Where American Gypsies shines--and it really does shine here and there--is in the glimpses we get of the internal system of justice that's developed among a people who don't trust government, and family rituals like the "red-dress ceremony" with which the Johns family welcomes its newest member.

Though I sense the show is treading water a bit as Prohibition drags on and the operations of the black market become increasingly contentious, there's still plenty to see on the Boardwalk, thanks to the show's secondary characters.

Ben and Kate has great sibling chemistry, a cute kid (Maggie Elizabeth Jones as Kate's daughter, Maggie) and an appealing premise.

The first two episodes of The Neighbors actually made me laugh more than once--and without the aid of mood-altering substances.

Miller's approach may be different from Benedict Cumberbatch's in "Sherlock," but he's as riveting a screen presence. Even if you don't care about the weekly whodunit--and mostly, I don't--Elementary" could be fun.

Plenty of new challenges await the survivors, led by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), whose performance as a man who's had ruthlessness thrust upon him continues to be a series highlight.

The plotting of the pilot is a bit too pat at times, but two subsequent episodes bolster the argument that Underemployed deserves a shot at going full-time.

Not everyone's going to like this or other aspects of Sister Jude's story, which essentially does for nuns what the first season did for real estate agents. But it's the kind of cliché meant to appeal to parochial-school survivors of a certain age of which, yes, I'm one. And Murphy another.

Though Ethel can't possibly be construed as a tell-all, much less the work of an impartial observer, it's great that someone finally got her to talk at all.

This feels very much like the show I've been watching all along.

Golden Boy works as a decent cop show. But an epic one? Not yet.

In the light of Monday morning, a lot of what goes on in Red Widow is probably going to seem pretty silly. But shows like this are all about the chemistry, and the chemistry between Mitchell and Visnjic is everything you'd want in an essentially unequal relationship between a recent widow and the megalomaniacal drug dealer who can end her life at any moment.

But if you watch this one at all - and Fox hasn't increased the odds by waiting so long to introduce it - it'll be for Laurie's fierce and funny exploration of the doctor in House. [16 Nov 2004, p.53]

No one should base a term paper on it, but Da Vinci's Demons is at least an entertaining lie.

There's something faintly retro about a show that tackles fears many thought died with the Cold War.

[It] so far boasts characters more intriguing than their interactions.

If you watch "Shark," it's going to be for those Woods-ian rants and for the sheer exuberance he brings to them.

The pilot for "Twenty Good Years" has some genuinely funny moments even as it makes no apparent effort to reinvent the form.

[3 Lbs.], as medical shows go, is pretty, full of the kind of light-show graphics the "CSIs" and "House" have led us to expect.

As much fun as it might be for some of us to start our Wednesday nights watching a shirtless Taye Diggs get out of bed - just as it was once fun to watch Agents Mulder and Scully chase goblins and ghosties and things that go bump in the night - these TV conspiracies have a way of ending badly.

While there's nothing groundbreaking happening in "My Boys," there is something a bit fresher than we saw in any of the many "Sex and the City" wannabes that popped up a few seasons ago.

Martin kills as a 12-year-old who is old beyond her years. I might watch just for her. As comedies go, Californication is a bit of a downer, and not just to fans of "The X-Files."

An overly complicated pilot had me feeling that I, too, would like to time-travel, if not actually fast-forward, but a more straightforward second episode made me decide not to cancel my subscription just yet.

Samantha Who? could easily be a complete mess. That it isn't is almost entirely due to Applegate, who brings sweetness, sarcasm and a steely edge to this story of a woman doing everything she can not to become the person she's always been.

I can't say I was riveted by either of the episodes I watched, which largely consisted of interviews with the girls and their parents, together and separately, interspersed with scenes from extracurricular activities and parties. But if there are parents who can actually get their teens to watch with them, it might get a conversation going.

The comedy's broad, the characters broader--Chris Parnell plays a control freak of a vice principal, Brooke Burns the former homecoming queen from Becky's year who's just joined the faculty--but there are moments when you can see it turning into something watchable.

I'm thinking most of these kids seem way too old to be headed back to high school from the Hamptons. It's not so much the actors--it is their characters, who've morphed over the summer into people whose world-weariness is palpable and their genuine problems so few that the writers needed to manufacture some truly outlandish ones to keep things interesting.

