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First the Nets leave New Jersey, then Jersey Shore returns to disappointing ratings, and now CBS's Made in Jersey has been canceled. Jersey Pride is taking a beating.

CBS has made the first awkward phone call of the 2012 fall season, pulling Made in Jersey from its schedule effective immediately. The legal drama about a street-smart lawyer from New York's jealous cousin has been airing on Friday nights at 9pm; last Friday marked the series' second episode. Made in Jersey actually won the hour in total viewers with its last episode by drawing 6.78 million viewers. But it still had that CBS problem and finished fourth with just a 0.8 rating in the adult demo. Hey, at least it beat a Hart of Dixie repeat!

This bloodshed is the first of what has been a kinder, gentler opening month of the new fall season. Five shows (NBC's Go On, The New Normal, and Revolution and Fox's The Mindy Project and Ben and Kate) have all been given full-season orders.

Made in Jersey's 9pm timeslot will go to CSI: NY, which slides back an hour from hour. Undercover Boss will take over the vacated Friday-at-8pm slot when it returns for Season 4 on November 2.

If you're participating in our Dead Pool, this news is a bit of an upset—Friday shows are usually given a longer leash, as poor ratings come with the territory. Made in Jersey will be worth 11 points (two episodes aired, so it's 13 – 2 = 11). No, I did not have it as one of my picks and I'm pretty bummed about it. But now it's so obvious! Arghhhh! I mean, CBS let A Gifted Man rot for months before it got canceled in the same time slot last year!

Other shows that are likely candidates for cancellation include Fox's The Mob Doctor, CBS's Partners, and NBC's Guys With Kids.

Did anyone here watch Made in Jersey?

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Made in Jersey S01E01: "Pilot"

You wouldn't know it from a cursory scan of popular TV, but there are other exciting places in the U.S. to live in besides New York City. Yet the all-seeing eye of TV keeps wandering back to NYC and it bizarro-world counterpart and neighbor, New Jersey, which has developed a reputation as home of the brassy and super-trashy. Made in Jersey expects you to already be well-versed in this stereotype, calling upon a pastiche of pop-culture tropes, from Stephanie Plum novels to Working Girl to the The Nanny. I mean, look at Martina Stromboli's hair!

The actress playing Martina Stromboli (not the character's actual last name, it but might as well be), Janet Montgomery, is engaging and natural and a pure delight, but she's about as "Jersey" as Kate Middleton, and dipped in and out of her accent throughout last night's series premiere. Despite looking more or less well-dressed to bumpkins like me, she was constantly told things like "You came in... looking like you!" so we could understand that she looks like HUMAN GARBAGE to the eyes of REAL New Yorkers.

However, this hasn't really held her back; in the opening scene she'd already been hired by a Big Awesome Law Firm, and by the end of the episode she'd risen through the ranks at a precocious speed and the guy with his name on the building was singing her praises, so it seems like her arc is not going to be a very dramatic one (maybe the big season finale will be her fighting to make Partner?). She uses her brassy experience with the working class to get clues her wealthy Prep school colleagues and the frou-frou NYPD detectives are too snobby to nose out. She CHATS with a WAITRESS!! I mean she basically IS the 99%.

She also has a big delightful stereotypical family that gets together for dinner with like eight sisters who all appear to be sassy supermodel models. Even if the big Jersey family has been done umpteen times, the Stromboli family's dinner was one of the highlights of the episode. If the writers can steer this ship closer to Martina's family and their Moonlighting vibe, they might even convince some viewers to record this show on their DVRs before heading out to enjoy their Friday night.

Because that's the elephant in the room, right? Premiering on a Friday night is bad news for a show, and Made in Jersey is not exactly the fun-filled escape from a workweek you might seek out when you're all TGIF'd up. The majority of the scenes unfold in a gray and brown legal office because ambitious Martina works non-stop. And the show will require the same level of engagement as, say, a high school math class, if this first "case" is any indication, with a flood of tiny bits of evidence trickling in throughout the episode. At a certain point I thought I'd need a notepad to keep track of everything, I actually got a little stressed out. In just this first episode the key evidence that was discussed at length included:

- a 'mosquito tone'

- substances which trigger luminals

- a series of illicit voicemails

- a brasserie alibi

- the cost of highlights

- DIY hair color

- a thumbprint on a ledge

- brick dust on a sleeve

- uncredited research

On and on... and weirdly, none of these clues really changed where the plot went. Nothing triggered a twist or a turn. Martina was convinced their young client was innocent, and every detail just reinforced that, a straight shot from a young girl accused of murder to all charges being dismissed.

The only real conflict in Martina's world is her bitchy Aryan co worker, a handsome blonde woman who undercuts her with super-inappropriate little one-liners. The dynamic is exactly that of Nanny Fine and C.C. Babcock. That may have been how this was pitched. "We want to set The Nanny at a law firm..."

With national treasure Kyle MacLachlan stepping in as the Max Sheffield analog.

Don't get me wrong, I loved The Nanny but it was a half-hour sitcom and this is an hour. An hour of puzzling over a foregone conclusion.

