If I could pick five people to be on The View’s roundtable, even for a day, they would be:

• Rosie O’Donnell, emcee – crazy, but comfortable commandeering a show
• Chelsea Handler, for the Joy Behar spot – sassy, topical, and with it, for the most part
• Star Jones, historian – preferably original Star, but post-op lizard Star will do
• Kathy Griffin, secretary – because it would make great standup material afterwards
• Julie Chen, news authority – to lend the show its trademark “journalistic credibility”

Keep dreamin’, right?

Remember when sweeps used to be a huge deal? (I also remember when broadcast networks relied on movies one night a week.) Now instead of stunt programming, we just get streamlined primetime lineups. It feels like the networks have been more patient this fall than in years past. Nonetheless, I’m thinking Jay Leno might just want to take the whole month off. As we approach the season’s first mile marker, here are some news items that made me furrow my young brow.

Lots of early full-season pickups
Some of these were no-brainers. Glee is going to be rocking that gold single all the way to syndication, I’d guess. Community was a shoo-in, and Parks and Rec seems to be an NBC darling. But Mercy? Really? My plate is already full of middling medical dramas.

Cancelled series are more apt to linger
The ax finally fell on expensive paramedic series Trauma, after weeks of struggling in a horrible time period trapped between Heroes and Leno. But its 13 episodes will be produced, and it’s likely NBC will burn most of those off through the end of the calendar year.

Some hot messes are still on the air
How is Three Rivers still clogging up an hour of Sunday night real estate? Amazing Race fans season passing it solely because of football overruns can’t be great for CBS’s nightly or weekly averages. Does anybody believe Fox will order more Dollhouse? The sophomore entry for the Joss Whedon cult is guaranteed to get through its current 13 episodes (with double runs Fridays this December), but outside of a miracle, future episodes are a long shot. At ABC, someone needs to put both Kelsey Grammar and his sitcom Hank out of their misery.

NBC lies like a rug (okay, not really surprising)
And I’m not just talking about the Peacock’s perpetually limp fourth-place finishes. We want to put on quality shows, they say a week after cancelling critical fave and potential sleeper hit Southland. It is pilot season and NBC does have to suck up to program distributors, especially with one third of its weeknight real estate tied up. This would be why NBC ordered additional eps of midseason replacement Chuck, from Southland’s mama Warner Bros.

Viewership is on the rise
Overall, despite a dramatically shifting media landscape, eyeballs are back in front of TV sets. New media continue to emerge, but this is a positive sign that despite ongoing growing pains, a major shift in the production model is not coming overnight.

I am fiercely loyal to my TV shows, often well past the point of reason. At least, I used to be. Procedurals, spinoffs, and sitcoms seem to rule this new season, still in its infancy. But series from each of these categories have all but fallen off my radar this year.

Dexter
Season Four | Sundays on Showtime
The season premiere is still languishing in my On Demand folder, unwatched. How many more seasons does this one have in it? At its high points, it’s a colorful psychological thrill ride. The corresponding valleys have on multiple occasions put me into a sleep rivaled only by Bob Ross’ Joy of Painting and the original Martha Stewart Living, both of which I once used to intentionally induce naps.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
Season Eleven | Wednesdays on NBC
How is Hargitay an Emmy contender, ever? Pretty much since Jerry Orbach’s exit from the original series, SVU has been the best series in the franchise. But the fact that it’ll outlive me in syndication makes it a low priority, especially since lovable wooden hand puppet Ice T has somehow become one of the show’s best actors. It can’t even compete for DVR space, up against time slot competitors Glee and Modern Family.

The Mentalist
Season Two | Thursdays on CBS
There wasn’t ever much to watch on Tuesday nights (though America has been keeping its NCIS addiction under wraps for some time). The Mentalist was a nice treat early in the week; not so now that it’s joined TV’s most crowded night. Showrunner Bruno Heller suggests snagging Red John isn’t anywhere on the horizon, which makes the weekly Columbo-cum-Psych antics entertaining but missable.

