In the end, this is mostly a straightforward, if well-made, thriller with a dependable cast.

Downton Abbey comes back stronger and more muscular this time, with intriguing and shocking new plots that provide a bit of vital momentum and an uncharacteristically wrenching dose of tragedy.

Pleasant surprise, The Carrie Diaries's premiere episode is a nimble and entertaining trip back to Carrie Bradshaw's high school years.

Frasier at this point seems much more amusing when he's at home contending with his father than when he's at the workplace fielding phoned-in woes. But wherever he is, he's clearly in good hands -- the hands of old pros who still have the brash enthusiasm of young Turks. [16 Sept 1993, p.C1]

Mitchell’s coolly understated performance makes it all slightly more believable and worth a few episodes to see where it leads.

Spin City is firing on all cylinders. It's a slick little contraption custom-built by professionals, and if it's not exactly full of surprises, at least it's roaringly competent. [17 Sept 1996, p.B01]

Orphan Black has the same plain club soda flavor you get in most cable action dramas now, but I have to say that I’m enjoying some of its fizz.

Da Vinci’s Demons breezily and capably finds a balance between amusing wit and dour drama.

Guest has assembled a worthy and adept ensemble of oddballs. But it remains to be seen if the story itself will catch on.

A solid prime-time soap with a burnt-crisp soul.

The earnestness comes in pretty strong doses, but it might be good for what ails you.

It's an adrenalin-doused premise that is handsomely executed, but it feels like we get to Defcon 2 way too fast.

A large supporting cast helps Vegas appear to be compelling and classy. And then CBS lapses into its old habit, as Lamb and company squander all this intriguing potential trying to solve their first of many cases.

There is absolutely nothing new about anything seen here and yet Arrow has nice aim.

There isn't much in "Supernatural" to engage viewers older than Sam and Dean, but it's certainly not the worst of the new troop of spookers.

It is a little better than most other sitcoms, past and present -- especially those featuring wacky urban friends in their twenties experiencing the bittersweet mysteries of life.

Boasts the strongest cast of any new sitcom.

Even if many elements of "Vampire Bats" seem, to say the least, familiar, director Eric Bross and writer Doug Prochilo still deliver some darn good frights.

Despite the limitations, and there are a bundle, "Emily's Reasons Why Not" logs a happy high on the delightful meter -- fresh and frisky much of the time.

While the film could not be called a rollicking success, it seldom if ever pauses long enough to be ordinary, complacent or conventionally minded.

It's not an easy task to figure out where the thing is going, but it is intriguing watching it go there.

"Ocean" follows the reality-show formula perfectly, and it's hard to look away from this piece of pretty puffery, made even more attractive by the slick documentary style that makes "Laguna Beach" so appealing.

The spinoff is stylish, mindless and easily devourable. In other words, "Laguna" fans can safely put out the rallying call: "Run for 'The Hills!' "

There's no question that "Dog Bites Man"... scales heights of hilarity, more than one might have a right to expect. But there's a problem: Virtually all the characters are detestable in one way or another, and partly as a result, the show never seems grounded.

"Lucky Louie" is not a runaway smash right out of the gate, but neither does it stumble or implode.

If you're a regular viewer of the network -- whose hits include "Stargate: SG-1" and "Battlestar Galactica" -- be glad there's plenty of sci-fi to be found on "Eureka." And if Sci Fi's not on your TiVo, be glad that the show is driven more by characters than special effects (and so-so special effects at that).

For all its cribbing from plots gone by, "Vanished" still makes for good, escapist fun.

Sorkin aspires to "importance," which can sometimes curdle into pretentiousness.

Minor but deftly done.

The laughs generated are not subtle, but at least they're there.

Benjamin clearly did not sell out with this good-natured, inspirational cartoon.

The show is just silly enough -- and Silverman is just appealing enough, for once -- to cultivate at least a cult audience.

" 'Til Death Do Us Part" would be sort of ultimately ordinary, the very definition of a negligible trifle, if Waters weren't lurking around.

The show... can easily be enjoyed simply as a fairly proficient thriller, pushing the kind of buttons that Alfred Hitchcock used to push with such films as "North by Northwest" -- although here they're pushed with much less artfulness and finesse.

Maybe it should be considered substitute programming, until more solid and substantial dramas return. On that level, it doesn't totally blow, bro; it's actually quite tolerable.

