The show debutued in September of 1975. The pilot episode titled, appropriately, “Welcome Back,” was actually either the second or third to air depending on whether you believe Amazon or Wikipedia. The wacky order is a reminder of a time when sit-coms were not at all episodic and you could figure out exactly what was going on by choosing any episode at random.

Here’s a clip:

The pilot is set on Gabe Kotter’s first day teaching at his alma mater, James Buchanan High School in New York City. He finds out that his students, the legacy of a gang he himself founded, are a bunch of aspiring young criminals. All of the main characters appear in the pilot, but I couldn’t say whether Epsetin shows up with a note signed “Epstein’s Mother” in this one. More later.

For even more fun here’s a “Where Are They Now?” for the cast.

Alcatraz

In case you haven’t heard, this is the latest J.J. Abrams tale of alternate realities. It tells the story of what really happened to all of the prisoners who were in Alcatraz when it was closed down.  The pilot came with a bonus second episode on the same night. Two episodes were enough to worry me that show is just another procedural. If it’s just going to be about searching out the murderer of the week, we don’t care. Even if said murderers haven’t aged since 1960-whatever. Basically, it’s a cop-with-an-unlikely-partner show. The partner in this case is a comic book store owner (Jorge Garcia), so there’s tons of potential for geek jokes.

Lost Girl

I’m calling this show the new Charmed. Airing on Syfy, t’s campy and all about showing off hot chicks with magical powers, but it has an appeal. (I guess for some viewers, the hot chicks are the appeal.) It’s about Bo (Anna Silk, who’s done a ton of stuff you’ve never heard of), who has the power to drain others’ life forces. After killing a guy who is trying to date rape a young pickpocket, Bo is discovered by a group of supernatural beings who have been trailing her. It turns out they’re all fae, magical beings divided into good and evil sides. Bo is just discovering for the first time why she has the powers she has.

The pilot is very pilot-y. It loads us up with rules of its universe and a bunch of characters. What keeps it interesting is that we’re never sure who the bad guys are–or if they’re just all bad guys.

Unsupervised

In contrast to Lost Girl, this first episode wasn’t pilot-y at all. They might have written a bunch of episodes and just decided to throw this one on first. We’re thrown straight into the lives of two high school freshmen boys doing what high school freshmen boys do: trying to get laid. There’s not much to the story, but the animation is pretty sweet, ala the far superior show, Archer. Kristen Bell plays the boys’ nerdy friend but she unfortunately didn’t get a ton of screen time in this episode.

As Alicia and Peter exit the press conference into a stark, empty hallway, she turns to him without a word and slaps him with the full fury of her humiliation. As viewers we don’t even know what her voice sounds like yet, but she has spoken. This is the great thing about television, and especially pilots; such a rich picture can be painted so quickly.

The next time we see Alicia, six months have passed and she looks renewed. Color has returned to her complexion, her hair is lustrous and her nails are neatly manicured. She sits alone in a conference room. She soon realizes it’s the wrong conference room. And, she is off and running, something she will do for the rest of the episode. The pace of the show lets us feel that, like Alicia, we are always racing to keep up.

Alicia now works in a law office, putting to use a degree she earned 15 years ago before turning her full attentionto her family. She’s sharing her first day with a young pretty boy, Cary, played by Matt Czuchry, much the same as his character on Gilmore Girls. ”Let the best man win,” he says to Alicia. She doesn’t know what he means by this but learns, much later in the episode, that she is competing with him for the same job. In the meantime we have plenty of time to stew on his comment and maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I think that line holds more power than just Cary’s meaning. I think the writers are asking us, does one have to be a man to “win” in this world?

Alicia is defined by her relationship to the infamous Peter; she is “Peter Florrick’s wife.”  Is Alicia destined to carry the weight of her husband’s scandal for the rest of her life, her career? Can she, a middle-aged woman, hope to compete with men half her age in the workplace? Christine Baranski plays Alicia’s boss, Diane, a decidedly straight role for this generally outrageous comedic actress. She talks about women mentoring each other, “the closest thing we have to an old boys’ club.” But a later comment by another attorney suggests that she is not all beneficent.

When Alicia gets assigned to a pro bono murder case, the judge already has a strong–negative–opinion of her husband, of which he makes no secret. It seems like she is being set up to fail. Even the defendant has no faith in her. She’s repeatedly reminded of her age by savvy co-worker Kalinda (Archie Panjabi). Will (Josh Charles, who to me will always be the love interest in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead), a co-worker and old friend from law school seems to be her only ally.

