Zombies are Set to Walk Any Day Now, Pumpkin Spice is Everywhere and That TV Show You Totally Didn’t Expect To Come Back Is Totally Back! #PremiereWeek #ABC #FOX #NBC #CBS

Zombies are Set to Walk Any Day Now, Pumpkin Spice is Everywhere and That TV Show You Totally Didn’t Expect To Come Back Is Totally Back! #PremiereWeek #ABC #FOX #NBC #CBS

That’s right, laids and gents, the time has come for another crazy fall premiere week/season. Why season instead of just one or two weeks? Because the political shenanigans that have threatened to not only upend our country and current society as we know it under the leadership of orange-skinned or pant-suited tyrants are only now getting to the debates, which have frightened the major networks (and a few cable channels) into premiering their new shows at ridiculously staggered intervals. Because of Monday night’s first presidential debate, NBC has chosen not to premiere Timeless until October 3, while ABC has decided to do a similar thing with their new drama Conviction. While I think that delaying the premieres may be good in this case, I say that with a huge caveat: many of the new shows that premiered later into the season last year didn’t have a good chance to catch on, or couldn’t break preset viewing patterns. With the exception of Supergirl, ABC’s Wicked City, AMC’s Into the Badlands and a few other crap shows not worth mentioning struggled to find audiences. And while Into the Badlands may have gotten a renewal, most everything else did not. While I am well aware of the binge/Netflix-culture of today’s gotta-have-it world not being as tied down to certain norms, I still think that all shows benefit from one set deluge in the fall and again mid-winter after New Years, rather than a new show premiering each month, then going on hiatus, replaced with something for a few short weeks then back and forth and back and forth. While it encourages bingeing, I’m still not convinced that we as audience members enjoy the show more or as much as we think we do when bingeing. It makes water cooler talk way harder. But anyways...

Wait a minute, was that whole thing my opening paragraph? Oh my god! That was way too long. And then I went too deep into the subject matter of the schedule and... That definitely should’ve been in the second paragraph. Now I’ve wasted a second paragraph talking about how the first should’ve been at least two paragraphs, completely missing the point that this post is to inform people about some of the new shows coming this fall. Yeah, still knockin’ that rust off. Let’s get to the shows.

This year, let’s begin with the wimp of the major networks and go from there. I’m talkin’ about NBC.

NBC

For whatever reason—either because they think they’re returning shows are so fantastically great that they don’t need any new stuff or because they really couldn’t find anything that great to put on after all the really good shows went to FX and AMC, the good shows to ABC and FOX, and the decent shows to CBS—NBC has decided to premiere just three shows this fall. Frankly, none of them float my boat all too well, even after seeing countless commercials for them during NBC’s wonderful coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympics. While I keep an open mind for all shows, I can’t figure out which one of the three is the least appealing, so we’ll begin with The Good Place.

The Good Place

The Good Place follows the life—er... I mean, death and afterlife of Eleanor Shellstrop played by Kristen Bell. After living a far-less-than-stellar life rife with misanthropy, apathy for others, self-centeredness and a slew of curse words, she dies and goes to heaven or... The Good Place. Ha! Get it! Because it’s the name of the show. The joke’s probably funnier on the show. Her first overwhelming instinct is that she has somehow ended up in the wrong place. Not only should she not be in heaven, but she makes the argument that she shouldn’t even be dead yet. She makes this argument to Ted Danson in his return to goofy comedy after stints on more serious CBS dramas. Ted plays the mayor of the city in which Kristen’s character now resides. While he promises to look into the mystery behind her appearance in heaven and if her death was warranted, Kristen is paired with dorky black guy Chidi played by William Jackson Harper. Not only is he her guide to the new heaven where everything is roses, rainbows, lollipops and drunken nights with non-hangover mornings, but he is also revealed to be her soul-mate. Surprise, fool!

From here, the show seems to roll along in the same vein as most fish-out-of-water sitcoms as Eleanor explores/learns what it means to truly be a good person. Based off the commercials alone, I can’t figure out who this show is quite for. I can’t see it appealing to actual Christians as the spectrum of afterlife belief is so varied amongst all of them, that I’d find it hard to believe they would watch something like this for an extended period of time. Also, the euphemisms and funny twist-of-words for all the curses that she tries to employ through the show, while cute in a 30 to 60-second commercial, may grow immensely annoying over the course of a season, though I’m sure the writers would tone that down. Even worse, the show seems to be very much about nothing, and not in a good Seinfeld way. Again, I haven’t seen an episode and will give you my judgment after three episodes as always, but at the moment I can’t see this turning into a full series (maybe a full season) of comedic shenanigans that sitcoms so often thrive off. For instance, because it is heaven there shouldn’t be any random hookups—a singles’ sitcom staple. Eleanor is not married with children so the kids/family angle is gone, and she really isn’t a detective/sleuth so things like iZombie or other out-there concepts are also gone. This is really just laughing about the bad surrounded by good, which, at some point, can get old and feel more like we’re laughing at someone because they're different than us. Not that great of a message for a show billed as a wholesome comedy.

The strength of this show is in the casting as Kristen is everywhere right now and I’ve always loved her, and Danson is an old pro. Harper, while I’m not familiar with his work, also looks good. Ultimately, I think this show will be successful or fail based on the NBC network’s viewership’s eagerness to find a laugh amidst the drama-heavy slate of shows across the network. Other than this, the returning Superstore is the only real comedy that NBC has invested in after the critically-acclaimed but ratings-disappointments of Parks and Rec, Community, A to Z, Bad Judge and a slew of other shows over the last seven years. Will you tune in for a Good laugh or are you a soulless, heartless atheist with no chance of ever getting to meet Ted Danson in the afterlife? The Good Place airs Thursdays at 8:30pm on NBC.

That was a far too long preview of a show. I’ll try to cut it down to my standard from last year.

Next, This is Us.

This Is Us

Similar to The Good Place, NBC’s Olympics coverage bombarded viewers with advertisements for their new drama This Is Us. Fresh off his Emmy win for his role in FX’s American Crime Story: The People vs OJ, Sterling K. Brown was front and center for much of the commercials and promotion material. However, the sad thing in all of this was that even though they showed countless commercials for this series and even showed a reaction clip of people who watched the first two or three episodes and talked about how moving and heartwarming it was, I still have no idea what this show is actually about. That’s right, it’s another show that cannot communicate its draw within a commercial. I am flabbergasted by how someone in Hollywood would’ve elevator-pitched this successfully, but somebody did. So... Anyway, Brown is joined by Mistresses and Revenge alum Justin Hartley who, I guess plays some kind of Hollywood type, maybe an actor, though this isn’t made clear in the advertising. Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore play a young couple on the cusp of starting their family as she is in labor with triplets. Then there is Chrissy Metz who plays a fat woman who is friends with Justin’s character. She meets a fat guy and wants to lose weight and can’t get involved with a fat person right now, and being a fat guy he’s funny and lovable, and laughs all around. The commercial then ends with Brown’s character revealing that he was orphaned at a fire station by this old black guy who he confronts on the stoop of some apartment building. Angry, he tells the man that he turned out alright without him, then seems to quickly forgive him and invite him to meet his grandkids.

