What I’ll Be Watching This Fall

Hey all! So fall is coming, which means that our shows are coming back! While summer is nice and you get a break if you have school or maybe a vacation at some point if you don’t, one of the hardest struggles during the season is finding things to watch. Most television series are off by the end of June, making people wander around aimlessly wondering what else they can do! Luckily the presence of Netflix and Hulu and the outdoors can help fill these empty holes, but now they don’t have to! Because it’s fall again, and our shows are back. So I thought I’d make a list of what I’ll be watching. Feel free to comment below, or hit me up on Twitter with recommendations or what you’ll be watching.

Doctor Who, Sept. 19 (BBC America)

I think this is the show I’m most excited to come back on, and it’s probably because it’s been the one I’ve been waiting for the longest. Doctor Who only consists of 12-14 episodes a season, and so it usually only comes on in the fall plus on Christmas (which is fine only because in the spring it is replaced by Orphan Black). Anyway, I’m really excited for the second season of the 12th Doctor as played by Peter Capaldi. While I had some issues with season 8, overall I think it was a good season that made me like Clara much more than I had before. I’m excited to see what new aliens the Doctor and Clara meet, and what cool times and planets they go too. I’m also really excited for the return of Missy, to learn who Maisie Williams (or as most people know her, Arya from Game of Thrones) will be playing, and most of all THE RETURN OF RIVER SONG in the Christmas special. I don’t even celebrate Christmas, but I need it to come ASAP.

Scandal, Sept. 24 (ABC)

Of the shows on this list, Scandal is the one I’ve been watching the longest (though Doctor Who has much more material, I only started it about 2 years ago when I binge-watched the first 6 and a half seasons). Season 4 was kind of choppy to me, and sometimes felt like it dragged on too much or like certain arcs were moving way to far into the realm of unbelievable, which is something this show struggles with. It seems Shonda Rhimes and the other writers are constantly trying to top themselves with the shock factor and the twists that sometimes it becomes over the top, and that happened a few times in the last season. I’m excited, however, for season 5, which I hope will be a restart of sorts and allow the audience to both believe everything that’s happening and also not give us a heart attack right away.

How to Get Away With Murder, Sept. 24 (ABC)

This show started off with a bang last year when the first season came out. While just as dramatic and dark as Scandal, HTGAWM is a new show and more of a murder mystery, which are always fun. The first season wasn’t very long, but they were able to leave us with some answered questions and a cliffhanger, so I can’t wait to see what happens next. The show, of course, is led by the amazing Viola Davis and my bae Dean Thomas aka Alfred Enoch (who, tbh, was the reason I started watching the show in the first place). I’m interested to see who gets away with murder next, or if it’s even possible for all of them to get away with murder every time, since it doesn’t seem possible but makes for an intriguing storyline.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, Sept. 29 (ABC)

This is one of my favorite shows on television. While I didn’t watch the first season and a half live (instead watching it on Netflix and Hulu once I’d been convinced to watch it and subsequently got hooked), I did watch the last half of season 2 live and the finale was one of my favorites. One of my favorite things about MCU is the connected nature of all of the stories. Even if all the characters don’t necessarily meet or see each other often, everything they do affects each other and even when I may not love all of the movies or even all of the episodes, this overarching factor makes me a huge nerd for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Agents of SHIELD does a great job with this: it has its own storylines, while also contributing to the movie storylines (for example one of season 2’s episodes led directly into Age of Ultron), and also tides us over until the next movie. I’m especially excited for this next season because not only will Coulson and Daisy (fka Skye) be creating a team of Inhumans called the Secret Warriors (which means even more superpowers than the spy-centric show had before), but also because it will be leading up to Captain America: Civil War and therefore will probably have some foreshadowing to that (my guess is that SHIELD will be on Tony Stark’s side). Anyway, after Doctor Who, I’m most excited for this show to start back up again.

Sleepy Hollow, Oct. 1 (Fox)

I’ve been rooting for this show for so long. Like most shows, I started watching late (as you can probably tell from the above shows, I tend to at least let the first season come on and then binge to decide if I want to watch live). The first season was amazing, but the season 2 was way choppier than I would have liked. One of my (and many other fans’) issues with the show is how the writers pretty much push Abbie Mills—one of the two main characters—to the side throughout the season, relegating her to the sidekick rather than the badass she is. Instead, season 2 spent an ungodly amount of time on Main Character #2’s (Ichabod Crane) wife Katrina, who all fans of Sleepy Hollow are known to hate. With Katrina now gone, I’ve been hoping that season 3 will be much better, though once they moved the show from Monday nights to Thursdays at the SAME TIME AS SCANDAL, I’m not so sure how they’re going to keep this up. It almost feels like Fox is rooting for this show to fail, and with their track record (cough, cough Firefly and Dollhouse) they may succeed. The thing is, I already know I’ll be watching Scandal on Thursday nights, partly because it’s a family affair, and partly because Thursdays are already called Scandal Thursdays (or TGIT for those of us who watch more than one show from Shondaland). So I’ll have to watch Sleepy Hollow on Fridays and make sure I do watch so that it hopefully won’t be cancelled before season 4. But if season 3 isn’t better than 2, we’ll see if I even bother after a while. I’ve given up on shows before.

Supergirl, Oct. 26 (CBS)

Supergirl is a new show coming out as a part of the DC Cinematic Universe (I think. I’m not totally sure how or if they’re connecting the movies with the shows, though this show in particular seems connected to Man of Steel at least). DC has had a couple of successful shows, namely Arrow and The Flash, though I’ve still not been able to get through the twelfth episode of Arrow (now going into its fourth season) so we’ll see if I ever get to The Flash, which crosses over with Arrow and which both shows lead up to Legends of Tomorrow in the winter (my main reason for even attempting Arrow in the first place). Anyway, that’s another post for another time, but I am curious to see how Supergirl fairs. I read a couple of her comics as a kid and I don’t remember much about them except for liking them. The trailer for the show didn’t wow me very much, but I like superheroes so I at least want to give it a try. We’ll see how that goes, though DC doesn’t excite me nearly as much as Marvel. I’ll hopefully attempt to get through at least the first season of Arrow too, since a lot of people like it and it apparently gets better.

*Honorable Mentions aka What I Will Be Watching On Netflix: House of Cards, Naruto, Jessica Jones