Entourage is showing its age, but still offers a reliable dose of frat-boy humor and Hollywood-style hilarity. It also continues to be a show where men ride high (in more ways than one).

But the feeling here is that Simon may have dipped into his Baltimore crime well one too many times. Tonight's pilot episode, while intriguing in spots, is hampered by a convoluted tangle of multiple plot threads and numerous characters, most of whom seem to have no interesting wrinkles. Worse yet, the story moves at an annoyingly sluggish pace. [1 June 2002, p.4]

Friday's moody pilot unfolds at a listless pace and, occasionally, gets bogged down in its own density. But in it's favor, there are enough compelling characters and tantalizing questions to keep us engaged for the time being.

What it lacks thus far are the laugh-out-loud oments that made the movie such a joy....That's not to say Parenthood isn't worth a look. Graham, the adorable "Gilmore Girls" alum, rocks the heck out of every scene she's in.

If you're a sucker for tangled mysteries--and are in need of a few heebie-jeebies--the show has enough oomph to its early episodes to suck you in.

The pilot episode isn't a total knockout, coming off as a tad bland and safe. Although Abrams does enough to hold our interest, it feels like he's let up on the gas pedal.

Not everything worked, of course, and anyone expecting Conan to reinvent the wheel or drastically shake up the genre is probably disappointed. But if you were simply glad to see his brand of quirky comedy back in late night--and free of the network guardrails--it was cause for celebration.

Unfortunately, things just never really gel in a pilot episode that falls flat and is only intermittently funny....In fact, only Janney, whose gleefully oblivious character spews un-PC zingers and keeps a huge self-portrait in her office, makes a truly fresh impression.

The Playboy Club isn't in the same league, or even the same galaxy, as the critically adored "Mad Men." While the latter offers nuance and depth and keen insights into its era, the former settles for stock characters, cliches and superficiality, punctuated by a lot of come-hither looks.

So far, though, it has mostly kept its ambition in check, preferring to follow the playbook of a typical crime procedural, with a little more darkness and a little less energy.

Homeland has a chance to be a much tighter--and smarter--endeavor with more nuance than "24" ever had. But if a cougar suddenly appears, and/or if someone comes back from the dead, all bets are off.

Although the show features strong performances and is piercing in its emotional honesty, it also get bogged down in its own existential angst.

It's a scattershot approach that ultimately undermines what is admirable about Luck, including some gorgeous photography.

It all makes for a scattered, hit-or-miss proposition. Some gags land. Others fall flat.

The good news is that Sunday's two-hour opener answers several key questions in relatively rapid fashion and in ways that don't seem totally unreasonable. The bad news is that it also puts Sarah back at square one, and therein lies the problem.

While these [butt-kicking] scenes contain a certain intensity and exhilaration, you can't help but think that, had the writers of Missing devoted as much time to plot and character as they did to the fighting, they might have wound up with a much more enjoyable show.

The cast around Washington is also quite solid, and the show looks and is refreshingly different from a typical procedural. But it also feels a little too slick and superficial, and those gaps in logic may be a problem for some viewers.

Based on two preview episodes, Anger Management is at least more interesting than "Two and a Half Men" (take that, Ashton Kutcher). That's certainly not saying much, though.

You get sort of an odd, been-there-done-that feeling when watching the pilot, which contains, to varying degrees, traces of "The Hunger Games," "The Walking Dead," "FlashForward," "Jericho," "Lost" (Elizabeth Mitchell is in the cast) and other dystopian fare.

Some viewers will be riveted to the sex, violence, beautiful nude bods and sensory gluttony of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Others will be turned off almost instantly.

Surely it will have Palin lovers rushing to plant wet smooches on the screen and all the haters citing it as proof that TV is, indeed, full of dreck.

Hamming it up big time, William H. Macy plays a booze-addled father of six kids in this uneven drama that seems more intent on taking its pay-cable liberties (nudity, profanity, etc.) to the extreme than weaving an engaging story.

Unfortunately, The Cape fails to fly. Lyons has all the charisma of a fence post, and the leaden scripts bring no fresh twists to the genre.

What's more bothersome about Skins from a critical standpoint is the thin plotting, the aimless narrative, and the generally flat and artificial feel of the production.

Very little of it feels fresh or funny. Nor does Allen's character strike me as someone viewers would want to spend a great deal of time with.

Unfortunately, no one pops off the screen the way Farrah once did.

The problem is there's nothing here that hasn't been done before, and often done better. Even more disheartening: The cast, which includes Matt Long and Billy Zane, is stocked with forgettable and/or boorish characters.

$#*! My Dad Says feels hopelessly old school. It relies on a stock sitcom character--the crabby dad--that we've seen over and over. It mainly anchors itself to a claustrophobic sitcom-y living room, and it relies too heavily on a tired, rat-a-tat setup/punchline delivery.