The way Alicia ultimately turns the murder case on its head is pretty impressive and makes for some exciting courtroom drama, but this pilot is setting us up for the long haul. It continuously reminds us just how little control Alicia has over her own life. Everyone has an opinion of her. Everywhere she turns, the media is still spewing footage of the scandal. Her kids just barely respect her. And her mother-in-law is running her home.

One random fact worth noting is that Alicia and Cary’s shared assistant is played by pre-Community Gillian Jacobs.

Through it all, her husband remains in the picture. She visits him in jail. It is hinted that he may yet be a free man. Chris Noth is listed as a special guest star, so we don’t really know how much of more of Peter we’ll be seeing. We are left to wonder whether Alicia will play the good wife, salvaging the marriage, or forging ahead on her new-found path. At the end one can hardly wait to see how episode 2 unfolds…

Let’s talk backdoor pilots for a moment, shall we?

When you think spinoff, you usually to think of a story that follows an existing character to a new setting (think Frasier, A Different World, or *shudder* Joey). Spinoffs that originate with backdoor pilots are generally just new shows from the existing show’s creators. The characters get introduced in an episode of original show — and episode that appears to have very little if anything to do with… well, anything.

You remember that episode of Gilmore Girls where Jesse (Milo Ventamiglia) goes to find his dad? That was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for Jesse’s own show. I wouldn’t have know that. (I learned it on TV Tropes). What I do remember vividly is the episode of Growing Pains where the kids protest the firing of recurring character Coach Lubbock. Once fired from Thomas E. Dewey High School, Coach moves his zillion kids to California to star in Just the Ten of Us.

The episode of Bones titled The Finder is a backdoor pilot to a series of the same name debuting January 12. If you weren’t aware of this fact, you might think the Bones writers had gone off their rockers. Even the title deviates from the normal Bones formula of “The X in the Y.” Season 6, episode 19 is simply called “The Finder.”

I think the backdoor pilot approach is particularly problematic when the original show is past its prime. Don’t hate me, Bones fans–I still love it–but the show is not what it was in seasons 3 and 4. Even if you want to argue that it remains fabulous, it is obvious from the backdoor pilot for The Finder that the latter will not measure up. The most we can hope for is a guest appearance or two by one of beloved Jeffersonian-ites.

The episode begins with Booth and Brennan fishing a body out of a Louisiana bayou. Through a rather convoluted chain of events the case requires them to find a missing treasure map–or chart, as Brennan reminds us is the proper term for a map of water. (At least she hasn’t changed.) Bones tells her about a guy he once knew how can find anything, anywhere: ”The sonofabitch has got the Finder power.” Whatever the hell that is.

We could get hung up on the fact that Booth and Brennan have needed to find things on many other occasions (Tempe’s dad, for starters) and Booth has never thought to mention this guy before. But we’ll be nice.

Walter Sherman (Jeff Stults) is an Iraq veteran who appears to live a pretty chill Southern lifestyle. We meet him as he’s hanging out in a bar with a couple of friends, locked in a debate titled “Ninja vs. Samurai.” It’s a big dramatic moment where Booth and Bones approach from way across the room. All we see is the back of The Finder’s head, until he finally turns around in what is apparently supposed to be a big reveal. It might be effective if he were played by a major actor and not a guy who played a whiny husband to one of the hand-wringing Camden daughters on Seventh Heaven. His friends are  Willa (Maddie Hasson), whose schtick is that she mispronounces words, and Leo (Michael Clarke Duncan) doing what Michael Clarke Duncan does–being large and intimidating.

My minute nine, we’re finished with Booth and Brennan and we’re left with these three new characters as they break into the victim’s apartment, question a pawn shop keeper, and search out a certain tattooed murderess. They’re crafty and clever; there’s a sneaking-in-the-back-door method to their high jinks… fitting for a sneaky secret pilot.

Brennan is, of course, skeptical of the trio’s ability to find the map and help track down the killer. In order to win her over, Walter pursues a parallel mission to uncover a science fair medal Brennan lost as a child. Naturally he finds both things he’s looking for and helps save the day. Along the way we learn that he has a number of OCD-like eccentricities possibly due to PTSD from the war. He won’t seek treatment for fear of losing his “finder power.” Apparently we’re assumed to find him hot, too. We’re subject to some long, pointless shots of him half-naked. Overall, it seems like the show is going to be wacky for the sake of wackiness; something Bones certainly is not.

