Culture

Our Almost Entirely Serious Guide to TV This Fall

Take My Wife's Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito weigh in on the new crop of shows. Warning: May contain time travel, remakes, and lightning.
Take My Wife039s Rhea Butcher and Cameron Esposito weigh in on the new crop of shows.
Take My Wife's Rhea Butcher (left) and Cameron Esposito weigh in on the new crop of shows.Ramona Rosales for WIRED

“People complain that everybody gets a show now,” says Rhea Butcher. “What’s wrong with that?” Nothing at all, especially when it means Butcher and Cameron Esposito get to make Take My Wife. Streaming on Seeso, NBC’s on-­demand comedy platform, it’s a sitcom based on their lives as married comics in Los Angeles. They’ve wrapped their first season and are therefore now eminently qualified to critique other people’s work on the fall’s new crop—based solely on the trailers. Warning: Shows may contain more time-travel, movie remakes, and lightning than necessary.

This article appears in the September 2016 issue.

WARDROBE STYLING BY MICHAEL CIOFFOLETTI; SET DESIGN BY WARD ROBINSON/WOODEN LADDER; MAKEUP BY RACHAEL VANG; HAIR BY KAT THOMPSON.

  • 01
    Zorn is an animated barbarian hunk in a live-action world; his son (a flesh-and-blood boy) is a dweeb. Esposito: People who love this show are gonna love this show. I think it will be a lot of young dudes. Butcher: It’s basically like, what if He-Man was real? And we all knew he was, so. Esposito: There’s another show coming up with Jenna Elfman, and she has an imaginary friend who’s animated. I fear *Son of Zorn* will come out and destroy that show in its wake—much like Zorn himself.
  • 02
    It’s ostensibly based on the 1973 movie, but this is HBO, so anything’s possible. Esposito: So many layers: *Vanilla Sky* inside of *Deadwood* inside of *Surrogates* ... Butcher: ... inside of *The Matrix*. Esposito: Is HBO just doubling down on complicated shows? Did you understand this trailer at all? Butcher: It reminds me of doomsday prepping. A lot of white people have it so easy that they’re like, How can I make my life interesting? I’m gonna create cyborgs that allow me to go back to the Old West!
  • 03
    A remake of the movie franchise, in which two at-odds cops make nice and solve cases. Esposito: I don’t know that it’s *quite* the right moment for a loose-cannon cop show. Is there any value in a show where cops, like, have really good training? About cops being very responsible? I want a show about the academy and how many classes they have to sit through on safety. Butcher: And they’re all pro-body-camera. Esposito: Maybe this could be a plot point!
  • 04
    Kristen Bell plays a terrible person who dies—and gets into heaven by mistake. Butcher: Both her enemies are nonwhite. I’m hoping it’s a bit of an *Orange Is the New Black* situation, where the white lady gets into heaven based off of lies and then is proven wrong. Esposito: Kristen Bell is in so many commercials with Dax Shepard that I’d forgotten she isn’t actually on network TV. Butcher: You forgot that *Samsung:* *Dax and Kristen* wasn’t a show? Esposito: I forgot that their refrigerator ad wasn’t a hit!
  • 05
    Donald Glover created and stars in a new comedy show about the Atlanta rap scene. Butcher: I already feel great about this. This is the *Dazed and Confused* of trailers. It perfectly encapsulates everything that they’re trying to make. It gives you a feeling. I feel like I know these guys. Esposito: It’s almost an Instagram filter. And it definitely seems practically shot, which makes you think they actually made this in Atlanta and not, like, Vancouver. Butcher: It reminds me of summer and figuring things out.
  • 06
    The first woman to play Major League Baseball faces adversity—from teammates, fans, and an overbearing father. Esposito: We both cried during this trailer. Butcher: As a woman who is actively into sports, I thought it was very real. I love the shots of all the little girls in the stands. That is what would happen. Esposito: It has the best tagline I’ve seen for a television show: “A true story on the verge—*ellipsis*—of happening.” The only way this could be better is if Supergirl flew in from the CW and played in the game.
  • 07
    Four decades after the original movie, a young girl gets possessed—again. Esposito: I don’t like scary things, so I didn’t watch this. But I assume it’s about a girl whose head spins around and then she has a hard time because she was a child actor. Butcher: I watched because Geena Davis. She’s the mom who seeks out the priest because she’s hearing things. Meanwhile, the daughter is doing nothing, so you’re like, is the *mom* the crazy one? Esposito: I’m so sweaty I can’t even listen.
  • 08
    A history teacher, a scientist, and a soldier travel through time to save the world. Esposito: This feels like a show they made after “Would you kill baby Hitler?” trended on Twitter. Whenever political unrest and tension are super high, we’re always like: But remember the Nazis? We fucking *hated* those dudes! Butcher: I like that the main character is a woman. Jennifer doesn’t get to do much in *Back to the Future Part II*, so it’s nice to see a time-traveling lady who doesn’t get knocked out and then left on a pile of laser discs.
  • 09
    More time traveling, this time by a daughter who makes lightning-induced radio contact with her long-dead father. Esposito: The power of lightning is something we’ve really gotten away from in television and film. Lightning can make you switch bodies, can make you time-travel, can turn on a radio. Butcher: Lightning is a character, guys! Esposito: There’s so much to keep track of. If they’re able to pull off this show, whoever wrote it should be hired to do all television for the rest of time.

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Jason Kehe edits features and commits occasional acts of criticism. He writes The Big Story newsletter, edits the Machine Readable column on programming languages, and was once WIRED's Angry Nerd. He's been at the magazine since 2012. ... Read More
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