Upfronts 2013: What's new, what's dead, and what's weird

     NBC unveiling "Revolution" at their May 2012 upfront.
     How'd that work out for ya?

I've been busy the last couple days trying to get a few weeks ahead on my 25 Favourites list, and I completely forgot to write anything about last week's upfronts, in which the major U.S. television networks unveil their fall schedules in front of advertisers in New York City. Some scheduling decisions intrigue me, some seem utterly ridiculous. Let's go network by network: all the fall shows are listed in bold and new shows will hyperlink to a trailer whenever one is available.

How will NBC's unaired "Hannibal" episode affect the show's reputation?

     Hugh Dancy as Will Graham on "Hannibal".
     Photo Credit: NBC

Early last Monday (April 15), Bryan Fuller, the creator of the dark, disturbing, and excellent new series "Hannibal," approached NBC with a request not to air an upcoming episode of the series, which focuses on FBI profiler Will Graham and his experiences with a pre-imprisoned Dr. Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris' series of books and their film adaptations. The episode, entitled "Ceuf," features Molly Shannon playing a disturbed mother (who has lost her own child) kidnapping kids and then brainwashing them into murdering their families.

Most of "Hannibal's" 13 episode order was filmed last year, before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. In light of the tragedy, Fuller was rightfully uncomfortable with the episode's "kids murdering other kids" subject matter and NBC agreed to skip over the episode. The announcement of the episode's removal from the North American market came last Thursday (April 18), and many sources initially reported (wrongly) that the Boston bombings last week were responsible for the shuffling. Most of these reports were later corrected, and NBC prepared to skip to episode five.

Small problem: while "Hannibal" does contain a case of the week (the Molly Shannon side of things), there's an ongoing arc involving the case from the pilot episode and how it has affected the main characters. Particularly, the unaired episode contains a good deal of development in the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Abigail Hobbs, the victim of the pilot's antagonist. When critics were sent episodes to review earlier this month, they were sent episodes 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, and in watching the "Previously on Hannibal" segment realized they had missed these developments from episode four. To help eliminate confusion, Fuller "cannibalized" the episode (haha, because you see, Hannibal Lecter...never mind) into six short webisodes, running in total for about 22 minutes. This way, fans could follow along with the arc in future episodes but not have to see whatever disturbing violent images (that were actually probably topped in episode five) from the case of the week.

While the episode has been eliminated from the U.S. and Canadian rotation, the full episode will still air overseas. AXN, a Sony-owned channel that holds the broadcast rights to the show in parts of Asia, aired the uncensored version of "Ceuf" earlier tonight in India and the rest of the continent is expected to see the episode on Tuesday. And because it's 2013, that means it won't be too long before the full version makes its way online.

Confused? You won't be after this week's episode of..."Hannibal!" (Actually, you might still be very confused. I wouldn't blame you.)

"The Office" - "Moving On": Lord, beer me strength

     Destined to be together. Too bad they apparently stopped
     listening to each other say stuff.
     Photo Credit: NBC

14 year old me probably never thought I would say this, but tonight's episode of "The Office" was horrible. A complete and total mess on every level.

An episode of "The Office" in the 2010s was bad? Stop the presses. Yeah, this show has been a complete mess for about three years now, but never in a way that I felt, or that made me finally realize, I needed to sit down and pen an essay about why I hate so much about the things "The Office" has chosen to be.

Season 3 of "The Voice" transitions from unwatchable to legitimately maddening

   From left to right: Miranda Lambert's husband, former Mousketeer,
   massive tool, half of Gnarls Barkley, and the short haired guy from
   Maroon 5.

This fall, NBC launched a new sitcom called "Go On", in which widowed sportscaster Ryan King (Matthew Perry) is forced into a handful of "coping with loss" therapy sessions with "Community"-esque misfits before returning to work full time. And Ryan isn't ten minutes into his first session when his sports background takes over and he decides to turn the various losses and pains suffered by the group's established members into a bracket-style tournament that the Tyler James Williams character dubs "March Sadness".

