Meeting at the Docks #30: Shows You Autumn Be Watching (Mid-Season Edition)
Greetings, Ko-Dan Armada!
You may remember that last fall I brought you my picks for the fall television shows worth watching in the 2009-2010 season.
It’s not over yet.
U.S. networks like to do this little thing called “mid-season replacements”. For the broadcast networks, this usually means they replace a show that’s been performing weakly in the fall in January with another show that’s been sitting in their coffers with the hopes that it will do better ratings-wise. This is not only a big middle finger to the show being replaced, but is kind of a back-handed middle finger to the show doing the replacing, as the replacement show was considered not good enough to start in the fall season in the first place.
Cable networks, on the other hand, view mid-season shows a little differently. Cable, in their efforts to compete with the “big dogs”, like to schedule many of their shows to start in the spring or summer and end in the fall or winter. This is so they can pull in all the viewers that would most likely be watching repeats on the major networks.
What this causes is a kind of television symbiosis. Everyone benefits, no one gets screwed over (except Conan).
I just happen to have two more picks for this television season, one from each category:
“Chuck”
What else can I say about this show? I think I made my point clear last spring when I went out and bought a five dollar foot long at Subway in order to help keep this show on the air. Turns out NBC let us believe that the ploy worked, and “Chuck” was renewed for a third season. Unfortunately, NBC pulled a Monkey’s Paw on the fans and decided not to air it until March.
The television gods must also like five dollar foot longs, because suddenly – like an astromech droid suddenly popping off with a bad motivator – NBC suddenly decided a couple months ago to jettison a couple of their shows that they deemed to expensive or weak ratings-wise. This paved the way for “Chuck” to have its premiere moved to January. And there was much rejoicing (yaaaaaaay).
And so far, the show has continued to deliver. With the main character’s abilities cranked up a notch, the show has also upped the ante character and plot wise. Add to that some surprisingly impressive guests stars, and “Chuck” continues to be a solid, fun show to watch.
“Burn Notice”
I’ve written about this show before, as well. When I did my first “Autumn” article last fall, one of the comments I received was that I forgot to include this show. Not at all. I just had to wait to include it since it is technically a mid-season series.
And what a series it is. I managed to catch a random episode of this last year and I was hooked. I was already about two and a half seasons behind, so I had a lot of catch-up to play. I ended up marathonning the sucker. Worth every hour of therapy.
This show continues to exhibit some really tight writing combined with a stellar main cast. Everyone is simply a pleasure to watch do their thing. Finding myself literally on the edge of my seat during every episode, “Burn Notice” has the perfect amount of tension, suspense, humor, and drama. And I can’t mention this enough: it has Bruce Campbell.
With the way the current television climate is… okay, I’m sorry. There’s just no way I can end this article that will be able to measure up to mentioning the Almighty Chin himself. It’s impossible. I just can’t do it.
So instead, I will let the man himself take us out:
The Don has… no. No. I just can’t do it. Bruce Campbell!
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