It was a big night on television yesterday, and by big, I do mean large. From eight to ten, NBC aired the premiere of the new season of its popular reality weight loss show Biggest Loser. At the same time over on FOX, it was the season finale of the plus-sized romance show More to Love. Four hours of television last night, all dedicated to our American obesity epidemic. With fast food commercials during the breaks.

Biggest Loser

I feel very differently about Biggest Loser and More to Love. Biggest Loser is about people working hard to better themselves, and that’s always going to be a dissimilar experience to watching a show built around The Bachelor. The premises are not equal – it’s not unreasonable to expect people to work out and learn about nutrition over a several weeks, and experience significant weight loss. Putting a bunch of women in a house and expecting them all to fall in love with one (probably unpleasant) guy is both silly and unfair. The role of weight is different in the shows as well. While Biggest Loser makes the argument that physical and mental health are related and that everyone deserves to be healthy and strong, the primary argument of More to Love is that overweight people can fall in love just like skinny people. More to Love take an already absurd premise and then implies the audience can’t even appreciate the participants’ basic humanity.

That said, these two shows have some intriguing similarities. In both of them, the contestants perpetually describe the pain of living in a world that judges them instantly based on their appearance. The unsurprising result of that focus is that both shows are unapologetically emotional. Weeping occurs on regular, minute-to-minute intervals. On More to Love, the women weep, both because they have been ignored and insulted for much of their lives and because they believe they are finally experiencing love that looks beyond their size. Contestants and trainers alike weep on Biggest Loser; they cry because the pain of working that hard is overwhelming, and because most of them have trauma or tragedy that led to weighing 450 pounds.

Oh the crying...

Biggest Loser and More to Love also have sizeable cultural ambitions. The “Very Special Messages” embedded in these programs form a constant drumbeat, so that the lasting impression is as much about Accepting Your Heavy Friends and Learning to Eat Right as it is the people on the show. On The Bachelor, the mission is to watch women fall in love with a guy and then make fools of themselves waiting for him to pick one. I think the producers of More to Love expect you to walk up to the next person you meet and declare, “I promise to love you for you!”

It’s not a bad thing to require something of your audience, but unsurprisingly, the messages here lack complexity or originality. “It’s not about how big you are,” says the winning girl on More to Love, “it’s about the size of your heart.” Of course it is, and it’s a shame you feel the need to tell us as though we don’t already know. I just wish you could figure out how to tell me without regurgitating the same simple ideas over and over. Or crying quite so much.

This week, NBC begins its new fall lineup, and however much Joel McHale has tried to make everyone pay attention to the premiere of his new comedy Community, the topic du jour is the new 10pm topical comedy talk show The Jay Leno Show. Did you miss the premiere last night? No worries, it’s on again tonight! And tomorrow night!

The Jay Leno Show - like The Tonight Show, but with chairs where the couches were

Sigh. I have nothing against Jay Leno. I have never found him particularly funny, but I know a lot of people do and that’s fine. My problems with The Jay Leno Show are bigger, more general issues.

For one, it’s not as though this show is filling any gap on network television. There are already plenty of shows where a man stands up, tells some jokes, plays some clips, interviews some celebrities, and looks generally uncomfortable while wearing a suit. We call them “late-night television shows.” Not only do they already exist on NBC’s major competitor networks, there’s already one on NBC! It’s called The Tonight Show – it’s pretty famous! Every weeknight, then, NBC is providing viewers with a form of programming already amply available, with the only added bonus being that it happens an hour and a half earlier. Sure, this doesn’t seem like a major objection. Television is full of programming that essentially copies more popular, effective shows (see, for example, every single crime procedural out there). But in the case of The Jay Leno Show, the process of replicating something already available is taking up a full hour of primetime network TV slots, Monday through Friday. Those five hours could have been five thoughtful dramas, or primetime soaps, or even stupid reality shows. From my perspective, that’s a loss.

