Pilots, Part Eight: I'm No Superman

Only one show on the docket today, so let's jump right in with ABC's -

No Ordinary Family

No Ordinary Family is about a somewhat ordinary family who develop amazing superpowers.


Here's what I like about this show. They seem to be focusing on the "family" part of the title. The "no ordinary" part is a nice complication, but at its core this is a family drama. That's a fresh way to tell a superhero story. The family has some serious family problems, and they've suddenly developed crazy abilities on top of that. It's simple and nice.

I find it a little odd that there is a crime-fighting element. The father (The Shield's Michael Chiklis) seems to think he's Batman now, getting all vigilante and stuff. It works in the pilot because it speaks to the father's character (he wants to be a superhero), and it's a further complication for the family to deal with. In the last few scenes however, they seem to be setting up the crime-fighting as a major part of the show, with dad getting himself a secret lair and the emergence of super-villains. I just hope the plan is to keep it tied in with the problems of the family.

The powers that each character develops were well chosen. They are completely woven into who the characters are and what they want. For example, the working mother (Julie Benz) develops super speed and is better able to make time for work and family.

It's nice. I'm curious to see where it goes.

The last September pilot premieres tonight on NBC - Law & Order: Los Angeles!

Pilots, Part Seven: Friday-Style Justice

That title seems like I'm reviewing Dragnet. Worry not. It's been six or seven years since the last time they remade Dragnet, so hopefully we have a couple more years before the next one. No, I'm here to talk about the new Friday night dramas, Blue Bloods on CBS and Outlaw on NBC.

Blue Bloods

Blue Bloods is about a family of cops and lawyers in New York. Guess what they do? Fight crime!


It's a cop show (and you know how I feel about those by now), but the family element is really nice and gives it something unique. There's going to be lots of opportunity for discovering these relationships over the course of the series.

The thing I hate most in a cop show is the whole good-guys-vs.-bad-guys thing, but Blue Bloods has taken great strides to mitigate that. Sure they get the bad guy in the end, but the main drama of the episode has to do with police brutality. Is it okay for a police officer to step outside the law if it saves a life? Whenever you can give characters opposing viewpoints where neither is right or wrong - that's good drama to me.

Outlaw

Outlaw is about Cyrus Garza (Jimmy Smits), a Supreme Court Justice who resigns to return to practicing law.


I have some major quandaries with the premise of this show. First of all, Garza leaves the Supreme Court because he wants to be able to actually make a difference, to really seek justice for the people. Huh? Since when is the SUPREME COURT impotent to affect the law or make just decisions? Surely he had more power to control these things as a justice of the highest court in the nation than he will as a litigant for a private law firm.

Equally perplexing was the fact that Garza is supposed the be "the most conservative Supreme Court justice", as appointed by George W. Bush. In the world of Outlaw, "most conservative" seems to translate to "most apathetic to the problems of the American people". The episode begins with Garza being guilted into leaving the Supreme Court by the memory of his dead father. No longer will he be the cold, ambivalent, conservative justice. Now he's going to fight for things like gay marriage (I'm seriously not even exaggerating. He said the words "gay marriage").

He leaves the Court specifically to take on the case of a convicted murderer on death row seeking a new trial. Now, yes, of course the man is discovered to be innocent later in the episode. But Garza has no reason to believe that the verdicts of his trial and appeals were wrong. He stops being the most conservative Supreme Court justice to become the worst kind of bleeding-heart liberal. I don't get it.

The show does offer some fun legal plot twists and interesting interpretations of the law. It keeps the episode interesting. But between the bizarre agenda-pushing origin story and Garza's tendency to make long speeches about morality and justice (while questioning a witness even!), it's not easy to enjoy.

Lone Star's abysmal numbers from last week sank even further last night. Looks like my top pick this fall is done for.

UPDATE: Yep, it's gone.

Up next is No Ordinary Family premiering tonight on ABC.

Pilots, Part Six: Unfunny People

Pilot week continues with My Generation on ABC, $#*! My Dad Says on CBS, and NBC's Outsourced.

My Generation

My Generation is a mock-umentary show about nine high school graduates from the class of 2000. Ten years later, the documentary film crew catches up with them to find out where they are now.


There's some cool things about this show. It's inventing it's own format. It's honestly portraying people in their mid-twenties in a way that TV seldom does. The thing is, I didn't like it.

