PILOTS GETTING ORDERED AROUND

I can't say I got real excited reading the descriptions of the 51 drama pilots that have been ordered by the six major networks. Still, one can hope. Here are some highlights/lowlights/whatever lights of the list that will eventually mutate into next Fall's TV season...


43 Minutes (ABC) - SWAT team handles the final 43 minutes of a major crisis in real time.

And this is not 24, how? You have 42 minutes left to explain it to me...


Desperate Housewives (ABC) - The sexy and secret lives of the inhabitants of a cul-de-sac.

How fresh and surprising! Melrose meets Main Street. Now, I grew up "on" a cul-de-sac... We never really said we were inhabitants "of" it, however. Maybe that is one of the secrets? How much you want to bet that the entire creative team has never actually "seen" a real live cul-de-sac. How much you want to bet they think its a kind of spa or something?


The Catch (ABC) - from JJ Abrams, the Felicity/Alias guy, one of two pilots on the list about bounty hunters.

Untitled Bounty Hunters - from Spelling, the Melrose/90210 guy, the other pilot about bounty hunters.

My money is on Spelling to win this contest. He has more experience with desperate, moral pygmes who will do anything for a buck, having worked with Beverly Hills stories already.


CSI: New York (CBS) - from yeah yeah yeah...

Alternate title: "Na-Na-Na-Na-NA We'll Meet Your Law and Order and Raise You One"


Clubhouse (CBS) - from Icon Prods/Spelling/Vincent/Cerrone - Coming-of-Age drama about a Yankees batboy

Sounds completely perverse and vile to me!!! This time Hollywood has gone TOO far! We NEED more of this kind of crap on the airwaves?! I think NOT! --- (sigh) Go Red Sox....


Revelations (NBC) - from David Selter/Gavine Polone - a group tries to stop the apocalypse; Da Vinci Code meets The X-Files

Alternate title: NBC Continues to Invite Its Own Apocalypse By Greenlighting Garbage Like This


Nikki & Nora (UPN) - from Myatt/Linn - Two lesbian private investigators investigate privately in a lesbian way

I'm thinking this kind of programming isn't going to lift UPN out of the cultural/ratings basement?


Dark Shadows (WB) - John Wells - Remake of the ABC soap about a wealthy Maine family and a vampire curse

I'm excited about this! Hope it makes it. I remember having the bejeebies (sp?) scared out of me when I was like four or five by the original show. John Wells makes good stuff, so this could be cool. Betcha' didn't know thatthe house used for the exteriors of Dark Shadows was in my home town of Newport, RI. I grew up a few blocks away and every time we drove by it -----eeeew! Too creepy.


Oh, and my leading contender for the "Let's All Slap Our Foreheads in a Collective Expression of Exasperated Befuddlement" Award goes to the WB for greenlighting...

Jack and Bobby - from Berlanti the Everwood guy - drama about the teen years of JFK and RFK.

GOOD GRIEF! Will the baby-boomers PLEASE PLEASE stop the insanity!? Say it with me..."The Kennedys are not God. The Kennedys are not God." Please, please, stop....