Jay Leno did make Kanye cry, but in a month no one will remember why

My other significant reservation about the whole Jay Leno Show project is its focus on topicality. NBC is attempting to create DVR-proof programming by marketing The Jay Leno Show as being so current and of the moment that you will have to watch it every night at 10, and by the time you flip on your DVR the next day, you might as well just wait and watch the new one. (Whohoo, says NBC, we will force you to watch our advertising.) But topical television is throwaway television. For example, in last night’s episode, Kanye West talks to Jay Leno about his misbehavior during the weekend’s Video Music Awards, and describes his embarrassment over interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech. Leno introduces him by explaining Kanye wants to say a few things, and then they go through the entire interview without ever mentioning Taylor Swift’s full name or describing anything about what happened. A few months from now, that interview will be gibberish, based entirely around a reference no one even explains. It’s like producing a newspaper every night at 10pm, and it’s already out of date by the time it airs.

Topical works for programs like The Daily Show because the editorial content is separate from reporting on events, and Jon Stewart’s opinion about the Senate race may still be interesting a day later. While many people clearly find Leno hysterically funny, his humor strives to be as entirely devoid of personal opinion as possible. It works by distilling the accepted wisdom of the day and feeding it back to you with a silly sex joke. There’s not much point in watching someone repeat what everyone was thinking yesterday, even less what happened last week or last year. It’s unlikely that years from now, someone will come back to episodes of The Jay Leno Show and feel connected to them, or moved by their humor.

Obviously there are advantages to programming like The Jay Leno Show. For one, it’s much cheaper to produce than five separate hour-long shows. It’s generally inoffensive. Jay Leno seems like a cheerful, good-natured guy. Ultimately, though, The Jay Leno Show is lazy television, filling time where more thoughtful shows used to be, meant to be watched and then forgotten. Is that the most we can ask of media, of entertainment? Apparently for NBC on weeknights at 10pm, it is.

“Every job has its ups and downs,” said the elevator operator.

For an episode chock full of developments, it’s a testament to my overpowering love of silly wordplay that the first thing I remembered this morning as I reconsidered last night’s Mad Men was this quote from Hollis, the man who works in the elevator. Silliness aside, The Fog gave us a number of telling moments and suggestive possibilities for the show’s future, but for me was much more about the smaller throwaway lines and brief glances.

Medgar Evers in the waiting room and at the kitchen table

As my focus has been largely on this season’s increasingly insistent relationship with its historical period, the most obvious of those throwaways is the embedded account of Medgar Evers’ assassination. First Sally’s teacher mentions she has been asking questions about it in class (and assumes this is related to coping with her grandfather’s death), then footage of the memorials plays in the background while Don sits in the hospital waiting room, and finally the reference culminates in Betty’s drug-induced hallucinations. Explaining to her mother that she’s having a baby, Ruthie tells Betty to shut her mouth, and then gestures to the bloodied black man sitting at the kitchen table. “See what happens to people who speak up? Be happy with what you have.” Evers, who died mere hours after Kennedy’s civil rights speech from the previous episode, organized boycotts and spoke in favor of integration, and then became a figurehead for the civil rights movement after he was assassinated in 1963. Ruthie’s comment that Evers should signal the importance of being “happy with what you have” is one of the show’s great motifs. From the surface, Betty should be happy with her picture-perfect life (a picture taken just a few episodes ago at the end of the school May Day performance), but the emotional hollowness underneath and the historical pressures from outside both telegraph the increasing impossibility of simply being happy. The mismatch between Ruth’s words and Evers’ bowed head make it clear that being “happy with what you have” will not be the way of the future.

The other brilliantly played small glance in this episode comes in the scene where Peggy asks Don for equal pay. After being prepped by the “previously, on Mad Men clips” and the lunch with Pete and Duck, we are completely ready to see Peggy finger the blue baby boy’s footies and feel the flooding memory of her traumatic first year at Sterling Cooper. It is no coincidence that the thematic content of the scene is a direct parallel to Betty’s hallucination – where Ruth scolds Betty to settle for her unhappy marriage, Peggy goggles at Don’s amazing life. “You have everything,” she breathes, “and so much of it.” He has the income, the social stature, the suave snappy suits, and most painfully, the baby she could never have raised on her own. Don’s life is what Peggy strives to attain.

