In this post I refer to the television season as an actual season of the year. So the Fall Season is one season and the spring season is a second season, even if television (20-26 episodes = 1 season) doesn’t work like that. I use this vernacular because sometimes shows don’t come back after January and it works in my head.

Accidentally On Purpose (CBS): Jenna Elfman (Dharma and Greg, Courting Alex) stars as Billie, a thirty something year old who gets pregnant after an uncharacteristic one-night stand and plans to keep the baby. There’s another man in the scene who, though jerky, is trying to win her back and there’s the twenty something year old who got her pregnant resulting in a surprisingly cute comedy where you’re rooting for the young guy to be more than he can be and maybe that this surprising duo gets to know each other beyond their incident. Unfortunately, I can’t see the show lasting beyond three seasons but at least we’ve got another comedy.

The Cleveland Show (FOX): Even with the cliché beginning that was purposefully done to make fun of any other spin-off shows and the Family Guy-like references, the Cleveland show managed to be funny in a unique sort of way. They didn’t cut away into too many flashes, they made black jokes while making fun of shows that make black jokes, and they have a talking bear. You can’t beat a bear. When Cleveland told Quagmire that he was getting a spin-off, I thought it was weird and here we are. Well, we’ll see how it goes. Cartoons are hard to predict. I would’ve given Futurama 1 season and the Simpsons I wouldn’t believe it would have left the Tracy Ulman show…

Community (NBC): Made me chuckle but not really memorable. I don’t think this one will last past this season.

Cougar Town (ABC): What a coincidence! Courtney Fox plays a hot single mother on the prowl for guys who lives in a town where the main sports team are The Cougars! you can totally see the hand of the Scrubs creators all over it (right down to the music underscoring scenes and the quirkiness of the characters). The show, though making me happy for Courtney Cox, is a bit crass content wise even when it manages to be funny with this sort of thing. The target audience is higher than the intended primetime viewership, but it makes sense for Friends fans (now approaching their forties) to tune in. I’m not sure of its survivability right now but I’d say two seasons off top.

Eastwick (ABC): The name pretty much tells you what the show is going to be about—witches. The hook is that  they don’t really know they’re witches; they’re just women who want to be different and wish for that change. They come together and in their forming of their triad, Jack Nicholson a Mysterious Rich Man Who is Likely The Devil moves into town.  The show seems to have a big undercurrent of sex (for no reason than being naughty) and seems to have potential for some other crazy evil but ultimately I’m not digging it. I don’t know if the show will last beyond five episodes but who knows; they might have had enough unnecessary violence and sexual innuendo to make it last. I won’t be watching anymore though.

Flash Forward (ABC): Wow, there was nothing wrong with this show. Everything was properly paced. The setup was fantastic (they tore a page out of Lost by starting with chaos). The characters have potential. Hopefully the viewership was great because with the right marketing, advertising, and input into the story line this show could last five seasons.  Of course, that depends if the source material has that sort of legs—something I will make sure to find out with some near-future reading. If there is one complaint is that the second episode had way too much recap. Either way, this show is awesome.

The Forgotten (ABC): Christian Slater’s last show (My Own Worst Enemy—pretty good) was cancelled (boo!) but he’s back this season (yay!) as an ex-cop who is part of a civilian cold case (not really “cold”, more like “cop-stumping” because they’re into john/jane doe identifying and crime solving) team. At first I was pretty nervous about it going down the general police drama route ala CSI; instead it is focused more on broken characters (like Bob Stephenson—from Jericho and afterwards TV Commercials—plays a phone company employee who keeps a picture of Sipowicz in his car to psyche himself up while he does wannabe-cop work) and the dead (who seem to tell their own story as the investigators do their research). The show has potential but I don’t think it’ll last; especially with the annoying dead retelling their own story.

Glee (FOX): All around cute and pretty funny lovechild of Revenge of the Nerds and High School Musical. The music and dance numbers are pretty impressive. The story is essentially the underdog overcoming and the hook is reinterpreting modern pop songs. I’m not enjoying some of the stuff they might do to the marriage of the main character, the hypocrisy of some of the characters and I’m hoping they want to make the characters reach higher than societal norms expect them to reach but that’s all incidental to the music and quirkiness. Even so, I can’t see it going past two seasons.

The Good Wife (CBS): This show is really good. I thought it was going to be some stupid sex scandal charged show trying to pick up some desperate housewife viewership; instead it is a smart investigative law show about a character (Julie Margolis) who is putting her life back together after her ex-husband’s public scandal. It is involved, it is character driven and also a mystery (for example, her son discovers that their father’s face was photoshopped onto one of the incriminating photos). I hope it lasts. My prediction? This one should stick around but it’ll last 4 seasons.

