CBS Upfronts 2016-17

Well hopefully this will post properly without devestating the FOX upfronts post or destroying the multiverse.

CBS is the most viewed TV network in the United States, although there are those who say that that doesn’t matter since their appeal to the lower part of the 18-49 demographic isn’t great. Unlike last year, when CBS introduced Supergirl to appeal to that part of the demographic (since superheroes and comic book based shows are doing well on The CW), the network doesn’t really seem to be making a huge effort to latch on to the Millennials. In fact they’ve even exiled last year’s “great young hope” to The CW. Yes, Supergirl, which did decent but not spectacular ratings number has gone to play with The Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow at The CW (and in Vancouver). Also missing but not yet dead is Limitless which CBS is hoping to relocate to some other network. Coincidentally I liked both of these shows. Oh well.

Cancelled
Angel From Hell, CSI: Cyber, The Good Wife, Mike & Molly, Person Of Interest, Rush Hour

Renewed
2 Broke Girls, 48 Hours, 60 Minutes, The Amazing Race, The Big Bang Theory, Blue Bloods, Code Black, Criminal Minds, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, Elementary, Hawaii Five-0, Life In Pieces, Madam Secretary, Mom, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, The Odd Couple, Scorpion, Survivor, Thursday Night Football, Undercover Boss

New Shows
Bull, Doubt, The Great Indoors, Kevin Can Wait, MacGyver, Man With A Plan, Pure Genius, Training Day

Fall Schedule By Day (New Series in Caps)

Monday
8-8:30 p.m. The Big Bang Theory (until mid-October) KEVIN CAN WAIT
8:30-9 p.m. KEVIN CAN WAIT (until mid-October) MAN WITH A PLAN
9-9:30 p.m. 2 Broke Girls (new day and time)
9:30-10 p.m. The Odd Couple (new day and time)
10-11 p.m. Scorpion (new time)

Tuesday
8-9 p.m. NCIS
9-10 p.m. BULL
10-11 p.m. NCIS: New Orleans

Wednesday
8-9 p.m. Survivor
9-10 p.m. Criminal Minds
10-11 p.m. Code Black

Thursday (Starting October 27)
8-8:30 p.m. The Big Bang Theory
8:30-9 p.m. THE GREAT INDOORS
9-9:30 p.m. Mom
9:30-10 p.m. Life In Pieces
10-11 p.m. PURE GENIUS

Friday
8-9 p.m. MACGYVER
9-10 p.m. Hawaii Five 0
10-11 p.m. Blue Bloods

Sunday
7-8 p.m. 60 Minutes
8-9 p.m. NCIS: Los Angeles (new day and time)
9-10 p.m. Madam Secretary (new time)
10-11 p.m. Elementary

Summaries
Kevin Can Wait stars Kevin James as a newly retired NYPD Sergeant (named Kevin)who has big plans for his retirement including chilling with his family and having epic adventures with his friends and fellow retirees (like combining go karts and paintball). The problem is that Kevin’s wife Donna (Erinn Hayes) has withheld certain key information from him, meaning that the challenges he’s going to have to face at home are going to be greater than those he faced on the job (like keeping himself from killing his eldest daughter’s fiance).

Man With A Plan marks Matt LeBlanc’s return to American broadcast network TV. He plays Adam, a contractor who decides to become a stay at home dad while his wife Andi (Jessica Chaffin) goes back to work. He doesn’t know what he’s in for. He – and his kids – expects that he can get away with being “daddy fun times” but he soon discovers that in their own ways his kids are maniacs. He needs to learn the tricks of getting control of his brood from other parents who’ve been there.

Bull is Dr. Jason Bull (Michael Weatherly) is one of the top jury consultants in the country. He and his team use psychological analysis, intuition and high tech data to learn what makes lawyers, witnesses, and especially jurors tick. Weatherly’s character is based on Dr. Phil McGraw who, before he became a TV psychologist, was the founder of one of the top trial consulting firms ever. McGraw is one of the show’s executive producers, along with Steven Spielberg.

In The Great Indoors, Kevin McHale plays Jack a renowned outdoor adventure writer who suddenly finds himself supervising a collection of millennial online journalists when Roland (Stephen Fry), the founder of the magazine he works for, decides to take the magazine “all-digital.”  Complicating matters even more is the fact that he report has to report to Roland’s daughter Brooke (Susannah Fielding). If Jack can manage to decipher his co-workers he might be able to get them to realize that the outside world something more that an image on the screen.

