalgic and fun train wreck it will be.
-Chris

P.S. This is our first experiment in posting more than once a day here on The Blogulator, so if you haven't been here since yesterday, don't forget to catch Brigitte's rundown of the Gossip Girl and ANTM premieres below!

This entry was posted by chris, on Thursday, September 04, 2008. You can leave your response.