This post is going up almost a day later than The CW announced its schedule, which I could say is a sign of just how "eh" the entire CW portion of the Upfronts often seems. This is sort of unfair, because there's some really good shows on The CW. But it seems kind of strange that what is basically a cable network disguising itself as a broadcast network has a big, overblown, network-level "Upfronts" presentation. Although, actually, The CW had a pretty good year, finally regaining an identity after spending years seeming a little lost. The CW started off in pretty messy fashion, as a mish-mosh as the equally struggling but stylistically very different WB and UPN networks. Then, when The CW finally found an audience (young girls watching teen soap operas!), ABC Family came and snatched it from them, leaving them lost yet again. But after Arrow, The Vampire Diaries, and Supernatural became the networks' 3 biggest hits, the network made an effort to go for genre programming, which has resulted in the show becoming both a more interesting network and a more successful one, with a seemingly sustainable identity. They're still far below the level of the "main" networks, but well...they always will be. Still, they've managed to carve out a pretty solid niche for themselves. So good for them! Now let's talk about Jane the Virgin.
Jane the Virgin
This is, like, the #1 reason why I wanted to do a CW post. THIS IS A SHOW ABOUT SOMEONE GETTING ACCIDENTALLY ARTIFICIALLY INSEMINATED, GUYS. And a (GASP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) virgin!!!! This is a REAL SHOW that is happening. It's not a fake show on 30 Rock or Community. It's fucking real!!!!!! I'm sorry, I'm just....I need a minute.
The Flash
Okay, phew. Just as I was starting to doubt both television and life itself, The Flash reminds me that TV can actually be a positive thing capable of providing shit that doesn't make me want to crawl into an Arby's and die. Actually, this looks really good, and I'm not much of a superhero guy. But I might actually have to give this a shot. I've heard great things, and this trailer was pretty fucking awesome.
Um...apparently that's it. I guess The CW felt we needed time to recover from fucking JANE THE VIRGIN.
Anyway, that does it for Upfronts! Now we just have to wait and see which one of these shows is worth watching, and when it'll be inevitably cancelled! (Just kidding. I bet a few of them will be good and some might even make it to a second season! Honest!)
For many years, CBS was what represented all that was wrong about America. (At least, it did if in the minds of the internet). It was the boring network that your parents love and you roll your eyes at because you're just SO MUCH BETTER THAN THAT, MOM, you're so edgy and creative and you hate stupid procedural and sitcoms with LAUGH TRACKS because what is this, the '90s?! And the boring part of the '90s! Not the cool, Buzzfeed-beloved part, MOM. Of course, this was made CBS the most popular and consistent network, because it knew exactly what its audiences liked and how to give it to them. They wanted lazy sitcoms and mindless procedurals, and CBS knew exactly how to make them. The truth is, there are actually a handful of good shows on CBS (The Good Wife, Person of Interest) even if they are rooted in *gasp* PROCEDURAL FORMULA, and hell, How I Met Your Mother was a CBS sitcom, after all. (More on that shows' currently doomed spin-off later!). But still, it's not hard to see why CBS gets some contempt. It's pretty boring, most of their shows are paint-by-numbers, and it's rare to see the network doing anything interesting.
And yet, CBS had kind of a rough year this past season. They're still the #1 network in total viewers, but the problem of their old-skewing audience seems to be catching up to them, as they slipped behind NBC (!!!) in the demo and spent many nights hanging out in fourth place in that category, a place CBS is not at all used to being in. Other than The Big Bang Theory, their sitcom stock is collapsing, with 2 Broke Girls not shaping up be the surefire hit it looked like it'd be in Season 1, Two and a Half Men slowly marching towards death, and their lack of new sitcoms to replace the departing How I Met Your Mother. In fact, CBS is having a major problem with new shows. They haven't launched a hit drama since Elementary debuted two years ago, and even that shows' ratings are far from the solid tentpole status CBS is used to. Their only freshman comedy to get a second season in the past two years is Mom, which is an okay player but didn't quite live up to the lofty expectations CBS had for it. CBS still has the NCIS franchise (there's three of them now) and Big Bang Theory and Criminal Minds to hide their problems, but they're far more exposed than they were even at this time last year. And how has CBS responded? They did a very un-CBS thing - they sort of blew up their schedule in many ways. The CBS Monday comedy block, a staple of the network for nearly thirty years, is gone and replaced with a freshman drama. CSI, long CBS's proud veteran, is off to Sundays, and staple reality hit The Amazing Race is banished to Fridays, another new drama in its place. CBS is going pretty heavy this year, hoping that it'll cover up their weaknesses.
