https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckCv4_pIEN4
ABC cancelled Last Man Standing and Fox brought it back from the dead. Much to the delight of their fans because more people tuned in to the show on its new home. Tonight at 8p, they lose another cast member and this one will not be recast.
That is because Mike’s (Tim Allen) father passed away, much to his delight because he hated his father, so he cannot wait to get rid of all of his stuff. Things like his dad’s pot dispensary Bud’s Bud. He wants to sell it, but Kristin (Amanda Fuller) and her husband (Jordan Masterson) want to run it. What will he do?
Also on the episode, Kyle (Christoph Sanders) gets a new job in corporate and Mandy (Molly McCook) gives him a makeover that will make him a laughing stock to everyone but his wife.
Side note, still don’t like the new Mandy (and never liked the new Kristin), but I still love the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUZ-54J4JEU
Then at 8:30p, it is time to party on The Cool Kids. It is Margaret’s (Vicki Lawrence) birthday. Not just any birthday, but her 65th.
Since she is having a hard time with becoming a senior citizen, Hank (David Alan Grier), Charlie (Martin Mull) and Sid (Leslie Jordan) decide to take her to a young people’s club. Can this oldies but goodies still party like when they did 40 years ago?
You do not want to miss this instant classic with classic sitcom stars to find out!
Over at 8p but on ABC, Fresh Off the Boat is back. Someone is leaving the show and another person is joining it.
Honey (Chelsey Crisp) is going to have her baby while Jessica (Constance Wu) gives birth to hers. Not a fourth child but her book is finally out. Will it be a hit?
Meanwhile, Louis buys an RV, from a famous basketball player, and wants to take his family on a road trip. What could go wrong?
While the three boys are getting older, the show is not getting old. You can say it is like it is still fresh off of the boat.
Then at 8:30p not only is Speechless on a new night but the DiMeos are out of their house. They have nowhere to go, so Kenneth (Cedric Yarbrough) says they can live with him.
A month goes by and the 6 of them are still living together. Jimmy (John Ross Bowie) and Maya (Minnie Driver) know they cannot stay there forever, so she decides to cross the pond and ask her dad (John Cleese) for the money.
Maya has not seen her father in decades and they are not close to put it mildly. He is a grumpy old man and Maya will do anything to get the money from him. Even pretend that she likes him. Will it work?
You don’t want to miss a single second from this two-part season premiere that shows us London and a lot of laughs!
They said the third time is a charm, but not for the third day of the broadcast fall season. Of the screeners I saw for tonight, none of them made me go wow. They kept my interest but nothing groundbreaking.
As I have done for the last two days, I will review the shows from best to worst in my opinion. I have to say, it was a tie for best. When it comes to worst, there was no contest that that goes to A Million Little Things. I don’t know what ABC was thinking by putting the most depressing show on television after four comedies. Seriously?
I will start it off with Single Parents on ABC at 9:30p. It is a new comedy about 5 single parents trying to survive the day by raising their kids without a spouse.
Will Cooper (Taran Killam) and his daughter Sophie (Marlow Barkley) are new to the school and his whole life revolves around his kid. He acts more like a first grader than her dad. Thankfully, the other single parents are there to help him out. But they are only doing it so that he will leave him alone. He is like that lost puppy no one wants but will do anything to have you take him home. You know the type of dog.
Angie (Leighton Meester) used to be like Will, but not anymore. Now she will do anything to have alone time to drink. While Douglas (Brad Garrett) not Doug just want to hang with his dermatologist friends and not his twin daughters. Poppy (Kimrie Lewis) wants Douglas to help her with her son, who is a little eccentric and she accepts him for who he is. Finally, Miggy (Jake Choi) does not have a kid in the first grade like the others, they have adopted him and his baby boy into their group.
Even though they don’t want to hear that it takes a village to raise a family, it really does. Good thing they have each other in this endearing comedy that could become an ABC staple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wbt1wXGccw
Then at 8p on Fox, Empire is back on Fox and the 2-year time jump helps to breath new life into the show as more people die.
As you just read, the drama starts the season off 2 years after the season finale. Lucious (Terrence Howard) and Cookie (Taraji P. Hensen) are nearly broke without Empire and they are trying to start their own record label. Andre (Trai Byers) is in jail and Jamal (Jussie Smollett) is in London with a new love.
The Lyons are all over the place and something needs to get them back together. How about another death? Is that person the one in the coffin? Who is in that coffin?
I have seen the first two episodes of the season, and it feels as good as it during the first season. The restart is just what they needed and you do not want to miss it.
To read the reviews of the other shows, then click here!
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.
It is the first Monday after the Emmys and that means it is time for the start of the fall season on broadcast TV. As much as this pains to me say, this is the weakest one for new shows in a really long time. Since there are a lot of shows premiering over the next few weeks, I am going to put them all in one post on a daily basis from, what I think is, best to worst.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhKmfJrnrw0
The best show of the night goes to a new one and that is Manifest that debuts on NBC at 10p. Michaela (Melissa Roxburgh) and her family went on vacation with her brother, Ben (Josh Dallas), his wife Grace (Athena Karkanis), their twins, Cal (Jack Messina) and Olive (Luna Blaise) and their parents (Malachy Cleary and Geraldine Leer) and it is time to go home.
Michaela is ready to get home, but she will do anything not to travel with her nagging mom. When the airline opens up 4 seats, she decides to go along with her brother and his son who is battling cancer. Cal’s diagnosis is grim, so Ben wants to spend some time alone with him. They just have no idea what will happen next.
Their flight seems normal until they hit some turbulence. Once things level out, it is time to land at JFK. Air traffic control tells them to land at a nearby airport instead. When they get there, they find out that it has been 5 and 1/2 years since they took off. No one has aged a day in that time, while everyone else on the ground, including their family, has.
After several hours of quarantine, the passengers are reunited with their families. Now, they have to adjust to being together again. That is not the only difference, they start hearing a voice in their head that tells them to do something. They do not understand and that is something we are going to find out.
While I really like the pilot, I am cautionary optimistic because we have been down this road before with sci-fi shows. They give a good pilot and then it is all downhill from there. Hopefully, this will break that pattern. Please break the pattern because there is a lot of potential here.
For the rest of tonight’s reviews, then click here!
Last year, ABC didn’t think that they needed sitcoms on Friday and they were very wrong. Therefore, they are making TGIF a thing again.
Remember in the ’90s our Fridays nights were full of Perfect Strangers, its spinoff Family Matters and Boy Meets World? Now in 2018, it is about ’90s based sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and modern-day’s Speechless.
Thus, someone at ABC thought it would be cool to merge the two eras with stars from the past and present. They are PS’s cousins Bronson Pinchot and Mark-Linn Baker, everyone’s favorite dad Reginald VelJohnson from FM, BMW teen dream queen Danielle Fishel, FOB’s Constance Wu and Randall Park, and Speechless’ John Ross Bowie and Cedric Yarbough.
You know if ABC were smart, they would do a massive revival of their old shows. Seeing the stars from yesteryear makes me miss them and Dinosaurs. I want my baby back because you gotta love him!
Until then I will be spending my Fridays with Fresh Off the Boat and Speechless starting on October 5th at 8p.
