A recent issue of Time magazine has the phrase “The Decade from Hell” emblazoned across its front cover. It’s referring to everything America has gone through in the past ten years, and it’s difficult to argue such an assertion: it’s been a shitty decade on a national level. During such times of stress, people inevitably turn to entertainment as a form of release, and although the methods in which we’ve distracted ourselves over the last ten years have unquestionably diversified, television remains the most easily accessible outlet for most Americans.

Within the format itself, the whole concept of reality TV must surely have been the biggest revolution of the decade. It’s really easy to bag on reality TV – mostly because the bulk of it is so damned unreal – but anybody who spends any time in front of the tube has surely had at least a couple of reality series they consider appointment TV. The two concepts that paved the way for everything else are undoubtedly “Survivor” and “American Idol.” The former, of course, opened the floodgates for the genre, and while it’s seen a considerable dip in the ratings department over the years, 12 million viewers isn’t a viewing figure to sneeze at. The latter, despite all the bitching and moaning and cries of “it’s not as good as it used to be” that accompany each new season, remains one of the most watched shows on the tube, likely due to the fact that it’s strictly a talent competition.

On “American Idol,” the only backstabbers are the judges, and since they aren’t part of the competition, their amusing duplicity is championed. The contestants, on the other hand, are innocents, and once the competition is underway, we’re given no peek into any possible backstage drama, which is a good thing, because by the time the audition rounds are over, we’ve had enough drama to last the whole season. Everything that comes after is all about who can best transfix us for three minutes a week via one pop ditty. It actually says something positive about the U.S. that “American Idol” remains our #1 form of reality entertainment, even if the actual reality is that the vast majority of Americans couldn’t care less about buying the winner’s album six months after they’re crowned.

You might think reality TV is a bunch of crap, and in most cases you’d be right, but the whole idea of it, to my mind, led to an important revolution, and that is serialized nighttime television (the classic “soap” formula notwithstanding). Reality shows taught viewers how to become invested in characters, how to be concerned for their eventual fate, and, most importantly, how to pay attention to an ongoing storyline, and the need to tune in every week. It didn’t take long for the networks to figure out that there was an audience for shows that didn’t continually hit the reset button. “24” must have been the first successful show of the decade to embrace the serial formula, and it embraced it whole hog. It required you to tune in for every episode, because each installment was another hour of a single day in the life of Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. That “24” premiered less than two months after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 was pure happenstance. That it became enormously popular with viewers? Probably not so much. America needed some fictitious reassurance that there were folks on the job who could get shit done, and “24” filled the prescription.

Strangely, “24” didn’t open the network floodgates for more such programming right away. It took a few years, and then “Lost” made its mark. The number of “Lost” episodes I’ve seen could be counted on two hands, but that’s not because I didn’t like it, but because real life got in the way of it being appointment TV. Yet I viewed the pilot for “Lost” several months before its 2004 premiere, and when it ended I was convinced that I’d seen the second best TV pilot ever made. (“Twin Peaks” stills sits at #1.) The fact that a show as intricate as “Lost” still has a hardcore, central audience is perhaps a testament to that pilot. “24” started a new story with each new season; “Lost” required that you tune in for every episode of every season.

Another sci-fi series that did just that was “Battlestar Galactica,” a show that, due it being on a niche network (Syfy), never amassed a huge audience yet snagged boatloads of publicity and awareness nonetheless. It was no small feat to take an utterly laughable short-lived series from the late ‘70s and re-envision it for modern audiences, but Ron Moore and company did just that…and they did it far more successfully that anyone ever guessed possible. Most amazingly, the show taught us a lot about ourselves, by thoroughly defining what it means to be human, and as the damaged ‘00s dragged on, there may not have been a more important lesson to be learned.

On the same day I saw the “Lost” pilot, I saw another pilot for a completely different kind of series. While I didn’t rank it as one of the greats, there was one thing I was sure of: it would be a massive hit…and it was. “Desperate Housewives” was precisely the sort of vapid, soapy fare that had been absent for far too long on American TV. It clued into the seemingly bland suburban construct which surrounds so many Americans, via the Lynchian notion that “all is not what it seems.” Most anyone who lives a suburban life can no doubt relate to that idea, because wherever there are groups of people, there are bound to be some of them that are fucked up. “Housewives” is littered with fucked up suburbanites of all shapes, sizes and types, but they’re kooky and funny and there’s always some twinkly music playing in the background that in the end makes everything OK. It is not great television, but over the years it has, for the most part, been immensely watchable in the most disposable sort of way.