But their new shows still look pretty damn boring. Here they are!
Madam Secretary
Continuing the "moms can have JOBS?!" theme that's apparently a thing this year, this is a show about a MOM who is also SECRETARY OF STATE. She used to be a professor but then the secretary of state died! So now it's her! Crazy, right?! Actually, this show looks like it could pretty good. I just have to snark on everything. I have a serious problem. Help me?
NCIS: New Orleans
The trailer for this one is only a minute long, because the real trailer is just the other two NCIS shows. A lot of people watch NCIS, guys. Like, do you realize that? So many people watch NCIS.
Scorpion
It's so cute to see CBS shows acknowledging technology. I hope CBS doesn't start making annoyingly long and irrelevant comments on my Facebook statuses.
Stalker
Similar to how NBC really wants to make Debra Messing a thing, CBS has similar ambitions for Dylan McDermott. He plays by his own rules, guys! Isn't that awesome?!
The McCarthys
People live in Boston! And they're just like us, except their silly accents! They have kids and watch The Good Wife! Did you know that? It's crazy, right?!
ABC is a bit of a boondoggle of a network. They're home to some of the biggest hits on television (Scandal, Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy) and yet, year after year, they consistently come in last place among the big four. They're not equivalent to NBC at its lowest point, because they have some seriously huge hits. And yet, they seem to have no idea how to capitalize on those hits, consistently making baffling scheduling choices and picking up ridiculous, awful shows (remember Work It? I know, I know, you were trying to forget) that anyone with a clear head can see will fail. Often times, when they find something that works, they manage to completely fuck it up, like a few years ago when they had a seriously strong comedy line-up with The Middle, Suburgatory, Modern Family and Happy Endings followed by the promising new drama Revenge. There were weeks all of these shows crossed the magical 3.0 demo line. And yet, their solution? They broke up the block and moved in a bunch of marginal shows. Now Happy Endings and Suburgatory are gone completely, and Revenge is a shell of its former self. This is just an example of how ABC will occasionally just throw a bunch of shit around for no real reason, even when they have something that's working.
And yet, ABC's schedule for next year manages to do the opposite of what ABC normally does - it keeps what's working, expands on it, and smartly tweaks what's not. There are some strange decisions here and there (it's hard to imagine a female-skewing comedy block taking off Tuesdays at 8 up against The Voice, and Forever following SHIELD is certainly...interesting), but for the most part, it looks like ABC actually sat down and looked at its schedule and realized what they were good at and tried to expand it. The Shonda Rhimes power hour of Grey's Anatomy and Scandal was doing well? Let's make Thursdays all Shonda all the time by slotting her new How to Get Away With Murder in there! The Wednesday comedy block has flow issues? Let's put The Goldbergs after The Middle because they're pretty similar in tone, and let's put a family comedy after Modern Family instead of an inexplicably incompatible show about single people in their 20s! It's not a super ambitious schedule, but it's one where ABC seems to at least be aware of itself, something it so rarely is. I will always hate them for their long list of promising comedies they've slaughted with their incompetence (and we can now add Suburgatory and Trophy Wife to join the ranks of Happy Endings, Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23,and Better off Ted) but hey, at least they seem to be trying to get their shit together this year.
So let's dig into these fucking shows.
How to Get Away with Murder
This is the most Shonda Rhimes show in the universe. Meaning it's probably going to do super well and also be super fucking insane. Let's guess some of the insane plot twists that will show up this year! My guess is the skeevy male professor will turn out to be a spy that time traveled here from Ancient Greece but not for any mischievous reasons, just because he wanted to see if people still believed all of that crazy shit about Hades. Also, I bet Main Students' mom killed Viola Davis's cat.
Forever
Do you like shows about mortality but also there has to be a love interest and also some sci-fi elements and maybe some comedy and also is a crime procedural too? Congratulations! The first and last television show you will ever like is airing on Tuesdays on ABC this fall!
The Whispers
Being on a cop on TV must be such a sweet job. They get to deal with, like, alien invasions and supernatural forces and shit. What a life! The cops in my town spend most of their time directing parades and taking peoples' weed. I bet they would love it if an alien invasion just happened in some little girls' tree house. Poor cops in my town. TV has given them such unrealistic expectations.
American Crime
If you were feeling okay about life in America, American Life is here to remind you that everyone here hates each other, no one is safe, we're so many years behind in racial equality, there's so much violence and so much of it is between young people, your child is probably on drugs and in a gang, and we're all living in our personal versions of hell. Get your jammies and cuddle in with American Life, midseason at ABC.