Some back story is revealed about how Walter knows Booth, which could create some interesting tension if these two characters were going to continue to appear on the same show. Which they’re not.

Once the day is saved, we are ready to go on watching Walter and his friends save more days. The first one they save will be on January 12. We’ll see if it finds its own niche and how quickly we forget it has anything to do with Bones.

What do you think, are backdoor pilots a smart way to launch a new series? Or just a cheap way to get us to watch something we wouldn’t otherwise care about? Here are some more musings on backdoor pilots, or “secret” pilots, at Television Without Pity.

The opening scene perfectly and poetically establishes the background for the story of Nathan (James Lafftery) and Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray) with parallel scenes. One teen boy walks beneath the glow of streetlights, dribbling a basketball. His grey hoodie and the evening darkness obscure his face. He arrives on an asphalt basketball court where a handful of fellow players and a pair of geeky commentators await. Another teen boy arrives on a brightly lit high school basketball court, complete with cheering fans and cute girls in pleated skirts. The back of his jersey reads “Scott.” The back of the other kid’s hoodie reads “Scott Body Shop.” You get a sense of the chill on the outdoor court contrasted with the warmth of the indoor one.

Linking us from one location to the other is the most prominently featured cheerleader (Hilarie Burton, as Peyton). We first see her behind the wheel of her classic car, driving, we presume, along the same street as the guy in the hoodie. Next she’s offering sexy encouragement to the other from the sidelines: “Don’t bother showering,” she tells him.

Each guy engages in a heated contest with the opponent. The high school player is benched for a while and back-talks his coach, giving us a glimpse of his character. Soon he’s back on the floor, however, and each game builds to a crescendo of ”Scott for the win!” Each Scott brother makes the critical final shot, one with the clank of metal chains and the other with the swoosh of the net.

That engaging opening gives way to clunky exposition as we learn the back story of the two basketball players. Lucas, the one in the hoodie is being raised by a single mom (Moira Kelly) and works at his uncle Keith’s body shop. Meanwhile, Nathan is a rich kid with an overbearing father, Dan (Paul Johansson), who pushes him to succeed and makes excuses for his rebellious behavior. The uncle (Craig “Hardy Jenns with two ‘n’s” Sheffer) meets with the high school basketball coach, and from there we learn how all of the people are related. Keith and Dan are brothers, who played basketball together at the same high school. Dan fathered a child, Lucas, out of wedlock before marrying his current wife and fathering Nathan. Keith remains friends with Lucas’s mother, Karen. (Got that?)

Keith explains, “Dan’s on the birth certificate but they never got married.” You have to wonder why Lucas’s mother gave him the last name Scott–whether we’re supposed to infer that she held out hope of having a family with Dan, or if it’s simple literary symmetry.

Rounding out the cast is a young girl named Haley (Bethany Joy Galeotti), who talks like a Gilmore, and hangs around Lucas and Karen’s house with no explanation. Is she Lucas’s sister? His girlfriend? A plucky orphan with nowhere else to eat dinner?

Nathan has long known that Lucas is his half-brother; it something that’s always been there in the background of his life, so there’s no shocking revelation. They go to the same school, but apparently we are to understand that it’s a big enough school that they can maintain a healthy distance. The brothers seem to know very little about each other. Of course, in high school, all you need to know about someone is what social group they’re in.

The plot of the episode is that Keith thinks Lucas should be playing on the school team. Dan wants to stop him, because he doesn’t want Lucas to overshadow Nathan. Nathan couldn’t care less. This means the climactic scene is well, anti-climactic. Nathan challenges Lucas to a round of one-on-one at the park. Nathan agrees that if he loses, he’ll quit the team. But Lucas bets that if he wins, Nathan stays on the team. So… heads I win, tails you lose. Either way the outcome is the same.

That doesn’t stop us from getting a mellow-dramatic scene set to Saliva’s “Rest in Pieces.” Lucas will join the team, and we’re promised a love triangle among Nathan, Lucas, and Peyton, with Haley perhaps complicating it further.

This show draws to an end this spring, after nine seasons on the air. Fans will no doubt look back wistfully at how much the characters have grown and changed (and, in many cases, left the show) since 2003.

