The Daily Beast: "Bring on the New Shows!" (Upfronts 2012)

Over at The Daily Beast, we're keeping you up-to-date with all of the news, renewals, cancellations, and series orders coming out of this week's broadcast network upfronts.

You can read our Network Scorecard, which keeps track of all of the renewals and cancelations as well as reactions to the scheduling changes and check out video promos for all of the networks' new shows. And you can read detailed descriptions--as well as insider information--about all of the new series heading to your television in the fall and spring.

Jace Lacob and Maria Elena Fernandez take a look at what’s coming up and what’s coming back on TV this fall as television's network upfronts week comes to a close. The CW moved Supernatural to Wednesdays, ordered five new shows, renewed Hart of Dixie, and canceled Secret Circle and Ringer. CBS moved Two and a Half Men to Thursdays and The Mentalist to Sundays, while The Good Wife is staying put. ABC renewed Revenge (moving it to Sundays at 9 p.m.), Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy, Suburgatory, and several others. Fox renewed Touch (and it moved it to Fridays), canceled Alcatraz, moved Glee to Thursdays, and ordered Kevin Williamson's The Following and several comedies, including one from The Office's Mindy Kaling. NBC renewed Community (which moves to Friday this fall), Parks and Recreation, Parenthood, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and 30 Rock, and ordered 10 new shows, including a comedy with Matthew Perry, serial killer drama Hannibal, the Dick Wolf-produced Chicago Fire, and J.J. Abrams action drama Revolution. Read our analysis of all of the networks' 37 new series and counting!

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The Daily Beast: "Dark Shadows for Dummies"

Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows doesn’t require a deep knowledge of the '60s gothic-horror TV show, but it helps—and my glossary and character gallery explain all!

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Dark Shadows for Dummies," in which I offer a fairly comprehensive glossary of characters, terms, and places from 45+ years of Dark Shadows continuity, several series, films, and a plethora of other materials. What is Parallel Time? Who is Angelique Bouchard? What is Widow's Hill? It's all in here.

In the more than 45 years since Dark Shadows first premiered as an afternoon soap opera on ABC in June 1966, the series created by Dan Curtis has spawned numerous feature films, novels, television series, comic books, and even hit singles. Evolving from a standard soap opera into a supernatural horror-fest—overflowing with vampires, witches, ghosts, and H.P. Lovecraftian ancient beings (remember the Leviathans?)—Dark Shadows was a forerunner for many of today’s spine-tingling TV shows and films.

Revolving largely around tortured vampire Barnabas Collins (and, initially, around governess ingénue Victoria Winters), Dark Shadows offered thrills, chills, and unintentional laughs, thanks to rapid-fire production times and frequent flubs (such as actors forgetting lines, the sets swaying, crew members wandering onto the set, or the boom mic being visible), but it has also found a legion of fans new and old for its imaginative world and what might be the first depiction of a remorseful vampire.

With the May 11 release of Tim Burton’s feature film version, which stars Johnny Depp as bloodsucker Barnabas Collins, it’s time to either brush up on your knowledge of Dark Shadows or dive into the world’s complex and often confusing mythology for the first time. What is the difference between Collinwood and Collinsport? What is Parallel Time? What was House of Dark Shadows?

We delve into the original 1966-71 ABC soap, the 1991 NBC revival series, and beyond to offer you a glossary of Dark Shadows’ most common terms, characters, and concepts.

Angelique Bouchard: A vengeful witch in the 18th century who is responsible for the curse that transforms Barnabas Collins into a vampire after he spurns her for his true love Josette DuPres. She is played by Eva Green in the 2012 film; previously, the role has been filled by Lara Parker and Lysette Anthony, as well as Ivana Millicevic in the unaired 2004 pilot. (See also: WB Pilot, The.)