The pace is languid and the ambiance laconic. Easy Money isn't the kind of show likely to clean up at Emmy time. But it has the same sort of eccentric, addled charm that marks an increasing number of current television shows.

Like the homeliest puppy in the pound, there's something lovable about this clanky ode to romantic love; maybe it's just that the cast is so determined to put it over, no matter how foolish even the actors might find the material.

For all its shortcomings and flat flourishes, Crusoe has one very significant thing going for it, a virtue that can be summarized in four reassuring words: At Least It's Different.

Stylista is--what is the phrase?--like a little tick that you want to flick off, but it's no worse than other reality games that have come before and will come after.

The acting at times is overdone, and some of the pivotal plot moments come across as downright hokey.

Moving up to the big time, and relocating to the earlier time slot, seems to have robbed Conan of much of his charm. Much--but not all.

Horton may in fact reach too frequently into his bag of editing and photographic bells and whistles, but for the most part his approach helps sustain interest when the teleplay falters, sputters or just plain poops out.

Since the show steadily improves as the first few episodes progress, Hung can hardly be written off as a failure.

Well, here's "24" again, with a renewed sense of dot-connecting purpose (fictional, yet symbolic) and a two-night premiere, Sunday and Monday -- a rollicking four-hour chunk in which the series seems on track to rediscover some of its original verve.

But for all the noble collaboration, for all its division of writing and directing duties and its tactical approach to deployment of film crews, The Pacific becomes a very good miniseries that fails to arrive at a coherent, artistic sensibility.

The result is a mildly alluring dark comedy. Schwartzman is difficult to like, but he always has been. The show is lifted greatly by "The Hangover's" Zach Galifianakis as Jonathan's strange friend, Ray, a comic-book artist with a complementary set of his own strange-but-cute neuroses.

Looking for a show to stave off "ER" withdrawal? Have Mercy; it's (you'll pardon the expression) strong medicine.

Like "Twin Peaks," it raises questions that it doesn't necessarily answer--but even the raising took a bit of daring, and "a bit" is more than one usually gets from television.

The premise of this new series seems charmingly assembled from leftover "Magnum P.I." and "Spenser for Hire" polyforms kept in a storage bin somewhere.

It's deliciously, marvelously bad, and I was helpless in its grip. It's a long way from Kubrick, but what isn't?

I've seen the first four and, although each was more compelling than the last, the series contains a repellent amount of hipitude, which distracts from its tale.

The results are, of course, compelling but also assiduously sterilized.

It isn't brilliant television, but everyone in it seems to be giving it their all--even the corpses.

The Event is an intentional mess, daring you to go wherever it thinks it's going. Within the first five minutes, potential viewers will have to make their own personal choice: Am I up for this?

I'm slightly more taken with Fox's sweeter absurdedy, Raising Hope, though I still mourn the original title: "Keep Hope Alive."

Undercovers is watchable only because of its stars, whose chemistry recalls the fonder days of "Hart to Hart"-style high jinks.

Darabont and his cast excel at conjuring up a taut social study, but let the horror scenes fall oddly flat.

Circus has no difficulty finding all the usual, romantically enthralling ideals contained within circus life, which unfortunately causes a lot of the series to feel predictable.

Public Speaking often seems to be trying to relaunch the Fran Lebowitz brand, 25 years past its expiration date. It feels like the kind of movie that old friends would make about an old friend. Which is precisely what it is.

Though deliberately and even artfully paced, Lights Out also feels protracted. It has difficulty establishing momentum in its first few episodes, even with a smattering of intriguing subplots and story lines, and no one character exerts that intangible ability to make us keep watching.

An intriguing but often clumsy new movie about the making of the TV show.

Too Big to Fail has momentum and a certain wonky remove, but is too epic in scope, as Gould's script struggles to match the breadth of the original journalism while the actors try to convince us that they understand all their lines.

The new episodes push the saga in a few initially intriguing directions, but the cast keeps expanding into an overpopulated mishmash of disparate story threads that no longer weave together as a whole.

While Web Therapy is certainly clever and occasionally funny, it lacks both the nerve and verve of "The Comeback."

Detailed, but not terribly illuminating.

Meant to celebrate innovation and entrepreneurial can-do spirit, Quirky instead eerily reflects the vapidity of the American economy and employment picture, where ideas trump labor and success is measured by top-level paydays instead of actual toil.

