Tuesday, May 18, 2004 Upfront Week: The WB I'll save the futon critic some bandwidth and link directly to TheWB.com's promo page: God, I couldn't care less about their sitcoms if I tried. And the only drama I'm at all interested in is Jack and Bobby, which has the pedigree of quality known as Greg Berlanti and Thomas Schlamme. (Man, that was quite the rhyming sentence, huh?) No way The Mountain can compare to The O.C., and that's not shooting high to begin with. I remain convinced that Josh Schwartz's writing is the only thing that kept The O.C. from meeting Fastlane's fate. Well, that and the pretty pretty stars, though Adam Brody doesn't look nearly as nice as Peter Facinelli shirtless. This is the first year in a long series of years that The WB is genre-less. No Buffy, no Angel, and the two genre pilots they had in production -- Lost In Space and Dark Shadows -- didn't make it. This really is a bold new direction. And by bold new direction, I mean "giving the adolescent girls whatever they want." But as much shit as I'm willing to give the Frog, I will say this -- I haven't done any math yet, but it would appear that their fall schedule is much heavier on the scripted series than NBC or ABC. Only one night has a regularly scheduled reality show (Studio 7) -- the rest of their shows are variety, sitcom, and drama. Will the WB become narrative's last stand? It's a disturbing thought. | permalink blog • archives • photos • about • contact This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All content © 2004.