Around the same time period as “Housewives,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” made some major waves. It’s a series I have never watched and never plan to, but I’d be foolish to omit it from discussion since it brought two annoyingly obnoxious terms to the TV table: McDreamy and McSteamy. I haven’t heard either in a few years, but there was a time when they seemed to define everything that was wrong with television. I assume “Grey’s” fans have grown out of it…or maybe the show killed one of those guys off? I’ve no idea and can’t be motivated to investigate. Presently, there’s a brand new version of it going around, through cinema, via Camp Edward and Camp Nimrod. People can be so easily distracted it makes you wonder why some shows actually try harder.

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And Upfronts Week rolls on, with the American Broadcasting Company offering up their slate for the new season. Sadly, as Mr. Paulsen revealed yesterday, “Samantha Who?” will not be returning for Season 3 (and that rather depresses me, as I quite liked the show), but on the up side, “Better Off Ted” did score another season. Woo-hoo! You can view the network’s fall schedule below, along with info on the new shows and details on what to expect come the mid-season.

Monday:

8:00 PM – Dancing with the Stars
10:00 PM – Castle

Tuesday:

8:00 PM – Shark Tank

From Mark Burnett, executive producer of “Survivor” and “The Apprentice,” and Sony Pictures Television comes “Shark Tank,” an exciting new reality show that gives budding entrepreneurs the chance to make their dreams come true and become successful – and possibly wealthy – business people. But the entrepreneurs must first try to convince five tough, multi-millionaire tycoons to part with their own hard-earned cash and give them the funding they need to jumpstart their ideas.

9:00 PM – Dancing with the Stars Results Show

10:00 PM – The Forgotten

From executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer comes a crime show in which a team of dedicated amateurs work on cases involving unidentified victims. After the police have given up, this group must first solve the puzzle of the victim’s identity in order to then help catch the killer. They work to give the deceased back their names, lest they become — The Forgotten. Stars Rupert Penry-Jones as Alex, Reiko Aylesworth as Linda, Michelle Borth as Candace, Bob Stephenson as Walter, Anthony Carrigan as Tyler and Rochelle Aytes as Detective Grace Russell.

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- NBC wants shorter seasons from “Heroes,” according to AdAge.com. The network is looking for 18 to 20 episodes instead of the usual 25, with fewer in-season breaks. I’m all for shorter seasons, as shorter usually equals better.

- ABC has renewed “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” — no surprises there — “Brothers & Sisters,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Ugly Betty” and “Private Practice,” but “Cupid,” “Better Off Ted,” “Castle,” “Scrubs,” “Samantha Who?” and “The Unusuals” are still in limbo. TV.com thinks that “Castle” has the best chance of surviving.

- Television Without Pity lists 10 series that deserve a movie before “CSI.”

- Yahoo TV highlights 16 season finales that are coming up over the next five weeks.

Compared to that other famed desperate housewife of world literature, Tolstoy’s sympathetic Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary is, well, kind of a…word that I’m too well brought up to use. Especially as portrayed during Isabelle Huppert’s perfectly minimalist performance, she is more than a little superficial, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and horribly unable to asess the consequences of her own actions. On the other hand, she’s no Paris Hilton, by which I mean she is still very recognizable as an actual human being, all to similar to anyone one of us (her creator, author Gustav Flaubert famously declared, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi!”). Still, the flavor of the story is dry – almost satirical. So, France’s ultra-prolific master of ultra-dry melodramas and tales of suspense, Claude Chabrol, makes perfect sense as the writer-director to bring Flaubert’s revered, frequently filmed novel to the screen. This 1991 production takes a worm’s eye of the tale, which has Emma coldly marrying a goodhearted but deadly dull doctor (Jean-François Balmer) simply to get out of the house. Bored literally to tears, she cuckolds him with a cold-blooded womanizer (Christophe Malavoy) and a seemingly more goodhearted law student (Lucas Belvaux), while literally spending the good doctor and herself to destruction. Yes, this is an evergreen story with a contemporary ring to it – and Chabrol’s cool, dispassionate, and not merely cynical eye is an appropriate counterpoint. This is no tearjerker, but it’s also impossible to stop thinking about this underplayed tragedy of a family destroyed by pretension, materialism, and self-involvement, with innocent victims all around.

