Wile Bobby Cannavale plays a credible Cupid and Sarah Paulson is likable as his mortal sparring partner Dr. Claire McCrae, there just isn't a whole lot here.

Lange is fine as the senior Edie, but Barrymore, for reasons not entirely her fault, seems off her game.

For the moment, it would be nice if the show could just make the present more compelling.

The performances here are good, right down to a cynical--and beautiful--bartender to whom Teddy tells the whole tale. But the action often feels like it was created by video-game developers, and what is supposed to be the subtext, about Teddy really trying to save himself, is about as subtle as a kick in the groin from a sneering DEA agent.

It all feels pretty dense and confusing to those outside the sci-fi world.

it's still feeling like a pasted-together assortment of ideas and plot lines from productions past.

The formulaic story also limits what the actors can do, though Sokoloff slides nicely into the plucky reluctant heroine role.

It's all good-natured, upbeat and occasionally funny. Janeane Garofalo has an amusing role as a sardonic talk-show host. But mostly the viewer will be drumming his or her fingers, waiting for the inevitable to play out, which it does, with no particular distinction.

Too much of Men, despite Romano's skill at observational humor, feels slow and uncomfortably downbeat.

None of the stories is particularly memorable and, interestingly, no one suggests that weight gain was a by-product of depression from losing the spotlight.

Clueless, oblivious characters are a foundation of most sitcoms, but this show needs more of a humor base than a wall mural that shows Pawnee's first white settlers massacring the natives.

If it all sounds a little contrived, it is. But that's not the show's real problem. The real problem is that instead of having goofy fun with all its eye candy, Royal Pains mostly wants to sit around drinking in the excesses of the uber-wealthy, with an occasional joke as an afterthought.

The Beautiful Life is designed to fit alongside CW anchors like "90210," except that even by those standards, it's pretty predictable and stilted.

It's a slight premise, and the odds of it morphing into a fresh, lively weekly adventure feel about the same. Slight.

The Middle feels like a sitcom version of standup comedy. "Three guys and two girls walk into Indiana..."It's not offensive. Just superfluous.

For viewers, it's almost impossible to stay awake.

Secret Girlfriend feels like it never aspires to be more than a leaf blowing past us in the wind.

Ultimately, though, the stories here are too brief and, frankly, too ordinary to sustain the viewer's interest for very long.

The show does a good job in tonight's premiere of sorting out the good guys and filling viewers in on the disturbing backstory. In fact, it may do too good a job because there doesn't seem to be a lot of mysteries left.

Somewhere along the way, though, this three-night, six-hour production begins to feel less like a compelling metaphor for totalitarian repression and more like a marathon. No offense, but is it over yet?

Trouble is, it doesn't feel all that fresh. Arrogant, idiot superiors have been a bedrock of humor-infused dramas from the ancient Greeks right up through "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Ugly Betty."

The trappings up front are so over the top that to say you watch Spartacus to see a contemporary reworking of a cinema classic is like saying you go to Hooters for the food.

Not all Mortimer's posse seems shallow or unpleasant. But collectively they feel like the characters from all those nasty and wonderful 1960s Rolling Stones songs about neurotic rich girls. If only they were as interesting.

As a reality show, "Fly Girls" feels pretty routine.

It's got the action and the one-liners. It just doesn't leave you caring all that much whether you see it again.

The pieces are here. They just feel messy and unfocused, which means the show's fate may depend on whether the audience will hang around long enough to sort it all out. That may take a little sprinkling of magic.

They might have to lose some of the cartoon-cop humor to get there. Whether they do may determine whether Dan and Jack end up as a short, forgettable joke or a couple of cops we care about.

While the story feels thin and forced, it does let the show dig into Nick and Suzanne's real feelings toward each other, and reminds us that we like them both.

Persons Unknown was originally developed for Syfy, and it shows. It's all eerie music, unanswered questions and disturbing discoveries, leavened only very occasionally by humor.

The show just doesn't add enough fresh blood to dramas and situations we may simply have seen too often.

