Every TV season, we watch a few episodes of as many of the interesting shows as we can manage. This usually means a mix of stuff, with a few genre shows thrown in. This time, it meant a whole lot of genre shows and nothing else. After a few showings, we ditched Reaper and Moonlight (sorry, Kira). Journeyman was on the bubble, because frankly, the poor hero seems like fate’s football, and it’s hard to fall in love with a show that offers no hope for the future. And Bionic Woman is a narrative mess — major characters (and showrunners?) coming and leaving by revolving door.
Top two shows? Unquestionably Pushing Daisies and Chuck. The former is almost too stylized to be watchable week after week — we had trouble believing that the pilot could be sustained, but yes, it could! I suspect that watching a season on DVD might rot your teeth.
Of course, with the writer’s strike, many of the new shows are at real risk of failing to build sufficient audience, followed by cancellation. (Rumor has it that Journeyman may not even air the last episode it already has in the can). Lucky for us, NBC is ordering more episodes of Chuck, which makes us very happy. This show clearly has actual geeks in the writing room; there’s usually at least one deep nerd culture reference per episode which you know can’t have been faked.
