The shame is, after a very slow start, the living members of the Fisher family actually start to grow on you -- though it takes them far longer than it should. [1 June 2001, p.15E]

Without Kanye West, and his conveniently timed controversy from the MTV Video Music Awards, NBC's Jay Leno Show premiere Monday would have been even more of a cut-rate, snooze-inducing, rehashed bore. If Leno's desire is to help fans get to sleep earlier, desire satisfied.

Lacking much in the way of attitude, the show seems obsolete and irrelevant. What it boils down to is that Seinfeld, likable as he may be, is a mayonnaise clown in a world that requires a little horseradish. [31 May 1990, p.3D]

You can think of it as Titus with kids added and talent removed.

O'Donnell is humorless, formless and vacant; Goldberg is manic and grating.

There isn't a moment of wonder or suspense in Surface, or a single performance or character that is even remotely involving.

With each misstep, E-Ring becomes more ridiculous.

Overagitated and overaggressive, Philipps is in constant motion; her face contorting, body twitching, voice braying. Against all odds, she has taken a show that was merely bad and made it truly unbearable.

Incessantly chatty, incredibly busy and annoyingly pretentious.

Cobbled together out of hundreds of undercover/caper movie clichés, Sleeper Cell is so absurdly detached from the real world, it makes 24 look like a documentary.

Tawdry, empty and inept, South Beach is UPN's too-late-in-the-game attempt to transfer The O.C. to the other coast.

Courting Alex is nothing if not dull.

An abject failure both as sociology and as entertainment, this incompetent update of Black Like Me is no more than a gimmick in search of an idea.

Seldom has a series expended more energy with less entertaining results.

The scene before the opening credits is awful enough all by itself to send you fleeing to any one of the other networks, all of which have something better to offer.

The dialogue ranges from ridiculous to tiresome.

There are two major things you need to know about Night Stalker. One is that it's a third-rate rip-off of a superior series. The other is that the series it's ripping off is The X-Files.

The main structural problem for the show is that neither the couples nor the contrast makes any sense.... Still, this being a comedy, the more troubling problem is that no one is funny, starting with Garrett.

There's not a moment or character that rings true, and the only joke you're likely to remember is an anatomical gag you'd probably rather forget.

It just isn't funny. At all. Ever.

Everything about the show seems designed to misuse its stars and erase our memories of the better work they've done.

The most important lesson from tonight's premiere is that there isn't a single plot point this yawn-a-minute show won't feel the need to hammer home.

The show is all structure and no substance.

Sanctimonious yet salacious, tawdry yet preachy, and dull as, well, dirt, this haltingly comic drama has as much trouble finding a workable tone as it does making a coherent point.

It's kind of like Friends if every character had been outlandishly contrived, every situation had been stripped of every humorous moment, and every attempt at sentiment had felt cheap and unearned.

Rules is one of those sitcoms that makes people who hate sitcoms hate sitcoms.

Unfortunately, the comedy is Kelley at his most forced and artificial.

Unfortunately, the smarter-than-thou riffs that may have seemed amusing and fresh back on Dawson's Creek now simply feel dated and rehashed.

The real sin here is the way the show wastes Hunter, a terrific actress with a proven ability to make tough women compelling.

Badly written, badly cast and done on the cheap in the Canadian woods, Flash is the kind of fantasy toss-off that gives sci-fi, and Sci Fi, a bad name.

Spend an hour with Journeyman and you'll wish you knew how to time-travel.

Alas, while it's fine to have a villain who is more colorful than your hero, it's not so fine to have a supporting actor who makes your star vanish whenever they're on screen together. It makes you think that what this remake of a spinoff really needs is a spinoff of its own.

Strip away the abrasive flourishes, and what's left is a standard-issue TV mystery with cases that are too easy to solve and internal conflicts and conspiracies that make no sense.

The problem with Big Shots is that the men don't sound like anyone at all, male or female.

