First day of press tour is done, and tomorrow I dive into the waters of MSNBC, Bravo, and SyFy. More to come, but here were the best and worst trends from NBC’s presentations today:

Worst: Big Scary Lesbians. NBC has two pilots where plots appear to be motivated by the presence of outsized, aggressive lesbians. After her lovely work on Glee, Dot Jones deserves far better than to be cast as a butch lesbian who sexually harasses Laura Prepon while they’re both in lockup on Are You There, Chelsea? And the heavy lesbian contractor who gets passed over in favor of a hottie love interest for the main character on Bent manages to simultaneously reinforce stereotypes about lesbians, and about women and home improvement.

Best: Support for Working Mothers. Amanda Peet mentioned at the Bent panel that NBC had been wonderful about accommodating and supporting her being a working mother during production of the show. Debra Messing says of her character on Smash, “The hero’s a woman who is very passionate about her creative life and needs that part of her life fulfilled, but also is a proud mother who has that home life and wants that part of her life fulfilled. The way Theresa writes, there’s such richness.” Not that we need aggressive emphasis of characters HAVING IT ALL constantly, but it’s nice to hear that the network practices off-set some of the better things it preaches on-screen.

Worst: Uncertainty. Bob Greenblatt doesn’t know when Community‘s coming back. No one knows when Awake will air. Scheduling’s not easy, we know, but stop torturing us here.

Meh: Alcohol: It sounds like the drinking on Are You There, Chelsea? will get tired quickly, but J.B. Smoove as an addict in recovery? That could be intriguing territory. Television’s got a lot of serious drinkers, but fewer people showing us what it’s like to live in a world where most people treat drinking as if it ranges from no big deal to the linchpin of their social lives.

Best: A lack of sniping. NBC may have to fight its way back to the top, but the network seems aware that it’s not close enough to its rivals to tear them down. The folks behind Smash acknowledge that Glee opened the door without slagging anything they don’t like about it. Bob Greenblatt was blunt about the network’s need to find its own way without complaining that his rivals are being wrongly rewarded for less risky programming. When The Voice criticized its rivals, it was on substance and format, which is fair game. NBC’s biggest asset is the fact that people want to like it. It’s clear they have no intention of relinquishing it.

Maybe we should all blame Judd Apatow, but I find the way Hollywood handles older virgins kind of fascinating, something that came up again earlier today in the panel for Are You There, Chelsea?, the new NBC comedy for alcoholics with a lot of rage at their families*. A lot of the time it’s just the amazement that people have made it past whatever arbitrary age—18, 25, 40—without having sex. And sure, there are not a ton of older virgins, but they’re hardly mythical creatures. Sometimes, it just doesn’t happen for people.

But more to the point, there’s the idea that if someone is a virgin at an advanced age, they need to be fixed, as if virginity is inherently a flaw or the result of someone being damaged. Sometimes, as The 40 Year Old Virgin put it, sex jus doesn’t happen for people. That movie was probably the most positive way to spin that particular kind of plot arc—Andy wants to have sex, but after some bad experiences, has essentially stopped trying. That it hasn’t happened isn’t really his fault, and he’s not an inherently damaged person. The advice he’s given turns out to be mostly BS, too: there is no secret code for getting with women or having satisfying sex. He just has to find someone he feels comfortable with.

That hasn’t exactly been the case with television recently, though. Glee‘s played out Emma as an incredibly damaged person who does bad things to other people by virtue of refusing to fix herself. I don’t know what will happen in the upcoming arc where Will proposes to her. But the show has not exactly handled her with delicacy and empathy. Now, Are You There, Chelsea? is going to have its bitter, alcoholic party girl rooming with another late-twenties virgin, Dee Dee, who I am informed by the network no longer has her eyes pop all the time. Lauren Lapkus, who plays Dee Dee explains: “She has really strong morals, religious morals. But she’s able to go with the flow. And then kind of help her open herself up in different ways. And over the course of the season she has experiences she wouldn’t necessarily have with different guys.” Which, you know, okay. I like the idea of a sympathetic religious character on network television. But I really hope they treat her as if she has something to bring to the table, rather than having her deliver moralistic sermons on subjects that Chelsea’s already made her mind up on. And as for her getting opened up to new experiences? I’m not sure Chelsea Handler, fictional or otherwise, is someone who should guide someone in a sensitive way towards their deflowering.

*Chelsea Handler’s explanation for why she’s playing a character based on her own sister? “I have a sister. Period. Her name isn’t Sloane. And we had to change her name for legal reasons, so my own family can’t sue me…Everything I’ve been accusing her of my whole life I can now reenact before her eyes.”

Watching the presentation for Fashion Star right now, at which we learned that Ben Silverman isn’t concerned about producing shows in the United States and Nicole Richie has awesome turquoise shoes, I was struck by how much the show sounds like an extension of Bravo’s brand. The way it works is this: designers compete to have their designs purchased by companies like Saks and Macys, who will have those clothes in stores the day after each episode airs, and at the end of the season, one designer will win a deal worth, in Silverman’s words “more than $6 million,” which I expect means in the expected income instead of the actual cash value of the prize.

