Aaaannd The Inappropriate Teen Sex Starts Again

Yay! The new TV season has FINALLY started!

If it feels like it's been forever, let me just remind you that the strike last season caused all narrative television to break off in the fall and resume inadequately, and sporadically, the following spring.

So it actually has been forever since we got to catch up with our favorite fictional characters. And in most cases--well, in all cases--I've started caring a lot less about them.

Let me just take a moment here to tell the stupid stupid network executives DIRECTLY that I will entirely STOP caring about any show that doesn't show full episodes online. No, I will not buy a TV, much less get cable, just to watch some TV show. I have Netflix, I can wait, but your ratings can't. I'm willing to put up with the commercials, so bring it on.

Here are the cases where I still kinda care:

Thank oG Gossip Girl is back to showing full episodes online. They had stopped after the strike break last season, and were only showing teasers. As a result, I missed the last four or six episodes and am probably going to have to download them from iTunes or something. Ugh. No, I haven't watched the season premiere yet. I'm not yet caught up.

I just want to say that I don't just love Gossip Girl for itself--for its energy and freshness--but also because it is based on a series of novels. That's the second recent TV show (after Dexter) to do that and I think it has opened up a world of exciting possibilities, especially for cable TV. The traditional filming of popular novels into two-hour adaptations really only works for short novels with very strong, three-to-five-act structures. (Think A Room With A View, Sense and Sensibility, etc.) Longer novels, with more epic scope, get the life crushed out of them in film (Think Vanity Fair or any Anna Karenina adaptation) because you're trying to compress 15 or 20 hours worth of story into 2.

But dramatic series on TV? Perfect! I can't wait for the inevitable season-long dramatic adaptation of a longer novel. (No, mini-series don't count.) There could be a channel whose entire purpose is single-season novel adaptations. Awesome!

I've already talked about my excitement over the transgender contestant in the new America's Next Top Model, so I won't reiterate. The premiere is tomorrow night (Sept 3) on the CW.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles premieres next Monday the 8th on Fox, despite its unwieldy name. This show is the true inheritor of the Buffy legacy, because it's the only one in which there is a truly strong, yet flawed, physically kickass female protagonist who is a true leader. That was the real appeal of Buffy, all clever dialogue and martial arts aside, and that's the true appeal of Sarah Connor.

Heroes has a three hour premiere event on NBC on September 22, but I'm not sure I'm even going to bother. Last season (only their second) was so boring and annoying that I often forgot to watch it, and my excitement about it is almost gone. Bringing back Skylar--or whatever his name is--was a huge mistake and I don't care to see how they get themselves out of it. ... Okay, I'm a little curious, but not that much. We'll see.

Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy premiere on Sept. 25 on ABC. Love Betty, loathe Grey's, but it sucked me back in this summer when there was nothing but reality to watch. Chuck premieres Sept 29  and Life premieres Oct 3 on NBC. Neutrality here.

Can someone please put Eli Stone out of my misery? I like Jonny Lee Miller, despite his crazy stalker-like relationship with Angelina "I steal colored kids" Jolie, but this show actually makes me feel embarassed every time I watch it.

That's all for now. I might watch some of the new ones. Might not.

Here's a schedule of premiere dates. Here's a grid of the fall schedule. Plus, here's lineup/breakdown of the new dramatic series.

So what's your poison this season? And when does it premiere?