Monsters of Television

Summer TV is nearly over! Sad, but true. We hope you’ve enjoyed our coverage of some of the summer programming.

Fall is nearly upon us, with a number of shows premiering next week. We here at the blog have been figuring out what to cover, what not to cover, and how to dole out the responsibilities. There’s not going to be a whole lot of change from what we was covered around the tail end of the previous season when Matt joined us. Karen’s picking up at least one show, Nick is staying pretty much the same, and I’ve slotted in a show to replace Law & Order (bet you can’t guess which one) while picking up at least one  new show.

We don’t get screeners for new series, so we’ve decided that each of us will do capsule reviews for the new shows called Auditions. This will be an entry that contains a few small reviews of a few shows, with general impressions. There may be some overlap in what gets reviewed as none of us our claiming many new shows at the moment (or that we’d be able to do timely reviews of them with everything else) . In the end, you may get impressions from all of us on the same show, and we’ll sort through who wants to write about what that way. If you find someone’s particular take to be interesting, share it in the comments!

Something we discovered over the summer was that sometimes a show doesn’t necessarily warrant a write-up on an episode to episode basis. Some of this is largely based on the “disposable” nature of summer TV, and some of this was just other things getting in the way of our coverage (life, the universe, everything). We’ve decided that there’s some value to this approach, as it allows us to expand what we write about without totally committing to it. In that light, you can expect to see reviews on shows that may not follow a normal rotation.

One last thing before we show off what’s getting covered. Our writing team has essentially split in half, geographically speaking. Nick and Matt are in LA, while Karen and I are still in Atlanta. And while we’re not known for immediate post-airing reviews, shows that Nick and Matt cover will be on a bit of delay from our normal schedule, just because of the time zone issues.

All right! With all the housekeeping out of the way, here’s the fall line-up for us! Like last time, I’ve included the network and premiere dates.

Karen

• Vampire Diaries (The CW, Sept. 9)

Matt

• Gossip Girl (The CW, Sept. 13)
• Undercovers (NBC, Sept. 22)
• The Big Bang Theory (CBS, Sept. 23)
• Smallville (The CW, Sept. 24)

Nick

• Parenthood (NBC, Sept. 14)
• Life Unexpected (The CW, Sept. 14)
• Chuck (NBC, Sept. 20)
• House (Fox, Sept. 20)
• The Office (NBC, Sept. 23)

Noel

• Nikita (The CW, Sept. 9)
• The Venture Bros. (Adult Swim, Sept. 12)
• How I Met Your Mother (CBS, Sept. 20)
• Community (NBC, Sept. 23)
• 30 Rock (NBC, Sept. 23)
• The Good Wife (CBS, Sept. 28)
• Law & Order: Los Angles (NBC, Sept. 29)

And that’s the line-up. Like I said for the summer, some shows may fall out of rotation (I’m looking at you, HIMYM), but if possible, we’ll replace it with something else (depending on our schedules). I hope you’re all looking forward to the new fall season as much as we are, and that you’ll share your thoughts in the comment section, or contact us on Twitter or via e-mail.