Nat's TV reviews 2002

If you need to reach me, you can write me at nat@aaugh.com

Then I realized that the problem wasn't ABC's. It was mine. Because I'm not watching ABC.

It hadn't struck me before, but except for an occasional episode of Life With Bonnie, I'm not watching any of the ABC primetime lineup. I'm watching more WB and more UPN than I am ABC.

On to the show. HAving not seen the earlier episodes or the miniseries, I didn't know what to be prepared for, stylistically. The first time I saw the dinosaurs, I wasn't struck with awe and wonder. I was struck with the thought that "hey, those dinosaurs are no more convincing than the ones on The Land Of The Lost!" It's not that there wasn't a lot of careful computer modeling and an impressive walking motion, it's just that they never looked like they were part of the scene. They looked like a special effects overlay. The brain was not fooled.

Looking at the sets and costumes, I was reminded not of a high-class film, but of the cheap syndicated action fare that shows up at odd hours on weekends for no discernable reason.

Watching the acting and the focus on these stiff young folk, I was again reminded of what little I saw of Land Of The Lost. And the simplistic plot reminded me of Land Of The Lost as well.

I never liked Land of the Lost, but then I never saw it at the right age, whatever that may have been. But there certainly are people who fondly recall watching that show, even if they cringe when they see it now. And I suspec tthat there is a group of young people for whom Dinotopia will have the exact same effect.

But I ain't in that group.

Other TV notes: Malcolm in the Middle has been worth watching this year, having recovered from last year's doldrums. Would that I could say the same for Frasier. I keep meaning to watch Firefly, but I only catch about half of them. The female mechanic is the only character I find myself caring about (although it's always cool to watch Ron Glass in action.) Any assumption that this year's Buffy would be lighter in tone than last year has proven ill-founded; they've found ways to be darker still. But it's still well-made. And the show I'm currently focusing on in reruns is The Larry Sanders Show which airs on Bravo with a rather curious profanity editing; the few dirty words they leave in makes you wonder why the bother bleeping so many words, including some of the same ones that survive. But the show started well and got better. I'm now up to episodes that I believe are near the end of the run, and they are fascinating, dynamite, and hilarious. One recently-rerun episode not only had Winona Ryder (looking cute and claiming to be boring), Jon Stewart (whose Daily Show is our sole weekday latenight viewing around here), and George Wyner, it also was directed by Tom Schlamme (West Wing, SportsNight) and even had SportsNight's Josh Molina, all in the midst of finely-crafted work. Talk about an episode that was meant for me!

RECENT WEST WING SPOILERS: And hey, speaking of Josh Molina -- I should have seen it coming that he would become a regular on The West Wing. It makes sense on many levels. But I was suckered into thinking that maybe they were setting up a possible spin-off for Rob Lowe as a way to settle his pay issues and possibly grow the franchise. Whatever the reason, it will be nice to see Josh be a regular on something good!

Well, we have reached the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.

It's not a hard line. There are still a couple new series yet to debut, ABC's Dinotopia and Fox's The Grubbs (although both have been pushed back from their original planned start dates, and no one should be surprised if the latter series never surfaces.) And some old favorites, such as The Simpsons, have yet to return for a new season.

Still, the dying has begun. Three series have been cancelled. Two were cut down quickly, as both That Was Then and Girls Club were dropped after two episodes.

The stylish Push, Nevada was allowed a full six episodes, and went down with its style intact. The final episode started with an explanation for the town mystery (if a problematic one), but if you thought this was designed to be a closing episode, guess again. The explanation, delivered with the sort of rapidity that made it look shoe-horned at the last minute, quickly unravels to reveal that larger mysteries go unsolved. There is no tidy rerunnable miniseries here. Not, mind you, that stories that stretch over many episodes have done that well in reruns, but the emerging DVD market is a great aftermarket for such tales. The DVD of the first season of 24, all of which makes up one big story, is an apparent success. That bodes well for getting DVDs of things like Murder One and Wiseguy, shows which don't lend themselves to catching random episodes here and there, but which are hard to commit to watching reruns on a daily basis.

The second season/second storyline of 24 launched last night. As expected, they are going to make Jack Bauer and what remains of his family on-going victims of various cruel individuals (not that Jack didn't always have a cruel streak in him as well, which we are amply reminded of in this episode.) And I doubt I'll stick around for it. Jack's daughter is already in the hands of another Abusive Man. Seeing her go through another season of being Girl Victim is not something I care to do. (There would have been great, great satisfaction if, when faced with this new abuser, we had it suddenly demonstrated to us that she had spent the intervening year taking self-defense classes. That would certainly have announced to us that they're not just stretching out the already paper-thin content of season one. No such luck, alas.)

Back to the cancellations: the odd thing is not that shows are already cancelled, but that so few are. Usually by now there have been more shows that simply didn't measure up in the ratings. I won't try to analyze what part of the longevity of new shows is due to a vast amount of quality (although I've noticed little), what part is due to network resignation to the fact that they can't launch big hits any more, what part is due to networks starting to believe in giving shows time to find their legs, and what part is due to flagging attention for older hits like Frasier and The Drew Carey Show allowing the new shows to get ratings.

So with all these new shows still on the air, what am I still watching? Not much. I watched Push, Nevada right through the last episode, still enjoying its lead character. Life With Bonnie is a must. Bram & Alice still gets my viewership, even though it hasn't reached for the Frasier-when-it-was-good tone I hoped it might or even the Will & Grace level of basic-sitcom-interaction-but-with-something-beneath-the-surface, and seems willing to hover in tome at some point between that latter series and Two Guys, a Girl, & (Originally) A Pizza Place. I finally caught a second episode of Firefly, and while not addicted to it, will continue to watch it when I can. American Dreams entertains but does not fascinate, and I may stop watching now that The Simpsons will be back. And last but far from least, Boomtown continues to be my kind of storytelling. I'd actually be a little happier if it didn't have to focus on the same set of continuing characters every episode, but I'll accept that as part of the ride that I'm taking.

Meanwhile a quick note for the DVD crowd: complete DVD sets of the past decade's greatest drama (My So-Called Life) and greatest comedy (SportsNight) are coming out soon.