Except, whether you want it to or not, “every job has its ups and downs.” For Peggy, although she longs to achieve the seemingly perfect life of Don Draper, Duck Philips is right to point out that this is Peggy’s time, and Don’s job may well be on its way down. While she may want what the old guard has, Peggy is as much on the right side of history as Betty is on the wrong, and her freedom to pursue her own career gives her the opportunity to speak up rather than being happy with what she has.

As for Hollis the elevator operator, soon it will be his time as well. And when that time comes, Pete Campbell will be right there to sell him a TV.

There were a few things about this week’s premiere of the new show Glee that didn’t thrill me. The premise still seems to lend itself far more readily to a movie than a full-length TV show, and I’m having a hard time imagining how the triumph of a high school Glee Club spins itself out into a full-length, densely plotted season of television. On soap opera high school shows like Gossip Girl, there’s a predetermined story in the will-they-won’t-they of the lead characters, but the surrounding story is far more open to surprise twists, unexpected hook-ups, and intrigue. On episodic high school shows from days of yore (I’m looking at you, Boy Meets World), something bad would happen, it would resolve, and then the whole thing would start over.

My concern about a show like Glee is that everything seems predetermined. It’s not just that the main characters will eventually get together and be happy, and thus require a new conflict to stew about, it’s that every aspect of the premise has its inevitable satisfactory end already built in. The Glee Club director will figure out his marriage is unhappy, break up with his wife, and then get together with the guidance counselor. The wife will then get together with the gym teacher, who is clearly more aware of his role as a provider (which is obviously what she wants). And of course, the Glee Club will eventually triumph over the Cheerios, going on to win Nationals and although they may not attain school-wide popularity, they’ll learn to love themselves in spite of their quirks. The end.

Glee Club vs. Cheerleaders - the epic struggle continues

Which is not to say that the show has to be that way. I loved the pilot, thought the second episode was strong, and will certainly keep watching, if for no other reason than I am a giant sucker for enthusiastically choreographed song-and-dance numbers.* Plus, Jane Lynch is hilarious. But I would love nothing more than to discover that they have a different place to take me than the ending we can all see coming a mile away. At the moment, the only plotline that looks like it will develop outside the pilot premise is the faked-pregnancy plot, which after the success of Baby Mama and the disastrous Lindsay Lohan debacle Labor Pains, I hope we can all agree is no longer funny or interesting. One step in the right direction would be to further develop the other members of the Glee Club, so that the group was more than just two main characters and a handful of stereotypes. Were I writing this show, I might also consider the inclusion of a third club to break up the good vs. evil, cheerleaders vs. glee club dynamic, because that polarity doesn’t easily lead to complicated, thoughtful plot scenarios.

Glee Club director, guidance counselor, (brilliant, hilarious) cheerleading coach

In spite of my trepidations, though – I like Glee. I like its odd mixture of snark and sincerity, I like that it doesn’t look or sound like anything else on television right now, and at the end of the day, I will always like a talented, heartfelt performance of 80s power ballads. I can only hope that as the show goes on, I’ll be able to like it without the nagging sense that I’m enjoying it despite my better critical judgment.

*Strangely, this weakness only exists in the context of fictional stories, and does not translate over into any of the many singing or dancing reality show extravaganzas. Take your American Idols and So You Think You Can Dances, and leave me my Rogers and Hammerstein musical any day of the week.

America’s Next Top Model returned last night, like a mildewy smell that comes back every time the weather turns. I wish I could tell you that like Melrose Place or Bad Girls Club or Dance Your Ass Off, this was a trashy show that I’ve only ever had a passing familiarity with. I wish I could tell you I had no idea who Miss Jay was, or noted fashion photographer Nigel Barker, or the Aswirl Twins, but I would be lying to you. Friends, I have seen a great, great deal of America’s Next Top Model. (Sadly I have yet to scrounge up some screenshots for this episode, but oh, I will find them.)