Now, I consider myself far from qualified to determine what are the best pilots of all time because 1. Of all the pilots ever made, I have seen only a small fraction of them, and 2. All time is long a time, and implies that it encompasses the future, too, and I haven’t figured out time travel yet. (Where are you, Dr. Tom?) I previously made a list of My Five Favorite Pilots of All Time, which is probably due for an update, but for a broader view, I decided to comb the interwebs.

The following is a list of links to various sources, written over the past few years, listing the best of the best in pilots.

The Best 15 Television Pilots (TV Surveillance, September 2011)

TV Pilots That Are as Good as Most Summer Movies (i09, September 2011)

The 10 Best TV Pilots Ever (MSN, August 2011)

The Ten Best Comedy Pilots of All Time (Splitsider, August 2011)

My Top 10 TV Pilots of All Time (TV Musings, October 2010)

10 Greatest Pilots Ever (Salon, September 2010)

Best TV Pilots: Series Premieres That Made our Jaws Drop (HuffPost TV, November 2009)

Are These the Best TV Pilots of All Time? (Buzz Sugar, September 2008)

You will notice a lot of recurring titles (Lost, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, How I Met Your Mother) as well as recurring themes (genre-bending, twist endings, introducing a mystery).  If I had to pick one all-time favorite I’d have to go with Veronica Mars.

The episode opens, as so many of these things do, with a character who we will only know for a few minutes before she is gruesomely murdered. We watch a young woman jog along a wooded trail, before a truly jump-out-of-your-seat moment. Next, as per the formula, we meet the detectives called in to inspect the crime scene. Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli, Privileged) and his partner, Hank (Russell Hornsby) check out the victims iPod, still blaring “Sweet Dreams are Made of This,” and what appears to be her arm. It looks like an animal attack except for the boot prints in the vicinity.

At this point I found myself becoming distracted by product placements, namely iPod, iPhone and Nike, as well as the importance placed on the song playing on the iPod. (This latter detail does turn out to be surprisingly important.) Nick, meanwhile is distracted by something else. He starts noticing that when he looks at certain individuals they morph momentarily into monster versions of themselves.

As the police set out on the path of the killer, a little girl is abducted, and the audience is shown a mailman wearing boots like the ones that made the prints at the first crime scene. Both victims are wearing red hoodies at the time of their abduction; so here we have our first fairy tale tie-in. (Later episodes go on to explore other well-worn yarns.)

Nick is visited by an aunt who is dying of cancer, and she provides us with the premise for the show. She, like Nick, is a Grimm. That’s not a family name, but a title of sorts. We are not told exactly what that means, and neither is Nick. The implication is that they are put on this Earth to battle bad guys; it’s hard not to compare these Grimms to the brothers in 2005′s The Brothers Grimm.

Nick, his aunt Marie, and his girlfriend, Juliette, are not particularly memorable characters. As the story is plodding along, at last we meet Monroe. Nick sees Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell, My Name is Earl), thanks to his Grimm-vision, as a snarling beast. Naturally, Nick suspects him in the recent crimes.

The best scene of the pilot is one where he and Nick meet; Monroe is busily marking his territory when Nick arrives. Monroe is a wolf-man or, as we learn, a blutbad (a German word meaning “bloodbath”). After attacking Nick in his yard, Monroe invites him in for a beer. In a fun role-reversal, Monroe marvels at the experience of meeting a real life Grimm. “I’ve heard about you guys all my life. My parents used to tell me stories about you guys; scared the hell out of me.” Like Angel of the Whedonverse, Monroe is a reformed monster. He stays on the straight and narrow through ”a strict regimen of diet, drugs and Pilates.” The relationship that develops between wolf and cop promises to be the glue that holds this show together.

If you can get through a rather dull first half to meet Monroe, Grimm looks like it might be a fun ride. Even if it begins with a procedural approach it could grow into something more (think Fringe). All 7 existing episodes are available on Hulu, if you want to catch up before new episodes resume on January 6.

What interests me most about the pilot, however, is not Will and Grace’s relationship. It’s Will’s relationship with friend Jack (Sean Hayes), or rather the way the writers set up the contrast between them. We meet them as they’re playing cards at Will’s apartment with two other guys. As Jack mulls his hand he sings the show tune, “A Room Without Windows.”

