Fall 2007 TV: Premiere Week, Sunday

Welcome to TV's Premiere Week! Sure, a few shows have already gotten an early start out of the gate -- a few awful shows. (You know who you are... Gossip Girl.) But tonight is when the real magic begins! If by magic you mean "slack-jawed, glass-eyed, brain-dead tube-watching." And I do!

I thought every day this week, I'd take a look at what some of the highlights and lowlights for the evening are going to be. So here's what's in store for you this Sunday.

No new series are debuting tonight. That's not true. CW Now and Online Nation are debuting at 7 PM on The CW. But I'm ignoring them. The CW's other new Sunday show, Life Is Wild, is being held until Oct. 7, and CBS's Viva Laughlin is four weeks away from premiering. And six weeks away from cancellation!

ABC, I think, makes the oddest choice of the majors by essentially opting out of tonight's competition. A repeat of Extreme Home Makeover or whatever it's called is followed not by new episodes of two of the network's most popular shows, but by recap episodes instead: Desperate Housewives: Secrets & Lies, and Brothers & Sisters: Family Album. And since these recaps have never aired before, they're being touted as "new" episodes in TV Guide. Pretty weak, ABC.

NBC's got Sunday Night Football. Dallas at Chicago. Should be pretty good.

CBS has the season premiere of 60 Minutes (oh boy oh boy oh boy, I can't wait to see what Andy Rooney got grumpy about over the summer!!!), followed by the season finale of the inexplicably popular summer game show Power of 10. Something about this show just irritates me. Probably because I'm so bad at it. "What percentage of Americans think Vin Diesel invented the Diesel engine?" My guess: uh, nobody? Because that's fucking stupid? Real answer: twenty-five percent, folks. Twenty-five percent. Yeah. I can't handle learning things like that. Also on CBS: new episodes of Cold Case, which I have never watched, and Shark, which I kind of liked for a while until I got a James Woods overdose. And there's no inoculation against a James Woods overdose.

The CW reruns Gossip Girl's pilot episode, in case you hate yourself, but didn't get a chance to punish yourself with the original airing on Wednesday. And yes, I will continue talking smack about this show without watching it for the foreseeable future. Also being rerun, America's Top Model, which, amazingly, is now in its ninth iteration. It's a double header for masochists!

And finally, the best of the night: the majority of Fox's animation block returns with new episodes, beginning with the 19th (!!!) season opener of The Simpsons. Stephen Colbert guest stars! Or guest voices. Whatever. Next up, King of the Hill, which is beginning its twelfth season. That's pretty spectacular. How many times has it gotten this close to being cancelled? And it's still around -- thankfully. Right now, this is the real gem in Fox's cartoon collection. Great, character-based humor, as opposed to the random gag machine The Simpsons has become. Speaking of which: Family Guy is next. And despite all the criticisms against it -- aimless, disconnected, crude, and so on -- which are all true -- I still like it. So there. Tonight is the special hour-long Star Wars spoof episode, which I'm actually excited about. The title of the episode is "Blue Harvest," which is already a nifty inside joke for Star Wars devotees: that was the fake title used to misdirect press and fans during filming of Return of the Jedi. Allow me to respond to myself on your behalf: NEEERRRRRRRRRDD!!!!!

Alternate, non-network programming: at 9 PM, ventriloquist Jeff Dunham has a new special on Comedy Central, called Jeff Dunham: Spark of Insanity. I actually kind of want to see this. Dunham can be pretty funny. Sadly, I'm not kidding. I'm lowbrow! And, for you MST3K fans, his act is the origin of the line, "He's a Woozle, and his name is Peanut."