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The Daily Beast: "The 13 Best Drama Pilot Scripts of 2012"

With the broadcast networks about to unveil their new lineups, I pick my favorite drama pilot scripts—from psychological thriller Mastermind to period drama Ralph Lamb.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The 13 Best Drama Pilot Scripts of 2012," in which I offer my takes on the best and brightest offerings at CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and the CW when it comes to their drama pilot scripts.

At the network upfronts the week of May 14—when broadcasters unveil their fall schedules along with new programming and glad-hand with advertisers amid a series of presentations and parties—broadcasters will reveal the shows that might end up on your TiVo’s Season Pass in the fall.

This year, nearly 90 pilots are battling for slots on the schedules of CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and the CW, all of which are desperate to replace aging hits and find those few breakout shows. This year’s crop is especially heavy on the supernatural, imported formats (especially from Israel), period dramas (which range from the frontier era and the Gilded Age of Shonda Rhimes’ The Gilded Lilys to the 1980s of Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries), remakes and prequels (Mockingbird Lane! Hannibal! The Carrie Diaries!), Beauty and the Beast (there’s not one but two competitive projects based on the fairy tale), and—oddly enough—a fascination with cults, which turn up in several pilots.

Among the many pilots this development season, what follows are the 13 strongest drama scripts. A few caveats: The list below focuses exclusively on drama pilots, as I believe that casting and chemistry among actors are two of the most important factors to the success of comedies. The selections below represent my own personal taste, which doesn’t always necessarily mesh with that of the broadcasters. Finally, as always, there’s a lot that can change between these scripts and completed pilots, with significant change sometime occurring before a pilot makes it to the screen. That said, here’s hoping that some of these projects—presented in no particular order—will make it on the air!

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The Daily Beast: "What Happened to NBC’s Smash?"

While the pilot was a hit with critics, few have been happy with NBC’s Smash since. How could things have gone so wrong, so quickly?

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, in which I offer my take on NBC's Smash, which started out with such promise but has turned into a head-scratching mess of a show. (Also, said story is being advertised on the site as, "A Jace Lacob rant." Ha!)

What has happened to Smash?


Despite a pilot episode that was praised by critics, Smash went from must-see TV to stumbling, face first, into the orchestra pit in a matter of weeks. While the show will be back next season after a renewal last week, the show’s creator, Theresa Rebeck, won’t be returning.

That has to be a boon, given how uneven Smash has been. For every well-done and lavish musical number, there have been countless appalling elements each week.

One of the concerns about Smash going in was that it would be too insular: that its depiction of the rush to stage the Broadway launch of Marilyn: The Musical would prove to be too inside for a mass audience. But, in an effort to downplay the specificity of its world, Smash has instead spent the majority of each week’s episode focusing on the home lives of the characters and on the often tedious battle between the two would-be Monroes, jaded Ivy (Megan Hilty) and sunny ingénue Karen (Katharine McPhee).

Even in that retreat, Smash has proven itself to be weak-willed, attempting to cram earnest drama and over-the-top soap operatics into 40 minutes. When unstable Ivy began to suffer prednisone-derived hallucinations and fantasy musical numbers kept cropping up in the midst of rehearsals (not to mention that ghastly Karen-does-karaoke number in Iowa), well, that’s when the ability to suspend disbelief in Smash began to falter considerably.

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The Daily Beast: "Amy Poehler Talks to Rachel Dratch About Her Memoir"

If you're at all like me, you love Amy Poehler. And if you're at all like me and Amy Poehler, you also love Rachel Dratch.

At The Daily Beast, I had a hand in today's interview feature, in which Parks and Recreation's Poehler interviews her former Saturday Night Live colleague and long-time friend about her new memoir, out this week, as well as about motherhood, ghosts, the prairie, and more.

In her new autobiography, Girl Walks Into a Bar…: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle, former Saturday Night Live star Rachel Dratch—the rubber-faced comedian behind Debbie Downer and Abe Scheinwald, to name two of her creations—comes clean about growing up, life behind the scenes on SNL, what happened with 30 Rock, dating possible cannibals, and her life now that she’s in her forties and a first-time mother.

