I decided against a 10 worst list, because some shows — like Mixology and Manhattan Love Story — were clearly doomed from the start and promptly lived down to expectations. Instead, I’ve focusing on the year’s biggest disappointments: shows (and performers) who aspired to something greater, and perhaps even briefly achieved it, before it all came crashing down. Here is 2014’s Hall of Shame, in alphabetical order:

(Michael Desmond/NBC)

A to Z (NBC)

This sitcom — chronicling the A-to-Z relationship of Ben Feldman and Cristin Milioti —was one of the most promising fall pilots. Its stars had terrific, unforced chemistry. And then … nothing happened, for episodes on end. The jokes evaporated, and no actual stakes ever materialized. And how could a show set at not one but two different workplaces get away with never showing anyone doing actual work? After How I Met Your Mother, I thought the fantastic Milioti had finally found a part worthy of her talents. Better luck next season.

(Robert Voets/NBC)

Bearded best friends 

One of the most depressing developments of the fall season was the discovery that all the networks’ comedy development teams were operating from the exact same bland playbook: don’t forget to cast a bearded best friend! Like a virus, they popped up on almost every sitcom this fall, including Mulaney (Zack Pearlman), A to Z (Henry Zebrowski), Manhattan Love Story (Nicolas Wright) and Marry Me (John Gemberling). Now Gemberling is the last beard standing, not that I could really distinguish him from the other three.

(CBS)

Extant (CBS)

When I reviewed the Extant premiere this summer, I was excited about the sci-fi drama’s possibilities, both in storyline and the performance it was coaxing out of star Halle Berry, as an astronaut who returns from a lengthy solo mission to discover that she’s pregnant. A few episodes later, those optimistic dreams were the opposite of extant. Instead of learning its lessons from Under the Dome, which quickly squandered its beguiling premise in 2013, CBS repeated them all again.

(Ron P. Jaffe/Fox)

How I Met Your Mother finale (CBS)

While I was never a regular How I Met Your Mother watcher, I had been eagerly anticipating how series would pay off the story it had been setting up for nine (!) seasons. Instead, the finale confirmed everyone’s worst fears — that the Mother (Milioti again!) had died — and turned into How I Barely Met Your Mother. It was a legen — wait for it! — dary addition to the annals of all-time worst finales. (Make room, Dexter!)

(Ray Mickshaw/FOX)

Mulaney (Fox)

Out of all this year’s new sitcoms, I was most excited about seeing Mulaney, created by and starring one of SNL’s all-time great writers (and the man behind Stefon!), John Mulaney. And then I watched the first episode Fox made available, which was…awful. Soon after, Fox shared four more episodes, each one more depressing than the last. How could someone so innovative end up in something so conventional? Even worse, the show completely wasted its fantastic cast (including Martin Short and the underrated Nasim Pedrad).

(Fox)

Rake (Fox)

A year after Fox had scored big with a midseason drama featuring a movie star (Kevin Bacon’s The Following), it tried again with this Greg Kinnear legal series — and failed spectacularly. Billed as the law version of House, it lacked any of that show’s zest and wit. Kinnear’s Keegan Deane was less an anti-hero than an anti-character, as clunky a fit as the show’s silly title.

(Fred Norris/FOX)

Sleepy Hollow (Fox)

It’s the hat trick of Fox disappointments! Season 1 the Fox supernatural series was a delightful, wackadoodle wonder. And that’s what has made Season 2 so upsetting, as the series has undone so much of what made it addictive in the first place. John Noble, so vital to the end of Season 1, has been neutered this year, while Orlando Jones was stuck on the sidelines. There are still flashes of the trippy show that once was (and Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie remain terrific), but Sleepy Hollow suffered the biggest quality dropoff this year.

(Antony Platt/AMC)

Turn (AMC)

So intriguing in theory, so bland in execution. Still flailing post-Breaking Bad, AMC came up empty again with this uninspired Revolutionary War drama. It was somehow renewed for Season 2, and saddled with a longer title: Turn: Washington’s Spies. There, problem solved!

