This week brings the premieres of many of fall’s new TV series, including two from the new team behind Star Trek and one from Star Trek’s original Kirk. Monday saw Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s Hawaii Five-0 win its time slot, and Wednesday JJ Abrams new show Undercovers premiered with somewhat disappointing ratings, while last night William Shatner’s $#!* My Dad Says scored big.
Kutzman and Orci’s Hawaii Five-0 #1 new Monday show
On Monday CBS premiered Hawaii Five-0, the reboot of the classic cop show from the 70s. The show was co-created by Star Trek writer/producers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and is produced by their K/O Paper Products production company. The pilot was also written by Orci and Kurtzman, telling a new "origin story" on how Steve McGarret (Alex O’Loughlin), Danno (Scott Caan), Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim) and the "Five 0" task force came together. The premiere was the top rated new show on Monday and won the 10PM timeslot. The pilot was watched by 13.8 Million viewers, with a 3.9 rating in the key 18-49 Demo. The show easily beat the season premiere of Castle on ABC (2.8 demo rating) and Chase on NBC (2.5 demo rating).
Hawaii Five-0 main title sequence w/ classic music
Although not a genre show, Hawaii Five-0 is full of action and does have a couple genre stars as regulars: Daniel Dae Kim (from Lost and Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise), as well as Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica). And the bad guy in the pilot was played by James Marsters (Buffy), who could be returning to the show. Reviews for the series have also been very favorable, so Hawaii Five-0 is off to a good start.
Preview of next week’s episode "Ohana"
You can get more info about the show, including watching the pilot and more video clips and behind the scenes videos at CBS.com.
Abrams’ Undercovers underperforms
NBC heavily promoted JJ Abrams return to the spy genre with the TV series Undercovers, noting it comes from the man behind Lost and Star Trek. The pilot for Undercovers was also directed by JJ Abrams (complete with lens flares), but apparently that wasn’t enough as the show premiered in third place in overall viewers (8.6M) and fourth place in terms of the key demo (2.0 rating). CBS’ Survivor Nicaragua won the 8PM Wednesday timeslot with 12.5M viewers and a 4.0 demo rating, but Fox and ABC shows also beat Undercovers.
Preview of next week’s episode
More videos, including the pilot, are available at NBC.com.
Shatner’s sitcom scores big
William Shatner’s new sitcom $#!* My Dad Says had generally unfavorable reviews. While Shatner was generally praised, the show itself was mostly panned, but that did not stop the show from scoring big ratings last night. The CBS sitcom benefited from the lead in of The Big Bang Theory and both shows won the hour. $#!* My Dad Says held 80% of the audience for Big Bang and was watched by 12.5M viewers and had a 3.9 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, beating head to head competition with the popular NBC sitcom 30 Rock, as well as the second half hours on Fox (Bones), CW (Vampire Diaries) and ABC (My Generation).
Preview for next week’s episode
More videos and the first episode for $#!* My Dad Says available at CBS.com.
Orci, Kurtzman and Abrams pilots for next season
As we have been reporting, JJ Abrams already has three pilot projects in the works for next season with Alcatraz at FOX, Persons of Interest at CBS, and Odd Jobs (the comedy/drama with Michael Emerson and terry O’Quinn) landing at NBC.
And earlier this week FOX gave a pilot order for a new series from Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman called Exit Strategy, described as a high octane procedural set in the world of CIA agents who are sent in to "fix" operations gone bad.
And with all of that, Fringe the sci-fi show from Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman, kicked off its 3rd season last night. That show started the season with a 30% drop from the season 2 premiere with 5.8M viewers and a 2.1 demo rating.
Data for article source from TVByTheNumbers.
He shat all over them!!! Go Bill!
Congrats to Hawai’i Bob-O and Book’em Alex on a job well done! Best relaunch of an old series since TNG (and a better relaunch than TNG’s first season was, honestly! It took All Good Things to fix Encounter at Farpoint.)
What can we say. The Shat is Back with a Vengence!!!. Hawaii 5-0 looks to be a great show and they have some great actors. looks to be a solid Hit. Looks like the Court is off to a pretty good start. Hang in there J.J But please lose the Flares. It was ok with Trek. But not for a T.V Series.
Oh. The Shat was as funny as $#!*
Just when the Big Bang Theory was starting to soften my loathing for the traditional sitcom along comes $#!* My Dad Says to prove the rule. I guess BBT is the exception to the rule.