I think the problem may be that it was trying too hard for that realistic documentary feel. The result is that nothing much happened. Entirely too much time was spent on one-on-one interviews with the characters and narration about the characters. I want to see scenes, please! These people's lives were a little too far on the side of realistic. Real people's lives are not very interesting. That's why my facebook mini-feed is not a hit TV show.

The first episode had the burden of establishing not only who these nine people are, but also who they were ten years ago and what happened in the past ten years to make them who they are now. (Hint: Most of the time it was 9/11.) Instead of doling the exposition out interspersed with some kind of STORY, this glut of information was just dumped on the viewer for most of the episode.

There's another thing, but I'm hesitant to say it. I hate to give opinions that limit the kind of stories we can tell, because execution is always more important than premise. But there's a reason television has seldom tackled a realistic show about people in their mid-twenties - it's depressing. I don't think it's impossible for it to work, but it would have to be handled really well to not be a total buzz-kill. My Generation has the added... what's the opposite of a bonus?... the added opposite-of-a-bonus of showing us these characters as they are graduating high school with high hopes and great expectations. And then we see how far they've really gone - not very. Which is completely realistic, but not very uplifting.

Anyway, I applaud this show for stepping out of the box and trying something other than doctors/lawyers/cops. I'm actually kind of interested to see where it goes because the format is so unique.

$#*! My Dad Says

$#*! My Dad Says is about a young man (Jonathon Sadowski) who loses his job and has to move in with his crotchety father (William Shatner), who says shit. It's loosely based on the popular Twitter feed, Shit My Dad Says.


I didn't actually think it was that bad. Rephrase: I didn't think it was as bad as I thought I was going to think it was. It wasn't funny, but then neither was anything else this fall. It's a standard Odd Couple format (How will this mismatched pair live together?), which has been done again and again, but I don't think it's necessarily dead yet.

What this show does have going for it is an awesome cast, including Madtv alumni Nicole Sullivan and Will Sasso. The four stars do a great job of delivering jokes that aren't so good. If the quality of the writing picks up, I could see this being a decent comedy.

Outsourced

In Outsourced, a manager from a novelty catalog company (Ben Rappaport) is sent to run their call center in India.


What is with all the non-funny comedy pilots this season? Is it me? I watched the premiere of The Office and laughed, so I don't think my funny bone is broken. And I wanted to like this show. I really really did. But there is just so much bad going on here.

I was really pleased when I first heard about this show. There is a dearth of Arab and Indian characters on television and then here's NBC making a show where most of the main cast is Indian. A show that takes place in India, no less. But from what I saw in the pilot, it looks like that was supposed to be the joke. All the humor seems to come from a place of "India! What a silly place! They worship cows and eat gross food! They have humorous misconceptions about normal American people!" I wouldn't say the jokes were offensive, but I wish the tone of the show was more inclusive of this other culture, rather than taking every opportunity to point them out as the Other.

I know you were all missing the cops and lawyers. Well, worry not. Tonight there's Blue Bloods on CBS and Outlaw on NBC.

Pilots, Part Five: The Lawyer Who Loved Me

I'm back with the next batch of pilot-y goodness. We've got Undercovers on NBC, Better With You and The Whole Truth on ABC, and CBS's The Defenders. Let's begin with:

Undercovers

Undercovers features a married couple who are also CIA agents (Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw). After five years of retirement, the agency has roped them back in.


Once again I feel I must draw a comparison to Alias. The reason is two-fold. For one thing, Alias set the bar for any spy show, and it's a tough mark to hit. But also, both Alias and Undercovers were created by J.J. Abrams.

Abrams is back with his trademark witty banter and the kind of fun-filled action/comedy romp we love him for. Oh wait. That's not what we love about J.J. Abrams?

Abrams has actually become popular for setting deep and complex characters in the context of a dense mythology (e.g. Lost or his recent Star Trek film). Undercovers feels like what Alias would be if you stripped away everything that made it an important and critically-acclaimed series.

I can appreciate it if Abrams wanted to try something new (there was certainly no need for him to recreate Alias) but this feels more like pandering. When compared with his other work, Undercovers seems self-consciously commercial.

It's fun and fast-paced. I can definitely see people watching it. I was just hoping for something more.

