Spring in the world of television means two things: mid-season replacements and pilot season. With the latter comes handfuls of catchy titles, casting announcements and network descriptions, or “loglines,” describing what they hope will be a crop of new hit shows. In just a few sentences, networks describe the new shows in an attempt to create buzz for them before they air next fall. To have some fun, I gathered five of the more fun loglines circling the Internet and added in five of my own. Take a break, read them and see if you are savvy enough to tell the fakes from the ones being made into real shows this spring.
1) Keep Calm and Karey On
Karey is the clean-nosed black sheep in a family of petty thieves, drug addicts and narcissists “” but when her brother is sent to prison, she decides to raise his kids along with her adopted African-American son and give them the normal lives they deserve.
2) Break a Leg
Set behind the scenes of a struggling theater troupe in L.A., “Break a Leg” combines the craziness of showbiz egos and lifestyles of “30 Rock” with the starving-artist underbelly of “Party Down.” The show stars Krysten Ritter (“The B in Apartment 23″) as the star actress and David Walton (“Bent,” “Perfect Couples”) as the head stage tech and focuses on their troubled relationship as they attempt to keep their tiny theater company afloat.
3) The Selection
Set 300 years in the future, the drama is an epic romance centering on a working-class young woman chosen by lottery to participate in a competition with 25 other women for the Royal Prince’s hand to become the nation’s next queen. Balancing her loyalty to family, true love and the kingdom, she must attempt to remain true to herself as she navigates cutthroat competition and palace intrigue, all while a budding rebellion threatens to topple the crown.
4) NCIS: Red
The back-door pilot will air as part of “NCIS: L.A.” and follow a mobile team of agents who are forced to live and work together as they crisscross the country solving crimes. The title refers to the “code red” cases the team are uniquely equipped to handle.
5) Law & Order: Protect and Serve
The backdoor pilot will air as part of “Law & Order: SVU” and follows a group of “beat cops” as they patrol the streets of New York City’s toughest neighborhoods, dealing with the crimes and victims before and after the detectives arrive on the scene.
6) Two Drink Minimum
James Wolk (“Lonestar,” “Political Animals”) stars as rising comic Mike White. His dreams are shattered when clips of a show gone horribly wrong hit the Internet, and he returns to his former life as bartender at the local comedy club, The Laugh Track, in downtown Chicago. Martin Starr (“Freaks and Geeks,” “Party Down”) and John Mulaney (“SNL”) star as fledgling Chicago comics who begin to look to Wolk for advice.
7) Editor-in-Chief
Allison Janney (“West Wing,” “Mr. Sunshine”) stars as the former editor-in-chief of the “The Washington Post” who finds herself in the middle of a workplace scandal which forces her to take a job running the new political “news” and gossip site “1600 Penthouse.” Janney’s character clashes with a younger generation of web-savvy journalists and bloggers and attempts to reinvent herself in an era of changing news media.
8) Wild Blue
“ER,” “The West Wing” and “Top Gun” collide in this young ensemble about the working men and women on board a U.S. aircraft carrier. Equipped with a 500-foot landing strip, a nuclear reactor and 6,000 souls on board, the drama is an upstairs/downstairs look at the pressure-cooker lives of the U.S. Navy.
9) Bloodline
A contemporary pulp thriller that revolves around an orphaned young girl named Bird Benson who, because of an accident at birth, is caught in the struggle between two warring families of mercenaries and killers. Mentored by a Chinese man, Bird has to accept the quest to find and defeat her mother in mortal combat if she is to ever lead a normal life.
10) Island Time
Paul and Jeff plan the ultimate escape from their high-pressure Ivy League academic lives. Their arrival on a remote Caribbean island begins as the “ultimate getaway,” but quickly becomes complicated when political discourse means their passports are revoked and they must adapt to living and working permanently in accordance with “Island Time.”
Solutions:
1) Real
2) Fake
3) Real
4) Real
5) Fake
6) Fake
7) Fake
8) Real
9) Real
10) Fake
