Despite the fact that I wasn’t going to watch half these shows, I managed to sample some or all of a bunch of the new shows. Here are my feelings on them (like anyone cares, this mostly an excuse to bitch about Big Shots):

Gossip Girl: Was like a joyless O.C., a fact that is really brought home by them running the first season of The O.C. on MuchMusic right now and it genuinely was funny and charming and clever. There were hardly any prime time soaps on when it started (now there are like 80) and it did this thing where the characters kind of acknowledged the craziness of the storylines, even though they were totally ridiculous. So they seemed like real people in an unreal place. Gossip Girl doesn’t really have that though: it seems so dour and lifeless. None of the actors really have much personality. I can see why people like it — it’s really pretty and there is hilarious fashion and, uh, lots of weirdly unexplained underage drinking — but it’s not my thing.

Chuck: Seemed okay; the lead guy is reasonably charming, it’s funny, and “Captain Awesome” made me laugh. Also, the ludricous “Chuck is the computer” premise is actually kind of theoretically fascinating if you’ve just been reading about the development of sound technology and film technology and the ways that they were discursively related to the body.

Bionic Woman: This also had a healthy dose of interesting cyborg body stuff, plus some gender politics hanging around (why are only women bionic?). Katee Sackhoff was good, and I’m okay with the classic “villain is more interesting than the hero” thing, but Michelle Ryan was very, very flat. I feel like there was tons of potential there, but I’m not sure if such a flat, grey, self-consciously artsy show will make it on network TV. Also, I kept having weird geography suspension of disbelief issues, because it uses real Vancouver places for sets, and I kept thinking, like, “Why would she drive all the way over to the University just to say hi?” I haven’t had the issue with BSG even when I recognize places, because it tends to be more fictional future buildings, not just random alleys, or like, where I catch the bus.

Dirty Sexy Money: I think this was my favourite pilot so far. It’s funny, it has Peter Krause, it has Donald Sutherland (who sells some pretty cringe-y dialogue), and it has Anna (she has lots of shirts that look like doilies). It is actually probably less hard on the rich than Gossip Girl, but it is actually kind of fun to watch, unlike Gossip Girl.

Cane: Was okay. Alex wasn’t into because of its basically being “Sugar Dynasty,” (and I totally made a “First you get the sugar, then you get the money, then you get the women” joke before the first commercial) but I kind of thought that was the point. I don’t think I’m going to keep watching, but it had some stuff in it. And most of the Cuban characters were played by actual Hispanic people, so that’s nice.

Big Shots: Is seriously a harbinger of the apocalypse. It was mostly described as “Sex and the City, with men”; but unlike Sex and the City, it shows nothing but contempt for women. It sort of has this “edgy” tone, but there is nothing remotely subversive about how hard it is to be a rich white CEO. Seriously, I like all the actors on it less because they chose to associate with this garbage. I can’t remember the last time I was so actively offended by a fictional filmed entertainment. (Actually, it was probably the end of the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I was at Zellers looking at Halloween costumes and bitching about how lame the girl ones were when I noticed that Elizabeth costume was an old-timey dress — which in the movies was treated as basically a metaphor for how restrictive life was for women — and it brought back all my rage.)