I was working on a piece that didn’t pan out last year about Andy Cohen, Bravo’s former programming director who is now going full-time on his talk show. And at the time, the thing we discussed a great deal is the extent to which, if you have enough money, you can live in the world of Bravo’s shows. You can go to Lisa VanDerPump’s restaurants in Los Angeles. You can hire Kyle Richards’ husband (or any of the guys on Million Dollar Listing) to sell your house or help you buy one. Consultations are available with Patti Stanger if you’re looking for love. You can go to any of the restaurants where the Top Chef contestants and judges work or consult (this is totally why I went to Craftsteak in Vegas).

Fashion Star is essentially a lower-rent, fast-fashion version of this, coupled with instant gratification. I think we’re going to see a lot more of this trend, where television networks both create a compelling world and then give you a little bit of a way to live in it. Glee is particularly up front about this, and the revenue it rakes in from iTunes and concert tours will probably keep it alive even as the ratings dip.

I’ll be recapping House of Lies, but I also reviewed the show for The Atlantic. And if you’re considering whether or not to tune in to the Sunday premiere, this should convince you:

House of Lies is at its best when it focuses specifically on the grotesqueness and desperation of the one percent, a subject that management consulting is uniquely poised to explore. “These guys are just looking for a way to justify their bonuses,” one of Doug’s junior team members tells him as they walk through the airport on the way to their first assignment. “And why shouldn’t they?” Marty wants to know. “Because they robbed the American public of billions of dollars by selling them bad mortgages,” his coworker Jeannie (a charming but underused Kristen Bell) tells him. And true to form, Greg Norbert, an executive at fictional mortgage giant MetroCapital, complains that people are unjustly angry at the company for giving them what they wanted in a boom, suggesting that underwater homeowners “cowboy the fuck up.”…

After the assignment at MetroCapital, Greg Norbert appears again, this time to set into motion the season’s major plot arc: MetroCapital’s attempt to acquire the firm Marty and his team work for so the mortgage company can have in-house consultants rather than hiring outsiders. “After you left, we felt sad,” Greg tells Marty, who had hoped not to see Greg again after a sublimely awkward business dinner. “No, not really. But we had all this bailout money.” That last line sums up one of the most off-putting things about the economic crisis and recovery we’ve been living through since 2008: The people substantially responsible for our current peril ended up with a lot of money and remain unrepentant.

For those of you who were curious about how the show would handle Cheadle’s character’s gender-variant son, the answer is also very well, in a way that gets beyond the supportive-parent/unsupportive parent dichotomy to examine the actual hurts and compromises parents of gay and non-gender conforming parents make every day. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the show knows that these are the things it has going for it best. There’s a lot of semi-standard cable debauchery, something I’m getting increasingly sick of: risque sex talk is not inherently meaningful. And not all the clients are equally interesting or offer equal opportunity for commentary on the economy. But Cheadle is very good. Kristen Bell is very good. And I’m kind of glad to see management consulting go under the microscope.

At this morning’s executive session, I asked NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt if the network could turn itself around by taking its success building fanatical fanbases for its shows among nerds and identify underserved demographics like black and Latino viewers and program to their needs*. His answer wasn’t particularly specific, but it was revealing, and suggested that NBC is doing some development work in that direction. He told me:

It’s always tricky to think about the niche and trying to build on the niche. Because unfortunately that’s been the good news and the bad news of a show like Community. It has such a strong core audience, and yet it’s been hard to expand that audience. What we’re trying to do is seize on the audience that’s going to come to it at the beginning…we’re developing all kinds of those things. I’m not sure yet what it’ll yield out of development. But we have to some degree do the thing that no one else is doing but we have to be broad. You can just program for 18-year-old twins and get a hit show on a cable network. We just have to figure out how to seize on that but also not end up in the narrow place.

I think this is probably true, even if it’s deeply unfortunate that shows aimed at a black audience, or that star black or Latino characters, count as such a niche that programming in that direction means networks assume they’re giving up white viewers. But a recession seems like a good time to try to win some minority viewers back to the networks by showing them that cable isn’t the only place that will tell stories about their lives or meet their needs. NBC’s very good at fan service for nerds. It would be cool to see them try to do something similar for other categories of underserved viewers. And it would be nice for someone to demonstrate an understanding that Tyler Perry products aren’t just popular because they’re Tyler Perry products, but because they’re an entrant in a comparatively bare market.

*I maaaay have used Living Single as an example of a black sitcom that’s the kind of thing NBC could do. The Hollywood Reporter may have made fun of me for it, but NBC would flip if it had a freshman comedy that pulled 9 million viewers per episode in its first season.

Alright, folks! Based on popular votes, this is what we’re going to do.