Better With You

Better With You is a comedy about three couples in three different stages of relationships: the engaged-after-two-months young lovers (Joanna Garcia, Jake Lacy), the young couple in a serious nine-year relationship (Jennifer Finnegan, Josh Cooke), and the parents who've been married 35 years (Debra Jo Rupp, Kurt Fuller).


Better With You is funny enough. I got a few laughs from the episode. But I'm not really impressed. It feels stale. The cast is made up of two-dimensional stock characters. There's nothing new about the premise or execution. We've been there, done that a hundred times before, often with better jokes.

This show is also not what it claims to be, at least not yet. Yes, it has three couples. But aside from the gags that opened and closed the episode, it doesn't do much in the way of comparing the three relationships. This may develop more in future episodes. The pilot had a story about six people that happened to be paired up. What I think would be more interesting is to give each couple a story in the episode, with the three stories linked thematically (think Sex and the City) and use that to explore how the three relationships are fundamentally similar or different.

Maybe I'm thinking too hard about what's meant to be a light 'n' fluffy comedy? I could be wrong, but I don't see this one becoming very popular.

The Whole Truth

The Whole Truth has an interesting twist on the courtroom drama. It follows both the prosecution and the defense as they prepare and try their case. In the end, only the viewer learns "the whole truth".


The premise is so simple, I'm surprised we haven't seen it before. (Maybe we have and I just don't know about it?) In your usual lawyer show, you're rooting for one side or the other. You're thinking "I hope they get that bad guy" or "I hope that innocent man goes free". The Whole Truth keeps things evenly balanced so you're never quite rooting for either side. You get the delightful stance of just being on the side of justice. As I watched I found myself thinking "I hope they get that bad guy. Unless he's not bad. Then I hope they acquit. I just hope they do the right thing either way." Isn't that interesting?

A complaint I have with the pilot is they seemed to have too many balls in the air. The case was really twisted up so that no single aspect of it got very much screen time. It sometimes felt rushed, especially in the courtroom sequence that was essentially a montage of all the witnesses.

I always prefer shows with longer story arcs, but this is a strong enough show that I think I might check out it's stand-alone episodes from time to time.

The Defenders

The Defenders is about a pair of brilliant-but-flawed defense attorneys (Jerry O'Connell and Jim Belushi) in Las Vegas.


I don't have much to say about The Defenders. It's a lawyer show. I like lawyer shows, generally. I didn't find the characters terribly interesting, although the case they tried in the pilot was fun to watch. It fell into a sort of moral grey area, raising questions about the thin line between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.

The action was a little one-sided. Obviously they're not going for the same balance as The Whole Truth, but the show seemed unfairly prejudiced against the prosecution and even the judge. It was like everyone was out to get our heroic defenders.

Nothing too thrilling. Might be worth a watch if you're a big fan of the lawyer stuff.

Things are finally slowing down - no more four-shows-a-day for me! Tonight offers My Generation on ABC, $#*! My Dad Says on CBS, and Outsourced on NBC.

Pilots, Part Four: Cops and 'Coms

Whew! All this TV watching is harder than it looks, no lie. It's pretty much taking over my life and it's only Wednesday. So please appreciate that fact as I tell you about NBC's Chase, FOX's Raising Hope and Running Wilde, and Detroit 1-8-7 on ABC.

Chase

Chase is about a gaggle of U.S. Marshals in Texas tracking and collaring dangerous fugitives. As one character put it, "It's like hide and seek - with guns."


This cop show was a bit more palatable for me, because it at least breaks away from the usual format a little. Instead of solving a crime and arresting the offender, Chase just spends an hour on trying to do the second part. It adds a little variety to this fall's lineup of cop procedurals, but seems to lead to some repetitive action in the pilot. (He's at his mother's! Oh, we missed him. He's at his girlfriend's! Oh, we missed him. He's at the motel! Oh, we missed him. He's at the Mexican border! etc etc) I don't think it's impossible to get more creative with the show's premise on a weekly basis. There's plenty of ways to chase a crook. I just didn't see it in this episode.

Laying in hints about Annie Frost's (Kelli Giddish) backstory was handled clumsily, as in this exchange:

FUGITIVE
Didn't your mother teach you girls shouldn't play with guns?

ANNIE FROST
My mother died when I was eight, so no.

Really?

Ultimately, it's just another cop show. 'Nough said.

