Mark this date on your calendars: April 29^th, 2010. If you’re a college student, it’s the day before the last Friday of classes for the 2009-2010 academic year. If you’re a television watcher, it is the day alluded to in last night’s premiere episode of ABC’s FlashForward.

For those who don’t know, the premise of the show is that everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes, seventeen seconds (save for one person dramatically revealed to be lurking in Comerica Park in Detroit). During the blackout, everyone has a vision of his or her future in six months.

The show opens with Los Angeles a smoldering mess. Cars are piled up, buildings are on fire, and around the world the scene is the same. The camera focuses on Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), an FBI agent who immediately surveys the mess and tries to piece together what happened. Along the way, we learn that Benford is a recovering alcoholic whose sponsor (Brian F. O’Byrne) has a daughter who died in the Afghanistan conflict.

Of course, the visions that every person has during the blackout change what each person believes. Benford sees himself drinking again and being targeted because he is piecing together why everyone blacked out. His sponsor sees that his daughter is still alive. Benford’s wife (Sonya Walger) sees that she is with another man and Benford’s colleague (Harold and Kumar’s John Cho) doesn’t see anything at all.

However, for such an interesting premise, the show is not without faults. The show followed different storylines for each of the characters, which made it seem as if there were multiple shows on the television screen. Furthermore, the characterization was rather weak and some of the emotional dialogue seemed out of place (no one really recognized that thousands of people died as a result of the blackout). However, the story was so compelling that it demanded the viewers’ attention. This show is one that will stand on the merits of its story, not of its characters.

This show will probably explore fate versus free will, a concept that Lost has tackled in the past. Will a character that knows his future change his actions to correspond with it? Probably. Will the veracity of these flashforwards be called into question? Possibly. Will I continue to watch to see if my predictions are right? Definitely.

The show is filmed in the mockumentary style, with brief interstitials that allow for exposition. Though the show is obstinately about intra-family relationships, it has a greater focus on dark and absurdist comedy. One such example is a scene in which one of the children has a problem with shooting his siblings with a toy BB Gun. To correct this problem, his parents (Ty Burrell and Julie Bowen) decide that he needs to be shot with the gun. While discussing when he this shooting should take place, Burrell and Bowen manage to work in references to soccer games and other obligations, which creates a degree of recognition for people who grew up on the traditional family sitcom. Yet, at the same time the dark and absurdist comedy coexists with the traditional.

And yes, the show does venture to the absurd quite often, usually while referencing some elements of pop culture. Burrell dancing to High School Musical was used heavily in commercials, but there are other gags that are just as adept. The show plays upon the “I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen” line from Say Anything when detailing the courtship of an eleven-year-old by substituting “picture of me as an old-time sheriff” for “pen”. These references aren’t in any heavy-handed manner and fit the characterization of each character (much unlike the “manatee gags” of Family Guy).

The breakout star of the show is Burrell, who portrays the self-stylized “cool dad”. He tries to be hip when it is painfully obvious that he is not in any sense of the word. Even though the “cool” dad has been performed many times throughout the years, the mockumentary interstitials allow for more development and jokes that seem fresh, even if the archetype itself is stale.

Modern Family marks a step in the right direction for television comedy, and is the best new comedy this year. There is tremendous potential to be found within its first thirty minutes, and it marks the first comedy on ABC in a long time that is worth watching.

Two and a Half Men is a show that, like it or not, demands to be reviewed by any legitimate entertainment critic. Last season, it was the highest rated comedy on television and on Sunday, Jon Cryer upset Neil Patrick Harris to win the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor. Its star, Charlie Sheen, is the highest paid actor in television.

After viewing last night’s season premiere, it’s difficult to understand why two of those facts are true. The humor consisted of creative ways to refer to genitals and excrement. For example, one of the subplots, Charlie’s inability to decide between his fiancé and an old ex who reappeared in his life, led to a tremendous bout of constipation. Thus, the following exchange ensued toward the end of the episode:

Alan (Jon Cryer): “How’s the intestines?”

Charlie (Charlie Sheen): “Clean as a whistle.”

Then, a laugh track played. Why? There was no joke there. There was no funny delivery, just a series of exchanges that would be normal for someone who experienced constipation. The writing was lazy and the laugh track only seemed to highlight the utter detachment between what is humorous and what appeared on the screen. Much of the episode proceeded in this fashion. The show told me that I was supposed to laugh; yet I couldn’t even bring myself to chuckle. This observation seems to articulate the evolving paradigm shift that is occurring in network television comedy.  While shows like The Office and 30 Rock have breached the line between the inane and the absurd frequently, Two and a Half Men plays it straighter than most, mining the established tropes of situational comedy to try and find humor.

Jon Cryer shone in his relatively brief screen time. The timing between he and Sheen is actually a work of art and something that should be noted (that’s why he won the Emmy). After six years, the two have an established rhythm and it showed in the opening scene of the episode. However, there was nothing beyond the opening scene that came close to matching its humor.

This episode fell flat, betrayed by its script. Hopefully next week’s episode will be an improvement, as laying the foundation for this season’s overarching plot lines bogged much of this episode down. The writers of the show should have realized that an episode could still be funny even if it spends most of its time on establishing story. Isn’t that the purpose of a comedy, anyway?