Bill was great, sadly it ends there.
Watched Undercovers and was underimpressed. While Gugu Mbatha-Raw was too beautiful to look away from, it was predictable formula TV with too much cutesy dialogue. Nothing challenging. Just another show to help you store calories and get fat.
Bob Orci doing a CIA TV show??? Well THAT should be interesting. It’s hard for me to imagine Bob doing a show about the same organization that brought us MKULTRA in an altogether positive way.
Hawaii 5-0 was fantastic fun, and I certainly intend to watch more. Shit my Dad says on the other hand was just the opposite. Everything Shatner said was gold, its a shame every other aspect of the show was shit.
As for undercovers i’m afraid the spy couple thing just doesn’t interest me at all in the slightest. I wish it well, but I’m afraid I won’t be watching.
6. I know, right? Gonna have to figure out how to navigate.
I’ve read a few reviews for Shat My Dad Says, mainly because I missed watching it, that said the show was bad but Shatner was good. One review pointed out that Shatner is genuinely funny but that his style doesn’t really fit the sitcom mold. It seems like every year there’s a new show that starts strong and seems like it will defy the odds, but drops off fast and winds up getting cancelled. Shat My Dad says might be that show.
I love the Shat, but his new show simply sucks.
I’m loyal to the Shatner. I watched the show for him. It’s not a very good show but no one can say I’m not loyal. I don’t see it lasting a season. Sorry.
Hmm, JJ’s show didn’t perform.
As far as having genre stars in the new Hawaii Five-O, Alex O’Loughlin can also be counted -anyone remembers “Moonlight”
Yes, James Marsters is not the only ex-vampire in Hawaii Five-O.
Great job on 5-O guys! Well done, it kept me interested, Scott Caan was hilarious, and Boomer was great to look at. I loved every minute of it.
I had to work, so I missed the Shat. But my girlfriend watched it and said she thought it was okay, and hoped it might get better. She said the last 5 minutes was the best part of the show, but the rest was unnatural, just a series of one-liners. Of course, I trust her judgement completely…
I like this idea “Exit Strategy,” watching agents go about fixing “operations gone bad.” I’ll bet there are a gazillion stories out there!
This certainly doesn’t sound like your typical cop show, and sounds like it might have a sort of Mission: Impossible flavor to it.
Shatner’s show had a couple of good laughs, which is rare (for me, anyway) in most current comedies. And I had zero expectations going in. 5-0 will probably need good stories over explosions and gunfire to work long term.
Instead of titling the name of the show with a body function and offend lots of Shatner fans, why not just call it “Shat , My Dad Says”.. Everyone will get it ! Great title, I think!
Sorry – I couldn’t take more than about 15 minutes of Hawaii Five-O.
There are two kinds of TiVo usage – 1) speeding past the commercials to get back to the good stuff, and 2) pausing the show itself to clip your toenails, check the placement of your shoes for the morning, etc.
When I realized I’d spent 30 minutes slogging through that first quarter hour, I decidfed that was enough.
Paint-by-numbers TV, pure and simple.
As a way to mute, briefly, the experience of glee experienced by Messrs. Orci and Kurtzmann at their success, I dredged up a 1970s punk version of the H5-0 theme by UK supergroup, “Splodgenessaabounds”.
It’s really, really cool until, well…
Enjoy and destroy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9AnUs2urC4
Go Bill, Go Pies…..
I thought Shatner’s show was so-so. The ending with the Girl Scouts and the shotgun did make me laugh, but the rest was forgettable sitcom rubbish. Strangely, I thought while watching it that the relationship between Shat and his family would work better as a non-laugh track “dramedy.”
But I will give it another viewing next week to see if it improves. Pilots (especially sitcom pilots) are almost always rough and awkward; the actors are still in the process of getting to know their characters while the writing is generally shoddy. Just go back and watch the pilot to Seinfeld!
Just ONE question:
Why is it ok for the new Hawaii Five-O to have the same theme music…
…but TOS fans are ‘fanboys’ because they wanted the USS Enterprise to look more familiar, or the bridge, or Engineering or even having the TOS theme music? Huh? Why the double standard?