Click to buy “Madame Bovary”

Even though each of these panels was its own entity, it just seemed best to combine them all into one posting, since I think most people really just want the bullet points about what we can expect from the new season. If I’m wrong, don’t be afraid to tell me so, but in the meantime, here’s what was doled out…

Desperate Housewives

* The big news, as noted in the previous entry, is the five-year jump between last season and this season…or the “One Tree Hill”-ing of the series, if you will. (Look, I’m telling you, this description is so fetch. It’s totally gonna take off.)

* Gale Harold is playing Susan’s new love interest. “He’s kind of an interesting artsy guy who’s very much very different from the previous man in her life,” says executive producer Marc Cherry, “and he will present her with all sorts of new challenges, especially the fact that she kind of doesn’t really even want to be in a relationship. She’s not sure. So that’s kind of some of the colors we’ll be examining there.”

* There are no immediate plotlines planned which surround Andrew’s gayness, but “but some part of Andrew’s personal life will come up and probably cause problems for Bree soon enough,”says Cherry.

* Eva Longoria’s character, Gabrielle, is looking decidedly haggard after the five-year jump, but, then, that’s what happens when you pop out a pair of chubby little darlings in a short amount of time. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

* When asked where Edie’s character would be going this season, Nicolette Sheridan instantly deferred to Cherry, who would only say that “Edie will come back to Wisteria Lane in a very surprising way, and we’re not telling you anything more than that.”

* Neil McDonough is going to be moving onto Wisteria Lane. “He will be bringing the mystery with him,” says Cherry, “and all I’m going to tell you is he has revenge on his mind.”

* Even though he and Susan are no longer together, you will see Mike Delfino in the show. “It will be revealed what happened to Mike and Susan,” said Cherry, “and that’s all I’m going to tell you.” (Do you sense a recurring theme here?)

* The time jump has resulted in some of the actors and actresses playing the kids on the show to fall out of the show by necessity, but at least in the case of Andrea Bowen, who played Julie Mayer, Cherry says, “We’re going to bring her back and try to come up with stories to bring her back,” with fellow producer Bob Daily adding, “I think we’re hoping to see some of those kids in flashbacks.”

* In further discussion of the five-year jump and how much in the way of flashbacks we’d be seeing, Cherry reiterated that they were very much committed to staying in this new time period, with Daily clarifying, “I think the fun for us and the audience is revealing in dribs and drabs what you missed in those five-year periods. Sometimes that will involve flashbacks and sometimes it won’t. I think we’re trying to parcel that out over the first half of the season and then leave some mysteries open.”

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This was a nice idea: get the show runners for ABC’s returning dramas on one panel, and let the critics pummel all of them with questions at one time. It kinda worked…but it also kinda didn’t, with the biggest issue being that the panel ended up being dominated by the producers who also had panels for their own shows. Obviously, I would’ve liked to hear a lot more from Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (”Lost”), but I guess it really wouldn’t have mattered a whole lot even if they hadn’t had Marc “Chatterbox” Cherry, producer of “Desperate Housewives,” off to their left, since those guys aren’t exactly known for their loose lips.

Here’s some of the info we managed to gleam from the various show runners…

Lost:

* We were given no answers as to when the Oceanic Six will return to the island, nor when the two timelines of the show might merge. “Season 5, obviously we’re not going to talk too in depth about,” admitted Lindelof, “but suffice to say, it’s very exciting for us to be 86 hours into the show. We’re going into Season 5, and the fact that people are still asking us, ‘What is the show going to be next year? How are you guys going to tell stories?’ It’s enormously cool. All we can say is it will take place in some time.” (This was the most illuminating thing offered by Lindelof during the entire panel, just so you know.)

* When someone pressed the issue and asked if the Oceanic Six and those remaining on the island would spend any quality time on screen…perhaps a visitation, perhaps a dream sequence, Cuse responded, “Obviously, the turn that’s happening with the characters off the island is that the island does seem to be drawing them back, and Ben makes it kind of clear at the very end of the finale that it’s important that they go back to the island. So that, hopefully, is going to be something that you see a lot of in Season 5, and that’s something we are excited about: the journey about how those six kind of return to the island…or contemplate returning to the island.”

* Lastly, Cuse provided the only actual fact about the upcoming season: “There will be more of Daniel Dae Kim in the series in some form.”

Grey’s Anatomy:

* Shonda Rhimes was – shocker! – tight-lipped about the reported major plotline for Izzie (Katherine Heigl’s character), saying only, “Storywise, we have a really great story worked out that we’re all very excited about.” The end. Ugh.

