Mid-season Check In: The Winners and Losers of Fall’s Newest TV Shows

Every year we get an onslaught of new TV shows to check out. Some shows turn out to be great, a lot are just okay, and some are just plain terrible. Almost all of the shows that premiered in the fall are still on a midseason hiatus, so let’s check in and see how everyone is doing.

Below, some of our writers share their opinions on how some of the new shows have been faring.

Unexpected Favorite

Christine: The Grinder! I went into it feeling very indifferent. I like Rob Lowe and Fred Savage, but I was cautiously optimistic about how they would work as a duo. I was really stoked that the show works so well. Dean and Stu are so perfectly mismatched and the chemistry between them is amazing. And I LOVE the segments where we actually see the procedural “Grinder” show. This one is easily the biggest surprise hit for me. Grinder rests!

Lizzie: Quantico. I mean, the premise made it look like 24 meets NCIS. And other than a bunch of pretty people, I didn’t expect it to hook me. And then I saw the first episode, and wow. The show is not perfect, but when it delivers, it really, really delivers. And even when it has bad moments, somehow, you’re always invested in the characters, and that’s a really, really hard thing to do.

Allison: Limitless. I love Greek, so when I saw that Jake McDorman was starring in a CBS procedural, I decided to check it out mainly just to see him. I instantly fell in love. McDorman is definitely the best part about the entire show. It’s impossible not to love Brian. Plus, this is just a fun take on procedural crime shows. All the crimes are a bit wacky and fun. I was not expecting to love this show so much.

Lindsay: Jessica Jones. When I first saw the trailer for this Netflix hit, I figured it would be another superhero series that I should be watching but never made it to the top of my list. Then I check out the first episode on a whim and fell into a binge-watching hole that I never returned from. Jessica Jones blew me away, and I’ll never stop shouting its praises from the rooftops!

Biggest Disappointment

Christine: Blood and Oil. On paper, this show should have worked. It had an unbelievable cast and an excellent staff working on it. However, something about it just never clicked, whether it was writing or acting or maybe the constant comparisons to Dallas. I’m not surprised or sad to see it go. The same can be said for Wicked City, though on that one, I’m not quite sure what happened. I really enjoyed the three episodes I watched. I think maybe this one suffered for it’s very violent tone on network television, because the story itself was quite interesting. That one I AM sad to see go. I wanted to see what happened next.

Lizzie: Heroes Reborn. It was all there. I was already interested. How could they mess it so badly that I actually decided that I’d rather not know how this story ended than sit through another hour of it? I don’t get it. I mean, I do, the show is disjointed, hard to understand, moves at a glacial pace and they never managed to make me care about even one of the characters. Are we sure these are the same people from the original Heroes?

Allison: Heroes Reborn. Ugh, I’m with Lizzie. It got to a point where I stopped watching Heroes Reborn, and I didn’t even realize I wasn’t watching it anymore. That shows you how little I cared about the show. Honestly, it took reading Lizzie’s answer above for me to realize that it had dropped off my viewing list. It was boring. There were too many random characters that I didn’t like or even hated.

Lindsay: Wicked City. The premise for this new drama had me all excited, and when you added in Ed Westwick and Erika Christensen, it seemed like a slam dunk. But Wicked City started off shaky and just got unbearable, which was such a disappointment. Sometimes what seems like a home run is a swing and a miss.  

Needs Improvement

Christine: The Muppets. I’m a huge fan of the Muppets, in general, and while I think the mockumentary format works for them, they need to work on ways to interject some more classic Muppet humor into it. The first few weeks were funny, but the format quickly got stale as the writers continued writing it as though it was The Office for Kermit the Frog. I don’t want to see it go, because I think it can still work. They just need to find their own classic voice in that format and stop trying to be other shows.

Lizzie: Blindspot. I know I’m in the minority in this, but the pace in which Blindspot moves makes me want to strangle someone. I’m pretty sure it’s because the idea was conceived for a specific number of episodes and now they’re producing more, but… yeah, I just can’t. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not watching until I have at least a couple of episodes to binge, and I’m worried about what’s next. How much more can you stretch of this premise?

Allison: Supergirl. I love the characters, but there is still so much work to be done. Kara works too many jobs. We have her time at CatCo, her secret crime fighting team of Winn and Jimmy, and then Kara also works at the DEO. It’s a lot to balance. Maybe now that Cat knows Kara’s secret things will get better. I also feel like the bad guy of the week goes something like this: new bad guy and Kara fight maybe once or twice, then somehow Kara kicks his ass. I never feel like they are really developed, mainly because we have to shift to Kara’s other jobs and then whatever personal stuff is going on. It’s too much. We need to cut back on things. I’d rather see Kara work with Winn and Jimmy than the DEO. If those two groups could merge, that would help.

Lindsay: Supergirl. I’m with Allison on this one. Supergirl is amazing, and its ‘no-shame’ feminist leanings are seriously empowering, but it hasn’t quite found its footing yet. I’m hoping that that the back half of the season will flesh out a few more long-term storylines to give the show some firmer ground to stand on.

Clear Frontrunner

Christine: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend! I love this show more than words can say. Rachel Bloom is brilliant. The show tackles mental illness and feminism head on with such smart humor. The musical numbers are fun and in-line with the story of the episode. The characters are developing really nicely. There’s nothing I don’t like about it. I sincerely hope that audiences find this show and love it as much as critics do. It’s one of those shows you just have to watch before you give it a “No,” because that “No,” will most likely become an, “OMG YES!”

Lizzie: The Grinder. I can wax poetic about this show, I really can, and it’s not just because, as Christine said earlier, the chemistry between Rob Lowe and Fred Savage is phenomenal, but also because this show presents me with something I thought had been missing from TV for a long, long time: A smart comedy that refuses to compromise characterization for the sake of laughs. If you haven’t been watching, you’re missing out. My top show of the year, by far.

Allison: Weirdly, I can’t think of a front runner, which is a little sad considering I came up with these questions/prompts. I think I’ll also give this one to Limitless. Sadly, I haven’t been able to watch more than a couple episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but I will say, it is pretty awesome.

Lindsay: Quantico. From the get go, I’ve been hooked on the mystery and training plots, plus the impressive use of flash forwards. They’ve dedicated just the right amount of time to fleshing out both the characters and the who-done-it terrorist plot. If I had to pick a show that’s leading the polls in both popularity and storytelling, then Quantico is my choice!

 

Which news shows do you love or hate? Tell us in comments below!