Which Fall Shows Should You Screw, Marry or Kill?

Gregory E. Miller
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Screw Marry Kill fall shows montage
Fall TV Preview 2015

Fall TV: Flings, Relationships or Breakups

Much like the dating world, the fall TV calendar is bloated with choice. No matter how many good new shows there are, you can’t possibly commit to all of them. So what’s a couch potato to do? Why, employ the classic schoolyard game of "Screw, Marry, Kill" to choose, of course.

We’ve grouped the fall’s debuts into 10 categories of three and determined which one is worth a try with little investment (screw), which one is worth a long-term relationship on your DVR (marry), and which one you never need to turn on (kill). Play along, and let us know your picks in the comments.
Movie-Adaptations
Frank Ockenfels/Starz; Katie Yu/FOX; Jeff Neumann/CBS

Movie Adaptations

  • Ash vs. Evil Dead — Marry
  • Limitless — Screw
  • Minority Report — Kill
If you like the camp-tastic Evil Dead franchise, you can go ahead and marry this faithful continuation from original creator Sam Raimi. Limitless and Minority Report are mostly using blockbusters to mask shows you’ve seen before, but with Bradley Cooper making an appearance in the Limitless pilot, we’ll screw that and leave the Stephen Spielberg remake for dead.
Superheroes
Matthias Clamer/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.; Crackle; Jeff Riedel/NBC

Superheroes

  • Heroes: Reborn — Screw
  • Supergirl — Marry
  • SuperMansion — Kill
Once upon a time, Heroes was a great show, and then it screwed us royally. So we’re happy to hesitantly screw it back. As fans of the leaked Supergirl pilot know, the female-centric cape and tights hour is a lot of refreshing fun, so we’re ready to walk down the aisle. With enough superheroes on our radar, we’re going to kill Crackle’s SuperMansion.
Doctor-Dramas
Paul Drinkwater/NBC; Neil Jacobs/CBS; yler Golden/FOX

Doctor Dramas

  • Code Black — Screw
  • Chicago Med — Marry
  • Rosewood— Kill
We’ve heard the logline for Rosewood a dozen times and still can’t remember what it’s about, so it’s receiving our fatal wound. Marcia Gay Harden knows her way around a TV series, so even though Code Black feels like a retread, we’ll give her show a quick bang. As for Chicago Med, we already know exactly how this is going to go down thanks to its siblings Fire and PD, so sure, we’re down for some polygamy.
Funny-Families
Joseph Culticel/NBC; Michael Desmond/ABC; Darren Michaels/CBS

Funny Families

  • Dr. Ken — Screw
  • Life in Pieces — Marry
  • Truth Be Told — Kill
Let’s just get this out of the way: our relationship with Truth Be Told is ending before it begins… with murder. The other two are a little harder to choose between, as they could go either way. Life in Pieces has a very stacked cast, but it’s going to have to avoid being Modern-er Family. Dr. Ken feels broader than the comedy favored du jour, but if anyone knows how to steal a laugh, it’s Ken Jeong. We’ll screw Dr. Ken as a sidepiece and marry Pieces for now. Hey, there’s always divorce.

Plus: 15 Fall Shows Ready to Make You Laugh
Detective-Work
Jeff Riedel/NBC; Virginia Sherwood/NBC; Eric Liebowitz/ABC

Shows With Detective Work

  • Blindspot — Marry
  • The Player — Kill
  • Quantico — Screw
Blindspot and Quantico are among the fall’s buzziest dramas, starring two of the season’s hottest rising stars (Jaimie Alexander and Priyanka Chopra, respectively). But we’re saying “I do” to Blindspot because, c’mon, tattooed naked woman in a duffle bag! We’ll settle for a one-night stand with Quantico for now, and the forgettable The Player gets killed.
Really-Like-Leading-Actor
Justin Stephens/FOX; Darren Michaels/CBS; FOX

Hey, I Really Like That Leading Actor In This Comedy!

  • Angel From Hell — Kill
  • Grandfathered — Screw
  • The Grinder — Marry
The Rob Lowe of the 2010s is all about smart choices, and he’s continuing that pattern with the highly original The Grinder, which pairs him with the equally great Fred Savage. We’re marrying it. John Stamos’ show Grandfathered is also a stand-out this season, but only one marriage is legally allowed at a time, so we’ll screw it today. That unfortunately leaves Jane Lynch’s Angel From Hell as our kill victim. It’s unclear yet whether the show can live up to her greatness.
Tangentially-Musical
Robert Trachtenberg/NBC; John E. Barrett/The Muppets Studio/ABC; Mathieu Young/The CW

Tangentially Musical

  • Best Time Ever With Neil Patrick Harris — Kill
  • Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — Screw
  • The Muppets (as in the Mayhem Band) — Marry
To be fair, the newly-envisioned The Muppets won’t have the musicality of The Muppet Show, but Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem count for something, right? Kermit and the gang can do no wrong, so we’ll tie the knot. Neil Patrick Harris can rock a musical number like no other, but variety shows over the past decade have left us cold. It pains us to do so, but we have to kill Best Time Ever, especially since Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a bona-fide musical, is such a delight that we were ready to screw it the moment we met.
80s-Flashbacks
Comedy Central; Nicole Rivelli/Amazon; Eric McCandless/ABC

‘80s Flashbacks

  • Moonbeam City — Kill
  • Wicked City — Marry
  • Red Oaks — Screw
America’s most garish decade is on full display this season, most clearly on the animated send-up Moonbeam City. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much exclusively made to occupy the center of a venn diagram overlapping Miami Vice and Archer fans. So…it receives the kill. Red Oaks seems to have the freshest take on the ‘80s, situating its comedy at a New Jersey country club, in a series that feels like an indie movie. Those are always good for a date, so we’ll offer it a shag. Wicked City, an L.A. crime drama, gets the marriage by default, but we feel okay with that given that it’s an anthology, meaning there’ll be time to course-correct our marital issues.
Period-Pieces
Ollie Upton/FX; Kata Vermes/Carnival Film & Television Ltd; Liane Hentscher/Amazon

Period Pieces

  • The Bastard Executioner — Marry
  • The Last Kingdom — Kill
  • The Man in the High Castle — Screw
The high-concept The Man in the High Castle isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “period drama”—it envisions the 1960s as a time after the Allies lost World War II. The thrilling concept means we’ll welcome a screw with an option to spend the night (bingeing!). The slice-and-dice 14th century action of The Bastard Executioner feels like a solid Game of Thrones alternative, so we’ll marry it and leave The Last Kingdom, which sounds closer to the “meh” of Vikings, for dead.
Bloody-Fun
Steve Dietl/FOX; Kurt Iswarienkio/ABC/Getty Images; Patrick Harbron/Starz

Bloody Fun

  • Blood & Oil — Marry
  • Flesh and Bone — Kill
  • Scream Queens — Screw
Flesh and Bone is in this category simply because it’s about ballerinas, and their feet bleed all the time. We acknowledge this is terrible logic on our part, so we’re going to put it out of its misery with a swift kill. Scream Queens could be a lot of fun, or it could be the worst of Glee meets the worst of American Horror Story. It gets a screw, but we’ll definitely be wearing protection. This means we’re lending our hand in matrimony to Blood & Oil, which embodies the soapy goodness ABC has come to master.
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