We've seen that moment many times before, from gays and straights. That doesn't mean we can't see it again. It just means The Real L Word needs to feel like more than a Facebook post.

We see his standup act and we laugh. We watch this whole package and the laughs are sporadic. Someday he may find the scripted sitcom that captures his humor. Not this time.

It just plays like strung-together sketch comedy, working much harder for fewer rewards than if it added a little depth to the characters.

Despite a first-rate performance from Smits and a smart, sharp cast, the show stumbles over a clumsy setup from which, alas, it may be difficult to recover.

So where "Dallas" was happy if we were appalled at almost every character, Lone Star depends on us coming to like most of them, including Bob. The problem is that he's not a guy who got drunk one night and wrecked someone's car on a joyride. He has spent his life stealing from people who thought he was their friend.

The Event is such a blur of shadowy operatives, dubious motives, cryptic dialogue and mystifying time shifts that by the end, many viewers may be not so much curious as simply confused.

Fox's best comedies are always off-center. Raising Hope forgets to stay there.

Running Wilde gets off to an unpromising start by creating a complicated, tortured premise that many labored minutes later delivers us to a simple rom-com.

Not offensive. Just not particularly fresh or compelling. Long-term, "Outsourced" may want to become an Indian cousin of "Community," with diverse off-center people whose eccentricities fuel jokes. That's fine. The question may be whether, in carefully omitting most things that could offend, the show has enough left to endure.

To put it bluntly, it's more fun to watch some guy pick up a car than to hear him contemplate its impact on his family.

The best thing that can be said for the six Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on their opening night is that they aren't as annoying as their counterparts in New York or New Jersey. The fact they don't make us want to wash our hands, though, is not the same as saying their self-absorbed dramas are worth an hour of our lives.

Palin is a decent, likable guide to the wonders of Alaska, when we get to them. But the real agenda of this show more often seems to be the wonders of Sarah Palin.

While the fixings are here for genuine humor, Glory Daze repeatedly settles for quick-and-dirty. That's frustrating, even though it's understandable to some extent, because the audience for that style of comedy clearly exists.

What Bob's Burgers doesn't quite have yet is a rhythm and flow of its own. It's got the ingredients to get there, though.

Episodes has funny moments. It just seems primarily designed to amuse the TV industry.

The opening night lesson of the new Fox sitcom Traffic Light is that no matter how marvelous hands-free telephone technology has become, it isn't yet advanced enough to carry its own sitcom.

It just doesn't feel like it's setting up a story we're really going to care about.

Sadly, the game on CM:SB feels too often like we've seen it before and we know what's coming.

To my eyes, in the end, those moments still don't make this show worth an hour and a half of a Saturday night. It just has too many giggly jokes about "toilet water." But if you're among those fans who feared a few years ago you'd lost Pee-wee forever, there's no arguing that you now have him back.

Maybe it will work. Maybe it will sort itself out in time for viewers to figure out what they like. For now, it feels chaotic.

The characters on ABC's new sitcom Happy Endings seem likable and funny. So why, the viewer may ask, does the show give them such a forced and convoluted back-story that it keeps getting in the way of both those qualities?

Some of the humor is decent enough, but some also has the same feeling as Paul's life: We're here and there's nothing we can do about it, so we might as well tell jokes.

There may or may not be a better way to do this show. Unfortunately, this one just isn't all that exciting.

Where "Army Wives" can get soapy at times, it also starts with a premise that sets it apart. The Protector doesn't start with that advantage.

They both confess to failings, Tatum more than Ryan, and they seem genuinely interested in making things work. Whether they can will be the drama for the next seven episodes, and the only safe bet is that with two people as self-focused as these guys, the ride won't be smooth.

So it may develop a cult following, and whether it does or not, FX deserves continuing credit for trying different approaches to traditional TV shows. Too often, though, Wilfred makes us work a little too hard for the payout.

What's good for Roseanne, though, isn't necessarily good television. We need something to happen other than a continuing low-level debate over whether Roseanne will accede to Johnny's bidding and get married.

It plays as cheap voyeuristic thrills, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but does keep the show percolating at a somewhat low level.