It might all have been a bit lifeless, had not Sutter, a writer on "The Shield"--which has so far kept its own tragic hero from speaking in blank verse--not cast his wife, Katey Sagal, as Jax's mother, Gemma.

Across the pond, wisecracks, sexual tension and some broad shots at Britain's class system make for a predictable two hours with some pleasant scenery.

Ball's done an entertaining job of turning Harris' stories about life in a small Southern town after vampires "come out of the coffin" into something adults who wouldn't dream of reading her books might be caught dead watching.

I just knew that there seemed to be a Duchovny-shaped hole in the universe "Lost" co-creator J.J. Abrams had designed for his new sci-fi show....Fortunately, things pick up considerably in the second half of tonight's two-hour premiere.

Thank goodness for Danny DeVito, whose total commitment to this insanity often makes the unbelievable just believable enough to be funny.

What's bad for Seattle Grace isn't necessarily bad for Grey's, which needs all the medical drama it can muster to distract its doctors from their (mostly) dreary love lives. Guest stars don't necessarily hurt, either.

Certainly Swayze, as undercover FBI agent Charles Barker, is better than his material. If The Beast, which turns on the relationship between the experienced and not exactly by-the-book Barker and the young agent, Ellis Dove (Fimmel), he's supposed to be training, is more rooted than reality than, say, Fox's "24," it can't be by much.

Parts of tonight's episode and next week's also focus on the Dubois offspring and their own burgeoning psychic abilities, yet another growth opportunity for a show that keeps finding a way to survive in an ever-tougher world.

If you watch the CBS show more for Baker's sunny smile than for the way he always seems to know when people are lying, ABC's Castle might be more your style.

I gradually lost interest during the agents' first case together, which takes them on the road. Here's hoping the assignments get better. Because the warehouse itself is packed to the rafters with (sorry, Syfy) geeky fun.

As Cycle 13 of America's Next Top Model gets under way, some of the stories seem sobbier than ever, though the young women telling them are shorter than usual.

I found the first episode of "Survivors" incredibly depressing and began to think longingly of rewards challenges and hidden immunity idols. But a subsequent episode, though devoid of tribal councils, did provide enough heart and even occasional flashes of humor to make survival - and the continuation of "Survivors" - seem like a fate considerably better than death.

There's very little that's unexpected in Make It, including the obvious editing of the gymnastics performances. But Emily's a tough character who's easy to root for.

It's hard to say from one episode how the transition from movie to series will go, but producers have populated the show's Padua High--yes, the Shakespeare jokes just keep on coming--with interesting enough kids to make 10 Things a more than watchable high school show, anyway.

Strahan's not yet up to his cast mates' level and the writing's uneven in tonight's back-to-back episodes--producers need, for instance, to figure out just how serious Weathers' character's forgetfulness is meant to be--but there are a few great moments.

Nothing very important is happening here, but if you love "24" for its silliness rather than its sometimes muddled message, "Human Target" might just hit the bull's-eye for you.

I've only seen two episodes and while I'm not yet ready to move in with the Bravermans, I'm at least curious to see what they're doing next.

That for those of you who love True Blood for its soapy mix of sex and horror--and occasional flashes of humor--nothing important is missing from the three episodes I've seen of the new season.

As for Scoundrels, it is, like its characters, far from perfect, but probably far better than you expected from a scripted network show in the summer.

AMC's likely earned a little rope with a small but passionate audience. Whether Rubicon manages to establish more than an edgy mood will probably decide how long even the most masochistic of those viewers sticks around.

I might not believe for a moment that any of these people actually exist in nature, much less Pennsylvania, but Big Lake, with its wink and a nod to a format that always required suspension of disbelief, is at least more than willing to own its silliness.

Chase is a very competent action-adventure with a heroine who's so far not as interesting to me as, say, the deputy U.S. marshal Mary McCormack plays on USA's "In Plain Sight." That could change, though, if I gave her a chance, and for adrenaline junkies who appreciate the professionalism Bruckheimer's company brings to just about everything it produces, this is certainly a better way to spend an hour than wishing that guy would stop talking so you could get a better look at Hawaii.

Now it's a talky but straight-ahead ensemble cop show whose cast includes Michael Imperioli ("The Sopranos") and James McDaniel ("NYPD Blue"). Think "Southland" in Detroit.

