The FOX upfront

So...

Part two of my upfront thoughts, this time on Fox. If you don't know what an upfront is, check out the previous post I did on NBC's.

First, the shows Fox canned:

There really isn't anything here except The Wanda Sykes Show.

Returning:

Pretty much everything, even Lie to Me and Human Target. Lie to Me is surprising in that it is back for the fall, and I don't see it sticking around too long past that... especially since the showrunner just left to do a new series for Fox (more on that in a minute). Lie to Me is a weird sell to begin with -- a man can tell whether people are lying and calls them out on it?? Human Target is a show that had some potential. I liked the Die Hard vibe to it and the concept of putting the lead in a different "cool" location each week, from a mountain top sanctuary to a foreign embassy to an out of control train, but it was too male skewed and needed a strong female on the team to break up the testosterone and give the boys a female voice to bounce off. There's word that someone from Chuck is coming over to help co-run the show, so there maybe be a chance of this happening. Or it could just screw the show up royally and make it too cheesy and inter-connected the way Chuck got. Still, it is a stand-alone, episode of the week type show with relatively no mythology, so should be easy to fix up and still attract viewers in it's sophomore season.

Now for Fox's new shows:

Lonestar. It's described as another Dallas. Doesn't excite me, so I have nothing to say there.

The Good Guys. Why is this an hour? Sometimes it just seems like they stretch it out to fill time. Still, the casting is enough for me to check out the comedy in hopes of a good buddy cop comedy. Bradley Whitford plays the burnt out loose-cannon, while Colin Hanks plays his rookie, by-the-book partner.

Running Wilde stars Will Arnett as a jerk trying to win back his childhood sweetheart. Now, Arnett is funny, no doubt about it, but he's a bit like Kramer from Seinfeld in that I wonder if he can hold a show on his own. And will this concept get old? Futher, will people tune in to see Will Arnett each week (other than his tiny, yet devoted following)? Time will tell.

That's about it for Fox. There schedule isn't very exciting to me. The real interest will be in the Spring when we see how American Idol fares without Simon Cowell (I'm guessing further decline unless they can get a huge presence to give them an initial ratings bump) and to see how X-Factor does with Cowell. X-factor is like Idol but with bands, not just individuals, competing.