In an effort to wring more money from advertisers and keep Americans fat by ensuring they stay on their couches, major networks are running unprecedented amounts of original programming this summer. Fox is even going so far as to declare the death of the traditional September-to-May TV season. Since I already spend all of my free time on my couch, I had high hopes for the five new shows that debuted on Fox in the past couple of weeks. In keeping with the low-rent offerings on other networks, though, Fox seems to have made a good-faith effort to ensure that all its shows suck.
Not that they suck on the level of, say, Who Wants to Marry My Dad? But these are certainly not the cream of the crop, nor are they the best way to introduce that supposed paradigm shift in TV programming. The best of the bunch is The Jury (Tuesdays, 9 p.m.), a courtroom drama from producers Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, creators of Homicide: Life on the Street and Oz, both gritty, critically-lauded crime dramas. The Jury's concept is intriguing, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Each week, 12 jurors consider the merits of a criminal case. As they deliberate, we get flashbacks to the trial, filling in the details and allowing us to form our own opinions about what the outcome should be. At the end of the hour, the jury renders a verdict and we see what really happened, discovering if they came to the correct conclusion or not.
With 12 new cast members each week, characterization is not The Jury's strong point. There are regulars, including lawyers, court administrators and Levinson himself as the judge, but the nature of the show means they are only given a fraction of screen time each episode, and much of that is spent explaining the case. Levinson and Fontana do their best to give each week's jurors a bit of personality, but with the little time they have, they more often end up with stereotypes. The expository dialogue is often clunky, and rare personal moments can feel jarring after 10 minutes of dry, logical evidence summarization.
Still, The Jury has the potential to develop into something interesting, and that's more than you can say for the other scripted drama, North Shore (Mondays, 8 p.m.), a nighttime soap Fox is pushing as this summer's The O.C. About the only thing the two shows have in common, though, is pretty people on beaches (the shore in question is in Hawaii). The O.C. is a soap, sure, but what sets it apart is clever dialogue, mostly good acting and often rich characterization. North Shore's world of an upscale hotel has none of that, and its stars are pure C-list. Sadly, I'll probably keep watching it, bad acting, predictable plots and all, because I have a sick weakness for nighttime soaps.
Survivor and The Apprentice producer Mark Burnett's The Casino (Mondays, 9 p.m.) is a show that promises to do for the Golden Nugget what The Restaurant did for Rocco DiSpirito's New York eatery: make it look poorly run and not worth showing on TV. New Nugget owners Tom Breitling and Tim Poster are allegedly the stars of the show, but Breitling is an inert log on camera, uttering barely four sentences in the first two episodes, and Poster is a diminutive, annoying motormouth. Because of this, Burnett has packed in "colorful" hotel guests to hold down the main story lines, including a quartet of swingers, a pack of frat boys and a variety of creepy high rollers.
The Casino's biggest problem is not that it makes Vegas look seedy and unappealing, nor that it's full of obviously staged bits, nor that no one on the show is remotely likable, but that it's got sex, gambling, glitz and potential mob ties and yet manages to be incredibly boring. Thanks to Nipplegate, Fox had Burnett edit out anything remotely risqué, which means the show is one long teaser for intriguing things which never happen. The frat boys try to get their virginal friend laid ... and fail. A young couple might try swinging ... but doesn't. I could tune in again ... but I won't.
At the bottom of the barrel, and almost not even worth mentioning, are the worst, and naturally highest-rated, new sitcoms: Quintuplets (Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m.) and Method & Red (Wednesdays, 9:30 p.m.). Quintuplets is the kind of lame family sitcom with cookie-cutter stories and zero laughs you would have seen on ABC's TGIF lineup in the late '80s and early '90s. Method & Red is only marginally better, with rappers Method Man and Redman playing, in a real stretch, rappers Method Man and Redman, who've moved into an exclusive (read: all-white) suburb after achieving music-biz success. Almost all of the jokes are of the "look at them crazy white people" variety, though there are a few semi-amusing jabs at the Cribs-style excess hip-hop stars inevitably flaunt.
Fox has proven that networks can indeed churn out uninspired crap year-round, and no one need wait all the way until fall for laugh-free sitcoms, contrived reality shows and cheesy melodramas. Clearly, it's a quantum leap in television broadcasting.