Geek Impact

That whole Chuck vs. Reaper argument? Hack TV critics may not have their "revenge of the nerds" go-to for much longer: Nobody's watching Reaper. I mean nobody. Veronica Mars had three times more viewers in the same CW timeslot last year, and we all know what happened to her.

And as a side note: How is it that Kristen Bell (Veronica) wound up on Heroes this season, but Jason Dohring (Logan) got screwed with a role on CBS' craptacular (but still more watched than Reaper) Moonlight? Now Ghost Whisperer is suddenly high Friday-night art ... sorry, Logan.

Back to Chuck and Reaper: The only similarities are that the shows' leads work in big-box stores and happen to be as good-lookin' as TV stars. That's it. Chuck is an action series with hints of humor. Reaper is a comedy with several toes in sci-fi. When the action slows down on Chuck, the funny ain't there to carry it. Reaper rarely falls flat, no matter what mode it's in. If it were on a real network—say, as a lead-in to Heroes—Reaper would be a Fall Smash. As it is, it's just barely beating out Life is Wild (debuted to exactly 35 viewers last night) and your webcam.

So watch Chuck tonight (and then the multiple reruns on NBC properties Bravo, USA, Sci-Fi, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, etc.), and watch Reaper REALLY HARD tomorrow night. Who knows, could help ...

All About Hugh

Daddy, what was Cop Rock? So Pushing Daisies might not be the hardest sell of the new season: CBS’ new musical casino drama (yeah, that’s right) Viva Laughlin doesn’t debut for two weeks, but this one-minute YouTube clip of Hugh Jackman singing “Sympathy for the Devil” (also right) surrounded by slot machines and showgirls should keep you laughing for at least that long ...

Bonaduce Breaking

So last night at the Fox Reality Channel Really Awards (one bomb, hundreds of reality-TV douchebags taken care of, just sayin'), hulking freckle Danny Bonaduce pulled a WWE-worthy move and tossed Survivor assclown Jonny Fairplay face-first to the floor, sending him to the hospital sans teeth and blood. Finally, Bonaduce has contributed something to society, although Kanye West felt slighted for not receiving a Piledriver.

What The Only TV Column That Matters™ is watching tonight:

Pushing Daisies (ABC): Debut of the fanciful new series from the folks behind Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me ... so it's probably already been canceled.

The Bionic Woman (NBC): Jaime learns to use her new powers, while everyone else wonders why the guv'ment didn't give her a personality upgrade.

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC): Tranny trouble is a-brewin'!

South Park, The Sarah Silverman Program (Comedy Central): Cartman has Tourettes; Sarah joins an anti-abortion group. Let's all go to Hell, shall we?

Slick Willie 24-7

Former president/future first lady Bill Clinton on Sunday's Meet the Press:

"If you're the Jack Bauer person, you'll do whatever you do and you should be prepared to take the consequences ... When Bauer goes out there on his own and is prepared to live with the consequences, it always seems to work better."

Yeah ... to quote Dwight Shrute: "My ideal choice? Jack Bauer. But he is unavailable. Fictional. And overqualified."

What The Only TV Column That Matters™ is watching tonight:

Bones (Fox): A soccer mom gets blow'd up in her minivan; Jack Bauer not suspected.

Reaper (The CW): Sam and Sock capture more souls escaped from Hell, including the fuckers responsible for Cavemen and Carpoolers.

Eureka (Sci-Fi): In the season finale, Carter and Stark work together to get into Allison's pants, er, save her son from a mysterious virus. Then, the pants thing.

Crock of Love

So the escapee from the '80s Cowboy Biker Poser wing of the Rock & Roll Hall of Wax chose the young, hot girl over the skanky old stripper who might possibly be a dude on last night's Rock of Love? This is the shocker of the century! Well, that and the revelation that reality TV may not be all that real! Can't wait for the Reunion Show next Sunday ...

Killing Time

Big Shots Thursday 9.27 (ABC) Series Debut: They’re four alpha-male corporate execs but, damn it, they have feelings, too! Big Shots was apparently shooting for Sex and the City With Dicks, but just wound up with dicks. Watching metrosexual power-players whine about relationships, kids, office politics and golf just makes The Only TV Column That Matters™ long for the days of AMC’s Mad Men that much more: bang a secretary, pour a bourbon, light a Lucky and shut the fuck up already.

Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy Thursday 9.27 (ABC) Season Premieres: Betty’s still ugly, but the interns are now real doctors. Scary.

CSI, Without a Trace Thursday 9.27 (CBS) Season Premieres: Sara’s gone missing, then the Trace team searches for Shark.

