Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
For the first time, I decided to sit down and watch the pilot for every new fall TV show airing on the ‘Big Five’ networks. I watched 19 pilots and wrote a review for each, detailing my interest level before and after viewing. The following are the reviews for the pilots only, though I have continued on with some of these shows.The 2018 season boasted a surprising amount of diversity. CBS in particular has been known for skirting diversity in their programming. In the 2017 and 2016 seasons, the network took fire for having majority white, male actors in lead roles. This year, only one out of their six new shows (The Neighborhood) has a white, male co-lead, and he shares the spotlight equally with a black man. Diversity can be seen on all the networks, with more women and persons of color in lead roles than any other year in recent memory.
The first seven shows are covered below. Two more installments will follow with six shows each. I’ve provided a key detailing my ratings scale below.
Interest Level Key:
1: Don’t wanna touch this with a ten foot pole.
2: I’ve never even heard of this.
3: Looks like shit.
4: Looks like shit but there’s one or two things I like.
5: Not my cup of tea but I can see the appeal for others.
6: Maybe. I’m giving it five episodes to prove itself though.
7: It has the potential to be good. I’m hopeful but cautious.
8: Bring it on. (a.k.a. I’m in for half a season at least.)
9: I am super stoked for this show; there’s maybe one thing I’m iffy about.
10: Have they renewed for season 2 yet?
REL (Fox)
The 5-second Description: The series centers on Rel (Lil Rel Howery), who lives by the code to “always believe in yourself and great things will come.” Rel finds that attitude put to the test when he learns his wife is having an affair with his own barber. He tries to rebuild his life and post-divorce as a long-distance single father on the West Side of Chicago on a quest for love, respect, and a new barber. It is inspired by Howery’s life.
Interest Level Before Pilot: 2
Analysis: This show wasn’t even on my radar prior to putting this list together. I am only familiar with Sinbad, who plays Rel’s father, and Lil Rel from his role in Get Out, in which I found him a bit over the top. This follows through into this pilot, which is chock full of unfunny jokes and clichés. The canned laughter makes this feel very formulaic and Rel’s two companions, an ex-con brother (Jordan L. Jones) and female best friend (Jessica “Jess Hilarious Moore) who will inevitably be slated in the role of love interest, are both annoying and boring. They tried to save it with a sincere moment of reflection on Rel’s marriage but not enough time was spent exploring the ramifications of Rel’s life falling apart. The fact that he seems to care more about having to find a new barber than about his kids living far away makes him unsympathetic. I expect a lot of cringey cuckold and tired ex-wife jokes before the show is canceled after 7 or 8 episodes.
Interest Level After Pilot: 1 – Sorry Lil Rel, I have zero emotional attachment to your apparent life story, and better things to do with my time.
Magnum P.I. (CBS)
The 5-second Description: Jay Hernandez stars as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator in Hawaii, in this remake of the 1980s show starring Tom Selleck and his mustache.
Interest Level Before Pilot: 4
Analysis: Once again, CBS proves itself the network of very little imagination. Between it’s 15th iteration of crime procedurals and other semi-successful remakes, like Hawaii 5-0 and MacGuyver, it should be no surprise this show exists.
The pilot starts out with an action scene so preposterous, I nearly stopped watching two minutes in, but it is soon revealed to be a scene from an action novel written by Magnum’s benefactor, wealthy novelist Robin Masters, who is not shown on screen. It opens on Magnum’s three best friends and ex-Navy SEAL buddies, Rick (Zachary Knighton), TC (Stephen Hill), and Sebastian Nuzo (Domenick Lombardozzi). The four currently live in Hawaii and Masters funds Magnum’s private investigative business while letting him live on his opulent estate. Juliett Higgins (Perdita Weeks), a gender-bent replacement for a male character from the original 1980 series, is the go-between who begrudgingly minds Magnum, but it’s obvious she is secretly into him.
