More Mid Season Replacement Shows

Every year after Christmas the networks trot out their hopeful new hits to fill the vacancies left by the failures from the fall. These midseason replacement shows tend to be far more spread out than the late September/early October fall launches, with debuts coming from early January through late March. Some great shows have been launched in this winter period, stuff like Deep Space Nine, Futurama, and The Family Guy. At the same time, some total dogs have also arisen in the same periods. I rated several of this years crop a few weeks ago, and now I'm rating some of the late arrivals.

Andy Richter Controls the Universe (CTV/Fox Tuesday Evening): There are currently a bunch of new gimmicks that new comedies are using. First, ditch the laugh track. Second, use fantasy sequences. Third, have the main character talk directly to the audience. Finally, make all the characters dysfunctional. Most shows use one or two of these techniques. For example, Scrubs uses no laugh track and lots of fantasy sequences. The Job uses no laugh track and all dysfunctional characters. Andy Richter uses all of these, and surprisingly uses them very well. Once you accept the the continual fantasy sequences and the asides to the audience, it all starts to make sense. And it's funny. It's very funny. It's not for kids, to be sure, but it's funny. Of course I'm calling it Good.

Zed (CBC Monday to Friday Nights): And now for something completely different. The CBC isn't a network known for being particularly avant-garde (these are the people that aired The Beachcombers for nearly 20 years) but this show certainly is. It's almost impossible to describe. It has a rather impressive slate of guest hosts (Bif Naked and Kardinal Offishall are the most noteworthy) for a one hour show that airs at 11:30 PM on weeknights. Not exactly something that will find a terribly big audience. By now you are probably asking "What is it about?" That's not easy to answer. It's not about any one thing in particular, so far as I can tell (check out the rather impressive website for the show for more info), but since this airs at 11:30 PM for an hour I don't really watch it all that often, which is really too Bad.

Greg the Bunny (Fox Wednesday Night): This is a puppet show. . . on Fox. Make all the jokes you want about Fox, they're all probably true. This show is every bit as off the wall and irreverent as you'd ever hope, and probably a bit more. You have to accept that in the reality of this show, puppets are every bit as human as humans. Got that? Greg is a rabbit puppet who lands a job on a children's show with a cast and crew that's highly dysfunctional. Although the setting is a children's show and it's about puppets, Greg the Bunny is definitely NOT a kiddie show. On last week's show, for example, Jimmy (Greg's human roommate) goes out with a girl whose dog ends up mauling Greg, so to reduce the canine's aggressive tendencies Junction Jack (a human who works on the show with Greg) castrates the pooch and refills the scrotum with novelty Sammy Davis Jr. eyeballs that play a bad version of "The Candyman." So you might want to keep the little ones away from this. If that 60 word run on sentence just now didn't scare you, then watch this show. It's that Good.

Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central) (CTV Tuesday Evening, ABC Wednesday Evening): You heard it here first: The traditional sitcom is dead. Well, maybe not entirely dead, but it's bleeding out fast. This is a perfect example. It's a workplace sitcom with a laugh track and loads of impressive talent, people like Ivan Sergei (who you might remember from Once a Thief), Ed Begley Jr (who you might remember from lots of stuff, such as St. Elsewhere and This Is Spinal Tap) and John Cleese (who if you don't remember, you're too young to be watching this show). And there are impressive guest stars like John Ritter and Lori Loughlin. So by the numbers this show should work. But it doesn't. The characters aren't at all engaging, not even Ivan Sergei's likeable Midwestern everyman main character. This show went into the spot recently vacated by The Job, and both episodes have pulled ratings less than every single episode of The Job to air. And so it has already been cancelled. How's that for Ugly?