"Everbody Dies": House M.D. Comes to a Close

Eight years ago, when I was in the middle of high school and generally too busy proto-texting through AIM to watch much television, my father suggested that I join the family to watch a new show that was debuting on the Fox network.  Even then I was generally in the habit of taking my father’s advice, but I wasn’t especially impressed by his description of a medical procedural with an unlikeable protagonist based on the literary detective Sherlock Holmes (this was 2004, before I had read any Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Downey Jr. was still recovering from his stint on “Ally McBeal”).  However, after watching House, M.D.’s pilot, “Everybody Lies,” little doubt remained for me, and eight years later, I sat down with my parents to watch the show’s conclusion, “Everybody Dies.”

Alcatraz: The Latest Fiction from The Rock

Earlier this week, Fox premiered its new winter series, Alcatraz, adding another entry to the canon of lore surrounding the decommissioned San Francisco prison. Despite a lukewarm score of 63 on media critic amalgam site metacritic.com, I felt that Alcatraz's two hour premiere, consisting of two distinct episodes, made a decent showing of itself.

If you missed the half-hearted publicity campaign and/or are too busy for Wikipedia or IMDB, Alcatraz explores a supernatural cause of the island prison's shutdown, complete with mysterious disappearances and government coverup. The show's premise is that 302 prisoners (and, presumably, guards) vanished from the island one evening in 1960 (or possibly 1963- the characters and subtitles seem to disagree on this point), leaving two patrolmen from the mainland to discover the facility entirely vacant. Fast-forward to the present day, when the missing prisoners have begun to resurface, committing their crimes in the modern world.

New On Fox: A Look at Fall 2011

Last week Fox released its schedule for Fall 2011 and Spring of 2012. Returning are some old favorites including House, Glee, and Bones, set to continue airing at their usual times. Surprisingly, Fringe continues to hold on to one of the Friday night death slots, previously used to kill of shows such as Dollhouse and Firefly.

New this Fall:

• New on Monday night is Terra Nova, a science fiction adventure. The year is 2149 and Earth is overcrowded and overdeveloped. Luckily, a particle accelerator unexpectedly finds a fracture in time that allows travel back to prehistoric Earth. The decision is made to start resettling people in the past with the hope of creating a better future. The story follows the Shannon family as they look for a new beginning, however they quickly discover that things are not as awesome in dinosaur times as they seem. Terra Nova looks interesting and potentially enjoyable. To me it seems like a crossover between the Swiss Family Robinson and Jurassic Park but with time travel. The cast is filled with actors with some experience, from shows that I have never heard of, but with Steven Spielberg listed as an executive producer, it might stand half a chance of success.

• New for Tuesday is New Girl (working title), a half hour sitcom staring Zoe Deschanel as Jess Day, a “offbeat and adorable girl in her lat twenties who, after a bad breakup, moves in with three single guys” (fox.com). Awkward moments and hilarity ensue as they, along with Jess's best friend Cece, become a dysfunctional sort of family. Overall, the trailer for the show contains a few funny moments and seems to be well suited for a short slot between Glee and Raising Hope. I'll probably catch the first few episodes online and decide if it's worth following.

• The next new non-reality show for the new Fox fall line up is a comedy called I Hate My Teenage Daughter (working title), which will be airing at 9:30pm on Wednesday nights. Annie (Jamie Pressly) and Nikki (Katie Finneran) star as best friends and single mothers trying to raise their teenage daughters. Annie and Nikki's original intent was to give their daughters the lives they themselves never had, but inadvertently the mothers end up creating new versions of the girls who bullied them through their teenage years. Realizing their mistakes, they now must try to fix what has been broken. I Hate My Teenage Daughter looks like it might have some funny moments as it takes a comedic look at the sometimes complicated mother-daughter relationship dynamic.

• I would be remiss in a review of Fox's fall TV lineup if I did not mention the two and a half hours it will be dedicating to The X-Factor on Wednesday (8-9:30) and Thursday (8-9) nights. This is the same block of time reserved for American Idol in the spring and is another variety of singing competition. The X Factor is really going to have to be something special if they hope to make it distinctive from every other singing competition on television, especially with Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul as judges on the show. Joining them are Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Cheryl Cole. I'm really not sure how I feel about Fox dedicating so much time to yet another singing completion. We all know that there are people in America who can sing. Pick a new topic, please.

• I also feel the need to mention Allen Gregory, the new addition to Fox's Sunday night comedy lineup. The show is about an ultra-smart and pretentious seven year old who leaves the homeschooling of his father to join elementary school with children his own age. The show looks to be about in line with the rest of the Fox Sunday night shows,which have never really been an interest to me, but some people find hilarious. If you like shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons, it might be worth it to check out Allen Gregory, airing at 8:30 on Sunday night.

For a more detailed description of the above mentioned shows, check out http://www.fox.com/programming/. Stop back sometime in the winter months for a look at the new mid-season pickups including Alcatraz, The Finder, and Napoleon Dynamite. Feel free to sound off below on your thoughts for new TV this Fall on Fox.