All of this is supposed to be heartwarming (as said by the beta-viewers on the commercial) and really make you feel for these people going through life. Apparently, there is supposed to be one strand uniting them all, but with each commercial I found myself caring less and less. Again, what is the show about? Why would I care about these characters? The commercial is so nondescript in a bad way (not in the American Horror Story good way) that this has to be my least anticipated show of the fall. It might be as fantastically touching as a Hallmark holiday movie, but.. eh! We shall see. This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 10pm on NBC. Will This Is Us become a part of you?

Lameee! I tried to do something slick and funny with that last line and it fell completely flat. Stupid words, always messin’ up what I wanna say! Moving on!

Timeless

Probably one of my most anticipated new fall shows, NBC’s Timeless stars Goran Visnjic (previously of ER fame) as a sinister time traveler who seeks to alter the history of some of America’s (and the world’s) greatest historical events. While not all of these alterations are bad (he helps the Hindenberg land safely, thusly saving the lives of three dozen people), they all have consequences that ripple through time’s expanse and effect us today. It is up to a team of three... or four or however many they want for that week to chase him through time with their own time machine vortex-thingy to stop him. See? See how easy it was to explain the concept of that show? And you can get all of that from the commercial. You’re probably even plotting in your head all the ways the series could go, the events they could cover. It’s simple, yet can get so complex. Granted, this is about concept more than character but it still has potential for great execution.

The team is filled out by Abigail Spencer (she’s a familiar face from multiple series), Matt Lanter and funnyman Malcolm Barrett. It promises fun period-piece adventures while reminding us of just how much things have changed and stayed the same. As already stated, Timeless will have a later premiere than the other two shows already mentioned. It premieres Monday, October 3 at 10pm.

ABC

Home-cave of the cancellation bear, the alphabet network always comes with a plethora of new shows to sub-in for the shows decimated by the previous season’s slaughtering of decent TV. While NBC has only three shows to premiere over the course of three weeks, ABC has a new show for nearly each night on its schedule. We’ll begin with Monday where the surprise cancellation of Castle left an hour-long hole in the 10’clock timeslot after Dancing With the Stars. In this slot, they’ve placed Conviction.

Conviction

Starring Hayley Atwell (formerly Peggy Carter of Agent Carter/Captain America-fame) as a defense attorney with a heart of gold, from what I understand the show follows her and her team as they try to solve the crime of their clients and dig into the truth of what really happened before their clients are convicted of wrongdoing... or slide when they actually did do something wrong. Either way, it puts her into a tough kick-butt-worthy role similar to her days as Carter, while giving her a softer, more nurturing edge—testament to the female-leaning edge of the network. While I am glad to see more of Hayley... Mmm, more Hayley (and there’s your sexist comment of the day. You’re welcome!), I am a little taken back by the tone of the show. Castle dominated the Monday timeslot not just because it had two lovable, charismatic leads with great chemistry, but because it played well to the drama/comedy aspect that people often like to see to wind down their first day back into the workweek. Reality shows tend to do so well on Mondays because people don’t want heavy mental fare after the exhausting Monday. But since CBS hasn’t had a problem with its shows, I’m sure conviction can do just fine. Still, after my three viewings, if I feel it is better suited for a different day, I will tell you.

Conviction airs Mondays at 10pm on ABC. It will premiere one week after the first presidential debates. Next up, American Housewife.

American Housewife

Sitcom veteran role player Katy Mixon (of Mike and Molly fame) gets her first starring role as a typical American Housewife in this new 30-minute sitcom. While the commercials haven’t quite made it clear if this is a multi-cam or single-camera show (a la Modern Family), it does have the vibe of a new-age Roseanne. Joined by veteran actor Diedrich Bader (of Drew Carey Show-fame) who plays her eccentric husband, the two navigate life as a typical American Middle-class family situated somewhere in middle America. Katy is sure to bring her down-south sass to the role and the commercials look promising, though typical of such a show.

The polar opposite of NBC, ABC has decided to go heavy on the comedy and feature, not one but two nights of back-to-back comedies on Tuesday and Wednesday, all geared toward family viewing. With American Housewife sandwiched between the likes of Fresh Off The Boat and The Goldbergs, it should play well to the same audience and eke out a modicum of success for the network. American Housewife will air Tuesdays at 8:30pm on ABC and premieres October 11^th after the second presidential debates.

Speechless

Sticking with comedy, but moving to Wednesdays, we have ABC’s Speechless. Headed by Minnie Driver in yet another attempt of hers to break into the steady paycheck of the American sitcom market, she plays matriarch to a family whose life revolves around their handicapped son. While he has siblings, the family has been forced to relocate and change schools countless times as the son struggles to fit into a society that still has lots to learn about disability adjustments. The commercials I’ve seen of it don’t delve into the boy’s affliction, but I may have missed such a diagnosis in the few times I’ve watched. The boy, however, seems to have MS as, similar to Theorist Stephen Hawking, he is confined to a wheelchair and cannot speak for himself. Here is where Reno 911! vet Cedric Yarbrough comes in to serve as some sort of speech surrogate (hence, the name of the show).

The sassy, take-no-BS, angry but lovable black man shtick on full display here, much of the comedy will be mined from the relationship between Cedric and the boy as he interprets what the young man says, and between Minnie and Cedric as he interacts with the overbearing mother. What Black-ish tried to do with modern blackness, this show will try to do with the trials and tribulations of being handicapped and being the family/caretakers of someone with a disability. Truthfully, I’m not very interested in sitcoms these days and the ones that I did like from Fox last year both got canceled. Regardless of how good these shows are, I probably won’t tune in regularly to Speechless and American Housewife. Speechless will air on Wednesdays at 8:30pm on ABC. It premieres Sept. 28^th.