This is one of those rare instances when you have strong writers, a great lead, fine production, and just a lackluster premise. Martina is not dramatically brassy/sassy/different enough from the world of her colleagues to hinder her own progress, so the show craves conflict. It took a cartoon premise and really restrained it and the result is kind of tepid and completely humorless. Would I pause and watch this again? Mmmmmaybe... but then, I'm usually busy Friday nights.

QUESTIONS

... What city do you wish a TV series would be set in?

... Have you ever been to Jersey?

... If you haven't been to Jersey, do you still have a strong idea of what it's like and what is that based on?

... How did you like Made in Jersey?

Made in Jersey Series Premiere Photos

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BUSINESS TIME

... My keyboard is dripping with tears as I type this: MTV has declared that the upcoming sixth season of Jersey Shore will be the show's last. It seems like just a handful of months ago that Jersey Shore was still one of biggest things in popular culture, but you know what they say about all good things. Thankfully, many of the cast members have moved on to bigger and better interests—including having babies, starting drama on the U.K.'s Big Brother, and live-tweeting WWE events for money. Seriously though, I probably won't forget those first few seasons of the show, which is more than you can say for most random reality fare. [New York Times Arts Beat]

... Fox News perhaps unsurprisingly dominated the ratings last night during the important speeches from Condoleezza Rice and Paul Ryan that happened during the 10–11pm hour. 7.7 million people watched Paul Ryan talk about his AC/DC record collection on Fox News, more than doubling the broadcast champion NBC's 4.1 million viewers during that same time period. [Deadline Hollywood]

... Shawn Ryan is just as attached to Hank Dolworth and Britt Pollack as the small few of us who watched Terriers are. Ryan is trying to resurrect the project in a movie-length send-off through Kickstarter. The key word is, of course, "trying." He has to clear it with lots of people (writer Ted Griffin, the studio Fox 21) before he even gets to the kick-starting, but Ryan is hopeful that something could happen and we could get just a little more of one of the best shows in recent memory. [Television Business International]

... GLAAD has announced the results of its sixth annual Network Responsibility Index, which measures "quantity, quality, and diversity of images of LGBT people on primetime broadcast and cable TV" and yet again, The CW features the most "inclusive" programming. The CW is followed by ABC, FOX, NBC, and CBS, in that order, on the broadcast side. This marks the fourth year in a row that CBS came in last; the network received a failing grade. On the cable side, Showtime leads the way, followed by ABC Family, TNT, and HBO. Well, at least The CW can say they're first at something—and something important, for that matter. [GLAAD]

... ABC ordered two scripts from familiar names today, one drama and one comedy. The first, Patron Saints, is a mystery thriller from Jeffrey Bell (The X-Files, Angel) and mega-producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. It's about a covert group helping those in need. The second is a multi-camera sitcom called Housewives. It's set in the 1950s and comes from Happy Endings' Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael, and Will Gluck. [Deadline Hollywood / Deadline Hollywood]

... NBC has grabbed a high-profile project of its own from Howard Gordon (Homeland, 24, Awake) and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). The untitled thriller script set in contemporary society will follow a detective investigating the first robot-on-human murder and deal with a "growing robot rebellion." So, I, Robot? I could see this being next year's Revolution as the one NBC show that looks really cool and but that ultimately isn't very compelling, though Friedman did awesome work on TSCC. [Deadline Hollywood]

... A follow-up to yesterday's S.H.I.E.L.D. television show news: Joss Whedon will not be the showrunner if/when ABC orders it to series, which was to be expected. He will serve in a consulting role, though it's still unknown how hands-on of a consultant he will be. [Entertainment Weekly]

CASTING NEWS

... Mercy and The Lucky One Taylor Schilling will star in Orange is the New Black, the Netflix original series from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan. The series, based on a Piper Kerman book, will follow Schilling's character as she wades through her dangerous new home: prison. The character finds herself in this predicament thanks to a decade-long relationship with a drug-runner. So it's kind of like After Weeds meets Lock Up. I'm in. [Deadline Hollywood]

... In yet another casting decision that was made to make the internet go crazy, Lost's Jorge Garcia will guest on Once Upon a Time as "The Giant," presumably from Jack and the Beanstalk. By my calculations, Garcia becomes the 91st person announced to appear on OUaT in Season 2, so I'm curious to see how the show balances all these random characters. [TV Guide]

... Shelley Long will return to Modern Family this upcoming season, presumably to ruin some part of Gloria and Jay's pregnancy, but also presumably to help the show continue to reinforce its problematic representation of gender. [TV Guide]

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH IS STILL MAD ABOUT ELEMENTARY NEWS

... Sherlock's Benedict Cumberbatch and Elementary's Jonny Lee Miller are bros, but the former continues to publicly express is disappointment over the latter's choice to portray Sherlock Holmes for CBS. Cumberbatch said he hoped that Miller would pass on the project, even after Miller asked for his blessing. I appreciate Cumberbatch's honesty, but I especially appreciate his seemingly egoistical propriety over a character that's been around for more than a century. I hope he texted "I forgive you" to Robert Downey Jr. at some point. [The Shortlist]

Cory Barker is a co-founder of This Was Television and the founder of TVSurveillance.com. Follow him on Twitter: @corybarker.

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