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Last one. Night ya’ll!

She was so great last night on X Factor, y’all. And she wore glasses. As if she could be any more perfect.

‘Last Resort’ Pilot

New on ABC this fall from Shawn Ryan (The Shield, Chicago Code), Last Resort is easily the class of the new fall pilots that have been released early online. Yes, the premise is pretty much insane, but I think the show grounds it by involving us with the lives of characters from every part of the story, and surprising us in just enough places to make it worth sticking with.

It’s a helluva lot more confident and all-around better than Revolution over at NBC.

Lifetime taking a look at Marc Cherry's 'Devious Maids,' other failed pilots and canceled network shows →

Here’s the thing. I know what Lifetime thinks it’s doing: getting “younger” and “sexier” with the addition of fare like The Client List, but really, it’s only making itself even more eminently mockable. I’m all for a channel devoted to programming content for women, but when that content is reinforcing negative stereotypes and rigidly normative (and heteronormative) attitudes about femininity, well, you’re actually not doing anything good for women. Their new project Clarice, based on the character from Silence of the Lambs, sounds like it could be really great, but picking up Unforgettable would be a truly awful move, and a Marc Cherry show does not inspire confidence. (Desperate Housewives, for how transgressive it claimed to be, was actually disappointingly conventional for most of its run.)

set your DVRs accordingly →

UPDATE 2: Now with CBS schedule details, and details on Monday night, which I apparently just ignored before.

UPDATE: Now with ABC trailers!

The Futon Critic has the new fall TV landscape gridded up for you —now only minus the CW—and it features some tantalizing/paralyzing battles for live viewing or DVR space. Among them:

