A month has passed since the networks revealed their 2011-2012 shows to us, the fickle television viewers of America. As a whole, there’s a good deal of sameness of previous seasons, with some interesting shows thrown in to give us all hope; even though those interesting shows may not make it past the first month. However, when you take the season apart, you can see some trends emerging for the next season which bode well for some genres and very bad for others. Here now are the five trends to look for come September.
1. The (Canned) Laughter Returns: Yes, comedies became fashionable again some time ago, but they were minus the live studio audience or laugh track, used to point out the funny parts or the parts the writers thought were funny. This season, the multi-camera, live audience/laugh-track sitcom is returning with a vengeance, and not just on CBS, which has held the title for a few years now. Both NBC and ABC are joining the fray with a number of new sitcoms, including ones starring Tim Allen, Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings. If viewers laugh along with the pre-recorded chuckles, their return may not be short-lived.
2. Women Win: The haze of estrogen covering your flatscreen isn’t a hallucination. Women are taking over all genres during the upcoming season. In comedy you have the aforementioned Whitney Cummings and Zooey Deschanel headlining programs. In drama, Maria Bello and Poppy Montgomery go toe-to-toe with the men of their respective police departments. Add the return of Charlie’s Angels to the mix, and the women are ready to kick some butt.
3. Men Lose (or are Losers)!: There was a time when television’s leading men were hearty folk who took nuthin’ from no one and got the women all hot and bothered with just a twitch of their mustaches. This upcoming season, the opposite is in effect. Especially in ABC’s lineup, with shows like Man Up, Last Man Standing and Work It showing viewers how wimpy men have become. Perhaps ABC will mean All Men Being Castrated for the new season.
4. Looking Back at Nostalgia: With Mad Men now entering the not-so-swinging mid-’60s, the networks have decided it would be a good time to premiere shows reflecting the decade’s earlier years. NBC will be rolling out The Playboy Club, about the workers and players at the legendary Chicago club, while ABC will premiere Pan Am, about the pilots of the famous airline and the early 1960s stewardesses who loved them. For more recent nostalgia, the networks are bringing back folks like Tim Allen, Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Van Der Beek onto new shows for new audiences. And, of course, there’s the remake of Charlie’s Angels that will either bring joy or scorn to ABC.
5. Fantastic Fantasy; Silent Science Fiction: No predicting the future for the networks which, thanks to cable, seems dystopian. Instead, they’re sticking to the realm of fantasy for their new programs. NBC will premiere Grimm, about a homicide detective who finds out he’s part of an elite group of hunters who protect humanity from the supernatural. On ABC, Once Upon a Time focuses on a bail bonds collector who discovers she is the lynchpin between the real and fairytale worlds. Even FOX is jumping into the fantasy realm with the J.J. Abrams-produced Alcatraz, which revolves around the mysterious return of the prison’s most notorious residents. By the way, FOX is also premiering the new science fiction drama Terra Nova. But the budget was so huge on this show it’ll be a surprise if the network doesn’t pull the plug before the opening credits.
Rich Keller is an East Coast native who recently transplanted himself and his family to the foothills of Northern Colorado, which surprisingly has no ocean. A former writer for TV Squad and ClickClack TV, Rich can now be found on Twitter and at his brand new blog Cranial Burps.
Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Jun 11, 2011 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
Pollyanna here, hoping for the success of Terra Nova! :)
Same here. In fact, of all the new shows next season it’s about the only one I’m excited about. To me, the upcoming season is even less exciting than this past one, and it was pretty damned bland. The networks see something that works and they copy the hell out of it and it seems to fail miserably every time.
I remember after the success of Animal House all three broadcast nets had their own copies of that movie in sitcom form and all three failed spectacularly. Cable seems the place to go for originality and risk-taking while the broadcast nets just keep cranking out the same, bland crap.
I’m actually pretty excited about the new network offerings this fall. Tom – I think you will like Grimm (though Friday nights are jam-packed this fall). You’d probably also like Ringer and Alcatraz.
I’m a little excited about Alcatraz, but the reason I didn’t mention it is because I’m worried it’s going to become “mysterious reappearance of criminal of the week” show and get repetitive. But, yeah, I’m a little excited about it. Grimm and all the other shows with apparently straight-up fantasy scenarios I am not at all excited about. I very much dislike fantasy shows, I’m much more of a hard science fiction fan.
I know there’s a fine line separating fantasy and science fiction, but I’ve always felt that any story involving magical elements has given itself a pass to write away anything as “magic” and that’s just too easy a path. Hard science fiction at least gives us some technobabble and when written by someone who knows their science can at least come across as plausible. Magic, on the other hand, can just write in any possibility. That’s what turns me off to it.
For example, I just don’t understand the appeal of the Harry Potter series. I tried, but couldn’t get the appeal. Magic and fantasy just leaves me cold, although I do understand that many people, my own kids included, really love those genres. They’re just not for me and I’ve given many of them a real chance, especially because my kids love them and I enjoy sharing things with my kids.
Unless Terra Nova is a massive failure by the second week, I doubt Fox will pull the plug too quickly because of the amount of money that’s been sunk into the show. I really liked the Spielberg-produced Earth 2 a few years back, so here’s hoping the viewers will give this one a shot … and it has dinosaurs!
As for the “canned laughter,” I think the return of the three-camera sitcom can be traced directly to the success of Hot in Cleveland, which proudly proclaims, “Taped before a live studio audience” at the beginning of every episode. Sure, most of CBS’ sitcoms are in that arena but Hot in Cleveland, which NBC turned down, made the networks sit up and take notice that traditional sitcoms can still work. The question is, will any of the new ones this season have the writing to back them up?
Earth 2 was on the air a little more than “a few years back”, it was 17-18-19 years ago.
Seriously?
Oreo’s right about that. It premiered in 1994. Feel old yet? :o)
Yes, Tom, I am aware of that (I’m old, but I know how to use IMDB!). That was a sarcastic “seriously?”, not an actual question, because Oreo just likes to bust my balls, and since Glee is in reruns and I don’t get much of a chance to say “Kurt Hummel is a good guy,” he had to get me on semantics. I should have said, “I really liked the Spielberg-produced Earth 2 last century…” but when you’re old, you try to be cute and use “few” instead of “several” or “ages ago” or anything else that denotes a huge passage of time so you don’t actually feel old! :-)
(And that’s all meant in the most humorous of ways!)
LOL, the sarcasm passed me by completely! I guess that’s what I get for playing on the web at almost 2 in the morning after getting 4 hours of sleep and spending 8 hours running network cables whilst getting covered in fiberglass insulation.
I’ve been known to use “few” to represent, oh, 25-30 years, too. Unfortunately for me, all my parts are either malfunctioning or just plain falling off so I have been unable to make myself feel anything less than old and decrepit for the last “few” years. :o)
Overall, I’m with Tom. I am hoping for some pleasant surprises in the new shows, but I thought the Up-Fronts were particularly unpromising–even worse than last season.
Thanks for all the comments to my guest clack. For those of you who visited my new site this weekend, only to see a ‘Hello, World!’ statement, I am now live at https://cranialburps.wordpress.com.