(Patrick Harbron/FX)

Tyrant (FX)

FX’s incredible run of essential dramas came to an end with this controversial Middle Eastern series, which finally offered one antihero too many for a network packed with them. And no, don’t remind me that this was renewed over the far-superior The Bridge.

(Virginia Sherwood/NBC)

Christopher Walken (Peter Pan Live!)

Two weeks later, I still can’t believe what I saw on Dec. 4. Walken’s Captain Hook was supposed to save Peter Pan Live! Instead, he almost sunk the show. That an actor who is so reliably riveting in everything he appears in — no matter how great or lousy the project itself is — could sleepwalk through a three-hour live performance was one of the year’s biggest stunners. Whether it was due to age or boredom, Walken lost a big chunk of his luster that night.

That was cathartic; now it’s time to praise television again! Check back Thursday for more 2014 TV VIPs.

The post The 10 Biggest TV Disappointments of 2014 appeared first on TV & Not TV.

One month ago today, I published my first Adweek story, TV’s 10 Worst Time Slots. Since then, four shows that occupied those time slots this season have already been canceled: Manhattan Love Story, Utopia, A to Z and The Millers. In related news, I think my first month writing for Adweek went pretty well!

The post TV’s 10 Worst Time Slots, Revisited appeared first on TV & Not TV.

What if How I Met Your Mother had actually been about, you know, how Ted met the Mother? The result would have been something like A to Z, the new NBC romantic comedy starring, yes, Cristin Milioti, who played the Mother in that show’s final season last year. At The Daily Beast, I spoke to the charming actress — who, it turns out, went to the same high school as I did (a full decade either before or after me; I’ll never tell) — about the controversial HIMYM finale, dropping out of college, what she learned from Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese on The Wolf of Wall Street and (spoiler alert) how she discovered the Mother’s fate:

Milioti first discovered Tracy’s fate late last year, at the show’s Christmas party. “I was sitting with Craig and we were like three cocktails in,” she says. “He’s very happy and giddy when he gets a little tipsy, and he said, ‘Do you want to know how the series ends?’ I was also tipsy and I was like, ‘What, do I die?’—as a joke. Then he got real serious and was like, ‘Wait, do you know?’ He told me how it happens, and I sat there bawling. I just didn’t see it coming.”

I did this interview with her at TCA summer tour; it was nice to be able to do this one in person and swap South Jersey memories.

How Cristin Milioti Met Sitcom Stardom

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After a bit of a hiatus, I returned to Parade to put together a Fall TV Preview, which was one of my first stories for them last year. My take on this shows are how they managed to be both fresh and familiar — and have a lot in common with some of your favorite shows.

When I filed, I didn’t know that this would be my very last Parade story. But sadly, the magazine was sold last week and the entire editorial staff, including all my favorite editors, was laid off as editorial operations move from New York to Nashville

I’ll miss you Parade; it’s been fun!

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Viewers are taking longer than ever to watch TV shows, but when it comes to news series, networks don’t have the luxury of waiting several days or weeks for audiences to sample them and decide whether or not they want to see more. That’s why the pilots for several new series are being released weeks and even months before they premiere. As I wrote at Quartz,

Broadcast networks insist that they now program year-round (and indeed, have been doing just that), but almost all of their biggest shows still debut during the same two-week period in late September and early October. This makes it especially brutal for new shows to find an audience, so the online premieres gives viewers an early opportunity to sample them and, the networks hope, get hooked and start spreading the word before the shows enter the TV equivalent of Thunderdome.

I question whether viewers who watch and like the A to Z pilot will still be interested when the show actually premieres in October, but until the broadcast networks stop premiering all their fall shows in the same two week period, they’ll need all the help they can get.

TV is no longer where TV series premiere

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