WEIRD LONERS:  Tuesday 9:30PM on FOX – If Nothing Else is On… WEIRD LONERS belongs to the sitcom subspecies of quirky singles comedy, which has given us New Girl (the pilot for Weird Loners was directed by Jake Kasdan, who’s also a New Girl director/producer) but also things like A To Z and Marry […]

  TRAINING DAY:  Thursday 10PM on CBS – Change the Channel If the idea that CBS, of all networks, could turn the dark, ruthless police drama TRAINING DAY into a TV series seemed counterintuitive–well, they haven’t.  There’s a show with that title on the network schedule, and the general outlines of the character dynamic and […]

  GOLDEN BOY:  Friday 9PM on CBS (special previews on Tuesday 2/26 and 3/5) – Potential DVR Alert CBS tries to have its procedural cake and eat its serialization with GOLDEN BOY.  Think of it as How I Met Your Mother as a cop show:  the story is structured, by veteran procedural writer Nicholas Wootten […]

  MR. ROBOT:  Wednesday 10PM on USA – Potential DVR Alert There are networks, especially in the pay-TV universe, that play the instant-renewal game, announcing as soon as a new show has premiered, or sometimes even before, that another season has been ordered.  It’s a PR move, for the most part, and sometimes only semi-legitimate, […]

  THE SLAP:  Thursday 8PM on NBC – Potential DVR Alert THE SLAP is strikingly different from everything else on broadcast television–it’s unusual even by cable standards, with an indie film, non-genre mindset that brings little to mind beyond Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s Togetherness (and even The Affair has its flash-forward murder plot to help […]

  Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here and Midseason Pilot Reports here. THE MILLERS:  Thursday 8:30PM on CBS – If Nothing Else Is On… When Bad Shows Happen To Talented People, Chapter 2456:  you wouldn’t think a network comedy would need more to succeed than Greg Garcia (My Name Is Earl, Raising Hope) as […]

  BULL:  Tuesday 9PM on CBS – Change the Channel CBS’s BULL is, from its title down, almost completely insufferable.  Loosely inspired by the pre-TV professional life of Dr. Phil (billed here as “Dr. Phillip C. McGraw” for maximum pretentiousness), and co-created by McGraw and industry veteran Paul Attanasio (a co-creator of the great Homicide […]

  TELENOVELA:  Monday 8:30PM on NBC starting January 4 – If Nothing Else Is On… Simply put, TELENOVELA is what Jane the Virgin would be if Jane’s vain, airheaded but good-hearted actor father Rogelio were the main character–actually, if every character were more or less Rogelio.  The show, which NBC previewed tonight to give it […]