It’s mid season, with the returning shows emerging from winter hiatus and new shows introduced to replace the bloody remnants of the season’s early bright ideas. Since I have been watching a lot of TV lately, indeed too much, I might as well put all that exposure to good use, so here is my assessment of the 2006 – 2007 season at midpoint.

The first thing to assert is that thus far, all my favorite network prime time shows have already been canceled. Smith, Kidnapped, and Daybreak all bit the dust somewhere between three and six episodes. Smith was a visually stylish show about criminals with a cast of movie stars (Ray Liotta, Amy Smart, Virginia Madsen) doing great work. But you could tell from the beginning that Smith didn’t fit into the general CBS template of bland looking, methodical plan americain presentation and conservative subject matter. Fortunately the unaired eps along with synopses of the remaining plots were available on line. Same with Kidnapped, a very realistic show that attempted, like Smith, acquire a bit of the 24 shine. In essence, it was a TV version of Ransom, even down to the presence of Delroy Lindo. Again it was well cast, but it did seem to be treading a little bit of water by the time of its unaired post-cancelled eps. ABC’s Daybreak had the bright idea to do an unofficial remake of Groundhog Day as a cop show with hints of 24 and The X-Files (the film also starred Mitch Pileggi). In it, Taye Diggs is a cop re-living the same day repeatedly, one on which he is accused of killing a DA. On paper, the show sounds like a drag, a repetitious narrative that taxes patience, but in fact the makers brought a lot of imagination to would have been a deadly and stagnant program.

Fortunately, there was still cable, and The Wire and BSG there to make up for the short-sightedness of either the mass of viewers or the decision-makers in the board rooms. Both cable shows were at the height of their powers and whetted the appetite for their next seasons, both due at different ends of this year. I don’t have cable, but greatly enjoyed the first season of Dexter, which excelled where for me most Showtime shows have fumbled. In the Battle of the Network Blondes, I favor Dexter‘s Julie Benz and Without a Trace‘s Montgomery over any of the others.

Meanwhile, back on primetime, Criminal Minds, a show I watched only because of Lola Glaudini, dropping her a few eps into its second season at the end of some convoluted Nixonian law and order subplot that, as usual in TV shows, intellectually wants you to side with law but which is secretly weighted toward vigilantism. Lola may be back, however, for a resolution of her plot line, if current teasers for the show are correct. Her character, Elle, pulled a Vic Mackey and murdered a serial rapist. I was disappointed at this turn of events, as it probably meant that Glaudini wanted off or was wanted off, the show (though her disastrous new bangy haircut is reason enough for banishment).

Also on CBS was the new show, Shark, which coasts on the star power of James Woods, and some of its cast, including Jeri Ryan. However, aside from them, it’s pretty conventional stuff, in the classic conservative CBS crime show manner, and most of the subsidiary cast members are rendered utterly unmemorable.

Shark has a character going from defense to prosecution, while the short-lived Justice had a guy going from prosecution to defense. Justice offered the gimmick of showing “what really happened” in the show’s last minute, but like most gimmicks, it would have been dropped eventually if the show had survived six airings.

I watched about 20 minutes of Jericho, but it didn’t grab me,it felt so conventional and soap operary. And I haven’t even watched Heroes yet, though all the episodes are saved up on my hard drive. Meanwhile, I’ve become a regular watcher of Without a Trace, not because it is a good show (it pulls that same dichotomy between moral and legal action), but because I love Poppy Montgomery’s mouth and because I like the fact that her character is named Sam(antha) Spade. Like Criminal Minds, the show had her shot recently and she tried to come back “too early.”

In the CSI realm, I still like “classic” Vegas CSI, am a bit repulsed by Miami, and am waiting for NY to take off (it’s tried to make itself hip by including the Suicide Girls). I wish that the producers would do something daring such as CSI: Vancouver, i.e., go to a wholly other jurisdiction where all the rules are different. Actually, in a way the show already exists, in the form of the excellent Canadian program DaVinci’s Inquest.

I don’t watch the rest of CBS’s female-oriented dramas ( Ghost Whisperer, Numbers, or for that matter, NBC’s Medium), nor its reality based shows. Over at ABC I watch Boston Legal (reviewed earlier under its box set), and Lost (treading water). I never even had a chance to follow The Nine or Six Degrees before they were canceled, and I just recently did a marathon of Ugly Betty, a good show that has something of a divided soul: Betty’s home life is realistic, but her work life is farcical (like the telenovelas that her dad watches). With luck I’ll catch up with Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives later on DVD, which is my preferred way to watch those shows.

At Fox, I follow House (which tells the exact same story every week), Prison Break (which is starting to wear me out), the X-Files-like Vanished before it was canceled (though it wasn’t very good), Bones (against my better judgment), and The Simpsons.

Over at NBC, I’m following Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip without really liking it much, along with 30 Rock which I greatly prefer. By way of comparison, note how they both mocked the ambush pederasty shows on NBC, but 30 Rock integrated them into the narrative while Studio simply did a funny skit. Again, Studio is already treading water (while presenting the occasional powerful moment), while 30 Rock has some sharp wit and Alec Baldwin. Fey’s portrayal of a conflicted modern urban woman is, I fear, terribly underrated, if it is “rated” at all. I’ve only seen a few hours of Friday Night Lights, and while I like the coach and his wife, haven’t found myself addicted, and don’t really like where the show appears to be going. Of the Laws and Order, I prefer the Sherlock Holmesian CI, which has lost its way terribly, never watch SVU, and only the classic L&O when I am home on Fridays, though I like the addition of Milena Govich. I never watch NBC’s game shows or news shows, and Thursday is all about four good comedy shows in a row.

Finally, I’ve been catching Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars when I can. It’s my understanding that Gilmore was much, much better in earlier seasons, and Mars is continuing its downward spiral, with an obviously bright Veronica trapped in what appears to be a community college, and clashing with her dreadful boyfriend an parodies of college extremists. The show just doesn’t have the layers or nuances of its first season.

I’m obviously watching way too much tube (or plasma screen). I just wish I were getting paid for it. But this immersion into network television has been building for years, not just with me, but with many of my friends. It seemed to have started way back in 1999 with the appearance of The Sopranos on HBO. Suddenly snobbish movie buffs found themselves making appointments with television, something they hadn’t done since they were kids. Having raised the bar, HBO inspired other networks to keep up, and in a spotty fashion, they have.

But it is also clear that as good as TV is these days, it is still a medium in crisis. It doesn’t know what to do. When it tries to push the edge of the envelope (hate that phrase) it’s shot down; meanwhile it is rewarded for airing shows like NCIS that are like every other show. Meanwhile, people are TIVOing and Bittorrenting shows and so the networks have no way to really know who is watching their shows. And it is obvious that anyone who can, be it via iTunes or other downloads, avoids seeing commercials as soon as they can. Worse, the networks are still locked into the 22 to 24 episode season, when it is obvious that the strength of HBO shows is that they play to fit, they exist as a cycle of episodes only to the extent of their internal narrative logic. HBO writers, I imagine (though I could be wrong), don’t tire out as fast. Thus The Wire has stayed strong for four seasons, which Veronica Mars seemed tuckered out in its second season. We are on the cusp of many, many radical changes in the nature of programing and consumption, in formats that have changed more in the last eight years than in all of the previous 80.

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