Secrets and Lies
Oh, you thought you were done hearing about how awful life is after you finished the American Crime trailer? Think again! Children die! People KILL them! Also, look! More cops! Cops and killers! America! The American Broadcasting Network! Are you crying yet? You're not? MAYBE YOU KILLED THE CHILD. If Ryan Phippe is a suspect, you can be too, you fucking asshole!
Selfie
The internet has been thrown into a wave of disgust over this trailer. I get it. It's called Selfie and there's hashtags over characters' faces. But I mean, Karen Gillan! John Cho! Emily Kapnak! These are all people who have done very good things for this world! This is a show that will be either incredible or awful, depending on how much self awareness it has on its ridiculous premise (and whether or not it drops those damn hashtags). But, look. Amy Pond is in it. Although where the fuck is her Scottish accent?! People with Scottish accents can be vapid too, you know. Anyway, this could totally suck but it could be good. Also, it has a terrible title, and all ABC shows with terrible titles are great until they get cancelled and we all die a little more inside.
Black-ish
So this is the first network sitcom with a predominantly black cast since...what, Everybody Hates Chris? And it looks like it could be pretty funny! ABC has given this the post-Modern Family slot, and it actually looks like a show that could do well with that audience. The network claims they are attempting to "accurately reflect the people of America" this season. I guess in past seasons they were really going for inaccuracy. But not anymore! Yay, accuracy! Really, though, it's nice to see network TV actually responding to some of the diversity criticisms of recent years. Typically they wait like 10 years to listen to what people actually want. They're just now realizing that we're all pretty okay with Friends being over.
Manhattan Love Story
It's at this point I must take the time to discuss ABC's comedy promo voiceover guy. Or maybe they're all different guys, but they all sound like a dude in the '60s who was THE CRAZY ONE in his friends group and also really liked LSD. He should get his own sitcom. Anyway, nothing new to see here. TV still thinks romantic comedy is a good suit for it, especially when they rely on the most basic of gender stereotypes. Even silly '60s LSD lover knows this shit is antiquated. (That's why he totally bails on this trailer halfway through).
Cristela
The preview for this show is just a Mexican-American woman drinking beer. Remember, accuracy!
Fresh Off the Boat
I like that there is an Asian-American sitcom on network TV. That's a first, right? Also, it's from Natchnatchka Khan, creator of Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23! That said, maybe consider a new title, guys. Still, this looks like it could be very funny and have lots of things going for it. Let's hope ABC actually doesn't fuck it up, for once.
Galavant
What the FUCK is this? I think I love it. I might hate it? I don't even fucking know, but this...this is certainly a show, and I credit it for just fucking...doing it, man. Seriously. It's like Cop Rock in silly costumes! Do you not realize how revolutionary that is?!
If NBC spent this season surprisingly rising from the ashes, then FOX spent it crashing down to NBC's previous levels. After dominating most of the 2000s mostly thanks to American Idol being an unstoppable juggernaut, the network has found itself in question ever since Idol, well, stopped. Granted, not all of FOX's success was tied to Idol - one of their best seasons was 2011-12, the year Idol really began to fall off - but shows like Glee and New Girl also found themselves crumbling this season, and even old stalwarts like the Animation Domination block showed some cracks. So it's not surprising that FOX's schedule this year is a pretty huge gamble, full of new programming and strategies that could either pay off in a huge way (like ABC back in 2004-05, the year it totally revived itself with LOST and Desperate Housewives) or it could fail in a big way like...any NBC season between 2005 and 2012. But hey, isn't that exciting?
The network's biggest move its lowering its dependence on singing competition, which was suggested by the cancellation of The X Factor a few months ago and confirmed with the announcement that Idol would be shrinking to one hour a week following the audition rounds. This is a really smart move, both from a numbers standpoint (because less Idol could soften the decline, which has been accelerating at an alarming pace the past few seasons) and from a creative standpoint (because more original scripted content and less bloated singing competitions is always a good thing, in my mind). One of the most interested changes is the splitting up of the Animation Domination block. After pawning American Dad off to TBS, FOX will move live-action sitcoms Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the new Mulaney into the Sunday night slots, shifting Bob's Burgers to the dreaded 7:30 slot. While I really hope this doesn't mean FOX is severing its ties with Bob's (and, unlike large portions of the internet, I don't think it does), I'm hoping this allows the hilarious Brooklyn Nine-Nine and the promising Mulaney to get the audience they need. Among the rest of the line-up, there are lots of other ambitious projects, such as the kind of awful sounding Utopia (which apparently will just up and move a bunch of people to a deserted island and wish them luck), the adaptation of the hit British series Broadchurch (now starring Anna Gunn and titled Gracepoint), and the new Batman-based series Gotham (which FOX is hedging many of its bets on). All of these could be good (except for fucking Utopia, probably), or all of them could suck, but they're certainly ambitious. FOX is really the only broadcast network that seems to be even be acknowledging the decline of the broadcast model, from cancelling its pilot season to moving to a year-round structure (though NBC seems to be sort of be adapting that) in an attempt to more clearly. What they do might not work at all, but unlike pretty much all of the other networks, it should be really fun to watch.
