Monday, September 10, 2018

The Most (and Least) Anticipated Questions of 2018-19 Television



Here we are a week after Labor Day and already fall television is starting to ramp up before the network start their new seasons. Four shows I am watch just lauched last night.
o here are some questions I am looking to be answered by the time we hit next summer.

1. What the Fork Is Going On in The Good Place? – The Good Place blew our forking mind when the ended the first season with Eleanor figuring out that they were, in fact, in The Bad Place. The show did their big twist a bit early in season two when The Judge sent Team Cockroach back to Earth to live out their lives to see if they would end up being worthy of The Good Place at the start of the list episode so we did get a sneak peak of what season three may be like. It may be a bit precocious to think this will be the whole season considering Michael’s second try only lasted two episodes of season two. All I know about the third season is that Jason better enjoy the Jacksonville Jaguars’ run through the playoffs last year.

2. Will DC Universe Succeed? – We have finally reached streaming saturation where we have to ask of every new service, can it survive? Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu seem to have their foothold with the big pockets of Disney, Youtube, Facebook Watch, and Apple TV lurking (granted deep pockets does not necessarily mean success, remember Ping?). Which begs the question is there a place for niche services? Seriously, who is paying six buck a month to get AMC or FX ad free? Do you at least get their movies uncensored? The latest to put their hat in the ring is DC which is offering a vague number of their comic book movies, shows, and actual comic books along with one exclusive series airing at a time released with weekly episode for eight bucks a month (or seventy-five for a yearly subscription). Does not seem enough to me for a permanent subscription, but I will likely sign up once a year or so for a month just so I can see Lyla Garrity in a superhero costume. Now if only they would greenlight a Saturn Girl spin-off.

3. How Will Homeland End? – How apropos that a show with a bi-polar lead would be the most uneven show in the history of television. As great as the first season was, the third season was equally bad. Since killing off Brody, the show has evened out (though the long slow death of Quinn was excruciating). Two seasons ago, the show backed itself into a Russian hacking storyline before it turned out to really be happening. The show recently announced next will be its last. We left off with Carrie completely off her meds for a lengthy amount of time. Kind of a shame the drama of freeing Carrie wasn’t itself the final season.

4. Will Manifest Be the Next Lost? – Lost launched thirteen years ago and during it six year run, every network tried to replicate its deep seeded mythology with sprawling cast to no avail. Very few got a second season and none I believe got a third. Since they all failed, it has been awhile since a network has tried something so ambitious. Can Manifest, about a plane (how Lostian) lands fire years with the passengers thinking it was a normal flight, capture the magic that Lost did or will it just go the way of The Event?

5. Will the Veronica Mars Reboot Be Any Good? – Veronica Mars has long been the holy grail of gone too soon television shows. We did get a movie thanks to Kickstarter but it was too fan servicey to be great itself. Four years later it looks like we may get a full television revival on Hulu (no official announcement yet but creator Rob Thomas has tweeted out multiple acticles on the subject without actually commenting on it himself). So will the reboot be any good? The movie was good enough and with Thomas and Kristen Bell back, I am definitely optimistic. And free of network constraints, just how dark and gritty will the show get? Can we expect a full frontal Dick Casablancas?


As the great philosopher Butt-Head once pondered, how would we know if something was cool if there weren't things that sucked; here are the five least antedated questions:

1. Who Will Get Roseanne’d Next? - A wise man once said, “Twitter is stupid and Instagram is Twitter for people who can't read.” Twitter has long been a cesspool for the angriest people to shout at each other and earlier this year Roseanne got axed from her highly rated show for being racist. Then about a month later Guardians of the Galaxy writer / director James Gunn was fired, also by Disney for making poor pedophile jokes on Twitter (or so some claimed were jokes; pictures at him at a pedophile themed party did not help his cause). Which begs the question, who will get fired because of Twitter next? Can I put money on Alec Baldwin, who has an upcoming ABC show and surprisingly has never been blacklisted for his very inappropriate tirades including calling his eleven year old daughter a “rude thoughtless pig.” I know it will not be Rian Johnson, another Disney employee and director of an upcoming Star Wars film, who recently deleted all of his tweets older than a year which is probably the wisest thing anyone can do besides never even going on Twitter.

2. What Will Be the Next Crappy Reboot? – Sure there are some reboots to be extremely excited about that may be coming soon like the previously mentioned Veronica Mars as well Alf, and a Deadwood movie. But for every worthy reboot, there seems to be ten crappy ones. Joining Will and Grace and Roseanne The Connors this fall include Murphy Brown, Magnum P.I. Last Man Standing, and Charmed. We will also be getting soon The Hills, Roswell. And also in the works are Bewitched, Designing Women, The Facts of Life, The Muppet Show, Party of Five, The Twilight Show, The Animaniacs, and a double dose of Melissa Joan Hart reboots in Clarrisa Explains it All and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (though she will only appear on the former).

3. Where Did the Runaways Runaway To? – It took an entire season for the titular runaways to actually runaway, to the point I do not really care at this point. I am still kind of rooting for the parents.

4. Will FX Continue to Let Kurt Sutter Overindulge? - The first couple seasons of Sons of Anarchy were pretty good. Then the gang went to Ireland and things dragged on a bit. When they got back to California, it did not get much better because FX’s laisse faire attitude let creator Kurt Sutter make longer and long episode that got more and more excruciating to watch. I think there was even a two hour plus episode that included three musical montages in the final season, one sung by Sutter’s wife who was also a star of the show. Aw, nepotism. So his follow-up was a hard pass for me and apparently most of Sons’ viewers because it was canceled after one season. Sutter is back in the motorcycle game with the spin-off with Mayans MC. But if FX continues to give him carte blanche, I think I will pass. And my cable guide has the first episode at over an hour and thirty-eight minutes and episode two at an hour and a half, so definitely hard pass. Seriously FX, notes are good sometimes.
5. Can CW Succeed Going to Six Nights a Week?: The CW was launched twelve years ago and two years later it was outsourcing its Sunday schedule before abandoning the night a year later. A decade later the CW is reviving the night.

And here are the shows I will be watching this fall and when they begin.

Mondays
8:00 – The Neighborhood (CBS, October 1)
10:00 – Manifest (NBC, September 24)

Tuesdays
8:00 – The Gifted (FOX, September 25)
9:00 – Blackish (ABC, October 16)
10:00 – The Purge (USA, September 4)

Wednesdays
8:00 – Survivor (CBS, September, 26)
8:00 – The Goldbergs (ABC, September 26)
9:00 – Modern Family (ABC, September 26)
9:00 – Vikings (History, November 28)

Thursdays
8:00 – The Good Place (NBC, September 27)
8:00 – The Big Bang Theory (CBS, September 27)
8:30 – Superstore (NBC, October 4)

Fridays
The First (Hulu, all episodes September 14)
Into the Dark (Hulu, new episodes on first Friday of the month starting in October)
Marvel’s Runaways (Hulu, all episodes December 21)
8:00 – Blindspot (October 12)
9:00 – Midnight, Texas (October 26)

Sundays
8:00 – Supergirl (The CW, October 14)
9:00 – Shameless (Showtime, September 9)
9:00 – The Last Ship (TNT, September 9)
9:00 - The Walking Dead (AMC, October 7)
9:00 - Ray Donovan (Showtime, October 28)
10:00 – Kidding (Showtime, September 9)
10:00 – You (Lifetime, September 9)
10:00 - Escape at Dannemora (Showtime, November 18)


No comments:

Post a Comment