Clearly, though, I haven’t seen anything yet, because this season is special and different. This season, Tyra Banks is taking risks and introducing diversity to expand our cookie-cutter notions of what a model should be. This season, all of the contestants are under 5’7”. I KNOW. I TOO AM SHOCKED AT THIS CONTROVERSIAL DECISION. In order to fully express the significance of this season, the references to height come about once every thirty seconds. After the second elimination, Tyra walks up to the remaining girls and explains to them that it’s harder than usual to say goodbye because their shortness will obviously prevent them from ever succeeding on their own. “You can do some face modeling,” she tells them.

Tyra helpfully models how important it is separate their faces from their freakishly short bodies

The premiere last night was the standard two-hour culling of the herd, with the first hour about focusing on the crazy girl parade. The usual crazies were out in full force, featuring one girl who claimed that her first nickname was “Bloody Eyeball,” another who mimed the procedure involved in castrating cows, and the obligatory Models for Jesus Christ representative. (Ol’ Bloody Eyeball also brings a rusty wheelbarrow to school instead of a backpack, and is angry her classmates find her odd.) Tyra performed the standard Did-You-Know-I-Also-Have-A-Talk-Show moves, taking delight in the process of asking each girl about her history of abuse, childhood trauma, or poverty.

Bloody Eyeball, cheerfully miming cow castration techniques

Sadly, the camera/graphics people were unprepared for short models

In the second hour, after the unexplained disappearance of the Models for Jesus Christ rep, makeovers – excuse me, Ty-overs – ensued. There was no weeping over the loss of beautiful, beautiful hair, but one beautiful girl had to have her eyebrows bleached, because apparently when you’re a short you need to look like an alien to be noticed. Then there was a photo shoot where the girls had to do high fashion interpretations of their own baby photos. Because babies are short? Jay tries to explain it as a commentary about how fashion works in cycles, and what they were wearing then is hot again now. Except, does baby fashion really reflect what’s happening on the runway? Jay points to a baby wearing a flared onesie and calls the pants “Hammer pants” that have now been reinterpreted as “harem pants.” Which is great, except on babies, I think those are called “pants with room for your diaper.”

In the end, someone got eliminated and many girls cried, and now we get to do it all again next week. And happily, by the end of the episode we learned what this whole shortness thing is actually about, as the judges repeated over and over what made a good picture. “You’ve stretched yourself here, it’s great.” “You look 5’10”!” “You look so long in this picture!” What a relief, America’s Next Top Model – I was worried you were actually suggesting I should accept short people. Thankfully, I only need to like them if they look tall.

I know I wrote yesterday that I had no plans to blog about the new Melrose Place, but then I watched it. And now I feel it is unfair to deprive the world of any opportunity to appreciate this glorious, glorious show. So I’ve decided to reinterpret my total ignorance about the original incarnation of Melrose Place as an advantage, allowing me to understand and value this new version without any cloud of previous judgment. Here, then, is a recap of last night’s premiere of Melrose Place.

While out partying at his friend Auggie’s restaurant, David gets a text message from their landlady, Sydney, who is in trouble. Although he claims to have moved on, David rushes home to be with Sydney (in, you know, the biblical sense) after she tells him she has done something “really, really bad.” I wish I could tell you the dialogue gets better than that, but… no. The next morning, two other residents of the building, Jonah and Riley, wake up and celebrate their five-year anniversary. At first Riley is angry because she thinks Jonah forgot, but then aspiring-filmmaker Jonah turns on the television to play her the cutesy video he made of them happily bouncing around with various props (swimming pool, feathers). When the video’s done, Riley turns to discover Jonah on his knee, proposing to her. Before she can say yes –

Melrose Place: From "will you marry me?" to "AIIEEEEE DEAD BODY IN THE POOL!" in less than a second

A scream comes from the courtyard outside! And they rush out to discover Sydney, floating facedown in the pool in a cloud of blood! All the attractive residents of Melrose Place gather around, and their blank, blank faces supposedly indicate shock. While the hot people discuss the possible motives for murdering Sydney (and the motives seem legion), bisexual publicist and fellow Melrose Place-resident Ella reminds aspiring-filmmaker Jonah that he has to leave to be a videographer for a famous director’s daughter’s birthday party. Riley starts to leave for work, and Jonah asks her what her answer is to his incredibly ill-timed marriage proposal, and Riley acts a little squirrely before demanding a day to think about it.