But this parade of sob stories fighting to win over a jury of one's peers isn't unique to "Go On" - in fact, the ridiculous, over the top sob stories on the new season of "The Voice" consumed a third of the primetime hours on NBC this past week.

Quick review: NBC's "The New Normal"

     The cast of the new NBC comedy "The New Normal"

The upfronts trailer and early ads for NBC's new Ryan Murphy-created comedy "The New Normal" did not exhibit promise. There might be a more obvious thematic trend in the actual content of these new fall shows that I'm overlooking, but right now it seems like this season is seeing a lot of very talented and/or funny actors working on some real duds of shows. While traveling in the U.S. over the holiday, I took advantage of Hulu to watch a couple of pilots before they air on TV, and "The New Normal" was one of them. Rather than write up a specific review, I've copied and pasted a message I sent to a friend on Facebook describing all the things I didn't like about the show, most of which were reasons that I both abandoned "Glee" after its second season and didn't watch a second episode of "American Horror Story".

My reaction to "The New Normal" immediately after viewing:

Wasn't a fan of The New Normal. It's somewhere between meh and bad. Typical Ryan Murphy problems - serious tonal issues and at times unearned sentimentality. The old lady character from the ads is the main character Goldie's grandmother (because everyone in their family gets knocked up really young - Goldie is in her late 20s and got knocked up at 15) and she's basically Sue Sylvester, over the top for cheap laughs and you can already tell she's only gonna get worse. It's half unfunny sitcom and half lecture on tolerance.

One of the problems I have with Modern Family is that it seems far too often that Mitch really can't stand Cam but it's played as "oh that crazy Mitch and Cam, they're such a couple" like we're supposed to find it cute or endearing. This couple is kind of the same thing. Bryan is the "Cam" of this couple but kind of more of an unapologetic dick. But again, I think we're supposed to find it endearing that he means well, which is really cliched. He's recording these videos for his unborn child and cries at just the thought that the kid might call him daddy, and then when he's meeting with the guy from the surrogacy services all he wants for the child is that it will be blonde and thin.

Also, not to totez spoil this show for you, but this pilot ends on a goddamn cliffhanger re: whether or not Goldie (that's her actual name) will be impregnated from the artificial insemination. Can't think of another comedy that's ever done that. Cheap ploy to get people back for week 2. NICE TRY RYAN MURPHY BUT KTHXBAI.

Sigh. Oh well. My hopes weren't high, so this feels about right. I just so want NBC to have success with a good show. Fingers crossed for "Whitney" to become a surprise sophomore hit!!! Except...then I guess only the first part is true. Anyway.

Didn't end up finishing Fox's "Ben and Kate", but hopefully I can do that tonight and write up something about it tomorrow.

Greg Daniels promises a good final season for "The Office" - do I believe him?

Note: This has been a work in progress since last week, so a little bit of the wording is off re: dates. "Tuesday" refers to last Tuesday, August 21.

On Tuesday morning, I took a fun trip to the dental surgeon to have my wisdom teeth removed. Meanwhile, as I was enduring a good deal of pain, somewhere in California, Greg Daniels was relieving a great pain of mine by announcing that the upcoming ninth season of NBC's "The Office" would be the last for Scranton's paper pushers.

I fell in love with "The Office" pretty quickly back in the summer of 2007. Within no time, I suddenly found myself quoting the show constantly and anxiously awaiting the premiere of the fourth season. To my sadness, the show hit a rough patch and slowly but surely has become a pale imitation of its former brilliance. In this writer's opinion, seasons one, two, and three are near perfect; season four has a batting average of about 2/3; season five is probably about half, and has the four or five "Michael Scott Paper Company" episodes carrying it; season six is largely forgettable outside of the Jim and Pam wedding and baby episodes; season seven saw a great sendoff for Michael Scott, and was decent considering how much of the show was broken by then; and last year's eighth season was pretty much horrible.

