Tonight is the second night of the fall season and it is the worst night of television on all of the networks except for NBC. Tonight, we will be crying over This Is Us and tomorrow the heads of ABC, CBS and Fox will be crying over their how bad their shows are.
As I did yesterday and will continue to do, I will do my opinion of best to worst and tonight is a lot of worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvMCbzrToAo
I will start off with New Amsterdam that debuts at 10p on NBC. It is my favorite new show of the season. It was the only pilot that made me cry. That is because there is a lot of heart in the medical drama. It is not too focused on medical procedures or being a soap opera. It is about the patient as an individual and the doctors who want to make them feel better.
Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) is the brand medical director at Bellevue Hospital in NYC. He is going to shake things up at his new job. He tells the doctors put the patient before billing and he means it. He fires the whole cardiac surgical unit because that is what they do.
He wants to hear what the doctors want, so they can make the hospital a better place. The doctors are more than willing to do it, and it is starting to make them better doctors. How long can they do this before the money people make them stop? Not only that Dr. Goodwin has a secret of his own, one that might limit how long he stays at the hospital.
Thankfully he has a lot of good doctors to back him up like Dr. Hana Sharpe (Freema Agyeman), Dr. Laura Bloom (Janet Montgomery), Dr. Floyd Pearson (Jocko Sims), Dr. Anil Kapoor (Anupam Kher) and Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine).
I just love the feel of the show because it is a medical drama but not one that makes you feel like you might get diagnosed with one the unusual illnesses they have. Plus, Ryan Eggold plays the role so brilliantly. He is one of them, while also being their boss. You can feel the compassion in his performance.
Actually, you feel the compassion about the whole show and that is why it is my favorite new show of the season.
To read the rest of the reviews, then
Next up is Lethal Weapon on Fox at 9p. They went through some changes over the summer. They fired Clayne Crawford and brought on Seann William Scott to replace him.
As we know, Riggs (Crawford) was shot during the season finale. Spoiler alert, he dies. His partner Roger Murtaugh (Damon Wayans) is taking his death hard. So hard he has been on a six-month sabbatical trying to solve Riggs murder to no avail.
Wesley Cole (Seann William Scott) is a CIA agent overseas and he loses his partner too. To get over his death, he comes back to the United States and takes a job as a meter maid in Los Angeles. Pray for us Angelinos because he still thinks he is at war. When he witnesses a crime, he goes to confront the criminals who happen to be the same people Murtagh is looking into and now the two of them are fighting crime together. Again pray for us Angelinos.
Even though I have not watched the show’s first two seasons, I am tempted to add it to my schedule.
Next up is FBI at 9p on CBS. The show is from Dick Wolf and it is about the FBI solving crimes in NYC. What more do you need to know it is Law & Order but with the FBI.
Because it is the pilot, it is exhausting and unsatisfying. But I am biased against it because they mention my hometown in a way that pissed me off. It is a sensitive topic for my hometown and the exploited it in a disgusting way. But the show had already lost me before they got to that point.
FBI stars Missy Peregrym, Sela Ward and Jeremy Sisto. If you like Dick Wolf and CBS procedurals, then this is for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0aB4nA5MOQ
Up until last week, A Million Little Things was, to me, the worst new show of the season. Since then, I watched another drama whose follow-up episodes and a comedy pilot that made this show more tolerable.
The show that debuts at 10p on ABC, has a great cast but an awful story. It is depressing to be depressing. There is no happiness to it whatsoever. At least This Is Us has some happy moments.
The show is about Jon Dixon (Ron Livingston), who commits suicide and his friends are dealing with his death. His friends’ lives are just as sad.
Rome (Romany Malco) was about to swallow a bottle of pills when he got the call about Jon’s death. Gary (James Roday) beat breast cancer and is the only man in his support group. Eddie (David Giuntoli) is married to Katherine (Grace Park) but having an affair with Jon’s wife (Stéphanie Szostak). See happy happy, joy joy.
Jon was the least messed up out of all of them and he is the one who is no longer with them. It is This Is Us with no redeeming qualities. Except the music is really good. Like the Big Chill, watch for the music.
Finally, at 8p, I said let me check out The Gifted on Fox to see if it got any better for season 2. That is because the end of season one was a let down to me. Twenty minutes in and I shut it off and said I was done. In fact, I had no idea what was happening and I did not care.
There were no screeners for NCIS, NCIS: No LA and This Is Us.
