Bowl games finally over; other diversions aplenty
The new year is upon us and the 40 (!) college football bowl games are finally over.
Ah, yes. Remember the Dec. 16 Celebration Bowl where North Carolina A&T downed Grambling State 2114? How about the thrilling Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl where Florida Atlantic squeaked past Akron 50-3? I won’t even mention the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl or the San Diego County Credit Union Holiday Bowl.
Are 40 bowl games too many? Probably.
There’s only one more game to go — the College Football Playoff National Championship presented by AT&T at 7 p.m. Monday on ESPN. The final two teams weren’t decided until well past my deadline, but it’ll be Georgia or Oklahoma vs. Alabama or Clemson.
To fill the void until then, Fox is offering something old, something new and something new that seems sort of old (or at least familiar). Fox is hoping to get your attention before the rush of shows coming back from holiday hiatus.
LA to Vegas, 8 p.m. today on Fox. This new half-hour comedy stars the usually dramatic Dylan McDermott (The Practice, American Horror Story). It begins life with McDermott sporting a slick Magnum, P.I. moustache and an impressive team behind the scenes.
The nine (count ’em!) executive producers include Will Ferrell (Saturday Night Live, Elf), and sitcom veteran Steve Levitan (Modern Family, Just Shoot Me!), who also directs.
LA to Vegas is an ensemble workplace comedy aboard a weekend economy commuter jet from (fictional) Jackpot Airlines. McDermott is the pilot, Captain Dave. Each week another eccentric gaggle of passengers heads for Las Vegas with dreams of making it big. Hilarity ensues.
Think The Love Boat on a low-rent regional airline.
The other regulars include the scene-stealing Kim Matula (UnREAL) and Nathan Lee Graham (The Comeback) as flight attendants Ronnie and Bernard. Bonus: Peter Stormare (The Big Lebowski, Fargo) plays wacky frequent flier Artem.
I laughed out loud four times, but the series features adult comedy, so keep the small fry away. 9-1-1 premieres at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Fox and is yet another project from the prolific Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Crime Story, Feud).
The procedural drama deals with the high-stress lives of first responders — police, paramedics, firefighters, 911 dispatchers — and features several fan favorites.
Connie Britton (Nashville, Friday Night Lights) is stressed-out 911 dispatcher Abby Clark. Angela Bassett (American Horror Story, What’s Love Got to Do With It) is police officer Athena Grant dealing with upheaval at home. Peter Krause (Parenthood, Six Feet Under) plays firefighter and recovering alcoholic Bobby Nash.
The first-responder wheel wasn’t reinvented with this series. Fox breathlessly claims the characters “are thrust into the most frightening, shocking and heart-stopping situations that are equal parts unpredictable, intense and uplifting.”
9-1-1 will remind some viewers of every other show in the genre, from Emergency and Rescue 911 to Third Watch and Trauma.
The cast is impressive, but the pilot was uneven in its jumping from character to character. Perhaps that’s just the hazards of first episode exposition and character introduction. A pilot that hits on all cylinders is rare.
Eventually, the success of 9-1-1 depends on whether these characters are fascinating enough for you to want to follow their stories. The pilot had some compelling moments, but also a couple of grating characters that really need work, especially hotshot newbie firefighter Evan Buckley, played by Oliver Stark (Into the Badlands).
The X-Files returns to Fox at 8 p.m. Wednesday. This will be the second installment of the “event series.” That is what Fox calls a limited airing of the fan favorite. There will be 10 episodes.
Full disclosure: I didn’t much care for 2016’s sixepisode reboot. I felt the old magic was gone from the series that ran from 1993 to 2002. Fox, however, brags that it “drew an average multiplatform audience of nearly 16 million viewers and was the most talked-about event series on Twitter.”
There you have it. If you get tweeted about these days, that’s reason enough to bring the show back.
The new episodes pick up after the last cliffhanger. Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) learn they aren’t the only ones looking for their long-lost son, William.
Creator Chris Carter wrote and directed the episode. About the plot twist, he says, “The very fate of the world may depend on it.” Yikes.
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