Which of These New Fall TV Shows Will Fail First?
If there is anything we can guarantee about the fall TV season, it's that at least one of the highly promoted network newcomers will fail to catch on with audiences and meet a premature end. Heck, it happens every year.
But which freshman series will be this year's This Is Us, and which will be its Conviction? Below, we have picked out some of the pros and cons facing each of the new broadcast series debuting between September and November
Pros: No Marvel show has ever been canceled mid-season. And this one has been given one of the most unique rollouts in TV history, with the first two episodes currently screening on 1,000 IMAX screens almost a month before they debut on television. It takes place mostly in Hawaii, so it (theoretically) should be nice to look at.
Cons: Where to begin? Inhumans is not technically a spinoff from ABC's sole Marvel hit (Agents of SHIELD), nor is it based on one of Marvel's better known properties. (If anything, the Inhuman Royal Family characters here come off as a poor man's version of the X-Men.) The series comes from Scott Buck, who is responsible for the only unequivocal Marvel dud so far. Fans reacted negatively to the first trailers, while this summer's presentation to TV critics was an awkward disaster. ABC has opted to air the show on Friday nights—not exactly a ringing endorsement for such a high-profile program. And those first episodes now in theaters? They are being savaged by critics, who think the show looks small, cheap, bland, uninspired, "baffling," "pitiful," "a slog to get through," and even "laughably asinine."