NBC suddenly realizes the fall season's beginning

Well, good news - mere hours before the fall season begins, NBC has taken a vested interest in getting its new programming sampled. A screener of "Knight Rider's" pilot showed up yesterday; today, an episode of "My Own Worst Enemy" and two episodes of "Kath & Kim" turned up.

(Since there's apparently only a couple of shots of "Kath & Kim" out there, both pretty much looking the same, here're stars Molly Shannon and Selma Blair without their goofy costumes. There - not so bad, right? They look like folks you might want to spend some time with, right? But then, this isn't how they dress on the show.)

We'd grouse about the paucity of episodes to sample and note that pilot episodes aren't a reliable gauge for the potential ongoing quality of a series, but none of the networks have exactly been sharing much beyond the pilots. The fact that the networks have been so generous with screeners for returning shows (except for "The Office" - where's that?) suggests they have more confidence in their venerable fare rescuing them from audience attrition than their new (and in more than a few cases, slapped-together-haphazardly) programs.

Time to pop "Knight Rider" into the DVD player! David Foster Wallace, I may be seeing you soon.