My Name Is Earl, The Office, ER Thursday 9.27 (NBC) Season Premieres: Full-hour premieres for Earl and The Office, while ER enters its 57th season.

Moonlight Friday 9.28 (CBS) Series Debut: If you still miss Angel or even Forever Knight, there’s a new crime-fightin’ vampire with a heart of gold in town; this one sleeps in a freezer and looks a lot like The Shield’s Alex O’Loughlin. That’s about all there is to report, because Moonlight has undergone several cast, script, showrunner and title changes (previous names: Twilight and Crime-Fightin’ Vampire With a Heart of Gold) since CBS first picked it up; could be all sock puppets and show tunes by the time it gets on the air.

Ghost Whisperer, Numb3rs Friday 9.28 (CBS) Season Premieres: So many boob and math jokes, so little space.

Las Vegas Friday 9.28 (NBC) Season Premiere: Nikki Cox is gone, but Tom Selleck has arrived. Doesn’t seem like a fair trade.

Dexter Sunday 9.30 (Showtime) Season Premiere: At the end of Dexter’s excellent first season, our Serial Killer With a Heart of Gold had finally eradicated Miami’s Ice Truck Killer (who’d turned out to be his own brother, who was dating Dex’s stepsister to get to him … you had to be there) and all seemed relatively right in Dexter’s sorta-wrong world—so why so down at the onset of Season 2? A month later, it’s more bowling than killing: “My life’s been all Jekyll and no Hyde.” He’s not only off his vigilante game, but his freaked-out sis has moved in with him and his girlfriend suspects he may have framed her douchebag ex-husband and sent him back to prison (which Dex did—the guy wasn’t quite evil enough to murder). Then there’s the discovery of the bodies of his previous villainous victims—and Dexter can’t even carry out a nice, relaxing kill. Sheesh.

Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters Sunday 9.30 (ABC) The housewives enter their 60s, and I still hate Brothers & Sisters.

American Dad Sunday 9.30 (Fox) The Smiths go on vacation, which can’t end well.

Brotherhood Sunday 9.30 (Showtime) The best Rhode Island mobster drama since Family Guy returns to fulfill your Sopranos-free life.

Cavemen, Carpoolers Tuesday 10.2 (ABC) Series Debuts: Yes, Cavemen is the new sitcom based on those Geico insurance ads, so it already has a built-in audience of people with 30-second attention spans. Now, it’s 30-minute comedic allegory for racial and class divisions … yeah, sure, they’ll hang with it. Except that the first version of Cavemen’s pilot sucked harder than Allstate, so ABC sent it back to be “reworked”—a phrase on par with, “Let’s make this commercial 1,000 percent longer! With other commercials in it!” As for Carpoolers: If you liked the underrated/under-watched Sons & Daughters (Fred Goss stars here), you’ll probably wonder why no one brought that back instead of watering it down and moving it into the commuter lane. I know I did.

Pushing Daisies Wednesday 10.3 (ABC) Series Debut: Then again, sometimes networks take too big of a chance with something that might have even been difficult to pitch on cable: Pie shop owner Ned can bring the dead back to life with one touch, but a second sends them back Dirtnap City for good—helpful for solving murder cases with his private eye buddy (doesn’t everybody have one?); not so much when he revives his childhood sweetheart. Pushing Daisies comes from the creator of Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, and shares their offbeat tones of sweet romance and dark humor—and eventually, probably a DVD discussion group on Amazon.com about brilliant-but-canceled shows. Catch it while you can …

South Park, The Sarah Silverman Program Wednesday 10.3 (Comedy Central) Cartman struggles to reach the new Wednesday-night offensiveness bar set by Sarah Silverman, who joins an anti-abortion group and then performs an anal abortion on Steve. Good times.

Chuck You

Chuck, Journeyman Monday, Sept. 24 (NBC) Series Debuts: This is not another hack piece about how the new fall season is all “geeked” out. Damn, TV critics are a creative lot. The titular Chuck of NBC’s new Heroes lead-in works at Buy More (think Best Buy) in the tech-troubleshooting Nerd Herd (think Geek Squad), so of course he’s a girlfriend-free underachiever—until he accidentally downloads the entirety of America’s secret intelligence into his brain via an e-mail (just go with it) and bam! Instant Alias, with clip-on ties instead of wigs. Chuck takes the average-dude-in-over-his-head comedy of Andy Barker P.I. (remember that?) to a new level—the first episode’s chase scenes could be the most hysterically intricate ever shot for television—and nails the balance of smart comedy and sweet charm, not to mention killer action. As for NBC’s new time-travelin’ sci-fi drama Journeyman … at least it’s better than Day Break (I know you don’t remember that).