Maybe there are superheroes who specialize in improving organic-farming methods or eradicating bedbugs, but they probably won't be getting network shows any time soon. Shows that parents might be willing to watch with their kids--and kids with their parents--remain few and far between, so it's too bad that the so far ordinary but at least well-meaning No Ordinary Family is facing off this fall against the phenomenon that is Fox's "Glee."

If Harris, who's clearly meant to steal every scene he's in, seems a little too cool to be hanging out with the brothers from Omega Sigma, whose deficiencies haven't yet been fully cataloged, it's still not nearly as cool as he's going to need to be if he's to lead this slightly tired toga party right into "Conan's" waiting arms.

Not every TV show has to leave you wishing for a Ph.D. in physics and total recall of Philosophy 101, and V, which seems to have embraced the cheesy goodness of the original, strikes me as a bit more fun this season.

Southland, which seems to be at pains to give each of its characters and their stories equal weight, may just be a little too evenhanded for its own good.

The premiere of Mr. Sunshine feels more forced at times than it needs to be, as if the writers mistrusted Perry and company's ability to wring humor from real-life situations and felt compelled instead to send in the clowns--with axes--to get the job done.

Little of this stands up to close scrutiny, but there's a nice twist at the end of the pilot, and it looks as if every episode will begin with a fiendishly clever prison break by someone viewers might actually hope to see caught.

I found myself more drawn to the part of next week's episode where we see Jo with her fellow physics grad students--think "Big Bang Theory" with "American Idol's" Kevin "Chicken Little" Covais--and wondering if a slightly less seductive Georgia (at any weight) might not have a better shot at being the funny girl.

I can't disagree with those who insist the show passed its sell-by date a few years back, but it doesn't mean I'm not still fond enough of these guys to keep watching.

Way over the top but potentially a guilty pleasure for those with the time to pursue it.

Clever but somehow not very absorbing, Person might provoke the paranoid while leaving the generation who's grown up on camera wondering what all the fuss is about.

It doesn't yet feel like just another cop show.

Yes, it sounds insane (you can't have ghosts on CBS who don't help solve crimes) and like many of this season's pilots, it left me wondering how the show's premise could be sustained for more than a few episodes, much less multiple seasons. But it's an awfully pretty pilot.

The show's set in Washington, where the crises that need managing are unending, so there's bound to be material, some of it all too familiar.

Interesting enough to justify six hours? Probably not. But for those who watch "Game of Thrones" and "Spartacus" for the high body counts, it offers plenty of action.

Silly doesn't even begin to describe most of what goes on in the first few episodes....And yet, like an addiction to free-range hemoglobin, there's something undeniably compelling about the characters, human and otherwise, in a series whose plotting grows more twisted every year.

Between their personal history and their decidedly different approaches to running the place, they're dealing with plenty of built-in conflict, but if the show's a hit, I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually united, just as Perry and his fellow "Friends" stars once did, to demand an end to (or at least a dialing back of) the monkey business.

While I'm intrigued, I'd prefer to be carrying something stronger than a candle before I head too far down this particular rabbit hole.

People who like their procedurals with punch--there's plenty of punching, not to mention kicking, in the pilot--might like CBS' period cop show just the way it is. But if I'm going to stay with Vegas, I'm going to need to be wooed a little.

NBC's Smash returns for its second season Tuesday still a work in progress. But at least there is progress.

An advisory at the beginning of this thing claims it's "inspired" by actual factual accounts...Snort. [10 Sept 1993, p.56]

The World According to Dick Cheney has some chilling moments, from his dispassionate description of waterboarding ("It creates a sensation of drowning") to his 9/11 narrative, in which he takes responsibility for having authorized the shooting down of Flight 93 if it approached Washington. What it doesn't have is a lot of navel-gazing.

Whether other people's secrets will prove to be as interesting as the intimations of Norman's not-so-sweet future remains to be seen.

As the series goes on and takes a deeper interest in the multitude of characters he's gathered around him, Mr. Selfridge begins to come into focus. Whether you'll find it as engaging as "Downton Abbey" may depend less on any single performance than on how invested you can become in the rise of the modern perfume counter and off-the-rack dresses.

