New fall pickups indicate CBS still flush with cash, run by execs not suffering from head injuries 

Renewing its commitment to being the United States’ top broadcast network—and once more demonstrating that the people making its decisions have not recently sustained debilitating head injuries—CBS’ six fall pickups boast a bevy of recognizable faces and established creative voices. Deadline reports that the four comedies and two dramas include expected series orders for the Chuck Lorre/Anna Faris vehicle Mom, the David E. Kelley/Robin Williams/Sarah Michelle Gellar teamup Crazy Ones, and the Jerry Bruckheimer production Hostages, each the kind of bankable, safe bet that speak to the full mental faculties and non-compromised cognitive abilities of people who are not recovering from severe brain trauma. “When a Greg Garcia-written, Jimmy Burrows-directed pilot starring Will Arnett, Margo Martindale, J.B. Smoove, and Beau Bridges comes across your desk, you greenlight it,” CBS boss Les Moonves probably said, with all of the confidence of a man whose pockets are lined with Big Bang Theory money—and nary a whiff of head injury. “Assuming you’re not in the swooning throes of a severe blow to the noggin, in which case you might make a full 24-episode commitment to the pretty birds spinning around your head.” Deadline notes that the Beverly Hills Cop reboot was not among the confirmed pickups, though no subsequent report has been made about Moonves or one of his colleagues taking a blunt object to the cranium, so that Shawn Ryan-run adaptation ought to receive the good news any minute from now.

Still no word on what brain-busting malady led to NBC passing on that John Mulaney show, though.