Designated Survivor

Ending the comedy additions to the network, Designated Survivor ends the Wednesday night with another political drama that has promised to be unlike previous DC-centered productions. The always committed Jack Bauer—er, I mean Kiefer Sutherland returns to TV in yet another riveting role. Based around the very real idea that during large political speeches (not just the State of the Union) in which the majority of the top federal governing body is cloistered into one area (think President, Vice President, Secretary of State and on down), one person from the President’s cabin is chosen as a designated survivor to stay within a plan of succession in case something horrific happens to the entirety of the top staff. Well, something terrible happens. From the commercials we see that a bomb goes off during the State of the Union address, killing the President and pretty much everyone in the federal government. Because of this Kiefer is sworn in as President when before, he had never been elected to anything in his life—a fact we learn from Kal Penn’s character. Oh yeah, Kal Penn is in this thing, too, though I don’t know what role he plays yet. While I can see this making for a great movie concept, thinking toward the future, this show could become very stale and similar to any other political drama by the end of the first season. With that said, I still look forward to the insanity of a guy who has no idea what he’s doing becoming president amidst the country’s greatest tragedy and how he will handle that, as he and everyone around him has to know that whoever dared kill the federal government deserves a war, but more importantly wants a war. And how will his family deal with it? Obscurity to the most protected, scrutinized family in the world? Only time will tell. Designated Survivor airs at 10pm Wednesdays on ABC.

Notorious

Thursday night sees an unexpected entry in the TGIT lineup. With Kerry Washington toting around another gut-full of her NFL-baller husband and that not playing into the plot of Scandal, Rhimes and her cohorts have decided to delay the premiere until midseason. This move has made way for another scandalous show, Notorious. Hoping to feed off the OMG-crowd of Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder, Notorious follows the working relationship between a high-powered celebrity attorney and a national news show producer as they decide what will and won’t be the biggest news stories. Very similar to my own novel A Negotiation of Wounds (sequel coming soon), the show feeds on public perception and how a court case plays out in the eyes of the public, and how that makes or breaks the news and vice versa. As an example, if the news producer wants to paint the lawyer’s client in a bad light, make him America’s newest villain a la Nick Dunne in Gone Girl, then that just makes everything much harder for the lawyer. And with TV vets Piper Perabo as the news producer and Daniel Sunjata (of Rescue Me fame) as the lawyer, things promise to get hot and downright devious as they work to control the narrative at every turn.

ABC clearly has high hopes for Notorious as they have slotted it in a fantastic slot at 9pm on Thursdays right behind the long-standing Grey’s and before How To Get Away. The biggest problem I see with this is that if the writing is subpar and less than emotional, it could damage the entire brand of TGIT.

Fridays and Sundays stay pretty much the same with the exception of ABC’s Secrets and Lies making its triumphant return after delaying its spring second season premiere to take advantage of the gaping hole left in the Sunday night schedule. Though not new, it will continue in the vein of an anthology series with Juliette Lewis’ detective character picking up another case rife with secrets... and, uh... lies.

FOX

A network always searching for the next big think, FOX has come under fire in the last few years for canceling shows that had yet to hit their rhythm but was gaining steam in many fans eyes. This included such shows as Second Chance and Almost Human. While it has made questionable decisions like canceling freshman comedies Grandfathered and the Grinder, while renewing the low-rated Sleepy Hollow after one of the two main leads left, and renewing Scream Queens after a season of volatile ratings, it seems to have stuck to a few trends while bucking others. The network which has always skewed younger seems to have veered into nostalgia land to grab a slice of the older demographic this season with the onslaught of shows based on past film franchises. While they started this trend last year (or a few years ago) most notably with Minority Report, they continue it this year with the likes of Lethal Weapon and The Exorcist. With Monday and Tuesday staying much the same as last season (Lucifer moves to 9pm on Mondays), we start on Wednesday with Lethal Weapon.

Lethal Weapon

Yet another procedural that will stick heavily to the case-by-case weekly format while plying the familiar winks from the film franchise, Lethal Weapon stars Damon Wayans as Murtaugh, the freshly 50-year-old cop with a bum ticker that nearly killed him on the day of his newest baby’s birth. Much to live for and trying not to have another heart attack, he nearly retires the day he gets partnered with his newest young partner Martin Riggs (played by Clayne Crawford), a Texas transfer new to the LA scene. Just like in the movie Riggs just recently lost his wife and now has a death wish that causes him to over-commit to the dangerous and deadly in his pursuit of criminals.

So what makes this concept fresh from the 80s where first we saw it? Umm... The black guy is already a proven comedian? Honestly, nothing. The difference between this and the movie looks so negligible that it's a wonder they didn’t just reboot it into a movie. Still, with Wayans in the role of “gettin’ too old for this sh—oh, my bad! Can’t curse on network TV” guy, it could make for an interesting watch. And with the likes of McG behind the camera, it looks similar to a long-canceled show entitled Fastlane. I ain’t got time. Look it up! My biggest hope is that they don’t just have a weekly case, but that they roll with the one overarching big case that all of the smaller crimes feed into at the end of the season, but that may be too much to ask.

Lethal Weapon airs Wednesdays at 8pm on FOX, right before Empire.

Pitch

Speaking of minority capitalization—something both FOX and ABC have been very deft at achieving in the last 10 years—FOX throws viewers a curveball on Thursdays with the arrival of Pitch. Yes, I just pulled that reference out of the stereotypical entertainment-writer handbook for shows that deal with sports. Curveball. Just stupid! Anyway, Pitch, like more than a few other new shows I’ve seen pitched to us (there it is again! When will it stop) has a premise that sounds better as a two-hour movie than a 22-episode seasonal series. Even 10-13 episodes is pushing it. Pitch follows the drama, tragedy, struggle and triumph of Ginny Baker as she becomes the first woman to pitch in Major League Baseball. Played by Kylie Bunbury (I know her from Under the Dome; she is just... breathtakingly beautiful), the show flashes back and forth between her entry into the major leagues now, and what she did as a child to make it there. It is a feminist love-letter to sports. While I see no problem integrating women into the MLB as it is not a contact sport, I would have issue with the same going for football and basketball, as I’m sure plenty of fans would. 

To a larger point, I wrote that last sentence to make the point that this show courts precisely that critique. It will not be subtle about its aim and will field criticism from the point it’s trying to make. The strange part to me is that it looks like a family drama. Strange because shows with political statements to make do better when in categories similar to ABC’s American Crime or FX’s American Crime Story—far more serious and stoic about the subject matter. Again, this is only the tone I’ve gotten from the commercials so it could be far different than what I am envisioning, but we will see if it can weather the storm of critics who will hate it because of what it stands for, as well as the possibly low ratings due to the strength of its competition (it got lucky that Scandal wasn’t coming back because they’d play to a similar demo). Pitch airs Thursdays at 9pm on FOX right after Rosewood.

