Movie Box Review

FOX's 4-sitcom Tuesday excited no one.

FOX:  I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER and BREAKING IN made unimpressive returns to the schedule.  Daughter could claim a decent retention of its RAISING HOPE lead-in, and it also won the head-to-head sitcom battle at 8:30PM--but really there's nothing good about a 1.6 premiere.  Breaking In had less excuse, falling to an ugly 1.7 from NEW GIRL's strong 3.0 lead-in, which was the highest number on any network last night. And even though Raising Hope handled its shift to 8PM well, it aired against an ABC repeat last night, so future results may not be as strong.

ABC: The network actually aired some good programming last night, to little avail.  COUGAR TOWN had a funny half-hour directed by Courtney Cox, and for Bill Lawrence fans, it had the additional pleasure of a guest appearance by Scrubs' Sarah Chalke.  After that, THE RIVER finally delved into what's supposed to be the show's central mystery--just what happened to Dr. Emmett Cole--which allowed Bruce Greenwood to appear in more than snippets, in a creepy hour directed by Michelle McLaren.  For their troubles, the show got matching lousy 1.5 ratings, 4th place for their slots.  (Cougar Town at least had the excuse that it rose from its repeat LAST MAN STANDING lead-in, but as its cast members continue to flock to 2d position pilot deals, that doesn't matter much.)  The evening ended with a terrible 0.9 for a BODY OF PROOF repeat that was beaten by primary election coverage on NBC.

NBC:  THE BIGGEST LOSER fell to a season and possibly a series low, dipping below a 2 for the first time.  At 10PM, a DECISION 2012 special scored a not-embarrassing-for-a-news-special 1.0.

CBS:  All repeats, which were still enough to win all but the 9-9:30PM half-hour of the night.

CW:  90210 returned after a month off with a fine (CW level) 0.7, but RINGER dipped to a 0.5 after that.

Tonight's only new arrival is REVENGE FOR REAL, which ABC will use to sucker in Revenge fans rather than air repeats.  The network is giving it a bit of a lead-in with a new HAPPY ENDINGS (although that show's rating will be lowered by having a repeat MODERN FAMILY as its own lead-in).  NBC airs new sitcoms at 8-9PM, and apart from that, only the unscripted shows on all the networks are original.

WHERE WE WERE:  Contra Security, a wacky high-tech firm run by the extravagantly enigmatic Oz (Christian Slater).  Contra tests the security measures of its clients by cracking them wide open, staging mock break-ins, robberies, and similar hijinks.  Its roster of idiosyncratic experts include hacker Cameron (Bret Harrison), gadget guy Cash (Alphonso McAuley) and, for the moment at least, lock-picker Melanie (Odette Annable).

WHERE WE ARE:  A somewhat different version of Contra.  BREAKING IN's behind-the-scenes story was at least as interesting as anything that happened on the show.  It aired initially with the giant lead-in of American Idol, and scored not-bad ratings in the mid-2s.  When FOX moved the show away from Idol at the end of the season and gave it Raising Hope as a lead-in, the number plummeted to 1.3.  So one's feeling about the ratings of the show sort of depended on how much one was squinting when looking at them.  In the (sort of) end, FOX didn't renew the series when its network option was up in May.  But Sony Television, which produces Breaking In, didn't give up, and when the cast options were expiring at the end of June (it's typical for cast options to extend beyond the network's, in case the studio can place the show somewhere else with a little extra time), it had talked FOX into splitting the cost of extending the deals for a few more months, so FOX could have a chance to reconsider.  Which, in the (real) end, it did, renewing the show for a midseason run that began tonight--and giving it the hit New Girl as a lead-in.

It's safe to assume that part of the pitch Sony made to the network was a shift in the creative elements of the show, and so the cast of Breaking In 2.0 isn't exactly the same as last year's.  The disguises expert who was part of the team is gone, as is Melanie's buffoonish fiance. And Melanie herself, for that matter, will only recur in some of the remaining episodes (Annable had meanwhile taken a role on FOX's House).  The bigger news is that Contra would have new ownership, with Oz selling the company to a conglomerate personified by the new character of Veronica (Emmy Award-winner Megan Mullally, who's been added to the cast), and her assistant Molly (Erin Richards).  

