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...dancing on American Bandstand. Fox's Oliver Beene (coming this winter) takes a comedic look at the same era. Two forthcoming shows set in the '80s are a strange manifestation of TV's collective unconscious. In both ABC's drama That Was Then (Fridays, 9 p.m. E.T.) and the WB's sitcom Do Over (Thursdays, 8:30 p.m. E.T.), a salesman in his 30s gets transported back in time to relive high school, fix his parents' marriage, win over the unrequited love of his life and avoid flubbing a speech in front of the school. (Happy teens, apparently...
...some viewers and their wallets. The result is less a return to the paternalistic family hour than a recognition that the family viewing audience still exists, as one niche among many. And one series that TV's moneymen believe will cash in on the hunger for wholesome is the WB's Everwood (Mondays, 9 p.m. E.T.). New York City neurosurgeon Andrew Brown (Treat Williams) is obsessed with his career until his wife dies in a car crash on her way to their son's piano recital, which Brown was too busy to attend. The doctor packs up 15-year...
...seen this before: man escapes the amoral city to rediscover his humanity in the country, where decent folk live. (Didn't David Lynch and South Park kill that canard?) It would be forgivable if the show were better written, like the WB's wholesome but sassy mother-daughter comedy Gilmore Girls. Most unfortunate is Everwood's narrator, the town school-bus driver, who's in the Bagger Vance tradition of the wise black man put on earth to comment on the white stars' spiritual healing. And for every flash of Gilmore-esque zippy dialogue, there's a groaner. When Brown...
Fathers (or father figures) also try to connect with their kids in ABC's 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (Tuesdays, 8 p.m. E.T.) and the WB's remake of the 1966-71 Family Affair (Thursdays, 8 p.m. E.T.). Both sitcoms' pilots were funded by the advertisers' group Family Friendly Programming Forum (F.F.P.F.), which sponsors "uplifting" series and also underwrote Gilmore Girls. (Two other F.F.P.F.-funded series will debut later in the season.) And both are gooier than a Krispy Kreme. Rules casts John Ritter as a suburban dad with two teen daughters...
...picked a more auspicious year to do so; this fall's slate of new programs is the most uninspired, creatively bankrupt set of debuts in several years. There are the shameless knockoffs, like CSI: Miami, a less imaginative product extension than Vanilla Coke. There are the retreads, like the WB's remake of Family Affair, with kids so saccharinely cute and a laugh track so obtrusive that the new series really could have been made in the '60s. Then there are the garden-variety, playing-it-safe choices that make up the bulk of the lineup: another lumpy...