"I hope you don't confuse me with the kind of lawyer that defends guilty people."

I swear to G-d, that is an actual line of dialog from GIRLS CLUB, the new lady lawyer series from David E. Kelley. A criminal defense lawyer said this in the courtroom, during questioning, and the judge and DA did not break into peals of laughter for some reason. It was a Serious Moment.

That line might make sense if this were some sort of broad comedy; it is not. It is, at heart, a drama with some attempts at David E. Kelley's patented over-the-top moments, but the patent has run out and the top is not even seen.

Three pretty young lawyers are cursed with working in an office where they are expected to do their jobs well, the horror! And some of their clients may not be honest, oh my! But they do achieve some victories -- if you can root for someone when they find a clever way to extort money from innocent folks.

The show started with a big-breasted woman in a tight top that failed to hide areolas waking her carefully-tossled-hair cutey roommates to talk with them. It felt like I was watching some Showtime cable film in which former Penthouse Pets played sorority sisters. Then it segued into the Bowie/Queen collaboration "Under Pressure" while some nice tricky camera work showed us people living under pressure. And that was where the show peaked. Despite appearances by a variety of actors that I like in supporting rolls (Bill Cobb, Felicity Huffman, Giancarlo Esposito) and directing by Todd Holland (who made Malcolm In The Middle what it was when it was good, and whose small-screen credits include The Larry Sanders Show, Twin Peaks, Friends, Max Headroom, and My So-Called Life, so he's been a class act), this show falls down on concept and writing, and I don't foresee it getting up.

It's not the saddest thing of the season, though. A new show not being very good is to be expected, and it's a temporary disappointment at best.

It's not even the second saddest thing of the season; that award goes to Saturday Night Live, following up a fairly strong season with one that is averaging about one laugh per episode. Even at its best, SNL has always been hit-or-miss, but the hits make it worth it. At the moment, however, I see little excuse to wade through the non-comedy being presented.

But the saddest thing of all is the ads which are trumpeting the newest addition to Scrubs. They're taking the finest new comedy of last season, one which built itself a nice little following, and to make it even better they're adding Heather Locklear!

Heather Locklear??? I have yet to see a sitcom star with less sense of comedic timing or delivery. My wife and I used to sit aghast and unbelieving as she would kill any possible comedic moment on Spin City, a show which had never quite lived up to being the sum of its parts but which utterly fell apart when she was shoehorned in. To allow her on another sitcom is a case of dubious judgment; to put her into a quality work and announce that as if it were some sort of special treat for the viewer is sad, sad, sad indeed.

I was predisposed to liking BIRDS OF PREY, the new female adventure series on The WB. I was expecting something that would tie the sensibilities of Buffy in with the mythos from the Batman comics. And I was disappointed on both ends.

The set-up is that Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl now planted firmly in a wheelchair, acts as the brains of a superpower duo while Helena Kyle, the love-child of Batman and Catwoman, handles the physical end of crime-fighting. They are joined by a teenage lass with ill-defined psychic powers, and together they fight crime in a highly stylized version of "New Gotham".

The dialog is stiff, lifeless, and inhuman. The visual style uses a lot of photographic tricks that distract from the story rather than enrich it (which, admittedly, copies the method of some popular comics of a decade back). As for the links to the Batman mythos, they rely on it in the worst ways. There are things that get said which only make sense if you already know some of the Batman material, and not just the stuff you see in the movies. When Barbara explains that she had another name before she was known as Oracle, that statement makes sense... to those who have read the comics in which she is known as Oracle. However, unless I missed it, that was the first time that the Oracle name was mentioned in this show, and since Barbara and Helena's operation is secret, there doesn't seem to be anyone who would know Barbara as Oracle.

Meanwhile, the richness of the Batman mythos is wasted as we have a Joker without insanity, a Harley Quinn without joy, a Catwoman who cannot defend herself, and an apparently cowardly Batman. What we end up with is a lifeless, humorless spectacle with little sense of adventure.

About the only redeeming aspect of this is the very appropriate casting of Dina Meyer as Barbara Gordon. She manage to convey the sharpness and intelligence that comics writers John Ostrander and Kim Yale had given Oracle when they established that identity after Alan Moore had Batgirl crippled. Making Oracle seem intelligent is no small achievement, given that the script actually conveyed little if any of that intelligent. (Hey everyone: there's a business partnership in which three of the four partners have been killed. Whose your main suspect? Anyone? Come on, someone out there must have the answer...)

Still, that's not enough to save the show. A shame, given the effective (if often repetitive) reimagining of Superman that the WB has given us in Smallville.

The new sitcom BRAM AND ALICE had a very rich pilot. Bram is a one-time great writer clinging to all of those great writerly traditions: a ravenous love-em-and-forget-their-names-in-the-morning sexual attitude, a far closer relationship with the whiskey bottle, finances which focus on who can be borrowed from and how little can be repaid, and a penchant for not actually getting any writing done. Alice is a struggling young writer, not able to keep an apartment in New York, with one small sale to her credit. She is also Bram's long-since-forgotten love child, who has just discovered who her father is and has gone to look him up.

The pilot focuses on their meeting, which is one of those sitcom scenes where two people are having two different conversations, unaware that the person they are talking with is on a different page entirely. Alice thinks (correctly) that she is talking to her father; Bram assumes that she's a former one-night stand of his who just might be worth a second go.

The characters are well-formed, with richness to them that goes beyond their stereotypical set-up. The humorous material is delivered well, and these are characters I want to spend time with.

My main concern, however, is that the characters seemed so designed for this pilot that I wonder if they can sustain a series based around their on-going relationship. Now the daughter is living with the dad; what will this lead to? Will the makers of this show be able to deliver consistently? Tune in and find out; I know I will.

Okay, I was wrong. It's not that long between reviews -- not because there are any more premieres (although Sunday will see the launch of Bram & Alice, but it will be additional days before I can review it), but because I forgot about the one series that had gone unreviewed: GREETINGS FROM TUSCON.