When Dratch was performing with improv comedy troupe Second City in Chicago, her understudy was an up-and-comer named Amy Poehler, who would go on to perform with Dratch on SNL and star in NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

Poehler first saw Dratch on stage and was struck by her comedic ability. “I thought Dratch was the funniest person in the room,” she said, “keeping up with all of the guys while still being herself. We hit it off instantly, and we went on to become lovers, and then finally, we’re just friends.”

Last week, Poehler interviewed Dratch and asked her friend about why she wrote her memoir now, their children’s future plans, and whether she’s seen a ghost, among other topics.

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The Daily Beast: "The Women of Community"

At The Daily Beast, Community’s female stars—and one of its writers—sit down for a roundtable discussion about being a woman in comedy, the show’s legacy, slut shaming, and more. Tears are shed!

You can read my latest feature, entitled "The Women of Community," in which I visit the set of NBC's Community on the final night of shooting Season 3 to sit down with Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Gillian Jacobs, and writer Megan Ganz to discuss being a woman in comedy, the “dark night of the soul” ahead, and the Bridesmaids effect, among other topics.

Fans of NBC’s Community—the wildly inventive yet criminally unwatched critical darling, now in its third season—were shocked when the network unceremoniously placed it on an indeterminate hiatus. Those same loyal viewers turned to Twitter hashtags, flash mobs, and original pieces of artwork (depicting the Greendale gang alternately as Batman villains, X-Men, Star Wars characters, and even Calvin and Hobbes), all in an effort to keep the adventures of a group of disparate community-college students alive.

Last week, NBC finally gave the Dan Harmon–created comedy a return date of March 15, when it will retake its old haunt of 8 p.m. on Thursdays for 12 episodes that had been produced while the show’s fate was still unknown.

On the final night of shooting for Season 3, The Daily Beast visited the set of Community to sit at the study-room table, its surface marred from ax blows, for a roundtable discussion with its female stars—Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Gillian Jacobs—and one of its female writers, Megan Ganz, for a discussion about being a woman in comedy, the “dark night of the soul” ahead, and the Bridesmaids effect, among other topics. What follows is an edited transcript of that discussion, which ended in tears for more than one of its participants.

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The Daily Beast: "NBC's Community Returns March 15"

While fans of NBC's beloved--if low-rated--comedy Community, which went on an indefinite hiatus in December, have had to make due these last few months with casting news (Giancarlo Esposito! John Hodgman! A Law & Order-themed episode!) and ++fan-generated art++ [http://critormiss.tumblr.com/post/17727815698/savecommunity], there is some good news to be had for the loyal followers of the Greendale study group.

Community will return Thursday, March 15 at 8 p.m. with the first of twelve all-new episodes. Multiple sources close to the production confirmed the news, first tweeted by Community creator Dan Harmon, that the Sony Pictures Television-produced show would be returning to its old Thursday night stomping ground next month.

Read it at The Daily Beast

The Daily Beast: "Smash: Anjelica Huston on Her Husband’s Death, Her New Role, and Whether She’ll Sing"

Over at The Daily Beast, I talk with Anjelica Huston about her husband’s death, her formidable character on Smash, and the “cult of murder” on television today. You can read my latest feature, entitled "Smash's Scene Stealer," here.

It is impossible to miss Anjelica Huston when she walks into a room.

In this case, the room was the bar at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, California, a few hours before Huston was set to take the stage before a ballroom of television critics at the TCA Winter Press Tour to answer questions for her new show, the Broadway-set drama Smash, which premieres Monday on NBC.

With her raven Cleopatra cut, an armful of gently clanging bracelets, and her impressive height, Huston is unlikely to get lost in a crowd, but her considerable talents as an actress render that an impossibility. As she slinked into a club chair on a gray January morning, she exuded a sense of serenity and warmth that is deeply at odds with the troubled characters she often plays.