Raising Hope

Raising Hope is a comedy about a 23-year old (Lucas Neff) who finds himself with custody of the infant he conceived during a one-night stand. He and baby Hope live with his parents (Martha Plimpton, Garrett Dillahunt), so he'll get a little help from them.


It took me almost half the episode to really get into the groove of Raising Hope. It's decidedly not joke-y. There are few laugh-out-loud moments. But once I understood the rhythm of the show, I began to really enjoy it. It's sort of similar in tone to Arrested Development or Juno - quirky, awkward, with heart.

It's definitely not the best place to go for laughs, but this show's got style. I could definitely see myself watching some more of it.

Running Wilde

Running Wilde is about a self-centered billionaire (Will Arnett) and a liberal do-gooder (Keri Russell) living together in his mansion. Maybe they'll learn a few things from each other.


Well, for starters, it's not very funny. But more importantly, it makes no sense. The first episode was dedicated to getting this crazy mismatched pair to a place where they would decide to live together. It didn't work for me. They didn't earn it.

The billionaire wants the hippie to live with him because he has a crush on her. That's okay, I guess (although he's kind of moving a little fast). But why does she agree to live with him? No, I'm really asking you - why? Is it because her daughter doesn't want to live in the jungle anymore? There's other non-jungle places they could live. Is it so the daughter can go to the school in that district? There are other homes in that district. There are other schools. Is it because the hippie thinks she can change the billionaire? Maybe, but it still doesn't work for me. Why does she care? She hates him. None of this adds up to them living together in my mind.

I think she decides to move in with him because she's secretly always dreamed of living in a television sitcom.

I don't like it. Next?

Detroit 1-8-7

Detroit 1-8-7 is about homicide detectives. They fight crime. In Detroit.


Cops. Murders. It's pretty much NYPD Blue or the first half of Law and Order. The only somewhat fresh aspect is that it's filmed in a rough, mock-umentary style.

The climax of the episode involved our standard "out-of-the-box" detective (Michael Imperioli) defusing a standard hostage situation by relating to the criminal with a standard heartfelt monologue.

No, thanks.

Take a break from the cops with tonight's shows about lawyers and spies! Undercovers is on NBC, Better With You and The Whole Truth on ABC, and CBS brings you The Defenders.

Pilots, Part Three: Cops and Cons

It's pilots galore this week. Today I'm talking The Event on NBC, Lone Star on FOX, and CBS's Mike and Molly and Hawaii Five-O. (I haven't seen Chase yet.)

The Event

The Event is an action/mystery show. What do the missing girlfriend, stolen plane, and mysterious group of people in captivity have to do with one another? And what-oh-what is the titular "event"?


Whether creator Nick Wauters was influenced by Lost or not, The Event is definitely following in that show's footsteps. I think it's safe to say that this show would not have been made were it not for the success of Lost. But let's leave that aside.

The Event is thrilling in a mind-bendy sort of way. The timeline of the pilot was almost too twisty to keep up with, but it worked. I admired the device of seeing a scene several times from different perspectives - the scenes meant something different every time because the viewer had new information.

The pace of the episode was heart-palpitatingly fast, except for the unusually long and dull romantic-cruise-sequence. (It was like, "What is this scene doing here with no guns and car chases and planes crashing?") So far there are no characters I was able to really hook into, but I don't think that's what they're going for. The characters feel like pawns to serve the plot and the mystery (in a good way?).

In the end, I don't care about the characters, but man do I want to know what the heck is going on. My prediction is that The Event will be like last season's Flashforward: it opened with a bang, but fizzled out quickly. We'll see.

Lone Star

Lone Star is about a con-man (James Wolk) trying to get out of the game while still leading a double-life, juggling two wives in two different cities (Adrianne Palicki and Eloise Mumford).


This is my favorite pilot I've seen this month. It's really proof that execution is far more important than concept. The premise of Lone Star didn't appeal to me at all, and had me a little confused ("How do you make a show out of that?"). But the episode is artful and unexpected. It's smart, good story, just the right amount of soap. I didn't expect to feel so personally troubled watching it, but it plunks you right down in the main character's predicament, pulled in several directions at once. Dare I say I was moved by it?

I don't have much else to say about it other than a strong recommend. I can't wait to see if it continues as strongly week-to-week.

