Sepinwall on TV: The re-freshman class of '08

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on July 31, 2008 at 4:59 AM, updated August 01, 2008 at 12:44 PM
Because of the writers strike, there won't be a lot of new shows on TV this fall. Instead, the strike has forced several of last year's newbies to repeat their freshman year.

When the strike ended, five rookie series were renewed for another season at the same time their networks said they wouldn't be back until the fall: NBC's action/comedy "Chuck" and cop drama "Life," plus ABC's Wednesday lineup of quirky supernatural dramedy "Pushing Daisies," "Grey's Anatomy" spin-off "Private Practice" and soap opera "Dirty Sexy Money."

The thinking at each network was that these shows might get lost in the shuffle of all the series returning post-strike and would do better with a big promotional push in the fall. But all aired between 9 and 13 episodes, and all but "Chuck" ran their last original episode in early December. ("Chuck" had a couple of leftover pre-strike episodes that ran in late January.)

By the time each series returns in September, they'll have been off the air or in repeats for nine months or more. While TV fans have shown a willingness to wait that long, or longer, for established, popular shows like "Lost" or "The Sopranos," none of these re-freshman had reached that level of loyalty with their audience, and the creative teams behind each show are aware that they're basically starting from scratch.

"We are re-launching the show," says "Life" creator Rand Ravich. "Our episode one this season is a sort of pilot. If you have never seen the show before, you can come to this episode one and be thrown into the world and not be left behind and be instantly up to date with everything that's happening."

"There were fans who were watching the show last season who will carry over, and hopefully, new people will join on," says "Private Practice" creator Shonda Rhimes. "But I really wanted especially the first episode to be an episode that if you've never seen the show, you would be able to step right into it. If you had seen the show, you'd go, 'Ah' and see maybe deeper layers to it, and it would feel fresh."

Even in a dozen episodes or less, each show established enough of an ongoing storyline that the creators are taking extra care to explain things for newcomers and/or to refresh the memories of people who watched the abbreviated first seasons. Ravich has joked that the first "Previously, on 'Life'" will take up the entire season premiere, while "Chuck" creator Josh Schwartz decided to play with the idea by opening season two with the titular geek-turned-hero (Zachary Levi) dangling from a window as he tells the bad guy exactly how his life came to this point.

In the making-lemonade-out-of-lemons school of thought, the re-freshman producers are all looking at the extended hiatus as something of a blessing. Sure, they'd all prefer to have made a complete first season - and to have been paid for one - but all took advantage of the extended time off to examine what was and wasn't working about their shows.

"The strike, creatively, really helped us," says "Pushing Daisies" creator Bryan Fuller, "because we were able to stop and take stock of the show - what was working, what wasn't working, how we were able to do it more efficiently. All of that really paid off, because the break really allowed us to get out of the weeds and look at the horizon."

For season two of "Pushing Daisies," about a piemaker (Lee Pace) with the power to temporarily raise the dead with a touch of his hand, Fuller wants to expand the world of the show, introducing more strange locales and characters so his main characters won't seem quite so isolated.

When "Private Practice" started, Rhimes wanted to distance the show from "Grey's Anatomy" and so had main character Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) stop performing surgery. Now a year removed from the parent show, Rhimes has decided it's okay for Addison to get back in the operating room, and that the series works best when it focuses more on the ethical dilemmas faced by Addison and her co-workers.

"There is surgery in it because Addison is a surgeon," Rhimes acknowledges, "and she gets back to doing that. But there's also just very high stakes in terms of the medicine that raises questions about what you would do if you were in that situation - things that cause debate and conflict and are very interesting."

"We knew that (after the strike ended), Shonda was retooling and getting a real chance to focus on bringing 'Grey's' back," says "Practice" co-star Audra McDonald. "And then when it was time to bring 'Private Practice' back and for us to go into production, we would have her full attention. So I think it was to the betterment of the show for us to sit out and not try and rush back in."

With "Dirty Sexy Money," about the lawyer (Peter Krause) for a wealthy, corrupt New York family, the producers used the time away to find their balance between comedy and drama.

"I think almost inevitably (that a) show called 'Dirty Sexy Money' was going to be a very unique blend of tones," says creator Craig Wright, "and I think what we learned last season is that sometimes we would make episodes early on that were a little too serious, without any of the satirical fun and without any of the over-the-top extravagance, and then we would boomerang back and make an episode maybe that was, you know, way too serious without the other stuff, and we'd go back and forth."

Schwartz realized that, while "Chuck" found its own tone early, the plots worked best when they either had some personal connection for one of the characters or were part of some larger story arc. So season two will feature an ongoing story about the government's attempt to build a new version of the computer that got downloaded into Chuck's brain, and the standalone stories will have more of a biographical punch, like an episode guest-starring Nicole Richie as the high school nemesis of Chuck's CIA handler Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski).

"We know when we're watching an episode now when it feels like we've veered off and we're just another show," says Schwartz. "The one thing above all that we're striving for with 'Chuck' is that it doesn't feel like another show."

Befitting his main character, Zen koan-spouting LAPD detective Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis), "Life" creator Ravich describes the lessons of season one in philosophical terms.

"I found out that you really need to trust the character. You cannot force the character into situations where you think it would play. You cannot force the character into something where you go, 'Oh, this will be a morality tale or whatever.' You need to let the character grow. You need to be on Charlie Crews' side. 'Oh, I'm just out of prison, I'm unsprung, I've got all this money, I can say anything to anyone that I want, I've got this ex-wife.' You need to let those circumstances drive the character and not force him into jerry-rigged circumstances that you or the studio or the network think would be fun. You need to let him drive the show."

Several of the series have undergone cast changes between seasons. "Dirty Sexy Money" dropped Samaire Armstrong as the Paris Hilton-esque daughter of Donald Sutherland (she may return on occasion) and is adding Lucy Liu to the cast in an attempt to make the show, as Craig Wright puts it, "dirtier, sexier and monier." Donal Logue joins the cast of "Life" as Crews' new boss in an attempt to lighten Lewis' workload (Robin Weigert, who had been playing the boss, will appear from time to time in a new capacity).

And in some cases, the hiatus simply allowed each production team to take a breath and get a batter handle on logistics.

"I think we also got better at figuring out how to do it on a TV schedule and a TV budget," says "Pushing Daisies" producer Dan Jinks. "It's an incredibly ambitious show to do -- it looks like a movie -- and we've figured out what we can create and how to do big spectacular things in our TV world."

"Our stunt coordinator is fantastic," says Schwartz, "and that's something we wanted to spend more time on. But we've upped the ante this year, there's some great action and stunts, our stunt coordinator is fantastic, and that's something we wanted to spend some time on, make the fights fancier and the explosions more fiery."

No one knows how much of the previous audience will return come September, or whether they can attract new viewers who weren't there last season, but everyone's trying to look for the silver lining in this scenario.

"When you do series television, there's always a period where you're trying to find the show," says "Private "Practice" co-star Tim Daly. "When we stopped, we were kind of trying to find the show, and I think we have taken a big leap in terms of where we started this year. We're already, I think, a better show than we were at the end of that little season. It's starting to kind of solidify for us. So it's not like starting over; it's just like starting in a place that's a lot better."
