A script so unimaginative, and characters so flat and forced, that it begs for a recall vote.

It's a show so determined to shock that it cares more about that than about such things as compelling lead characters, believable situations or inventively solved mysteries.

If you think "Will & Grace" got lazy and tired after a few years, with its broad punch lines and broader plots - and you should - "Twins" accelerates the process by starting out that way.

It's not only unimpressive. Parts of it are uncomfortable.

The questions posed by "The Triangle" are fascinating. But the answers are - sometimes literally - a waste of time.

Where "The Game" botches its "Game" plan, though, is in writing punch lines that are much too broad, and in casting men who are more convincing in their roles and relationships than the women.

There's little talent, and even less charisma, evident in this gaggle of guys.

For every story line that intrigues, and every character that sparks some interest, there are several others that don't.

The cast is pleasant enough, and Romijn certainly tackles her character with the abandon and conviction necessary to anchor a comedy-drama series. Were the show better written, these actors probably could deliver the goods with no problem.

This year even Anderson can't keep this ship from running aground.

My "Sixth Sense" says "Ghost Whisperer" isn't a very good show at all.

Every year, there's at least one sitcom that takes an extremely talented cast, and wastes all that talent in an extremely disappointing series.

Louis-Dreyfus herself tries hard - sometimes too hard - and deserves better.

Perhaps, with all the reality TV dating shows pervading the tube, there's not much appetite left for a sitcom about a fictional dating firm. More probably, there's just not much appetite for a sitcom that isn't funny.

This latest attempt at a series with glamorous young people frolicking at an even more glamorous resort doesn't demonstrate significantly more depth than its unsuccessful predecessors.

This "Free Ride," I suspect, will be over very soon.

Yes, these are good deeds. Yes, Amy Grant seems genuinely nice. But no, "Three Wishes," unlike "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," does not come off as a good TV show.

Something feels wrong about a TV "reality show" team swooping into the hotel where a displaced Hurricane Katrina family has been living since September and carting two girls out to Las Vegas for a fancy birthday party.

How un-innovative is this series about innovation? Let me count the ways.

They say insanity is performing the same action repeatedly and hoping for a different outcome. For ABC and "Day Break," insanity may be expecting viewers to watch the same day over and over and be interested in the infinite minor and major variations.

The question, still open, is whether the writers can pack enough comic caffeine into the next 21 weeks to keep viewers along for the ride.

It's not only about a bomb. It is one.

Tonight's new Fox courtroom drama series, "Justice," has plenty of [gimmicks]. What it doesn't have, though, is a persuasive reason to watch.

The plot strains credulity so much that even that action-happy audience might reject the show.

These actors more than deserve a series of their own. They deserve a good one, and "Standoff" isn't it.

The initial story... is a lot more complicated than it is compelling - and by the time tonight's first hour is up, you aren't hungry for more.

It may be harsh to suggest his "Creek" has run dry, but as a followup exploration of teen anxiety, "Hidden Palms" offers little but scenic and human scenery.

In theory, it's an intriguing concept for a series. But in practice, "Six Degrees" doesn't work at all in drawing you in at the start.

"Fashion House" is a passable pop diversion, and a definite curiosity.

It's a show where neither the world being created nor the characters populating it are remotely convincing - or interesting.

It's not a very artistic or compelling documentary.

If we're going to root for these guys, however, it would help to like them. These guys don't make it easy.

Even the best home run hitters can swing and miss badly, though - and on "The Wedding Bells," all of them do.

The show feels recycled.

Carpoolers, despite a few likable cast members and passable jokes, is in so much trouble, it's pulled over, on the shoulder.

Its humor, which dominates, isn't funny enough, and its occasional stabs at dramatic scenes aren't serious enough.

The Captain [is] a historic hotel now populated by every Hollywood stereotype ever dusted off for a sitcom pilot.

Let's say Unhitched just isn't very funny.

There's more pathos than humor in "Dice Undisputed," and very little "reality" that seems real rather than self-consciously staged.

You know a show needs work when its show-stopper is the mime.

It doesn't bode well for this series, however, that tonight's premiere features a magnetic, dynamic, no-nonsense female cyborg who steals every scene she's in--and it isn't Ryan as Jaime Sommers.

Waters may kill me, but the rest of "'Til Death" doesn't have the same pitch-perfect tone.

Neither the characters nor the cases in "Conviction" generate much of anything. Not drama, not comedy, and certainly not viewer loyalty.

The drama has more false frights than a student horror film, and such an uneven and incompatible tone that it's tough to tell which is funnier, the scenes of alleged humor or the scenes of alleged drama.

"The Loop" is much more failure than success.

Cold-hearted and dreadful.

Desperately trying to be mysterious like "Lost," this show, by any other name, turns out to be an ironically diluted version.

The network may feel that Bratt could stand there, read the phone book and attract millions of adoring female fans. Starring in "E-Ring" may be the closest thing to finding out whether that's true.

"Head Cases" has good leading men but a crushingly bad premise.

NBC has reestablished another Thursday night tradition: sticking another unfunny, almost unwatchable sitcom at 8:30.

"Criminal Minds," which generates almost no creative energy of its own, has the aura - or is it odor? - of being patched together from scraps of failed CBS dramas of the past.

Stiflingly reverential, sadly superficial.

It's all surface and very little substance.

Thou shalt not watch.