This is actually a nice if unastounding family sitcom, well designed for the WB version of the deceased ABC TGIF line-up. While it does fit the pattern of modern sitcom families, featuring the wacky dad and the far more reasonable mom (a combination which I suspect arises from male sitcom writers who picture themselves the wacky ones in their clans), some of the chemistries are not. We're dealing with a somewhat extended semi-Latino family, including a spicy grandma, a ne'er-do-well uncle (performed rather weakly, alas), the mean sister, and the young male protagonist.

This breaks no new ground, but the humor is consistently constructed, and while the jokes and insults are peppered in, most of the humor builds from the central premise of the episode. This won't be the sitcom that changes the world, but if you need something tohave on while you do the crossword puzzle, this is better than most of the new crop.

Just a quick note that it will be a while before the next TV review, primarily because most of the shows have already debuted and we've entered a quiet period (no new shows until Sunday) augmented by the fact that I'll be going away for a few days to celebrate my aniversary.

In the category of "shows whose title beg for bad reviews" is LESS THAN PERFECT. A workplace comedy, it takes an overly-chipper earthy woman from the downtrodden masses of the 4th floor of a big office building and puts her to work with the snobs on the 22nd floor, home of the network news. Of course, to keep the ensemble tight the snobs are only represented by two people, the downtrodden folks are represented by two people besides our lead, and there is only one other person that counts, the distinguished news anchor who is egomaniacal and always prowling for sex, but is not a snob.

I sat there watching, considering if the conflicts worked, considering the talents of the various cast members, considering whether it was really created by one of those 22nd floor types who just assumed that the 4th floor types would be so mentally focused on them. And then I realized that if I was focusing on all this, it didn't really matter in my review, because I was not being amused.

I'm not saying that there was anything wrong with the show, there are certainly some talented folks on some level. But I don't watch sitcoms to find writers or actors to respect.

STILL STANDING is a generic family sitcom in the as-many-jokes-as-we-can-cram-in mode. The only thing that makes it rise above many of the other generic family sitcoms is that the leads, Mark Addy from The Full Monty and Jami Gertz from lotsa things, actually have some reasonable comedic delivery chops. I'll probably peek in on this from time to time, to see if they have developed the material.

In the opening scene of tonight's CSI: Miami, David Caruso's friend on the bomb squad has a chatty talk with him and says they should get together for some beers later, just before heading in to deal with the bomb. How many of you out there figured he'd live until the theme song started? Nah, me neither. We're all too smart to fall for that.

The folks who create BOOMTOWN now how to be thematic. The episode opens with musings on the L.A. River, long since lined with concrete yet still carrying with it runoff from the rare rains of Los Angeles. The story of the episode is also a river, running a stream through L.A., yet bring the run-off of many people along.

This is a cop show, and it is about cops, and those around them, and other people as well. The stories are moved forward in chunks focusing on an individual character -- a cop, an ambulance driver, a young man involved in the crime -- but this is not Rashomon, we are not seeing the tales as influenced by anyone's interpretations of the events. We are just seeing different camera angles on what really happened.

This is a good show. It tells stories, and its about people.

That's not to say that it couldn't grow askew. It could do what 24 did last season, clinging to an interesting format but letting the quality of the material suffer. Certainly, they will have to work to keep from repeating themselvs, or from letting the more soap-operatic portions of the cops lives run away with the tale.

But I think we'll see a good run of fine episodes out of this, certainly the best drama to be unveiled yet this season. Judging from the first episode, the people behind this show like telling stories and listening to people talk.

So Boomtown (Sundays on NBC) is clearly recommended (with an extra recommendation for people who liked my comic The Factor. There's some similarity of soul here.)

It is difficult to judge AMERICAN DREAMS off of the first episode. This is a family drama, and like most family dramas, it is about a family which is fraying at the edges. It is set during the Kennedy administration, in Philadelphia (a fact that they pound into you with repeated naming of the local sports teams and with an awkward invocation of the term "cheese steak hoagie"; one is left wondering whether they are aware that this is not the same thing as a "cheese steak", or whether they just included it because it had the Philly terms "cheese steak" and "hoagie"). The family father watches his perfect family start to crumble, as his wife starts yearning for unnamed things beyond middle-class motherdom, his eldest son tired of being the football star and thus dashes his scholarship chances, and his eldest daughter aims to appear on American Bandstand. It is the last that brings the series its gimmick, the integration of old Bandstand footage with much work put into getting around that they can't directly show Dick Clark in the modern footage (as he does look a full 7 years older now than he did then.)

And then, in a startling twist at the end of the episode, President Kennedy gets killed off, and their world will never be the same!

This first episode is well constructed, the fraying of the family well documented. But the question is not whether they can fray the family, but rather what do they do with the family once it is frayed. That's what makes a good drama series, and that is something that time will have to tell. (If they have time to tell it, that is; off the top of my head, I'm having trouble thinking of any recent successful hour-long primary network dramas set in the past. The last one that comes to mind is China Beach, and before that I find myself dredging up John-Boy and Lara Ingalls Wilder.)

It's been a long day; watching and reviewing Boomtown will probably have to wait until tomorrow.

There was a while there when cop shows were shows about cops. The quality tent poles of this movement were Hill Street Blues and Homicide. Now, however, we've returned to the Dragnet days when cop shows were about crimes. ROBBERY HOMICIDE DIVISION is an example of this shift. Oh, it's far more violent than Dragnet ever was (we see 9 shooting deaths in this episode), but it's still about the crime that the plot brings to light.

And if that level of violence makes this show a bit hard to look at, believe it or not the show is harder to listen to. Between heavy music, Spanish conversations, static-laden radio transmissions, and simple mumbling, it's often hard to hear what is being said.

The look is stylish, bringing a cold eye to stylish Los Angeles sites. The performing is good. The writing gives us no one to care about, though; the cops don't engage us, we're not awed by or rooting for the criminals, and the victims are dead.

Nor is it illuminating. This is not reality. If they have 7 people murdered each episode (that's the murder count for episode 1, including a dead cop who was -- wait for it -- just about to retire; the other dead folks were bad guys killed by return fire from cops), then in a season this crew will cover more than half the peopl killed in L.A. in a given year, as if most murders were interesting. And if a cop-gone-bad (hey, he's a Rampart division undercover narc officer, was it supposed to be a surprise when they later revealed he'd gone bad?) was the kingpin behind 7 killings, would they really offer him a maximum sentence of one year in county so that they could get his underlings? Rrrrright....