Shatner continues to prove why he is The Shat. No matter what role he’s given, it’s pure entertainment. Unfortunately I was disappointed at the poor acting from a couple of his co-stars. I like the idea of going back to the classic sitcom format of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, because TV needs more bread and butter like that, but it needs some tweaking.
8. “Gonna have to figure out how to navigate.”
Carefully. I want you involved with Star Trek for a long time to come. ; )
There’s good and bad in any organization, right? People who want to do the right thing and people who’ve sacrificed their consciences to believe the ends justify the means. Eisenhower has already given you the core of the conflict. Converting his speech into an action story could be a very cool thing to see. It might even prove to be a benefit to society.
#21 – Music is one thing. Not having cellphones, old cars & aircraft, etc. is another. It would look pretty stupid to have the regulars tooling around in a 1972 Plymouth looking for a pay phone, while examining punch cards from the local room-sized computer.
“It’s Shotgun time!” Best line of the show! It’s funny I like it!
Shatner is invincible.
And the 1972 Plymouth was a lovely automobile.
Bill is funny but his show is not. Community (a show with, ya know, actual laughs) got a pretty good joke out of it when one of the characters contemplates whether he can make a TV show out of Twitter account and all the other characters respond by saying it would never work.
#21
Good point!
#24
“Music is one thing. Not having cellphones, old cars & aircraft, etc. is another.”
It’s seems to be working for Mad Men! ;)
Correction: It seems to be working for Mad Men! ;)
$#*! My Dad Says was okay. Shatner was terrific!
I can’t imagine watching Hawaii 5-0 as I hated it the first time, but I might check it out to see Alex O’Loughlin. I watched the entire DVD set of Moonlight a couple of weeks ago and liked him a lot.
I liked Hawaii Five-O, but I thought it moved too fast (a common complaint these days) and really should have been a two-hour or two-parter episode. Also, while the ratings were good, after the HUGE promotion for the show, I have to think CBS is a tad disappointed that Five-O got lower ratings than running-on-fumes CSI Miami did one year ago. “Castle” is really eating into what was once a dominant timeslot for CBS.
Bleep My Dad Says needs work. Fast. Shatner was terrific but he looked as embarrassed delivering those lines as he did in “Spock’s Brain”. Denny Crane this character is not. The guy playing Shatner’s son was awful, and the writing was even worse. Not that no one saw this coming for a show based on a Twitter feed. In the last few years, we’ve had a sitcom based on a commercial (“Cavemen”), a movie based on a blog (“Julie and Julia”) and now a sitcom based on a Twitter feed. The first two flopped and almost no one seems to have liked Bleep My Dad Says despite the big ratings (which will likely continue against NBCs and ABCs flops.)
“Big Bang Theory” has now proven it is not a time slot phenomenon after all, although that was far from the show’s best episode (the Howard storyline was so over the top it could be seen from the Space Station.)
I’m sorry, but I was unimpressed by all three. “5-0” was so cliché it was boring, “Shit” was just that and “Undercovers” was … nice, but not much more.
Just my opinions. Judging by the numbers and the other comments, I’m in the minority. As usual.
21… They actually used a variation of the classic Five-O theme for the pilot. It was absolutely awful (it may have been intended to be temporary all along, but thank heavens they changed it.) So they went to something very close to (though much shorter than) the original, which in all likelihood is the greatest TV theme song ever written. No problem at all with reusing it. (I just wish we’d get the 60 second version.)
But why was the opening credits sequence filtered down to look grainy, with those “interlace” like lines through it? This is HAWAII… beautiful scenery and beautiful girls. Why in the world are they trying to hide it?
And what? No distant pull in to McGarrett on the balcony? Come on!
(And no teaser for next week with “Be there, aloha!” either, but I didn’t expect that and it would sound silly coming from O’Loughlin anyway. There is no authority in his voice like there was for Jack Lord.)
ill agree with ‘undercovers’ geting low marks.
but i have to say for 5-0 that it looks to be a good show in the FUTURE. but that first ep was a solid no higher then a ‘D+’
Speaking of “Lost” and “Star Trek” did you see the YouTube parody of when the crew of Star Trek visits the Island of “Lost” and try to figure out what is going on? If you haven’t I’ve linked it below.
