If ABC's new cop drama, Castle, can slightly tweak its title character, it could turn into a very nice little show. In Monday night's premiere episode, it's just not quite there.

Brothers starts with a noble idea: Bring two estranged adult brothers together by forcing them to live in their parents' house again. It just doesn't quite achieve either poignance or real comedy.

There's a danger, writing about the new WB series "Nikki," that's hard to avoid: In describing how bad the show is, it almost makes it sound worth watching. [6 Oct 2000, p.151]

If you had to lay out the blueprint for the quintessential Lifetime movie, Secrets of Eden would be it.

What we get is a young adult soap opera whose story is as old as drama itself, but which is smartly packaged to look like you'd get it by typing www, instead of pressing the "on" button.

The problem with this "Diary" is that Belle simply isn't as interesting as Bridget [of "Bridget Jones's Diary."]

The story of Prince William and Kate Middleton offers way too much of a Hallmark moment for the channel not to weigh in with a sentimental, heartwarming version of the year's favorite romance.

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.

Nothing to see.

Yes, it's "Fugitive ... With Children." But "Runaway"... actually is pretty good, mostly because this family doesn't always get along.

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]

Parker's celebrity may help sell a TV show, but it's much more interesting to find a Civil War soldier in your own family tree than a long-ago public figure in hers....Genealogy is way better when it's participatory, not a spectator sport.

Its supporting players steal the spotlight from the central character.

This show tackles a genuinely interesting issue: how high-achieving men cope with what society sees as demoting themselves by staying home while their wives earn the family money. It tackles that question in a calm and at times even insightful way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Workaholics is crude, dumb lowbrow comedy, which means it's doing fine right up until the last requirement of the genre, which is that it should be funny. Workaholics is not.

Long-arc storylines usually need some immediate or fresh hook. Deception doesn't have that, instead reshuffling familiar pieces into a new puzzle.

Time travel looked so cool and carefree in "Back to the Future" that you wonder why it seems to become so difficult and often downright unpleasant when TV characters try it. In the case of Dan Vassar, the time traveler in NBC's new Journeyman, it also gets unreasonably complicated for the viewer.

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

A new ABC Family series built around four teenage friends and an ominous hint of supernatural forces that mean no good, makes most popular vampire romances look anemic.

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.

"Saved" is a show with a good cast, interesting concept and a fast-paced, stylized approach that never quite reaches its potential.

The action moves at an admirable clip and the cases feel interesting enough so we want to see how they come out.

While it follows the current cable pattern of taking dramas a little further than traditional broadcast shows, The Beast essentially serves up familiar cop fare.

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

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.

While the crime itself is only moderately intriguing, its real function is to let viewers see what each of these women does, how they work together and how they talk to each other.

Without sounding disrespectful, it feels pretty routine.

As silly concoctions go, it's rather tasty.

Free Agents has a strong premise, solid characters, good chemistry and some great one-liners. Like Alex and Helen, it needs to trust its heart.

Everyone in the pilot makes a solid first impression.

While Titanic gets melodramatic and even a little soapy, it achieves what seems to be its main goal: to remind us that when the ship went down, the most terrible loss may have been 1,500 dreams.

In the larger picture, Hellcats has the deceptively tricky mission of taking what has been a 90-minute idea in most other incarnations and stretching it into an ongoing series. But it serves up plenty of eye candy to enhance the ride, so hey, gimme an M for Marti!

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.

If the acting isn’t remarkable, we get a sense of what life was like in one of country music’s royal families.

Nothing that happens with other characters or elsewhere in the plot, though, is likely to diminish Shahi's presence.

There's nothing flashy or special about this series, but it's satisfying and impressive in an old-fashioned way - much more so, in this opener, than its parent, "JAG." A lot of it is due to the ease with which Harmon and McCallum embody their characters. [23 Sept 2003, p.83]

It's more nuanced than the average cop drama, and for that reason, more intriguing.

"Brothers & Sisters" establishes itself as little more than a family gathering you should have no interest in attending. Their dialogue sounds real, but not much of it sounds interesting.

I'll be patient, out of respect to Milch and Tinker, but I don't expect you to be.

By staking turf between "True Blood" and "Twilight," Vampire Diaries hopes it has found the promised land. The danger is it could also be no man's land.

The jokes and the moral lessons are equally telegraphed, and instantly forgotten. [20 Sept 2002]

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

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

Quantum Kitchen moves along at a good clip and Marcel creates dishes you won't ordinarily see on food shows. That could be the recipe for a novelty act, but it's hard to resist peeking under the lid.

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

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."

Definitive history The Kennedys is not. But most of the flaws explored here mostly make the characters seem human. The series credits wins as well as losses and sends most of its characters home on a positive note.

Evoking the era is one thing "Reunion" does very well. Involving you in the plot and characters, as well as the gimmick, isn't.

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

The more it progresses, the more surprises it unwraps, and the more promise it presents.

The visitors return for their second season on ABC Tuesday night and alas, they still aren't quite as fascinating as you want them to be.

