It’s new show season! That special time of year when dozens of hopeful comedies are plucked from the minds of their creators like flowers, ready to be arranged in the elegant glass vase of the fall TV lineup - some to flourish, but many to quickly die (cancellation) or wilt (be pushed to midseason to make room for new X-Factor episodes). So let’s celebrate them while we can! Can you guess which of the following new shows is real?
A) Janeane Garofalo stars as a cynical police officer whose life is turned upside-down when she’s assigned a new partner, hippie bongo player Zac Efron, in Life On Our Beat.
B) The View’s Lisa Ling leads this ensemble comedy about a Chinese and an Irish-Italian family that learn to get along when their oldest children get married. Who ordered the No. One Son?
C) The new single camera comedy The Real Deal revolves around a professional poker player (Don Rosen) who finds himself with a new hand to play as a father.
D) Hot For You, created by Cheers writer Rob Long, follows three best friends who open a hip, foodie restaurant - while navigating a love triangle! Can they control their appetites?
E) Based on Alli Kramer’s book by the same title, Braking Up is a quirky comedy about a couple (Kramer and Jim Lantern) who break up but still have to attend driving lessons together.
F) Jay Baruchel and Kristen Schaal are a pair of street magicians down on their luck, who turn to petty crime to fund their dreams, in the new Joss Whedon comedy Abracadabra.
Ready for the answers? Let’s rotate the board!
Answers:
A) Come on. I wish. (In my fantasy version of this show, Michael Showalter plays the curmudgeonly but sensitive police chief and has like 9 cats in his office.)
B) Yeah, this is really the name of a real show.
C) Don Rosen isn’t even a real person, you stupid idiot! You’ve been double-punked!
D) It’s true, and I can’t take credit for that amazing “control their appetites” joke.
E) No. No one’s name is Lantern.
F) I am so sorry to tell you this isn’t a real show. I don’t know why I would make something like that up just to take it away like that. I’m sorry. This list was a bad idea.