Outside in the courtyard, Auggie mournfully tells creepy new apartment-mate Violet that Sydney convinced him he could be a real chef, and then everyone realizes David has been taken in for police questioning. Bisexual publicist Ella springs David out of jail by telling the police she spent the night with him. Glowy flashbacks inform us that Sydney used to sleep with David’s dad. And then, of course, David’s dad pulls up outside the police station in one of those cars where the door opens by sliding upward. They argue about how they both had sex with a murder victim.

Meanwhile, on a very special Melrose Place/­­Grey’s Anatomy crossover episode, hot Asian med student Lauren gets a call from her dad say he’s been laid off and can no longer afford to pay her tuition. Then a hot guy asks her out, but she’s, you know, sad now.

Over at My Super Sweet 16, Jonah pitches his short film to the birthday girl’s famous director father, who laughs him away. Weirdly, there are Bollywood dancers everywhere. Then Jonah accidentally films the famous director father making out with the birthday girl’s best friend. Whoops! Famous director adulterer offers Jonah a ridiculous amount of money and a screenplay to bury the footage. Moral conflict!!

Riley and hot med student Lauren discuss their love lives. Riley has doubts about marrying Jonah, who she worries is immature. Lauren is poor, and also doesn’t feel like going out on this date. Riley lends Lauren some cute shoes, though, so that solves that problem.

Glowy flashbacks courtesy of every daytime soap opera ever

Skipping back to the murdered landlord plot, David tells Auggie that he’s worried he may have actually killed Sydney, but that he blacked out and doesn’t remember. Auggie reassures David that someone else did it, and they need to be brought to justice. More glowy flashbacks inform us that Sydney only slept with David to get back at David’s father for leaving her. Ewwwwww.

Med student Lauren is having a nice date with the hot guy from the hospital, but then he offers her $5,000 to pay her tuition in exchange for sleeping with him. She blows him off, but creepy new apartment-mate Violet points out that money is better than your self-image. Facing the exact same money vs. self-image problem, Jonah comes home all upset about the bribe from famous director father, and tells Riley he refused the money. Riley decides this means he’s a grown-up, and agrees to marry him.

All the attractive residents of Melrose Place gather outside in memory of their stabbed-to-death landlady, and while their champagne glasses are raised in a toast, Jonah decides to announce he and Riley are getting married. To auspicious beginnings!

We are left at the end with a final dramatic montage: bisexual publicist Ella makes out with a girl from a bar. Riley and Jonah have hot bathtub sex. Med student Lauren goes to the hot guy’s hotel room in order to prostitute herself for tuition money! Creepy new apartment-mate Violet surreptitiously puts the framed memorial portrait of Sydney in her purse! Auggie burns a bloody chef’s uniform in a dark alleyway! And finally, in the strangest montage scenes ever, David selects a fictional nineteenth-century landscape painting out of an auction catalogue, and then appears to pull off a million-dollar art heist.

Just your standard montage - bathtub sex, hotel hallway of moral decay, art theft - wait, WHAT?

So clearly, I was wrong to dismiss this amazing piece of television artistry. Did Auggie kill Sydney? How many shots of Ella making out with other women are necessary before we get over her sexuality? Will Lauren drop out of med school to become Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman? Does Violet have a Victorian-esque obsession with photographs of dead people? And of course, how is David able to sell such fictionally renowned paintings on the black market? How did he even get into that museum without setting off the alarms? WHY IS THERE AN ART THEFT PLOT IN THIS SHOW?!

Stay tuned next week, for the new exciting installment of –! Oh nevermind.

Whooo fall season fall season fall season fall season! I am pumped!