Jay Leno (NBC): Um…sorta’ like Late Night with Jay Leno but earlier.

Mercy (NBC): This one surprised me. I was expecting another E.R.; instead it’s a show that focuses on the nurses. I was expecting the heart of the story to be on medicine; instead it’s a show that focuses on the relationships of people who come from some sundry walks in life. Indeed, the leads consist of an Iraq War Vet who is on the verge of a breakdown; another person trying to shake off the history of violence in her family; and another who comes from Amish County, Lancaster. The show has real potential but in my head HawthoRNe (starring Jada Pinkett) does a better job of putting all these things together. If I had more time, I would likely follow the show but I can’t. And since the commercial bait seemed to be more E.R. like, the switch is probably going to upset some viewers. I’ll say it ends April.

The Middle (ABC): Patricia Heaton and Jan I Tor (Neil Flynn) team up as parents who live out in the middle of the country nowhere leading a family of misfits. It reminds me of Everybody Hates Chris meets Scrubs (not Flynn’s fault) and, for some reason, even though it’s funny I doubt it’s going to last (Chris Kataan seems to have that effect on me).

Modern Family (ABC): This is like The Office meets today’s family sitcom but without any of the slapstick that has become part of family sitcoms. It stars some of our favorite TV actors like Julie Bowen, Ed O’Neil, Ty Burrell, and Sofia Vergara—well known on Spanish Television and I’m sure MCF everyone will be pleased. I thought it was funny (like outburst funny), had tear jerking moments (episode 2), and am planning to tune in again but I seriously don’t think people will give it much of a chance. If they can stick with it for three episodes, I think they’d be hooked. Personally, I was hooked after one.

StarGate Universe (SyFy): Outstanding. The writers have figured out how to give us another space opera along the lines of Battlestar Galactica while remaining true to the mythos already established by the StarGate universe. Not only that, they’ve also managed to bring us back to our source of addiction—that first mission when James Spader first stepped through the gate with Kurt Russell and his team. The impending sense of doom; the fear of the unknown; the excitement regarding new discoveries; and the knowledge that the time anywhere is drastically limited weighs heavily on the viewer of this new series. We’ve also been exposed to a whole cast of characters with some serious developmental potential and, being that they’re all wet behind the ears (save one), we feel like we’re actually entering new ground. Indeed, the two people who seem to know the most in the show about the Stargate universe are likely the most dangerous. I personally don’t mind the way they’ve managed to pull out some of the humor, and insert more of the young humor of a newbie, but I think it might turn off people who aren’t hard core fans. So the same way BSG might’ve been charged with being too heavy, SGU so far has a similar potential. I won’t know until the second episode though. Tune into this.

Royal Pain (USA)—Summer: aired on the USA Network back in June. It’s about a doctor who has been booted from the hospital staff but now functions as an MD for the rich and privileged enough to afford living without health care (part of the group we’re planning to cover with our Health Reform…lol). The show is a quirky mix of a medical drama and MacGuyver . Seriously, sometimes the guy uses a pen, a balloon and a butter knife to create an EKG—okay, that’s an exaggeration. I can see this show lasting.

Warehouse 13 (SyFy)—Summer: Awesome show that is quirky enough to carry on to a second season and make it worthwhile to watch. It could do a better job of stringing together the overarching plot line across the season (and I have a feeling they’ll do more of that in the second season) but what they did do was very impressive. The weakest character is probably the female lead but they’re working on developing her. Also pretty funny is the amount of BSG characters they’ve had show up: this show has legs.

Durham County (ION)—August: The show isn’t technically new since it is of Canadian origin, and frankly I’m not sure if I’ll tune in anymore, but it was a pretty intriguing concept. A cop lives in the same neighborhood s the same guy that he had accidentally injured back in High School—throwing the guy out of any potential sports career. The guy grows up, gets married, has a kid, and starts a weird downward spiral when he witnesses a rape and murder…that he finds himself enjoying. What the first episode unveiled was a cop doing a poor job of holding his life together and his neighbor, old schoolmate, doing a poor job of holding his humanity together as he devolves into a serial killer. This isn’t light TV at all.

NCIS-LA (CBS): Technically, the show aired last year but with a tepid reaction. The characters were too serious, the chemistry was non-existent, and the quirky interactions that NCIS fans had grown to love was set aside as unimportant. The show was a dud—but they had a summer to fix it. Premiering during the Fall season, the New NCIS dropped some characters, reinvented interactions, and brought more focus on a pair of mains. It’s actually decent now! I’m not sure it will last though. The Ladies might enjoy having LL Cool Jay stomping about but he needs to do more than stalk and grunt. Yeah, he jokes about with Chris O’Donnell (and they seem fairly comfortable) but still…