No matter how beautifully the dead bodies are staged--and, like Dr. Lecter's dinners, the corpse presentations in Hannibal could be ripped from old issues of Gourmet magazine, if Gourmet had featured cannibalism--they're still meant to represent once-living people. So, if I'm less amused by this than whoever chose to title those episodes "Aperitif," "Amuse-Bouche," "Potage," "Coquilles" and "Entrée," call me a party pooper. Still, it's a gorgeous party, with hosts that include "Wonderfalls" star Caroline Dhavernas as a colleague of Will's and Laurence Fishburne as Will's boss.

Defiance the TV show may not break new ground in its two-hour premiere Monday, but it does stand on its own as a watchable sci-fi series, with a Wild West vibe mixed with a bit of "Farscape"-meets-"West Side Story.

McKenzie may look like Russell Crowe's younger brother - while playing nearly a decade below his own age - but for all the James Dean comparisons being bandied about, he's a character straight out of Dickens: a little bit Pip, a little bit David Copperfield. [4 Aug 2003, p.28]

I want to like "30 Rock" more than I do so far, because I've always liked Fey. Yet it could be Fey - the actress, not the writer - I'm having trouble warming to.

Whether you'll want to go the distance with "Big Day" will probably rest on how close you feel to the family.

Much of what's swept up in "Dirt," from gay action stars to sad sitcom actresses, seems more dusty than dirty.

Their efforts to better their lives through grand larceny feel forced, not to mention doomed.

I just couldn't buy in.

I don't want to beat up on Meyers here. He does justice to Hirst's Henry, if not entirely to history's, and being young and good-looking is hardly a crime. But like Tony Soprano, Henry VIII brings more to the table than charisma: Corrupted by absolute power, he's a bit of a monster.

The first hour left me a bit cold, but the second, which arrived yesterday, filled in enough of the blanks to take me as far as Monday.

Like so many current serials, [it] requires viewers to buy into the idea that its heroes have no choice but to do very unobvious things.

In January or February, I might not have found room in my own schedule for a combination murder mystery and teen soap. I certainly would have wondered more about setting a show about adolescents among the ancients of Palm Springs. Now I'm just inclined to appreciate the little things.

In Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, it feels as if he's sometimes forcing himself to emote for the cameras.

There's a distinct "Alias" overtone to her initiation into the dark side of the force. If I'd liked "Alias," this might have me all excited. But I didn't, so I'm not.

Kranz does look like a writer, for what it's worth. But if he's really as good as they say, he'd have written something better than this.

I should probably feel bad, too, about finding all this silliness passably amusing, especially after having trashed its evil stepsister on ABC. But somehow I don't.

I'm ashamed that a wounded Marine, about to be discharged after 15 years in the service, needs help from an entertainment show to find and afford civilian housing for himself and his family.

McCormack, a rangy actress who looks more comfortable in Mary Shannon's tank tops and casual jackets than she ever did in the lawyerly business suits she wore way back on "Murder One," manages to make all this crankiness intermittently endearing.

It probably wasn't their intention, but the producers of The Principal's Office have succeeded in capturing one reality of high school life that's often been overlooked on shows like "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill"--the sheer tedium of it all, from the petty rebellions to the sometimes even pettier responses.

MacLaine, who apparently decided not to bother to attempt a French accent, isn't served well by a script that essentially has her introducing flashbacks.

Truth is, there's not terribly much to dislike about Opportunity Knocks, a kinder, gentler version of Fox's "Moment of Truth" in which families win by having their members answer not unreasonable questions about one another. There's not much to get excited about, either.

It's a subject that was explored more deeply, and even a touch more believably, in BBC America's "Jekyll," a nail-biter of an update in which James Nesbitt inhabited both personalities so completely they barely even looked alike. Slater, by contrast, just seems like a guy in need of a good night's sleep.

Defoe's ambitious bachelor is transformed into an ardent husband and father, whose memories of his previous life are so tinged with romance they include falling rose petals. I kid you not.

Teddy's impulses are undeniably good ones, but tales of African corruption are nothing new and often cited as a cause of viewer fatigue. And though Teddy's expected to range far and wide, it remains to be seen whether The Philanthropist, and its debonair title character, have anything new to do--or say--about the problems he'll encounter.

