Sergei Bachlakov/ABC
It was a mere month ago that I was so beleaguered by the state of the network television drama that I declared the entire genre dead. Yes, I’m well aware of how repugnant it is to reference myself right off the bat, but you must understand: I was hopeless. I was fed up. I had watched so many hours of middling-to-bad network shows that I finally threw my hands in the air and my television off the balcony. And I stood by that statement…until now.
I am here today to tell you that I was wrong. So wrong! Tail between my legs, devote-my-life-to-making-amends wrong. The network drama is not dead, it just had to take a seaplane off the mainland in order to thrive—some 2,000 miles northwest to Alaska, to be exact.
You’re looking at (well, you’re reading) a certified Alaska Daily devotee. No doubt you’ve heard of the new ABC drama series, which premieres Thursday night. Its marketing budget seems to have no cap. Ads have been popping up on bus stops, billboards, and poster walls all around major metropolitan cities. But this isn’t just a show for us coastal elites, oh no. We’d venture that every American has, at this point, spotted an image of the show’s star, two-time Oscar-winning star, Hilary Swank, shooting a determined look over her shoulder while browsing the web or amidst an episode of Abbott Elementary or The Conners.