It’s the Alphabet Net’s turn at Upfronts — which this year also includes FX, since Disney owns them all now — but y’all, we have so much to discuss about the new shows that have been unveiled already. If you haven’t watched the trailer for Kim Cattrall’s new FOX show… stick with me here because it’s coming.
ABC’s stuff seems pretty boring to me. They must be fairly hard up, because they picked up a pilot that NBC passed on, called Emergence. It stars Alison Tolman of Fargo, and I think she’s awesome — she had a big episode of NBC’s Good Girls in season two that was incredible — and she infuses this clip with a lot of warmth. You just innately trust her. But it feels like Magical Kid Aircraft Cop Mystery With Kidnapping Threat has been done in so many ways.
There’s also Stumptown, which then got renamed Untitled Cobie Smulders Project, and then apparently went back to being Stumptown. It’s based on a graphic novel, and she plays — WAIT FOR IT YOU’LL NEVER GUESS — an unconventional cop whose personal life is messy but she GETS RESULTS.
During that entire first action scene, all I could think was, “This attack was a terrible plan, Cobie. 11 times out of 10, this gets you killed, but because it’s a TV show you’re alive.” Suspension of disbelief, sure, but — at least in this context — it plays less like anything a person would do and more like her character thought, “If I were on an expensive network cop show, how would I surprise these two oafs?”
Let’s get straight to Filthy Rich, on FOX, which is kind of like Dynasty meets G.C.B. Kim Cattrall gives one line reading in particular that is really… something special, in a way that made me laugh when I later read that her performance was garnering “rave reviews.”
As Jessica said, that looks horrendous, but I am also probably going to watch the first two.
Jimmy Smits has a new show called Bluff City Law, for NBC, which is this season’s smug legal drama. I laughed out loud when he passes his daughter a post-it note that says “CHANGE THE WORLD” because at that point it’s the trite icing on an incredibly self-satisfied cake.
CHANGE THE WOOOOORLD.
I cannot with Perfect Harmony, which is kind of Sister Act meets Pitch Perfect, right down to the fact that it stars Anna Camp, and there’s also a little of A League of their Own because Bradley Whitford plays the drunken mansplainer who is turning around this choir and helping them understand themselves better than they ever could without him.
FOX also has a show in which Timothy Hutton plays a doctor who fertilized a bunch of patients with his own sperm — possibly without all of them knowing; I’m not clear? — and his daughter and the world are shocked to find out that he has a ton of potential kids out there. Three of them apparently are going to bond like the sisters they never had, in a heartwarming dramedy… rooted in how their biological father (who only raised one of them, Brittany Snow) has a God complex and consent confusion, among other things.
What that trailer really teaches me is that I like that Pink song.
It’s a hard no from me on this FOX “comedy” about Jason Biggs and Maggie Lawson raising three genuises and then I guess one kid who’s gonna be dumb!!!!!!!!!!
There are more and more clips on this landing page from Variety, including a couple more from ABC, the network whose party I’m actually featuring here. But I could not leave you without showing this clip:
The new “NOT PENNY’S BOAT” is, “NOT STEVE SANDERS’ LICENSE PLATE.”