Law & Order
Season Twenty | Fridays on NBC
The current iteration of credited cast members at least doesn’t make my cereal want to come back up. But we’ve been running on fumes for awhile. Straying into characters’ personal lives (Lt. Van Buren has cancer) was once a no-no. If we’re resorting to these tactics to beat out Gunsmoke’s longevity record, what will be the show’s legacy? I’m still waiting for Dick Wolf to launch a Law & Order channel, once the franchise leaves primetime and its current syndication agreements expire.

Community
Season One | Thursdays on NBC
Joel McHale, rah rah rah. This is supposed to be a list of returning series, but I already feel like Community has been on forever. And I’m just not that into it. It’s on demand when I feel like catching up, and while the characters are quirky, they are allotted approximately one note each. McHale can do better, though if it were up to me, he’d be trapped in The Soup for eternity.

People caught up with Jordan, who bought a house for her mother, as promised. Jordan confirms that she and Jeff are now officially a couple outside the house. Those wacky producers got much more than they bargained for: this high school clique season turned into Jordan’s reality TV fairy tale.

Season 9, on the other hand, continues to be a major embarrassment, which is saying a lot for a show of this caliber. First, contestant Crazy James appeared in a series of adult videos which were released during his tenure in the house. Now, season 9 winner Adam Jasinski has allegedly confessed to using his winnings to fund a drug operation on the East Coast.

Cheesy Blasters and Jenna’s tennis video were the highlights in this otherwise middling season premiere. Do better! I want to want to go to there!

I’m mostly sad that they’ve ditched the origami fortune teller titles.

I was almost guaranteed to love this show on its casting alone (Julianna Margulies, Josh Charles, Matt Czuchry…plus bloaty old Chris Noth and an increasingly leatherfaced Christine Baranski).

The legal drama is paint-by-numbers enough that I’m starting to wonder if I should take the bar (or the TV lawyer equivalent). But I feel there’s something more to this. We’re still fumbling through a Matlock-y phase, but chalk that up to the show still finding its way. Despite its timely premise, the gender attitudes tend toward dated, and either they’re still building the titular arc or they picked the wrong title for this show. Nonetheless, I’m as ready to commit to the season as CBS is.

By putting more emphasis on the conclusion of a story than the coherence of the steps that take us there, Glee is turning into Frankenstein’s monster as it lurches awkwardly into our living rooms.

Mark Blankenship

I’ve looked askance at cable television for many years, especially after jumping on the satellite bandwagon half a decade ago. As noted here, I recently signed up with Charter, and given the quantity of horror stories I’ve heard from other customers past and present, I’ve been waiting for the sky to fall down. In the meantime, I’ve discovered some things I actually enjoy about my service.

Maximizing my HDTV
I know this was going to happen either way, but man do things look snazzy in HD. I found the chunk of HD channels (which could stand to be expanded), and I love that the black bars disappear and the way it makes the colors pop.

Music Choice
I’ve swapped Sirius XM digital music channels for Music Choice. No more annoying Sirius XM deejays interrupting the music! Plus, Music Choice boasts totally unflattering images of artists along with hilarious non-sequitur collections of facts about them. Highly entertaining, especially since I’d memorized the rotation on XM Coffeehouse.

On Demand
I’ve watched more music videos in two weeks than in the previous two years. Despite its frustrating playback controls and asinine menu, the cable On Demand selection is vast and entertaining. On Demand also includes programs from channels I don’t subscribe to, which is a nice way of adding value and potentially enticing folks to sample and add new channels to their package.

Simple, easy DVR
I told Charter where they could shove their Moxi, and now I have a Motorola HD DVR, the kind that’s just a cable box with a DVR. But it looks and functions a lot like the DirecTV model I just ditched, so there hasn’t been much of a learning curve. It’s easy to sort my recordings list by date, title, or channel. And it separates future recordings day-by-day, which is surprisingly helpful.

Package pricing
I haggled with the Charter salesperson and got a bundle including DVR, a decent package, Showtime, and my existing Internet service for under $100 per month. It’s not fire sale pricing, but I’m pleased considering previous offers were well north of a C-note.

It’s not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. But I’m pleased enough with the service so far to settle in for a while. Rest assured that I won’t be shy about any issues that come up, which they hopefully won’t.

The fall television season has reached an improbable moment: the number of new series that have been picked up for a full year exceeds the number that have been canceled.

Dave Itzkoff, The New York Times