You're stuck with a dull mush that works neither as drama, comedy or camp trash.

It's all meant to be exciting, but like everything else about The Cleaner, it comes across as almost profoundly silly.

Sons wants us to care about their hopes and struggles, but gives no clue as to why we might do so.

Alas, like most copies, Privileged is a second-rate imitation.

The result is a show that tries to be adult and titillating but just comes across as juvenile and badly paced, as if the cast were waiting for laughs they must realize won't be arriving.

You might be able to forgive the sloppiness of the premise if something else in the episode worked, but it's all a contrived, derivative mess.

Clearly, the show is aiming for urban grit. But that's hard to achieve when you're constantly distracting us with a ludicrous plot.

If you want to get away with being offensive on TV, you have to be awfully funny, and Sit Down gets much closer to "awful" than it ever does to "funny."

Monday's opening monologue, supposedly Leno's strong suit, was tired, lame and unfunny. In other words, typical of the real Leno, rather than the Leno of public-relations imagination.

Practice is still terrible, and I'm still not ready to give up.

Southland is unbearable--a pretentious, foul-mouthed, overly arty chore that will leave you with a headache should you linger too long.

Perhaps Leighton has a huge fan base, but nothing in her cold, starched, tightly stretched rehash of Sydney would explain her appeal to the uninitiated. Still, the apartment complex does look inviting, as do many of the Los Angeles hot spots that are being used as sets.

Bored is TV that's tailor-made for people who hate TV. It won't make you laugh, but it will make you feel hipper than the room, and for some, that will be enough.

There are some remarkably good actors going to waste here, most of whom will no doubt wipe this showoff their résumé the moment they get the chance.

McKellen may be a sublime combo of the Wicked Witch and the Wiz, but Caviezel is no Dorothy. And sadly, this isn't much of a Prisoner.

Honestly, Deep End is the type of high-gloss, dim-bulb broadcast hour that makes you despair for broadcast hours.

What Miami Medical most closely resembles is CBS' equally retro and quickly canceled Three Rivers, right down to the pre-credit scenes that launch the medical story lines.

The show suffers from severe tonal problems as it struggles to balance local eccentricities and strained comedy with an overly graphic approach to its plot-driving crimes.

A ludicrously see-through supernatural crime drama that wastes a perfectly fine performance from Emily Rose as an FBI agent who tracks an escaped convict to a Maine town.

Seldom has the byplay been as idiotic or annoying as it is on Rizzoli.

Without characters to rely on, the show tries to hook us in with legal twists and turns--evidence found, evidence in, evidence out. But even on that level, Truth falters. The only twists you won't see coming are the ones that make no sense

Not a single thing William Shatner's Dad has said in those ubiquitous CBS ads has been even remotely funny, a trend that continues in tonight's premiere.

Bob's isn't nearly funny enough. It just lopes along, stumbling from one tasteless moment to the next.

Sadly, it takes even less time to realize that Map is a near-criminal waste of talent.

If ill-cast, unfunny and thoroughly unoriginal are your ideas of perfection, then Perfect Couples just may be.

There are a few amusing, if not always sensible, twists, and after a rough start, Bower does display some charm and skill as the boy king. But even so, a story meant to sing simply doesn't.

The adventures aren't funny, and the friends aren't believable. But the real flaw is Reiser seems to have missed one of the central points that gives Curb its odd, counterintuitive appeal: David's willingness to paint himself in an unwaveringly horrid light.

Friends was not a shockingly original premise. It's what you do with it that matters, and Caspe and crew do almost nothing that doesn't feel secondhand and artificial.

As oversexed as it is underachieving, Bash is the kind of original programming that makes you reconsider your antipathy toward reruns.

There's not a character you're likely to believe, which is a problem, or one you want to see again, which for a series is a bigger problem.

Even were this Odd Couple rehash amusing, you'd still wonder what sane person would think the dimwit who bullied him in high school was the ideal Sherpa into modern manhood.