Recall that in 1998, when this aired, gay television characters existed almost exclusively as flamboyant side-kicks or token friends of main characters. (Ricky from My So-Called Life comes to mind as a more developed, yet still minor, gay character.) The Will & Grace pilot sets up Will and Jack as two sides of a coin; while Jack satisfies our need for jokes about Broadway musicals and shallow hook-ups, we learn that he’s amusing even to his friends. When one of the other (straight) guys at the table suggests that there might be an attraction between Will and Jack, Will laughs hysterically while Jack retorts with a catty “Will should be so lucky.” It’s notable that we meet them in a very mundane situation, at home with friends, having normal everyday conversation; as if to say the “gay lifestyle” is pretty much, you know, normal. You could say they started what Modern Family has taken to the next level.

In Will we have a complete and compelling character from the word “action.” (This is not to minimize Jack. Though he remains fairly one-note throughout the show’s run, Sean Hayes is an absolute riot and has seven Emmy nominations to prove it.) Sometime in the 90s sit-coms started to allow more serious emotion to be part of their weekly ethos and not just “very special” episodes. Though the laughs are non-stop, Will is dealing with a serious problem here. Having to tell a best friend that you think she is marrying the wrong person is a task no one should have to bear. Through just a sprinkling of description about Danny, the writers provide a clear picture of Grace’s relationship with him and Will’s view from the sidelines.

As the story unfolds, it is mentioned that Will recently ended a long-term relationship. Because his partner has moved out, he is taking on a roommate, Jack, to defray expenses. While he banters with Grace, crushes competition at the $25,000 Pyramid home game, and cracks wise about Jack’s every move, we believe there’s pain there, too, at the break-up. We also get to see Will at work, where he is a confident and well-spoken attorney.

As for Grace, we learn that she chafes at being compared to her mother, works as an interior designer, and tolerates a foul-mouthed, pill-popping assistant, Karen (Megan Mullally — did you know she’s married to Nick Offerman of Parks and Recreation? — a little trivia). She keeps Karen around because Karen’s wealthy friends are frequent clients.

All of the exposition flows seamlessly. We are right in the action, knowing the characters and sympathizing with their problems. It’s comical when Grace storms into Will’s office in her wedding dress, her veil catching on the door; but it’s also bittersweet because we know that she’s just made a tough decision. The fact that Will influences that decision demonstrates her great love and respect for him; his being there for her in the aftermath demonstrates his great love and respect for her. He tells her not to lose hope, that her life is like the plot of a movie. “You’re just in the middle of your movie,” he says. Such a sweet line makes us love him from that moment on.

I am guessing many, many people would include Game of Thrones. The pilot effectively introduced a whole world and a slew of characters while keeping viewers on the edges of their seats right up to the final moment. I’d also like to suggest Wilfred, just for sheer originality, and Locke & Key, if we can count that even though it never aired. American Horror Story was way up there, again for the originality and hook of the pilot, even though the season may not have lived up to expectations.

Here is a list of the best new shows of 2011 from HitFix – a related subject, but not quite the same.

So, what were the best pilots of 2011? Please comment!

The pilot introduces all seven members of the ensemble cast, though the one we get to know best is Francesca (Fernanda Espindola), a fashion designer. Fancesca comes off like an uber-bitch, but we’re able to forgive her in short order when we learn she’s not feeling so well. Her mid-day barf break ends with her hand resting on her lower abdomen–TV shorthand for “Oh shit, I’m pregnant.”

Quick snippets of dialogue tell us what we need to know about the others: Brooke is the sweet gay BFF (played by show creator Matt Palazzolo), Karen is the slut, Joanna is the demure Muslim woman, Ross is the good guy (a Ted Mosby, if you will), Lilla is the uptight career gal, and Clarissa is the virtuous married woman.

Although the pilot title is “L.A. Baby” there’s nothing indicative of L.A. about it; it could be about a group of 20-somethings in any urban setting. Most of the characters work together at a company that designs sexy underwear. That setting should provide fodder for plenty of humorous situations.

At 11 minutes, this pilot runs long for a web series; there is a lot going on. The dialogue is a bit stilted, but there are some funny one-liners, like, ”You look droopy. Like sad, not boobs.” It ends, though, with a tender scene between Brooke and Francesca, where we learn that they have been friends since fourth grade. He is the one she opens up to about being pregnant, and he is fully there for her. We understand that, while the other relationships among the group will ebb and flow to provide the show’s drama, this one will be a constant.