It's not clear to me whether this was a stand-alone episode or the start of larger stories, with the bad guys who were quickly introduced and then left free part of some larger plot. If the latter, they could possibly build something worthwhile. I'm not driven to see more about the cops or the crooks, though, so I won't revisit it.

THAT WAS THEN, this is bad. a thirty year old shlmiel wakes up to find himself reliving being 16 again, and tries to fix his future problems by being a shmuck then. Realism does not ensue, nor does excitement, hilarity, or interest. The episode ends with him being back at 30, discovering the he did change history, but he's not satisfied with the new version either so apparently he's going back to fix it again... if the series actually survives to a second week.

When you name a series HACK, you're just encouraging reviewers to give you bad reviews. They want to use the lines like "the problem with the series is that by its nature, all its writers are Hack writers, and it shows." For all I know, Very Bad Things was a great movie, but with an inviting title like that they were just begging for bad reviews.

From what I've seen elsewhere, Hack has gotten bad reviews. And it deserves bad reviews. But I don't think it deserves reviews quite as bad as it is getting.

Hack stars David Morse (probably best recognized from St. Elsewhere) as a Philly cop rightfully kicked off the force for corruption, who has now turned to driving a cab for a living. Seeking redemption, he helps those who need help -- in this episode, a man whose daughter ran away to Philly. Man in search of redemption is a good theme, and there is some good texture here, as the show manages to get the cool quiet feeling of the nighttime even in its daylight scenes. And hey, I'm from the Philly area, and I liked seeing the familiar sites as this was shot on location.

But the scenes were often unconvincing (particularly the climax), and I suspect there's not quite enough in the character to hang a series on. He'd be an interesting character in an ensemble drama, but he seems a little hollow being given the full hour to himself. Even the talented Andre Braugher (Homicide) can't add much as the cabbie's old cop partner. I don't see this series ever quite putting together the pieces it needs to work, but I'll be glad if they prove me wrong.

It's a late night of watching things from tape, so Robbery Homicide Division will have to wait for tomorrow. And because of my limited number of VCRs, I wasn't able to catch Greetings From Tuscon, so despite my promise last week, the review will have to wait until the third episode. To make it up to you, I'll give you double your money back...

Traditionally, NBC has had problems finding a good new show to fill the 8:30 slot on Thursday. This year, they avoided the failed guesswork of years past, and just slid a quality existing series (Scrubs) into that slot.

Now the problem slot is 9:30, which they tried to fill with a piece of drek called GOOD MORNING, MIAMI. Talented TV producer shows up for a job interview for taking over a drek TV show called Good Morning, Miami (see, life does imitate art), falls instantly in love with the show's hairdresser, takes the job, and deals with the batch of wacky (yet uninteresting) characters. Hilarity fails to ensue. Yeah, I was complaining yesterday about the lack of new workplace sitcoms... but getting one didn't help.

Tip to the makers of this show: a hairdresser working on a morning show would not be leaving work at 5:45 pm, much less feel the need to convince people she was leaving at 8 pm. She's a hairdresser -- they don't need her after the show is over.

Tonight's other premiere was WITHOUT A TRACE, a police procedural drama about the FBI's Missing Persons unit. Think of it as CSI without dead people. Instead of CSI's zooming-through-the-corpse effects, we get repeated crossfades between the location where the FBI is currently investigating and what they discover had taken place there earlier. The show kept me guessing about the story they were unveiling, but the characters weren't particularly interesting. I've never been a fan of Anthony LaPaglia; he seems to be slowly morphing into Alan Rosenberg, whom I do like, but Anthony hasn't gotten the likable portion yet.

All in all: if you're into CSI, it's worth looking at one episode of Without A Trace, but I suspect you won't like it as much.

MDs wants to be M*A*S*H sooooo badly. Two wisecracking doctors misusing and abusing equipment, having sex with the staff, and generally making asses of themselves while the struggle to save patients despite the entanglement of the bureaucratic system.

Problem is, Hawkeye and co. were working in a system that was built for war, were trapped in that system, and their wild antics were their way of surviving them. The doctors on MDs on the other hand, work in a hospital they choose to work in. The system they have to fight is the system they chose to join. The HMOs want to watch cost, which is of course presented in purely evil terms here... and while HMOs can be evil, they can also through their savings make healthcare available to more folks. Medicine costs money, more money than ever... and our "heroes" here are using hundreds of dollars of hospital resources to get a delivery of fresh donuts. They make poor doctoring decisions, which of course prove to be the correct decisions, demonstrating how handy it is to have fiction writers creating your life. There's a couple good performances here (and, for those who pay attention, an uncredited vocal performance by Hector Elizando, if my ears don't deceive), but the central conflict is so manufactured and the protagonists so smugly wrong that it's not worth wading through.

While the season premiere of FRASIER wasn't great, at least it was better than most of the episodes of the tepid previous season. Here's hoping it gets some of its spark back.

Hey, Buffy fans: some of you may be of mixed thoughts about the revival of Sunnydale High, but you gotta give Joss this: those last two minutes showed that he still knows how to grab our attention.

HAUNTED is the new show slotted to follow Buffy: The Guidance Counselor. The lead character is a detective who is revived after flat-lining, to find that the near-death experience has left him with the ability to see dead people. If that description sounds familiar to you, you may be recalling Michael J. Fox's last great film roll, the overlooked off-beat The Frighteners. But whereas that film mixed humor with its thrills, Haunted is about as humorless as it gets. Filmed in a dead color palette of grays and crimson, the first episode included gore, child murder, and child pornography. Now dark is fine, if it illuminates the human soul, but thre's no illumination here. What you're left with is a not-that-good TV version of a horror film, and that doesn't do much for me. Following the dark but humorous and enlightening Buffy, this show is wanting much.

If there ever was a show that was designed to rerun on Lifetime, PRESIDIO MED is it; it's about a San Francisco hospital-adjacent medical practice staffed primarily by women. (It seems like Lifetime wants to hold on to some shadow of the network's original plan to be a cable channel for doctors.)