The Big Bang Theory Monday, Sept. 24 (CBS) Series Debut: Hyper-intelligent geeks struggle to meet hot girls; middling comedy ensues. On the upside, The Big Bang Theory actually makes Rules of Engagement seem funny an hour later—score, CBS!

Cane Tuesday, Sept. 25 (CBS) Series Debut: Jimmy Smits presides over a Cuban-American family’s sugar and rum empire in Florida; middling soap-opera drama and intrigue ensue. CBS has promoted Cane with Mojito-flavored lick-strips in magazines, so at least one original idea has come from all of this.

Reaper Tuesday, Sept. 25 (The CW) Series Debut: Another nerdy guy toiling away in a big-box store is thrust into extraordinary circumstances—similarities to Chuck don’t quite end there; instead of being forced to moonlight for the government, Reaper’s Sam has new gig with Satan. Tomato, tomato. But, whereas Chuck star Zachary Levi carries his show with confident ease, Reaper’s Bret Harrison (late of Fox’s The Loop) is upstaged at every turn by slacker bud Sock (Invasion’s Tyler Labine) and the Devil (Twin Peaks’ Ray Wise), who bought Sam’s soul before he was even born—enough about Britney being a bad parent—and now employs him to hunt down escaped Hell-ions. Reaper has a funny, crackerjack Kevin Smith-directed pilot ep, but is it too smart for the viewers of lead-in Beauty & the Geek? Oh, hell yes.

Private Practice, Dirty Sexy Money Wednesday, Sept. 26 (ABC) Series Debuts: Ever seen Kate Walsh on a talk show? Hi-larious. She’s also probably more capable of carrying a show than anyone back on Grey’s Anatomy, from whence Private Practice spun-off last spring in a lame tentative “pilot” episode. Fortunately, the final Addison-does-Cali product is far better, and this is coming from a guy who hates Grey’s Anatomy. I mean, really, really hates Grey’s Anatomy. Oh, and ABC didn’t send me Dirty Sexy Money, so fuck it.

The Bionic Woman, Life Wednesday, Sept. 26 (NBC) Series Debuts: The good news: The Bionic Woman lives up to nearly all of its Battlestar Galactica-pedigreed buzz. The bad news: That buzz is limited to the relatively small audience of Galactica (sorry, not everybody reads your blog), and Michelle Ryan’s performance in the title role is so stiff you may wonder if she’s not entirely circuitry and silicone. The best news: Matters not, because The Bionic Woman is dark, taut, action-packed and riveting every second that Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff appears onscreen as the first bionic woman who’s gone rogue and quite insane. She’s out to kill her 2.0, and The Only TV Column That Matters™ is rooting for her—I wanna see that series. I don’t, however, want to see another cop show. Life is another cop show. Ergo …

Five to One

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia Thursday 9.13 (FX) Season Premiere: How to kick off a new season of basic cable’s most infamously sick/wrong/hysterical sitcom when you’ve already mined the comedy gold of racism, abortion, molestation, welfare, crack addiction and—worst of all—local politics? I believe the title of tonight’s episode says it all: “The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby.” There’s also a subplot about environmental idiocy, er, activism, and the continued, utterly unnecessary presence of Danny DeVito, but It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia still rides on the flawless cartoon-nihilism chemistry of Mac, Charlie, Dennis and Sweet Dee, which occasionally equals that of Seinfeld’s Hallowed Four … if they lived in a seedy Philly borough instead of Manhattan, that is. Love the show, hate yourself.

Nashville Friday 9.14 (Fox) Series Debut: If you actually consider Laguna Beach and The Hills to be “reality” shows, you just might be a big enough sucker to fall for the same brain trust’s Nashville, which follows the manufactured dreams and drama of young pretty folk “struggling” to forge a career in country music—or whatever it is Nashville cranks out these days. Then again, it’s on Friday nights, so it won’t even last as long as the previous sentence. Moving on …

Prison Break, K-Ville Monday 9.17 (Fox) Season Premiere/Series Debut: When last we left Prison Break, Michael had been tossed in a hellhole Panamanian prison and Lincoln was on the outside—tables turned, man! Is your mind blown? If not, this should do it: Nash Bridges’ daughter (Jodi Lynn O’Keefe) is introduced this season as a character named … Susan B. Anthony! Prison-breaking, conspiracy-busting and head-shining ensue anew. Considerably less-complex is new series K-Ville: Jaded maverick cop + by-the-book new partner with a Dark Secret + colorful crew x post-Katrina New Orleans = Standard Police Drama No. 625, with a side of Cajun sauce. In other words, don’t bet on any new series with a “ville” suffix.