UPDATE: Because this show is interesting and original and enjoyed by me, it is of course already in danger of cancellation.

Mike and Molly

Mike and Molly is a romantic comedy about a police officer (Billy Gardell) and a fourth grade teacher (Melissa McCarthy) who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous group.


This is probably my least favorite pilot I've seen this month. It's not funny. With a sitcom, I can forgive a lot if the jokes are funny. They're not. The majority are fat jokes of the fat-people-only-think-about-eating variety.

The jokes betray the story and the characters. For example, when Mike and his partner are investigating a burglary at Molly's home, Molly's sister is smoking marijuana out of an apple because her bong was stolen. What? Even if the joke was funny (which it's not) I would still be offended by it. It's just bad storytelling. Why WHY would ANYONE smoke marijuana and talk about their stolen bong in front of the police? And WHY wouldn't the officers say or do anything about it? It's not even acknowledged.

The best way to write comedy is to let the jokes come organically from the action of the episode and the flaws of the characters. Mike and Molly is a bunch of weak one-liners forced onto a threadbare story. Yeah, thumbs down.

Hawaii Five-O

Hawaii Five-O is a remake of the popular cop show of the 1970s. They fight crime. In Hawaii.


I'm running out of steam here, so briefly: Hawaii Five-O has a great core cast of characters, which is what really sells a procedural cop drama. The characters are fun and the relationships dynamic. The four main characters are well cast (Alex O'Loughlin, Scott Caan, Daniel Dae Kim, Grace Park). The show keeps the fun of the original but ditches the cheese factor.

No real complaints, I guess. I just cannot care about TV cops anymore. If you go in for that sort of thing, this one's worth a watch.

Tune in tonight for Raising Hope and Running Wilde on FOX, and Detroit 1-8-7 on ABC (more cops!).

Pilots, Part Two: Spy! Spy! My Darling!

My fall TV coverage continues with CW's

Nikita

Nikita is based on the 1990 French film La Femme Nikita. It's about a girl (Maggie Q) who was trained as a spy by the government agency known as the Division. When the Division killed her fiance, she fled and went into hiding for three years. Now she's back to take down the corrupt organization that ruined her life.


I hate to draw comparisons between Nikita and Alias, but it's kind of hard not to. Their premises are mighty similar, right down to the murdered fiance. And although I'd love to see more shows like Alias, there's something that show had that Nikita lacks. Alias was an action show, but what made it so great were the variety of characters and interesting relationships.

That's what we watch TV for. People will go see a movie for the action and special effects and pretty girls in bathing suits. But people will not tune in to a TV show week after week for these things. What keeps viewers coming back are characters that they care about, that they feel a connection to, a need to check in with them once a week. Nikita delivers on action and pretty girls, but none of the characters really grabbed me, least of all Nikita herself.

A pilot needs to be able to prove to me that there are lots of interesting stories to be mined from the series premise. Nikita will definitely be able to deliver great action and thrills, but I'm struggling to see where the emotional stories will come from. So once again, this doesn't seem like a show I'll be watching.

Things start to get crazy Monday, September 20 with the premieres of Chase and The Event on NBC, CBS's Mike and Molly and Hawaii Five-O, and Lone Star on FOX. I'll be trying my best to keep up!

Pilots, Part One: The Truth About Cats and Dogs

Welcome to my first post on new pilots. To be clear, I don't fancy myself a journalist. I'm not attempting to write true "reviews" of new shows, but just to throw out my thoughts on what worked for me and what didn't. I'll also be focusing on the storytelling and not on things like production and performance.

Today we're talking CW's Hellcats and FX's Terriers.

Hellcats

Hellcats is about Marti (Aly Michalka), a pre-law college student who loses her scholarship. Faced with having to drop out, she joins the cheerleading squad to get a new scholarship. Let's start with the bad.


The Bad

The episode begins with a voice-over. I could do a whole post on the problems with and merits of voice-overs (hmmm... maybe I will). In brief, voice-overs can sometimes be used as a lazy way to puke exposition all over the viewer. This seems to be the case here. It's ridiculous though, because any piece of exposition we learn from the voice-over comes up naturally in dialogue before the first commercial break. You could literally just chop the first two minutes off the episode and not miss out on anything.
Marti only initially appears to be our eyes into this world. In reality, the voice-over completely disappears until the very end of the episode (where it is just as unnecessary). What is this voice-over doing? What purpose does it serve? It's a crutch. Get it out of there.

