Prison Break Monday, Sept. 1 (Fox)
Season Premiere: After breaking out of all those damned prisons, Linc and Mike are breaking back in for Season 4! Or something. The Buzzcut Bros. are bent on taking down The Company (the secret multinational group that controls the world but yet can’t keep tabs on a pair of male models) once and for all; a main character or two will get killed in the season premiere; but a main character who apparently lost her head in Season 3 (Sara Tancredi) returns. Oh, now, Prison Break is just getting unbelievable.
Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill Monday, Sept. 1 (The CW)
Season Premieres: As much as I enjoyed the recent Gossip Girl ad campaign that turned around damning quotes from the Jeebus freaks at the Parents Television Council, this show is only bad for ’Merica because it sucks. Same goes for One Tree Hill, but look how long that’s lasted.
The Middleman Monday, Sept. 1 (ABC Family)
Season Finale: Sadly, the first season of The Middleman also probably will be the last, due to lower ratings than even Gossip Girl and the oh-so-wrong pairing of a smart series with a cable net that was purchased from Pat Robertson with the stipulation the word “family” stay in the name for time and eternity (a true Wikipedia fact!). Too bad, because this adaptation from the comic book of the same name is/was funny, pop/geek-culturally literate, sweet without the toothache, and (attention, potential cable suitors) obviously produced on the cheap. My solution: The Middleman on the Sci-Fi Channel; co-star Natalie Morales in Maxim. Everybody wins!
90210 Tuesday, Sept. 2 (The CW)
Series Debut: The CW refused to send out preview discs for critics. Remind me to get ’em a fruit basket for sparing me.
The Shield Tuesday, Sept. 2 (FX)
Season Premiere: Few remember that The Shield launched the basic-cable drama renaissance back in 2002—without it, today, you probably wouldn’t have Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, The Closer, The Cleaner … OK, never mind the last one. Over six seasons, rogue LAPD detective Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) hasn’t made a case for a “happy ending,” and the seventh and final chapter has been promised to deliver the definitive exit (in jail or in a box) he deserves—hear that, Sopranos whiners? The end comes Nov. 25; until then … yeah, it’s good.
America’s Next Top Model Wednesday, Sept. 3 (The CW)
Season Premiere: The CW sent a preview disc. Cancel that fruit basket!
Sons of Anarchy Wednesday, Sept. 3 (FX)
Series Debut: What’s more surprising: A family drama about a gun-running biker gang or the fact the Drea de Matteo has finally landed a job after Joey? Sons of Anarchy, about a SoCal motorcycle club trying to keep their town “old school” against the encroaching forces of drug goons and The Law, is a marketing dream (sweet choppers, rock & roll soundtrack, “outlaw” threads soon to be available at Target) that rings satisfyingly true, especially given TV’s usual dumbfuck portrayal of bikers—witness a recent episode of, yup, The Cleaner. The only real problem here is that pretty-boy lead Charlie Hunnam can’t match the bad-ass-itude of co-stars Ron Perlman and Katie Segal (playing the series’ real center of power) or even de Matteo. Minor glitch; the rest of the heavy-hitter cast and an underlying streak of black humor (like a semen-DNA plot point you’ll probably never see on CSI and an Asian Elvis beatdown, among others) more than make up for it. Prediction: Sons of Anarchy will be bigger than … Gossip Girl.
| Devil’s Dominoes A mob boss (no-neck fat guy Vincent Pastore) faces off against a small-town sheriff (no-neck fat guy Daniel Baldwin) in a tale of murder, diamonds, strippers, revenge, family, more strippers, Brylcreem and no-neck fat guys. (BFSEnt.com) |
| Ghost Whisperer: Season 3 Jennifer Love Hewitt sees more dead people, but this season she had Jay Mohr, too! Get it? Hey, if you keep whining about “tasteless” big-boob gags on your damned Ghost Whisperer fansites, these are the jokes you get, folks. (Paramount.com) |
| Itty Bitty Titty Committee New lesbian in town falls in love with the leader of local feminist group Clits in Action (CIA), which of course leads to drama with said leader’s girlfriend. As you can gather from the title, Jennifer Love Hewitt is not in this movie. (WolfeVideo.com) |
| The Morgue Six strangers somehow find themselves trapped in a haunted morgue—sure, this totally happens all the time. You know what doesn’t happen all the time? Heather Donahue (The Blair Witch Project) finding work, but here she is! (Lionsgate.com) |
| The Office: Season 4 Only 14 episodes long (as opposed to the previous seasons’ 22), but five of ’em were an hour long—quit bitching about the price; that adds up to like 19 eps. Besides, you don’t hear me complaining about the severe lack of Karen, do you? (NBC.com) |
More New DVD Releases (Sept. 2)
Bait Shop, The Big Bang Theory: Season 1, Cheers: Season 10, The Chosen One, Desperate Housewives: Season 4, Eli Stone: Season 1, The Genius Club, Kings, Life: Season 1, Outsourced, The Promotion, Supernatural: Season 3, Water Lilies
Listen to Bill some Mondays at 8 a.m. on X96’s Radio From Hell. No blogging at BillFrost.tv. Even more True TV linkage at MySpace.com/TrueTV and on Facebook.