2014 Upfronts: NBC

In some ways, the television industry has changed in great ways since its conception. We have more than three channels, after all. Hell, we have hundreds of channels and now we have premium streaming services producing original content. We no longer have to rely on abiding by networks' schedules to watch our favorite shows, using DVRs and on demand streaming and the like to watch TV at our leisure. Plus, you know, women are allowed to write things now! Obviously, TV is nothing like it was in the '50s, but you wouldn't know it from the annual network Upfronts, when the broadcast networks get together and tell advertisers about all of their awesome new shows and their cool new schedules, before cancelling half of those shows and revising the schedules in a panic when they inevitably fail. Indeed, from the ancient "throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks" process to the painful stereotypes and archetypes marched out in the dozens of terrible new shows premiered every year, the Upfronts process really looks the same now as it did in 1957.

Still, we all love television, and loving television means dealing with the silly shit they throw at us during thins like Upfronts week. So for the next few days, I'll be taking a look at just what these kooky old broadcasters are trying to get us sexy, sexy 18 to 49 year olds to make profitable for them this year. Let's start with NBC!

NBC

(Note: I won't be posting schedules because that's redundant. There's a million places to find them. Go find them if you're that interested!)

After spending years as a joke of a network that we loved to make fun of but secretly just loved because their failure kept low-rated gems like 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Community around, NBC is expected to finish the 2013 - 2014 season as the #1 network in the demo. Yes, the #1 network in the demo. For real. And it's not a technicality! Even if you took away the Olympics and Sunday Night Football, NBC would still be the #1 network in the demo. "But what about The Voice?!", you say. "Surely, that must be helping their numbers!". And yes, it is. A lot! Sure, without The Voice, NBC might be in trouble, being it not only gives them one of the highest-rated shows on TV but has also helped prop up well-rated shows like The Blacklist, Chicago Fire, and About a Boy. But the reality is that a broadcast network in the year 2014 really only needs one big hit and a few other solid players to be considered a successful network. That's exactly what NBC set out for this year, and it's what got them to #1. Riding off of the coattails of The Voice, NBC doubled down on general procedural fare like Chicago Fire and Chicago PD and supposedly "broad" comedies like The Michael J. Fox Show and About a Boy. The comedy angle didn't really work, with Michael J. Fox and its companion Sean Saves the World falling flat on their faces and About a Boy likely only succeeding because of its plum timeslot. But enough of its new "all bland, all the time" line-up did manage to work, and NBC has capitalized on the "generic and safe" platform with a new schedule that's as boring as it is competent. This is a schedule that's probably going to work, but damn, it was so much more fun when they were failing.

This makes NBC's cancellation of Community and their dropping of Parks & Rec after next year (which gets the always fun "short order, timeslot TBD" treatment this season) make a lot of sense. We're past the point where NBC can give those kinds of shows the care they need because they don't really have anything to tend to. They're the #1 network now, and they're in the business of actually, you know, winning and making money and stuff. We'll all miss when NBC could just throw us our favorite comedies on Thursday nights to make us happy, but it's time to accept that is a thing of the past. NBC replacing the long-cherished Thursday comedy block with The Blacklist is a sure sign that it's a new era for the network. A new, boring era, but an era that will make more money for them than the last one. Congrats to Bob Greenblatt, I guess?

Let's take out the pain by making fun of NBC's new shows.

Constantine

Comic-based trends seem to be the new network TV trend. Fox has the buzzy Gotham premiering, ABC has Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Agent Carter, and now NBC has Constantine. Constantine is the low-key one of the block - it'll premiere in a quiet Friday night timeslot, which might seem like a death slot but has actually been fairly kind to genre dramas over the years, seeing the solid success of Grimm and allowing Fringe to exist for several seasons longer than it was expected to. This looks like a perfectly competent adaptation, one that has the potential to please fans of the comic, at the very least. Translation: I CAN'T MAKE FUN OF IT SO NEXT.

