If the "Shark" writers feel the need to, in the very first episode, soften their hero in a way the "House" writers haven't had to do in two-plus seasons, how warm and fuzzy will the character be by November sweeps, let alone the end of the season?

"Write what you know" is a cardinal rule of writing, and Fey certainly knows this world better than Sorkin -- even if "The Girlie Show" is lame, I believe it exists in a way I don't with "Studio 60" -- but the history of failed behind-the-scenes sitcoms and dramas is so long and ugly that she would have been better served using a different setting altogether.

The larger problem may be whether there's enough material to cover an entire season.

Even when "My Boys" isn't wildly funny (which would be most of the time, frankly), it has a lot of charm.

One of the better -- if stranger -- comedy debuts the networks have put out this year.

The Sunday premiere has a nice mix of thrills, comedy and pathos, but is there a show here?

The guys are so polite and harmless that it's hard to dislike them even when they repeat themselves in such a short span.

Damages offers two superb performances by old pros Glenn Close and Ted Danson.... One thing it doesn't have: a compelling main character. It's a doughnut show: lots of sweet, satisfying goodness around the edges, nothing in the middle.

The pieces shouldn't fit together--Earl's celestial presence with Grace's raging sex life, discussions of metaphysics with police procedural plots--but somehow they do.

Lewis is a strong enough actor (again, see "Band of Brothers") that there are moments where he pulls together all these tics into a character who could be interesting, but too much time gets wasted on pedestrian mysteries to give him room to work.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles happens to contain that show's most interesting character. It just ain't Sarah Connor.

Margulies is a potent enough screen presence that this part of the show could be interesting, but Canterbury's self-destructive streak gets overshadowed by all the Leg Show material and the overheated courtroom theatrics.

For the most part, they're neither fish nor fowl: not gory enough for the "Saw"/"Hostel" crowd, and not genuinely scary enough for anybody else.

There's plenty of humiliation in I Survived a Japanese Game Show as well, but there it's so varied and strange--and very much in keeping with what I understand of those shows--that it doesn't get repetitive or annoying.

Neither trainwreck nor masterpiece, the new "90210" was exactly what nobody expected it would be: remarkably faithful in tone and spirit to the original adventures of Brandon, Brenda, Scott Scanlon and company.

Fringe is just good enough to watch with or without the ads. But with Abrams, you expect more than "just good enough."

Baker has an unforced masculinity that allows him to play likable bastards like this, and with the other regular characters (played by Robin Tunney, Owain Yeoman, Tim Kang and Amanda Righetti) so far ciphers at best, he's able to carry the show by his lonesome.

So long as Lewis is around, Life will be several steps above those cookie-cutter police procedurals.

Easy Money was created by Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, who wrote for "The Sopranos," and the show in many ways feels like a low-budget HBO (or FX) series.

I don't know that there's a long-running series here--even the pilot runs out of steam before the end--but I did laugh several times.

A show with such a weird mix of tones and subject matters needs a strong cast to even have a hope of working, and for the most part, the ensemble remains sturdy.

The new TNT drama Leverage isn't a great show, but it may just be the exact right show at the exact right time.

Toward the end of the second episode, two characters who have no business acting chummy with each other get in the back of a car together and do exactly that. And rather than make me eager to pop in my screener of the third episode (which I did, eventually), it just killed all the buzz I had built up to that point.

Basically, it's a dumber version of "The Shield." Swayze's performance and the always-memorable Chicago locales are frequently undercut by dialogue that's clumsy and/or spells out things we can see for ourselves, and by model-turned-actor Fimmel, last seen on the WB's deservedly short-lived "Tarzan" remake.

The performances by the three lead actresses (and by Amanda Seyfried as Paxton and Tripplehorn's eldest daughter) are so strong, and the nuances of life in such a complicated relationship so endlessly fascinating, that I'll suffer through the rest for a few episodes at a time before Bill's unsettling stare or Roman's calm, criminal sense of entitlement chases me off again.

In an episode like next week's, in which Allison spots the ghost of a recently deceased man watching a murder, the twistiness works; in one like tonight's, featuring a complicated web of affairs, betrayals and possible reincarnations, things become so tangled that the story and Arquette can't keep up.

Whedon is a vastly better storyteller than anyone involved in "My Own Worst Enemy," so Dollhouse can be very engaging, even if the premise doesn't make sense. Dushku isn't as versatile as the role demands--many weeks, the only difference in Echo's persona seems to be her wardrobe--but Whedon and his writers certainly are.

Katic has the more thankless role, as the actress in this scenario inevitably does, but the necessary sparks fly when she and Fillion are on screen together swapping barbs, and hopefully as time goes on, she'll get more to do than play kindergarten teacher to Castle. How much you like the series will depend almost entirely on how you enjoy watching these two spar; for me, that was enough.