Every May, the network fat-cats kennel their white tigers and head to New York City for the advertising pep rally/celebrity burlesque review known as the upfronts. Initially conceived as an industry event, a chance for the broadcast nets to unveil their fall schedules to assembled advertisers who, in turn, will shell out enough dollars to keep Burbank flush with development cash for another year, the upfronts have morphed into genuine public spectacle, a breathlessly reported-upon State of the Union for the Big Four. Buoyed by canapés and perhaps a monologue from Jimmy Fallon, the audience of beat reporters, unwashed bloggers and shampoo reps are encouraged to buy in to the scripted optimism on display. What’s funny – certainly funnier than Jimmy Fallon’s monologue – is that the same speeches will be made at first place Fox and last place NBC: an annual promise that these new shows with their pedigreed casts and gauzy gag reels are destined to become great big shining hits. In the bright lights of a midtown hotel ballroom, it’s more than possible to believe that stinkers like Pan Am will take flight or that disasterpieces like Work It just might work out. After all, it’s springtime. Anything is possible.

When it picked up the sitcom New Girl, Fox made a risky gamble: It pinned the success of a freshman series on the polarizing cultural figure known as Zooey Deschanel. A member of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Club since her star turn in (500) Days Of Summer, Deschanel has a very specific celebrity brand: She's a ModCloth-wearing, signature bangs-rocking, ukulele-playing quirk factory — not that there's anything wrong with that. And Fox's marketing campaign played up Deschanel's appeal by promoting New Girl with a made-up word: "adorkable."

Jay Caspian Kang: Can we collectively agree to never, ever, ever desecrate the national anthem in the name of promoting bad television? I understand that Zooey Deschanel is currently starring in a show on Fox and that Fox is carrying the World Series and that at some point in her career of having bangs, smiling coquettishly, and being the complicated girl in independent film, Zooey D has found it necessary to share her vocal talents with the world. But this does not mean that America’s forever pixie has earned the right to sing the national anthem, especially on such a massive stage.