Best of the New Broadcast Season: "Grey's Anatomy," "The Good Wife," "90210"?! and More - Ed Martin - MediaBizBloggers

There has been so much to complain about during the first two months of this unremarkable broadcast season that many of its success stories have gone largely unheralded. Here are a few positive observations from weeks gone by.

ABC's long-running medical drama Grey's Anatomy has after too many wildly uneven and ultimately unsatisfying seasons done something so risky that its inherent bravery cannot be understated: With much patience and thoughtfulness it has been telling the ongoing story of several people who were forever changed by a traumatic event. Last May's blockbuster season finale, in which an emotionally unhinged man entered Seattle Grace hospital with a gun and murdered eleven people, including two we had come to know very well throughout the previous nine months, and grievously wounded many more, including several lead characters, was as breath-taking a two hours of broadcast drama as I have ever seen. So I'm pleased to note that, unlike so many other series in which characters shake off the shattering impact of life-changing cliffhanger finales and get about their business the following September, the doctors and interns who were so savagely attacked a few months ago are still dealing with the psychological aftermath of that event, even as their lives move forward (or try to). They're all a little different, except for those who are a lotdifferent (especially Sandra Oh's Cristina). It takes most people years to recover from such outsize horror, if indeed they ever do. Grey's isn't afraid to explore the basic long-term impact of true trauma, and the show is richer for it. (Remember back in season three when Meredith suffered the fleeting misfortune of essentially dying for an hour or so after that big ferry boat disaster and emerged no more or less miserable than before? Is this even the same show?)

Another drama that is much improved over last season is CBS' The Good Wife. No, I'm not suggesting that there was anything wrong with it during its freshman year. In fact, I expected Wife to return this fall virtually unchanged, because it seemed to me that there was no room for improvement in this sterling series. But its creative team went and mixed it up anyway, adding new characters (including Friday Night Lights alumni Scott Porter, outstanding as a foil for sly investigator Kalinda), beefing up others (especially Alan Cumming as campaign manager Eli Gold) and creating a fresh whirlpool of intrigue and office tension with the merger of Lockhart/Gardner and another firm. The damaged marriage of defense attorney Alicia Florrik (Julianna Margulies) and her husband Peter (Chris Noth) is still at the center of it all, with their personal issues further intensified by Peter's run for state's attorney and the ugliness that digital technology has brought to the political process. The best compliment I can pay The Good Wife is to say that it is the first broadcast drama that truly belongs in the company of the most unashamedly adult programs on basic cable, a group that currently includes the likes of AMC's Mad Men and Breaking Bad, FX's Terriers and Rescue Me, and TNT's The Closer and Men of a Certain Age. This CBS gem consistently proves that the often ridiculous content restrictions imposed on broadcast series need not prevent them from achieving creative greatness. (Another very adult CBS drama on its way to becoming something special is Blue Bloods, which has developed in recent weeks into the best new broadcast series of the year.)

Speaking of broadcast series that can hold their own against the best of cable, ABC's Modern Family and CBS' The Big Bang Theory this fall have continued to do exactly that, even as so many other veteran comedies have slipped. Meantime, ABC's The Middle – a quiet newcomer in its freshman season -- is soaring in its sophomore year as the only comedy on television that reflects life in America as millions of people are experiencing it during the country's ongoing economic decline. Charlie McDermott, Eden Sher and Atticus Shaffer, the actors who portray the Heck kids, are turning in three of the most reliably funny performances of the season.

Lastly, and most surprisingly, one of the most improved series of the season is The CW's 90210. (There's a sentence I neverthought I would write.) I'm not altogether sure why, but what had been an unwatchable mess during its first two seasons is suddenly a seductive diversion. Perhaps it's the removal of those irrelevant veterans from the original 90210, or the subtle softening of AnnaLynne McCord's brittle central performance as nasty narcissist Naomi, or the relative downplaying of the relatively bland Wilson family, or the fact that the kids seem to be working together against outside forces rather than tearing each other apart. Best not to think about it too much and just enjoy these welcome changes.