Back to You, ‘Til Death Wednesday 9.19 (Fox) Series Debut/Season Premiere: Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton and Fred Willard star in the hottest new sitcom of 1987—now! Sure, Back to You may feel like a throwback to Murphy Brown, but it smells as dead as Ted Knight’s decomposing corpse under the remnants of the Mary Tyler Moore set (see kids, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a newsroom comedy of the 20th Century, as was Murphy Brown). How ‘Til Death made it to a second season is equally unclear; Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher’s undercooked homage to Al & Peggy Bundy would probably have gone straight to TV Land if Fox wasn’t so preoccupied with giving Ryan Seacrest more shit to do—seriously, that assclown is hosting the Emmys and animating backgrounds for American Dad on breaks.

America’s Next Top Model Wednesday 9.19 (The CW) Season Premiere: The search is on for the latest 98-pound skank to sequester in the Witness Protection Program, uh, launch into a fabulous modeling career! Or at least a future guest spot on a doomed CW series like …

Gossip Girl Wednesday 9.19 (The CW) Series Debut: If I thought the pilot episode of Gossip Girl would stay in my head for longer than the two minutes it’s going to take to recap it, I’d spring for a lobotomy. Josh Schwartz has relocated The O.C. to an east-coast private school for rich teen models with more “problems” than personality; when you can spot the group “bad boy” wearing a bored look, artfully mussed hair and an ascot (!) in the first act, things probably ain’t going to get better. No, it gets worse, and the unseen titular “blogger” narrating the show only drives home the inanity: It’s Kristen Bell, ex-star of The CW’s far-superior-so-of-course-it-was-canceled Veronica Mars. Stellar first week of the new fall season, eh?

To the Curb

Torchwood Saturday 9.8 (BBC America) Series Debut: A spin-off (and anagram) of Doctor Who that’s being pitched as a sci-fi combo plate of The X-Files, Angel and, well, Doctor Who: A team of pretty special-ops agents keep watch on a space/time rift in Cardiff, Wales, and use acquired alien technology to battle whatever baddies pop out of it. Torchwood continues BBC America’s summer hot streak (if you forget about Hotel Babylon, which you should), even if it falls slightly short of Jekyll. Oh, and like Britain’s previous Buffy the Vampire Slayer tribute Hex, there’s plenty of sex. But not as much as …

Tell Me You Love Me Sunday 9.9 (HBO) Series Debut: Home Box Office answers the “It’s HBO-ver!” naysayers of the post-Sopranos era with a meta-depressing rumination on Relationships and Intimacy that makes Ingmar Bergman look like Judd Apatow. Too much? OK, breaking it down: You. May. Kill. Yourself. Before. Episode. Three. Tell Me You Love follows four couples at various stages of marriage working through trust and commitment issues while … too much again? Try this: There’s a whole lotta graphic sex, including a scene in the premiere with Lost’s Sonya Walger performing a tug-job on her husband that could have only been simulated with a prosthetic—which would be even weirder than the actual sex that’s rumored to have been filmed for the series. If this all sounds like more draining work than pirating Showtime, you’re right. For real creepy awkwardness, stick with …

Curb Your Enthusiasm Sunday 9.9 (HBO) Season Premiere: What valuable social lessons has Larry David learned since the last new episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm way back in December 2005? You know, when he died? None—he’s a rich white guy, what’s to learn? In the Season 6 opener, Larry and Cheryl take in a family of Hurricane Katrina survivors (it’s a Cheryl thing, natch), conveniently named … the Blacks. Upcoming episodes involve the violation of unspoken drycleaner codes, roadside memorials, teddy bears and Ted Danson, as well as the disturbing revelation that one of Larry’s pals has been masturbating in his house (HBO now stands for Habitually Beating Off, apparently). In other words, it’s still the hysterically real/unreal Curb you and the network pray never ends—and in what universe is Richard Lewis dating Tia Carrere?

Frisky Dingo Sundays (Adult Swim) Season 2 of Frisky Dingo premiered Aug. 26—which was unexpected, considering the planet was supposedly driven into the sun by supervillain Killface’s Annihilatrix doomsday device at the end of the first. Turns out it malfunctioned and actually pushed the earth’s orbit 3 feet away from the sun, stopping global warming. Now he’s an insta-hero running for president while former millionaire playboy/Iron Man-esque nemesis Xander Crews is a destitute porn star. This is he part where you assume I’m going to say, “It all makes sense if you watch it.” Yeah … anyway, Frisky Dingo: Funny and educational for the marketing of evil pinheads for president—listen up, Brownback-ers.

