The Prime Times: Lawn Mower Meets Foot Edition

By on Sep 27, 2009 in In Brief | 1 comment

I can’t even fit all the news that’s fit to print into one blog post, but here are some of this week’s most interesting tidbits: Some of the shows that premiered this week got impressive ratings. FlashForward scared up 12.41 million viewers. (I realize now that there’s no space in that title. The world’s in crisis and people are blacking out—there’s no time for spaces, folks.) Modern Family welcomed 12.74 million. And The Good Wife attracted 13.72 million watching. I didn’t preview that show, but it seems promising so long as it keeps up the scorned-political-spouse angle and doesn’t become an average law drama. Just to make the wait for Season 3 of Damages (set to start in January) that much more excruciating, Jace at Televisionary tells us that Martin Short and Lily Tomlin have joined the cast. The addition of two comedians to the cast...

Two Minutes, Seventeen Seconds

By on Aug 1, 2009 in Previews |

The following post was originally published on my old blog on April 20, 2009. 2009-2010 New Series Preview, Part 1 ABC has a lot of fine prospects for the 2009-2010 season, but one of the most exciting is a pilot called Flash Forward, based on the Robert J. Sawyer novel of the same name. (I don’t love that title, but that’s neither here nor there.) The story begins with a worldwide event: the population of the world blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds, during which everyone experiences a vision of his or her future. FBI agent Mark Benford, horrified by what he sees, assembles a team to figure out what the event means and how to prevent the future it projected. The team assembles a vast mosaic of visions as they ask people the same question: “What did you see?” It’s an ambitious premise that could set off a tangled, enigmatic plot in the vein...