For its epic investment, Living in the Material World still feels like only part of the story.

Scouted gives the first impression of merely being a show about models, it turns out to be a watchable session of human sacrifice lite.

There is something to like in Alcatraz's smooth momentum. The show has a spirit that comes through in spite of the flavorless cheese crumbles piled atop it.

Right now, the hype ain't justified.

Luck is suffused with brilliant acting and amazing scenes, but in a few unfortunate ways, it remains impenetrable almost until its last hour.

A sharply-made if slightly off-putting reality series that follows different advertising agencies each week as they compete for new accounts.

The result is a gentle, respectful and thorough biography that is 100 minutes of no news and no fresh insights.

All of these characters and situations are mildly interesting, but it's difficult to know from just a couple of episodes if they're ever going to become desperately interesting.

1600 Penn comes off as a fairly formulaic yet occasionally bright return to an old premise.

The first four episodes of this new season have the same raw and gritty-cool feel as the first season's (it takes no time at all for Dunham to bare her now-famously doughy naked body in a sex scene), but the show has become significantly more predictable.

As a drama, The Americans struggles to crack a certain code; the concept is tantalizing, but the follow-through lacks the momentum that gets viewers to commit.

Although no expense has been spared, House of Cards appears to suffer from the same ambitious but weighty seriousness that afflicted Starz's "Boss."

Distracting and annoying as some of its bad habits are, "John Doe" is still hauntingly distinctive enough to warrant further investigation. Who knows but that eventually we may even find -- yes, I'm going to say it -- Doe a dear.

Vice seems to be in search of some sweet spot between “60 Minutes” and “Jackass,” and there’s enough here to suggest that such a spot may exist. The concept could work, especially if Smith and his correspondents were more inclined to point the cameras away from themselves.

There are shades of "Swingers" -- that 1996 indie hit starring Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn -- all over this show, but it gives up much of what "Swingers" had in heart in exchange for heavier satire. Think "Swingers" if Vaughn finally did make it big and the other guys gave up their dreams and just went along for the ride. [18 July 2004, p.N01]

West Wing is not a dramatic powerhouse as it gets off the ground tonight but, indeed, it does get off the ground. There are good performances, crispy-crunchy lines of dialogue and a few sizzly sparks. Subsequent episodes will have to improve on the premiere, however, if there's really going to be anything must-see-ish about the show. [22 Sept 1999, p.C01]

The Show With Vinny, a contrived hybrid of a reality series and a talk show, is a surprisingly sweet exercise in hospitality and good cheer.

Largely faithful in tone to the BBC series, which concentrates on the maddening banality of workplace-as-microcosm, NBC's Office still fails to score a direct hit, settling instead for an amusing approximation.

Boss works hard to resist the usual "this is how we do things in Chicago" nonsense and dutifully aims for a somewhat "Wire"-esque believability. Yet it can also feel like a burden to watch.

The tepid laughs here are already in need of a jolt, as Partners cries out for its Karen.

Everyone here, including "Oz's" Eamonn Walker as the battalion chief, is working from the same medium-grim setting, with medium-grim dialogue, which quickly drags the story and action into the still-smoldering ruins of other fire-and-rescue dramas.

The pilot is admittedly a swift, brisk bit of escapist whimsy, but one has to wonder whether the idea of a heist every week will really prove tenable.

Intriguing and confounding though it is, this is anything but easy, funsy television. In fact, there are times when a viewer may feel he's being punished almost to the same degree as Detective Hopper.

"My Boys" is the kind of show that you're unlikely to seek out -- it's not TiVo-worthy by any means -- but if you happen upon it while channel-surfing, you could do a lot worse than pause and give it a shot.

"Underbelly" does indeed aim narrow, likely appealing only to those who are pregnant or have recent memories of it.

The show is enlightening, but dull.

Yes, they're wicked wacky, this group, but they also seem to have been torn from the pages of the Sitcom Writer's Handbook, their status as foils and fools having been measured out in carefully calculated amounts, the final goal appearing to be not so much nonstop hilarity as the reassuring guarantee of No Surprises.

It doesn't go quite far enough into uncharted territory but gets off to a basically promising start nonetheless.

Carpoolers has a certain loopy cuteness to it, but the show lacks a beating heart, some strong central figure to care about and root for.