Rescue Me Wednesday 9.12 (FX) Season Finale: So Season 4 of Rescue Me has been shakier than an all-Gavins AA meeting—it’s still better than any series out there, comedy or drama. Denis Leary has delivered both in a double-barreled shotgun blast of pathos every week, no matter how many ridiculous new characters clutter the scenes (Leary’s latest girlfriends, Gina Gershon and Amy Sedaris, make Callie Thorne’s whacked Sheila look like a pillar of sanity). The season-ender cliffhangers, however, must go, because none—not even tonight’s—live up to Leary’s lingering threat of having all the 62 Truck firefighters die in an out-of-control blaze. There’s always Season 5 … right, FX?

Endless Bummer 2

Last week, The Only TV Column That Matters™ told you how wrong the pretentious fucks were about television, that there’s plenty on the tube (mostly cable fare) artistically equal to anything that’s happening in The Cinema. As usual, I made an airtight case.

This time around, it’s all about the stuff that’s stunk up the summer. Not that the PFs are right—they’re just a little less wrong when you factor in shows like …

… Flash Gordon on the Sci-Fi Channel, where we left off. There was no reason for this series to exist when it debuted like a limp Smallville with Kryptonite down its Speedo a few weeks ago, and certainly not now that it’s failed to live up to even that promise. At least Sci-Fi’s now-canceled Painkiller Jane launched strong, even though it’s since devolved into Scooby-case-of-the-week banality that makes CSI (pick one) look like Long Arc Theater. And Who Wants to Be a Superhero? Once the hottest (Basura) and the craziest (Mr. Mitzvah) contestants were eliminated, who wants to fucking watch?

Somebody must be watching Code Monkeys on G4 (it’s that channel with the Arrested Development reruns), and I’m guessing they’re all wearing helmets and sipping dinner through a straw: A badly/barely-written cartoon animated like an ‘80s videogame sounds like nice time-killing YouTube short; 14 half-hour episodes sounds like my brain dripping onto the floor. Same goes for ABC Family’s Greek, a college dramedy for those who can’t keep up with the Byzantine plot twists of High School Musical. Or The Two Coreys, a sad A&E “reality” show that’s more tightly scripted than any movie Haim or Feldman have done in 20 years.

TBS now stands for Terminally Bland Shit, with throwback sitcoms like The Bill Engvall Show and Tyler Perry’s House of Payne mingling seamlessly with repeats from yesteryear and yet only improving upon them in hair (Nancy Travis’ on Engvall has never looked fab-er, nor has Bill’s mustache). Even My Boys, a relative critical hit, has lost its edge over the summer—OK, that “edge” was akin to a plastic spork, but still …

Vaguely vanilla is not necessarily better than aggressively craptastic, which sums up VH1’s entire summer slate: Rock of Love With Bret Michaels, Scott Baio Is 45 & Single, The Rock Life, Mission: Man Band, The Pick-Up Artist, I Hate My 30s—collectively the worst non-Flavor-Flav-related programming the channel has ever excreted; only Rock of Love earns a partial pass for humorously including a couple of transvestites in the lineup of ladies staying in the house and rocking Michaels’ world … wha? Rodeo and Mags weren’t dudes? Get the fuck outta here!

Also, USA’s The 4400 and The Dead Zone … they’re still on, right? Yes? No? Get back to me. And didn’t we used to count on Bravo and Comedy Central for at least one watchable summer series apiece? Flipping Out and American Body Shop, respectively, fall waaay short of the bar set in previous summers by Boy Mets Boy and Dog Bites Man, the greatest send-up of local TV news ever.

Well, until Fox’s Anchorwoman. Not a cable show, but notable nonetheless for being canceled after a single airing last week because fewer people tuned into its reality-jiggling debut than an America’s Top Model rerun on The CW (!) and Telemundo’s La Noche de 1,000 Iguanas (admittedly, stiff competition). Who could have predicted that no one would tune in to watch a brainless, unqualified bimboid attempt to become a serious news anchor? You know, besides CBS and Katie Couric? Remember the wisdom of Champ Kind: “It is anchor man! Not anchor lady! And that is a scientific fact!”

Still, all of this dreck is easily negated by AMC’s awesome Mad Men, one of the summer’s coolest new series; marathon Sunday, Sept. 2. (No way I’m going out on a TV downer, you pretentious fucks).