Sunday:
-The Good Wife, thanks to Katie Welsh
-Downton Abbey
-Luck
-House of Lies

Tuesday:
-Justified

Thursday:
-Parks and Recreation
-Alcatraz, thanks to novelist, comics writer, and Friend of the Blog David Liss, who volunteered
-Community when it returns

The bridge is yours. Links roundup will commence tomorrow. But in the meantime, the executive session at NBC is about to start, so if you have questions, toss ‘em in comments. And Leslie Knope’s campaign booth at the hotel is already my favorite thing of TCA:

As someone who spends a lot of time defending science and speculative fiction as valuable ways to conduct intellectual experiments around scenarios that are so far away that we can’t simulate them or that we desperately hope never come to pass, I was totally enchanted by this short piece by Madeline Ashby about science fiction and strategic forecasting. I think it’s a terrifically useful guide to making narratives more interesting and to thinking about what happens when you change certain variables, but also to making science fiction a more useful tool for thinking about the future. Of course, those two things do tend to go hand in hand, even if you need other factors to make for an excellent science fiction story. She gives advice like:

Pay attention and take note. Get a team together. Learn everything you all can about the industry, market, demographic, problem, etc. Find recent news stories about it. Save and organize them. Listen to the sources no one else is listening to, because weak signals have more to say about the future than strong ones. (A good example is the anti-vaccination movement. Once upon a time, it seemed like a small cluster of people influenced by faulty research would have no impact. Now, California has record numbers of measles patients.) This is also how I research my fiction. I learn unusual things and write about them. This is why my last story had Quiverfull families working with fansubbers to uncover the truth about zombies.

In Southland Tales, Krysta Now (speaking of which, MOAR GOOD ROLES FOR SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR-NOW-PRINZE PLZ) says that “Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted.” I tend to think that folks like Kurt Andersen, who complain about the recycling of styles, tend to underestimate the extent to which accelerating change has left everyone kind of fatigued and in need of some familiar reference points. All of which is to say the future is moving really fast, and the more people who are engaged in trend-spotting and intelligent speculative thinking the better. Artists should be at the front line with scientists and marketers.

I was packing during Kanye West’s latest Twitter Explosion of Crazy and traveling during the reaction to it, so forgive me this late pass. But while I think his latest plans to adapt a Jetsons movie and launch a think tank-cum-Entertainment-720-like organization (credit to BuzzFeed for realizing the parallels) are equal parts nutty and kind of fascinating, they also illustrate something that’s bizarre about our entertainment culture. Somehow, we’ve arrived at a place where success means not just killing it in one field, but EGOT-plus-a-lot-of-other-letters-ing. It’s one thing to launch a fragrance line because you can make bank on it while also singing or acting. It’s totally understandable, if you’re a rapper, or a singer, to try something new within the broader confines of your profession: I miss Cee Lo Green as a rapper, but I’m glad for him (and us) that he’s found the warble that lets him turn out effortless imitations of ’50s and ’60s pop. It’s another to insist that you’re capable of rapping, designing clothes, and pulling together an entertainment think tank.

Part of the reason this is nuts is because it’s not really possible for a significant number of people to be world-class level talents in multiple areas. Justin Timberlake may have his William Rast clothing line, but he doesn’t seem to spend the bulk of his time on it and also appears to be wise enough not to let its critical reception get to him. Being a serious musician and an increasingly serious actor is enough. The Kardashians, I think, are more on the commercial end of the scale, but there is something odd about pretending that you actually have your fingers in so many pies when it’s an impossibility.

But more importantly, it speaks to a huge, weird neediness. Kanye West is a generationally beloved hip-hop artist who turned himself from a producer into a credible MC by force of will, shifted fashion in the genre to a hipster-inflected, confessional style, and has pushed forward the integration of hip-hop with pop and indie rock. His legacy is secure. So why all the other stuff, when he’s exposing himself to stunning failures like his first fashion collection. Even if he’s arrogant to the point of delusion, it still speaks to a need to be validated that’s essentially unfulfillable.

One of the things that has interested me watching the SOPA debate evolve is the role of consumers, whether they’re like-minded tech enthusiasts or fans of certain products, in lobbying against the bill. They haven’t always been successful — some SOPA advocates have, for example, dismissed Reddit advocates as a loud but insignificant minority. But it’s not necessarily the reaction of the lobbied that matters in this one. It’s whether, having gotten a taste of activism, fans decide to become forces on other issues.

I’ve been interested for quite some time in communities that do public service and volunteer work based on the principals of their fandom. There’s the Harry Potter Alliance, of course, which grounds its campaigns in Potter-driven values. The Browncoats volunteer groups are inspired by Firefly. AnimeAid got together fans of the genre to raise money and coordinate efforts around Japanese earthquake and tsunami recovery activities. And I suspect that as fandom becomes an increasingly important basis for identity or community, we’ll see more work and organizations along these lines where the values that motivate service are drawn less explicitly from political parties or religious faith and more from powerful fictional texts.

Of course, it’ll be fascinating to see if, and how, these groups scale, and if they develop into ongoing organizations or function more like loose networks that can be activated when issues are on the front-burner, but don’t require as much maintenance in fallow periods. If nothing else, the SOPA debate seems to suggest a generation gap on Internet policy between legislators and consumers that could be usefully filled with education campaigns and citizen lobby visits. On both sides, this is a battle, not the war. And fans have a lot to offer.