The fall TV season kicks into high gear this week, with networks bombarding viewers with far more shows than the average person could possibly keep track of (let alone watch). To navigate through this chaos, here's a look at what's worth your time, and what's best left unseen.
Last year, it looked as if the sitcom was in its final death throes, and although there are several above-average new comedies this season, they are all single-camera, laugh-track-free shows that stay away from traditional sitcom tropes. Which means that anything which looks like a familiar sitcom, such as Twins (The WB, Fridays, 8:30 p.m.), is probably not worth your time. From the creators of Will and Grace, Twins is just as shrill and irritating as the long-running gay-straight buddy show, but without the advantage of being groundbreaking in any way. It follows twin sisters set to take over a lingerie company owned by their parents. One is brainy and anti-social, while the other is an air-headed hottie. You can imagine the rest, but you'd probably be better off if you didn't.
Besides laugh-track-less sitcoms, the other big trend this year is mysterious supernatural shows, specifically ones that vaguely deal with alien invasions. The worst of these three (although they are all so vague, it's hard to tell whether they'll shape up to be interesting or frustrating) is Threshold (CBS, Fridays, 9 p.m.), which comes off most of the time as a weak Sci Fi Channel-quality movie-of-the-week. It's sad that the drama with the season's best cast (Carla Gugino, Charles S. Dutton, Peter Dinklage, Brent Spiner, Felicity's Robert Patrick Benedict) is also the one with the worst dialogue. Its aliens are the most conventional, but the problem is all in the hackneyed, clunky execution.
September 19 is the week's busiest day, with five premieres vying for your attention. Of those, the one to watch is Kitchen Confidential (Fox, Mondays, 8:30 p.m.), one of the season's well-crafted new comedies. Based on a best-selling nonfiction book, the show follows a washed-up chef (Alias' Bradley Cooper) given a second chance to run an upscale restaurant. Although the book was gritty and dark, the show has a warmer, lighter touch while retaining a certain manic energy.
The closest thing to a successful traditional sitcom this season is Confidential's direct competition, How I Met Your Mother (CBS, Mondays, 8:30 p.m.). Although it's not as good as the more unconventional comedic offerings, this high-concept show about a man (voiced by Bob Saget) telling his children, well, how he met their mother as his recollections play out in flashback, does have some real laughs and a winning cast that includes Alyson Hannigan, Jason Segal and Neil Patrick Harris hamming it up as the hero's crazy best friend. The central gimmick has the potential to become tiresome, and the jokes are sometimes weak, but the show has a genial charm that's missing from something such as Out of Practice (CBS, Mondays, 9:30 p.m.). Despite its pedigree (created by two former Frasier producers, starring Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler), Out of Practice, about a bickering family of doctors, is crass, predictable and not at all funny.
Of the three alien shows, Surface (NBC, Mondays, 8 p.m.), falls somewhere in the middle. What sets it apart is that its aliens come from underwater (how they got there is, so far, a mystery). The pilot sets up a sprawling cast and four separate story lines that could get unwieldy over time. Although it's got a sense of scope to rival a feature film, Surface ultimately trades in mostly warmed-over sci-fi clichés that only seem mildly interesting because they're on TV rather than in the movies.
Competing with the three alien shows for copycat concept of the season are two legal dramas that take place on LA-area beachfronts and find mismatched lawyers partnering up to take on wacky cases.
The first, Fox's Head Cases, premiered last week, and this week brings the second, Just Legal (The WB, Mondays, 9 p.m.). A sort of Doogie Howser-meets-The Practice, Just Legal features Jay Baruchel as an 18-year-old law school prodigy whose youth prevents him from getting a job with any prestigious firms. Instead, he teams with a washed-up ambulance chaser (Don Johnson) and takes on poor criminals and personal injury suits. Like Head Cases, Just Legal succeeds or fails on its characters rather than its cases, but it's too focused on the cases to give those characters as much time as they need to develop. Still, there's promise in the show if it can pay less attention to the courtroom and more attention to the bonding.
The best of the new comedies, but only by a slight margin, is My Name is Earl (NBC, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.), with Jason Lee as a white-trash loser who wins the lottery and decides to balance karma by righting all the wrongs he's committed in his life. It's a concept that could easily make for a sappy drama or a predictable, formulaic comedy, but so far that's not the case. The show doesn't shy away from depicting Earl and his family and friends as ignorant losers, even if they are ultimately lovable ignorant losers. There is a certain off-kilter charm to the show, although at its core it's not nearly as off-the-wall as something like Arrested Development.
Back to the aliens, the best of the invasion shows is named, appropriately enough, Invasion (ABC, Wednesdays, 10 p.m.). It's just as slow as its brethren (if anything, it's slower) but shows signs of knowing how to use the leisurely pacing to build genuine tension. It also helps that with its aliens-taking-over-people premise, it's less reliant on cheesy special effects than Threshold or Surface. There's still the possibility that all of the hints and vague threats will come to nothing worthwhile, but for now, Invasion is the best new drama of the season.
The exhausting week ends with another show from uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who now has a whopping nine shows airing on prime time TV. E-Ring (NBC, Wednesdays, 9 p.m.) takes the patented Bruckheimer procedural formula and applies it to the people who work at the Pentagon, with patented Bruckheimer results. It's little more than CSI: Pentagon, although with Taylor Hackford directing the pilot and Dennis Hopper and Benjamin Bratt starring, it's got impeccable production values. But the writing is simplistic and jingoistic and lacks the bite of the early days of The West Wing, to which the show has been compared.
If your TiVo doesn't have scorch marks on it by now, next week is just as packed.