The good news is that the show's first non-"Grey's" episode is a decided improvement and recaptures the sense of humor that the mothership seemed to lose last season. The bad news is that as a medical show, it's so predictable that anyone who's watched any David E. Kelley show in the past 15 years or so, from "Chicago Hope" to "Boston Legal," will see certain plot points coming a mile (or two) away.

Tone--and we're talking cringe humor here--only takes you so far, and those looking for "Mars"-like subtlety should look elsewhere. But those who miss Veronica and company might want to tune in for the reunions alone.

Cassidys aside, the Ruby pilot, at least, feels more Disney Channel than ABC Family, with a sitcommy pace that doesn't allow for much in the way of plot or character development.

How much you'll actually care about any of them may decide whether you're ready to embrace the new Melrose Place.

So far, though, there's nothing on The Jay Leno Show that's worth losing sleep over.

Gross, who couldn't look (or act) less like Jack Nicholson and is the No. 1 reason you should run out right now and rent the Canadian series "Slings & Arrows," is a happy bit of casting that could add a little zing to this warmed-over dish.

My guess is Fox figures fans of MacFarlane's shows know what they're getting into and may not care if racial parodies are served up by white guys or black ones. Those of us who maybe aren't so comfortable were never welcome in the first place.

For sci-fi fans, the new V, like a Visitor, clothes itself familiarly, with actors from "Lost," "The 4400," "Firefly" and "Smallville," but until we see something we haven't seen before, we should probably go easy on the devotion.

I hated more how little I even giggled at Running Wilde, whose pilot doesn't quite live up to its pedigree.

It's Los Angeles, a city that's all too familiar a location to viewers the world over, and with all due respect to Detective Winters' tired-but-gorgeous brown eyes, there's not nearly enough here to distinguish the transplanted Law & Order from its aged parent or, for that matter, from plenty of other L.A.-based cop shows.

I think Hines' heart is in the right place, but I'm tired of seeing people in need used as entertainment to get help they're actually entitled to as Americans.

Those who still dream of making a killing on "Antiques Roadshow" might conceivably get a kick out of watching a bunch of guys try to outmaneuver one another for the right to take home whatever's behind Door No. 3, but if there's an acquisitive bone in your body, you should probably steer clear, lest you find yourself the subject of yet another cautionary tale on A&E's "Hoarders."

It's lighter than "Heroes," but also less coherent. Still, fans of Summer Glau (you know who you are) probably won't be able to resist.

So what we have here is another show in which pretty, mildly tortured people perform deeds of medical derring-do while trying to figure out how they, and various parts of their individual anatomies, might fit together.

Plopped down in Baltimore, the loose-living adolescents in MTV's seemingly line-for-line version don't actually feel American, no matter what their accents are, and the plots that always struck me as more teen movie than teen reality seem no more realistic than, say, "Gossip Girl."

There being few original ideas in television, execution matters. And though "Couples" fields a good cast, including Kyle Bornheimer ("Worst Week") and Mary Elizabeth Ellis ("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"), the two episodes I screened mostly felt forced and formulaic.

This is Mad Love, which takes a good cast--however tired I am of Labine playing the same guy--and forces them to try to make themselves heard over people who seem to think everything they say is hilarious.

If you don't care for Criminal Minds, Whitaker, Garofalo and company probably aren't going to be enough of a reason for you to tune in. Their characters may get to be interesting from time to time, but the crime's always going to be the main focus.

It's a happy mix of childlike wonder and mildly adult humor--too mild for "Two and a Half Men," but maybe too adult for Saturday mornings--that allows Reubens to be timeless and yet topical. But again, only mildly so.

Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar go the buddy-comedy route in Franklin & Bash, a new lawyer show the network's calling an "offbeat drama"--though it's hard to think of something whose beats are this predictable as off-anything.

Like Durant's ideal route, the five episodes I've seen of Hell on Wheels tend to meander a bit.

There are a fair number of character quirks packed into that first hour, more, perhaps, than I remember from early episodes of "Bones," which built up its own quirky world a bit at a time.

I'm not hooked, but I'm not yet planning my escape, either.

There's a germ of a good idea in the massively overproduced Fashion Star.

If you're moving on with The Killing, you're either a sucker for punishment or a hopeless fan of Detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) and her Scandinavian sweaters.

Best Friends Forever is better than a blank screen, but beyond setting what I think might be a 2011-12 season record--0 to vagina joke in 15 seconds--it doesn't do much to break through the sitcom clutter.