It starts slow, moves slowly and goes nowhere.

The Firm is part weekly procedural, part season-long conspiracy, and wholly unsatisfying.

This isn't escapist TV; it's TV you need to escape.

You can find mummies who look fresher than this mold-encrusted relic, and who have newer ideas in their empty, embalmed heads.

What fans are about to discover is that Goodson is a less amusing character than the one Chuck Lorre created for Sheen at Men, and that Sheen's new show is a pale substitute for his old one at its height, and not much of an improvement on Men at its depth.

The shame is that Practice has a fine human cast... But Kirk and his cohorts quickly get taken down by the barrage of stupidity the show sends their way.

Guys With Kids is an idea in search of a show. And a better idea.

Nothing in The Neighbors rises above mediocrity, and too much falls beneath it.

[Kreuk and Ryan are] terrible, but the material may have left them with no other option. Luckily, in this world of 1,000 channels, you have plenty of other options.

Lazy and listless to the point of being sad.

Drama requires more than mere stenography. It requires creating full-blooded characters we're willing to believe, giving them lines we think some human being might actually say, and hiring actors who are able to say them without allowing us to see any artifice underneath. At those tasks, Gupta, Kelley and most of their cast have failed.

Good dramas have been made from much less, but Widow's indifferently performed, dishwater-dull opener give us no real clue as to who Marta is or what she wants--or why anyone would want to watch her pursue it.

They're kids, exhibiting the kind of behaviors, good and bad, that kids do in real life. That's not awful or particularly surprising--but it's also not even remotely entertaining.

Enough to make you re-evaluate the virtues of celibacy...Here's a thought: Perhaps these whiners can't find great guys because they're not so great themselves. [5 June 1998, p.12E]

Everything about Criminal is patched together from other shows, from the FBI setting to the tired visual gimmickry.

The season's worst show.

Even with network movie expectations at an all-time low, you might expect more from November's only broadcast miniseries than an overblown repeat. We've seen enough bad weather and bad movies to last a lifetime; why anyone would want to see the two combine again is beyond me.

Donovan is barely present, and while Heche may have her strengths as an actress, warmth would not seem to be one of them.

Despite the obvious, desperate attempts to inject youth appeal, Conviction is as tired as it is undistinguished.

This is yet another terrible WB sitcom that never should have been made.

The Bedford Diaries... is not merely the worst show of the vernal season but one of the worst ever concocted by the soon-to-vanish WB.

There are desires that are best left unfulfilled.

[It doesn't] live up to its camp catfight billing, in large part because Derek doesn't have this kind of drag-queen Dynasty performance in her. Not only does the role take more than the minimal acting skills she possesses, it also takes a level of on-camera comfort she has never mastered.

Hands down the worst new show of the season.

If straining-to-be-inspirational, card-shop stocking fillers such as A Perfect Day are the best TV can do, then really, leave us to contemplate the meaning of the season in peace.

You'll eventually be able to tell one gun-toting, ax-wielding character from another. You're just not likely to develop a desire to spend time with them.

An appalling combination of precious and pretentious.

A badly acted, clumsily constructed "Starsky & Hutch"/"Miami Vice" revival that imposes fictional clichés on top of harsh realities.

A show that was once dumb and offensive is now dumb and pointless.

The show is so painfully witless and dull, your daily commute may begin to seem entertaining in comparison.

The stars, all of whom have done better work in better projects, give it their all, but the show is too snide, condescending and unpleasant to be salvageable.

The show seems to vanish as it's happening, leaving behind nothing except a vague feeling of being mildly annoyed. It doesn't just fail to leave you laughing. It leaves you, period.

The actors do their best, but most of what they're doing is hopelessly, witlessly predictable.

Seldom has the drive to do good works been as alarmingly, offensively presumptuous.