“Were you one of those kids I scared to death?” she asked, when the topic of The Witches arose; Huston starred in the 1990 adaption of Roald Dahl’s novel as The Grand High Witch, Miss Eva Ernst, and terrified a generation of young moviegoers when she removed her face to reveal a grotesque monster beneath the placid façade.

The Academy Award-winning actress, perhaps best known for her roles in The Royal Tenenbaums, The Addams Family, and Prizzi’s Honor, is no stranger to television—she starred in miniseries such as CBS’s Lonesome Dove, HBO’s Iron Jawed Angels, TNT’s The Mists of Avalon, and appeared in a seven-episode story arc on Medium in 2008—but it is the first time that she has taken on a series regular role. In the backstage Broadway world of Smash, Huston plays producer Eileen Rand, whose divorce from her lecherous husband has not only resulted in the freezing of her assets but the awakening of her sense of righteous vengeance.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

Smash premieres tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "Smash's Big Broadway Bet" and "11 Secrets of Smash"

Fifty years after her death, the mention of Marilyn Monroe conjures up familiar imagery: that whispery voice, the platinum hair, her vulnerability. From Michelle Williams’s recent embodiment to yet another reissue of Monroe’s last photo shoot, she’s still inescapable, and always exerting a gravitational pull on popular imagination.

In this week's issue of Newsweek, you can read my latest feature, "Smash's Big Broadway Bet," which looks at NBC's musical-drama Smash, launching February 6th, through the prism of both Marilyn Monroe's cultural impact and the stakes that the show faces ahead. Will this end up being The West Wing with music or Cop Rock? I talk to creator/executive producer Theresa Rebeck, Anjelica Huston, and NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt.

On The Daily Beast, the piece gets a companion story in "11 Secrets of Smash," in which I take a look at several questions surrounding the show including: What would the Showtime version have looked like? Can this show save NBC? Is it based on a book? What does the future hold for the show? Plus, much more.

Smash premieres Monday, February 6th at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "Fall TV Report Card: The Winners and Losers"

With the 2011-12 television season in full swing and the cancellation orders stacking up, Jace Lacob rounds up the season’s winners (Revenge! Homeland!), losers (Man Up! Whitney!), and draws.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, "Fall TV Report Card: The Winners and Losers," in which I offer up not a critic's list, or a Best of 2011 TV list, but a business story selecting the winners and losers (as well as draws) for the first half of the 2011-12 television season. (Those selections are in the gallery.)

With the 2011-12 television season well underway, it’s become increasingly clear that this isn’t the best fall the broadcasters have ever had. Back in May, when the networks touted their new offerings to advertisers, it appeared they were trying to take some risks with their programming.

But the opposite is true: most of those shows featured what the networks hoped were built-in audiences for retro brand settings (Pan Am! The Playboy Club!) or remakes of vintage television (Charlie’s Angels, it’s back to pop-culture heaven for you), but viewers largely stayed away from these and many of the new fall shows.

Those claiming that viewers’ attention is elsewhere, such as on the Internet, likely don’t have a response for the oversize audience for things like AMC’s The Walking Dead, now the highest-rated cable show on the air, or the first post–Charlie Sheen episode of CBS’s Two and a Half Men. (The latter could be due to sampling, but the show has remained consistently in the range of 14 million to 16 million viewers since then.) It seems as though people are watching television, but they’re increasingly just not that excited about what’s airing on the broadcasters. (Just look at the declining fortunes of once-invulnerable reality franchise The Biggest Loser.) Which is downright worrisome, as the networks have to replace aging series and churn out new and zeitgeist-grabbing programming on a yearly basis. And sorry, Fox, but that wasn’t The X Factor, despite the nonstop hype.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Community on Hiatus: Why NBC Is Making a Mistake"

Community fans, this is your St. Crispin’s Day moment. Dumping Community in favor of shifting around the Thursday-night comedies feels a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Community, after all, is not the iceberg that’s sinking NBC.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story, "Community on Hiatus: Why NBC Is Making a Mistake," in which I look at the case for and against keeping the brilliant and subversive comedy around.

