There's something adventurous to determining that you're going to review 'Running Wilde' as the not-especially-funny show that it is and not as the successor to the extremely funny show that it isn't.

 

But I can't.

 

FOX can't either. 

 

Without the associated names of Mitchell Hurwitz, Jim Vallely and Will Arnett, there's no way that "Running Wilde" makes it onto the air at all. For FOX, picking this show up was an act of good faith for a group of talented individuals who brought the network great acclaim and minimal viewership over three excellent "Arrested Development" seasons. It's that same good faith that then let the show's creators turn around and largely overhaul the pilot when they decided that the first version wasn't really the show they wanted to make.

 

And it's that same good faith that TV critics can't quite let go of, as we'll simultaneously over-judge and under-scrutinize any show Hurwitz is a part of for the near future. That is to say that we'll denigrate it for not being "Arrested Development" while also giving its potential for improvement the benefit of the doubt that we might not give otherwise.

 

So, after seeing two different versions of the "Running Wilde" pilot and a second full episode and finding none of them all that funny and seeing no real signs of improvement, where does that leave me? If I *didn't* know it was people whose work I love and respect, I'd probably quit now.

 

Then again, if it weren't from people whose work I love and respect, might I be more content with the couple half-laughs I got from the early episodes and I wouldn't expect anything format-shattering?

 

I suspect that it's the former, that Hurwitz, Vallely and Arnett are going to keep me tuning in long past the demonstrated on-screen quality would mandate.

 

Thoughts on "Running Wilde," and not that other early show that has nothing to do with it, after the break...

While that scenario may seem unlikely -- Rachel Berry would never let that happen -- Harry Shum Jr. is ready to take a bit more of a place in the spotlight.

 

Thanks to the show's certified phenomenon status and due in no small part to his extremely approachable Twitter presence (@iharryshum), Shum attracted fan attention that far outstripped anything Mike Chang was doing on "Glee." That doesn't mean that fans weren't noting Shum's "Glee" work. Any time you noticed tremendously athletic dancing going on in the background? That probably featured Shum, whose credits the past two "Step Up" movies, "You Got Served" and "Stomp the Yard."

 

This season, though, it looks as if Shum is going to get subplots and dialogue and maybe somebody will even let him sing.

 

I caught up with Shum for a little video time last week and the guy is every bit as likable in person as on Twitter. Note that this interview contains a few spoilers about the Tuesday (Sept. 21) "Glee" premiere. They're not major, but still...

I went to the movies less frequently this summer than ever before. It wasn't originally my plan, but there was a long stretch of obviously disposable premieres that I decided probably made better trailers than they did movies. 

 

My reluctance was somewhat validated when, on a recent international flight, I tried to watch "The A Team." I gave it several shots, since it was a long flight, but it put me to sleep each time. It shouldn't be that hard to make a popcorn movie out of a popcorn TV series, but Joe Carnahan either over-thought or under-thought matters. In either case, he failed. All of the thrills in "The A Team" were in the trailer, which makes the movie a 150-second adrenaline rush padded to 117 minutes. Ugh.

 

One person who apparently knows how to take a popcorn TV series and retain the popcorn  is Len Wiseman, the man you may like to think of as the helmer of most of the "Underworld" franchise, but who I usually refer to as "Mr. Kate Beckinsale." 

 

If CBS' "Hawaii Five-0" is a hit, much of the credit is likely to go to Alex O'Loughlin for finally breaking his CBS curse or to Scott Caan for his boundless energy or to Daniel Dae Kim for bringing that Hawaii magic or to Grace Park for looking very good in a bikini. But if I watch a second episode of "Hawaii Five-0," and I almost certainly will, that credit will go to Len Wiseman.

 

[Full review of CBS' fun and bombastic "Hawaii Five-0" after the break...]

Happy Monday, Boys and Girls.

 

As promised, it's time the second key piece of our Fall TV Premiere package on the Firewall & Iceberg Podcast.

 

Late week, we reviewed the new shows premiering on Monday and Tuesday nights. It's a pretty big list. Today, in addition to our normal "Mad Men" coverage, we also talked briefly about at least eight or nine (I lost count) shows that are returning in the next seven days.

 

We recorded the podcast early today in case anybody wanted our early perspective on "How I Met Your Mother," "House" and "Chuck" before watching Monday's episodes. Then we also talked "Glee," "Cougar Town," "Community," "Big Bang Theory," "Fringe" and "Dexter."

 

As I noted during the podcast, we don't spoil anything major about any of the returning shows, but we *do* assume that any discussion of last season's finales are fair play. I'll repeat that warning here, specifically if you're behind on "Dexter."