My pumped-ness is a little premature, sadly, because the majority of the new fall season beginning this week is on the CW. I have a long and tragically traumatized relationship with the CW, dating back to its launch in 2002, my obsession with the first season of Veronica Mars, and the subsequent failure of that show. That experience aside, I have nothing else seriously against the network other than its persistent veneer of trashiness, but it’s not like it’s VH1 or anything. Through no subsequent fault of their own, I will just always have a slightly negative reaction to their lime-green logo. Anyway, CW programming is new this week, so I will be blogging about it, including the zombie-like return of America’s Next Top Model and the new Vampire Diaries pilot. (No current plans to write about the new Melrose Place, largely because I never watched the original and therefore feel unqualified.)

Dean and Sam Winchester (confusingly for those Gilmore Girls fans out there, Jared Padalecki plays Sam, not Dean)

The CW show I’m most excited for this week I actually will not be blogging about – the dark and twisty monster mash Supernatural is coming back for its fifth season. It was one of those show I’d never gotten around to watching, and then it was already several seasons in and required many hours of catch-up, and was too easy to shelve for later. Recently, though, I started watching from the beginning in the hopes of being on track for the fifth season premiere, but I’m still two seasons behind and it’s just not going to happen. I hope to be fully caught-up by next week or the week after, but for now, some impressions on what I’ve seen so far and why I’m excited for the future.

Supernatural deals with the life of Sam and Dean Winchester, two brothers who inherit a career of demon hunting from their hard-boiled father. Particularly in the beginning of the show, it’s your standard monster-of-the-week format, as the Winchesters travel from town to town in search of spirits, werewolves, vampires, zombies, any ghoul with a legendary past, and pretty much whatever goes bump in the night. From what I’ve seen so far, the show isn’t perfect, and there’s a noticeably frequent pattern at the end of many episodes that goes something like this –

Dean: You hold him off, I’ll go salt and burn the bones!

Sam: GAHHH!!! [Spirit hurls him against wall, approaches menacingly]

Dean: Damnit, where are they? [Digs frantically into nearby gravesite]

Sam: GAHHARRRCHHnnnnn – [Spirit continues to approach, constricts windpipe]

Dean: Die, you bastard. [Pours salt and lights match in dramatic slow motion]

Sam: nnnnnnGASP GASP GASP [At the last second spirit bursts into flames and is dead]

Monster of the week

But there’s so much endearing about Supernatural that I’ve been more than willing to keep watching. For one, it’s been clear from the beginning that there’s a long arc plotline meant to anchor the episodic stories into a larger scheme. Sam’s burgeoning psychic abilities and the continued hunt for the demon who killed their mother pop up at regular-enough intervals that it’s easy to stay focused on the bigger issues at hand. For another, Sam and Dean’s relationship develops in appealingly complicated ways, neither predictably antagonistic nor tiresomely sentimental. The plausible, recognizable dynamic of their brotherly relationship is a nice counterweight to the perpetually appearing monsters.

I have a feeling that the third and fourth season will go the way I want them to – there will be more emphasis on the long plot, the world of their fellow hunters will grow more familiar, and their enemies will become long-term foes rather than short-lived baddies to destroy and forget. Fingers crossed, but in any case – whoo fall season! Also, if anyone tells me what happens on Supernatural this week, I’m going to be pissed.

On the whole, I found this episode much more tightly and carefully drawn than the last, with a more coherent overall effect of “variations on a theme” rather than the few incongruously startling scenes of last week. That theme, of course, dealt with the way parents raise their children, and the frustrating difficulty of cross-generational communication. The Drapers, Peggy Olson, and the jai-alai enthusiast Horace “Ho-ho” Cook Jr. all provided opportunities to say, in a variety of tones and emotions, “My children are not what I would have wanted them to be” and “My parents cannot comprehend my experience of the world.” As familiar and well-worn thematic territory as it is, Mad Men manages to maintain a sense of anticipation and the unexpected by perpetually shifting the roles of parent and child, so that Betty begs her father to remember that she is his “little girl,” even as her advanced pregnancy acts as a constant visual reminder of her own children.

