On May 30, the sixth and final season of The Americans wrapped up on FX. Featuring the now married couple of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, the show told the story of 2 Soviet spies raising a family in 1980s Washington while reporting back to their homeland.
This will go down as one of the better works of the decade, and I look forward to seeing how it ends once I watch the final four episodes. Any day now.
We have reached the half way point of our look back at the offerings for the new fall season. Here’s what Wednesdays had on tap for the fall.
7:00
Arrow – Season 5 finds Oliver Queen trying to save the city, both as the Arrow and as mayor. This also promises to be the last season of flashbacks, making me look forward to season 6.
Honestly, Arrow’s new team isn’t really clicking with me. Hopefully the spring switches back to the old configuration.
Lethal Weapon – FOX reboots the movie series with Damon Wayans. Might be worth a look, at least.
I made it through a couple of episodes before bailing. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really anything special.
8:00
Modern Family – The comedy, entering its eighth season, is really starting to show its age. It’s still fun, but the plots are starting to get a little out there.
A strong first half of the season for the long time favorite.
Criminal Minds – The show returns for its twelfth season minus original stars Shemar Moore, who left last spring, and Thomas Gibson, who was fired for attacking a writer in the early going of this season. To fill the void, Aisha Tyler has been bumped up to a regular cast member and Paget Brewster returns as Emily Prentiss.
A few new faces have joined the BAU and they continue to solve crimes.
Frequency – The CW reboots the movie, replacing Dennis Quaid with the fetching Peyton List.
The first season wraps up tonight, as father and daughter fight crime together, separated by time.
8:30
Black-ish – After a strong second season, the show returns looking to improve yet again.
This might be my favorite comedy currently airing.
9:00
After a successful first season, The Bridge returned for a second season last July and, for me and seemingly others, quickly went off the rails, leading to FX pulling the plug on a third. To be honest, I didn’t even make it through the entire second season, watching a few episodes and then deleting the rest from the DVR after the cancellation was announced.
The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers And Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever – Alan Sepinwall
Starting in the late 1990s, as cable networks started to look to provide more viewing options than reruns of Benson and The Rockford Files and struggling netlets looked to find an identity in order to challenge the big 4, television entered what can only be described as a golden age of quality programming. TV critic Alan Sepinwall looks at the 12 shows that blazed this new trail, garnering hundreds of Emmy nominations in their wake.
The main leader of this revolution was HBO, which aired 4 of the 12 series Sepinwall profiled. Whether it was the goings on in Emerald City in the prison drama Oz or the dirty dealings of the western Deadwood or the drug-fueled and gang-infested streets of Baltimore in The Wire or the family run New Jersey business on The Sopranos, HBO showed that their “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” promos were more than just a slogan.
Seeing the success that HBO had with their scripted dramas, other cable networks looked to change their fortunes by following the same path. FX was looking to reinvent itself and succeeded with The Shield. AMC broke through in a big way with two hits, Mad Men and Breaking Bad, the only two shows in the book that are still on the air. Even the channel formerly known as SciFi managed to find themselves a hit with the remake of Battlestar Galactica.
The one place it is much harder to be revolutionary is on network TV, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. Against all odds, ABC took a germ of an idea from an outgoing network chief and somehow ended up with Lost. The WB, trying to find something to air besides “ethnic” sitcoms, turned to a re-imagined Buffy The Vampire Slayer. NBC also looked to the cineplex for inspiration and found themselves with Friday Night Lights. Not to be outdone, FOX managed to turn what could have become a tiring gimmick into the long running 24.
Sepinwall goes back and interviews most of the power-brokers behind the scenes of these revolutionary shows and provides an in-depth look at how they came to be and the struggles it took to get them on the air. If I wasn’t already reading Sepinwall’s reviews, I would certainly start after finishing this book.
It’s Hump Day. Time to take a look back at my thoughts on the midweek offerings for the fall season.
7:00
Animal Practice – When the best thing about your pilot episode is the monkey that played Annie’s Boobs on Community, that’s a good sign that your show is in trouble. When you keep cutting to the monkey because you know it’s the best thing about your pilot, that’s just sad. There is some promise here with Justin Kirk and JoAnna Garcia, but I don’t plan to stick around in the off chance they find it.
It’s hard to imagine that a show centered around a monkey did not become a huge hit and was instead the first show to be yanked off the air.
Arrow – The CW tries to give the Smallville treatment to Green Arrow. I’m willing to give it a shot and hope for the best.
A decent enough show, but nothing spectacular. I could see this following the Smallville path and lasting for years, with my interest waning somewhere along the way.
7:30
Guys With Kids – Having watched the first episode, which premiered last week, I can only say that this feels like a comedy that could have been on 20 years ago. And that is not a compliment.
I couldn’t even tell you if this show is still on the air.
The Neighbors – I only saw a brief clip of this show, but it was enough to tell me that I am not the target audience for this show. I’m not even sure who that target audience may be.
So I took one for the team and watched the pilot episode and, as I thought, this was not for me. Some people actually seem to enjoy this show, so more power to them.
8:00
Criminal Minds – Jeanne Tripplehorn joins the team for season 8, replacing the departing Paget Brewster.
The wrinkles are starting to show more and more. They’ve tried to introduce something of an arc for this season, but it really hasn’t been done all that well.
Modern Family – The family is expanding, as last season ended with Gloria revealing she is pregnant. This continues to be a consistently funny show.
Still bringing the funny, although most of the news about Modern Family this season has been about off the set drama involving Ariel Winter and her mother.