For right now, Community airs Thursday evening at 8 p.m. on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "The Teens of Parenthood"

In NBC’s Parenthood, the show’s teens--including Mae Whitman, Sarah Ramos, and Miles Heizer--often walk away with the most heartbreaking and emotional storylines.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "TV's Most Talented Teens" (formerly known as "The Teens of Parenthood"), in which I sit down with Whitman, Ramos, and Heizer to discuss their characters, on-set camaraderie, and, yes, the haircut that launched a thousand tweets.

Parenthood returns with new episodes tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

Rolling the Dice: An Advance Review of Community's "Remedial Chaos Theory"

Warning: You do not want to miss Thursday's episode of Community.

It's a given that some of the most ambitious episodes of NBC's Community are often the ones with the seemingly most straightforward concepts. Look at Season Two's fantastic "Cooperative Calligraphy" for a strong example of this: the gang at Greendale is locked in the study room when Annie's pen goes missing. A bottle episode is turned on its head (no pun intended) here, transforming a slight idea into a larger one as the group is beset by paranoia and fractures in front of our eyes.

The same holds true for Thursday's upcoming episode, "Remedial Chaos Theory," another bottle episode that defies the laws of logic and probability in a way. With Dan Harmon and the writing staff achieving such dizzying heights with "Cooperative Calligraphy," it seemed nearly impossible that they would be able to approach another bottle episode with the same gonzo spirit that made the original so palpably exciting and innovative. And yet that's just what they've managed to do with this week's episode, another bottle episode of ingenuity, emotion, and true insight, which I loved from start to finish.

Quick set up: Troy and Abed have a new apartment and they've invited the study group over for a housewarming party with genteel rules and a bowl of olives next to the toilet. (It's that sort of "fancy" do.) When the pizza they ordered arrives, no one wants to go down to get it, leading Jeff to come up with a solution: he'll roll a six-sided die to determine which of them will go downstairs. This is where the chaos theory of the title comes in, as Abed posits that Jeff has unwittingly created a series of alternate timelines, based on the outcome of the roll.

The genius of the installment comes from the fact that we're allowed to witness how each of these timelines plays out, sometimes similarly, sometimes with vast differences, each spinning out of the singular event of Jeff throwing that die in the air. In some, truths are dragged out into the light; in others, feelings are locked away, possibly forever, as moments fizzle, are missed, or are shunned altogether. The beauty of the episode comes from the small universalities created across the timelines, some of which are affected by the chaotic nature of the die-roll: Shirley baking pies, Jeff injuring himself, Britta wanting to sing aloud to "Roxanne," Pierce's insensitivity (and a gross Eartha Kitt story), etc.

Likewise, the episode works because of the individual characters' consistency from timeline to timeline. The dynamics between the characters may shift and buckle due to external pressures--people are in different places due to the chaotic nature of change in the timestream--but the characters themselves remain reassuringly the same: Jeff will always act like Jeff; Shirley will always be giving; Britta always flighty. The simmering attraction between Jeff and Annie is still bubbling away, because these timelines emanate not from the distant past but from the immediacy of now, from a chance roll of the dice.

I don't want to spoil too much of "Remedial Chaos Theory" because it is a breathtakingly ambitious episode comprised of separate narrative strands that twist together into an intoxicating union of character, story, and plot. (And fake goatees.) The concept may be heady, but the emotions within these timelines are painfully real, resonant, and yet not separate from the comedy. Will the gang tell Shirley why they're shunning her baked goods? Will Jeff and Annie give into their mutual attraction? What's going on between Troy and Britta? Will Pierce choose to humiliate Troy or choose to be a decent human being?

