Wednesday's Series Premieres
Back to You, Fox: After a on-air meltdown that became a YouTube staple, anchorman Chuck Darling (Kelsey Grammer) has to return to the Pittsburgh TV station he left 10 years before, to the dismay of anchorwoman Kelly Carr (Patricia Heaton). As you might expect, the station is populated by other colorful characters, such as oddball sports reporter Marsh McGinley (Fred Willard) and sexpot weathergirl Montana Stevens (Ayda Field).
Worth your time? If you like your sitcoms as traditional as they come.
Gossip Girl, The CW: Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen) are middle-class kids, but their ex-rock star dad insists on putting them in the very best school money can buy. And so these nice, normal kids are inserted in a private school on NYC’s Upper East Side populated with spoiled super-rich kids who spend their days shopping, having sex, and reading trashy blog items about themselves. Sounds like a nice premise, except that our underdogs take a back seat to the ludicrous triumphs and tragedies of the aforementioned rich brats, including the backstabbing Blair and date-rapist Chuck. Where there are underdog kids (as well as a sympathetic deposed Queen Bee played with style by Blake Lively), there’s hope — but judging by the “Gossip Girl” pilot episode, this show is much more obsessed with the characters you’ll hate than the small collection you might actually like. (However, if you’d like to witness what a teenager’s fantasy world — complete with bartenders who think nothing of serving mixed drinks to 16-year-old girls — looks like, this ridiculous show’s got you covered.)
Worth your time? Not on your life.
Kid Nation, CBS: 40 kids are left on their own for 40 days in a New Mexico ghost town to form their own society and live by their own rules. Nobody is voted off, and the kids are free to leave when they want to. But they also have the ability to award one of their members a gold star (with about $20K) every few days, so there’s some financial incentive to be a part of the tribe. It’s the most controversial show of the fall, but based on the amazing five-minute preview CBS showed this spring, it’s also potentially the breakout reality hit of the year.
Worth your time? Definitely.
Kitchen Nightmares, Fox: “Hell’s Kitchen” star Gordon Ramsay returns, and this time he’s traveling the highways and byways of America, dropping in on troubled restaurants and attempting to save them — much as he did on the British TV show of the same name.
Worth your time? Seems unlikely.
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