Thursday , March 28 2024
Will VM and I still be friends next season?

The 2007 Network Upfronts: The CW

So, let’s get it out of the way, everyone can read this and then the complaints can start flooding in before the rest of the article is read, but let me just remind you: I didn’t make this schedule, it is not my fault. That said, while we used to be friends, a long time ago, and while I’ve thought of you lately quite a lot, I won’t be seeing you anymore. Sorry Veronica Mars, you’re out. Have fun at the FBI, but we won’t be visiting you there.

They do however have some new shows that they wish to tout, not just the canceled stuff (like Gilmore Girls) so, here’s what they’ve decided to put out there (new shows in bold):

Sunday

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
7:00 CW Now
7:30 Online Nation
8:00 Life is Wild Everybody
Hates Chris
Beauty and
The Geek
America’s Next
Top Model
Smallville Friday
Night
Smackdown!
8:30 Aliens in
America
9:00 America’s Next
Top Model
(repeats)
Girlfriends Reaper Gossip Girl Supernatural
9:30 The Game

It’s a heavy on the reality schedule and there’s only one new comedy, Aliens in America. In this 30 minutes of funny, a sensitive nerdy 16-year-old kid, with a hugely popular sister, has his world turned upside down by the arrival of an exchange student… from Pakistan.

Drama-wise, The CW is sporting three new shows: Gossip Girl, Life is Wild, and Reaper.

Taking the last one first, Reaper adds another sci-fi element to The CW’s schedule. A 21-year-old slacker finds out that his parents, back in the day, sold his soul to the devil (I had no idea that such a thing was possible, selling someone else’s soul, but now that I do, there are a couple of people I’m willing to make deals for). Now the poor guy has to serve as the devil’s bounty hunter, tracking down evil escaped souls, Dog-style.

Life is Wild moves a family from the concrete jungle of New York City to a game reserve in South Africa. There they find a wholly different kind of animal. Outcasts at first, the family eventually starts to work things out, and starts enjoying this new life (not that everything will be smooth, of course).

In Gossip Girl, exec-produced by The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz, we enter the life of a super-rich, super-popular, super-girl (but not in the special abilities kind of way). Money however, we learn, does not buy happiness. As Weird Al noted though, it is possible to rent happiness, and I hereby suggest that.

Then, there’s the reality programming…

CW Now is a newsmagazine, focusing on music, fashion, movies, technology. You know, like Access Hollywood, Extra, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, that kind of thing. In a similar, or at least compatible, vein and airing right afterwards, Online Nation looks at blogs and user-generated content on the internet.

The CW also has a couple of midseason reality shows like Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants and Farmer Wants a Wife, plus there’ll be another Pussycat Dolls search. The first of these is a beauty pageant with the added bonus of there being mother and daughter teams fighting one another. And the second is exactly what it sounds like: a reality show where 10 women compete for the hand of one farmer.

One Tree Hill will be back too… at some point, somewhere.

Poor, poor Veronica Mars. Kristen, I want you to know though, if you need comfort, I’m here for you. All you have to do is e-mail. Please e-mail.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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