Marry Me

Oh, I can't make fun of this one either, because it's created by Happy Endings scribe David Caspe and stars Casey Wilson and Ken Marino. That means I want it to be good, and I think it will be good, although this is not a super great trailer. The premise looks dumb, and it hits hard on gender stereotypes (like all trailers do, though, let's be honest). But look: Happy Endings had a really dumb premise and actually a really bad pilot! Remember? It just needed a few episodes to overcome the premise that was required for it to get picked up. Once Marry Me does the same, it should be able to make ample use of its talent. Right? What? Up All Night? Well, yeah, but....I mean, um...look, I....WHATEVER LET'S MOVE ON.

A to Z

A to Z wants to be How I Met Your Mother so badly that it's little sad. It even uses THE MOTHER! Look: I like Cristin Miloti and I like Ben Feldman, but very little about this looks appealing to me. Rom-com is never a genre that TV has gotten especially right (shut up I don't like The Mindy Project and you can't make me), and this just looks cutesy and schamltzy in all of the wrong ways. Also, is that Katey Segal doing the voiceover? What? Why? With a cast like this, I want A to Z to be great, but it just looks like the kind of generic miss that's all to common on network TV. Also, what if the show makes it past 26 episodes? Do we get into the Greek alphabet? Will everyone in the cast be replaced with rough Greek equivalents? If that's the case, then screw it. I'm in!

Bad Judge

LOL ISN'T IT CRAZY THAT JUDGES DO THINGS LIKE DRINK AND HAVE SEX TOO I THOUGHT THEY JUST LIKE LIVED UNDER THEIR DESKS UNTIL IT WAS TIME TO COME OUT ALSO THERE ARE JUDGES OTHER THAN JUDGE JUDY??? ANYWAY LOL awwww but look she has a kid she likes or something because, as NBC itself has taught us, children are little magical sorcerers who can turn even the most disgusting pregnancy taking woman into a beautiful butterfly hahaha yay 

State of Affairs

One frigid winter morning, an NBC executive woke up from their boozy afternoon nap and noticed that, hey, that Scandal show is doing pretty well. Then he logged onto his Facebook account and noticed that his friend was posting a lot of statuses about Homeland. Lots of people were commenting on it, too! Boy, lots of people really like Homeland. What does that mean? Oh, he knows! NBC should make its OWN version of Scandal and Homeland, just like a network is supposed to do when things get popular! (Even though that almost never works out and they really should learn by now that you can't just copy the success of a SHHHHHHHHHHHHH). The NBC executive called up some of his friends and they were like, okay, we'll make our own Scandal and Homeland but we haven't seen either of those shows so we'll have to watch them all tonight. Then the NBC executive's friends got drunk and didn't watch any of the shows. They were like "oh, shit! But we have to write the pilot by tomorrow!". So they wrote the pilot - still a little drunk, and maybe on a few uppers - in how they imagine Scandal and Homeland to be (and they did have a dream about Homeland once so they know it pretty well, right?). And that is how State of Affairs happened.

The Mysteries of Laura

NBC really wants you to like Debra Messing. You didn't like Katharine McPhee, apparently, and you definitely didn't like Sean Hayes, so you know what? YOU WILL LIKE DEBRA MESSING. You know, Debra Messing is actually a pretty good comic actress, so why doesn't she just get a nice little sitcom where her moderately impressive comic chops can actually be utilized? NO. SHE WILL BE THE BIGGEST STAR OF THE NETWORK AND YOU WILL LOVE HER AND NBC WILL ACCEPT NO OTHER OUTCOMES. So anyway, here she is in a show that's apparently about how silly it is that some moms use guns at their jobs because moms aren't even supposed to use guns. Except Nerf guns! Haha! NBC's new comedies are so silly. Wait, this is drama. What the fuck? Welcome to NBC 2014, everybody.