Even if the performances were better and the scripts were funnier, Jezebel would still be saddled with one of the most preposterous, off-putting setups in sitcom history.

Seldom has a major network launched a show boasting as many terrible performances or jaw-dropper moments as this premiere.

Badly cast and sadly inept, this not-quite comedy follows the Goddess of Love (Jaime Murray) and her clan as they try to match mortal soulmates.

Witlessly Americanized by Michelle Nader (King of Queens), Kath manages to waste the talents of Molly Shannon while exposing the limits of Selma Blair's comedy range.

Gratuitously cruel and mind-numbingly dull, Stylista pretends to be "fashion forward" while it apes everything that has gone before.

Poorly cast and performed (including an embarrassing turn by Val Kilmer), XIII is shot so murkily and staged so badly, you can hardly tell where people are, let alone where they're going.

What you get from Motherhood are witless, barely connected vignettes about three unpleasant, unbelievable women.

What we expect in exchange are a few thrills, a few jolts and some convincing destruction, none of which this cheap, embarrassing film delivers.

The result is a deadly, deal-driven mistake that takes a network that has made great sitcom strides forward one unfortunate step back.

The characters here creak, including the talking bear who mirrors the alien in American Dad and the dog in Family Guy, and the watered-down setup now feels like a copy of a copy of a copy. What's worse, in three episodes, there's hardly a laugh to be found. Bad taste, we'll accept. Boring we won't.

Rather than art re-creating and explicating reality, How to is art mimicking reality shows, with all their annoyances and posing.

You start with the minor annoyances, like their fondness for silly nicknames ("Big Dave" and "Root Beer" standing in for Road's "Big Cat" and "Physical Phil"), and move on to the really big sins, such as their inability to create interesting characters or their habit of writing dialogue that either hits us over the head with exposition or pulls us out of the story through ridiculous, artsy flourishes.

Not content to simply be stupid, Outlaw is more than a little insulting.

If you're looking for a quick refresher course in what the U.S. Marshals do for a living, or just need to know how many fugitives they caught last year (more than 90,000), Chase could be the show for you. But if you're looking for actual TV entertainment? Heavens, no.

There's not a moment that isn't ridiculous or false, as the characters continually collide on the street (small town, that Austin). And worse, there's not a single reason to care.

A show that feels like it's multiple terrible shows in one. It's like he pitched four bad ideas to NBC, and the network decided to pour them all into one hour.

That Suspect is a spinoff of Criminal Minds, network TV's worst series, is just the dung icing on the dirt cake.

The act is tired, and at times more than a little inappropriate.

You might be willing to overlook the show's structural flaws if the cases themselves were wildly compelling, but unfortunately, they are of a piece with their misguided series.

[The original series] had energy and glamour and a self-aware sense of frothy fun, all of which are missing from this lugubrious update.

Meryl Streep would have trouble making Gerstein's never-been-there, never-done-that creation sound anything but ludicrous.

The problem with this trio isn't that they're unmanly; it's that they're morons.

Gross, ugly, vicious and stupid--Allen is all of that, to be sure. But funny? Too rarely to matter.

You're left with a show mothers and daughters can both hate.

Work It is dreadful almost beyond comprehension: witless, tasteless, poorly acted, abominably written, clumsily directed, hideously lit and badly costumed.

Vulgarity and lack of taste aren't the issues here as much as a deadening single-mindedness.

There's hardly a moment or performance in Rob that doesn't reek of the leftover and the second-rate.

An atrocious sitcom that can only be understood as a threadbare network's attempt to empty its larder before the fall restocking.

As its name indicates, it's half Mob drama, half doctor show, and all terrible.

ABC's upcoming Malibu Country is a more egregious waste of talent. But only Emily can provoke an almost irresistible urge to scream, "Shut up, shut up, shut up," at your TV screen.

In short, she [Lohan] and her film are too awful to watch.

If only Harm had stuck with "strange" and not barreled right on past to "stupid."