It's pilot season! As we speak the big TV networks are planning out their fall schedules through the time-honored tradition of filming one episode of every pitched show and choosing the strongest examples (or the most marketable, or the one based on something that was a hit 30 years ago). The list is published by the press -- here are 15 of the more...interesting ideas TV execs are thinking about.

I promise you that, no matter how fake some of these sound, they are all 100% real and all of them are in contention for the Fall 2019 season.

Stray observations:

1. The biggest loss from last year's crop was the Hannah Simone remake of Greatest American Hero, which I still really want to see and perhaps never will. Abandoned pilots used to leak out of the networks pretty easily. Either the network would run them over the summer, or they would be sold on VHS as stand-alone "mini-movies," or copies would be sent to critics that would later wind up on eBay. None of those things happen today.
2. Number of our "weird" picks for 2018 that actually got onto the schedule: four. In half of the cases it isn't clear why. We still don't understand why they would put a show on the air called "God Friended Me," but have an aversion to something called "I Mom So Hard."

And that Israeli series was obviously ripping off the Hallmark Channel movie A Star For Christmas. Time to sue!

What the what?

So....this is actually the second pilot in five years to propose a "modern" spin on the Frankenstein story. The first one actually made it to air under a different title, and spun around for a few weeks before crashing.

Chuck Lorre, multicam, racial stereotype potential of premise reading over 9000....warning signs, flashing lights, the clacking of keyboards as Vox writers prepare outrage pieces....CBS, DO NOT ENGAGE!

When this originally went up, "Location" was blank, and I was like "so help me, if you take this comic that was about Portland, written in Portland, drawn in Portland and published in Portland, and film it in Vancouver BC to save nine cents, there will be hell to pay." So how does one go about paying hell?

I'll give it this: Cobie Smulders is good casting for the main character.

I dunno. The best workplace comedies have chosen rather ordinary settings and stocked them with wildly interesting characters. Making the work setting SUPER WACKY AND DISTRACTING is a mistake. It's what sunk Fox's Ghosted last year, and NBC's Powerless the year before that. Like Magic is doomed. But maybe before it ends we'll get a cameo from Paul Dini's wife.

Whatever this is, I want it. I mean, don't you? It probably won't make it because it's too out-there a premise for conservative CBS. If only it was being pitched to Netflix.
Or CBS All Access; they'll take anything.

The good news is, there are more pilots with Asian families than there were last year.
The bad news is, they think you just want Crazy Rich Asians over and over and over.

As far as Archie Comics characters go, Katy Keene is pretty Z-list -- not what I'd call "iconic," you dumb description. But The CW has kinda painted themselves into a corner. They let Netflix have Sabrina, and they disbanded Josie and the Pussycats on Riverdale (I've heard Josie herself is moving to this series, assuming it happens)...who is left that anyone without a thorough knowledge of Archie comics has heard of? Time to dig out Ms. Keene.

Now that they're forced to use obscure characters, though, why not go all the way? Let's get shows for Li'l Jinx, That Wilkin Boy, Cosmo the Little Martian....and, of course, an expensive multi-season space epic starring Marvelous Maureen.

Sounds suitably weepy, like something NBC wants to pair up with This Is Us....but I can't get past that title.

Jane The Virgin was never a ratings winner, but you have to love a network that supports it SO MUCH that they would create a spinoff based WITHIN something Jane is writing.

Go dig up the old, old article I write about the "TV Shows That Never Were" special. There's an abandoned pilot from the 90s with this exact premise. That pilot actually aired on a digital subchannel two years ago, for some reason. I tried to catch it and failed...bad reception that day.

I hope ABC doesn't make the mistake of promoting this as a Lost ripoff, because people are sick of those. ...Who am I kidding, they will.

Highlighted for emphasis. We have a drama based on a JOHN MAYER SONG.
I mean, sure, the past has given us shows based off of tweets or a Geico caveman commercial, but....JOHN MAYER?

This, to me, is the GOOD kind of insane, and something I would much rather have from NBC than "Council of Dads."
It would perfectly fill the hole left by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which ends this year, and of course Jane Levy is good in everything.

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