Realism, in other words, is not the show's strong suit; pretty much all of it (the detecting, the lawyering, the examining and the reporting) can be described as "lite.

The characters are refreshingly non-hostile and converse in something other than brittle, cold sitcom-speak. But the serialized nature of the stories (subsequent episodes begin with the "previously on" feature usually seen on dramas) is no particular plus. And while the characters are sweet, they stop short of being lovable.

Somehow, even after following these girls from ninth through 12th grade, Confidential manages to make their stories boring.

It's easy to root for the very watchable Greer, both as the underdog and as a charming actress who deserves a better script.

The basic formula is by now so groaningly familiar, and the premise so weak and weary, that there's only the "reality" part of this docu-game, or whatever it ought to be called, to tempt one's interest, and that not much.

Seriously, it is hard to take the show very seriously. It does traffic in issues and hot topics--and protests, in its way, the general corruption of the legal system--but not in particularly fresh or original terms.

Despite the prestigious presence of stars such as Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli, Lisa Bonet and Gretchen Mol, Life on Mars, a new ABC crime drama, comes off as naggingly undistinguished.

There's little about Homeland Security USA that's warmly reassuring in the post-9/11 world. But the agents do behave with commendable civility (at least while cameras are trained on them) and apparent diligence.

Fallon is far from such stature, but though his opening night had disappointments, none were crushing or looked potentially fatal. Once Fallon relaxes, hunkers down and lightens up, the new "Late Night" could win over many a semi-conscious heart and mind.

Basically it's a half-baked adventure series, but it's July, and fully baked may just not be the way to go.

Accidentally on Purpose doesn't have the smarts to be the salvation of a genre, but neither does it look like the torpedo to sink the ship. Not great, but nothing heinous.

Now it's a little bit "Lost" meets "Star Trek: Voyager." Why are we here? How do we get home? Stay tuned, if it's your thing.

Unlike the misuse of celebrity willingness on "The Marriage Ref," "Who Do You Think You Are?" has a purer heart and an underlying appreciation for marriage, family, longevity and memory. Also to its credit, it encourages people to go to libraries and museums and to look for things online besides the latest Perez Hilton gossip.

The pilot episode is laden with so much setup for countless other characters that the network should have supplied a flow chart.

Perhaps partly because the producers are determined not to let More to Love turn into a jeer fest, the show almost chokes on its own sensitivity and refinement.

Leno's funny, but in the safest way. He's adheres to the center of the exact middle road, so it's wrong to expect a revolution here.

The dialogue, while quick, has all the calculated bite of a smirky cellphone commercial, veering into jokes about Ben Affleck and "The Breakfast Club." The grading scale here is strictly Pass/Fail. Its preseason hype aside, Community needs to buckle down to survive the semester.

A peppy but mediocre sitcom.

While it could be captivating to watch an everyday person change everything about herself to gain confidence (Hollywood-speak for "become hotter"), it's simply unsatisfying when the magical transformation takes place thanks to a highly trained team of stylists, a personal life coach and pricey electronic equipment.

Even with its ample servings of va-va-boom, a lot of edgy potential is wasted in Nikita, the CW's retinkering of the much-tinkered-with story of the sexy assassin who is betrayed and hunted by "the Division," the top-secret government agency that trained her.

Detroit 1-8-7 comes across, despite the strong performances, as wan and halfhearted. Dividing each episode into two cases, and labeling them onscreen (as Tuesday night: "Pharmacy Double" and "Bullet Train") may be convenient, but it seems part of an especially unimaginative approach.

Whatever hopes "Arrested Development" fans may have held for a new Will Arnett series begin to dissipate by Episode 2--even with another "Development" funnyman, David Cross, on board as Emily's annoying eco-terrorist boyfriend. This tiny horsey has no giddyap, but there's still a chuckle or two.

There's perhaps the coppiest cop show of the century so far, the soppy and self-satirizing CBS melodrama Blue Bloods, about an entire family--"the Reagans" yet!--involved in the crime biz.

It's a fine line with Coco. For every funny line he squeezed from his anger Monday night, he missed the point of pathos.

Both shows ["Storage Wars" and Discovery's Gold Rush: Alaska] also have their moments of absorbing drama and distasteful levels of bullheadedness, set against an American backdrop that once again seems mere steps away from the full-on, Cormac McCarthy-style apocalypse.

