NBC Preview Offers Your First Glimpse of Betty White on Community, and 4 Other Points of Interest

NBC's new 24-minute-long preview of its fall schedule invites us in for a closer look at its drama-heavy menu, which is enough to appetize me for some key debuts and guest spots. Here are its five biggest points of interest:

5. All right, I sort of care what The Event's "event" is. And furthermore, I care that Laura Innes hits us with that cliffhanger line about withholding the truth, because it means her character is sinister -- a character trait that I want to see her play to the hilt. Hopefully this serial will be treated with more care than NBC's forgotten hour of quality mystery, Persons Unknown.

4. The un-celebrity-fied Apprentice. It turns out I've missed it -- or it just makes the Bret Michaels version seem depressing in comparison. I can do without The Donald's monologue about his tired coif, but I suppose we're due for at least one of those a season.

3. Betty White's appearance on Community's second season opener: Her barely glimpsed scene shows off frenetic timing that may require more Sue Ann Nivens brass than Rose Nylund naivete, and it's time her alleged new hipster fanbase acquaints itself with that part of her skill set.

2. The return of Diedrich Bader on NBC's Outsourced. You laugh! I'm not high on the show -- how much of it can be hostile phone calls with stateside customers? -- but Bader's confidence outshines the lot of his costars, and his jaded character is different enough from The Drew Carey Show's Oswald Lee Harvey that I'm torqued for a full viewing.

1. Undercovers, the action-drama boasting an overlong JJ Abrams pilot, is shown off even better than it was in its original trailer. First, the bedroom business is actually sexy, and I've been dying for a primetime drama with libidinous edge and no trace of paranormal underpinnings (while NBC's not going to give us cable-ready nudity, it will give us the formidable bods of stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Boris Kodjoe). And speaking of Kodjoe: His line about withholding the specifics of his job from ex-spy wife, just as she appears behind the door? Funnier than the majority of Outsourced's material. Of all of NBC's new dramas, Undercovers proves in this preview that it has the most potential to be creatively and literally adventurous.