The big fall TV previews are all coming out now -- in glossy magazines like Entertainment Weekly or humble newspapers like the Courant, that ran today.
Each of these comprehensive overviews of TV's immediate future all share the same authoritarian tone, proclaiming with no little certainty which shows are the best to watch and which would be an utter waste.
But there is one thing that none of the previews quite admit.
They are all guessing.
Just about every new show judged in any fall TV preview you want to read is based on the viewing of a single episode, the pilot.
The pilot is far more than just a premiere.
It's the episode that's done nearly all the work of getting a new show sold to the network, sold to the advertisers and sold to TV critics before it's finally unleashed to sell itself to viewers.
It's made in a kind of isolation early in the year (during "pilot season") and nobody in it quite knows if they'll be picked up by the network (only one in three pilots ordered by the network actually gets to air).
But if its the lucky show that gets the green light that's the episode that also is used to lure advertisers, attract viewers through relentless promos (and, increasingly, Internet sneak peaks) and win over the critics who will either praise or bury the work in their fall TV previews.
And yet the judgments are made on very peculiar little episode. Pilots not only have to sell themselves to networks and all the others, they have to introduce characters, establish situations and essentially lay the groundwork for a show that may well last years.
The pilot for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" for example can't be the best episode of the series, since it has to spend all of its time explaining why its two leading characters, Brad Whitford and Matthew Perry, are brought in to help run the TV-show-within a show. On the other hand, the spectacular two hour pilot for "Lost" was different than any other episode because its first moments, at least, occurred off the island.
Pilots are one shot things made early in the year. If they're picked up, the cast has to be trotted out before advertisers and the press to talk about their role and the series, though their memory may be faulty and shooting for episodes two through 24 has yet to begin.
All this to say that there is an inordinate amount of attention on these unusual episodes called pilots. In fact, whole season judgments in these fall TV previews are based on them. A show may have gotten much better (or much worse) by episode five, but it's all on the shoulders of that first episode to proclaim a network entry a winner or loser.
Keep that in mind as you read about "the best new show of the year" weeks before it airs.
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