But really, who am I kidding. I daydream about being part of a company that goes up to networks and showrunners and yells at them about what they're doing wrong. I'm a judgmental little ball of sparkles and intersectional feminism. So when upfronts happen and all the trailers for all the new fall shows come out, well. It's hard to resist.
I just. Okay, someone clearly thought to themselves "Hey, Scandal and Homeland have made White House dramas sexy again, let's run with that shit!" and then they put Katherine Heigl in the lead role. I guess there's a chance that this could be interesting and not just a hilariously overblown and unconvincing piece of nonsense, but let's be real, there were only a few actually intriguing and non-derivative bits to that trailer, and they were A) Alfre Woodard as the President, and B) those ten seconds where they're talking about wanting to kill everyone responsible for the death of Alfre Woodard's son/Katherine Heigl's fiancé.
I don't know, I just really like ladies bonding over violent urges and a shared desire for vengeance. Maybe that's just me.
I could barely even watch this trailer, mostly because I'm really sick of scenes where women freak out over not getting proposed to. Also, who the fuck organizes a "surprise proposal" where all your friends are hanging out waiting for you to pop the question? That's almost as bad as the Jumbotron proposal.
Also, if we know that they're going to get married eventually, WHO CARES how it happens? Man. Secondhand embarrassment all over the place.
I admit, I think that Ben Feldman and Cristin Milioti are adorable, which is why I would watch this if it were a romcom. And yet, I find myself confused that it's a TV show. How are they going to drag this premise out over multiple seasons? What is there to say that they didn't already cover in the trailer?
Moreover, I'm a little concerned about the "meant for each other" thing. The "she was the girl in the silver dress!" thing is kind of cute, and lord knows I understand what it's like when it seems like you're narratively destined to end up with somebody. It's tempting. And yet, first of all, being invested in someone doesn't mean they should be reciprocally invested in you; and second of all, what if she weren't the girl in the silver dress? Would he still be interested in her? What does it say about the value he places on their relationship, if he wouldn't? When the narrative you're constructing for yourself becomes more important than the reality, you've got a problem.
On the other hand, because Ben Feldman and Cristin Milioti are so adorable, I hope they manage to make this shit work.
WHAT THE HELL. Are you allowed to do this shit when you're a judge? I feel like I need to go check with my lawyer relatives for the sake of verisimilitude. Also, when I saw the title of this show I had a brief confused moment where I wondered if, between this and Bad Teacher, we were going to get a series of Bad [Profession] TV shows, before I remembered that Bad Teacher is on CBS and is being cancelled. Just imagine, though. Bad Plumber. Bad Cashier. Bad Financial Services Executive.
Honestly, it doesn't look awful, if they actually make sure that the kid character is a character in his own right and not just a plot device. I'm not sure I have much faith in this. TV shows for grown-ups tend to write uniquely terrible child characters. Also, I want Kate Walsh and her bailiff (the guy she gives the pregnancy test to, played by Tone Bell) to be endgame.
I know just enough about the Constantine of the comics to know that if this is done well, I'll be really excited about it. John Constantine, dirty bisexual foul-mouthed working-class conman detective magician who rarely uses magic unless he has to and whose explanation about magic is that any asshole could do it? I'm there, okay. I'm so there that I've been trying to figure out where to start among the limited volumes of Hellblazer that are available in the public library.
On the other hand, if this isn't done well, I'll be rather "meh" about it. Thus far in the trailer it seems like the main actor isn't really settled into his northern-English accent, and something about it seems a little too... well-defined? That might not make sense outside my head, and I apologize, because I'm not sure I can explain it any better than that. There are just moments like the, "Not my problem. ...Sigh." bit that seem like they should be a little quieter; they don't feel like a real character doing something genuine so much as an actor doing something that the script says he should do. Hopefully it'll be better than this trailer is.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
No, seriously, when I was watching this trailer for the first time, the dialogue was so bad that I kept waiting for them to break character and reveal that this was all an elaborate show-within-a-show. Debra Messing would play Laura, the actress who has been hilariously miscast as the lead actress on a cop show. She could deal with industry sexism, mediocre writing, and her weird personal life!
Unfortunately, that show would probably be far more interesting than the show The Mysteries of Laura is actually supposed to be, which looks like a horrifically generic mashup of all those "crime-solving white ladies with messy personal lives!" shows. Seriously? Enough. Give me something a little fresher than this. And for the love of god, up your dialogue ante. "I'm pretty Type A and I practice with this thing all the time"? Really?
NBC hasn't put up trailers yet for Odyssey (which sounds like another Homeland clone), Allegiance (Homeland plus The Americans), One Big Happy (The New Normal-unconventional family shenanigans), Emerald City (Wizard of Oz gone weird), Aquarius (1960s show number 1), Mission Control (1960s show number 2), Mr. Robinson (School of Rock the TV show?), or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (...I don't even know). Of all of these shows, the ones I'm most interested in are Emerald City and Mission Control, although I'm always in favor of queer female characters, so if One Big Happy turns out to be decent I'd consider looking into it.
Really looking forward to the trailers, though, even if I don't have high hopes for most of NBC's new shows this fall. But hey, there are always surprises.
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