Fall Season Premiere Jamboree!

Stewart here, and be ready for spoilers on the horizon…

The fall season of TV starts once again, and Monday and Tuesday brought several nerd-related shows back on the air, along with a possible new addition to the ranks. Well, if to start easing myself into another season of minicaps for Arrow (and that’s still two weeks away), let’s talk about these NerdLush favorites, starting with the new kid in town.

Gotham — If there’s one big issue I had with the first episode is how much time was spent on establishing so many young versions of characters in the Batman mythos. It’s like someone decided to take all the references in a latter season of Smallville and shove it all into an opening episode. As a result, this felt like more of a transparent setup episode than most pilots. Of course, some of this feeling depends on how much knowledge of the Batman books you have going in.

No smiles in these yearbook photos.

But, at least some of the setup is interesting enough to hold my interest, like Jada Pinkett Smith’s mob boss character (with a name so weird I won’t even dignify writing it here), the setup of young Bruce Wayne and a slightly less aged and terse Alfred. Also, the dynamic of Gordon and Bullock is an interesting watch, with Gordon realizing from his more “laxidasical” partner (Gordon’s words, not mine) how difficult being an honest cop in Gotham City is. Just less perp interrogation montages and more character stuff may make this one a worthwhile watch. B

Sleepy Hollow — The most illogical show premise of last season ended up being one of the more entertaining shows of last year. After a good, long time off, Sleepy Hollow is back to pull Ichabod Crane and company out of the massive cliffhanger that ended last season (well, except Irving, who’s absent in the season premiere). And in a nice opening twist, it seems we’ve skipped ahead so far that you might suspect someone at Fox was airing episodes out of order, like a good amount of fans on Twitter lamented. But, it’s a nice story twist that is shown to be a ruse, and the rest of the episode is about Ichabod trying to escape and retrieve Abbie from Purgatory.

That’s what the female audience wants: headless men shirtless that remind them of mannequins at JcPenney.

So much weirdly fun stuff happened this episode, it’s almost impossible to list them all here. So here’s a few of them: naked Benjamin Franklin, shirtless Headless Horseman, that big first act action scene, John Cho returns, John Noble as Henry totally devouring the scenery, and so on. Even the episode’s Macguffin of the key to purgatory gets used rather well, if discarded very quickly after its used (for such an important item, you think it dissolving after one use would be an issue). Still, it’s great to have Sleepy Hollow back, which is something I couldn’t picture myself saying before it first came out. A

Agents of SHIELD — After a good slew of episodes last season, it was going to be interesting to see how much Agents of SHIELD fared without having (for better and worse) a Marvel movie to perch on. The early conclusion from the season opener is: good, so far. Agent, ahem, Director Coulson has a lot on his plate, like reforming SHIELD, staying under the radar of the task force hunting them, and dealing with HYDRA. Oh, and let’s not forget that creepy alien code, some new faces to the team, keeping a former agent locked in a cell, and one member hallucinating another missing member thanks to serious brain trauma. You know, just another day at the office.

Skye: now with rockin’ bangs.

I quite enjoyed this season opener, even with some of the more dodgy parts of it, like for instance: you’d think with such a facility containing some of the most lethal tech ever, there would be waaaaaaay more security. But I responded well to the Absorbing Man stuff, the Peggy Carter and Howling Commandos cameo, that rather horrible end for Lucy Lawless (her fault for touching that damned 084) and that sad turn for the wonderful duo of FitzSimmons. I don’t know how much of this new dynamic will survive going into the rest of the season (certainly Ward won’t be imprisoned forever), but I like what I see so far in this setup. It’s not the SHIELD show I would have hoped for, but right now, it’s pretty close. B

So, those are my thoughts, but hey, if you’ve got some of your own, drop a line below in the comments. You got some opinions to share on these shows? Agree/disagree on mine? Let’s talk…