It offers tantalizing glimpses of other movies it might have been.

NBC's Saving Hope, another of those Canadian imports with which frugal networks pad out their summer schedules, plays like a very special episode of Grey's.

[Larry Hagman's eyebrows] are the most contemporary thing about the "new" Dallas, which otherwise looks and feels like a chunk of the '80s trapped in amber.

The Newsroom is both wonderful and terrible.

This is more soap opera than satire, an intermittently entertaining but not exactly subtle look at the private and public lives of one extremely colorful family.

The first two episodes are so full of clunky explanations that it's impossible to forget for a moment you're watching a TV show.

This one tries so hard to set up its premise that at times it ends up feeling more like a PSA than a comedy, which can be annoying if you're already on board with same-sex marriage and gay parenting.

Frankly, it's a dispiriting season and I won't miss the show nearly as much as I'll miss Blake Ritson's charming turn as Sir Hallam's royal friend, the Duke of Kent.

Hard-core lovers of historical drama who've made no other TV appointments this fall might find the time.

I was far from convinced, but was left curious to know more about [Franklin D. Roosevelt vice president Henry] Wallace, which is maybe as much as anyone can expect from a TV show like this.

The set-in-the-White House comedy starts off more annoying than funny in its Monday debut, overwhelmed by a single character, first son Skip (Josh Gad), a perennial college student and first-class screwup. Over the next couple of episodes the show becomes a little less grating and, occasionally, mildly amusing.

The CW series that takes "Sex and the City" fashionista and sexual anthropologist Carrie Bradshaw all the way back to 1984 Connecticut, and high school, the fit's a little off.

Sutherland's very moving as a father fighting to hold on to a son who was slipping away from him even before the authorities came calling, but the show still feels at times like a mashup of "24" and "Touched by an Angel."

What's a little messy about Hemlock Grove isn't so much the corpses as the oddly paced story and the sometimes eye-rollingly silly dialogue, which occasionally leaves a more than competent cast looking less so.

"Six Feet Under's" Rainn Wilson, in fact, is so weirdly compelling as Scott's hierarchy-obsessed assistant that he just might make the whole exercise worthwhile. [24 Mar 2005, p.36]

Thanks to some happy casting, the show's not actually unwatchable.

Misgivings about Heche aside, "Men in Trees," in a weaker season, might be worth trying to warm up to.

Based on the first episode... we're talking predictable prime-time soap.

"Notes" feel[s] like a number of other sitcoms about couples who hail from Mars and Venus, respectively, and adds little to the discussion beyond stretch marks.

K-Ville's Lisco seems to want to have it both ways, presenting very complex cases and then wrapping them up neatly within the hour.

Unless the writers figure out a way to step away from the car without stepping away from the funny, I'm not sure how long the show can stay there before it's pulled over.

Families whose kids aren't yet jaded by "Gossip Girl" and "America's Next Top Model" might find the wildlife pretty wild, and the kids a little less so.

Sadly, though, the cliches rack up even faster than the wardrobe changes.

Sadly, though, there's nothing quite that earthshaking going on in Swingtown, which boasts the same eye for detail that characterizes AMC's early-'60s drama "Mad Men"--from a woman smoking on an airplane to another sipping a Tab--but none of its style.

So why would TNT settle for warmed-over Bochco? Because that's what they're getting.

Cupid may really be insane, and the undeniably offbeat Piven never let you forget it. Cannavale just seems, well, stubborn.

Hawley, who cited two of the best cop shows ever, "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue," as models, might want to hold off on the patent application. The one episode I've seen of The Unusuals felt unreal and unoriginal. Too bad, because Hawley's assembled some terrific players to populate his precinct of supposed misfits.

As TV dramas go, Mental is far from unwatchable. But unless you're spending the summer without cable, it's also probably unnecessary.

The writers, while showing a certain lack of imagination in feeding Toby the voices of passers-by--no, it's unlikely that woman who passes you on the street, guys, is thinking what they think she's thinking--have at least invested their lead with a mildly intriguing backstory.

Zack (Jon Foster) also very sweet, which leaves Elfman as the sour (sort of) grown-up, a thankless job made only more thankless by the writing, which takes a bad situation and only makes it worse.