Both shows [Storage Wars and Discovery's "Gold Rush: Alaska"] also have their moments of absorbing drama and distasteful levels of bullheadedness, set against an American backdrop that once again seems mere steps away from the full-on, Cormac McCarthy-style apocalypse.

Owing more to its overambitious breadth of material than any overt political agenda, The Kennedys necessarily compresses, stretches, distorts and otherwise crams itself into a soap opera that is occasionally elegant and even moving near the end.

It's strange how a show meant to generate excitement and promote thriftiness can leave one with a sense of remorse and shame.

This new, more mild Upstairs Downstairs, which makes its American premiere on PBS on Sunday night, is a three-part epilogue that feels more like an unfinished afterthought.

Becoming Chaz is one thing--and it's occasionally fascinating to watch--but being Chaz gets old pretty fast.

It's a handsome study in perfect mediocrity.

It's D'Elia and the other cast members who rescue the show from a wretched Whitney overload.

It's a whole lot of techno-hooey, relying on screenwriter-friendly leaps of logic. Emerson turns out to be a one-note actor, but Caviezel is appealing in a particle-board sort of way.

You'll vaguely remember several shows that went pretty much like this one.

For sitcom's premise sake, Kat reluctantly offers Caroline a place to stay, and before you know it we're watching a lukewarm revamp of "The Odd Couple."

It's rare for Burns and Novick to get lost in their own material, but it happens here.

With the line between documentary and amusement-park ride now crossed, it's easy for a critic to start noticing Vietnam in HD's other narrative and technical shortcuts with filler and stock footage, splicing in wherever needed the images we have seen before, including those familiar payload-perspective views of bombs being dropped over the hills and villages.

Downton Abbey lacks surprise and is stretched precariously thin, a house full of fascinating people with not nearly enough to do, all caught in a loop of weak storylines that circle round but never fully propel.

As lovingly written and organized as it is, the viewer must divide his or her time picking up on different scenarios and moods, caught between rather ho-hum murder cases and this other, more beguiling attempt to craft a show that is about the nature of loss and grief.

Fashion Star's debut lasts 90 minutes but feels as though it's about five hours.

It prefers action at points where it could really stand to slow down and build out a slightly more creative story. It's the very definition of a guilty-pleasure series.

In some parts, Touch is pleasantly moving and even tightly woven, until it becomes too blunt in its purposeful yanking of heartstrings.

A conceptually smart but only moderately funny comedy.

You'll blow a gasket if you watch this show with any trace of superiority or outrage. Instead, bafflement is a good resting spot; a guilty-pleasure glee works even better.

It's precisely what the title says: just new iterations of the same spit-up and teething jokes.

That path [Will Ferrell/Jack Black/Zach Galifianakis school of oddballery] is fairly well trod at this point, as is the "New Girl" vibe Ben and Kate reaches for. Some funny lines still manage to peek through.

Ultimately, the network misses the point of its own franchise, spending too much time poking fun at its classic guilty pleasure instead of giving something that viewers of "Mom at Sixteen" really want--actual information.

Deception falls prey to the exhaustive method of too-much-storytelling, adding layer upon layer of mini-mysteries and twists until the weary viewer needs a detailed map to keep track--or turns off the show entirely.

Only when it has 20 minutes left to live does Killing Lincoln knock it off with the hokey structure and melodrama and let the story itself take charge.

Snail-paced and difficult to relate to, Parade’s End feels twice as long as its total running time. And yet it’s an exquisite and thoughtful sort of slog, with sound British pedigree and bone structure.

For a while you can sense Hannibal’s noble urge to stick to a long story arc--why does there have to be a new case every episode?--but eventually it gives in to a proven formula.

Mad Men is that rare thing that can be as infuriating as it is perfect. I’ve gone back and forth (and hot and cold) on it as much as a critic can; I warmed to it last season but feel a familiar chill this time.

If Rectify was winnowed down to the length of a feature film and shown at a festival, we could better judge whether or not it accomplishes what it set out to do. Delivered this way, as a meandering, weekly TV show (with commercial breaks), it has spread itself too thin.

Schumer’s sharpness comes through best in such moments, when she’s in stand-up mode and taking significant risks beyond the genre’s still-customary boundary lines of gender.... Meanwhile, her sketches and woman-on-the-street interviews with passersby feel burdened with the task of pleasing a male audience (while enlightening them a scoch).

