New Season

Well, it's been three to four weeks, so time to review the current TV season.  If nothing else, the new shows have distracted from the endless drone of our infant-in-chief as the midterms warm up.

Best goes to ... "Sorry for Your Loss" streaming on Facebook and "Doctor Who" season 13.  "Sorry for Your Loss" can be difficult to watch at times but is so clean, direct and real that it kept drawing me back.  Elizabeth Olsen is a winner.  Expect kudos in award season.  "Doctor Who" finally got a female doctor.  A diverse cast which looks like the real world and Jodie Whittaker.  Need I say more?

Lots of frothy adventure fare worthy of DVR time.  None of these will tax your intellect but all are decent:  "Chicago Fire", "9-1-1" (credit to Angela Bassett for knocking it out of the park at 60!  you go, girl), "Station 19" and "The Rookie" (great premiere with Nathan Fillion being more Malcolm Reynolds than Richard Castle.  Needs to lose the 17 year gap physical relationship, however, with the 47 year old Fillion and much younger Melissa O'Neil.) 

Grab the kleenex:  "This is Us" and "A Million Little Things".  Quality friends/family dramas.

Hospital drama with emphasis on the drama:  "Grey's Anatomy" (continues to balance the medical with the personal, the main reason it is still raking in viewers while other Shonda Rhimes' shows aren't) and "New Amsterdam" which will have liberals in ecstasy.  Ryan Eggold ain't bad, either.

The CW:  Yup, I still watch nearly all the superhero shows and very much enjoy them.  The new "Charmed" appears decent, if not somewhat darker than its predecessor.  Like many shows, the post-911 version is a tad bleaker and more violent.  Bailed on "Legacies" as I am done with the whole vampire stuff for now.

Sitcoms:  Newcomers "Single Parents" and "The Kids are Alright" do well.  The first one is a smart show which requires actual listening to the dialog, the second is more touching than ha-ha.  Both have nice family relationships.  "Modern Family" continues although it is aging.  Rumor has it there will be a death soon?  "The Good Place" remains nicely arch and the CBS Thursday night lineup continues to be a great staple, with one exception.  Leaving the DVR?  Wanted-to-love because of the casts but can't because of the scripts -- "Murphy Brown" and "I Feel Bad".   One is gone already and the other is dropping to the bottom of the list.  Don't forget to tune in for the upcoming season of "The Guest House" next week, now set in a beach town.

Sci-Fi Anyone?  I didn't want to like "Manifest" given NBC's struggle with great sci-fi shows at 10pm on Monday or Tuesday nights.  I fell in serious like for the last four or five shows and didn't want my heart broken again.  Oddly enough, "Manifest" is getting truly great ratings, so maybe it will hang in there.  I've enjoyed watching and continue to hope.  It is as much family drama as sci-fi, so maybe some non-sci-fi types will tune in.

This, of course, is the fall season.  Stay tuned for the Spring season, including the final episodes of "Gotham" and "Jane the Virgin".  Still trying to decide if it is worth joining Netflix to watch my much-beloved "Lucifer".