But that shouldn't be taken as a denigration. The first episode was enjoyable, with a quality cast playing likable and intriguing characters. The men come off a bit one-dimensional, but I'll be glad to give them time to grow while watching Blythe Danner and Dana Delaney play the more full roles.

Tuesday won't be Presidio Med's usual slot, however. The premiere was shifted to Tuesday so that it wouldn't be right against the premiere of MDs, another San Francisco-based medical drama. People were quick to complain about placing two similar series in the same time slot, refering to it as a mistake and constantly pointing back to when two Chicago-based medical dramas appeared against each other years ago. Excuse me? Yes, E/R and Chicago Hope premiered against each other. Was it a mistake? Well, all I can point to is the fact that the less successful of the two ran for six seasons. Presidio Med will be lucky to do so well. (And if the ads are any indication, the rest of us will feel lucky if MDs doesn't do so well, opening up a space for a less obvious and manipulative show.)

THE IN-LAWS is about a cooking student and his wife who move in with her parents. Dennis Farina plays the intimidating father-in-law, Jean Smart the more accomodating mother, and they make a good couple in some ways. However, the laughs just aren't that strong, and after two episodes the conflict already seems repetitive. They also have had "aw, he's actually soft" moments about Farina's character in both episodes, and without giving him the depth of an Archie Bunker it would seem to just weaken the character. It's not awful, but being that it is slotted up against Buffy and Gilmore Girls, I don't foresee turning this one on again.

HIDDEN HILLS also premiered tonight, but I need sleep and will view it and comment on it tomorrow.

UPN has added a new sitcom to its block of black character sitcoms: HALF AND HALF. Half sisters, one raised by her mom in the city, the other raised by both parents in upper-class style in the country, start living in the same building. City sister, who is the clear focus of at least the first episode, is resentful of country sister. And yet, they must learn the power of family. Meanwhile, the two mothers hate each other, and dad is vastly uncomfortable. In typical sitcom style, situations that most of us would have long since learned to deal with are intstead treated as if everyone has the most base emotion.

The characters may be physically attractive, but not people you want to hang with. The lines are delivered awkwardly, and the chemistry certainly isn't there yet. This sitcom is Monday night filler, which is basically all Monday night is at this point.

Time was when successful sitcoms bred a lot of spin-offs. That is far less true today; off the top of my head, the only currently-running sitcom spinoff is Frasier, and that is now an old show that waited for its source show to go away. (The Tracy Ulman Show was not a sitcom, so The Simpsons doesn't count as a sitcom spinoff.)

However, it seems to me that building franchises from dramas has become ever more prevalent. In addition to the ever-present Star Trek universe series, we currently have a Angel (spun off from Buffy), Law And Order: Criminal Intent and Law And Order: SUV about crimes commited by soccer moms (both building on Law And Order, although the latter also inherited material from Homicide), and now we have CSI: MIAMI.

This new show, spinning off from a Las Vegas-based series on forensic detectives, quickly establishes its different location by setting the first story in the Everglades, a far cry from the parched deserts of Nevada. The cast is certainly staffed with respectable folks. David Caruso (looking a lot older than he did on NYPD Blue, and far more still than the Shamrocks gang member he played on Hill Street Blues) places Mulder to Kim Delaney's (Philly, NYPD Blue) Scully, he running on emotion and instinct, while she (a recent widow) working from science and careful investigation. These varying attributes are overplayed and overstated, and not much chemistry exists. In supporting roles are Khandi Alexander (ER, NewsRadio) and Emily Procter (which likely means that the Republican in the White House, Ainsley Hayes, won't be showing up on The West Wing for a while, alas), putting forth small but more interesting performances than the leads.

The focus is simply on finding out what happened from the clues provided. The evidence on the CSI shows is often biological in nature and thus not for the squeamish. And really, since the characters are not (at least yet) generating any emotional involvement, that's all this is: more CSI, more forensic detecting. The human element is weak; in the first episode, while trying to hang the case on the fashionable villainy of corrupt executives, they want us to accept that because people had been cooking the books a little for personal profit, they would simply sit around uninvolved while a coworker was unexpectedly murdered. I don't buy it; people work in a very different way when caught in the moment.

All in all, if you like watching CSI, you'll probably like having this as well, if it doesn't wear out its welcome. I never became a CSI watcher, so I'll likely skip it.

On a side note: in addition to the season premiere of Buffy (the series that is much better than anyone who saw the movie had a right to expect -- heck, its much better than what anyone who hasn't seen it is apt to expect), Tuesday brings us Buffy fans a treat: the release of the soundtrack CD of "Once More, With Feeling", the grand musical Buffy episode from last year. For more details, check out:

The good news? It's got Peter Scolari, formerly of Bossom Buddies and Newhart. The bad news? He plays the dad, which means he's moving to Japan and won't be on the scene often. Not that it matters; I expect this series to dissolve soon.

If I hadn't taped this last night, I would have had no series to review today. Not only did no new series launch tonight, there won't be any new Saturday series at all this season. Given how little is on Saturday now, there is really nothing worth watching on network prime time Saturday schedule.

There were four new shows premiering tonight, and at the moment I'm only going to review two of them. The third is waiting for me on tape, and if I hadn't hit the record button twice, the fourth would be waiting for me as well. As it is, you'll have to way until tomorrow for me to review What I Like About You, and barring the unforeseen, next week should bring a review of the second episode of Greetings From Tuscon.

FIREFLY is the premiere that I've been most looking forward to. Creator Joss Whedon brought us something unexpectedly great with Buffy, and while I've never quite warmed to the spin-off Angel, Joss is still very much in the positive column with me. Besides, any show created by one comics creator (Joss created the series Fray) and produced by another (Ben Edlund, madman behind The Tick) gets extra points from this comic creator.

The lead character is a space pilot with a heart of gold. His crew and passengers include a hooker with a heart of gold, a mechanic with a heart of gold, a preacher with a heart of gold, and one other fellow made mostly of flesh. And these gold-hearted folks fly around space and steal things. That's right, they're thieves. But they give the things back if they think that it's wrong to steal what they discover their stealing, so it's okay.

