January's Pilots & How They Stack Up

The new year rings in resolutions and a long list of TV shows that rarely look promising. Every show seems to be "the number one best show on TV," and it's exhausting trying to keep up, especially when HBO gets ready to premiere a slew of award-winning series. Although pilot season often feels like a buffer zone between the oft jaw-dropping season finales of Homeland and the awaited next season of Community, three new series may have some staying power in 2014. Let's take a look at them.

Intelligence

Oh, how we missed Josh Holloway’s square jaw and dimpled smile since LOST ended in 2010. He’s back on TV as Gabriel, a CIA asset with a microchip computer in his brain. While Sawyer was two parts bad, one part good, Gabriel operates on the reverse as he looks for his possibly terrorist-turned wife. Sadly, Holloway loses the charm that made Sawyer lovable on LOST with his current role.

Intelligence does have some potential: the incorporation of technology into the human mind is innovative and the pairing between Gabriel and Riley (Meghan Ory) works. The show is half Person of Interest, half Chuck, but doesn’t manage to pull in viewers. The pilot garnered over almost 16.5 million viewers but dropped down to only 6.2 million a week later. The show has the makings of a decent series with the possibility of a love triangle and some international action, but the show needs to maintain its ratings for the hope of a renewal.

Enlisted

After bad ratings, Enlisted has been pushed to Friday nights on Fox, where most TV shows are left to die. The show centers around three brothers at a military base, with the eldest (Geoff Stults) in command. Although Stults has been known to hop around cancelled TV shows (RIP October Road), the show gets more laughs than expected. And by expected, only a mere 2.39 million tuned in. The show is very male-heavy, and lacks any strong female roles, which may be a reason for its dire ratings. Enlisted has potential to follow in the footsteps of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a show that turned out to receive and win two Golden Globe awards, if it’s able to keep its audience.

Chicago P.D.

Brooke Davis fans, rejoice. Sophia Bush stars alongside Jason Beghe and Jon Seda in Chicago P.D., the spinoff from NBC’s Chicago Fire. The show is pretty much a cookie-cutter duplicate of the typical cop drama, but has Chicago Fire’s former bad cop Sgt. Hank Voight at the center of the new series. Despite the twist of having a jailed police officer lead a team, the procedural drama lacks any new ideas or plotlines that hasn’t been done before. Chicago P.D. will also utilize its relationship with Law & Order: SVU and have a crossover episode premiering after the Super Bowl, which should bring in big ratings for the new show. The show isn’t bad and will probably be renewed for another season, but the premise is too overdone.

Image: NBC