What I will say is that the episode gives us one of the series' best moments of group unity and singularity that had my face aching from smiling by the end of it. I'm definitely not going to ruin the moment here, but I'll say that it's both fitting and unexpected, a true instance of shared joy and collectiveness that harkens to the show's title and the group's relationship, not just to one another, but to the audience as well.

All in all, "Remedial Chaos Theory" is an intelligent, hysterical, and ambitious installment that proves just how much the Community writers challenge themselves to break through long-held narrative traditions to produce something innovative and electrifying. It's clear that they too took a chance on a roll of the dice, and this piece of narrative origami has paid off magnificently.

Community's "Remedial Chaos Theory" airs Thursday at 8 pm ET/PT on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "Parks and Recreation: The Comedy of Hope"

It's no secret that I love NBC's Parks and Recreation.

Over at The Daily Beast, I have not one but two features on the Pawnee-set comedy today, which returns later this week for a fourth season. In Part One of my Parks and Recreation feature at The Daily Beast, in which I visit the set of Parks and Recreation and spend time with Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, and showrunner Mike Schur, exploring what Offerman deems "the comedy of hope" that the show taps into, and the intelligence and spirit of Parks and Rec.

In Part Two, I offer some mild spoilers for Season 4, exploring what's ahead for Leslie, April and Andy, Ron Swanson, Ann Perkins, Mark Brendanawicz, and The End?

Season Four of Parks and Recreation begins this Thursday at 8:30 pm ET/PT on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "The Fall TV Season Begins!"

Time to head back to the couch, America. The fall TV season is here and all of your favorite shows—from The Walking Dead and The Good Wife to Dexter and Boardwalk Empire—and a slew of new ones are soon heading to a TV set near you. Will you find Ringer to be the second coming of Sarah Michelle Gellar… or is it the second coming of Silk Stalkings? Time will tell, but at least your TV favorites are back with brand new seasons, and lots of plot twists.

To refresh your memory after the long summer, over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "The Fall TV Season Begins!," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I round up a guide to the good and bad times of last season--or in this case, 23 cliffhangers--and offer a peek into what’s coming next this fall.

Quick Thoughts on Tonight's Parenthood Season Premiere

I had hoped to have a full review of tonight's fantastic Parenthood season opener ("I Don't Want to Do This Without You"), but unfortunately I'm being pulled in a thousand directions at the moment, so you'll have to settle for a glowing (if brief) recommendation to tune in tonight when this remarkable and emotionally powerful series returns for its third season.

Five months have passed since we last saw the sprawling Braverman clan, and change is in the air for nearly all of the family members. Adam (Peter Krause) is still out of work and has been reduced to loafing around the house and going on interviews for jobs that he doesn't really want and is over qualified for, having lost his purpose and identity as the family's breadwinner; Kristina (Monica Potter), meanwhile, is quite pregnant and quite capable of bringing home the bacon, having gone back to work. It's interesting to see how the dynamic between the two of them has shifted so considerably, now that their traditional gender roles have been reversed. (Adam, were you always such a traditionalist?!?) But there's another possible path for Adam, one that involves Crosby (Dax Shepard). That's all I'm saying on that front.

There's trouble ahead for Haddie (Sarah Ramos) and Alex (Michael B. Jordan), as things go in both a predictable and unexpected way in the season opener, and Jordan gets the chance to act opposite a cast member with whom he may not have gotten any screen time last season. (I will say, however, that something needs to be done to Haddie's hair, which just makes me sad.)

Amber (Mae Whitman) attempts to get back on her feet after last season's car accident and decides to move out of her grandparents' house. What follows--and the places that her relationship with Sarah (Lauren Graham) will likely go this season--gives the episode a strong throughline as Sarah too reevaluates her life on the eve of her 40th birthday, and the episode gives Graham some strong scenes with both Whitman and Bonnie Bedelia's Camille as a result. Plus, Jason Ritter is back, as well, which can only mean one thing for Sarah...