Pure Genius is a medical drama with a focus on the marriage of high technology and medicine. Young Silicon Valley tech billionaire James Bell (Augustus Pew) has built Bunker Hill Hospital to revolutionize health care and take on the rarest and most challenging medical mysteries, all free of charge. Bell persuade Dr. Walter Wallace (Dermot Mulroney), a maverick neurosurgeon who believes medicine is a human rather than a technological endeavour, to be the hospital’s chief of staff. Bell has assembled a group of trailblazing young doctors to pursue his goals.

MacGyver is a re-imagining of the 1980’s series starring Lucas Till as Angus “Mac” MacGyver who uses his vast scientific knowledge and talent for improvisational problem solving to save lives while on missions for a clandestine organization that he created within the US government. Among those working with him is Lincoln (George Eads) a maverick former CIA agent.

Debuting at mid-season, Training Day is a sequel to the movie of the same name. Bill Paxton plays morally ambiguous Detective Frank Rourke who heads up the LAPD’s Special Investigation Section. Frank has built a team that is devoted to him, but his tendency to operate in the grey areas has led Deputy Chief Joy Lockhart (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) to assign untarnished rookie Kyle Craig (Justin Cornwell) as Frank’s new trainee so that he can report on Frank and the SIS’s methods. However as Frank introduces Justin to the ways of the streets they form an uneasy alliance that could change both of them.

Doubt is another series debuting at mid-season. Sadie Ellis (Katherine Heigl) is a brilliant attorney with a boutique law firm who falls in love with her client Bill Brennan (Steven Pasquale), an altruistic pediatric surgeon accused of the murder of his girlfriend 24 years before. Sadie conceals her feelings towards Bill from everyone including her best friend and colleague Albert Cobb (Dule Hill) who thingks he knows everything about her. Among the other lawyers at the firm are its revered founder Isaiah Roth (Elliott Gould) and Cameron Wirth, a transgender Ivy League graduate who fights passionately for her clients (Lavern Cox, who plays Cameron, is the frst transgender performer to play a transgender character as a series regular in a broadcast network series).

Comments
I am not very enthusiastic about most of the new CBS lineup. And it’s not just because my favourite show, The Amazing Race, is being held for mid-season (although that’s part of it). The new comedy series really don’t inspire much confidence from me. Certainly Kevin Can Wait and Man With A Plan seem like rehashes of concepts we have seen so many times before just with “big names.” The don’t inspire me and I can’t help but feeling that by the end of the 2016-17 season (if not before) CBS will regret sending Supergirl off to The CW (and keeping Limitless in limbo). The Great Indoors might be okay; on the other hand it might turn into just another workplace comedy, a type that CBS frankly doesn’t do well. I’m betting (metaphorically speaking) on the latter.

MacGyver follows a trend that I mentioned in the FOX post, reviving a show that had a perfectly good send-off for no other reason than name recognition. I haven’t seen the trailer for the series (CBS has region-blocked their trailers this year, and while I was able to track down trailers for some of he network’s shows, I didn’try to get them all) so I can’t comment on what they’re putting on the screen, but somehow it just doesn’t feel like a good idea.

Bull has a potentially interesting concept, a popular lead actor in Michael Weatherly and gives it an excellent time slot between two big CBS powerhouses (with ties to Weatherly) in NCIS and NCIS: New Orleans I can see this show doing well in the ratings while being totally ignored by the critics because it isn’t exciting or controversial. As for Pure Genius, the concept sounds a bit out there; a gimmicky medical show that isn’t the background for romantic entanglements like Grey’s Anatomy, never know what happens next cases like Code Black, and whatever it was they’re doing on Chicago Medical (a show I confess I don’t watch). Of course, since it was one of the trailers that I wasn’t able to see, it could be the greatest medical show ever, but I’m getting more of a feel of Chicago Hope than ER. Mid-season series Doubt leaves me cold. There are elements like the presence of Lavern Cox, and the description of her character’s passion that could be interesting, but given that the description gives so much attention to the relationship between the characters played by Katherine Heigl and Stephen Pasquale sends up red flags for me. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be the next Good Wife and I’m worried that the main plot line could be the least interesting thing in this show.

The show that sounds like it could be the next big thing for CBS could be the Training Day. If the network makes this show as harsh and gritty as the movie that it was based on I think there are intriguing directions that it could go in. It could very well be something of a critical darling if it’s done right, and if it can capture an audience. The midseason start doesn’t necessarily bode well for the latter.

Looking at the completed CBS lineup I can’t help feeling disappointed. CBS has tended to produce a workman-like if not necessarily spectacularly good or noteworthy list of shows that mesh together well and leave the network with hard choices when the end of the season comes around. This lineup doesn’t feel like that; it feels like there are more big problems lying in wait than lasting successes.