The pilot doesn’t have much time to establish its characters or setting before offing Nuzo and sending the other three on a mission to avenge their friend. Some obligatory things occur—car chases, multiple shootouts, an unlikely slim female badass, flirty sexual tension between Magnum and Higgins, a pithy flashback, and a rushed emotional moment about Magnum’s dead father that probably should have been saved for another episode. Naturally, an uppity local detective clashes with Magnum, who is definitely withholding evidence from police, but somehow it’s okay because the detective seems like a dork.
For some reason, there is a voiceover narration. This is completely unnecessary because Magnum P.I. is not complicated enough to warrant this level of exposition support. The information could have been better spent filling in empty space with dialogue, particularly from Rick and TC, who do absolutely nothing of note in this pilot. Until we learn otherwise, Rick is the dopey white friend who knows people and shoots big guns and TC is the black friend who flies helicopters and… that’s actually all I’ve got for TC, sorry.
I had mild hopes for this show because of Zachary Knighton, who I loved from Happy Endings, but he probably won’t be enough to sustain interest in this indulgent mess. Knowing CBS, this show will stick around for at least four seasons, especially considering it is filming in Hawaii and therefore ripe for crossover with Hawaii 5-0.
Oh, and who wants to take bets that Magnum’s mysterious benefactor, Mr. Masters, will one day be revealed as Tom Selleck?
Interest Level After Pilot: 6. I still think this looks terrible, but I’ll probably give it a few episodes to iron its problems out. Like any CBS show, however, I expect the characters to stagnate as long as they can keep the cameras running, so I’m going to feel guilty about watching every minute.
Manifest (NBC)
The 5-second Description: A group of passengers disembark from a turbulent flight to find out that they have been missing for five years.
Interest Level Before Pilot: 8
Analysis: I went into this pilot hoping for a Lost-esque mystery to pick apart and it’s definitely that, but it’s missing a few key elements of Lost, particularly good acting and emotional resonance. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t abysmal on either front, but there is a lot of room for improvement here. I went into Manifest expecting dull acting from male lead Josh Dallas, but female lead, Melissa Roxburgh is almost worse, and her deadpan acting also serves as voiceover for the show.
Dallas and Roxburgh unenthusiastically play siblings Ben and Michaela. They, along with Ben’s young son, Cal, decide to take a later flight when their own is overbooked. They separate from their family—Ben and Michaela’s parents, Ben’s wife Grace, and Cal’s twin sister Olive. The flight experiences some turbulence and when they land, the passengers are corralled and told they have been missing and presumed dead for five years. Ben and Michaela’s mother has passed away, Michaela’s fiancé (who, like herself, is in law enforcement) has mourned her and married her best friend, Grace seems to be dating someone, and—what stung the hardest—Cal doesn’t recognize his twin and recoils at the sight of a teenage Olive.
I feel like there was a lot of emotion to explore after the missing people return but this show barely touches on that because they want to dive right into a case of the week to demonstrate the evolving mythology. I get that high-concept mystical dramas are a hard sell, so I understand why the writers opted to shove a case in our face but I can’t help but feel like this show, on a cable or streaming network, would be given way more time to breathe and get its bearings than it does on NBC, where ratings are king.
It’s also entirely possible that the writers knew that the acting strength of their leads couldn’t live up to the dramatic requirements and decided to brush over the impact of their disappearance, but that begs the question of why they cast the twins of tedium in the first place.
Despite all that, the mystery is interesting, albeit a little heavy-handed on the religious front. Plenty of people are comparing it to Lost (let’s hope that this show has a better 5-year plan than Lost seemed to have) but I saw more similarities to USA Network’s The 4400. I’m not going to fault this show for not having original ideas, but I will tap out if they can’t at least present me with sympathetic and compelling characters to follow while we tread in familiar territory.
Interest Level After Pilot: 7 – a slight downgrade now that I’ve seen the pilot and my fears about its dual leads’ total lack of charisma has been confirmed. As of October 18th, however, Manifest has been picked up for a full season, so it has plenty of time to find its feet.
