NBC: Swinging

In some ways, the 2013-14 season was not one of NBC's best.  Its Thursday night sitcom block went down swinging (like Sonny Liston!), and so many shows got canceled at the end of the year that TV critics called it a "bloodletting."  Ironically, one of those canceled shows was "Dracula."  

But something funny happened on the way to its upfront press conference for the upcoming 2014-15 season:  The Peacock Network actually came in first in the season now ending in the coveted 18-49 age group. Granted, the Winter Olympics were a big factor (the 2016 Olympics will take place in August of that year, so ratings for that won't be factored into any television season), and so was the smooth handover of "The Tonight Show" from Jay Leno to Jimmy Fallon (whose thunder could just as easily be stolen by Stephen Colbert at CBS one year hence), but there are other reasons.  "The Blacklist" is a hit, and so is "About a Boy," the sitcom vehicle for Minnie Driver (get it?).  But "Community" is lost, and "Growing Up Fisher" is going down swinging (like Tommy Dorsey!); they're among the shows that were not renewed.       

NBC is moving ahead with more dramas this coming season, such as "State of Affairs," about  a CIA analyst working under a black female president played by Alfre Woodard (which promises to be a ratings loser not because it stars Alfre Woodard as the president - a Hillary Obama character is very plausible these days - but because Katherine Heigl plays the CIA analyst.  Katherine Heigl!) and "Allegiance," starring Hope Davis as a CIA analyst (another one?) who's pitted against Russian spies . . . her parents.  Also premiering in 2014-15 are sitcoms such as "Bad Judge," with Kate Walsh playing the title role in a show obviously inspired by the Roberts Court, "Marry Me," about a young couple who get engaged but soon realize is harder to do than it appears, and "A to Z," a Rashida Jones-produced sitcom about a relationship from its beginning to its end, starring "Mad Men"'s Ben Feldman and "How I Met Your Mother"'s Cristin Milioti.  I can't wait; perhaps Milioti's character will still be alive when it gets to the end.

Speaking of Rashida Jones, "Parks and Recreation," in which Jones plays Ann Perkins, will come back for a seventh and final season, and "Parenthood" will return for an abbreviated final sixth season of thirteen episodes.  Apparently, the best show on broadcast television is getting too expensive to produce while its ratings are too modest, and so the show's producers are being given the chance to go out on their own terms rather than face possible cancellation.  ("Parenthood" will finish in February with a total of 103 episodes, an average of seventeen per season, just enough for syndication.) 

"As for the failure of "Growing Up Fisher," a show I actually liked . . . well, J.K. Simmons and Jenna Elfman now each have two failures in as many seasons, and while Simmons may be in another series - and I'd gladly watch it - this is probably the end for the peculiar career of Elfman, who just wrapped her, by my count, fourth failed attempt to follow up "Dharma & Greg."  I imagine that her fifth attempt at a second success will flop out as well.  In short, she'll go down . . . swinging.  (Like Derek Jeter!)     

Oh, yeah, "The Voice" will be back, too.

The full NBC 2014-15 lineup is here.