Wednesday/Thursday's New Lineup

Tonight, I got caught up on the one new show from last night that I wanted to check out, Undercovers. This is the newest show co-created by J.J. Abrams, who also directed the pilot. The other co-creator is Josh Reims, who worked on Brothers and Sisters and (with Abrams) Felicity, among other shows.

Undercovers is about a married couple who retired from separate jobs at the C.I.A. to run a catering service, only to now be reactivated by Gerald McRaney to work as a team together. Basically, Alias with a married couple, but without the double-agent theme. Or, based on the first episode at least, anything like the sometimes interesting, often infuriating "Rambaldi" MacGuffin.

Comparing to Alias is a tricky proposition. I absolutely loved the pilot episode of that show. And Alias totally kicked ass for the first two seasons. But there wasn't even a slow decline after that. Beginning with season three, Alias was just terrible, watchable only on the strength of its exceptionally talented cast.

Undercovers didn't match the incredible thrill of that first episode of Alias. But it was miles ahead of those latter Alias years. There is some potential here. The leading couple has some very good chemistry together. The side characters seem like they could be an interesting spice in the mix (except for the obnoxious sister). But the story wasn't really that compelling, and crammed an awful lot of globe-hopping in 42 minutes. It didn't seem exciting so much as "designed for short attention spans."

But maybe this was just not a "good episode" of the show. The building blocks were apparent. Airing on a struggling network like NBC, this show may well get the time it needs to work out the kinks over the next few episodes. And I think I'm willing to sample a few more to see if it does that.

I had time tonight to catch up on yesterday because the new Thursday material this year was widely reviewed as awful. From the treacly My Generation to the stale (if not offensive) Outsourced, I couldn't find any positive reviews about anything new debuting tonight. And yet, there was one show I decided I just had to try for myself anyway...

$#*! My Dad Says. Despite the warnings, despite the obviously stupid premise of a TV show based on a Twitter feed, I had to tune in for William Shatner. That's what the creators were counting on, of course. I enjoyed Shatner for years in his comedic role on Boston Legal. The man has been on one multi-season show nearly every decade since the 1960s. I was willing to give the man 22 minutes.

Or so I thought. I think I made it 10, maybe. Having not cracked a smile, and under assault by the cloying laugh track, I was grateful to receive a phone call from a friend. I turned the show off and never turned it back on. It was like watching an imitation of a sitcom rather than an actual sitcom, a script written by an emotionless alien robot trying to understand our strange Earth sense of humor. Just dreadful.

I'm only planning to sample one more new show this week, the Tom Selleck-fronted cop drama Blue Bloods, that debuts tomorrow. (Though I probably won't actually get to it until some time on the weekend.) But unless it's exceptional, it looks like this year's new crop is overall a very average one.