Lethal Weapon (Fox)
The 5-second Description: It’s classic Murtaugh and Riggs… minus Riggs, as lead actor Clayne Crawford’s contribution to on-set drama led to his being fired after season two and replaced with American Pie’s Seann William Scott. Seems like Riggs was offed and the series picks up six months later when newcomer Wesley Cole partners with Roger Murtaugh.
Interest Level Before Pilot: 6
Analysis: This show isn’t a new show, but given the shocking upheaval that happened last season and the removal of its co-lead, who defined the show for many people, myself included, this feels like it should be judged as a new pilot. I loved the remake in its first iteration, however, and Riggs was my favorite character, so I was not able to completely avoid the comparisons.
Wesley Cole is established first, having a background as a CIA operative who seems like quite the badass… until a tragic mistake sends him back home to LA. Only after Cole’s introductory scene do we get a brief montage of Murtaugh waiting at the hospital, only to find out his partner has died.
Then we skip ahead 6 months.
Everyone seems to have moved on, except for Roger of course; he has not gone into the office in months and is obsessed with proving there is a conspiracy surrounding Riggs’ death, since his former partner’s killer committed suicide shortly after. It’s not long before his investigation gets entangled with Cole, now a beat cop who accidentally gets involved with some shady criminals. They have a few scenes that are fun and very much in line with Riggs-Murtaugh shenanigans of old and eventually—after several massive explosions—they save the day and decide to be partners after Murtaugh gets Cole a promotion to homicide detective.
Let’s talk about the stuff that worked first.
THE GOOD:
I liked that Roger was still mourning. In spite of the stars’ animosity towards each other, it would have felt disingenuous if Murtaugh just got over it. Partnership is very important to him—this is something that is stressed to Cole up front—and the pair had become close in just two years. I wish Roger’s grief hadn’t been played as a joke akin to a guy getting dumped and moping for weeks, but it’s better than brushing the entire character of Riggs off. Riggs’ former therapist, Maureen Cahill (Jordana Brewster) is also still in mourning, and a nice scene between Cahill and Murtaugh shows how they both help each other grieve.
I like Cole. I get that a lot of people think Seann William Scott is not someone to be taken seriously because of American Pie, but I’ve never seen that franchise and I’ve enjoyed him in action comedies before (Goon, The Rundown, Role Models). If you can get over the stigma surrounding the actor, the character is actually pretty interesting. He’s a very different type of lethal than Riggs; Cole’s recklessness seems to be borne of over-confidence and capability, rather than depression and low self-worth. He’s a Riggs that might have been if Riggs’ wife and baby had never died. It will be interesting to see both partners navigate the struggle of parenthood from very different stages. As a bonus, he comes with Maggie Lawson (Psych), who plays Cole’s ex-wife, Natalie.
THE BAD:
I’m glad we saw Roger mourning, but Riggs’ death felt like a disservice to the character. We didn’t get to see anyone else’s reaction, not even Trish (Keesha Sharp) or Avery (Kevin Rahm). Though I loved that Cahill and Murtaugh had a scene celebrating Riggs, knowing Wayans’ real life personal feud with his costar made the entire thing feel insincere. I’ve seen plenty of shows that had to move on following the death of a star—8 Simple Rules, Glee, The West Wing—but something just feels wrong about mourning a character whose portrayer was forced out of their job. The fact that Riggs’ murder ended up not being a conspiracy (“just an angry kid with a gun,” as Murtaugh concludes remorsefully) was mostly a relief, because it will spare us Miranda 2.0, but it’s hard not to see it as the show brushing the entire character of Riggs under the rug so they never have to speak of him again.
I loved seeing Avery back, but hated that he was still running for City Commissioner. At the end of season 2, I got the impression that Avery was being phased out so that Murtaugh could take over as Chief (allowing Wayans the cushier job he wanted from the start). Now that it seems like Murtaugh is back in the field, I wanted Avery back in his former position. Rahm brings a lightness and fun dynamic to the team that will be missed without him. I also missed seeing Detective Bowman (Andrew Creer), and I hope he hasn’t been written out, since he always provides moments of comic relief.