An ambitious but ultimately weak attempt to set an ensemble drama inside Hugh Hefner's hallowed, smoke-filled nightclub of early 1960s Chicago.

The show vacillates between hokey and clever as it mines the Brothers Grimm for contemporary analogues.

A new but forgettable TV treatment for an old story, with results that look very "CW."

Where the previous movie aspired to be a camp classic, "Martha Behind Bars" takes itself more seriously, and less entertainingly.

She's not bad, just flat; not annoying, just weak.

It's a shame so much of the show is annoying, because it offers occasional small moments of enlightenment.

A show like this... doesn't ask a lot of its audience, or of itself. In that context, give the three leads credit: They display flashes of skill and even subtlety in depicting their one-dimensional characters.

At least [it] has possibilities and a good excuse for a giggle now and then.

Several steps up from "Becker."

For all the rewriting and reworking, the show needs a better premise and funnier dialogue and, most of all, a more commanding performer in the starring role.

The costumes and sets are just ducky and highly evocative, but the people in and around them spoil the show, gum up the works and shatter veracity.

There's a sort of comfort that comes from knowing you won't run into anything disruptively unconventional in a sitcom, and that would make Engvall as pleasantly lumpy as a dying couch.

At present it suffers from a problem that predates not only television but radio and theater as well: Too many cooks, or at least too many ingredients bubbling to a busy and irritating boil.

As light summer fare, most of it done with a campy wink at the camera, Flash Gordon is by no means unbearable. But the fonder one's memories of the original, the more likely the viewer will want to send this Flash back.

Anchorwoman is the sort of trailer-park television you wouldn't mark your calendar to watch each week, but if you channel-surfed across it, you couldn't help but watch.

Big Shots tries way too hard to be shocking and raunchy. The actors resemble kiddies at school trying to impress one another with the latest naughty word learned in gym class.

Despite plenty of surface sparkle, there is something discomforting about the show, and not just because it borrows tone and form from other sitcoms with youthful heroes, especially Fox's "Malcolm in the Middle."

Peeps of sentimentality only serve to emphasize the film's uneven mix of the sardonic and the heartfelt. Tin Man unfortunately seems as bereft of an efficiently functioning ticker as is the titular character himself.

There is too little Ambrose/Posey interaction in the pilot, but in the second episode--when Coco moves in and the two start haggling over the surrogacy contract--Sherman-Palladino's knack for chick dialogue shows some of its old promise.

Those who wade into Carrier might not want to be quitters, either, but after four or five hours, they may find they'd really rather be checking out who's survived on "American Idol."

Alas, although she's likable enough, Lovato just doesn't have the same sparkle as a Miley Cyrus--or an Ashley Tisdale, for that matter. And though her music is in the same dance-inspiring, easy-to-memorize mode as that of the "HSM" franchise, it's not as catchy.

If it had something truly new or provocative to say about such matters, the essential redundancy of Flashpoint could be overlooked--but it doesn't, and so it can't. These good guys are too good for their own good. And ours.

The show, though, never quite jells.

Worst Week has the primal simplicity of a Road Runner cartoon but less depth and, of course, far fewer laughs.

There are errant laughs floating around, but for the most part Gary Unmarried is Gary Unfunny.

It has a promotable gimmick that could help it find a few fans--literally. If only the premise or the show were as bright as the light in the heroine's eyes.

Momma's Boys is truly and sometimes horrifically fascinating, a deluxe example of sumptuous trash that takes the concept of "guilty pleasure" to a new extreme.

The parts of the show that don't seem recycled from previous medical dramas seem recycled from previous crime dramas, with just a few changes of vernacular and gadgetry.

It takes the stuff of legend and imagination and makes it dry and commonplace. You look forward not to the next exciting chapter, but for the whole enterprise to go "poof" and disappear.

If only these little dears were fascinating, or at least more interesting than they are on the first installment. From the looks of the previews at the end of the hour, things will be heating up in future episodes, and the first might be viewed as a scene-setting preface to battles, tattles and conspiracies to come.

Try as I might, Mad Men fails to resonate, settle in, tell me something. It can no longer get out of its own way so as to allow its multiple story lines to experience actual forward momentum. (Only the calendar does that.)