I bought into Ekman's ideas so immediately that I found myself looking at my watch as Lightman and company tried to persuade others. In the TV critic business, this is known as Not a Good Sign.

Poehler's funny because she's a smart blonde, not a dumb one. Here, she's reduced to one of TV's default settings.

Damon ("Lost's" Ian Somerhalder) complains. "Remember, Stefan--it's important to stay away from fads." If only the CW would listen.

A model-thin depiction of the glamorous and not-so-glamorous lives of fashion mannequins that was co-created by Ashton Kutcher.

The pilot for FlashForward, by contrast [to "Lost"], feels more like deja vu, with characters who could've been rounded up from a disaster miniseries, tied to a mystery that's only compelling if we care what happens to these people.

Three Rivers plays like a show that was put together in one made up of transplant advocates.

What's sad about Sherri--other than the fact that her ex, Kevin, is played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who was brought up better than this by Cliff and Clair Huxtable--is that while it's supposedly a show about a woman moving on after a divorce, it's being made by a woman who so clearly hasn't.

The new Prisoner looks marvelous, even if its desertlike location is initially a lot less appealing to the eye than the original Village, filmed on the lush grounds of a hotel in Wales. But also like "V" (so far), it doesn't seem to have as much to say.

Like "Entourage," whose laughs often are found in its secondary characters, "How to Make It in America" boasts some irresistible ones, including ....Martha Plimpton as Edie, the very funny interior-designer boss of Ben's ex-girlfriend Rachel (Lake Bell). Indeed, Plimpton has a speech in Episode 3 that kind of made me wish the whole series was about her. Instead of, well, about two twentysomething guys who so far seem unlikely to make it anywhere, including HBO.

Pretty Little Liars is entitled to its version. If only it could have resisted some of the other cliches.

This is a cast that for the most part has experienced good, even great, writing in the past, and while I'm not saying Martin's pilot is laugh-free, it's a sight closer to her deservedly short-lived ABC sitcom "Hot Properties" than it is to "Frasier."

Maybe it's just too soon after the bitter nonending of ABC's "Happy Town," but there's nothing in the pilot of Haven that makes me eager to crawl down the rabbit hole of one more small town mystery with supernatural overtones.

In return for confessing to a longtime crush that she's had feelings for him, an ordinary looking woman--the "Plain Jane"--is treated to a makeover by British fashion journalist Louise Roe, whose bag of tricks doesn't extend much past what you'd see on "What Not to Wear" or a host of other shows.

I'm probably not the best judge of NBC's Breakthrough with Tony Robbins, which struck me as way more Tony Robbins than breakthrough.

With all due respect to cheerleaders, and, um, hellcats, I'm a dog person myself. So when I say I didn't actually hate Hellcats, it means something. If nothing else, I'm in awe of the athleticism.

What I can say is that despite my admiration for an energetic performance by Q (between "Hellcats" and "Nikita," the CW seems determined to show its new stars getting more of a workout than you'll see on, say, "Gossip Girl"), and a lingering fondness for West that goes all the way back to "Once and Again," there was nothing in tonight's episode that made me care enough about any of these characters to spend a single unpaid minute with them.

O'Loughlin's American accent has long proved a hindrance, tending to leave him sounding flat and wooden, but he's hardly helped by the writing, which makes even the far more talented Smart sound not so smart, or the plotting, which is dark, and not in a good way.

Though based on a Twitter feed, it's far more of an old-fashioned sitcom than Tina Fey's weekly 22 minutes of whimsy, and Shatner is occasionally quite funny as a curmudgeonly retired doctor whose relationship with his son (Jonathan Sadowski) never quite developed.

Call me culturally insensitive, but I wasn't nearly as offended by the stereotyping in Outsourced--which is based on a movie of the same name that I've never seen--as I was by the fact that most of the resulting jokes were so lame.

Fans who've stuck with Kelley ("L.A. Law," "Ally McBeal") as his series became more outlandish (and yet repetitive) might enjoy seeing Bates in those inevitable scenes where she sways the court with the power of the writer's convictions. But there's a disconnect between Kelley's whimsy and his rhetoric here that too often leaves the cranky Harriet looking merely foolish.

Two of my least favorite "reality" genres--the weight-loss competitions and the weddings-on-steroids shows--come together in one only occasionally repellent package tonight.