The Exorcist

Friday sees FOX’s old standby Hell’s Kitchen returning to open the night. We Americans still can’t get enough of the angry Brit who has another slew of men and women to terrorize in his LA kitchen. But to pair with his hellacious outbursts, FOX will air their TV version of The Exorcist. If the summer box office has told us anything, horror is huge right now. FOX Studios not only has American Horror Story playing over on FX (soon to be joined in January by Legion and Tom Hardy’s Taboo) but they also have Scream Queens on FOX. And now comes The Exorcist based on the book/movie of the same name from the 70s. Little info on this one and how it will adapt the novel or movie into a full series, but from what I’ve gathered, it is supposed to follow the exploits of Fathers Tomas Ortega and Marcus Keane as they travel the country/world performing exorcisms. Again, little is known about the full plot of the season, so I can’t tell you if this is a case-by-case procedural or if the season will stick with one or two cases that stretch a large expanse of episodes, but I must say that I am intrigued by this series. The concept of an exorcist by itself is populated with so many possibilities that I can see this series going in a thousand different directions every week, let alone throughout a full season.

The Exorcist airs Fridays at 9pm on FOX.

Son Of Zorn

Last, and probably least, is FOX’s Son of Zorn. In keeping with their Animation Domination Sunday brand that had been recently interrupted with the addition and success of Last Man on Earth, FOX greenlit this animation-live action hybrid. A great cast filled with comedy vets Cheryl Hines, Tim Meadows and Jason Sudekis voicing Zorn, the show follows an animated barbarian from another realm named Zorn. Bored with his life as ruler over this other realm, Zorn returns to our earth where he has a human son with Hines. Gone for much of the boy’s life, only now does he try to bond with him and be the father he never was. He even gets a regular job here as he hopes to stay close to the boy. Another fish-out-of-water concept, Zorn still thinks with his hefty sword first and has the mind of someone on the battlefield even when trying to adapt and adopt modern concepts. To make this simple, I do not want to see this show. I’m sure it has its good points, but... eh! It looks like a show that’ll be good for two seasons, then fizzle/slog through a third season before dying, and that’s my thought based solely off the commercials. But again, time will tell.

From FOX we move to...

CBS

Another network filled to the brim with returning fair of Survivor, NCIS and Scorpion, CBS has two new notable series. We begin on Tuesdays with Bull.

Bull

Bull stars former NCIS actor Michael Weatherly as Dr. Jason Bull, a jury consultant for the defense. From what was shown on the commercial, his job is to help the defense team and their client to choose the perfect jurors, and craft the perfect story that will get them off. In doing this, he and his team use the latest in psychoanalytic technologies to help predict the voting behavior and thought patterns of each juror both pre-trial and during the adjudication. Think of it sort of as a CSI or Law and Order but focused solely around the jury and not necessarily the victims.

If you’re into the psychology behind why people do what they do and why a jury would vote a certain way (and after watching American Crime Story: People vs. OJ, who wouldn’t be?), then this might be worth checking out, though I don’t know how much mental flossing they go into each week.

Bull airs on Tuesday nights at 9pm on CBS.

MacGyver

Testifying to the fact that Generation Xers still aren’t over their sickening obsession with everything 80s (you know they’re seriously blaming Millennials for this? Ridiculous), we have yet another classic TV series reboot. For those who aren’t in the know, MacGyver, played by Lucas Till this time around, is a clandestine government agent who uses his “unconventional problem-solving skills” (yeah, from the actual IMDb synopsis) to solve crimes and cases and whatnot. While Lucas looks well-suited for the part, and the concept and brand are highly recognizable to viewers, I can’t help but think that this show might fail based solely on the same problem I pointed out last year in my Limitless show three-week review: There is an overload of too many geniuses on TV. There’s just too many abnormally smart people on TV. 

While MacGyver may have been novel back in 1985 when first it premiered, today we see countless genius characters solving crimes using some obscure factoid they learned once in the fifth grade that happens to come in handy right now as a bomb is about to go off. We’ve seen characters use pieces of gum to fix everything from broken heels to blot out security cameras. The very concept on which MacGyver thrived has become routine. But again, name recognition is very strong. Still, with Limitless not able to eke out another season with a much more elevated concept, and MacGuyver getting the cringe-worthy 8:00pm timeslot on Fridays on CBS, I wouldn’t be surprised if it only lasted a season, regardless of how good it may be. Again, we’ll see when I deliver my three-week reviews for these new shows.

The CW

I wouldn’t normally cover the CW but since I did a little of that last year, I can dive in here again. The CW will have a few new shows to go along with the network-switched season 2 of Supergirl. Their two shows that actually have premiere dates so far are No Tomorrow and Frequency.

No Tomorrow

I haven’t seen too many commercials about this show, but from what I do know, it sounds very similar to NBC’s failed Me, You and The Apocalypse—a midseason replacement from last season that tried placing British humor in American primetime. No Tomorrow follows a main female character (again, I don’t even know her name at the time of this writing) who learns that the world is going to end in a set amount of days. From there we see the shenanigans that ensue as she tries to live her life and get things checked off her bucket list before it’s all over. One of those things happens to be fall in love. Enter Galavant—uh, I mean the guy who played Galavant from the now defunct ABC comedy. He’s there, he’s the one who knows the world is gonna end, and he’s gonna die, too, and, uh... there’s some funny stuff. And yeah. No Tomorrow will air Tuesdays at 9pm on the CW right after The Flash.

Frequency

Another new CW show is Frequency. I don’t know if this is based on the movie of the same name but it seems to have a similar concept. Frequency is about a young woman played by Peyton List, who begins to get strange messages from her father through a particular radio frequency. The twist? Her father, a bad criminal/police detective who was said to have murdered people, died over a decade ago. Now, they must band together to stop some future crimes from happening while mending their complicated relationship and figuring out the truth about each other.

All I can say about this one is that it looks interesting, although it is just another twist on the overplayed procedural/mystery/detective theme we get so often on TV. Could be worth a watch, but I’m not holding my breath on me wanting to tune in for this each week.

Last but not least, we have USA’s latest entry, Falling Water.

Falling Water

I know little about this series but am intrigued. From what I can decipher from the commercials, it looks as if this is about the connection between three or more people’s lives through their dreams. The trailer mentions something about being able to step into someone else’s dreams, which sounds similar to Inception and has long been an entertaining concept. Here, however, it seems to hint at a more sinister play between reality and fiction, and bending the will of others as they sleep.

Falling Water will air on USA network, but because it is cable, you will have to check your local listings for the exact time. It is set to premiere Thursday, October 13^th.

