The Five Worst New TV Shows This Fall

via NBC

Dane Cook is here to ruin autumn.

This week, as the rest of the world watches feats of human awesomeness in the London Olympics, TV reporters have been watching feats of human idiocy at the Television Critics Association press tour in L.A.

Sure, there have been some highlights. (Dexter could be renewed indefinitely? Tell us more.) But most of TCA involves panels of celebrities and showrunners rolling out new fall programming -- 65 percent of which is so utterly terrible that they won't survive beyond a single season.

This fall's debuts sound even more laughable than we've grown to expect. Did you know that someone gave Dharma from Dharma & Greg another show? Or that Dane Cook is a TV actor now? Or that some people still think monkeys are funny?



1600 Penn
Bill Pullman and Jenna Elfman (yes, that's Dharma) star as President and First Lady Gilchrist in this comedy about family life in the White House. There's also Josh Gad -- who, on the up side, starred in the very funny Book of Mormon, but on the down side appears to be channeling a poor man's Jack Black -- as a grown-up son who's forced to move back in with the family. (Uh, Mr. President? You're rich, remember? Send the kid overseas and be done with it.) NBC's calling it Modern Family meets The West Wing. We're calling it, well, not that.