Addison’s Adventures in LaLaLand

What can I say about Thursday night's two hour episode of Grey's Anatomy that was supposed to serve as a pilot for the proposed Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) spin-off series, tentatively titled Private Practice? I guess I can honestly say that for the first time in a very long time I was overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time.

How do I explain this? I guess a major thing is that the decision to make this a two hour episode and to intercut events at Seattle Grace with Addison's adventures in LaLaLand was a poor choice. I felt overwhelmed with the number of storylines that intermingled and really the effort needed to try to keep things straight. I'll get to the "underwhelmed" part shortly but suffice it to say that maybe my perspective on the whole thing would have been different if they'd presented this in a different manner. There was enough drama and conflict in the Seattle Grace part that it should have been on its own, while I would have had more of a chance to feel involved in the Addison story if it had been presented as a contiguous whole. In my mind's eye, I can see how I'd have presented it, with only minimal ties to Seattle Grace in the Addison episode (Derek asks the Chief where Addison is; cut to Addison driving down the highway into Hollywood – close the episode with Addison walking through the doors of Seattle Grace seen from the exterior of the place) and a few more mentions in the Seattle Grace episode (same scene of Derek and the Chief at the start, and seeing Addison returning to Seattle Grace from inside the hospital; maybe some more stuff in the middle). But the way the show was presented didn't do a service to either story but seemed particularly harmful to getting to know who was who and what was going on in the Oceanside Wellness Group story.

I'm not going to go into detail about the Seattle Grace side of Thursday's show. Too bad, because there are some really major developments in the George–Izzie–Callie triangle; Christina's impending nuptials with Burke and Burke's apparent worries; the gradual collapse of the Derek-Meredith relationship (again); and oh yes, the totally unexpected (and in my book unnecessary because I liked the character) death of Meredith's step-mom that seemed to happen only so we could see Meredith rejected by her remaining parent with a serious slap across the face (and no one did anything to support her – more Mer angst on the way). But that wasn`t the focus of the episode, or wouldn`t have been if this had been a one hour episode. The focus was on Addison and the pilot for the spin-off, and on that I have to say that I was underwhelmed.

As I said before part of the problem was the structure for the episode. We`d spend a bit of time in California, sometimes just a vignette, sometimes an extended sequence and then be whisked back to Seattle Grace for a scene of Christina trying on a wedding gown, or Karev spending time with Ava, the amnesiac patient injured on the ferry weeks ago. Maybe it was me but all of this didn`t leave me confused but did make it slightly hard to follow the narrative and develop a feeling for most of the characters.

After her bit of "passion" with Alex Karev in last week's episode which terminated when Alex told her "I'm not your boyfriend" (in other words ruined it in a typically Alex manner), Addison has taken a leave of absence and driven down the coast to LA to see one of her oldest friends who just happens to be a fertility specialist Naomi (Merrin Dungey). See, with no prospect of a long term relationship leading to babies, Addison has decided to go the artificial insemination route to get part of the "everything" that she thinks Naomi has. Trouble is that Naomi doesn't have everything – her marriage has broken up and she's sort of envious that Addison went off to sow while she was marrying like she should, having a kid and building a practice. Addison wants as much to take a vacation from McDreamy, McSteamy and McStiffy (sorry, Addison didn't say it, I borrowed that one from Bruno on Dancing With The Stars) and hang out on the beach. You know that isn't going to happen though – there'd be no episode otherwise – and in short order Addison is pulled into the goings on at Oceanside. It seems their OB-Gyn quit when her relationship with another doctor at the place went south, and since there's and empty office.... The other doctors in the practice are Naomi's ex, Sam (Taye Diggs) who has written one of those successful self help books (I swear, someone on the beach called him "Dr. Feelgood") and is apparently quite in love with his own image since it's plastered all over the reception area; Violet (Amy Brenneman) the resident psychiatrist who is unlucky at love (maybe it's the way she dresses when she goes to the market – Brenneman uglies up real good); Cooper (Paul Adelstein) the socially inept pediatrician who likes to meet women online and refuses to believe it when they turn out to be hookers and in this case steal his Porsche; and Pete (Tim Daly) the serial monogamous "new age" alternative medicine expert (or as my friend Orac would say, pitcher of Woo) who Addison is attracted to almost immediately. Rounding out the cast is Dell (Chris Lowell), the receptionist who wants to be with Naomi and takes his lunch breaks surfing. In other words, like Grey`s Anatomy, this backdoor pilot is full of quirky characters.