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.

After you watch Wednesday night's premiere of ABC's doctor drama Off the Map, you might think the title means the show hasn't quite found its path yet. You'd be right. But it's got a shot to get there, with an engaging ensemble cast and a novel premise that could prove useful.

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

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.

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.

Sitcoms have been putting odd groups of people together in small apartments since before television existed. And so what? If we like the people, it doesn't matter, and Billie is someone we could get to like quite a bit.

Leno did the show last night exactly the same way he does every show. He knows how to tell jokes and he can make his way through an interview.

Fox and K-Ville creator Jonathan Lisco get credit for setting their new police drama in post-Katrina New Orleans--but future episodes will have to settle down and get serious if the show is to do justice to its setting and potential.

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

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

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

At the very least, it maintains TV Land's brand as the comfort food of television.

No matter how obvious the wardrobe might be, the scripts are even more so.

All in all, it's commendable ABC is so committed to recycling. Green is good, even if in this case, it's mostly the color of money.

The chemistry among the leads isn't fully there, and the trail of clues, at least in the opening two episodes, relies on a lot of serendipity and improbable deductive work. But "In Justice" is a watchable show.

People victimized by terrible events and circumstances often feel pride and dignity are two of the few things they have left. There are times in Oprah's Big Give when it feels like those things may be slipping away, in the service of creating a splashier television show.

Jay was Jay last night--hands in pockets, blue suit, solid monologue. Pleasant, likeable, funny, a guy you'd invite to your barbeque.

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.

Bochco delivers instead a solid lawyer show that fits comfortably into the mold formed by dozens of lawyer shows before it.

Princesses proves Jewish women who are mostly from the affluent North Shore of Long Island are at heart not much different from the Italian women who populate Bravo’s most popular series, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey."

What the show lacks most is the humor that lightened the original.

Jimmy Fallon took NBC's late-night slot for his first test drive early this morning, and it needs a little tuning up. It also showed some promise.

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

Heche is very likable here. She plays some of the same notes she played when stranded with Harrison Ford in "Six Days Seven Nights," or playing Amanda in last year's "Everwood" guest arc, but also crafts a credible character, and slips into her central role comfortably.

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

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

Deep it's not, but funny it often is.

It's hard to see this show lasting too far beyond the initial taste.

The show feels recycled.

Chase is as close as TV gets to a Western these days, and that's a good thing. It spins a good yarn. In the end, though, it also feels like TV's version of a "tweener." It's probably too big for USA, but it may not pack quite enough flair to stand out on NBC.

It's broad, accessible comedy - the kind of show where you aren't sure what to expect, but once you sit down, you keep watching.

The individual interviews suggest the contestants here evoke about the normal amount of sympathy in find-a-mate shows.

The outrageousness becomes cartoonish and the conciliatory moments so forced and predictable they lose their healing power. That’s what happens with How to Live.

Since we like scrappy underdogs, and Bates has the skill to slide from exasperation to amusement to determination, she just might coax this hybrid into the race.

Certain plot lines and production values are irritating (especially the never-ceasing music, scored relentlessly, as if "Related" were a silent movie), but there are a few redeeming bonuses here. The supporting and guest cast is loaded with very effective performers.

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

Bag of Bones feels a little skeletal.

Plenty of material here, spoken by people we like. It's what a good cable sitcom can be.

The pieces are in place for a solid drama-with-humor, the kind that cable channels are serving like aspirin these days. The problem is this show hasn't quite figured out yet how to integrate all the components into a uniform tone and direction.

Rescuing people from burning buildings. Feeding people who are starving. Taking a child no one cared about and teaching that child to read. That’s heroic. The Hero is an entertaining reality show. That’s fine. It’s just not the same thing.

Shailene Woodley is terrific as the teen in question. Unfortunately, other parts of the show feel so contrived they border on soap opera parody.

While they're entertaining together, the show needs other characters to avoid becoming just an endless exchange of the snarky things TV writers love to have exes say about each other.

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

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.

Retired at 35 does have the good sense to create a story. If it ever relaxes enough to tell it, the show could become more than "lukewarm in Florida."

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.

Happily Divorced, TV Land's third shot at a new old-style sitcom--the George Segal parents-and-son romp "Retired at 35" is the other one--tries harder than "Cleveland" and generates fewer laughs. "Happily Divorced" is not without its pleasures.[...] Okay, Drescher, who most famously starred in "The Nanny," may be an acquired taste. But if you like her combination of attitude and accent, she provides a full dose of both here.

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.

Working Class doesn't seem to have any lofty ambitions. It's a family drama with characters who are a little goofy, but credible, and it seems to recognize that their interaction needs to be the core of the show's humor.

USA's new The Moment is a feel-good, serious-minded reality show with one drawback: It leaves its stories unfinished.

A wellmeaning, goodnatured show that doesn't have quite the sparkle you'd expect when the main characters include Aphrodite and Hercules.