One primary effect of this episode structure, where each new character provides insight and further depth to the central issue at hand, is that the audience’s focus is diffused across several plotlines rather than focusing on one character. Mad Men has always done this to some extent, and the device is made easier because each supporting character has a fully developed background and is ready to step in at any moment and carry some of the thematic weight. In the past, the heavy lifting of each organizing device rested on Don Draper. Much of the plot has dealt with locating a kernel of truth underneath the sales pitch, both in Don Draper’s identity and in the central premise of an advertising agency, and because of that, Don has always remained firmly at the core of the show. He has always been what Mad Men sells to us each week in the opening credits – a perfectly coiffed silhouette, the thing our eye always returns to, and an outline whose inner features we cannot fully see.

Except now, as season three begins to take shape, Mad Men is more than ever about its time period. We have more constant reminders of the exact date (this episode took place on June 11, 1963), we get more discussion of political events and the way the world is changing, and the thematic content of each episode mirrors the sentiments of an era rather than a single inscrutable man. If you’re going to be dealing with the coming social upheaval of the sixties, what better theme to deal with than the gap between parents and children? And in the midst of Grandpa Gene, Peggy’s cruel mother, and the somewhat silly jai-alai plot, Don’s childhood flashback is reduced to a silent examination of a photograph and muted against sharper emotions.

Don Draper's in the foreground, but Grandpa Gene's in focus

I’m not at all upset that Don Draper has become less of the central focus of Mad Men – I love it as an ensemble piece rather than the continued exploration of one man, and it makes sense that we could only find his mysterious past interesting for so long. Mostly, I’m impressed with what a smart technique this is to build an audience for an obscure television show: hook them on one (extremely attractive, complicated, subtle) character, and then as the audience grows and the world of your show becomes more familiar, you can afford to expand your scope. It’s something The Sopranos was really good at, and something The Wire never did, but might have made it a little easier to build a following while it was on the air.

I never want to lose you, Don Draper. But I’m happy to see you blend into the background a little.

As much as I’ve enjoyed and enjoyed despising summer television programming, I am plenty ready to trade the pleasure of knowing with certainty that an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is on somewhere for the novelty of a new fall season. As Michael Ausiello (or his intern) has so helpfully compiled a list to keep everything straight, I’d like to briefly point out some of the shows I’m most anticipating.

Glee – It could be amazing, or it could crash and burn. FOX made the decision to air a pilot episode last spring, and I was encouraged by its unlikely combination of irreverence and snarky enthusiasm. I also have a particular weakness for catchy song and dance numbers, so this show has the potential to be a personal critical kryptonite. (Case in point: I watched the pilot and thought to myself, “now, how are they possibly going to maintain that tone over an entire season? And the lead guy is really not that great an actor. Also, how silly does the teacher look in this teaser?” And then I watched the final “Don’t Stop Believin’” scene like twenty times, and then downloaded “Don’t Stop Believin’” for Rock Band. Twenty one, I just watched it again on hulu.)

They just look so happy when they sing... I am a sucker.

The Office and 30 Rock – I am perpetually encouraged by The Office’s ability to develop Michael Scott’s character in a way that makes me feel so deliciously ambiguous toward him. He does something completely awful, and you hate him. Then you remember he’s essentially a six-year-old trapped in a grown man’s body, and you’re full of pity. Then suddenly he’s actually a skilled salesman, and you’re impressed. A lot of that is Steve Carrell, of course, but The Office also refuses to fall victim to the general long-lived sitcom trends. Instead of allowing Michael Scott to become a further caricature of himself, he got more complicated and sympathic. Rather than continue to play will-they-won’t-they with Pam and Jim, the writers decided they could still be funny with Jam in a stable, long-term relationship. It’s really impressive, and gives me hope for this season. As for 30 Rock, whenever Liz Lemon says something about Star Wars, I melt. The end.

Dollhouse – Shockingly, this show didn’t get cancelled, and the unaired thirteenth episode they made (starring The Guild’s Felicia Day) was truly ballsy. I am trying to have faith that Joss Whedon will make the most of this adrenaline-fueled, brush-with-death, near-cancellation experience and push Dollhouse beyond the weirdly uncomfortable and well into mind-twistingly disturbing territory.