The planets they go between have been united for several years now. Apparently, this is a bad thing, presumably because the new federal forces have mean-looking outfits. But we have to accept that they're bad, because the lead character doesn't like the "Unification", and after all he's got a heart of gold (although it may be stolen.)

If it wasn't Joss Whedon creating this, then the cynical sound of the preceding paragraphs would he heartfelt. It's not. Not because this introductory episode was great, but because I know it was just set-up, and what will generate the interest is when the characters start really interacting, and the bigger plots emerge. After seeing choices made on Buffy that worried me, only to have them lead to inspired material, I adopted a motto: "Trust in Joss."

So I can't really recommend this series based on the first episode, which wasn't bad but was a bit trite. Yet I still have high expectations for episodes to come.

To me, the new series JOHN DOE evokes the watchable high-concept series Early Edition, the one where God was apparently delivering tomorrow's newspaper to a guy who would then try to prevent the tragedies that the paper foretold.

The title character (or, more correctly, the character who assumes that name) is an amnesiac who can instantly answer any question for which there is recorded data, can quickly turn knowledge into talent (such as flying a helicopter), and yet cannot answer anything about who he is and where he came from. He is color blind, except apparently when he sees someone who needs help, who shows up in color in his vision, as if god is pointing out to him what needs doing.

At least, that seems like what's going on. However, if it is, then God stumbles badly in the first episode. Our hero saves a girl who didn't really need saving, and because of his involvement a cop gets injured, and someone else dies who might not have died if it wasn't for John Doe's involvement.

It's a cute concept, but if they don't do something interesting soon, it will get tired fast. There are subplots focusing on the characters search to find out what's going on, but those are the sort of subplots that rarely go anywhere productive, because him discovering his background would put a big crimp in the concept.

All in all, it's rather disposable.

I've gotten multiple inquiries about why I'm not reviewing PAX shows. Quite simple: in the early days of the network, they put out a press release criticizing the "alternative language and lifestyles" that other channels were putting on the airwaves, suggesting that they would be doing that differently. Frankly, a station telling me that they're avoiding putting "alternative lifestyles" on the air suits me about as well as if they were avoiding showing blacks and Jews. I have no desire to honor them with my viewership.

Tonight's sole premiere was DO OVER, a WB comedy about a 34 year old who finds himself transported back 20 years, occupying the mind of his teenage self and able to possibly correct the mistakes he made the first time through.

The choice was made to have the 34 year old set in approximately the present day, which means that the teenage self is back in 1981. This turns it into a nostalgia series. While the on-going narration evokes The Wonder Years, the focus on the various fads of the moment brings more to mind the far lesser series That '80s Show, which came and quickly went away. In some degrees this show is even worse, because while it seeks to evoke the eighties, it does not know the decade. It mixes elements from various parts of the eighties with things that don't seem eightiesish at all, ending up with a messy time setting.

(By the way, this erroneous 1980s view doesn't end with this episode. The "next episode" trailer showed our protagonist apparently about to spoil the big surprise of The Empire Strikes Back at its first showing. Problem is, by the time the movie came out, the hardcore fans actually already knew the surprise. No, it wasn't the "everything is leaked on the Internet" problem we now face. The surprise had been spoiled by the novelization of the film, which had come out weeks before the premiere.)

The writing is not sharp, the phrases are not well-turned, and any time you try to look at the lead character beyond the most basic versions of his motivations, he becomes an enigma. Really, I don't care for the guy, and I'm not particularly rooting for his life to come out better this time. No, I can't recommend this show.

But they are using folks I like in the cast. I've liked the actors who played the parents in other things, and Jules Carey (Lord Bowler of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) is always nice to see. But the real "happy to see them" portions of the cast are two of the old Freaks and Geeks crew, who once again find themselves acting in the early '80s. I laughed hard when I realized that they had cast the same guy to play the gym teacher in this as they had in F&G, but the real funas seeing the protagonist's wild female friend. I stared at her, thinking "no, that can't be...", but yes, it was the same actress who played Lindsey's straitlaced friend on F&G. This means not only that she is playing a very different character, but also that two years later she is playing a girl who is two or three years younger than the one she played before. If only I could age like that for a couple years...

Sometimes a show waves a little flag, shouting "here! Look! Now you know what you're supposed to compare us to." Case in point: FASTLANE, the new action cop show on Fox. With maybe ten minutes left in the episode, the dialog all drops away, and Phil Collins sings "In The Air Tonight" as we watch the headlights of a low, fast car shine against curving pavement in the night.

1984. First episode of Miami Vice. Same song, same place in the show, same imagery. Oh, but that show was about a white Miami undercover cop whose partner gets killed so he partners up with a black New York cop who is on a mission to get revenge for the death of his cop brother; they ride around in fast cars, meet sexy women, and have exciting violent times against a heavy music background. And this new show, its about a white Los Angeles cop who yadda-yadda-yadda. And I do mean all the yaddas.

So it's not striving for originality. But it is stylish, the cars are nice, and there are some sexy bods of both genders being revealed here. It's not a show that you can take seriously, but it doesn't ask you to. It does a respectably good job of doing what it sets out to do, and if that sounds at all nice to you then check out an episode.

CEDRIC THE ENTERTAINER PRESENTS is a sketch comedy show built around a popular stand-up comic. The sketches are sketchy, often with a good nugget of an idea ("Que Hora Es?", the Spanish language soap opera for people who only had one semester of Spanish) being wasted in a scattershot manner. It's not just that the sketches don't have real endings (endemic to much sketch comedy), it's that they don't build; they can't find a central gag theme and repeat it in a way that makes it funnier and funnier. Rather, they seem to be throwing every theme-related gag in and hoping that some of them stick. Despite the dancing girls and the Fox network, this does not look to be the next In Living Color.

I am not one to worship at the altar of the original The Twilight Zone. Yes, there were some fine episodes, and there were other episodes, and there were episodes that were too long for the ideas they contained, and there were episodes where fine performances got them past weak concepts. The last revival of The Twilight Zone had some standout stories that worked on all levels, and some other stories that just seemed zone-by-numbers.