Some scenes play like those stiff “re-creations” in crime reality shows and the camera’s constant quick-cuts promote headaches, not intrigue.

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.

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.

It's all surface and very little substance.

Whether Napoleon will work as a weekly animated series may depend on how well a teenager fits in with the other oddballs who populate Fox's Sunday-night animation bloc.

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?

This group doesn't need a villain or a backstabber, at least in the early stage. The job is enough of an equalizer.

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.

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.

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

Shahs of Sunset doesn't have any great message except maybe that the world of money knows no geographic boundaries.

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

Private Practice at first glance looks like it's about to die. But by the end of its premiere tonight it has miraculously come back to life, apparently without even the aid of a tall, handsome, mysterious script doctor.

The original "I've Got a Secret" was such a simple game show, and such a simple pleasure, that the only way to botch a remake would be to either spice it up or dumb it down. The Game Show Network... manages to do both.

All the Haggis-Moresco touches are here, from the imaginative choices and uses of music to the sly surprises and twisted humor.

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.

"The Loop" is much more failure than success.

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

While some of the pilot strains to be contemporary with its youthful fixations, the only actor and character who really stands out is Atandwa Kani's Tumelo, a native South African who connects with Katie. Otherwise, it's the animals that make Life is Wild worth watching.

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

Kell isn't Miranda, through no fault of her own. At day's end, Kell on Earth feels a little like a knockoff.

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.

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

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

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

It's hard to imagine reinventing the concept of the doctor show. But in a way, that's what Private Practice sets out to do in its new-look second season Wednesday--and it doesn't do a bad job.

It's a big cast where every piece fits, and at least upfront, the writing and jokes are good enough that Anger Management only uses sex gags where they work, not to cover up any lack of other ideas.

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

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.

Even if Amish Mafia may evoke for some viewers the popular and somewhat discredited "Breaking Amish," the show has a running undercurrent that feels interesting and credible.

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

Heche, a strong comic actress, can’t fully conquer the material here, and while the rest of the cast tries hard, there isn’t much with which to get traction.

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

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

But somewhere during the process of shaping these ideas into "Freakylinks," which premieres tomorrow, somebody forgot about a couple of details: writing and acting. [6 Oct 2000]

The setup sometimes feels as airy as an Alabama breeze, but most of us will like the characters, and that provides some grits, er, grit, as well as a decent set of legs.

Made In Jersey feels curiously half-dressed.

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.

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

Underneath it, we also see kids. Yes, rich kids, but also insecure kids coping with the universal dramas of teenagers. That may be the most engaging part of NYC Prep.

The producers don't even pretend to focus on the girls, however. They focus on the parents, a not very endearing bunch whose ongoing mental games with each other and whose drive to push their daughters creates the drama TV cares about.

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

The jokes that drive the plot revolve more around things like feeding drugs to assistant principal Stuart Proszakian, whose last job was being a prison clown with the Department of Corrections.

"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.

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

A lead character stuck endlessly agonizing over her fate isn't a character we will watch forever, even though Spiro is one of the freshest and brightest stars on TV this season.

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.

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.

Even skateboard star Tony Hawk, in a guest appearance, is wasted - as your time will be, if you tune in. [20 Sept 2002, p.136]

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.

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

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

It sounds soapy, but it's all handled well enough, and with enough humor, that we believe it.

The problem with Mistresses may lie with the expectations it has set. If the sex isn't going to be fun, what is it going to be? It would be good if we found that out soon.

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.

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.

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.

Lipstick Jungle apparently still isn't sure we get the point about bonding, because it goes out of its way to make it clear that even sympathetic male characters don't.

After one hour, we not only care about the patients - but care quite a bit about the doctors.

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

Mental doesn't blow in with quite as fresh a breeze as "House." But it could get up into that division.

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."

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

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.

"Courting Alex" is courting disaster by the way it plays against Elfman's, and Coleman's, strengths.

This kid behaves so obnoxiously toward the whole world that we want to stand up and scream, "Doesn't anybody in this whole school know how to spit in this kid's sushi roll? Is there not one of you who could jam his head into a toilet?" Which is, of course, exactly the response that creator Jonah Hill wants.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Thou shalt not watch.

Hype! is the high-energy creation of writers Scott King, Lanier Laney and Terry Sweeney. The 10-person cast - standup comics and improv players - seems as fearless as it is talented and includes some brilliant mimics. [6 Oct 2000, p.150]

This one is almost impressively wonderless.

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.

Many of its real-life characters display a lot of talent. They also are so transparent about their emotions, whether sincere or calculating, that their social interactions play more like a scripted soap on fast forward.

It takes a while for Hank and his assistants Rachel (Addison Timlin) and Arron (Scott Michael Foster) to grasp all this, even with the unwanted help of FBI agent Beck Riley (Carmen Ejogo). Once they have, and we have, the setup is solid.

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.

A squirt of soap serves this show well.

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.

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

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.

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

"'Til Death" plays like a tired reworking of "Married ... With Children," but without the children.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Stiflingly reverential, sadly superficial.

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.