‘Tis the season for development, and Lynette Rice at EW.com has released a list of the pilots the broadcast networks are considering. (Bear in mind that only a fraction of these shows will make it to the airwaves.) After perusing the list, I’ve reached the following conclusions:

• The public’s desire for shows about cops, doctors, and lawyers is still insatiable. By my count, 25 of the pilots are about these three professions. But some of these procedurals might be worth watching because of the attached talent: Forest Whitaker is heading up CBS’s Criminal Minds spin-off, NBC is pursuing Julianne Moore for their adaptation of BBC’s Prime Suspect, and Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica, 24) will star in a yet-to-be-titled detective series.
• Multi-camera comedies are coming in droves. If the term “multi-camera” doesn’t ring a bell, it refers to the traditional type of sitcom with live (or implied) audiences, three-sided sets, and cue cards. Seinfeld is a multi-camera comedy, whereas 30 Rock is a single-camera one. After the critical success of 30 Rock, there was high demand for single-camera comedies, but now it looks like the trend is reversing, probably because multi-camera ones are cheaper to produce. The multis on the development slate outnumber the singles 21 to 12. This disappoints me. I have a knee-jerk disgust to the very word “multi-camera.” I don’t like for the canned laughter, the fake-looking sets, the bland lighting, and—often times—the type of comedy itself. I know good work is being done on sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory, but I just haven’t been able to get into them. I’m not even making much headway on Seinfeld.
• The remake fever might not be a the pitch it was a couple of seasons ago, but we still have a few. CBS is updating Hawaii Five-O with Lost’s Daniel Dae Kim and Moonlight’s Alex O’Loughlin. NBC is taking another stab at The Rockford Files, this time under the direction of David Shore (House). And, interestingly, the CW is producing Nikita, an adaptation of La Femme Nikita.
• Spies and the CIA are once again in vogue. Now this is a trend I can get behind, mainly due to my undying love for Alias. All of the espionage series on the slate sound intriguing. CBS’s Chaos has Freddy Rodriguez heading up a “ragtag group of CIA operatives ensnared by backstabbing and bureaucratic snafus.” Fox’s The Station is a single-camera (huzzah!) comedy focusing on a “covert CIA operative and his work buddies embedded in South America.” Even the CW is getting in on the action with Nomads, a drama about “free-spirited” backpackers who carry out CIA missions around the world. But the pilot that I’m most excited about bar none is Undercovers, an NBC drama about married spies who pulled back into service. Why am I pumped? It’s created by my hero, god-among-men J.J. Abrams.
• Remember the 2005-2006 season when everyone wanted a piece of delicious Lost pie? Now everyone seemingly wants to replicate the critical and commercial success of Modern Family. ABC’s It Takes a Village and NBC’s Perfect Couples and Love Bites are all about various couples and their various intersections and intertwinings. I’m thanking God that Love Bites isn’t the name of another vampire series.
• I kind of miss the Lost knock-off trend, though. I want more heavily-serialized stuff, like this season’s intriguingV and FlashForward. There’s only one enigmatic-sounding pilot on the list, NBC’s The Event, a “thriller about a regular Joe caught up in a large conspiracy.”
• We may have dodged a bullet on Love Bites, but terrible names abound elsewhere. Some names are yawningly on-the-nose (Friends with Benefits), some are pun-ishing (Strange Brew—a brewery comedy), some have unfortunate connotations (The Wyoming Project, which brings to mind The Laramie Project), and some are just bizarre (Edgar Floats—a type of inner tube or a soda-fountain treat?). The worst one, however, is The Quinn-Tuplets. Naming characters to serve a pun in the title is a practice that needs to end. I’m still not convinced that Meredith Grey was so-named before the show was christened Grey’s Anatomy.
• Shonda Rhimes’ new show Off the Map is, once again, about doctors (presumably) in love. Okay, Shonda, you have a formula that works—I understand. But what’s neato about this ABC pilot is that it’s being filmed in Puerto Rico. As much as I love Los Angeles, New York City, and Vancouver (woohoo!), I appreciate when a show is filmed in the actual place (like Breaking Bad, which is filmed in New Mexico) or a reasonable stand-in (like Lost and Hawaii).
• There are two dramas about superheroes, NBC’s The Cape and ABC’s No Ordinary Family, the latter of which marks the small-screen return of The Shield’s Michael Chiklis.
• The rotten banana of the bunch seems to be Chuck Lorre’s latest sitcom for CBS, Mike and Molly, about “a couple that overeats.” If that right there is the punchline for the whole show, it sounds abysmally bad. As much as Eddie Murphy might disagree with me, obesity isn’t that funny, especially in today’s America.
• But on the other end of spectrum are pilots that seem quite promising. Reno 911! creators and Night at the Museum scribes Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant are producing a sitcom for NBC about a ex-child star who opens a bar in Vegas. ABC has a drama pilot in the works called Matadors, which centers on two feuding Chicago families and stars David Strathairn (of Good Night, and Good Luck fame). And the Alphabet Network is also developing a comedy called Mr. Sunshine starring Matthew Perry as a “self-absorbed manager of a sport arena” and co-starring Allison Janney. (Both of those stars previously guest-starred on each other’s Aaron Sorkin show, Perry on Janney’s The West Wing, and Janney or Perry’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.)