Julia (Erika Christensen) and Joel (Sam Jaeger) are still looking to adopt, though the perfect birth mother basically stumbles into Julia's lap. I was a little bit uncomfortable with the sheer incongruity of this development--as well as the massive coincidental nature of the set-up--that it took me a little out of the story, if I'm being honest. (The only instance would be the return of Joy Bryant's Jasmine, who continues to be a major downer.)

But, really, that's a quibble regarding a sterling season opener that reminds us why we love Parenthood in the first place: realistically drawn characters, universal emotions and experiences, and dialogue that captures the natural tone and vigor of familial life in all of its glorious colors. I've missed you, Team Braverman.

Season Three of Parenthood begins tonight at 10 pm ET/PT on NBC.

The Daily Beast: "TV Preview: Snap Judgments of 2011-2012's New Shows"

Will the 2011-12 television season be a winner or another dud?

Over at The Daily Beast, my fellow Daily Beast staffer Maria Elena Fernandez and I offer our first impressions of more than 30 network pilots--from Awake and Ringer to Alcatraz and Work It--coming to TV next season.

You can check out our he said/she said-style thoughts in my latest feature, entitled "TV Preview: Snap Judgments of 2011-2012's New Shows."

Which fall or midseason show are you most excited about? And which are you most dreading? Head to the comments section to discuss, and see whether you agree with our first impression take on more than 30 broadcast network pilots. Did your potential favorite make the must-see list?

The Daily Beast: "2010-11 TV's Winners and Losers"

The dust has settled on the TV season—American Idol and The Good Wife are in, The Event and $#*! My Dad Says are out.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "2010-11 TV's Winners and Losers," in which I rate the hits and the flops of the 2010-11 season and take a look at the broadcasters' position going into and coming out of the 2010-11 television season.

Brief caveat: please do remember (because I inevitably will receive something to this effect in the comments section), this isn't a critical evaluation. While certainly some shows I love (cough, The Good Wife, cough) did end up in the winners' column, this is more a look at how individual shows and networks fared in terms of series launches, ratings retention, and (to a smaller extent) critically.

The Daily Beast: "The Death of Will-They-or-Won't-They"

In recent years, it’s been a given that romantic pairs on television had to be subjected to the will-they or-won't-they dilemma—where couples as clearly in love as Ross-and-Rachel, Sam-and-Diane, or Jim-and-Pam were prevented from jumping into bed together for years, as the writers forced them through increasingly tight narrative hoops.

These days, though, it seems like more and more TV couples just will. As writer-producers have sought to surprise the audience, they’re puncturing romantic tropes in the process.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Death of Will-They-or-Won't-They," for which I talk to Community’s Dan Harmon, Parks and Recreation’s Mike Schur and Greg Daniels, and Bones’ Hart Hanson about how TV is throwing off that age-old will-they-or-won’t-they paradigm in the post-Jim-and-Pam era.

The Daily Beast: "Upfronts 2011 Full Report"

Television's upfronts week came to a close Thursday with the CW, which will bring Sarah Michelle Gellar back to TV with the thriller Ringer. On Wednesday, CBS presented J.J. Abrams' Person of Interest and five others, showed off new Two and a Half Men star Ashton Kutcher, and moved The Good Wife to Sundays. ABC, meanwhile, unveiled its schedule Tuesday; Fox and NBC did their dance for advertisers on Monday. Watch trailers of the networks' new shows, including ABC's Charlie's Angels reboot, Fox's supernatural drama Alcatraz, and troubled NBC's The Playboy Club.

Over at The Daily Beast, we're keeping track of every renewal and cancellation (and which shows are still in limbo) and well as keeping an eye on the bigger picture issues facing the broadcasters this May.

Plus, we've got the lowdown--in-depth breakdowns as well as information you can't find anywhere else--on the 44 (and counting) new series heading to the networks next season.