* She did, however, open up a bit about the lesbian storyline that was introduced last season. “We have a really interesting, wonderful, funny way of laying out the story of Callie and Erica that I’m pretty excited about,” she said, “that I feel like is not necessarily your typical — if there can be a typical — way of dealing with the storyline. What I love is we sort of sat down with GLAAD and talked about women who figure out that they’re lesbians later in life and what that means, and we really were able to find some really great, humorous, and serious emotional stuff to play that’s going to feel really interesting and also affect their lives in the hospital.”

Private Practice:

* Rhimes really only offered one thing for her other show: “Our medical cases this season are really laid out in terms of having real medical and ethical dilemmas and the problems that doctors sort of face every day: what do you tell a patient? What don’t you tell a patient? I don’t think that we’re talking about less soap per se, in that word, but I think that we are talking about sort of making the medical cases stronger so that the soap is supported.”

Desperate Housewives:

God love Marc Cherry. If you looked up “hoot” in your Funk and Wagnalls, there’d be a picture of him. But he spent more time talking about how there should be less sports metaphors in conversation and more Broadway musical metaphors, and that ate up a sizable amount of time during the panel. Funny stuff, but not illuminating from a show standpoint. But we still managed to glean a few items of interest…

* As already leaked by Marcia Cross, the show has jumped ahead in time by five years, thereby inspiring accusations that the series is pulling a “One Tree Hill.” (Actually, no-one even remotely said this, but I’m trying to popularize it, so don’t be afraid to say it to someone yourself.) Of the primary cast members, Eva Longoria has apparently suffered the worst as far as how her character looks.

* Carlos will still be blind…for a little while, anyway.

Ugly Betty:

* Silvio Horta was asked if he’d always intended to get rid of Henry or his departure was to do with Chris Gorham, the actor who played the character. “You know, it was neither,” said Horta. “Part of it was going into the strike and having that time to really think where this was going. I think we kept rushing it and thinking we were going to continue the relationship. We had no end point in sight. And thinking about it and where we could go, I just didn’t see where there was a place that was exciting that I wanted to write about and where I thought the audience wanted to watch it. So it just made the most sense to part ways. Chris is great – this is the second show I did with him – and hopefully he’ll be a part of this at some point. It doesn’t mean that the door is closed to him being a part of this at any point. But it just felt like it was time to move on.” It is perhaps telling…or, okay, perhaps not…that, when asked if Henry would be back at all in the new season, Silvio replied, “I can’t tell you.”

Brothers & Sisters:

* Greg Berlanti only got one question about this show, too, and that was when someone asked if he was repeating himself by having a missing sibling in the last season. “Hopefully, as it plays out, people won’t feel that way,” he said, “and we certainly aren’t designing the story in the same way. I mean, I definitely, toward the end of the year…I think it was a byproduct a little bit of the strike in terms of we had wanted to lay out the story a little bit better initially, and we wanted to dismount from the story a little bit better. And everything was sort of abbreviated. So I don’t think we quite pulled it off entirely. But I’m looking forward to this year. I think people will enjoy the way it plays out.”

Dirty Sexy Money:

Not a word. Maybe Berlanti was saving his strength for later in the afternoon, when the show got its own panel.

Michael Franti once described television as “the drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.” As such, we’re guessing he isn’t nearly as excited as we are that we’re finally beginning to see the fruits of Hollywood’s writers at last being able to put pen back to paper. CBS clearly got the jump on everyone else with the premiere of their new episodes, but as you can see, the other networks will soon be joining in the fun as well, offering up all the fresh new comedy and drama we’ve been craving for so very long. Okay, maybe it hasn’t been that long – as soon as the strike wrapped up, you probably noticed how some series magically “found” a few episodes they’d unabashedly been sitting on – but it’s damned sure been long enough.

Check out our coverage here, then head back over to tell us what shows you’re most psyched to see return!

* Your obligatory non-answer about “Lost”: “(The creators) would need to address where the show will head,” said ABC President Stephen McPherson. “They have not released whether it will take place with flash-forwards or flashbacks. They pitched where they’re going this year and where the next two years will take us, and I honestly think that, now that we have this specific end date, it allows them to craft that story in the next 48 episodes they want they want, and I think that running the episodes straight through will be best way to (display) that.”

* “Dance Acts” is a spin-off in the works from “Dancing with the Stars,” based on a similar spin-off in the UK. The judges have teams of dancers, competing against each other.