Skilled as Applegate, Arnett and Rudolph are at making us laugh, they need dimension.

The sobering truth is that sometimes when you mix too many colors, you don't get a brighter rainbow. You get dark gray. Or, in this case, a supersize soap opera.

Collectively, then, Whitney often feels like a series of standup jokes broken up by snippets of dialogue.

The Chew too often felt overstuffed, as if its celebrity crew were engaged in a speed-talking contest.

There's nothing to really dislike about CBS' new sitcom How to Be a Gentleman. There's just not that much there at all.

To draw out the story by looping it through subplots and minidramas runs the risk of turning it into a fairy-tale soap opera--when what we really want to know is whether the tragic Snow White or the lonely Emma can in the end live happily ever after.

Without sounding disrespectful, it feels pretty routine.

Bag of Bones feels a little skeletal.

It's as familiar, comfortable and tasty as a Ritz cracker.

The problem isn't the performers....The problem is the jokes.

So the upstairs and the downstairs people are sorting things out this season, a process that drifts in and out of confusion.

All these characters seem modestly interesting, but none, at least on first acquaintance, feel compelling. Nor are we drawn into their quest.

Viewers who don't regularly contemplate alternative-reality issues probably should tape the show as well as watch it, because the non-expert may have to watch it twice just to figure out what's going on, or even to understand what parts we don't understand.

In an attempt to distinguish itself from a dozen previous TV fashion competitions, which is not a bad goal, Fashion Star ends up feeling overly complicated and a little cluttered.

Duck Dynasty still turns out to be a formulaic show, with a lot of low-level verbal crossfire among family members who at the end of the day assure us they all love each other.

Bent feels like a one-night stand where, in the morning, no one minds if you don't stay for breakfast.

Okay, delicious trash, perhaps. But still, trash.

It's too easy, too much like a series of safe sketches that play to all the stereotypes everyone in politics claims describe the other side.

The problem with 7 Days isn't its lack of explicit material. It's the mundanity.

On its first pass, Common Law feels awkward.

After a little while, though, it slips over the line from factoid to lecture--and what doesn't help, oddly enough, is the wise-guy attitude the Sklars bring to it.

The turf [conversations revolving around sex] is so familiar in sitcoms these days that even funny lines feel recycled. Like Men at Work.

While everyone here executes their roles well, Saving Hope never feels very gripping.

Nick at Nite's new soap opera Hollywood Heights asks us for an extended suspension of dramatic disbelief. It has some work ahead to earn it.

Picking up a copy of the Washington Post from any day in his presidency would likely provide more insight into the man who led the Free World when the Berlin Wall fell and later launched the first Gulf War.

This one may be mostly for the hard core.

The best face it can put on terrible murder cases is philosophical, and that may not be enough to keep viewers from the somber takeaway that someone they like has ended up dead.

Maybe at a certain point it won't feel like all this is a little too gimmicky, or that the rules are being made up as we go along. Out of the box, it kind of does.

Part of what Jordan does, inadvertently, is remind us that the real value of a toy is what it meant to us when we played with it.

Fatal Honeymoon seems vaguely unsatisfying--not because of its conclusion, but because it feels like an extended dramatization that in the end tells us less than a straight news report or documentary could have done.

The New Normal wants what "Modern Family" is having. But if we're going to catapult from "South Park" to a Hallmark movie, we need a smoother ride.

Katie came off as likeable, which counts for a lot in daytime. The show just didn't have a lot of content, somewhat like the stage that often felt too big for her.

Almost all of it feels hit-and-run, an exercise in setting up a clever line here or a cartoonish response there.

There's nothing wrong with playing a gay stereotype on a sitcom, except that if you're the main character, you can't be just a gay stereotype. Even an amusing one.

Chiklis is terrific. Too often, though, Vegas plays like a comic book, without much depth to its characters.

Droll and amusing though the jokes and characters in the first episode often are, The Neighbors has all its chips riding on what is essentially a one-line gag.

