Premieres

Another run-down of what to expect tonight as premiere week continues. Last night’s ratings brought few big surprises except that Lone Star was a tremendous bomb, something I hadn’t really anticipated — it was so hyped online (the pilot was good, so the hype made some sense) that it distracted attention from the issue of what the show looked like to people who weren’t reading blogs. And if you were just watching the promos, I suppose the show looked like a rather dull soap opera; worse, it featured a man who was cheating on two women (and suggests he loves them both, of course) and presented him as the hero. Good though the pilot was, smarter people than I seem to have realized that that wouldn’t fly on a network where, unlike AMC, 4 million viewers is a disappointment.