The season premiere, written and directed respectively by series co-creators Adam F. Goldberg and Seth Gordon, was mostly concerned with setting up the new premise of the show.  Since every single FOX promo had made it clear that Veronica was the new boss, the first half of the episode was unintentionally tiresome as it introduced her as the new perky and annoying assistant to Oz she was pretending to be.  Once the reveal finally took place, the focus was on the Contra employees, so there was still no clear picture of who Veronica is actually going to be.  (Presumably the producers and network are fully aware that having both Mullally and Slater sharing a screen squeezes an awful lot of hamminess into a very small space.)  The Molly character was only briefly introduced, so other than being British and (naturally) acerbic, her role isn't defined yet either.

The basic dynamic of last year's Breaking In was that every week, Cameron and the others would leap to conclusions about what their assignment was and what Oz was really plotting, and every time, it would turn out that Oz was fiendishly playing mind-games with them and was actually 3 steps ahead.  Presumably with Mullally around, that's going to be somewhat different.  The other major thread was Cam's not-quite requited longing for Melanie, and with Annable playiing a limited role, that's not going to be the same this season either.  So the show is going to have some fundamental changes to its DNA.

As for tonight's episode itself, it was at best mildly funny:  Cash's pranks are rarely as clever as the writers seem to think, there was little opportunity for the pop culture jokes that usually abound (apart from an extremely forced Breakfast Club bit), and the script had to do a lot of heavy lifting to contrive both Mullally's arrival and Slater's continuing presence.  Breaking In was far from memorable TV before--we'll find out in the next few weeks if the changes have made it any less disposable.

FOX had announced last year that rather than air GLEE repeats in the space between its original February episodes and the new ones that will close out the season, it would instead air a 2-hour block of sit-coms.  That's still the plan, but today they shuffled just what those comedies will be and when they'll air.

Starting on March 6, Tuesdays will start with new episodes of RAISING HOPE (instead of New Girl reruns, as originally scheduled), facing off against Last Man Standing (as well as NCIS and Biggest Loser, which are less direct competition).  Then I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER, which had been scheduled to air after 90-minute American Idol episodes on Wednesdays, will instead take the 8:30PM slot and compete with Cougar Town.  NEW GIRL will of course keep its usual 9PM slot, and at 9:30PM BREAKING IN, the Christian Slater slow that was cancelled and then un-cancelled last Spring, will try to capitalize on its newly strong lead-in (it was originally supposed to have the 8:30PM slot).  

At first glance, this is clearly good news for Breaking In, which gets an original New Girl rather than a repeat as its lead-in.  It's bad news for Raising Hope, which loses its sheltered 9:30 slot and has to open the evening against Tim Allen.  Since Hope will be Teenage Daughter's lead-in rather than American Idol, it's also bad for Teenage, and seemingly unnecessary in terms of Tuesday results, since original Teenage episodes probably won't do a number much different than New Girl repeats would have.  The one piece of this puzzle that FOX hasn't yet announced is what will now be airing at 9:30PM on Wednesdays, and it'll be interesting to see if Idol is extended for 2 hours on that night--if so, it may suggest that FOX needed this change to create some extra Idol advertising inventory, in order to make up for the shortfall in this season's ratings and revenues.

FOX has announced the specifics of its midseason schedule, with no surprises (you don't need surprises when you're cruising in 1st place, with your unstoppable biggest gun on the way).  Below are the shows and dates:

Mondays 9PM (1/16-3/12):  ALCATRAZ, launching with a 2-hour debut

Mondays 9PM (starting 3/19):  TOUCH - This will have a special "preview" airing of its pilot at 9PM Wed January 25 after American Idol, then launch 2 months later for real, also with a 2-hour debut

Tuesdays (starting 3/6):  8PM - NEW GIRL reruns

                                    8:30PM - BREAKING IN

Wednesdays (starting 1/18):  AMERICAN IDOL kicks off  (during Jan-Feb, there will also be some episodes of MOBBED on this night in various slots)

Thursdays (starting 1/19):  8PM - AMERICAN IDOL

                                       9PM - THE FINDER (actually kicks off a week earlier, after BONES)

Fridays 9PM:  FRINGE returns 1/13

Sundays 7PM: BOB'S BURGERS returns 1/29, moving to 8:30PM on 3/11

Sundays 8:30PM (1/29-3/4):  NAPOLEON DYNAMITE

BONES, GLEE and (if we're unlucky) I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER will also return later in the Spring on unspecified dates.