When you get a headache just trying to follow a show's setup, that's not a good sign. When a show's twists and turns make it hard to concentrate on what seems to be a terrific performance from the splendid Andre Braugher, that's even worse.

Not even the prospect of Deena getting arrested for being drunk and disorderly can restore this final season to its past glory.

It has complex and possibly interesting ideas and subplots. By the time most viewers finish, though, their flame of interest may be flickering.

Emily Owens M.D. begins with the mildly interesting if familiar premise that real life is just like high school. Unfortunately, that idea does not become a launching pad for an interesting story.

Even though Baio and Ubach handle their roles well, neither the comic setups nor the sentimental reconciliations feel like much more than reruns.

Ethel comes off as a lovely family heirloom, something future generations of Kennedys can cherish. For the rest of us, it's a little less compelling.

George's action scenes are solid. There just aren't enough of them, and Hunted isn't comprehensible enough for the cerebral part to carry as much of the show as it has to.

On Our Own could ultimately paint the Houstons as solid, regular folks using their faith and love to cope with life's troubles. After the first night, though, most viewers will likely understand some of the unease.

Catfish has value as a cautionary tale, and documentation of one way the Internet has affected lives. That makes it sociology, not entertainment.

It's a story of triumph with a strong vein of tragedy, and in the larger picture, Liz & Dick never captures that scope. Nor, down at the detail level, does the script do neither Lohan or Bowler any favors.

The gimmick undercuts what could have been a decent doctor show with benefits --that is, a solid romance between lead characters Dr. Jason Cole (Steven Pasquale) and Dr. Lena Solis (Alana De La Garza).

The show still has some interesting things happening, and there are worse things on TV than a fast-paced action drama. But making it into “Son of 24” doesn’t feel like the right touch.

The problem isn't the source of the plot, rather the fact that its treatment is not dramatic or gripping enough. [27 Sept 2003, p.71]

[Red Widow] threatens to box its characters into a dead-end world from which viewers see no escape.

Giving the characters a few more shades of gray wouldn’t hurt, either, since the whole drama has a kind of cartoon simplicity that makes us feel like we’ve seen all of it before.

Yet as a dramatic series, it moves too swiftly through churning waters to be compelling. The conflicts it introduces are good; the rapid resolutions are not. [16 Sept 2002, p.75]

It's hard to imagine anyone watching Sunday night's plodding and pretentious pilot and coming back for more. [1 June 2001, p.112]

She seems to focus more, at least upfront, on injustices she suffered in the past, when she was the weird kid in school who got bullied.... For a lot of kids, the teen years are just plain awful, and it’s not surprising survivors would feel a bond with someone who had the experience and understands. That doesn’t guarantee a good TV show.

After watching five hours of preview tapes, I'm interested to see how The Wire turns out. But without characters to care for, much less root for, I'm not exactly burning with curiosity -- the way I am with most of HBO's other series...When it comes down to The Wire, this show falls short.

Instead of trusting this foundation and these actors, though, Family Tools seems to feel it must make every situation and interaction so outrageous it turns the characters into cartoons.

It’s all good-natured. It’s also random.

The final minutes of the show, when the rejects got to display their disappointment, were the hour's best, but that was only the beginning. [9 Jan 2003, p.91]

Leaden, predictable and, at times, unintentionally funny.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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's not a very artistic or compelling documentary.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The show feels recycled.

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.

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.

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

From the constant smoking to the constant whining, Star, who wrote several of the scripts, has again given his actors and directors dialogue and plot lines that make it virtually impossible for them to do anything but laboriously go through the motions of real life. [4 June 1998, p.104]

On its own, NBC's The Office is different, but it is neither daring nor funny; it's hard to imagine people taking enough of a liking to the characters to keep returning. And compared to the BBC version, in which every portrayal of those four key character types is utterly perfect, NBC's version is so diluted there's little left but muddy water. [23 Mar 2005, p.91]

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

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.

"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.

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

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

It's all surface and very little substance.

"The Loop" is much more failure than success.

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.

Cold-hearted and dreadful.

Thou shalt not watch.

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

Nothing to see.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.