A series like the Zone doesn't have a continuing cast or a regular system of writer collaboration to hang its hat on. It must rely on having a fantastic story editor and a quality on-going production staff to constantly bring in good stories, good casts, and good directors. Based on the first episode, things do not bode well for the newest version of THE TWILIGHT ZONE. You would think they would lead with their best stories for the first episode, and if that is true, you might as well skip this. In an hour, they spun two tales. In the first, we see a neighborhood where they force children to be perfect, and let us know that the mystery we are hanging on for is what happens to the bad kids. Eventually, we learn. It was foreshadowed, but fulfilling foreshadowing is not at the core of a good Zone-style story. Something like that should swing on poetic justic, or poetic injustice, and this had neither. The second story, about Death retiring, could have done so much more, but it was a bland exercise. And Forrest Whitaker, who is quite good in most things, does a poor job as host; his delivery makes the upcoming story seem inconsequential, rather than intriguing.

Given the nature of an anthology series, there is always hope that the next episode will be great. But hope, alas, is a poor cousin to expectation.

ABC aired two new sitcoms back to back tonight, and it was very educational. When you watched LIFE WITH BONNIE, starring Bonnie Hunt, you recognized that the characters in the show know each other, have dealt with each other for years, and all have lives outside of the limits of the half hour you just saw.

Normally, you would not be aware of these aspects... but normally, you would not just have watched 8 SIMPLE RULES FOR DATING MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER, a sitcom full of characters lacking those elements.

This isn't to say that 8SRFDMTD is bereft of positive qualities. After all, it stars John Ritter, who has this inate likability that glows through even weak material. In this case, he plays a sports writer/columnist (following in the newspaper tradition of sitcom characters such as The Odd Couple's Oscar Madison, Dave's World's Dave, Baby Bob's dad, and That Raymond Whom Everybody Likes.) He seems to suddenly find himself the father of a hottie teenage daughter (who looks absolutely unrelated to anyone in the family), an unloved younger teenage daughter, and a young boy who is no trouble at all, because one of the central themes here is boys are easy to parent, but girls are impossible. And it's true, so long as your girls are plot constructs rather than real human beings. Yup, this is another of the recent spate of family sitcoms where the younger generation exists merely as annoyances to their parents.

Katey Segal is the mother, but her high-pitched vocals which serve her well on more over-the-top material and cartoons do not integrate with Ritter's emphasized humanism.

8SRFDMTD has real textural problems. They're trying to have items that are emotional within the humorous context, but they end up with a muddled mess. A few moments of humor peaked through, but I don't see this series getting better.

Life With Bonnie has a real texture: a pace so rapid that some viewers may not be able to keep up. Don't worry though, it's just fine dialog you may miss, not plot points. Bonnie Hunt plays a morning show host with a hectic home life and a crazed work environment. The trick in her life is not keeping everything in control, but to let it go out of control without quite careening over the edge. At work and at home, she is surrounded by characters that supply their own texture. Even her kids (8 and 10 years old, if I have to guess) have some depth to them, and the older one (the boy) got a chance for effective comedic delivery.

This is a show worth catching. It is, I fear, a show that will not last long; it's pace may be too rapid for some, and it may have trouble maintaining the quality of the first episode. But I would love to be proven wrong, and hope you check it out to find out whether it's for you.

Some reviewers are decrying this as another example of a TV show set in a showbiz millieu, saying that people aren't interested in such things. And yes, they can reel off a list of unsuccessful TV shows set in show business, including such recent failures as Action, Greg The Bunny, and Wednesday 9:30 (8:30 Central). What they always avoid mentioning is the TV show settings of such classics as The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Tyler Moore, or more recent entertainment-themed successes like The Larry Sanders Show, Cybil, and The Bernie Mac Show.

PUSH, NEVADA evokes Twin Peaks in a lot of ways. Both shows focus on government agents whose investigations drag them to out-of-the-way towns where the residents seem eccentric and odd. Not, mind you, that Push is a carbon copy of TP; the caffeinated visual style and the brooding introversion of IRS agent Jim Proofrock are far cries from the opiated lush visual sense and enthusiastic FBI agent Dale Cooper that marked David Lynch's classic of TV weirdness. But it's hard not to draw the parallel.

And having drawn the parallel, one can also find that this new show does not measure up to the original in a couple obvious ways. For one, Twin Peaks managed to be intriguing in ways where Push is merely mysterious; watching Push, I recognized that people were acting in ways I didn't understand, but it didn't instill me with a drive to find out. Of course, in Twin Peaks that same intrigue that drew me in ultimately provided the biggest disappointment in the series, as it became clear that the creative forces behind the show didn't have answers to offer up. They were merely good at creating a texture that suggested there were answers to be had.

The other way in which Push doesn't measure up to the older show is that there isn't a cute young lady who is watching with me, wanting to make out during the commercials. Now I'm married (and so is the cute young lady, albeit not to me), and my wife didn't choose to watch Push, much less wait around for the ads. (Eventually, the young lady and I had to start watching Twin Peaks off of video tape, because while we were good at starting an extended smooch at the beginning of the commercial break, we were not so good at ending it when the show came back, and were missing bits.)

But even lacking extended lip-lock, Push does have something worth watching. I think it's the lead character, the introverted IRS agent who knows he's in over his head, but doesn't choose to let that stop him. (Then again, he may not be a good IRS agent to start with; he didn't seem to know the difference between "per capita" and "per household". I suspect that was just due to writers who weren't clear on what "per capita" means, so I won't hold it against the character.) I want to watch this guy at work, and will sit through all the "clues" scattered about, the various numbers that appear, the web addresses that pop up -- some of these may be clues to what's going on in the show, some are clues to a viewer-solvable mystery that's supposed to lead to someone winning about $1,000,000 around episode 13, and some may just be texture -- merely to watch him. We'll see how many episodes that will hold me for. By now, I'm cynical about such things. The show will either never reveal its secrets, or it will make the revelation and what it reveals will be found wanting, or even if it reveals things in a satisfying manner, it will not be able to follow up what it has shown. But maybe it will surprise me. (Or maybe once it settles into it's normal time slot, it will quickly fall to the double-whammy competition of Will & Grace and CSI.)