Private Practice – Hahaha, not really. But last season ended with the practice’s pregnant psychiatrist splayed on the floor of her living room while her psychotic patient tries to cut the baby out in order to steal it for herself. C’mon, tell me you don’t want to see how that ends.

Tim Riggins

Friday Night Lights – I am happy to sing the praises of this show in any place someone might possibly hear me. The new season will only be available on DirecTV until NBC airs it in 2010, but as long as somehow this show continues to exist, I’m tickled pink. Friday Night Lights is up there with Mad Men as most visually appealing television ever produced, and I’m not just talking about Tim Riggins over there. Nothing about me makes it likely that I will find a show about Texas football attractive, but the treatment of landscape alone makes me want to pause the show and just stare. On top of that, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton create one of the best fictional portrayals of a marriage I’ve ever seen, the writing is smart and emotionally sincere, and as long as we all pretend that crazy murder plot never happened in season two, Friday Night Lights has been consistently excellent.

This show makes Texas look so good

There are more shows to talk about and preview, but for now, let’s all take a moment to celebrate a time in the near future when Secret Life of the American Teenager is no longer the most notable new thing on television.

I’ve been watching the Duggar family on TV for a few years. Sure, there are lots of comparisons to be made with That Other Family I Will Never Blog About Who Also Have A Show On TLC, but I think the Duggars are sufficiently interesting on their own.

For those unfamiliar with the Duggars, chances are you won’t be for too long, if for no other reason than they will soon have generated a large enough family to take over the state of Arkansas. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are members of the Quiverfull movement, which espouses the belief that every child is a gift from God and thus that birth control is a sin. As a result, Jim Bob and Michelle are the proud parents of 18 children – and as they announced yesterday on the Today show, soon to be 19, who all have names that start with J. Their eldest, Josh, will soon have his own first child, which means that the Duggars’ first grandchild will be older than their youngest child.

18 Kids and Counting; Josh and Anna often wear matching shirts

There are a lot of things to really goggle over as far as the Duggars are concerned, most of which come from the intensity and rigidity of their belief system. But certainly the only reason I or anyone else is writing about the Duggars is that they have capitalized on reality television by making a show about their family, 18 Kids and Counting, that transforms voyeurism into a form of evangelism. 18 Kids and Counting is perhaps the only reality show I’ve seen where the people who are on the show seem constantly aware of the cameras and conscious of their role as television personalities. The Duggars seem to have realized that they can use people’s curiosity about their lives as a way of educating and encouraging other families who believe as they do, and generating knowledge and tolerance in those who do not. In at least one concrete way, they have been successful in reaching out to other like-minded families – last season on the show, Josh married a girl named Anna, who learned about him by watching his family’s hour-long Discovery channel specials. On their old hour-long specials as well as on this new weekly show, the Duggars are never rude, uncontrolled, or over-scripted. They are friendly, approachable, and never judgmental. They also state their beliefs in direct, concise language, and talk about their faith openly. In other words, 18 Kids and Counting is the only reality show where I feel like the Duggars are exploiting me just as much as I’m exploiting them. In…you know, in a well-intentioned way. Sort of.

Helpful captions explain why Anna wears the world's largest bathing suit; some of their J names are more plausible than others

Which is why I watch with equal parts shock and bemusement as Josh and Anna describe never kissing each other until marriage, Michelle talks about praying for President Obama, and the little kids are gently prevented from dancing along with music they hear in a store (because dancing isn’t allowed). I smile as the eighteen perfectly groomed children make gruesome faces while eating food they don’t like at an Ethiopian restaurant. And two seconds later I remember they believe I should submit my every word and deed to my husband’s will. It’s fascinating, and upsetting, and disturbing, and actually quite entertaining. If the Duggars want to teach me about how they live, I feel all right watching them and enjoying my own sense of surprise and alarm. After all, we derive pleasure from things that give us strong emotional reactions, and indignation can be as enjoyable a reaction as any