AMC and FX will have more new series later into the season near the midseason point in January, along with the rest of the networks. Of course, I will have missed one of your most anticipated series as I can’t cover everything, and I tend not to cover premium channels save for that one time I did Ash vs. Evil Dead. So tell me, what new shows this fall are you looking forward to? What returning shows can you not wait to start watching again? Will you give the new shows a three week grace period like me, or will you knock them from your viewing list immediately if they don’t live up to your expectations? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Both season 1 and season 2 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 3 coming summer 2017. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary to premiere sometime this winter on Amazon and my blog. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "Ask the sex question."

‘OK. How often do you two have sex?’

“Never! This therapy didn’t work. We’re getting a divorce. We’ve tried everything, even killing each other.”

‘Maybe you should try that again.’

P.S. I know, that’s a terrible sign-off. For one, it’s too long, and for two it refers back to a movie that came out over a decade ago. Frankly, it’s not even a good joke as I really had high hopes for Ben and Angie. I hope that whatever this craziness is that is going on between the two of them gets worked out and the kids do well through the separation. They really made a good couple. Oh well. Love and marriage are hard.

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Wicked Wolves With No Need For Sheep's Clothing #WickedCity #PremiereWeek #3WeekRoundUp

Wicked Wolves With No Need For Sheep's Clothing #WickedCity #PremiereWeek #3WeekRoundUp

All pictures courtesy of ABC 

Just what we need, another crime drama. Yayyy! Once again, we're back for another look at a new series' first three episodes. As always, I will point you to the # premiere week link above to read my initial thoughts on this show, but as a refresher I will say that I wasn't too keen on this show as I knew little about it as with most later season premieres. This wasn't as highly promoted as some of the other ABC shows and the little I read of it made it seem like another so-so drama. So, is Wicked City (#WickedCity) as wicked as it needs to be?

Wicked City is an ensemble narrative that follows the exploits of both the killer(s), the detectives following them and the journalists covering the story. The setting: 1980s Los Angeles, Sunset Strip. There, a supposed charismatic killer named Kent played by Ed Westwick stalks the night. A cunning liar, he deceives young, naive women into thinking he works as whatever they might want or need at the moment. She wants to be a singer, he's a music producer, an actor and he's a casting director. Convinced they can sleep their way to the top, they leave the club with him and take a car trip out to a ridge overlooking the starlit city. There, as they perform fellatio or other sex acts on him, they hear their name on the radio in what is supposed to be a special dedication to them. It is during this time that he kills them, usually by stabbing. He then will decapitate the victim and either leave their head in a safe somewhere for the cops to find, or leave their body out in the open to taunt the cops.

Things get dicey when he comes across two women that change his life forever. The second is a budding reporter played by Taissa Farmiga (American Horror Story fame) that he chooses as a new victim. The cops already in contact with her and hot on his trail, he abandons picking her up when he sees the dressed down detectives talking to her about the sting. Now, instead of making her the victim, he uses her and her journalistic prowess to help feed into his fame obsession.

The second woman Betty, played by Erika Christensen, is a nurse in desperate yearning for something interesting to happen in her life. A single mother, she raises two children on her own and is slightly older than his usual victims. He doesn't kill her only after finding out she has kids. Instead, he ties her to a bed and asks her to indulge his necrophiliac desires by lying perfectly still as he touches her. Finally, he grabs a knife and slices off the restraints, earning her confidence as he has imprinted upon her similar to Jacob in the Twilight series.

With all the murders going on resembling another serial killer, the real life Hillside Strangler, Detective Jack Roth played by Jeremy Sisto both takes on the case and a new partner just as hungry for fame as the journalists and the killer. Not without his own demons, Jack is a married man with a teenage daughter and a mistress who works undercover in the war on drugs. Though it is never said nor implied, somehow I feel that his wife knows about this other woman as their relationship seems more than just a recent development.

With the players set, the pieces move each at their own pace, allowing the audience to figure out who they will and won't root for and why. The life-altering event taking place for Kent is personified in Betty. Though he wasn't actively looking for it, Kent believes he found a soulmate in Betty. While her hypocrisy is shown when she crushes a bug after telling her children not to kill it because it deserved life too, her desire to move up from bug to something more fleshly isn't given much gravitas. A clear victim of a long-suffering broken heart, Betty is mentally malleable enough to go along with things she's never done before. In the second episode, she is convinced with nothing more than an extended hand to come home with him for a threesome with a girl he plans to kill.

Picking up in the second episode, she listens to his lies to the girl as he told Betty something completely different, even changing his name by a letter when he first introduced himself. Still down for whatever, they take the girl back to a room, tie her up and he does the same thing to her as he did to Betty, only this time watching as Betty does what I think we're supposed to believe is her first lesbian "kiss." From terrified to jovial, the girl laughs off the wicked games as she is the third wheel in the sexcapades.

Meanwhile, after seeing the gruesomeness of her first murder scene and being the near next victim of a serial killer, the reporter decides that not only does she doubt her ability to cover the art and culture section of the rag she writes for, but wants to run home because the big city is too much for her. After a tumble in the sheets with Evan Ross, her boss, she receives a personal envelope with info inside it from the killer. And so his game starts. Just as the Zodiac killer before him, he sends clues, riddles and little quips to her knowing that she'll share them with the police, hoping they'll follow his wild goose chase through the streets, apartments and libraries of LA (a clue left in episode three is in the library). What we don't know, however, is if he is a high-level genius like everyone else on TV seems to be or is just a normal guy who takes great care to toy with the law. He is seen working at a garage as a mechanic and while he does read, little is known about his other indulgences.

The detective and his partner squabble every so often about how to work the case or try to keep the reporter "kids" from getting themselves killed. For everything the detectives have going for them, I actually find their side of the story to be the most boring so far, unfortunately. Somehow, the inability to root for the good guys doesn't diminish the show. There was a brief scene where Jack ran into his mistress undercover and had to bust her for buying drugs. They argued that he could have blown her cover. She says that while stopping a serial killer would be great, illicit drugs kill far more people in a year than the psychopath can murder in a life time. Outside of that, not much is really going on with the detectives even into the third episode.

In the third episode, Detective Jack gets into another skirmish with his partner about how they should be working the case. His partner suggests that he should be the lead and not Jack, which the man ignores. During the second episode they found a body buried under the floorboards of an old rundown building. Head on, it belonged to a woman that had been murdered years before. The address was given to them through the clues left by the killer for the reporter. Not until the third episode does Detective Jack really work on the back story of the found woman.