Now! Shows!
Gotham
It's Batman! BATMAN, EVERYONE. BATMAN!!! Everyone likes Batman! Remember Batman? Batman! Also, The OC! Remember The OC? It's The OC and Batman! We've got everything covered here! Seriously, my guess is this will probably be pretty big, unless it's a total disaster. FOX is surely hoping it will be pretty big. If Sleepy Hollow can keep up its momentum and this can rise to expectations, Mondays should be a rock solid night for Fox.
Gracepoint
Very similar to when the original 13 colonies seceded from Great Britain, David Tennant and Broadchurch have broken free from the controls of England, adapted a new title and an American accent, and moved in with Skylar White, who has dealt with the fallout of her late husbands' run as meth king by becoming a detective. I have my doubts that this will be the big hit FOX wants it to be, and I have no idea if it will even be any good. I haven't even seen the original! Still, I like these people and I like to see them together. I like to pretend that Skylar ran off with the 10th Doctor to get over the the events of Breaking Bad. I do wonder where this will go if it's a hit. It's a "limited event" series, sure, but this is America, and if something here works, we make sure we give you more and more and more and more of it until you hate it and want to die. Anyway! Yeah! I don't know if this will be any good but even if it's not, David Tennant and Anna Gunn solving crimes is pretty damn badass.
Empire
This is another big, concept-y swing, one that looks like it will either be a very good show or a really embarrassing piece of shit. FOX seems pretty high on it, and they are supposedly giving it a post-Idol slot (which admittedly doesn't mean much anymore). My opinion is that everyone in it looks like they are very serious! Which is good! Yay, serious! LIFE IS SERIOUS, YOU KNOW?
Hieroglyph
Everyone loves Ancient Egypt. Everyone loves vampires. Why would you NOT combine them? This seems like something a person would come up with in a high school creative writing class. The teacher would say it is "really unique" and they wound get an A-. Good job, Fox. Your parents can hang this on your fridge!
Mulaney
Look, the reason I mostly just make fun of these trailers rather than actually analyzing them critically is because you cannot determine how good a TV show is from a 3 minute clip of its sweaty pilot. So I know parts of the internet were aghast that they weren't on the floor laughing by the end of the Mulaney trailer, but the truth is that I think the trailer shows a lot of promise. It doesn't have that warmed over, try too hard feeling of most present-day multi-camera sitcoms, and it has a really aces cast - from the fucking brilliant John Mulaney himself, to Nasim Pedrad, to Martin Short...all of that is enough to make this one of the most anticipated sitcoms of the fall for me. Then again, I anticipated The Michael J. Fox Show, and that show sucked lots of shit. But seriously! I think this could be really good!
Utopia
Something about this show makes me profoundly sad. Lots of things have been making me sad lately, so maybe that's more on me than this show. But still. Anyway, this is airing twice a week, and I feel like eventually we're going to just be watching the contestants wondering what they think is happening on Game of Thrones this season and maybe commenting on the state of each others' unibrows. I don't know, this just seems too ridiculous to work to me, but I bet someone said that about squeezing cow tits to make a beverage and look how that worked out.
Backstrom
I can't find the video. But anyway, it's Rainn Wilson being a cop. You like Rainn Wilson, and you like cops. Well, okay, you like watching cops, so you'll like this. Right? Right.
Wayward Pines
Uh oh. Close ups of eyes mean something bad is about to happen! Anyway, Fox apparently thinks you really like it when people solve crimes because like all of its damn shows are about that this year. But this one is creepy and there's mystery and stuff and no one even knows what's going on! Just like you, all of the time. Anyway, in all seriousness, this is a really kind of weird trailer that piqued my interest a bit. It's yet another show that seems like a big gamble, but hey, gambles are fun!
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.
