Yet Another Media Blog

We're kicking off our weeklong preview of the fall television season with Monday:

New Show of Note: Prison Break on FOX (9pm), the high-concept drama of a guy who purposely goes to prison in order to break out his wrongfully convicted brother. This actually debuted in late August, and so far has been good escapist fun, as long as you don't think about it too hard. It's only scheduled to run until the end of 2005 (in order to make way for 24 to return in January), so hopefully there will be some resultion as they actually make good on the title's promise.

Returning Favorite: Arrested Development (also on FOX, 8pm) was pretty much the funniest show on tv for two seasons running, and frankly its amazing that it is coming back for a third go-around.

Bonehead Scheduling Move of the Night: Two new sitcoms with Buffy-alums as costars: Kitchen Confidential (FOX) with Nicholas Brendan, and How I Met Your Mother (CBS) with Alyson Hannigan. Against each other in the 8:30 slot. How is a Buffy fan to choose? I'll probably go with Kitchen, seeing as it's on right after Arrested Development. Then again, Mother has Doogie Howser...

Also New: Surface (NBC) is also in the 8pm slot, although it looks as though SciFi channel will be carrying it in later-in-the-week re-broadcasts, so even though it looks to be the weakest of the three invasion-themed shows this fall I'll probably at least sample it to see if it's any good.

Also Returning: Las Vegas (NBC, 9pm), although I was really starting to get fatigued on this show near the end of last season, and they're bringing in Lara Flynn Boyle as a new cast member to spice things up, which is never really a good sign for a show. Still, there's always Nikki Cox...