Of course, everything is subject to change before May, when the networks present the shows that survive this phase to the advertisers at their “upfront” events. That’s when all this speculation will end, and hopefully by then the wheat will be separated from the (ahem, Mike and Molly) chaff.

Completist Destiny, as defined by Wikipedia, is the belief that a television addict such as myself is destined—nay, divinely ordained—to watch a series completely and completely chronologically. Fine, I admit: that might just be a dogma of my own creation. But I stick to it. (This is where you, in solidarity, shout, “Leave no episode behind!”)

Of course, I have to compromise sometimes, like when networks boneheadedly air episodes out of order, or when I’m watching TV with someone who’s not as obsessive-compulsive devoted to the intended chronology as I am.

Anyway, I was thinking today about the series I’ve watched in their entireties—i.e. series for which I’ve seen every episode made available. Here they all are, from the most prolific to the shortest-lived… and even the ones I’m not so proud I watched!

• The X-Files (205 episodes)
• Dawson’s Creek (128 episodes)
• Alias (105 episodes)
• Battlestar Galactica (78 episodes)
• Veronica Mars (64 episodes)
• Roswell (61 episodes)
• Samantha Who? (35 episodes)
• Eli Stone (26 episodes)
• Summerland (26 episodes)
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (22 episodes)
• Aliens in America (18 episodes)
• Worst Week (16 episodes)
• The Office (U.K. version, 14 episodes)
• Kings (13 episodes)
• Miss/Guided (7 episodes)

Any show that I’ve watched that is not included on this list is a show that I’m still in the middle of, a show that I’ve given up on, or one of the (few) shows that I only watch occasionally.

The sad truth is that very few of these shows ended of the producers’ own accord; far too many were axed. And some of them aren’t even available on DVD for future enjoyment.

I’ll update this list periodically as I polish off more shows, starting with my dearly-beloved Pushing Daisies, for which I only have one more episode. (And parting is hardly ever such sweet sorrow.)

Edits:

• Pushing Daisies (22 episodes, finished 9/12/09)
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (31 episodes, finished 9/16/09)
• Dollhouse (26 episodes, finished 1/29/10)
• Nip/Tuck (100 episodes, finished 3/30/10)
• Ugly Betty (85 episodes, finished 4/15/10)
• Lost (121 episodes, finished 5/23/10)
• 24 (193 episodes, finished 5/24/10)
• FlashForward (22 episodes, finished 6/12/10)

When you watch as much television as I do, you see familiar faces all the time, and then you have to ask yourself (or IMDb), “Where have I seen him/her before?” For example, I’m watching the first season of House, and I’ve recognized guest stars from elsewhere in thirteen of the first fifteen episodes.

And then there are actors like Michelle Forbes and Željko Ivanek who show up on many of my favorite series. The phenomenon came to a head recently when I saw both of them on the same episode of True Blood.

Pictured above is Forbes in the roles she’s played in some of my favorite shows. From left to right: presidential advisor Lynne Kresge on 24, Oceanic Airlines representative Karen Decker on Lost, tough-as-nails admiral Helena Cain on Battlestar Galactica, beleaguered wife Kate on In Treatment, “social worker”/maenad Maryann Forrester on True Blood, and abducted physicist Maggie Sinclair on Alias.