• Revenge will indeed square off against The Good Wife in the Sunday 9 p.m. timeslot. This alone is Sophie’s Choice, but when you consider that there will surely be several prestige cable dramas thrown into the mix, this timeslot turns into a bloodbath. Football overrun tends to screw with The Good Wife’s start time in the fall, leading to lower viewing numbers, so putting buzzy Revenge here (after bonafide hit Once Upon A Time and leading into new hopeful 666 Park Avenue) seems like an Emily Thorne move from ABC.
• On Monday, CBS counters The Voice performance shows on NBC and Dancing with the Stars’ just-announced “all-star” season with a two hour block of comedies old and new. Stalwart veteran How I Met Your Mother leads off at 8 p.m., followed by the David Krumholtz (Numb3rs) and Michael Urie (Ugly Betty)-starring Partners at 8:30 p.m. Then breakout hit 2 Broke Girls starts at 9 p.m., followed by Mike & Molly at 9:30 p.m. FOX is countering at the 9 p.m. hour with new drama The Mob Doctor, starring Jordana Spiro (TBS’ My Boys). NBC gives the prime post-Voice slot to the new J.J. Abrams/Eric Kripke drama, Revolution. 
• On Tuesday, FOX sacrifices/counterprograms Raising Hope and new hopeful Ben and Kate to the Voice vs. DWTS face-off in the 8 p.m. hour, but the real drama will be in the three-network battle for comedy viewers in the 9 p.m. hour. ABC was smart to pair similarly zippy comedies Happy Endings and Don’t Trust the B, but both are fairly low rated, and they’re up against some big firepower: FOX has New Girl returning in this timeslot, leading into The Mindy Project, which seems to have been genetically engineered to be paired with its lead-in. Meanwhile, NBC is trying out two freshman comedies with big names attached: Matthew Perry vehicle Go On starts off the hour, and Ryan Murphy’s The New Normal finishes it off. (There’s probably a piece forthcoming on the latter, because there is a LOT going on in that clip.) Finishing off the night, ABC puts Private Practice against Parenthood on NBC, while CBS launches a new show called either Vegas or Vegas Rising with a legitimately awesome cast (Dennis Quaid, Michael Chiklis, Jason O’Mara, Carrie Ann Moss) in this slot. With a cast like that and a script as good as this one apparently is, CBS could have another hit on its hands. (Poor Parenthood!)
• FOX hopes a revamped X Factor (Britney!!! Demi?!) will shore up its Wednesdays this fall (and not bite into American Idol’s spring ratings, or suffer from overall viewer fatigue on singing competition reality shows). Meanwhile, ABC hopes to keep a good thing going with The Middle, Suburgatory, and Modern Family in the same timeslots, with alien neighborhood-newcomer The Neighbors slotted in after Modern Family. NBC debuts freshman comedies Animal Practice and Guys With Kids in the 8 p.m. hour as well. Then things get interesting: will viewers go for twangy ABC soap Nashville (starring noted “y’all”-er Connie Britton!) or hunky NBC firehouse drama Chicago Fire (starring ex-Vampire Diaries werewolf and ex-Lady Gaga boyfriend Taylor Kinney)? CBS returns all three shows it had here last fall (Survivor at 8, Criminal Minds at 9, CSI: Original Flavor at 10).
• Thursdays, a noted bloodbath already, are looking terrifying. ABC leads off with awesome-in-theory Last Resort, about a nuclear submarine whose crew decides to go rogue (from The Chicago Code’s Shawn Ryan) at 8 p.m., squaring off against X Factor results and The Vampire Diaries and my DVR is already crying. FOX moved Glee to the post-X Factor results slot, a move that makes almost too much sense, and should be good counterprogramming against Grey’s Anatomy over on ABC and surprise hit Person of Interest on CBS at 9 p.m.. Meanwhile, NBC continues its quest to have the buzziest-but-lowest-rated Thursday night comedy lineup, putting the final, 13-episode season of proven 8 p.m. underperformer 30 Rock up against the likely (and formidable) challenge of The Big Bang Theory over on CBS. Up All Night finishes out the 8 p.m. hour for NBC, now up against inexplicable ratings juggernaut Two and a Half Men over on CBS in this slot, while The Office and Parks and Recreation will both have full 22-episode seasons of opening and closing the 9 p.m. hour. In the 10 p.m. hour, ABC returns freshman Shonda Rhimes drama Scandal, while CBS debuts its Lucy Liu-Jonny Lee Miller Sherlock Holmes adaptation, Elementary. I’m not sure if NBC is really going to give its Rock Center with Brian Williams newsmagazine a marketing push in this new slot, or if they’re just trying to finally kill it, because it does not in any way fit here. Then again, the problem is that it doesn’t really fit anywhere else in their schedule, either.
• All four major networks are making a play for Fridays this coming season. Long considered the night where troubled shows are sent to die, the survival of Fringe (which will have a shortened final season this fall) and Grimm here has apparently convinced the networks to try again. FOX has moved underperforming Touch to the Friday 8 p.m. slot, leading into the aforementioned Fringe. They’re hoping to at least remind people to set their DVRs for Touch at the same time they set their DVRs for Fringe. NBC has moved critically drubbed Whitney and critically beloved Community to the 8 p.m. slot, surely making this the scheduling odd couple of the season. Those comedies are ahead of surprisingly steady Grimm at 9 p.m. ABC, for their part, looks to be laying the groundwork for the return of a family-friendly comedy lineup on Friday nights, a la the TGIF glory days, with Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing moving to 8 p.m. and new Reba McEntire vehicle Malibu Country showing up at 8:30 p.m. this November. CBS has decided to move one of its venerable franchises, CSI: NY, to the 8 p.m. hour, leading into new comedic drama Made in Jersey at 9 p.m. and the respectable Blue Bloods at 10 p.m. CBS’ lineup probably has the strongest chance of succeeding here, since Blue Bloods has long done good business in the 10 p.m. hour here, and while a bit relentlessly dark for the 8 p.m. hour, CSI:NY could offer great counterprogramming for people who want nothing to do with ABC’s comedy block. 

the last sentence of this article is why Theresa Rebeck had to leave 'Smash' →

All her metanarrative pretensions, no matter how intriguing, were too much weight for one show to carry on its shoulders the whole time. Even if new showrunner Josh Safran, late of Gossip Girl, simplifies the show into something I don’t necessarily care to see (read: a soap opera about theatre people), it will probably be an improvement over what the show did this season under Rebeck.