Asking the Wrong Questions

A week or so ago, the US broadcast networks announced their lineup of new and returning shows for the fall of 2013, and since then the internet's premier TV sites have been abuzz with a flurry of analysis.  Trailers have been dissected, ratings and demographics calculated, schedules critiqued.  It's all a lot of fun, in an inside baseball sort of way, but in the midst of all this excitement, it's good to be reminded that in the end, nobody really knows anything.  Exhibit A: Elementary , a show that had absolutely no business being any good whatsoever.  On paper, it seems to epitomize all the worst failings of network TV, the kind that make us TV snobs sigh and complain that everything would be better on HBO.  Its genre is arguably the most overexposed, and dramatically inert, on TV, the procedural, and what's more, it's a procedural featuring a quirky, irascible detective surrounded by put-upon enablers, of which we've had far too many over the last decade....

Well, that was a long week and a half of new TV, and with not much to show for it in the end.  These write-ups represent a small minority of the new shows to premiere this fall--I haven't said anything about the season's new comedies, which run the gamut from terrible ( Partners ), to underwhelming ( Ben and Kate , The Mindy Project ), to competent but uninspiring ( Go On , Animal Practice ) , to bizarre Alf retreads ( The Neighbors ).  There are some more new shows premiering later this month, but so far I'm not very enthusiastic about this new crop of shows. Vegas - The premise of this show, which follows the (presumably fictionalized) exploits of legendary Las Vegas Sheriff Ralph Lamb (Dennis Quaid) in the early 60s, marks it as yet another attempt, after the failure of last year's Pan Am and The Playboy Club , to crack the Mad Men code for a network audience (only this time without pesky women running around all over the place--there is only one woman in the ...