This particular M.E., who's a bit of a Sherlock Holmes type, tags along with police on their investigations and isn't shy about interrogating suspects. Or even accusing them. Which can be kind of annoying. And not just to the cops she's upstaging (who include Sonja Sojn, of "The Wire").

Ultimately, though, The Kennedys is a high-speed chase through 30 turbulent years, punctuated by impersonations, some better than others.

I didn't hate the pilot, though it veers from silly to serious so quickly a girl could get whiplash, but I didn't for a minute buy it as a serious contender for next fall on CBS, either.

I'll admit that between the CW and ABC Family, I'm having trouble keeping track of the duos who've been separated at birth, switched at birth, given up at birth and in the case of Ringer, apparently just found themselves drifting apart into different worlds, but by halfway through tonight's pilot, I felt as if I'd seen this one before.

If this season's "True Blood" hasn't exhausted your patience with TV witches--as it has mine--Robertson's as appealing here as she was on "Life Unexpected." Maybe magic powers will help her keep this one on the air.

How to Be a Gentleman feels as if it comes from someone who knows a fair amount about constructing a sitcom but not quite enough about being funny.

NBC's version of The Firm is shaky at best.

A watered-down drink of a sitcom.

For all its numbers wizardry, the overmanipulative Touch doesn't yet add up.

Honestly, it's the title that titillates, not the show itself.

Only Ellen Burstyn, stalking around with a leg brace and a killer accent, seems to have seized the opportunity amid all the silliness to enjoy a taste of the scenery.

Maybe [it's] no worse than what MTV's done with "Teen Mom" and "Jersey Shore." But it's no better, either.

The most earnestly silly show of the fall.

Schulman seems desperate to extract meaning from the situation, but this isn't "Undercover Boss": The only prize available for the deceived is the attention for which they may already have proven a little too hungry.

Amish Mafia may be intermittently entertaining, but it doesn't pass the smell test.

As long as the network realizes it's deceiving no one if it pretends Deception is anything but what it is: far-fetched, formulaic and maybe a little late to the party.

As good as the performances are and as fascinating it might be to see the inner workings of a celebrity trial where money was apparently no object, Phil Spector plays like a docudrama.

Without the "Raymond" writing team behind him, Garrett's not so much unleashed as he is uninteresting.

This, my friends, is why HBO has writers. Not to mention actors.

Considering how hard people on shows like "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" work for their prizes, there's something almost unseemly about giving people prizes for not much more than showing up.

Lori Loughlin co-stars as an emergency room doctor who's dragged into their lives in ways so sitcommy they make robbing Mick Jagger look like a halfway decent idea.

Raines' conversations with the dead... aren't exactly riveting.

No, they're not ripping off "Heroes" - "Jane" was there first - but looking at the two shows side by side demonstrates how much execution matters to even the most promising concept.

Maybe it was funnier with "ordinary" Britons?

I don't know exactly why Moonlight, which acquired "Veronica Mars'" adorable bad boy, Jason Dohring, as a second-round draft pick, seems so very lifeless.

Television's a visual medium, but so much of the plot is advanced during dialogue, I actually lost track a few times and ended up rewatching sections of the episode to figure out how they'd figured out whodunit.

Eli/Ally not only isn't the most original character of the season, he's not the most sharply defined, either.

Though the abbreviated installments of the online quarterlife had annoyed me with their very brevity, at an hour, NBC's quarterlife seems to drag on forever

It's strictly entertainment. Assuming that's what you call it when one guy's ordering 10 aspiring brides through a series of ridiculously staged agricultural challenges to find the one who'll win the right to have her name mentioned in People magazine when they break up.

Liking Cho, I wanted to like The Cho Show. Liking Cho, I couldn't.

Nash is a force of nature, O'Connell a genial actor in search of something more interesting to do than leering. Together, they might want to think of checking out of Do Not Disturb.

The writing's not there, and neither is anyone who can play at the level of "Christine's" Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

A show that delivers every ounce of cheese its package promises, if not the recommended daily allowance of calcium.

Despite Shannon and Blair's best efforts, Kath & Kim's main characters feel like a compilation of attitudes (and wardrobes), forced into a sitcom format so tired that you'll see the plot resolution in next week's episode (not to mention most of the jokes) coming from nearly a half-hour away.