Interest Level After Pilot: 7 – Seann William Scott hit all the right notes and I always said, from the moment I heard of Clayne Crawford’s firing, that I would try to hear the show out, because it’s not fair that so many people should lose their jobs because the lead cannot get their act together. I will give the show a bit longer to find its footing after this massive misstep, but I think I’m always going to mourn The Show That Should Have Been.
UPDATE – Two days after writing this review, Damon Wayans announced he will also leave at midseason. Forget this dumpster fire of a show. This has gone down to 4.
FBI (CBS)
The 5-second Description: A drama series about the inner workings of the New York office of the FBI.
Interest Level Before Pilot: 5
Analysis: I first heard this show announced with the following byline: “Procedural Drama from Dick Wolf Ordered to Series by CBS” and I thought ‘That is the least surprising thing I’ve ever heard.’ CBS later defied my expectations by summoning up the imaginative title of FBI.
The pilot literally starts with a bang as an urban apartment building experiences an explosion. Special Agents Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) and Omar Adom ‘OA’ Zidan (Zeeko Zaki) arrive to investigate and Maggie quickly asserts that there will be a second bomb. She stops a mother from going in to rescue her 7-year-old son and inarguably saves her life, but the mother still blames her for not letting her die with her son. The rest of the episode is spent questioning suspects and tracking down the terrorists before more lives are lost.
There are some other agents played by Jeremy Sisto and Ebonée Noel and their supervisor, played by Connie Nielsen, who is apparently swapped out for Sela Ward by episode 2. I can’t be bothered to care about any of these characters because the bulk of the episode is spent on the case and ignores the main cast outside of little quirks (Maggie’s husband is dead and she abstained from mourning for him to come back and do her job, OA is afraid of spiders and used to work undercover among middle eastern terrorist cells). The cast is chewing through some pretty clunky dialogue and acting like their lives depend on it, but they don’t have much to work with yet.
Thanks to Dick Wolf, this show feels more like Law & Order than it does CBS’s other crime procedurals. We have yet to see any whimsical lab technicians or snarky Special Agents dueling with witty banter in between exploring leads. It’s all Very Serious™, and while that might give FBI a better pedigree than other crime procedurals… it also makes it a bit boring.
Interest Level After Pilot: 5 – My interest level stays the same. Good news for fans, however: FBI was the second of the new fall pilots to be picked up for a full season so someone can continue to enjoy this.
New Amsterdam (NBC)
The 5-second Description: NBC’s latest medical drama follows Dr. Max Goodwin (The Blacklists’s Ryan Eggold), who is appointed the medical director of one of the oldest public hospitals in America and seeks to reform the system to help people who cannot afford it.
Interest Level Before Pilot: 7
Analysis: My interest level was much lower until I was peppered with commercials while binge-watching NBC’s older medical drama, ER, on Hulu (good choice of advertising, NBC). Initially, the only draw for me was the dreamy Ryan Eggold, but after the trailer, I realized Tyler Labine (Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, Reaper, Voltron: Legendary Defender) and Freema Agyeman (Sense8, Doctor Who) were also considerable draws.
This pilot was extremely frenetic and has a lot of ground to cover, much like its lead, Max Goodwin, who spends the episode flitting around from one patient to the next, trying to cover every case in between making huge controversial decisions. These decisions include, but are not limited to: hiring tons of new doctors, requiring heads of the departments to spend time with their patients, building a farmer’s market, and firing the entire cardiac surgical department—because apparently they value billing over medical care. He does spare one guy, Dr. Reynolds, (Jocko Sims) reneging on his termination after another doctor (Janet Montgomery) tells him Reynolds is the only one who cares. Gee, Max, maybe you should have actually gotten to know and influence your staff before ruining all of their careers and placing their well-being in jeopardy. Dr. Goodwin helpfully suggests that Reynolds can now replace the staff with people who care like him, as if Reynolds has time to research and vet an entire surgical staff being that he is now the only surgeon left in the hospital.
