You're so Trendy!

I'm so sorry my blog has been on the "All Pilots All The Time" Channel for the past few days, but its really all I've had time for. Since its so consumed my life, I've started to notice various trends and common threads throughout the pilots that some might find amusing. See below:

PILOT TRENDS

1.) The Year of the VoiceOver (Pilot after pilot start and often continue throughout with the voiceovers--its an epidemic)
2.) Women in Power (Its all about replacing that "Sex and the City" gap with groups of powerful women)
3.) The Supernatural (Whether it be Vampires, Aliens, Zombies, or The Grim Reaper himself, there is certainly an influx of things unexplained.)
4.) Work-Place Laugh-Fest(Jumping on the success of office-related comedies like "The Office" and last year's "30 Rock," the networks have scrambled to develop their own office success story)
5.) Classically Trained Actors (Actors from prestigious Theatre school backgrounds with Tony Awards and Stage Experience--this isn't your usual crop of Texas and midwest Los Angeles transplants who want to be a star)
6.) Foreign Stars (It seems a lot of our talent is being imported this year from England and the like at a much higher percentage than normal. The audience seems to be sick of seeing the same old stars.)
7.) Acupuncture (Not sure why, but there have been numerous references to this in the pilots I've seen)
8.) Transvestites (Transvestites are the new gay I guess...going from never seeing them on TV to seeing 2 decent-sized parts in 2 huge pilots is intriguing)
9.) Making the Old, New (From "Bionic Woman" to "Sarah Connor Chronicles"-Terminator to "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and the Grey's Spinoff "Private Practice" its been all about taking something that worked once and making it work again)
10.) Law & Order, Crime and Punishment (Per usual, the networks get that the procedurals work and scramble to discover the next big crime drama)