* Dana Delaney is joining the cast of “Desperate Housewives,” along with the already-announced Nathan Fillion.

* Harold Perrineau will be returning to “Lost” as Michael…and, on that note, let me tell you about a moment during this panel which really, really grated on my nerves:

When McPherson acknowledged that the creators of “Lost” would be making an announcement tomorrow at Comic-Con, in San Diego, several writers just went apeshit about the utter ridiculousness that they would dare to bypass the Television Critics Association gathering in favor of a “fan convention.” Um…how about the fact that the shows are about their fans and not their critics? I mean, I didn’t even blink when they said that was going to be the case. Of course the fans should hear the info first, if it’s do-able…and if that’s what the creators want to do, then what’s the big honking deal? But, no, people kept pressing and pressing, throwing out statements about the state of the newspaper industry and how their editors would be upset if they found out that breaking news was available but wasn’t going to be given to them, and so on. Finally, it reached the point where someone actually called Damon Lindelof to get his permission for McPherson to give us the news, which was that nugget about Michael coming back.

As God as my witness, I hope Lindelof has more super secret info up his sleeve for the fans. If I was a fan, and it’d been built up to me that I was going to get exclusive info when I showed up for that panel, I would be pissed if I found out that, oh, sorry, the critics strong-armed us and made us give it to them first.

I’m just sayin’, is all.

UPDATE, 12:03 PM: I spoke to McPherson in the lobby a few minutes ago, revealed myself to be as much of a fanboy as a critic, and asked if indeed Lindelof had saved some exclusive information for the Comic-Con panel. He didn’t really confirm or deny – which I’d kind of expected, since he knows full well that my peers would probably pummel him if he they read such a thing – but he did acknowledge that the Comic-Con crowd would be getting far more access to Lindelof than the TCA is, since there’s no “Lost” panel at our press tour. Therefore, I think it’s reasonable to infer – if not an ironclad guarantee by any means – that, logically, the chances of the fans getting more information than the critics are pretty good.

Which makes me happy.

Yep, ABC’s released their 2007 – 2008 schedule, and, as you probably guessed from the title of this posting, the biggest focus isn’t on how good or bad the new shows look but, rather, how lazy it looks for the network to have picked up a series that’s inspired by a series of commercials. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely laugh every time one of those commercials is on, but that doesn’t mean I want a half-hour series based on them…especially not when it means that “The Knights of Prosperity” gets cancelled and “The Thick of It” – starring Michael McKean, Oliver Platt, John Michael Higgins, and Alex Borstein – is passed over for pick-up. (How does that happen, anyway? The pilot was directed by Christopher Guest, fer crissakes!)

But that’s enough complaining for the moment. This is intended as an educational post, not a bitter diatribe. (Besides, there’ll be plenty of time for that sort of material in our Fall TV Preview!) So let’s take a look at how the fall schedule will look…and, uh, let’s also clarify that we’ll probably still end up getting snarky along the way.

MONDAY

We begin with more of that star-dancing crap at 8:00 PM…an hour and a half of it, apparently, since it isn’t until 9:30 that we’re scheduled to see the new Christina Applegate sitcom “SAM I AM.”

“Sam I Am” – When a terrible accident leaves Samantha “Sam” Newly in a coma for eight days, she wakes up with no recollection of any past experiences, memories or events. Faced with amnesia, Sam must start over. To her dismay she discovers that she wasn’t a particularly honest, good-hearted or loving person. In fact she was self-involved, narcissistic and devoid of real relationships – essentially a bitch. Sam must now struggle with her desire to be good and her temptation to be…not so good. Finding the line between good and evil is never easy.

Um…that’s a comedy? Well, anyway, after that, 10 PM finds another season of “The Bachelor,” which means we can’t get to Tuesday night soon enough.

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Two months prior to the announcement of its official fall lineup, ABC has announced the renewal of ten primetime series — most of them thriving veterans such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Lost,” and “Desperate Housewives.” Also making the cut were freshman hit “Ugly Betty” and the late-blooming “Brothers and Sisters,” as well as the Anne Heche dramedy “Men in Trees.”

Reality programs back for another year include “Dancing with the Stars,” “The Bachelor,” and “Extreme Home Makeover.” Late-night talker “Jimmy Kimmel Live” will return as well.

And, in a pleasant surprise given the show’s relative lack of momentum to date, “Boston Legal” will return next season as well.

To which we say: Denny Crane!