Dirty Sexy returns from hiatus, a little bit truer to its name
Journey with me to the sepia-toned days of fall 2007. An innocent nation grappled with the news that Dumbledore was gay. Hillary Clinton girded for her inevitable presidential race against Rudy Giuliani. And the networks, after launching a roster of fall shows to anemic ratings, were hit by a three-month-long writers' strike.
The networks faced two problems. Their highest-profile new shows were unable to air complete seasons. And the strike disrupted development, giving them little new product to launch in fall 2008.
The two-birds-with-one-stone solution: bring back fall 2007! The networks kept many of their new shows off the air after the strike, and are now relaunching them after a long absence for a "do over" season. The pitch: Remember all those shows you were mildly interested in last fall, America? We bet you'll be even more mildly interested in them this fall!
In some cases, you actually might be. Spy comedy Chuck (NBC, Mondays, 8 p.m. E.T.) returns like an old friend back from a year abroad: still likable, still funny, but with an added note of intrigue. Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) is a salesman in the Nerd Herd of a big-box electronics store. One day he gets an e-mail that implants his brain with the U.S. government's classified data bank. Overnight, he becomes a conscripted secret agent and a marked man. (Remember, people: Never open unfamiliar attachments!)
The premise is so frothy you could destroy it by blowing on it, but the show is a delight, driven by Levi's geek charm and Chuck's tentative romance with his fed overseer, Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski). The new episodes quickly jump back in, with higher stakes and sharper jokes, and creator Josh Schwartz hasn't let the strike stop him from developing Chuck's character. He's gone from nebbish-out-of-water to nerdily assured operative, capable of seducing an enemy agent over cocktails with high-IQ trivia banter ("... and that is the true history behind the croissant!").
Like Chuck, NBC's Life should have an advantage returning poststrike: its episodes are also designed to be enjoyed individually, with simple ongoing plots. This format was in vogue at the networks in 2007, a step back from complicated serials like Lost that virtually demand a postgraduate degree to watch. The strategy amounts to unintentional strike-proofing, since it requires viewers to remember less mythology. Like canned peas, these shows are just as enjoyable after a year on the shelf.
But that approach risks some loss of flavor. In Life (Fridays, 10 p.m. E.T.; preview debut Sept. 29), Damian Lewis plays Charlie Crews, a cop wrongly convicted of murder who returns from jail with a big cash settlement and a Zen outlook. Because of Lewis' brilliant portrayal of the eccentric Charlie, the show is perfectly enjoyable. It's just not compelling, mainly because the ongoing story of Charlie's search for justice is so isolated from the rest of the show that it seems meant for bathroom and snack breaks. Life could disappear for five years, and I'd probably enjoy it just as much again. But I wouldn't spend a minute of those five years thinking about it.
NBC's comic-book serial Heroes (Mondays, 9 p.m. E.T.) debuted in 2006, but after the network aborted an atrocious second season halfway through--more a mercy killing than a hiatus--Season 3 is every bit as much a do-over. The premiere picks up directly from 2007's ending, and where last season moseyed toward reuniting its everyday superheroes, Season 3 gets them in the mix immediately. In particular, it keeps fan-favorite Hiro (Masi Oka) busy after stranding him in medieval Japan last season.
Heroes' canvas is too vast to tell if the show is fixed yet. One weakness is the need for better villains. Uber-baddie Sylar (Zachary Quinto) is up to his old tricks; his menace and mission (stealing superheroes' powers by killing them) are too familiar to be scary anymore. He's a popular villain, but Season 3 will have to figure out how to avoid becoming his hostage.
Doctors, Darlings and Daisies
ABC, meanwhile, has the biggest challenge, bringing back two heavily serial soap operas whose twists and turns many have probably long forgotten. Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money, both returning Oct. 1, open with ham-handed, if unavoidable, exposition scenes reminding us who the characters are and why we care.
Time has been least kind to Grey's Anatomy spin-off Practice (Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.). After nine tepid episodes (and a subpar season of Grey's) last year, there's less reason than ever to care about the dramedies and quirky cases of sexy doctors at a ritzy "wellness center," and the return episode trudges along like a 44-min. chore (even if there is some resonance, in this pregnancy-besotted election season, to the reproductive-medicine subject matter).
DSM (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. E.T.)--about Nick George (Peter Krause), who becomes in-house lawyer to the rich, tabloid-fodder family the Darlings--started fall 2007 sassy and slick but became increasingly earnest and torpid as it went on. The producers decided, astutely, that it needed to return dirtier and sexier, or there would be no mo' money. The return episode is also funnier and dumber, in the best sense: it's the kind of show in which a jilted wife confronts her politician husband with a golf club in the shower over his tranny lover. Its stripped-from-the-tabloids approach is nothing new, but it's well done, and a little familiarity won't hurt the show's chances.
No one would accuse Pushing Daisies (ABC, Wednesdays, 8 p.m. E.T.; returns Oct. 1) of overfamiliarity. Piemaker Ned (Lee Pace) can raise the dead by touching them. If he touches them again, they die again; if he leaves them alive for a minute, someone else dies. He reanimates his childhood crush, Chuck (Anna Friel); they fall in love but can never touch. And they solve murders! (The return episode spends about seven minutes re-explaining the premise.)
Yet Daisies' fairy-tale story is so unlike anything else on TV that it seems new even a year later. Unveiling one dazzling image after another (Chuck is a beekeeper, and when her colony fails, she pours a bucket of bees over Ned; they return to life in a shower of sparks), Daisies has a timeless, picture-book look. It could be set today, in the '30s, in the '70s or in any other decade fond of saturated color. Like Chuck herself, it's a perfect candidate for a second chance: as glowing and lovable as the day we first met it. You'd never believe it used to be dead.