ABC Upfront: 2009-2010 Season Preview

By Lisa Fary

I’m going to be watching more ABC just because Jay Leno is gorging himself on prime time next season. So thanks, ABC, for not caving in a similar manner and continuing to produce shows (and for getting into more offbeat territory).

Here’s the ABC prime time schedule for 2009-2010:

Sunday	Extreme Makeover: Home	Desperate Housewives	Brothers & Sisters
Monday	Dancing with the Stars		Castle
Tuesday	Shark Tank	DWTS Results Show	The Forgotten
Wednesday	Hank/ The Middle	Modern Family/ Cougar Town	Eastwick
Thursday	Flash Forward	Grey’s Anatomy	Private Practice
Friday	Supernanny	Ugly Betty	20/20
Saturday	Football

I had the chance to see previews for the new shows at Tuesday’s upfront presentation. Here’s the rundown:

Dramas

Flash Forward. ABC expects big things from this show, so much that, rather than a promo clip reel, they showed the entire first act of the pilot.

It begins with FBI agent Mark Benford in chaos, surrounded by car accidents, fires, death. We then back up to four hours earlier, when the main characters were just going about another day. By the end of the act, Benford zones out and has a vision of himself six months in the future, obsessively researching a case. When he comes to, we again see the chaotic scenes from the beginning.

The sucky part is that this happened to everyone for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, and during the event, no one was able to control a car, operate on a patient, etc, resulting in lots of gruesome death.

Stephen McPhereson called it an “intimate epic” and emphasized that Flash Forward is about characters. For long term interest in Flash Forward, I’m going to need more than this one time event and (the very yummy) Joseph Fiennes.  What the show has going for it are executive producers David Goyer and Brannon Braga.

Stars: Joseph Fiennes, Sonya Walger, John Cho
Airs: Thursdays at 8PM

The Forgotten. Amateur detectives close the cases of Jane and John Does. The team finds out who the victim was to find out what happened and let their families know. Interesting twist on the basic procedural, but not on my must watch list.

Stars: Rupert Penry-Jones, Reiko Aylesworth
Airs: Tuesdays at 10PM

Eastwick. Adaptation of The Witches of Eastwick. It looks like glossy, brightly colored witch fun. I’m totally watching this.

Stars: Rebecca Romjin, Lindsay Price, Jamie Ray Newman, Paul Gross
Airs: Wednesdays at 10PM

Happy Town. “From the network that brought you Twin Peaks. . . “ the promo proudly announces. If only they knew that I’d recently started re-watching Twin Peaks (definitive gold box edition, bitches!) and recalling the brilliance and then the tremendous disservice ABC did to that show. But, I get it. ABC is trying to get across a feeling and perspective.

The promo starts out bright and shiny, but the creepy gets cued fairly quickly. “Happy Town” is the nickname for Haplin, Minnesota, where the air smells like the local bakery, everyone wears a smile, and seven years ago, a psycho known as The Magic Man kidnapped a bunch of kids. Now, The Magic Man is back, the sheriff has to stop him, and there’s a new girl in town searching for her family’s history.

At best, it looks like Low Carb Twin Peaks Ultra Light.

Stars: Amy Acker, Geoff Stults, Lauren German, Sam Neill
Airs: Spring 2010

The Deep End. Boston Legal set in Los Angeles with first year lawyers and without David E. Kelly. I even recognized some Boston Legal sets in the clips. Seriously, it’s looks like Boston Legal with a younger, cheaper cast.

Stars: Billy Zane, Tina Majorino
Airs: Spring 2010

V. The is the one I’ve been waiting for. I was hoping for a continuation of the original story, but after seeing the previews, I’m OK with this update.

Just like in the 1980s, a fleet of massive alien ships park over Earth’s major cities. This time, instead of waiting for print and broadcast media to assemble and disseminate their message to the masses, the bottom of each ship projects an extra large image of Morena Baccarin’s lovely face to the wee humans below (BTW, she looks super cute with that pixie cut!).

This V seems more sophisticated than the original, not just in the effects. The Nazi imagery is gone in favor of a bright eyed smile and shiny corporate veneer. These Visitors appear to be far more calculating and sinister than their 1980s predecessors – they’d destroy humanity and not only would we not notice, we’d probably enjoy it. But, that’s just my perspective based on the clips.

Stars: Elizabeth Mitchell, Joel Gretsch, Morris Chestnut, Morena Baccarin, Scott Wolf
Airs: Spring 2010

Comedies

Hank. Wall Street CEO loses all his money, forcing entitled family to downsize to their old hometown in Virginia and learn to live without their Hispanic maid, private jet, etc. Yeah, rich folk learning to live like normies? Yawn. It’s a Green Acres rip off with a recession twist.

Stars: Kelsey Grammer, Melinda McGraw
Airs: Wednesday at 8PM

The Middle. The star is a point against this show: Patricia Heaton. I hate Patricia Heaton. Don’t ask why. Something about her just bugs the hell out of me. But, I like the Janitor from Scrubs, who plays the dad on this typical middle American family sitcom. At least it looks a lot less annoying than According to Jim.

Stars: Patricia Heaton, Neil Flynn
Airs: Wednesdays at 8:30PM

Modern Family. ABC showed the first episode in its entirety, rather than a promo clip reel. Gotta say, I’m typically not one for family sitcoms, but I appreciate that ABC is pushing the envelope a bit with this one. We know that the standard nuclear family is becoming less and less common, that more people have non-standard families, but we can’t say that’s been reflected in network sitcoms. At least, not without making it the shows raison d’etre.

Modern Family shows us three families. Phil and Claire and their three kids are the nuclear family (favorite Claire line: “If my kid never wakes up on the beach naked, I’ve done my job”). Jay and Gloria are both on their second marriages; he’s an older guy, she’s a younger, Colombian babe with an 11 year old son from her first marriage. Mitchell and Cameron are a gay couple who have just adopted a Vietnamese baby girl. They each form their own unit, but they’re all related: Claire and Mitchell are siblings, Jay is their dad.

This was probably the biggest surprise for me. I’m generally not a sitcom person, but Modern Family was so full of heart, was smartly done, and felt honest.

And America is probably going to hate it.

Stars: Julie Bowen, Ed O’Neill, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ty Burrell
Airs: Wednesday at 9PM

Cougar Town. A sitcom about Courtney Cox getting older. It may work because Cox isn’t skanky like the SNL gals on the Cougar Den sketch. Also, it has Busy Philipps, who won me over with her role on Freaks and Geeks. Another positive point is Bill Lawrence (Scrubs) who serves as executive producer, writer, and director. I’m not crazy about the concept, but Cougar Town looks like it has charm.

Stars: Courtney Cox, Busy Philipps
Airs: Wednesdays at 9:30PM

There are some strong possibilities on this list. I’m most looking forward to V and Eastwick (and will give Happy Town and Flash Forward a chance). There’s nothing here quite as high concept of immediately charming as Pushing Daisies or Life on Mars, but it seems like the best stuff is always short lived, anyway. Here’s hoping one of these shows, in its entirety, blows me away.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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