So I would say that going into the ninth and final season, I am the least cautiously optimistic than I've ever been in the second half of this series. Greg Daniels, who helmed the show during its brightest years, is returning to help send Dunder Mifflin off into the sunset. And he's promised the following changes (courtesy of OfficeTally.com), to which I've attached my opinions.

There were a lot of characters on "Friday Night Lights" I wished I would never see again

     Clockwise from top: Kat McPhee on "Smash," star of "Off
     the Map" and "The Mob Doctor," typecasted murderer, girl
     who asked the question to Miss Teen South Carolina,
     has volleyball under special skills on her resume, Canadian
     box office draw, Rob Has A Podcast fantasy football
     competitor, new Charlie's Angel number...let's say two.

Better late than never, I spent the last twelve days making my way through all five seasons of "Friday Night Lights", which I really enjoyed. Except for some key parts that I didn't. And since I'm about six years too late on getting in on this party, I really don't have anyone to bounce these thoughts off of. So I turn to you, faithful blog.

So many of the show's problems have already been written to death about - the Tyra/Landry murder plot, Santiago, everything else about season two, its complete inability to handle a story about crime with any grace - so I'll spare you. But the Tyra/Landry murder story did leave me thinking about an aspect of storytelling that to me felt so obviously wrong that I can't believe the writers went down that path.

If you could just go ahead and shut up about how NBC broadcasts the Olympics, that'd be great

     Opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in London.

There's been a fair bit of outrage on Twitter tonight regarding NBC's presentation of the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Some of it is deserved, like the excessive commercial breaks that wouldn't be necessary if NBC didn't overpay for the television rights to these games again. Some if it is totally deserved - if Bob Costas and Matt Lauer did indeed spend the duration of Kazakhstan's entrance in the Parade of Nations talking about Borat (as Twitter tells me they did) then obviously that's not journalism and just very ignorant. That being said, allow me to offer a couple bullet point forms of defense.

- Tape delay: There are pros and cons here. You have to keep in mind both that a) there is a 5 hour time difference between London and the east coast of the United States, and b) NBC is still a television network that makes most of its money broadcasting in primetime. The argument that social media has killed the tape delay is only half right. Sure, CBS should continue to be nailed for tape delaying the Grammys every year on the West Coast considering they air on a Sunday and are produced in Los Angeles; but NBC should not be nailed for airing this event in primetime because fun fact: the majority of Americans were working today, a Friday, at 4:00pm eastern time and would have no way of seeing this event live. That's not to say that one of NBC's cable channels, like USA, couldn't have aired this live instead of the three reruns of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" that it aired during those hours instead. That's because it's much easier for them to do that than for NBC to clear three hours from every one of their affiliates to air the opening ceremonies live. An event this big is going to be talked about, even if it's three hours later than when it actually happened. The West Coast tape delay of the opening ceremonies are proving that right now. NBC Sports is another contended to air this event live, but at the time they were already showing Olympic coverage in the form of men's soccer.

- America, ra-ra-ra: Please stop. America is far from the only nation to do this. If you watched CTV's coverage in Canada as I did, then you must remember watching Brian Williams and Lisa LaFlamme babble over footage of Canadian athletes walking through the entire stadium as between five and ten countries behind them were ignored entirely. The countries with the biggest teams, like Australia, Canada, and the U.S. among others, will usually have commercials aired over them because nobody wants to watch 200+ person teams walk through the stadium as the commentators have run out of things to read from the notes they printed off Wikipedia. The Olympics are extremely political, so it's kind of pointless to complain when more coverage is given to a team of hundreds than to a team of 4. Also, coverage will always vary by country because they're trying to try to offer you a take on the games from your own nationality. Because of the primetime tape delay NBC uses, they get complaints about their coverage focusing too much on the American team. Umm...what? They have three primetime hours to sum up the day's highlights, and the people who watch the games in that format want to hear first and foremost about the American team. Canadian television operates on a different model and because of that, coverage will be ongoing all throughout the day on the main CTV network and can therefore more easily cover a broader scope of nations that will otherwise be ignored. Don't blame NBC - this would happen on any major American network. It's just the biz, folks.