Who's Gonna Hear You Cry? A Preliminary Review of Fox's "The Chicago Code"

It presents like every other cop drama: commercials with drab colors, grizzled cops in a notoriously crime-ridden city, a vaguely badass title, and a splash screen with the main characters in confident poses with shiny badges and matte black sidearms at their hips. Except for the occasional Law & Order marathon, I generally don’t watch shows like “Detroit 187,” “Blue Bloods,” “The Shield,” or even the recent reboot of “Hawaii 5-0.” But something about “The Chicago Code” piqued my interest.

I can’t say it was the powerful female character: that’s nothing new for contemporary television or even this genre, with the likes of SVU’s Olivia Benson, CSI’s Katherine Willows, and NCIS’s Ziva with whom to compete. That being said, Jennifer Beals has outdone herself in “The Chicago Code,” making clear that her guest appearances on “Lie to Me” were far below her skill.

It may have been the geography: Chicago is not among the glamorous cities for criminals like New York (Law & Order) or the various locations of CSI (Vegas, Miami). It isn’t a center of federal government, like Washington D.C., home of “Bones” and “Lie to Me.” If Chicago fits any stereotype, it’s one of corruption, from which The Chicago Code seems to be drawing its primary content and purpose.

If not the setting or the characters, the allure of “The Chicago Code” must come from its plot. Six months ago, if someone with a nice suit and a stack of research told me that all the stories we can tell about modern, fictional policework have been told, I would have believed that person. But “The Chicago Code” brings something different to the cop narrative party. It uses something akin to the parallel narrative plot structure that can be found in any hour-long drama on the air today: characters have a specific conflict in each episode, but also devote between ten and fifteen minutes each night to advancing a plot that spans the entire season, or sometimes multiple seasons. In this, “The Chicago Code” is no exception to the norm. Its stock protagonists, the newly-promoted Idealistic Superintendent of Police and the Grizzled Veteran Detective With Authority Problems, are pitted against the slightly-more-original Corrupt Politician Moonlighting as a Crime Boss. What’s interesting about how “The Chicago Code” handles the story arc is the frequent intersection of its episodic stories and seasonal goals. Frequently, Superintendent Colvin (Jennifer Beals) is forced to enlist the aid of the devious Alderman Gibbons (Delroy Lindo) to solve daily crimes and injustices in Chicago, despite her ultimate intentions to bring him down, and his dubious awareness of her intentions.

Now that I have done my due diligence in highlighting clichés, it’s only fair to point out some more original things “The Chicago Code” does. Teresa Colvin, the Idealistic Superintendent, for example, is more than a James Gordon or Captain Cragen. She is a primary character with significant depth, who appears in roughly equal frequency in her full-dress uniform, bulletproof vest, business casual detective clothes, and (admittedly less often) casual civilian garb. The show admits she is a woman in a male-dominated world without it becoming a fetish: the occasional subordinate or villain will push her, she’ll push back, and the plot moves on. By the same token, her archenemy, Alderman Gibbons, is not an African American male by accident, but the show doesn’t constantly harp on his race or gender. Even Grizzled Detective Jarek Wysocki (Jason Clarke) is of overtly Scandinavian descent, though he otherwise remains in the uninteresting “middle aged white male” category. “The Chicago Code” is more interested in the problems of morality, loyalty, and integrity that are common to all of us, regardless of race, gender, or age.

I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the show’s significant cast of supporting characters. Junior detectives Vonda Wysocki (Devin Kelley), the younger sibling of the protagonist Jarek Wysocki, and Isaac Joiner (Todd Williams), to whom any “In Plain Sight” fan will be unable to refer as anything other than Bobby D, have thus far been marginal at best as far as the show’s plot, but are certainly fertile ground for development. Deep-cover cop Liam Hennessey (Billy Lush) is lucky to see five minutes of screen time each episode, but faces a plethora of his own moral dilemmas as he sinks deeper into the corruption Colvin’s team is determined to root out. Wysocki the Elder’s sidekick / apprentice, Caleb Evers (Matt Lauria), is barely worth mentioning as more than eye candy, although this early in the season, it would be premature to disregard him entirely. All that being said, the show’s characters (both primary and supporting) have a well-directed, polished feel to them. From their imperfect wardrobes that speak of hurriedness, dishevelment, and urgency to their subtle but noticeable accent work, they fit in their setting and never distract from the themes of the narrative.

“The Chicago Code” is young, having aired only six episodes since its premiere in early February, and is expected to run for at least seven more. However, let’s not forget this is on the Fox network, which is infamous for executing fledgling shows with significant promise (a generalization based almost entirely on its widely criticized destruction of Firefly before the completion of even a partial season [though I personally enjoyed the short-lived “Canterbury’s Law” as well]).

Did I mention Tim Minear (“Firefly,” “Drive,” “Dollhouse”) is one of the executive producers?

I’m not ready to give The Chicago Code a permanent spot on my television docket. There is still too much that can go wrong, even if it survives its first dozen episodes under Fox’s Damoclean cancellation sword. But I am cautiously optimistic, and would encourage the curious and open-minded to take a look at The Chicago Code. It’s fast, but it’s fun.