Lacke is the only person, or thing, in "Happy Hour" that made me laugh.

It would be obvious and unfunny to dismiss Rob Corddry's new Fox sitcom, "The Winner," by saying it's a loser. But since the alleged humor in this new series is even more lazy and less amusing than that, it seems only fair.

A sort of perfect storm of bad writing.

Nothing to see.

Since these "Book Club" women do not seem inclined either to read or discuss their books, my advice is to follow their example - and neither watch nor discuss "Tuesday Night Book Club."

He's polite-looking and very likable - but aside from some quick ad libs during on-location segments, he doesn't get any chance to establish, much less assert, his personality.

It's not good.

The word "juvenile" doesn't begin to describe "The Sarah Silverman Show." It completely describes it.

This one is almost impressively wonderless.

Everything feels forced, right down to the dialogue, wherein the characters all talk the way writers write when they're stretching to set up a joke.

If, years later, you're still trying to wash away the foul taste of Fox's "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance," the idea of putting family members and friends through emotional anguish for the sake of prime-time entertainment isn't any funnier than it sounds.

It's stunning that ABC's new sitcom In the Motherhood, built on stories of life as Mom, manages to come off as stiff, disjointed and curiously unlikable.

It may remind some viewers more directly of the British sitcom "Absolutely Fabulous," except that "Ab Fab" was hilarious and this one just gives you a headache.

In a perfect world, Dollhouse would be a good show. It's not.

The producers are dependent on their contestant and the kindness of baffled strangers to develop an interesting impromptu drama, and it just doesn't happen all that often.

The lesser problem is that all the gags are telegraphed. We see them coming long before they arrive. The bigger problem is that when they get here, they all feel forced, as if someone thought of the gag first, then tried to manufacture a situation, however contorted, that would lead to it.

Hidden camera gags often now settle for crude instead of working a little harder to achieve clever.

There isn't a person on this show selling anything more compelling than shallow vanity.

The two-night miniseries "The Storm," the latest production in NBC's summer of the apocalypse, suggests the network may be running out of creative ways to terminate life as we know it.

He's supposed to be a neurotic slacker who escapes into this cool new world, but even there, he still comes off as a neurotic slacker. You want smack him and tell him to go sit down. And if you did, he probably would.

The writing is uneven, so is the tone, and all put together, it's just not very engaging.

It's a waste of Cox's comic talents to have her spend the whole show trapped in lines like, "We had sex three times without you needing a nap or a pill or anything."

The fragility of these women sucks the fun out of the meeting-and-culling process that should be the entertainment heart of any dating reality show.

At first these actions, which feel extreme, seem to have little relation to the problems at hand. It soon becomes clear, however, that they do. As he promises, Robbins is attacking deeper problems, not symptoms, and as with any good infomercial, the results look compelling on the screen.

If it's any solace to the handful of organizations that are boycotting this new William Shatner sitcom over its attention-getting title, the title is the least of the reasons not to bother watching. A better one is that it's not very good. In the process, $#*! My Dad Says wastes the talents of Shatner.

My Generation solves that problem by creating fake people. There still could be a worthwhile drama, or least an entertaining soap opera, in "life 10 years after high school." But not when your characters are all stereotypes.

Everybody in the premiere episode of Strange Days turns out to be a nice guy or gal, and that's a great thing in life. It just doesn't make for a very strange, or interesting, TV Show.

You wish them all well. But in the end, watching the Hasselhoffs isn't much more interesting than watching a mechanic rebuild the transmission on KITT.

Well, the plot doesn't offer a lot of possibilities. The jokes are predictable even when the delivery is hip, and none of the characters is especially likable, nor do we care that much which of them mix-and-match with which others.

At the very least, you'd think the Miami edition of this franchise would have some striking pastel visuals. But even the look, alas, is no brighter than the content.

In the end, visiting the lives of self-absorbed rich people is about as interesting as visiting people who have saved all their toenail clippings. And named them.

They're profane, contentious and come off hard as nails, given to saying things like if a man is good to his family, his crimes are not that important. For most viewers, it's a glimpse into another world--a world where a glimpse is enough.

His wavelength is extreme narrowcasting, and most viewers are likely to find Angry Boys just rambling and dull.

She wears 4-inch heels to her community service program, as if she expects her community service will involve a pole. Most intriguing of all, she seems vaguely bored. What a coincidence. So are we.

Everything in Mike's life seems contrived to set up ba-ba-boom punch lines.

If you like smart women who hide the iron fist under the velvet glove, you'll get more satisfaction elsewhere--like from, oh, say, Nikita over on the CW, who is better drama all by herself than this ill-served new trio of Angels.

It isn't invested deeply enough in magic to create an alternative world, and while Giuntoli is perfectly fine as a cop, the police procedural part feels routine.

In the end, it doesn't feel much more enduring than a tweet.

The setup could be mildly amusing if it weren't more common than Starbucks.

To make them all screwy but lovable, in the vein of "Raising Hope," requires more work than this show seems to want to do.

The show lumbers like a 200-pound man trying to impersonate a 95-pound ballerina.

The main problem with Rob is that instead of finding fresh insight and perspective from his inside position, Schneider just slams a piñata full of familiar and predictable ethnic jokes.

Watching Best Friends Forever is like going to the sitcom thrift shop and poking through the leftovers. It gets old quickly.

There just isn't much about Bristol's life that's of much interest to anyone outside of family and friends.