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Widescreen: Weak shows may be the death of the fall TV season

Is the fall TV season dead? I'm far from the first person to ask this question, but this year's crop of shows has me leaning toward "yes."

I have sampled only three new shows so far this season: ABC's "The Good Doctor," starring Freddie Highmore as a brilliant young surgeon with autism; CBS All Access' "Star Trek: Discovery," a victim of its brazen marketing campaign; and Fox's "The Orville," a "Trek" knock-off from "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane.

Believe it or not, the poorly reviewed wannabe from the polarizing funnyman is the only one I'm still watching.

Seven episodes in, "The Orville" hasn't quite reconciled its desire to pay homage to Gene Roddenberry with MacFarlane's sense of humor, but it's getting there. The fourth episode, "If the Stars Should Appear," posed MacFarlane's Capt. Mercer and his crew with a moral quandary straight out of "Next Generation": Should they intervene with a giant space colony headed for doom, even though doing so would pull back the curtain on the inhabitants' religious beliefs? As always, it's the characters that put "The Orville" over the top, and MacFarlane has settled into a fine rapport with Adrianne Palicki, who plays the ship's first officer (and Mercer's ex-wife).

I gave up on "Star Trek: Discovery" on principle - I didn't want to pay for the app - and the absurdly earnest, cliched climax of "The Good Doctor's" pilot had me howling. (I hope Highmore is getting paid handsomely, because his talents could be put to infinitely better use.) So that leaves one new fall show that I'm watching - I'd be hard-pressed to even name another one, which could mean I'm not watching as much TV as I used to, but more likely means that none of the marketing has left an impact on me.

The most-anticipated offering of the season won't be consumed like a TV show by most people, and isn't marketed as one either: "Stranger Things." It's a fair guess that the nine new episodes premiering Friday, Oct. 27, on Netflix will be watched in one weekend (or one sitting) by most of its fans, and the trailers have omitted the word "season" altogether, branding this new batch of adventures as simply "Stranger Things 2." The sci-fi adventure that owes much to '80s flicks such as "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and "The Goonies" feels like a big-screen blockbuster in a fall that has produced only one runaway hit at the theater. (That would be "It," whose stars include Finn Wolfhard of ... "Stranger Things.")

So. We have blessedly shorter runs (remember when every show had 24 episodes a year?), fewer boundaries and more platforms. Netflix is becoming a misnomer, as the platform created for "flicks" is dominated by TV shows. And now, more than ever, the concept of a fall TV season is losing its importance. What is the next evolution? Will the lines blur even further thanks to cinematic TV spectacles such as "Game of Thrones" and impossibly large film franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Imagine that: Every episode of your favorite show playing in a movie theater alongside every installment in a superhero saga. It's not hard to picture, is it?

• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.

"The Orville," a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" wannabe with an often off-putting sense of humor, stars Seth MacFarlane and Adrianne Palicki. Courtesy of Michael Becker/FOX
Millie Bobby Brown returns to Netflix Oct. 27, in the second season of "Stranger Things." Courtesy of Netflix
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