The New Partner and Jack

Going back to the place where they found the body, he dares to get into the hole where the body had been stashed. Covering himself up with the floorboards, he notices an old-fashioned heart carving presumably by the killer. From there and a few other pieces of evidence, he deduces that the woman was special to the killer, that he loved her, that he had to be in her life for a while, and that the killer made her his bride after her death as she wore a ring on her decayed finger. Her clothes had been laundered and her wig was almost new at the time they found her meaning that she was like a security blanket which he returned to often. Their question: what has changed for him to give up his security blanket/love of his life to the police? Again, Betty is the change.

A story book night, episode 3 started with the murder of Kent's next victim in front of Betty. Believing her different, Kent finds the previous girl once more after losing her in the second episode after their threesome. Making her his victim, he ties her up and throws her into his trunk as he drives Betty out to the cliff. There, he and Betty get out of the car where he then pulls the girl from the trunk, takes her into the front seat of his car (he has a weird fetish of killing them while sitting in the driver's seat) and stabs her countless times. Her initial reaction to run, Betty takes off into the forest while telling the story of the wolf in sheep's clothing to her children later. Falling to the ground, she fears him then gives into passion as he comes for her.

The next 50 minutes is spent comparing what is happening with him and Betty to the Phantom Of The Opera--a beloved musical in my eyes. He has taken off his mask and shown his true colors, daring to fall in love with her though she might be a normal person. In luck, she shows him that she isn't a normal person as she hesitantly accepts his offer to belong to him. Her ex, a large married guy, comes back around trying to threaten her into sleeping with him again and she doesn't do it. Though Kent doesn't do anything to the man yet, the guy lingers around and sees his old girl going with this new gigolo-looking guy. At the end of the show, Betty is seen talking up a brunette at the bar on the strip where they met just so she can seduce the girl into being her and Kent's next victim.

Meanwhile, the journalists kept running around the city, switching roles with the detectives for the night as far as having the most boring story arc. They find the library clues and help the cops find another head locked in a box. They exchange pleasantries with the cops, absorb threats to stay away from the case and try to keep their relationship platonic after having goodbye sex when the young woman wanted to leave.

Detective Jack, meanwhile, gets out from the creepy crawlspace where the body used to be stashed and goes home to spend time reading Phantom. He falls for his teenage daughter's trickery to let her go with her friend to a party that was supposed to be chaperoned by adults. As it turns out, the party was nothing more than a crowded car of friends (mostly boys) driving around the city drinking and smoking. They mention how her dad happens to be working the case and, just to fit in, she tells them that the killer sexes the bodies only after killing them. Jack and his wife get into a fight about how easily duped he is and only then does he panic. He leaves to take a tip from the reporter about where the next body might be found just as his daughter gets back home to face her mother and things end there.

What's my grade? I give it a C+. Here's the thing, this series is in desperate need of a much more stylized form of storytelling. While I think the plot is intriguing (it is loosely based on the real life couple of Doug Clark and Carol Bundy--never trust anyone with the last name Bundy), the way it is filmed and told doesn't inspire much of anything, really. A more artistic hand could make the lights lighter and the darks darker. Right now, certain characters don't ring true and others don't feel like part of the story. It's quite hard to explain it, save for if I compare it to something like Breaking Bad or Mad Men. In those shows each scene oozes tension. There's nothing flat. Here, with the onset of every commercial break I kept pausing my DVR and rewinding it a little because I felt like I had missed something crucial. But I never missed anything, making the show bland in taste and texture.

"Just me, nearly blending into the background." Taissa

Also, while I think Ed Westwick and Erika Christensen are killing it, and Jeremy Sisto is doing an OK job so far with what he's given, Evan Ross and Taissa Farmiga's acting sticks out. While I loved her in the American Horror Story franchise and wished she had gotten a role on Scream Queens instead of this, I feel like here she takes a step back in her growth as an actress. Everything about the role seems like it should be for a woman slightly older or someone with a richer sense of the character. Those who haven't seen her in anything else, if this was their introduction to her might be inclined to say that she can't act, and the role she plays here makes it hard for me to argue that.

Should you be watching it? The toughness of this is that I originally read this was supposed to be an anthology series like AHS or American Crime, each season telling a different story, meaning that this one doesn't have long to stay on your tube. With that said, I can only give the recommendation to take a look at the first two episodes and see if you enjoy the tone. It is different than the procedurals that plague our airwaves and is ABC thinking outside of the box for a change, but there's nothing there to really write home about so far. Maybe it's an ode to the slow build. Who knows.

What do you think? Am I being too rough on this freshman series? Is Kent and Betty's twisted romance entangling you yet? Have you even seen the show? If so, do you think Betty will survive to the end? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).

Check out my new comedy novel Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out now NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "come on, Kent. You're killing like Betty White out there."

P.S. I could think of almost nothing else the entire time while writing this article, except for Betty White. Wow, was this really back in the days when the name Betty was common? Maybe that's even farther back. I'll think of something better to say next time.

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Up, Up, and A, Uh... Hm? Where Do We Go After Up? #Supergirl #PremiereWeek #3WeekRoundUp

Up, Up, and A, Uh... Hm? Where Do We Go After Up? #Supergirl #PremiereWeek #3WeekRoundUp

All pictures courtesy of CBS

Once again it is that time, ladies and gentlemen. It's been on for three weeks (wow! That went by fast). It's time for Supergirl's (#Supergirl) three week roundup. My initials thoughts for this show were sparse as it premiered so late into the fall season that I didn't see the need to think about it much. Suffice it to say that I enjoy all comic book stuff (frankly, I enjoy anything with a good story that can entertain me) and give most of it a chance just because I like seeing the stuff. Fun fact: I also really enjoy TV so, yeah. Amidst the crowded marketplace that is the comic book movie/TV shared conglomeration multinational corporate universe, how is the latest superheroine doing? More hot and cold than Katy Perry in that one song that she sang. God, what was the name of that song?

Supergirl, starring Melissa Benoist as our titular character, follows the exploits of the supposedly lesser known cousin of the man in blue, Superman. For those who don't read the comics and didn't see the 80s film Supergirl of which I have fond memories of seeing, let me give you a little back story. As covered in the premiere, Kal-el's parents weren't just idiots who were going to send their baby son off to some alien planet alone while they died. Instead, they decided to send his cousin Kara-el in her own pod. A girl of 13 at the time of the planet's destruction, she was to take care of her baby cousin and make sure he was protected from whatever foolishness might pop off on earth.

Well, things didn't go as planned when her spacecraft got knocked off course and ended up spending 24 years trapped inside the phantom zone, which is neither a floating piece of thin glass like in the original Superman movies nor penis-shaped pods that go into a spaceship in Snyder's Man Of Steel. Here, it is somewhat of a cosmic mist/black hole/event horizon type thing. They try not to bog the viewer down with specifics but what we do know is that somehow after 24 years of frozen time in that zone, her pod escaped and crashed to earth.