And here is Željko Ivanek in his roles: Juliet’s ex-husband Edmund Burke on Lost, the sadistic Magister on True Blood, closeted attorney Ray Fiske on Damages (a role which earned him an Emmy), Serbian terrorist Andre Drazen on 24, Homeland Security agent Emile Danko on Heroes, and mentally-handicapped murder suspect Roland on The X-Files.

So both actors have been on 24, Lost, and True Blood, as well as the short-lived series The Inside. And True Blood wasn’t even the first time the two have appeared on a show simultaneously: they also shared the screen for eleven episodes of Homicide: Life on the Streets.

Luckily, I think both are fine actors, so they’re welcome additions to any show I watch. (I say that now—soon I might be complaining about Željkoverload!) And I see that both have made appearances on other shows I’ve been meaning to watch: Forbes has been on Seinfeld, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Prison Break; and Ivanek has been on Oz, Big Love, and—coincidentally enough—House.

One highlight of this May’s MTV Movie Awards was the music video starring Andy Samberg and “Neil Diamond,” with a special keyboard solo by J.J. Abrams. The video was an ode to the cinematic cliché in which the hero or villain walks away from a blast without so much as a backward glance. In case you haven’t seen it, check it out here:

And keyboardist J.J. Abrams should know: on multiple occasions, characters in his brainchild Alias (my favorite show, incidentally) don’t look at explosions. Take this scene, in which free-agent Anna Espinosa, disguised as Sydney herself, brazenly doesn’t watch as Sydney’s truck explodes behind her…

…or this scene, in which Peyton takes a bazooka to Sydney, Jack, and Irina’s only means of escape and then strides away with full badassery…

…or this scene, in which Sydney runs away from an explosion in a Taiwanese lab. (Okay, she has a reason to not look: she’s flat-out booking it. But still, my point remains!)

The song speaks the truth: the more you ignore it, the cooler you look.

The following actors are all alumni of some of my favorite shows, and I want them back on television. Post haste!

Merrin Dungey Dungey is one of my beloved Alias actors and probably one of the most under-appreciated. She spent two seasons playing Francie Calfo and then made a couple of repeat performances later in the series. She spent two seasons on the sudsy, frothy mess known as Summerland. And then good news! She was cast as Addison Montgomery’s best friend Naomi Bennett in the backdoor pilot for Private Practice. And then bad news! She was replaced by Audra McDonald for the actual series. Even though McDonald seems perfect for the part of Naomi, Dungey needs a role elsewhere.

Gillian Anderson I don’t care if she’s playing Dana Scully or not, Anderson should return to American television. (Actually, that’s a lie: I’d love to see a Scully comeback.) The X-Files alum has had a fair share of success with the miniseries Bleak House and with The X-Files: I Want to Believe, but it’s not like she’s crazy busy. And she did vow to come live in America again if Obama won, so she is in the country…

The Senior Staff of the West Wing And by that, I mean Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, and Josh Molina. I’m even going to throw in Janel Maloney and Stockard Channing. The whole cast of The West Wing is enormously talented, and the actors deserves more roles—preferably on the same show, preferably on one created by Aaron Sorkin. (I’m not including Dulé Hill and Rob Lowe because they have regular jobs, and I’m not including Martin Sheen because he’s had a long career and deserves a break.)

Sam Jones III Why has he not returned to Smallville? People should know when they can jump-start a big-screen career and when they can’t. (I call it the David Caruso Question.) If Sam Jones III can’t make the transfer, he should return to the burg of Smallville to have more dangerously awesome, awesomely dangerous adventures with his old high-school chums.

Almost the entire cast of Roswell But not Katherine Heigl, that diva! No, this one goes out to Shiri Appleby, Jason Behr, Brendan Fehr, and all the rest who need jobs. I miss them. Unless they’ve been abducted by real aliens, they’re around, and probably looking for work.

Lee Pace & Anna Friel I’m sad that Pushing Daisies was cancelled, and I’m remiss for not having seen all of the available episodes! But I loved what I saw, and these two were masters of innocent, cutie-patootie love. I’d love to see them portray the same types of characters. Then again… it could be cool seeing them as serial killers…