TVSquad

Fantasy football is a tricky thing. You either love it or you hate it and that largely depends on whether you're good or bad at it. For the most part, the same can be said about FX's newest comedy The League. When it's good, it is good, but when it's bad... well, you get the picture.

The show, which premieres tomorrow night, Thursday 10/29, at 10:30 p.m. after It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is FX's first solid attempt to produce a lasting companion piece to Sunny and, given some of its predecessors (like Starved or Testees), it'd be easy to write The League off. But, like a two-minute drill that gradually picks up steam, The League might actually go... all... the... way.

OK -- no more football metaphors.

(S01E01) The first question I had after watching the new NBC medical drama Trauma was this: can the show keep this up every week?

You can tell a lot of money was spent on the pilot, because the first 20 minutes is like Irwin Allen: The Movie. Helicopters crash, cars explode, children are endangered. It's like those big episodes of ER where something massive happened, only this is going to be a regular thing with this show (if, as I said above, they can spend a lot of money on future episodes).

But what about the rest of the show? It's one thing to have big accidents and pyrotechnics (which are actually very impressive) but what about the cast, the writing, the stories?

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.

(S01E01) Watching Accidentally on Purpose, thoughts of Seth Rogen danced in my mind. Not Seth, actually, but the film Knocked Up. This is the second year in a row that CBS seems obsessed with that film. Last season, it was Worst Week, with a schlubby Kyle Bornheimer channeling Rogen's goofy lack of grace. It didn't work and Worst Week bit the dust. Now we have Jenna Elfman in the Katherine Heigl role, knocked up by accident after a one-night stand, albeit with a twist. Instead of a schlub, Jenna's fling is a boy-toy named Zach.

And there you have the premise of Accidentally on Purpose. Are you ROFL? Will you LOL? Read on after the jump.

(S01E01) "Oh god, with the curry again. This shirt smells likes Indira Gandhi's thong." - Archer

I should preface this review with something basic - I am in no way whatsoever an animation buff. I didn't watch a lot of cartoons as a kid and now that I'm a big boy, my Adult Swim knowledge stretches about as far as Aqua Teen Hunger Force with the occasional episode of Sealab 2021 tossed in. So... I guess I know a little. Enough to say that Sealab's mastermind Adam Reed definitely has a hit on his hands with his first stab at a half-hour show in FX's Archer.

So if you're looking for a treatise one why Archer's flash animation or cell-shaded stop motion freeze-frame whatever-it's-called is superior vs. parochial and clunky, then this is not the review for you. I'm basing my review on content alone and seeing as how Archer won't be back for its official premiere until January, we were very fortunately given more than enough to whet our appetites.

Sometimes ratings can paint such interesting portraits of the American audience. Mad Men set a series high and ranked as the top show on cable Sunday with its third season premiere. And yet, its victory on the night was only 0.1 million viewers over the premiere of E!s Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami.

Those K&K numbers make it the new highest premiere on E! since The Anna Nicole Show premiered. A record briefly held by Kendra's premiere earlier this summer.

So one the one hand we have one of the most deservedly acclaimed television shows of the past decade, and right there with it, running neck and neck, is yet another reality spin-off featuring rich people who are only famous because ... they're famous. I blame Paris Hilton. She was one of the first people who got famous for doing absolutely nothing.

Since Bravo doesn't think there are enough people to dislike on television, here comes Miami Social. Vapid women? Check. Guys with their shirts off? Check. Dumb conversations? Check. Too much drinking and partying? Check?

I just realized that all of the negative things I just mentioned will probably make you want to tune in. Here's a preview. The only way I'll watch this is if they do a crossover with Burn Notice.

Better Off Ted, ABC's new workplace comedy, debuts Wednesday at 8:30PM ET. However, the timing of the show's release couldn't be more fortuitous... or disastrous, depending on how you look at it. The show revolves around an ethically inept conglomerate, Veridian Dynamics, and as a result, viewers will unavoidably end up thinking about everything that's wrong with our economy - from Bernie Madoff to AIG to Enron (a stretch yes, but still relevant). As a comedy, it's a decidedly glass half-full approach. Unfortunately, this comes at a time when most viewers will probably have more in common with a glass half-empty mantra. Will it work? I'm thinking yes.

Nathan Fillion deserves a break. Sure, he's had a successful career with memorable guest turns in recent hits such as Lost and Desperate Housewives. And sure, he's got cult hits like Firefly and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog under his belt, too. However, as of late, the well has run dry for Fillion (Drive, anyone?), and let's be honest - a man cannot live off of Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place residuals alone. So I'll say it again - the man deserves a break. Castle, unfortunately, is not that break.