I won’t spend a lot of time talking about each stupid aspect of this show. There was too much going on and a lot of dumb ideas floating around. Suffice it to say, Max’s plans for New Amsterdam, while optimistic and idealistic, are at best not economically feasible and at worst downright insulting to the current staff. But we are meant to view Dr. Goodwin as a hero and a maverick, not an idealistic daydreamer whose morals are not compatible with reality. At one point, Max glibly tells another doctor “If you can’t help [your patient] as a doctor, help her as a human being” and the coworker dumbly replies “Am I allowed to do that?” instead of immediately shooting off a more realistic, “Of course I’m f***ing treating her like a human being! Did you think none of us knew what compassion was before you showed up?”
But I digress, New Amsterdam may be naïve and overly-reliant on clichés, but it represents an optimism that has been lost in the current state of healthcare in America. For all its faults, the show is trying to bring awareness of Americans who need help into the homes of Americans who don’t have to worry about it every day, because reform doesn’t start at the top; it starts at the voting booths.
I like much of the cast, and the ending of the pilot throws a twist at viewers that I am ashamed to admit I was not expecting, in spite of an anvil dropped earlier. I think this show has some fight in it, despite a market already oversaturated with medical dramas. Ratings were modest but if it can retain its This Is Us lead-in, it might see the end of season one.
Interest Level After Pilot: 7 – It needs some time to flesh out its characters and find its footing, so my rating remains the same. Luckily, New Amsterdam was the first new fall show to be picked up for a full season (after an additional 9 episodes were added to the original 13-episode order), meaning it has plenty of time to settle in.
Single Parents (ABC)
The 5-second Description: A sitcom about a group of single parents that rely on each other as a support system.
Interest Level Before Pilot: 4
Analysis: I was barely aware of this show’s existence before starting this list and the premise didn’t exactly pique my interest. Single Parents features a cast list I am familiar with but not one I follow. SNL’s Taran Killam plays Will Cooper, a single father of the precocious Sophie, whose mother took off when she was born. Will is dorky, empathetic, and 100% devoted to fatherhood, at the expense of his own social life, we come to find out.
On Sophie’s first day of Kindergarten, Will meets the cabal of single parents who rely on one another when he attempts to get the unenthusiastic group to sign up for activities. Angie (Leighton Meester) has a son who is lovestruck with a classmate, Douglas (Brad Garrett) is an older, widowed, reluctant father whose identical twin daughters are hilarious and snarky (and a little unsettling), and Poppy (Kimrie Lewis) has a son who is eccentric and fashionable, but a little unsure. There’s also Miggy (Jake Choi), Poppy’s 20-year-old neighbor, who is raising a baby by himself and thus was taken under the wing of the older crowd. They all find Will’s enthusiasm tedious, but take pity on him when they learn he hasn’t been on a date since before Sophie was born.
The pilot is simple and concerned only with the simple mission of getting Will laid (a mission that is, of course, abandoned when Will goes to stage-10 level clinginess). But by the end of the episode, the group has reluctantly accepted the new pair into their clique. I got a Community vibe from this aspect, as the NBC comedy also featured a group of disparate people who reluctantly become friends. The pilot also featured an adorable Moana sing-along that most parents of three-to-ten-year-olds will probably find relatable.
I have to say, I expected not to like this show but was pleasantly surprised by it. It wasn’t outrageously funny, but it definitely had its moments of charm. Low viewership and a competitive night probably means Single Parents won’t see a season two, but I’ll be watching until the end.
Interest Level After Pilot: 8 – I was sure this show would get canned in under 8 episodes but ABC blew me away by picking it up for a full season in October. It’s been my biggest jump in expectations from pre- to post-watch.
