Fall TV Guide

There’s not many shows that I keep up with these days – all those reality shows on MTV and VH1 don’t seem to be doing it for me lately anymore, because, well, they’re all the same, and somehow I end up seeing or hearing about them at work, or wherever anyways.

But after a week of series and season premieres, I think I’ve successfully narrowed down the precious little time I have for TV watching to a few shows that in my opinion are must sees, and one that I’m sure won’t even be on the air in a couple more weeks.

I figured we’d start with the idiotic. This first one is “Hole in the Wall,” which is on FOX. I was fortunate enough to catch the series premiere last week, and was not too impressed. In fact, I think it’s the worst piece of crap to be aired since… possibly ever. It’s a game show set up in a dramatic, dark Who Wants to Be a Millionaire type thing, with a small pool of water in the center. Two teams of three then, in various groups of one, two, or three try to position themselves to fit through holes cut in a wall that comes toward them. If they can make their body the right shape, they effortless go through the oncoming wall. If not, they get pushed into the pool of water. It’s a total waste of time, not entertaining in the slightest, and is another bad rip-off of a Japanese game show. Don’t even bother with it, it sucks. I’d rather watch old reruns of Absolutely Fabulous during primetime.

The next show is Entourage, on HBO. Season 5 opens with a review of Vincent Chase’s newest movie, which he spent the better part of last season buying the script for, and convincing the Queens Boulevard director to direct. The reviews are bad, but Vince, of course, acts apathetic, until E and Ari fly down to Vince’s Mexico hideaway to bring him to a meeting that will surely get his career back on track after the straight-to-DVD release of Medellen. Meanwhile, Drama begins to once again shoot himself in the foot as his NBC show is still in production. I forsee a season of Entourage that has been left wide open for anything to happen. Definitely a must-see.

I also had the pleasure of seeing the first two episodes of Californication before season two begins tomorrow on Showtime. And from what I’ve seen, the finale of last season is not the end of Hank Moody or his life as a struggling writer, father, and mate in Southern California. The first two episodes have a lot of promise: Hank finds himself in jail, while still trying to figure out what to do about Bill’s underage daughter Mia with whom he slept and her devious plan to release what may be Hank’s best book under her own name; while his agent Charlie has problems of his own with his former secretary-turned fellow agent Dani who is representing Mia, and threatening Charlie with a sexual harassment lawsuit. Meanwhile Karen is questioning her decision to leave stable and successful Bill for Hank, who screws up at the first opportunity he gets. But lady luck may just be good to Hank – by pure coincidence Hank may be about to land a job that could finally get him away from the Hell-A blog. Good stuff, and if you haven’t seen the first season, you’ve still got time before tomorrow to catch up.

Finally, I want to talk about a new series on FOX called Fringe. It stars Joshua Jackson, and is produced by J.J. Abrams (LOST, Alias, Felicity, Cloverfield, and the upcoming The Invisible Woman). The first episode played more like a sci-fi action/thriller movie and was an hour and a half long, and introduced us to the main concept: an Alias and X-Files type formula that I believe will be the big show of the year. Primetime TV has gone without good government conspiracy and freaky stories for a while, and Fringe will be that pacifier, for a while at least. The first episode introduced us to FBI agents who were investigating an act of domestic terrorism, and needed the help of a scientist who had been in a mental hospital for years, and the only one who could get information from a comatose patient by mentally linking minds with them. After getting him out, Agent Dunham and the scientist’s son, played by Joshua Jackson, work to bring back the comatose agent who was harmed by a strange chemical that made his flesh clear. They save him, only to be apparently double crossed by him at the end, suggesting that the job offer Agent Dunham receives from a mysterious, higher-up may be more than what she bargained for, but may also help her to bring down the real bad guys. I forsee something not as great or as hard to keep up with as LOST or 24, but more self-contained storylines with an overarching plot for the real fans. I think this show has a lot of potential, and hope it does well. Oh, and the name Fringe refers to the areas of fringe science the show will be dealing with, such as telekinesis, precognition, teleportation, and the like. Also, the opening credits were made by Andrew Kramer of videocopilot.net, so that’s reason enough to watch it too. There’s an encore of the pilot tonight at 8 on FOX, then it moves to its regular Tuesday night time slot next week.

That’s about it, if I missed anything good, be sure and let us know about it.