HBO probably wants us to regard it as brilliant layering. But viewers who have three previous seasons' investment deserve Big Love's original (and more linear) sense of twisted heart and dark metaphor. Even the actors look alternately confused and pooped, empty shells of the characters they used to play.

In the end, Leno is talented in the most mediocre of ways, and this gives viewers great comfort....There was nothing new, but there was a very happy man on stage.

Poehler's show unfortunately isn't worthy of her. It's dry and hesitant when one longs for it to be raucous and madcap.

Unfortunately, Defying Gravity will have to be listed as one of its well-intentioned mistakes, another of the many peculiar oddities churned out by broadcast and cable every year, every week, every moment of our earthbound little lives.

They carry on like mischievous scamps, and while they are fun to watch up to a point, the point is reached well before the shenanigans peter out.

The new series seems to share a perhaps fatal flaw of that now-canceled show, which is that the premise becomes so byzantine and the complications so arcane that eventually people just give up on trying to make sense of the darn thing.

Packed with appealing actors (Peter Krause in the Martin role; Craig T. Nelson in Robards's paterfamilias role), this new Parenthood is boring, disorganized and weirdly missing the tender texture of its original source.

Although Justified qualifies as cryptic, and its mouth is plenty potty, it definitely lacks edge, the most important quality of the three. In fact, it can get downright sleepy between killings. It moseys. It meanders.

I just don't root for any of them, nor can I seem to work up the froth required to root against them. It's never been about how well they cook; it's about how well they cook with cameras around.

Every setback endured by Vince and his entourage (box-office bombs; girl trouble) is smoothed over by the arrival of six-figure paychecks and the bromantic ideal. It's pretty to look at, but stagnant all the same.

If you can tolerate one more word on the beaten-senseless subject of weight loss, then, and you don't mind hearing generic cliches yet again, you could conceivably become a Huge fan before the summer is over.

The network has brought back Hart and Lawrence, who are both 34 (whoa!), in a sitcom called Melissa & Joey, premiering Tuesday night, which isn't half-bad. You could do worse--say, "Hot in Cleveland."

There's something blandly nutrition-less and sugary about Mike & Molly, CBS's new Hostess Twinkie of a Monday night sitcom.

Every scene in School Pride feels like the seventh or 10th take and too contrived, even by the low standards of reality TV....I will say that School Pride seems less manipulative and showy than its forebears.

It's still pretty blah and rarely rises above a relative's chatty slide show of vacation pictures.

Skins is so determined to relate to hardened kids--without sermon, theme or context--that it accidentally discovers a new frontier in phoniness and filth. Even if I could warp time and watch it as my teenaged self, I'm pretty sure I would have been bored by it back then, too--even with all the sex.

Morgan's first show turned out to be a fawning and completely unnecessary interview with a successful businesswoman named Oprah Winfrey.

Even when the pacing and writing and performances seem to line up, some intangible quality fails to quite hit the spot.

There's a bit of banter well-delivered and some artful action, yet Breakout Kings lacks a certain vim and chemistry required for a real breakout series.

Both Restaurant and "Millionaire" stir similar pots of self-pride, entrepreneurship and the psychic reward of sharing one's good fortune. But because the medium is television--reality television--each show collapses under the pressure of showing off its sense of nobility and higher purpose.

Both "Restaurant" and Millionaire stir similar pots of self-pride, entrepreneurship and the psychic reward of sharing one's good fortune. But because the medium is television--reality television--each show collapses under the pressure of showing off its sense of nobility and higher purpose.

Although it is 90 minutes long, it feels much longer, and the truly smart laughs are few.

The always-appreciable Dana Delany does her level best to lift Body of Proof, a paint-by-numbers morgue drama premiering Tuesday night on ABC, from its stale premise and up to the level of a beautifully-flawed-character study, something more akin to Julianna Margulies's legal procedural, "The Good Wife."

In the first four episodes, there isn't anyone or anything to root for, other than history's corrective hand.

Teen Wolf bounds so wildly between its main plot points that I began to wonder if my press copy of the show had skipped some scenes or if they'd been assembled out of order.

It is filled with weak attempts at sketch comedy, resulting in a few funny moments here and there, but not enough.

Yet another dystopian vision with Steven Spielberg's brand name affixed to it (as executive producer), this time as a cheap-looking but occasionally intriguing sci-fi social study called Falling Skies.

Countdown has transported itself from MSNBC to Current without major incident or much innovation.