Already established as Superman, her cousin finds her and her pod and brings her to the Danvers' family (do not get that confused with Marvel in any way) where she lives out her days with an older sister, gasp! Flash forward about 12 years and we find are humble hero being anything but heroic. A near carbon copy of her cousin, she finds herself wearing glasses, some of the cutest skirts and dresses I've seen in a while (yes, straight men do notice stuff like that) and working at a digital and print media empire founded, formed and run by Cat Grant played by TV vet Calista Flockhart (glad to see her back after Brothers and Sisters). Hence, Catco subs in for the Daily Planet, and National City (hey, that used to be a Midwestern bank for which my mother worked) is the fill-in Metropolis.

Funny, this city's Jimmy Olsen is the same Jimmy Olsen, though he's six feet of black hunkiness and prefers to be called James (OK, that may have gone too far, but I can admit when another man is attractive). Played by Mehcad Brooks, James just moved from Metropolis. Now, the pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist is running the photo department for Catco. It is established pretty early that not only is Superman very well established as he was wearing the costume when he found Kara years ago (somewhere around 11 or 12, meaning he's around 36 after spending 24 years on Earth without her; I did so many maths there), but he also has had enough time on earth to let a few people discover his secret identity. That probably means that Lois knows who he is by now. I guessed within the first few minutes that he sent James there specifically to look after his cousin Kara and maybe push her to become her own eventual hero. What he probably didn't expect were the goo eyes she'd make at James.

Is it hot in here, or do I just have the Fever?

That's right, if I were her friend I would give Kara a brush machete for Christmas to clear out some of that safari grass because she has the deepest jungle fever that I've seen allowed on prime time at 8pm on Monday nights in a long time. Never mind the fact that her other colleague who is a bit of a nerd (what Jimmy was to Clark Kent) has a huge crush on her, her guy is of the tall, black, bald and handsome variety, not to mention older. Due to what I see as one of the biggest problems of this show which I will cover later, he doesn't let on to knowing that she is Clark's cousin right away, so they have to do this dance which was a total farce in my eyes.

Currently a regular 24-year-old woman waiting to make her mark on the world, she lives alone in an apartment which is clearly too expensive for her if National City is any bigger than a pea. Her sister, played by the always lovely Chyler Leigh (still miss you on Grey's; still think Not Another Teen Movie is so underrated; we won't mention Taxi Brooklyn) has a talk with her before leaving for a flight. As luck would have it, Kara sees the flight in danger hours later and flies up to save it, performing her first heroic feat. Things get dicey when people complain about how she saved the flight, having to turn the plane on its side, scraping the wing across a bridge and landing the plane in the river where it slowly sank after all the people were rescued.

A clear novice, heroism felt good and contrary to her sister's demands not to reveal herself, she does. First she tells her love-struck coworker that she saved the plane because she, too, is a Kryptonian. Then she goes through a quick 90s Clueless shopping/getting ready for a party montage to find a proper superhero costume. No, seriously, she just had everything she needed lying around. The red boots, the golden belt, the modest but stylish skirt--I'll give you the S and even the cape but really? Come on!

And out to save more people. As she tries being a hero again, tracking down her first ever super-powered enemy, she gets into a real fight with him and realizes, "holy cannoli, I don't know how to fight." She is saved by, wait for it... wait for it... her sister! What? I know, right?

Turns out, her sister Alex works for an organization called the DEO--Department of Extranormal Operations. And in this organization is where I found my most beloved character. The head of the DEO is this deliciously over-the-top black guy that delivers his lines so perfectly that they run the line of complete cheesy camp and realistic seriousness. The closest thing I could think of to describe him would be the pilots or Leslie Nelson's character in the Airplane movies. His constant scowl and bad mood make me want to do nothing more than flick his nose and watch him freak out about it.

Anyway, Alex has been working for the DEO for a while. Since Superman's arrival, the governments of the world felt they needed to keep watch for more aliens. Remember that strange ill-explained phantom zone? Apparently Kara wasn't the only one in there. During her escape, her spacepod somehow tugboat-ed out a larger prison vessel which crashed on earth too. Housing not just Kryptonians but prisoners throughout the galaxy (or universe, whichever) this dropped a clue to the history of Krypton. It seems they served as galactic peacekeepers/jailers. With Krypton gone villains who got locked away by Kara's mom (a judge there) want revenge on the remaining Kryptonians as well as to take over the world. The DEO's job is to stop that. After a little back and forth about how she isn't ready and is just a hindrance whereas Superman is built for this, they support her in a fight against the big guy that was throwing her around.

Kara saves the day by heat visioning the crap out of his ax and standing nearby as he killed himself, talking about something that was coming. The day saved, she escapes with few scratches and lives to be given the moniker Supergirl by Cat Grant. There's some back and forth about calling her a girl as opposed to a woman, and Cat explains it away to make it sound cool. James tells her he knows her secret and gives her a present from Clark--an indestructible cape. I want to delve into what's wrong with this show so much, but I still have two episodes to get through.

The second episode shows more of what the first bad guy eluded to. Kara's gallery of rogues is led by a very familiar face. Before the planet exploded, Kara's mom sentenced one last criminal to the phantom zone, her own twin sister. Outside of the mind-blowing fact that Krypton had twins just as Earth, we are to understand that she was a general (cough General Zod cough) who wants to subjugate the planet. Why she hasn't already done this, I don't know as she has plenty of supervillains on her side.

My mother's evil twin sister Astra... or the other one. 

Kara's first brush with kryptonite, she and her adopted earth sister fight in a training chamber so Alex can teach her tactical sparring. She doesn't learn much but does leave sore. Cat not only treats her like crap but wants James to use his Supes connections to get her an exclusive sit down with Supergirl or else he's fired. She also suggests the heroine start small and work her way up to big stuff after she ruined an oil tanker by ripping it open when trying to pull it away from a fire--eco-disaster.

Over-The-Top Black guy, you make my day.

Taking the advice, she does start small, stopping robbery, saving snakes named fluffy from trees--the usual stuff. But when a bug-alien that disguises itself as human kills and feeds on power, she has to stop him, unknowing that he works for her aunt. She and her aunt tussle as her sister defeats the bug. Over-the-top black guy makes some snappy comments about not calling her Supergirl and it is revealed that he, too, is some kind of enhanced human or alien as his eyes occasionally glow red. Finally, to save James' job, she goes and talks to Cat.

