A lot of shows on the list won't surprise us: Hank, The Forgotten, Numb3rs, Gary Unmarried, and 'Til Death (each either gets low ratings or has been on for a while), but there are several that I think will actually make it to a another season, including The Good Wife and Parks and Recreation.
That's right; you didn't read it wrong. Teresa Giudice and Jacqueline Laurita, the two who were having babies in season one of the show, will appear as themselves on the NBC medical drama, according to the Ausiello Files.
A funny thing happened when I turned on Bravo over the weekend. Instead of an avalanche of Flipping Out flip outs or Real Houswives' table-flipping or Tabitha's disgusting beauty salons, there was drama on the cable net. Bravo aired NBC's medical drama Mercy on Saturday morning.
On Saturday morning there really wasn't a lot going up against Mercy. In fact, it had the field pretty much to itself for any viewers looking for a quality, fresh TV show.
I say fresh because unlike the reruns of House or NCIS on USA, I hadn't seen these episodes of Mercy. So, rather than watch infomercials or pre-game college football chatter or animated cartoons, I watched Mercy.
There's so much cool stuff on SlashControl, it's hard to choose what to feature. But since I get to do this every day, that'll make it easier. Today, I'm featuring a clip from one of my favorite new shows, Mercy. It's not like we don't have enough hospital/doctor/nurse shows on right now, but there's something about Mercy that's different.
Maybe it's the actors, which include Taylor Schilling, James Tupper, and Michelle Trachtenberg. Maybe it's the fact that the main character, Veronica, has just come home from Iraq and is still wounded from that experience. And yet she keeps moving forward, despite issues like smashing a windshield with a cinder block when she's angry.
Whoa! I did NOT see that coming. One of the cases on last night's episode of Mercy was a woman suspected of having rabies after feeding a raccoon. So they brought the raccoon in to have it checked out. It was supposed to be dead, thanks to a poison apple and some peanut butter, but when the lid came off the styrofoam cooler, the coon jumped out and started running around the hospital floor.
Just the idea of a raccoon with rabies is creepy enough, but add in letting it loose in a hospital and the creep factor goes way up.
The synopsis of Mercy, the new NBC medical drama, says it's about three nurses at a hospital, but most of the previews have focused on the one played by Taylor Schilling. Here are two clips from tonight's premiere (at 8 on NBC), one Schilling-centric and one with all three.
The networks have had a quiet summer, quietly introducing scripted bomb after scripted bomb, so they're certainly ready to jump into the new fall season. And It looks to be an interesting one. ABC is scheduling a two-hour block of new comedies on Wednesdays as the sitcom tries to make a comeback.
Even more risky is NBC handing 10:00 to Jay Leno every night of the week. Everyone's waiting to see how that one plays out. FOX is banking on huge positive buzz for Glee to make it a hit, while ABC is hoping FlashForward can pick up where Lost is leaving off when it wraps its run this season.
To help you with it all, TV Squad has put together a handy calendar of all the premieres so you can schedule responsibly in this busy time of TV watching. Some nights have as many as twelve premieres scheduled, so you might need to invest in a few more DVRs to catch all your favorites; Monday's still look grim. Bookmark this page and you'll have it handy to help see you through.
Hey, have you seen any promos for Mercy on NBC lately? It's like they forgot the show was premiering in just a couple weeks. Usually the marketing machine is running into overdrive right about now.
For those who may be planning a volley of comments about how stupid I am, please note that the preceding paragraph is dripping with sarcasm. If you can't see it, perhaps you don't have the right fonts loaded. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. If you have seen the promos, I'll bet you haven't seen Captain Janeway prowling around the hospital halls, have you?
That's because Kate Mulgrew just joined the cast of Mercy. She'll be playing the mother of main character Veronica, played by Taylor Schilling. Mercy's already been getting some good buzz, and you just know NBC is looking for their next ER. Could Mercy be it? Or better yet, their Grey's Anatomy? It already appears to have a more personal slant, if Mulgrew's addition means anything.
Previewing NBC's fall offerings has been a long process. First I gave you Community and Trauma, then Parenthood. Now, I have NBC's second medical drama that's premiering this year: Mercy. While Trauma follows first responders in San Francisco, Mercy follows nurses in a hospital in New York.
While it's true that I've seen the pilot and should be able to give you some insight into what to expect when it premieres (Wednesday September 23, at 8 PM ), the fact is, every single thing you need to know about Mercy is summed up in its synopsis:
"Nurse Veronica Callahan (Taylor Schilling) has just returned to Mercy Hospital from a tour in Iraq and knows more about medicine than all of the residents combined. Together with fellow nurses Sonia Jimenez (Jaime Lee Kirchner) who turns the heads of everyone at Mercy hospital and Chloe Payne (Michelle Trachtenberg) a naïve newcomer who learns to deal with the difficulties of working in a challenging and sometimes unsettling profession, they navigate the daily traumas and social landmines of life and love both inside the hospital and out."
NBC seems to be sending out their screeners in dribs and drabs, so I'm making my way through their fall offerings very slowly. I've already given you previews of both Community and Trauma, and now we've got Parenthood, a new series based on a movie that was already turned into a series nearly twenty years ago. Who says Hollywood is out of ideas?
Parenthood is basically a less-melodramatic Brothers & Sisters. It follows the Braverman clan, a family in Fresno made up of four siblings: Adam (Peter Krause), Crosby (Dax Shepard), Sarah (Maura Tierney), and Julia (Erika Christensen), along with their children and parents, played by Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia. They all have their share of drama, but at the end of the day, they're all brought together in the most suburban of pursuits: Little League. Say it with me now: "awwww."
Maura Tierney, most recently on ER and now one of the stars of NBC's new comedy/drama Parenthood, is ill and will be going through a medical evaluation that will take several weeks. This means that the show will not start filming at the end of this month as originally planned. Instead, production will begin in September. No word yet on what exactly is wrong with Tierney.
It's getting hard to remember all of these TV shows, isn't it? Right now we have both The Mentalist and Mental, and this fall we'll have CBS' Miami Trauma, which shouldn't be confused with another show, NBC's Trauma. And then there's The Good Wife, which isn't the same as The Goode Family.
We have about 27 new medical shows to keep track of this fall. Here's the other NBC hospital show coming this fall, Mercy. It stars Michelle Trachtenberg, James LeGros, Delroy Lindo, Jaime Lee Kirchner, and Taylor Schilling and follows each story through the eyes of the nurses. Maybe they'll like this show more than they like Nurse Jackie.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a post about the shows that were "on the bubble," the ones in danger of being canceled. Now AOL TV has 
The other day 
A funny thing happened when I turned on 
There's so much cool stuff on 
Whoa! I did NOT see that coming. One of the cases on last night's episode of 
At 8, ABC has the series premiere of Hank, followed by the series premiere of The Middle and new episodes of Modern Family, Cougar Town, and Eastwick.
The networks have had a quiet summer, quietly introducing scripted bomb after scripted bomb, so they're certainly ready to jump into the new fall season. And It looks to be an interesting one. ABC is scheduling a two-hour block of new comedies on Wednesdays as the sitcom tries to make a comeback. 
Hey, have you seen any promos for 
Wow, this sounds rather serious.
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