With a healthy stable of hits including The Shield, Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, and Damages, you can easily make the argument that FX has a pretty good idea of what makes a good drama and what doesn't. Unfortunately, you can't say the same thing for comedies.

The cable network has scored a huge hit with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (now in its fourth season), but they've had no other comedic successes. You might recall that when Sunny premiered back in the summer of 2005, it aired in tandem with FX's only other sitcom attempt, the Eric Schaeffer vehicle Starved. Personally, I thought Starved was a great show and deserved a second season but the ratings didn't justify it. The subject matter (eating disorders) probably didn't help either.

So after a long hiatus, FX is finally giving comedy another shot with Testees, a new sitcom from the mind of Kenny Hotz (Kenny vs. Spenny). I had a chance to see the pilot episode and after viewing it, I think it'll probably do OK.

(S01E01) "Just pretend it's carve-your-own steak night at Sizzler." - Jax

FX is taking a fairly big gamble with Sons of Anarchy. With their trademark drama The Shield ending its seven season run this fall and their other two big hits (Damages and Rescue Me) pushed to 2009 because of the WGA Strike, the network is in dire need of some fresh buzz. The one thing they have going for them? Even FX's previous flops (Dirt, Starved, Over There, Thief) were better than a lot of other things on TV and Sons of Anarchy certainly fits that mold. Once the fall season is in full swing, the only network competition will be CSI: NY, as I don't see Lipstick Jungle or Dirty Sexy Money getting in the way. Sons has the potential to do well. It'll just rest on creator Kurt Sutter and how he plans to make the show appealing beyond this pilot episode.

You're going to hear a lot of things about FX's new motorcycle club drama Sons of Anarchy. It's different, it's edgy, and it covers a fairly taboo topic that, up to now, hasn't really been addressed in a TV drama.

However, strip away the leather jackets and exhaust fumes and you're looking at something we have seen before: Sons of Anarchy is The Sopranos on Harleys. You've got your powerful crime family, illegal gun smuggling, rival gangs, conspiracy, and for good measure? Drea de Matteo (of Sopranos fame) plays a crank addict. Trade the crank for blow and we've seen that before too.

Obviously I'm not going to go into an entire review of this episode of Dexter, as we've already done that once during the show's premiere on Showtime. Also, I gave my thoughts on the CBS version of the series last week. However, I do want to open up a post for newcomers to the series to discuss their thoughts.

I have to wonder if this move by CBS will result in more subscriptions to Showtime once viewers have been hooked, bought the season one and two DVDs and have caught up with things before the show picks up again later this year (I think).

Are you going to keep tuning in? Were you as blown away by the series premiere as we were? Let yourself be heard in the comments.

(S01E01) TV Squad has already done an early look at this series. What follows is a more in-depth review of the pilot episode.

To recap, the episode begins in 1999. It takes place between the second and third movies in the franchise. Sarah Connor (played by Lena Headey) and her son John Connor (played by Thomas Dekker) are on the run from the future.

In the future, John Connor saves mankind from a supercomputer called Skynet that was built by a human creator and financed by the military. Shortly after going online, Skynet became hellbent on making the human race extinct. Unfortunately, future John wasn't able to finish the job before Skynet invented a working time machine. Skynet also uses cyborg foot soldiers called Terminators to do its dirty work.

Sarah and John have to be careful not to leave any clues to their location while they're on the run from both the law and the future. If they do, at best they'll be arrested. At worst, Skynet can find them and send Terminators back in time to kill John before he saves the world.

Episode spoilers after the jump...

(S01E01) Los Angeles and Toronto -- two cities that I will probably never end up moving into or near. Why? Because of the dense population of vampires that make those cities their home. I could understand Toronto: it's cold and gloomy in the winter and you can transverse the city through a myriad of underground passageways. But, Los Angeles? The place is sunny for most of the year. Why the hell would a vampire want to move there? Frankly I would think Seattle would be a better city to live in, or one of those towns up in Northern Alaska. I mean, those places don't see the sun for months at a time. What a perfect location for a vampire to live!

Now that I got that out of my system let's talk about the first episode of the new CBS supernatural drama Moonlight. If you read my early look of this show you could see that I wasn't really enamored with the program. Besides the fact that the acting was sub-par and the featured crime was something you would see on any standard criminal procedural, the whole thing just left me empty.