TV Time

Fall TV season! This is the third new fall TV season during the lifespan of my blog, and the first with a major network television show that included the word 'Detroit' in the title. My personal happy place is Fall TV season. All the shows I know and love are tying up loose ends from last season, rebooting from a bad year of writing, or just bringing additional joy and happiness into my life through continued excellence. On top of this, all the hard work, expectations, and excitement of the new series starts to either pay off or crash and burn in the matter of mere weeks. It is actually tough for me to overstate how sincerely and deeply I appreciate fall TV.

This year, two brand spanking new shows are highly featuring parts and pieces of Michigan. The first and more obvious, is the show that debuted last night and I'm finishing up as I type: "Detroit 1-8-7". I feel the dashes between the numbers are unnecessary and they make it a little bit more annoying to type. Maybe if they used stars of little hearts between the numbers that would be cool. 1*8*7 or Detroit 1 <3 8 <3 7. The show is pretty decent, and I really do get a kick out of seeing different cinematic shots of the city where they actually want the shots to reflect the city of Detroit instead of some other metropolis. I know that a good portion of the pilot was shot in Atlanta (the only thing that upsets me about that is that I would like our blight on television to be OUR blight, not Atlanta's. Give us the blight respect we deserve). At this point I have no specific commentary on the show except to say that it definitely doesn't suck - I'm just not sure if it's awesome or something that I'll just watch because I love Detroit.

The second major connection to Michigan on TV this season is the lead actor on a Fox series called "Lonestar". This show premiered on Monday and it didn't do great in the ratings, but it is getting pretty rave reviews across the board. I must have been drunk or something when I saw early commercials about the show, because I could have sworn it was about some sort of law person in Texas (which interested me very little), and it turns out that I had no idea what I was thinking about. It's actually about a conman leading at least a couple different lives. The lead guy in the show is named James Wolk and he is from Farmington Hills. Maureen and I also watched that show and we definitely enjoyed the pilot. Mr. Wolk impressed me rather soundly with his acting chops. He had a way of emoting without being annoying. He could do subtle, he could do direct, and he could do everything in between (by the way, I heard a speech today where someone said "from the poor house to the crack house and everywhere in between." I immediately thought "what is between a poor house and a crack house?" I simply cannot imagine that type of establishment). I fear for the life of "Lonestar" because despite its strong reviews, its ratings were pretty low. Fox sometimes gives shows they believe in a chance to pull through initial low ratings so all hope is not yet lost. That's all part of the fun of Fall TV Season.

My heaven.