A big part of the show's premise is that Marti is going to bring some fresh moves to the Hellcats. She's not a typical cheerleader, and the team is desperate for a way to stand out so they can win something or other, you get where I'm going with this. There's a scene where the coach tells the team they are going to throw out their old routines and "improv". Sounds pretty cool. But then we cut to: the Hellcats doing a rehearsed cheerleading routine. In perfect unison. Hmmm... something is not right here. This show is unwilling to follow through on its premise. Which is a shame, because how much cooler would it have been to see thirty cheerleaders busting a move, doing their own thing, and then finding a way to bring it all together as a routine? Way cooler, I'd say.

Maybe the biggest problem I had with the episode is that it kind of didn't work as an episode. It worked as a pilot, introducing characters and establishing conflicts that will carry through the series. But the episode didn't work on its own. It was the story of Marti joining the squad... for the first half. And then I don't know what it was about. It meandered around a little, finally ending with a cliffhanger that felt like we were getting somewhere. Because there was no beginning-to-end through-line, I didn't know what I was watching for. An episode should have a question that remains unresolved until the end, where the resolution might raise further questions for the next episode. For the first half, the question was, "Will Marti find a way to pay for school?" After she makes the squad, the question is, "Will something, anything happen?"

The Good

I know it seems like I didn't enjoy the episode, but I actually did. I like the characters. The cheerleading is well choreographed and fun to watch. The episode did a fine job of expeditiously setting up a lot of different conflicts in just one hour. And the cliffhanger ending I mentioned was rather well executed and has me intrigued. Bottom line, I'm not impressed enough to want to commit to the full season, but I could see myself checking out another episode or two. It's fun to watch, and that's no small thing.

Terriers

Terriers stars Donal Logue (Grounded for Life) and Michael Raymond-James (True Blood) as a pair of private eyes. That's pretty much it. They solve crimes for money.


What I can say about Terriers that I couldn't quite say about Hellcats is that after seeing the pilot, I know what a typical episode looks like. On Terriers, two guys solve a crime, there's some clever misleads and plot twists, some humorous bits, and a few scenes about their relationships with the women in their lives. That's exactly what a pilot should tell me - what I will see if I tune in next week.

The pilot also sets up a Big Bad, a villain that will carry through at least a few episodes, possibly even a whole season. I like that it blends a procedural format with sort of a longer-arcing story.

The show takes a tried and true format (crime-fighting duo) and executes it very well. It has that recognizable FX-y grittiness. And as a bonus, the main characters are original, complex, and likable. That being said, I don't think I'll be watching any more of it, but only because it's not really a genre I enjoy.

Next up is Nikita, premiering tonight on CW!

Ally McBeal v. Not Ally McBeal

I've been watching old Ally McBeals this week. I just discovered that they play it in the afternoon on some cable network called Reelz (??). What a treat! The show has held up rather nicely, even though it's been 13 years since it premiered. (Can it be? How old am I?)


One of my favorites things about the show is Nelle, played by Portia de Rossi. It's a great character. She's gorgeous, but is never reduced to the status of sex object because she's also a competent, well-spoken professional.

But it's Ally's show, and everything has to work in relation to the protagonist. This is why Nelle is so perfect. She is the physical manifestation of all Ally's insecurities. Where Ally is awkward and erratic, Nelle is poised and precise. And making the beautiful Calista Flockhart look like just-your-average-girl is a feat that could only be accomplished by putting her next to de Rossi.

In any type of story, it's important to have a strong mix of characters. On television, it's essential. It's the beating heart of a series. We love Ally because she is insecure and flawed, and it sure is fun to see the sparks fly when she is on screen with Nelle. It's a great source of drama (and comedy) throughout the series.

If anyone would like to purchase the complete series set of Ally McBeal for me, I would be okay with that.

TV For Fall/Fall For TV

Autumn is almost upon us, and you know what that means - jackets! I can't wait. Love to layer.

But only slightly less important is the fall TV season. I've decided to try to watch as many pilots as possible this month, sort of a crash course in TV pilots for myself. To keep me on track, I'll be writing about all of it here.

You should play along at home. First up are the premieres of Hellcats on CW and Terriers on FX, this Wednesday (9/8).