 

Anyway, here's this week's breakdown:

 

"Chuck" -- 02:00 - 07:40

"How I Met Your Mother" -- 07:45 - 12:35

"House" -- 12:35 - 17:05

"Glee" -- 17:10 - 20:45

"Cougar Town" -- 20:45 - 25:50

"Community" -- 26:00 - 31:10

"Big Bang Theory" -- 31:20 - 33:30

"Fringe" -- 34:05 - 39:20

"Dexter" -- 39:30 - 44:05

"Mad Men" -- 45:15 - 01:03:00

And here's the podcast...

I'm not exactly sure how "FlashForward" came to be the poster boy for disappointing post-"Lost" serialized network programming.

 

Yeah, ABC's promotion for the twisty drama began too early (May, pre-upfronts) and progressed too aggressively. But ABC got exactly what the network wanted from the first week of "FlashForward," which was to say a rare and never repeated Thursday 8 p.m. win. 

 

Viewers began tuning out the very next week, but that was because the show wasn't very good. But "FlashForward" wasn't very good from the second half of its pilot on. I'd say once you get past the darned kangaroo, "FlashForward" had nothing at all to offer and it wasn't like ABC didn't know there were problems, what with the production delays and the showrunner changes and the myriad signs of creative discontent. Amusingly, there was a three or four episode stretch after the show returned from its long winter hiatus where it actually appeared that "FlashForward" had found a little purpose. That was an illusion and the show wrapped up with an awful and awfully disappointing finale. 

 

In any case, "FlashForward" keeps coming up when people talk about NBC's "The Event," but not for any of the right reasons. There's this weird presumption that "FlashFoward" promised so much and delivered so little, but that was really true only if you stopped watching that pilot after 17 minutes.

 

But even if you consider the full "FlashForward" pilot, you're looking at an entirely superior piece of craftsmanship to anything offered by "The Event."

 

I get that manipulating audiences is a core job of the TV creator and that audiences clearly have proven that, under some circumstances, they enjoy the manipulation (right up until they get an ending or a character hook-up they don't like), but good grief! 

 

"The Event" is all suspense cliches and coy teasing, with absolutely no narrative tissue holding things together. 

 

[Full review of "The Event" after the break...]

The more I write about comedies, the more you're going to hear me going on and on about the difference between laughing at characters and laughing with characters. It's almost unavoidable that I'm going to mention it for "Mike & Molly," for "Raising Hope" and also for "Outsourced." That's a lot of "laughing with" vs. "laughing at" discussion for a single week. 

 

I apologize. 

 

Really I do.

 

No, seriously. It wasn't my idea to have NBC, CBS and FOX all premiere all of their new shows in the same week.

 

Anyway, it's a question that involves issues of representation and hegemony, which means that more than a few people will automatically reduce it to "political correctness," which is just a bit stupid.

 

In its lowest form, my feeling on the subject boils down to this: If you have a comedy about any group of people who aren't represented extensively on television, you probably don't want to be laughing *at* them. Beyond just being smug and insufferable, you're pigeon-holding the totality of a group's representation down to being the subject for mockery. It's here that one sadly needs to point out that in TV comedy, just about anybody who isn't pretty, thin, white and middle-to-upper class is under represented. We've advanced a tiny bit from the days where the cast of "Friends" could wander around New York City for over a decade and meet roughly two people who didn't look exactly like them, but not very far. 

 

If your comedy finds itself laughing *at* black people, Hispanics, Indians, fat people or poor people as its primary vehicle for humor, you're doing it wrong. But guess what, anti-PC rage-aholics? I'm not a hypocrite here. If your comedy finds itself laughing at Conservatives or people with any sort of notable religious leaning, you're also doing it wrong. There are all sorts of different folks who don't get a tremendous amount of representation on TV. I'm not oblivious to the fact that it's as hard to find an unmocked practicing Christian (or Jew or Muslim) on TV as it is to find several other disenfranchised groups.

 

Laughing *with* people is harder to do, because it requires empathy or, at the very least, basic understanding.

 

So NBC's "Outsourced"? Laughing *at* Indians, for the most part. That's only part of why the show is awful, but it's definitely part. 

 

FOX's "Raising Hope"? Frequently laughing *at* lower-income white folks, but ultimately coming down with sympathy, so it's both empathetic, but also condescending. I still haven't figured out how I'm going to review that show.

 

And CBS' "Mike & Molly"?

 

That's what this review is probably for!

