The Emperor's New Clothes
FOX keeps trying to convince us that the summer is no longer a vast wasteland of repeats, but instead a "whole new season" of exciting, new shows and that they are a revolutionary network for doing this. All of this kind of sounds exciting until you realize that this new marketing strategy is really nothing more that dressing up duds that wouldn't have made it during the fall or mid-season. I watched about fifteen minutes of the first episode of
North Shore last night before giving up and flipping over to a 2nd season
TNG repeat on Spike and I gave
Quintuplets and
The Jury a try as well. (There is not enough money in the world for me to willingly watch
Simple Life). In each case, not one of these shows did anything to entice me to tune in again next week, much less be a faithful viewer during the warm summer months--unlike last year's brilliant but cancelled too soon
Keen Eddie.
Thankfully, cable TV, specifically the USA Network, is helping out by having some decent, first-run shows during the summer. As you may already know from reading my blog, I'm a huge fan of
The Dead Zone. And tonight,
Monk is back. (Let me just say--the Emmys got it right last year giving the award to Tony Shaloub. Who'd've thunk Antonio from
Wings was actually THIS good?!?) Unfortunately, this week's premiere is getting some bad press from
USA Today's Robert Biano, a review in
Entertainment Weekly was less than flattering but
TV Guide On-Line seems to have good things to say about it. From the previews I've seen (which USA runs every break during
Dead Zone), it looks like Monk heads to New York for tonight's episode which I hope is only a one-time, attention grabbing, season-premiere type of stunt. But I am interested in tonight's episode and will be tuning in with an open mind.
On a related note, there was a story in
USA Today this morning about people with OCD and how they related to
Monk. It's interesting reading.
People with OCD find a friend in Monk
posted by Michael Hickerson at 6/18/2004 08:35:00 AM |
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