And so it begins. For some, fall is the time of the new school year. For others, it's the change of seasons and looking forward to the holidays. But for those of us with spreadsheets to track our television viewing, fall is the time of evenings spent on the couch, absorbing and dissecting the deluge of new and returning shows on the six major networks. The fall season is a ridiculous concept, and one that puts TV fans at a disadvantage compared to fans of other media; imagine if nearly every movie or CD of significance in a given year was released in the span of a few weeks. No one can possibly watch everything, even armed with multiple TiVos. With my pitiful two VCRs, I've tried to catch as many new shows as possible in hopes of finding some signs of life.
NBC and Fox both started their fall premieres a little early this season, but Fox's quasi-year-round scheduling means the network isn't debuting any new scripted shows until November. I skipped low-rent reality offerings The Complex, Renovate My Family and The Next Great Champ, and judging by the ratings, so did most other people. Instead I looked to NBC, which rewarded my interest with a standard cop show, a CSI rip-off and a tired sitcom. It's enough to make Father of the Pride seem innovative.
Not that any of this stuff is particularly bad. It's all just bland and uninspired. The most fun to watch so far is Hawaii (NBC, Wednesdays, 8 p.m.), which doesn't do anything to deviate from any number of other cop shows plot-wise, but at least has some nice scenery, both in its locations and its actors. There's some decent playful banter between a pair of young cops played by Ivan Sergei and Eric Balfour, and it's nice to see one-time James Cameron regular Michael Biehn getting steady work, even if he does look a little worn.
Also full of familiar faces but steering completely clear of any notion of fun is Medical Investigation (NBC, Fridays, 10 p.m.), which has the blandest title since Friends. The show is NBC's stab at CSI, except instead of investigating crimes, these forensics experts investigate medical problems, as the title helpfully and uninterestingly points out. Blending cop-show clichés with doctor-show clichés, Medical Investigation gets the worst of both worlds. Neal McDonough, late of the overrated Boomtown, is loud and unlikable as the team's loud and unlikable leader, and the rest of the cast just cruises along in his wake. The first two episodes had nearly identical plots, but they weren't necessarily terrible plots. If you like CSI and ER, and are willing to forgive some dramatic excesses and thin characterizations, it's not a bad way to kill an hour.
If those two shows (and really, anything else on NBC's schedule aside from Father of the Pride) fail, it'll just be part of the game, but NBC has plenty more riding on the Friends spinoff Joey (NBC, Thursdays, 8 p.m.). The buzz is that the traditional half-hour sitcom (unlike laugh-track-less, single-camera shows like Scrubs and Arrested Development) is dead, and sadly, Joey is a clear indication of why. Taking Matt LeBlanc's Friends character to LA and teaming him with a loudmouth sister (Drea de Matteo) and brainiac nephew (Paulo Costanzo), Joey offers roughly the same quality of an episode from the last season of Friends. It's got a chuckle or two per episode, but it feels mighty familiar and tired even right at the start. Frasier, this show is not.
Amidst all the fall network premieres, two reality shows about six (or seven) strangers living together in houses start new seasons on cable. The 15th (yes, 15th) season of The Real World (MTV, Tuesdays, 10 p.m.) takes place in Philadelphia, and no matter how frustrating this show gets, I'm unable to stop watching it. I'm sure I'll regret saying this after a few more episodes, but for now I'm pleasantly surprised. The trend toward casting hot, built partyers instead of more normal-looking people with interests other than drinking continues, but this year's group actually busts stereotypes instead of reinforcing them, with the small-town Southerner being open-minded and the athletic, urban black guy being gay.
If you missed Real World parody The Surreal Life (VH1, Sundays, 10 p.m.) when it aired on the WB for its first two seasons, make sure to catch it now. The show puts six washed-up celebrities together in a house, and the results are hilarious and unpredictable. The producers are casting geniuses, and this year's bizarre romance between rapper Flavor Flav and Danish action star Brigitte Nielsen is hands-down the most entertaining thing on TV right now.