First Impulse: NBC's Fall Schedule

OK, it's been a month and a half since I talked about ABC, even longer since the networks actually announced their schedules, and you may wonder how at this point my reaction can be a "first impulse."

Hey, do you really think I have spent any time thinking about NBC's fall schedule before I realized I needed to finish up the series?

Let's start on a high note for the Peacock, with Sunday Night Football. This is a novelty: Something on NBC people not only watch, but look forward to and enjoy. With the ability to cherry-pick match-ups and the prime-time spotlight, NBC offers a great showcase for pro football, even if they did screw fans by putting on an inferior highlights show and forcing off ESPN's 7:00 "Primetime." But this is a good night for the National Broadcasting Company.

Let's sit back and enjoy this for a moment or two.

OK, unfortunately, there are 5 other nights of the week (Saturdays don't exist for networks anymore), so we must move on to Monday.

Oh, yeah, before we get started on weekdays, thanks to NBC for putting Jay Leno at 10pm, basically giving up on 5 hours of prime time a week and, more importantly, slashing the number of snide comments wise-ass bloggers have to create to discuss its schedule.

Mondays offer "Heroes" at 8. This is how enthusiastic I am about this show: My wife and I let the whole second half of the latest season accumulate on our DVR and never got around to watching any of it. When the DVR got nuked recently and we lost all those episodes, our reaction was more or less, "Eh." Maybe it'll rebound this year, but we've heard that promise before.
Maybe "Trauma" will be better at 9. It's about paramedics, and it's not "Third Watch." That's about all I know.

Tuesdays, it's two hours of "The Biggest Loser." Maybe NBC has some kind of weight-related clever marketing hook to justify this, but really, devoting two whole hours to this is almost as desperate as devoting 5 hours to Leno.

In the middle of the week, it's a nurse show called "Mercy," followed by the 23rd season of "Law and Order: SVU," which can't seem to make any ground on the record holder, "Law and Order," which returns Fridays for its 57th straight season. NBC must stand for Never Basically Changing, because this lineup is looking stale.

I know there are a lot of people who enjoy NBC's Thursday night comedies. They just don't have Nielsen boxes, apparently. Critics may love "30 Rock," but as far as I'm concerned, even if it wins all umpteen of its Emmys, it just ain't my thang. Same for "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation."

Leading off the night, though, is a new effort called "Community." If you read any TV news sites, it probably feels like this community-college-set sitcom starring E! Network's Joel McHale has been in development forever. I swear I've heard about this one for years. I'll give it a shot, but I hope it has a distinctive point of view and isn't just aping the other shows in this comedy block. Oh, yeah, and of course, someone has come up with a brilliant casting move to ensure "Community" feels fresh: Ladies and gentlemen, the return to series television of Chevy Chase!

I mentioned "Law and Order" returns Fridays. In the works this year is a special live, black-and-white episode which pays tributes to the show's origins as "Philco Playhouse Presents the Law and Order 90-Minute Showcase." George Clooney will direct and produce. At 9, it's returning cop show "Southland," which, uh, I kind of meant to sample this past season but never did.

Saturdays on the network aren't worth speaking about; it's all reruns and "Dateline," and of course every God-fearing American boycotted "Dateline" as soon as it canned Stone Phillips.

Sorry for not mustering more enthusiasm for NBC's fall schedule, but it really does seem that the once-proud network is kind of throwing in the towel this year. Maybe next year they'll get Jon Stewart to do a 9pm show and save themselves the trouble of producing 5 MORE hours of content. And then it's My-TV territory, folks.