With the debut of Fox’s Sleepy Hollow last night, the new 2013-14 season officially got underway. Unlike some mainstream media outlets, we don’t get advance screeners of the shows we watch, so I can’t really talk about any of them with any sort of authority. But I am struck by a couple of trends.
It feels like the Eighties all over again. Michael J. Fox, he of Family Ties and Back to the Future fame from when I was a kid, has a new show on NBC. It’s called, perhaps not too creatively, The Michael J. Fox Show, and it’ll premiere Sept. 26. It’ll be going head-to-head, oddly enough, with CBS’ The Crazy Ones, starring Mork and Mindy’s own Robin Williams. A few days earlier, James Spader—the lecherous rich dude I remember hating so much in Pretty in Pink—is the focal point of The Blacklist on NBC. And then, of course, you’ve got ABC’s The Goldbergs, which actually takes place in the 1980s. I guess television executives figure that we fortysomethings are done with our parachute pants and breakdancing and have nothing better to do than watch lots of television featuring some familiar faces and—well, parachute pants and breakdancing.
Sometimes, of course, it may feel like the 1780s—at least when it comes to Sleepy Hollow’s flashbacks. Which brings us to another theme …
Supernatural is still super-popular. Spurred on, I’m assuming, by the runaway success of ABC’s Once Upon a Time, semi-popularity of NBC’s Grimm and CW’s inexplicably long-running show The Vampire Diaries, the networks trundled out a host of new fantastical (though not necessarily fantastic) shows to sate their audiences’ thirst for fantasy. And most till the same well-dug ground.
NBC is reintroducing an updated Dracula to the masses. ABC launches a Once Upon a Time spinoff called, helpfully, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. CW has its own Vampire Diaries spinoff planned called The Originals. And let’s not forget that FX’s weirdfest American Horror Story trots out another bizarre serial, this one titled American Horror Story: Covens.
It’s looking pretty manly out there. Don’t know if this qualifies as a trend or not, but it seems a couple of testosterone-themed shows are making some early-season waves. There’s CBS’ comedy We Are Men, about a jilted groom who starts hanging with a bevy of divorced guys. And tomorrow, Fox premieres its caustic show Dads, about two grown men trying to get along with their aging fathers.
I don’t know if there’s anything out there I’m particularly dying to watch and/or review out on the docket now (though I admit, being the superhero guy I am, I’m looking forward to casting eyes on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Are you eagerly anticipating anything?
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