NBC: Circling The Drain

It's time for me to review the 2013-14 season's network television schedules, and the reason I'm starting with NBC is because I thought I'd start at the bottom of the heap, like the nasty schoolteacher in The 400 Blows who, in the movie, begins with a critique of the worst paper a student has handed in. Also, it's because - and TV critic Alan Sepinwall of the Newark, N.J. Star-Ledger would probably agree - gory orgies of NBC-bashing are fun.

The Not Broadcasting Competently network - still mired in last place among the four major broadcast networks - has just canceled virtually everything that aired in the season just gone by. Updating an earlier post on that subject, "The New Normal," an obvious "Modern Family" copy, has been canceled, and "Community" returns as a mid-season replacement. It will likely replace one of the three new sitcoms joining "Parks and Recreation" on Thursdays, and my candidate for the first sitcom cancellation NBC is likely to endure for 2013-14 is "Welcome To the Family," a sitcom about an academically challenged white girl attending Arizona State University who has a fling with a smart Latino boy at Stanford . . . and gets pregnant. They get married, bringing two very different families together. If this sounds familiar, it should. McLean Stevenson starred in a similar series in the 1980s, ABC's "Condo," about an Anglo-Saxon family and a Mexican-American family united by an unplanned pregnancy, which was horrible. (It didn't last, of course; after all, it starred McLean Stevenson.) "Welcome To the Family"'s whole premise is almost inviting a controversy by presenting a dim-bulb girl (the National Organization for Women will call this misogynistic) marrying a Hispanic guy (cue outrage from the National Council of La Raza regarding cultural insensitivity), and I can tell any outrage against this show is going to be justified. Because I don't see this show as having a chance of being genuinely funny. "Condo" wasn't.

The other new sitcoms are "Sean Saves The World," starring "Will & Grace"'s Sean Hayes as a single dad, and "The Michael J. Fox Show," starring the nicest guy in Hollywood as a TV news anchor returning to television after retiring to deal with Parkinson's disease.  Okay, I have to suspend my nastiness here; I want Michael J. Fox's new show to make it, because I love the guy, and the fact that he's playing a character who is clearly modeled after his own life suggests that it means a lot for him to get back on TV.  I'm skeptical, though, about bringing back a veteran sitcom star as a solution to NBC's problems, especially after Matthew Perry's show "Go On" didn't make it.

Now, back to nastiness.  A sitcom built around Sean Hayes? Didn't viewers already express disinterest in anything starring a "Will & Grace" alum by resisting Debra  Messing in "Smash?"

Now to one of NBC's few hits.  You say you want "Revolution?" It'll be back, as will "The Voice." TV critics blame the former show's mid-season hiatus as a reason for NBC's loss of momentum in the 2012-13 season, but I think it may have helped save the show. See, the series is about a nightmare scenario in which all electricity goes out and the United States devolves into chaos, and it went on hiatus about a month after Superstorm Sandy hit the Northeast. Get the picture? The firefighter drama "Chicago Fire" will also return, as will "Parenthood," the only show on NBC worth watching.

It's "Parenthood" that keeps me from going completely ballistic and unloading on the once-proud Peacock Network. So, why do I get pleasure out of bashing NBC as much as I actually do? It all goes back to 2004, when the network canceled "Ed." "Ed" was a wonderful, intimate, warm sitcom about Ed Stevens, a quirky lawyer with a bowling alley, and his friends, in a small town in Ohio. (It was actually filmed in New Jersey, in towns like Westfield and my native Montclair.) But its ratings weren't good enough for the network, and rather than respect the small but loyal audience it did have, NBC canceled it, and apart from Julie Bowen - who played Ed Stevens' love interest - none of the cast members ever revived their careers. Audience loyalty was tossed out in favor of better ratings from lesser shows, only for NBC come up with shows that did worse and thus fall to fourth place in the subsequent 2004-05 season . . . never to regain its footing. And, although "Parenthood" has survived, I can think of a few other NBC series of recent years ("Undercovers," for example) that the network gave up on too soon. So, when NBC keeps trying all these sure-fire ideas to turn things around, only to keep going in the wrong direction, I can't help but feel a little schadenfreude after "Ed" got unceremoniously dumped . . . even after nine years. That's a long time to hold a grudge, I admit, but I'm sure Alan Sepinwall would understand.

So is this the year NBC finally kicks Lucy's football? Judge for yourself: Other new shows include a series based on Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and a remake of "Ironside."  I think they're setting themselves up for another pratfall here. Especially when they don't have a summer Olympiad to take advantage of this time in promoting its fall lineup.  It didn't work for them last year anyway.

The full NBC 2013-14 lineup is here.