Oh, and if you want to play the game to try to win the show's money, and you somehow missed both the amount that appeared on the wall of the boarding house and the web address that was placed in the opening sequence, then going to www.dmvf.com should get you started!

One quick note for fellow BattleBots fans: yes, it wasn't on tonight, but no, it's not gone. Look for it Saturdays.

EVERWOOD, WB's new Monday night series, tells the tale of a top brain surgeon whose wife passes away, so he moves his family from NYC to Everwood, Colorado, where he can set up a General Practitioner practice while getting in touch with the kids in a way that his brain surgeon gig never allowed him time to.

Now, I have a history of not liking Treat Williams in things. He does an okay job here; it's not the actor I dislike so much as the character. This man abandons his life-saving practice to go work for no pay as a GP in the Rockies. Okay, he doesn't owe his life to brain surgery, and certainly there's a lot of good that a GP working for free can do in a community that needs him.

But this middle class community doesn't need him. They have a doctor, whose practice has now been in the town for two generations. That's right, this flighty new doctor, giving away his efforts for free, may serve to close down the practice that has kept this town going for decades, and do we really think that this distraught widower is stable enough that we can count on him sticking around for the long term? No.

Of course, we have to establish the existing medical practice as one that deserves to be shut down. So how does the story reveal this need? By showing that they actually require a patient with a non-emergency medical need to make an appointment! Oh, how cruel.

But if he's not serving the general good as a doctor, at least our protagonist is doing the right thing as a parent, right? Well, no. These kids (one preschooler, one high schooler) just lost their mom. I suspect that the last thing that they need is to have their entire life ripped away to get transplanted in a very different living arrangment in a town where they know nobody. But hey, had they stayed in New York City, then the doctor might have been able to find large numbers of people who really need free health care, rather than real estate agents who are saving the cost of their Blue Cross co-pay.

Judging from the pilot, there is little real joy to this series, nor insight, nor wisdom. It's a two-handed grab for the heart strings, but they miss with both hands.

With tomorrow bringing us three new shows, the fall premier season hits full steam. It will stretch out all the way to November 28th, when ABC launches their ongoing series version of Dinotopia, following up on the miniseries which I managed to miss, based on a series of books that I have not read.

Until they launch that, however, ABC is filling a hole in their schedule with reruns. Not just reruns, but reruns of a cable series. MONK launched this summer on USA Network. This hour-long show has Tony Shalhoub (who has a record of being in weak TV shows like Wings and Stark Raving Mad, but good movies like GalaxyQuest and Spy Kids) as a detective with Holmes-like perception but saddled with obsessive compulsive disorder, with a nurse/personal aide as his Watson. This is a fluffy but watchable show. The whodunnits are strictly short-story stuff, not a lot of complex twists here, but Shalhoub (who also produces) makes it fun to watch. It's a show where murder is a puzzle rather than a tragedy. The OCD is played for laughs a fair bit, but the character himself is well played and clearly shown as a heroic man struggling. If you like mystery shows at all, it's worth checking out. Given the additional exposure generated by the network airings, I expect this one will last at least a few seasons, and wouldn't be surprised if it transfered to ABC for the first run.

The new version of FAMILY AFFAIR tries to send the sitcom back to the pre-All-In-The-Family days, not only remaking an old (I won't say classic, there's more to a classic than age) show, but in style of filming. While it's not the only show currently shot on a closed set with all the walls in place, they also bring an older sense of camera movements, and an older style of using music in a sitcom. (The music thing they don't quite have down; they're also relying on a laugh track, but apparently they haven't figured out how best to layer the laughter and the music.)

This is a tricky review for me to write. This show is about a well-off jet-setting bachelor (Gary Cole. No, not Gary Coleman, you doof -- Cole is now known as the father on the Brady Brunch theatrical films, but I always think of him as the lead character on Midnight Caller) who finds himself suddenly laden with twin 6 year olds and a 16 year old girl to raise. It aims to be a family-oriented sitcom, something that one might sandwich either with Seventh Heaven or ABC's old TGIF line-up. Despite the presence of Tim Curry in the key butler role, this is not a show that I'm apt to watch, all cloying moppetry from the 6 year olds and all positive lessons about how you really gotta love the kids, dang it. However, I have to recognize that there are aspects of it that show real promise, as well as those that show real problems. The 6 year olds are photogenic, but not really engaging; apparently, the boy is already being replaced in one of those odd switcheroos they pull on sitcom families. And Gary Cole comes off a bit too bland; while he clearly doesn't want his lifestyle changed by adding these kids, we can't feel that he's losing much.

But the forcefully restrained ascerbicness of Tim Curry's Mr. French (which is a contrast with the simple I'm-in-over-my-head-and-distraught-but-stiffening-my-upper-lip style I recall from the original show) has some potential, and free-spirited sixteen year old Sigourne ("Sissy", we are told, is what her brother and sister were calling her when last they visited Uncle Bill 5 years ago -- which makes the six year old twins early talkers!) has the goods to be an honest presence in this show. At this point, the set up is just a plot situation; they will have to get character dynamics working, and I suspect that the Mr. French/Sissy pairing is what this show will ultimately turn on.

That is, if it gets a chance to turn at all. This show is, after all, scheduled against Friends. The WB is giving this new show heavy early support, presumably to capture an audience of families who may not be comfortable with the kids watching Friends. However, this is a year where the goals of programming against that Thursday juggernaut should be changing. With NBC's Thursday anchor show apparently in its last year, this is the time to establish the show that you hope will draw the Friends audience next year.

This is as good a time as any to throw in some comments about the results of last year's season:

• Malcolm in the Middle and Nikki both experienced precipitous drops in quality; the latter is now gone. Frasier continued a downward drift.
• 24 had a neat format and sense of style, but ultimately that didn't make up for weak and ridiculous plotting filled with hoary cliches. It seemed as though they hadn't really planned out all 24 hours, and they had to be filled with ridiculous escaped-but-caught-again efforts.
• The winners of the season were Scrubs (which is a must-watch for me) and The Bernie Mac Show (which I will admit I still usually skip.)
• The shows I wish had stuck around longer are Pasadena, Greg the Bunny, and Undeclared.