By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times, MCT Posted October 20, 2010
So it wasn’t the greatest fall season in the history of television or even recent memory. A few pretty good shows, some of which may not be around come midseason (“The Event,” “Mike & Molly,” “Raising Hope,” “Undercovers”), some not so good shows that did OK (“$#(ASTERISK)! My Dad Says”) and some that didn’t (“Lone Star”). But no really great shows, no groundbreakers like “Glee” or genre resuscitations a la “Modern Family” or “The Middle.”
“Hawaii Five-O” looks to be the one out-of-the-box hit of the season, which is both good and bad. With “Lost” gone, it’s certainly nice to have another show set in Hawaii, and how cool is it to hear that theme song again? But one fears its success will lead to a string of ‘70s remakes and that would be a drag. A new version of, say, “Little House on the Prairie” might be fun, but who wants to see “The Streets of San Francisco” or “Kojak” again? Not me.
Still, you can’t have a killer season every year or there would be no series to cancel to make room for the potentially new and great shows. And there are plenty of sophomore (and junior and senior) shows that kicked off the new season in promising and remarkable ways. Why, Justin Bieber showed up on the season premiere of “CSI” in the apparent hope of establishing a “CSI” beachhead among tween girls. I can’t imagine it is going to work out, but he was not nearly as terrible as one assumed he would be, and it’s good to see shows other than Fox’s “Glee” using guest stars to go pop-pop-culture hybrid.
Even “The Good Wife” (CBS) hauled in Lou Dobbs as a potential client for the newly reorganized law firm during its second episode. Remarkably well written and acted, “The Good Wife” suffered no harm over the summer break, resuming its stately and intricate dance of character and plot, politics and passion, crime, punishment and what lies in between without missing a beat.
This year’s Emmy winner for best comedy, “Modern Family” (ABC), used its season premiere to address criticism rather than flex its guest-star muscle (though Nathan Lane appeared a few episodes later), addressing that longtime partners and newish parents Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet, also a recent Emmy winner) have never kissed. Because, it turns out, Mitchell has PDA issues. So the big kiss episode was all about not kissing, though the second saw some lip on lip. The third episode had an earthquake and Lane, both with equally hilarious implications, so no early-onset slump in sight.
Over at CBS, “The Big Bang Theory” shows no sign of either post-breakup (Kaley Cuoco’s Penny and Johnny Galecki’s Leonard) or post-Emmy (Jim Parsons for lead actor in a comedy) stress, slipping without fanfare into its new night, Thursday, as lead-in to “$#(ASTERISK)! My Dad Says”
“Bones” brought its far-flung characters back to business as usual under the flimsiest of guises, as did “Castle.” Likewise, “The Mentalist” had a strong first episode, with events taking Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) and his pals deep into Jane’s carney past, but it wasn’t until Week 3 that the plot returned to his missing psychic friend in a real way.
Of all last season’s finales, none hit harder than that of “Dexter,” in which Dexter’s (Michael C. Hall) beloved if naive wife, Rita (Julie Benz, gone to much less glory in this season’s disappointing “No Ordinary Family”), was murdered by the Trinity killer, whom Dexter allowed to evade authorities so he could execute him.
So vociferous was the response to the sight of the baby Harrison sitting in a pool of blood and moral culpability that the “Dexter” tagline for this season became “Now?” Alas, not quite as much as you would think. Although the first episode chronicled in grim detail what actually happened next, the larger issue of Dexter’s guilt fell into the familiar “Am I a monster?” vein and soon events appeared to reassure us that the world still needs Dexter and his predatory ways. But then, with “Dexter” as with most returning shows, it’s never really about the season premiere. It’s about, well, the “now what?”