The third show opened with the continuing interview where Kara reveals that she is Superman's cousin. James then slips up and blurts out that Clark Kent is superman (is there no secrecy anymore). They find a little office space down the hall from their desks that no one uses that they decide to make into their psuedo-base, and I was like whaaaa? So, you're really just gonna have your superhero HQ in an office down the hall from where you work? OK. And to top it all off Cat made Kara treat that redheaded man like a redheaded stepchild. "That's hair-ist!" you say? First off, don't yell at me, because the show decided to pick on the ginger. The villain of the week: Reactron, a human poisoned with radiation who lost his family during a Superman rescue mission. Now, he uses a suit to fly and fight against all superpowered beings but especially against Superman--he's nearly killed him a few times.

When he nearly kills Kara she is saved by her cousin who swooshes in last minute and rescues both her and this other guy who thinks she's nothing but a menace. The hero she is, she throws a fit about not needing his help and how James was wrong for calling him because she could have saved the day herself. Then, during Cat's party later that night, the guy comes back with his suit supercharged and tries again to kill her. James runs distraction and gets the guy to chase him while Kara is fed info on how to stop him, which she subsequently does. Her confidence at an all time high, she goes to possibly ask James out the next day but finds that Lois Lane's younger sister is there to visit James. As it turns out, she also has a fever hailing from where the lion sleeps tonight as James is implied to be her ex. Kara sulks and chats with Superman on the computer to cheer herself up. And as if the show couldn't get anymore cheesy, they end with her and Alex eating while the song "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" plays in the background. Are you serious? Boy, where do I begin on my critique.

What's my rating? I give this show a B-. Before you chomp my head off superhero fans, let me explain. A few years back I was ordered to write a book entitled The Provocateur by a group of people. Not my proudest work, one of the things in the book is the idea that women are constant imitators and rarely originators outside of bringing life into this world. In other words, they will take something already formed and created by men and make it theirs. I know, that will piss off plenty of female readers but while the female Ghostbusters, the planned female version of Ocean's Eleven, the Expendabelles and a slew of other movies play into this very trend, none of them top Supergirl's imitation.

My laser beams glow blue because I don't want to be mistaken for Superman

I really like this show, but it is hella frustrating for the show to be packaged the way it is. As much as it tries to stay away from Superman, they mention him every single episode between every single commercial break. We get it, Kara doesn't want to be known as the lesser female version, but if she spent less time bringing it up, maybe people wouldn't notice. Oddly, this leads to my biggest gripe with the show--there wasn't enough Superman, or rather enough of his influence.

From what the show tells us, Kal-el found his cousin out in the middle of nowhere and dropped her with a loving family (Dean Cain from Lois and Clark, and the original Supergirl from the 80s movie). After that it suggests that was the last time she really saw or talked to him, and that even though he knows she is probably one of the only other people in the world who is similar to him, he isn't the least bit concerned with her. Even taking into account the crystals in his fortress of solitude, he doesn't want to know about what his parents were really like, how kind they were as an aunt and uncle, how much they really loved each other, or how Krypton was. What was it like to go to school there, to grow up there, the sunsets, the sunrises, etc.

This is your family! Don't contact me ever for anything. Love, Superman.

Apparently, he doesn't care about any of that because he's too busy saving the world? Also, he knows that she'll be dealing with superpowers but it seems he never showed her the fortress, or the crystals, or taught her how to fly, or anything... ever! Listen, I know that there's some filling in of the audience that needs to be done, but to have Kara be just as clueless about her cousin as everyone else is, if not more subverts one of the main purposes of the show and it also paints Superman in an even worse light than Man of Steel did. Superman is kind of a dick to not share or care anything about his little cousin. I understand family riffs and all of that, but there shouldn't have been any of that. Superman is acting more like Batman every day.

As I mentioned up top, one of the main purposes of the show was to be a pillar of feminism and femininity which I can understand. But I feel in more ways than one that the show misfires drastically on this thrust. First off, they called out Millennials (as is the cool thing to do now) as being the whiny bunch that constantly needs help. Not going to say that is or isn't true about some of the Millennials I've known, but I will say that it doesn't look good to possibly offend the very viewership you covet. Then, Supergirl plays directly into this. 

Not only does the show play into the stereotype that women don't know what they want (help or no help), but that they do need help. She has the entire DEO to help her defeat villains. Superman had, what, Jimmy with a camera and Lois who, let's be honest, was more of a hindrance than a help? She has a set-out model for what to do and how to be and she still complains because she feels it's unfair to compare her to Supes because he's a man? Because none of her criticism could be genuine like what Supes got as a hero, it all comes from a sexist slant? Ugh! Essentially the entire show is not Supergirl, not a story of its own making that could have taken these strange and wonderful turns, exploring how it is to adjust to a culture after living in another one for so long or figuring out how to be a better superhero than those that came before you. No, this is Superman in a skirt. This is why people (both men and women) complain about stuff like the new Ghostbusters, because the only change made is a gender swap. And with so much rich back story waiting to be mined and a virtually new character (people didn't look fondly on that 80s movie like I did), they could have done some really cool stuff. Instead, we get the same, "you aren't ready. Hide your powers. You can't do this. Oh you're a girl. I'm gonna prove that I'm just as capable as a man," shtick we've been getting for years from other superhero shows (minus the girl part). This was also the complaint people had with the shared universe thing for DC because they wonder how new superheroes will act when the old ones have been around for years. "Well, they'll act the same way and have the same struggles." Maybe, but not likely.

With that said, should you be watching? Yes. Look, with all of the stuff that's on Mondays at 8pm, it is difficult to type that definitive yes in there, but I did it because I do like the show. I enjoy the cast. I had doubts about Melissa (really only because I wanted a natural blonde for the role as Supergirl is supposed to be) but she does a fine job with what they give her. And that over-the-top black guy can give Hotels.com's Mr. Obvious a run for his money, and is worth the price of admission alone. As far as the female audience, though I actually find Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to be a smarter show, I think this is more family-oriented and has less chance at producing dead air. Don't, however, expect something ground-breaking. Also, don't listen to those supposed Hollywood insiders that say that this will revolutionize TV and film superheroes because Hollywood won't be afraid to make a female superhero anymore. Don't know where they got that BS, but Hollywood was never afraid to make a female superhero, otherwise the original Wonder Woman show, the 80s Supergirl and practically the first three X-men movies wouldn't have even gotten made, let alone Catwoman.

What do you think? Am I being too hard on the show? Were you expecting something a little different like I was, knowing that Kara hadn't come to earth as a baby? Were you expecting for her to at least have some family contact with Clark? Do you even watch this show? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).

Check out my new comedy novel Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out now NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "she's got jungle fever. He's got jungle fever. They both got jungle fever. They're in love."

P.S. I think I'm paraphrasing but Stevie Wonder couldn't have said it better. I'll try to think of something better next post.

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