 

After the break...

The cast of FOX's "Lone Star" includes plenty of actors you've seen before,  including Oscar winner Jon Voight, always busy character actor David Keith and "Friday Night Lights" favorite Adrianne Palicki. 

 

But much of the show's success hinges on a pair of stars who may not be quite so familiar. 

 

James Wolk is the show's star, playing romantically inclined con man Bob Allen. Wolk impressed Hallmark Hall of Fame viewers as the star of "Front of the Class," but otherwise, he'll probably be new to you.

 

As Lindsay, the salt-of-the-Earth Midland girl who shares Bob's heart, Eloise Mumford is likely to be a revelation, unless you happen to have vivid memories of Starz' adaptation of "Crash."

 

HitFix caught up with Wolk and Mumford to talk about their star-making new series, which premieres on Monday, September 20 at 9 p.m. on FOX.

And all storytellers (and specifically TV storytellers, for the purposes of this review) are con men. How else do you win the confidence of an audience that the journey they're prepared to accompany you on will be worth the time and the effort?

 

Some storytellers play the short con. The writers behind "House" or "CSI" or "Castle" only need to fool you and misdirect you for 43 minutes before offering resolution.

 

Some storytellers play a midrange con. The writers on "Dexter" or "Damages" know that they're telling a story that unfolds one season at a time, rather than one episode at a time.

 

And some storytellers play a long con. Whether you loved it or hated it, the "Lost" writers had a point they needed to reach and six seasons in which to reach it. On "The Shield," Shawn Ryan started a story in the pilot and everything for the rest of the show's run tied back into the events of that pilot, right up the the devastating finale. 

 

Sometimes you can tell from the first episode of a show exactly how long the con is going to be. I'm pretty confident, for example, that CBS' "Hawaii Five-0" is a short con and equally confident that no matter when and how "The Event" ends its con, I'll be the poorer for dedicating that duration.

 

But with FOX's new drama "Lone Star"? I'll confess that I'm flummoxed, but maybe not in a bad way. After watching the pilot, I can't tell exactly what the series is, much less what the duration of its con is going to be. With bad pilot or even a mediocre pilot, I'd be cautious or even concerned. 

 

"Lone Star," though, is the best network pilot of the fall. Maybe I'm not sure about the long-term durability of the show. Maybe I'd have loved to see a second and third episode before writing my review, as I would with a cable show. But if my job as a critic is to answer the question, "Would you recommend viewers tune in?" My answer would be, "Absolutely."

 

The first episode of "Lone Star" is a winner and I guess we'll just have to go on the rest of the journey together.

 

[More after the break...]

Over the next couple weeks, I'll be reviewing roughly a dozen new network shows.

 

The ones that are filled with good elements are easy enough to review, because they're usually pretty good shows.

 

The ones that are filled with bad elements are easy enough to review, because they're usually pretty bad shows.

 

But then there are the shows that just sit there, where I've got nothing kind to say, but I can't exactly isolate things that are specifically worth my ire. 

 

There are at least a handful of fall pilots that are notably worse than NBC's "Chase," but there are very few fall pilots that it's actually better than. Does that make any sense at all? It's an issue of attrition almost. So I can tell you that "Chase" actively annoyed me significantly less than "The Event," its Monday night lead-in. But despite being irked and frustrated by "The Event," which definitely has more negative elements than "Chase," "The Event" also had elements that at least left me curious, there's no direction I can foresee "Chase" going that would cause me to watch it again.

 

[I may not have a lot to say about "Chase," but I'll say it after the break...]

When it comes to Adrianne Palicki, it turns out that you can take the Texas out of the girl -- she was born and raised in Ohio, after all -- but you can't take the girl out of Texas.

 

After cutting her acting teeth as Tyra Collette on the beloved NBC and DirecTV drama "Friday Night Lights," Palicki is back in the Lone Star State for FOX's appropriately named "Lone Star."

 

In the new series, which premieres on Monday (Sept. 20) night at 9 p.m., Collette plays Cat Thatcher, daughter of an oil magnate (Jon Voight) and married to a charming con man (James Wolk). As Cat, Palicki got to remain in Texas, but she now finds herself with a fresh hair color, in a new income bracket and playing her own age.

 

But we'll let her talk about starting on her new series and saying good-bye to "Friday Night Lights." The disembodied voice asking the questions is, of course, me. But let's get real... Who do you want to see in this video? Her or me? Exactly.

 

[Stay tuned for more of my interviews with a slew of FOX stars, including some of Palicki's "Lone Star" colleague, in the days to come.]