Two totally unqualified critics preview the new fall season. Emily Shur
Each fall, a new crop of shows hits the air—and we're forced to gamble on which ones will be worth watching. After all, for every Arrow, there's a Dracula. Hoping to get a bead on this season's prospects, we asked Jonah Ray and Kumail Nanjiani, cohosts of the Comedy Central stand-up series The Meltdown With Jonah and Kumail, to review a few. They've only seen the shows' trailers, but when has that ever stopped a nerd from passing judgment?
Prequel alert! Fox gets in on the comic-book fun by imagining the future Commissioner Gordon as a rookie detective investigating the murders of young Bruce Wayne's parents.
Ray: There are younger versions of every future villain and superhero. It's basically Batman Babies.
Nanjiani: There's a skinny Penguin. Is there a lot of emotional eating coming up?
Ray: I can't wait for someone to punch Gordon in the face and go, “Welcome to Gotham City. That's the G.C., bitch!” That's a reference to the television show The O.C.
In this Facebook-era sitcom version of My Fair Lady, Doctor Who's Karen Gillan plays the Eliza Doolittle role (in this case Eliza Dooley).
Nanjiani: I thought the whole show was gonna be shot on front-facing iPhone cameras.
Ray: I'm hoping that all the social media references will be a gateway for shitty people to watch it and then learn how shitty they are.
Nanjiani: In the trailer she says, “We can do anything. But no backdoor stuff.” I would love if that's the hashtag they're trying to get out there for the pilot. #backdoorstuff
Based on DC Comics' Hellblazer, this supernatural-detective drama hews closer to the source material than the 2005 Keanu Reeves film version—which would normally give us hope, except for one of the things they apparently changed.
Nanjiani: In the comics, John Constantine is a chain smoker who gets lung cancer. They took that out. Now he's just a really bummed-out British guy who can commune with the dead.
Ray: They should have got Morissey to play him.
Nanjiani: But even the ghosts would be like, “You're really bumming me out, dude—and I'm dead.”
A team of ultragenius hackers (and Katharine McPhee as an everywoman waitress, because why not?) use their l33t skills to avert global crises.
Nanjiani: In the trailer, the software update messes up all the plane systems. Whenever a computer software update comes up on my computer, I'm like, “What's the worst that can happen if I don't do this?” Oh, 80 planes will crash.
Ray: I don't think anyone's gotten hacker culture right since the movie Hackers.
Nanjiani: Or the TV show Silicon Valley that's on HBO. That show really nails it.
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