Fall 2007 TV: Premiere Week, Thursday

Didn't watch a lot of TV last night. My thoughts on Bionic Woman (which may surprise you) are already posted, and my thoughts on Dirty Sexy Money (which may also surprise you) will be posted in the morning. And I haven't watched Life yet.

So we're up to Thursday already in Premiere Week. This is traditionally supposed to be the most competitive night of television, owing largely to the huge advertising budget spent on promoting Friday-opening movies. We'll just see how it looks to me.

ABC has Ugly Betty, which I mostly enjoyed last year, but which I don't think I talked about much here. I'll be watching it. Next is Grey's Anatomy, which I won't be watching. And they finish things off with new show Big Shots, which has a good cast but looks unsavory to me.

Fox has two shows with sentence-ending punctuation in their titles, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and Don't Forget the Lyrics! I won't be watching either of them, full stop.

CBS has a new episode of Survivor, the eighth season debut of C.S.I., and the sixth season debut of Without a Trace. Wow, six seasons? Do people really watch that show? I guess they must, but I don't know any of them.

The CW has the seventh season debut of Smallville. Wow. I finally gave up on it for good last year. Or was it the year before? Anyway, I won't be tuning in, even with the promise of Supergirl to sex things up. Didn't they just bring in Lois Lane to sex things up? Hell, that was probably five years ago now. No, wait, it was three years ago. I remember because of this entry I wrote about the actress joining the cast in that role. The mention of the actress' name directed so many unpleasant Google searches here that I vowed never to mention her name again. And I haven't!

Where was I? Ah, yes: also on The CW is the repeat of the Reaper pilot from Tuesday night. I'll be watching it.

So if I'm watching Ugly Betty at 8:00 and Reaper at 9:00, that must mean NBC is getting the VCR treatment. First is the hour-long debut of My Name Is Earl, which I would be looking forward to even more if NBC would stop running those damn promos with the "Free Earl" song. And then comes the hour-long premiere of The Office. Frankly, I think running four hour-long episodes as the first four episodes of the season might lead to a bit of an overload for the audience, but no one asked me. And then at 10:00 is ER, which has been on the air since the Truman administration. Won't somebody please, please kill that show already?? (It's actually more shocking if I don't exaggerate: this is the fourteenth season. Yeah. There are probably people reading this blog who are younger than that. Also: don't read this blog if you're younger than that. It will warp you, and probably make me feel old and sad.)