1. Star Trek visits “Lost.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J_Q_mkw-Vw&feature=related
2. Extra. Frustrated with Lost’s “interpret it any way you want” plot lines? This video allows you to kill of Hurley in four different ways. I like Magneto’s offing of the fat guy the best. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1P42e8TmHY
I knew Undercovers would not do well the moment I saw it stars black people. These networks should really consult with me before they put stuff on the air.
1.)The premier didn’t do well because people weren’t going to watch black people. If it ain’t a Huxtable, America ain’t tuning in.
2.)Those who watched it didn’t think it was very good, because hollywood won’t put black people in starring roles on shows that are actually good.
[/soap box rant]
Am I crazy, or did I see footage from “Wolverine” in the 5-0 opening credits?
(The rocket-equipped chopper and the exploding Humvee.)
“$H*! My Dad Says” was OK… I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it… but it does have an extremely adventageous time slot wedged between BBT (which is proving to be a ratings winner on its own) and the original CSI. It will certainly be given a chance to evolve as a show unless it starts hemorraging BBTs lead-in numbers.
Best Shat line of the night though was right after the actor playing his son mocks his father “by… over… emoting… each… word” in typical Shat fashion. To which Shatner replies, “why can’t anyone do a good impersonation of me?” Sometimes, the inside jokes work best!
Undercovers is doing quite well in illegal downloads. It seems as though people beyond America’s borders actually enjoyed watching the quasi-black folks in a romantic spy comedy with cutesy dialogue. Go figure… market elsewhere, JJ!!!
Oops, I take it back. The Five-O intro does have the long pull in to McGarrett on the balcony. Blink and you’ll miss it (which I did the first time.)
Thank goodness they put BACK the big brass sound on H5O’s theme. The twangy computer crap didn’t cut it. Anyway — not a bad pilot. Need to see more character development. Pretty standard stuff so far. Don’t get a sense of the new chemistry, although there were a few fun bits. It’d be nice to see no more than 2-3 ‘splosions/car chases per ep and some time spent getting to know everyone. That makes the ‘splosions more exciting, because we care who gets ‘sploded.
My mom HATES Shatner. Even hated him as Denny Crane. Told me there was no way she’d watch his new show knowing how very excited I was about it.
She just so happened to stick around for it after the Big Bang Theory and said she had to admit she thought it was hilarious and will now be tivo-ing it regularly.
Nicely done Bill
#39. . . this proves my point. America won’t watch black people, but the rest of the world will.
My only question, what in the heck are “quasi-black folks”??
Good job on the early success of 5-0 guys. I hope it continues to flourish. I noticed we aren’t having to wait to long for it here in the UK, so i will give it a look.
#21 you generalised just a little there, didn’t you John! I can only answer it by saying 5-0 doesn’t have much weight of history behind it, unlike TOS.
My favorite part was when he was all “blah blah blah calls me dano” and his buddy laughed at him. . . and he was all that’s not funny
and the later, the dude was like “book him dano” and i was like omgwtf did he really just say that?!!?!
TOP NOTCH WRITING!!!
#43 – I guess that explains why Oprah is helplessly unpopular and the Cosby juggernaut of the 80’s to 90’s were an illusion perpetrated by THE MAN.
46. Pays the bills.
Wow- the promo from Undercovers looks like a black parody of white people in bad action series from a Tyler Perry movie…
#47 – I already mentioned Cosby in my first post #36. There are a few safe negroes out there that America will watch. Cosby and Oprah. Can you name any other shows with black casts doing well?
Ever wonder why TNG did better than DS9 in the ratings?
On TNG, the black guy was kept in his place by massah whitey captain. White people love that. Dude couldn’t even score with chicks without a holodeck. They made him blind too, just so Americans wouldn’t have to be afraid he might steal their wallet. Even the casting is suspect. Cast the black dude who’d already passed the “you’re safe for white people” test. We already saw him beaten and whipped in the late 70s, so we kinda felt bad for him. And he taught our kids to read on PBS.
Why did DS9 not do as well in the ratings? Three words Avery M’F’ing Brooks. That dude was dangerous and they put him in charge. White folks can’t handle that = lower ratings.
So now back to Undercovers. We gots two mostly unknown black folks (or quasi-black folks, whatever that other poster meant) who haven’t yet passed the “you’re safe for white people” test in America. Add to that the chick has an African sounding name, and white people are running for the hills. This show won’t have a second season.
Meanwhile, people are going to eat up that Hawaii 5-0 crapfest.