It also has some quirky cases. Violet and Sam have a husband and wife as patients. It seems that the wife has been getting hurt a lot on exercise equipment because her husband hasn`t had sex with her in a couple of years. He just doesn`t feel it. Violet`s solution is to tell him to have sex with his wife even if he doesn`t feel in the mood. As a treatment regimen it leaves something to be desired, and so does the patient`s response to the ``therapy" – he isn't able to make love to his wife leading Sam to look for a physical cause. They eventually discover a tumour on his adrenal gland, although not before the wife spends the night away from home. She tells her husband that she could have cheated but didn't. When the truth comes out about his illness she confides to Violet that she did indeed have a one night stand. The other case was more in Addison's line – a surrogate mother who had sex with two or three men after the ova was implanted in her. Of course there's a potentially life threatening complication that could be dealt with easily if the baby went to term, and of course the stress of the situation means that the surrogate can't bring the baby to term. This leads to a confrontation between Addison, who earlier learned that she'd run out of chances to have a baby of her own, and the cloud of people surrounding the case who seemed more interested in the identity of the father and whether the surrogate mother would go through with the adoption than they were with the health of the baby and the birth mother.

I'm not convinced that this show would work as a spin-off, but if it doesn't it's not because of the cast. As always Tim Daly is effortlessly charming and he certainly seems to have more than a little chemistry with Kate Walsh. I'm not overly familiar with Merrin Dungey – I never watched Alias – but she seemed to be in full "best friend" mode. Adelstein's pediatrician is mostly played for comic relief as he maintained a belief that his Internet date hadn't stolen his car right up to the time the stripped shell of his Porsche was found abandoned on the street. As for Taye Diggs I can't say that much about him. He works as the celebrity doctor and yet I found things were a little lacking when it came to his motives for splitting with his wife. Kate Walsh was great, but then Addison has rapidly become one of my two or three favourite characters on Grey's Anatomy largely due to the way that Walsh has played the character. Amy Brenneman played against the type I usually associate her by playing Violet as more than a little insecure at times.

As I mentioned, I wasn`t at all happy with the way that they decided to interweave the action in Los Angeles with the events at Seattle Grace, so that might have had an influence on the way that I regarded the writing of the Private Practice portions of the episode. I tended to find the LA portions of the episode a bit flat. It may be that part of the problem is that they seemed to have made the choice to bring the quirkiness of Grey`s Anatomy to the new show but what works with (supposedly) 20-something interns isn`t necessarily the right formula for professionals in their late 30s or early 40s who have already established their careers. There were some nice touches – Sam walking the absurdly small dog while talking with Pete near the beach was one of those moments as was Violet`s encounter with her commitment-phobic ex-boyfriend – and his new much younger wife – at the supermarket. The best scenes revolved around Addison though, whether it was Addison and the "talking" elevator or an unwilling Addison getting acupuncture from Pete to release her stress. Give Walsh this sort of scene and she sparkles. I tended to find though that there was a sometimes too conscious effort to remind us that this is Southern California and things are different here that was a bit forced. Pete, the alternative medicine practitioner, was part of this – he wouldn't have been allowed within a hundred yards of Seattle Grace. Another of those scenes was when Naomi, Addison and Violet watch Dell walk through the lobby wearing his swim trunks and carrying his surfboard. It's a scene that practically screams "this is California and we're at the beach," with a healthy dose of "women have the right to objectify younger men." It's sort of a double standard for Naomi though – she can ogle Dell but when Dell tries to start a relationship with her it's inappropriate.

The first time I saw Grey's Anatomy there was a "wow" factor at play. It wasn't that the show was particularly innovative but it took a form that I was familiar with – the sort of "young doctors" movie that had been popular in the early 1960s – and updated it by making the characters more overtly sexual. It was a different take on a form that was so familiar that it had become trite. I don't get the same "wow" factor from the Private Practice portions of Thursday's Grey's Anatomy episode. There were interesting bits and pieces, but on the whole it was, well ordinary and certainly nothing to get overly excited about. Maybe that was a result of the pilot being intermingled with the Grey's episode. Maybe it was that I at least had high expectations that weren't met because of the strength of Grey's Anatomy. Either way – or maybe for some other reason that I can't fully understand – I was distinctly underwhelmed by the Private Practice backdoor pilot. And if anyone at ABC were to ask me (which of course they wouldn't) I'd tell them to pass on Private Practice, keep Addison at Seattle Grace and Kate Walsh on Grey's Anatomy, at least until they come up with a better vehicle for her and the character.