The premise is nonsensical, the characters little more substantial than fog and the central season long mystery is less a whodunit and more a why-bother.

This series won't last long enough for him to complete his education.

You can take the spiked head out of Jersey but you can't stop his "Shore" ways.

This show violates so many tenets of storytelling, it deserves to be tossed in the clink. Outlaw is about as entertaining as a legal brief on the case of Wall v. Paint Drying.

If you’ve seen one shark fall from the sky, you’ve seen them all. To its credit, in its last five minutes, Oh Hell No! amps up the craziness to a level that should have dominated the entire film.

Stepfather Todd reacts to news of the family's fifth car by reasoning that since they don't have enough parking spaces, the only solution is to buy a home. And we're off and running to the poor house. Again.

Akerman and Whitford have zero chemistry, and it doesn’t help that she looks young enough to be his daughter.

The dads in charge of the league are jerks, so Terry decides to lead a team of all-star misfits, making this sort of “Glee” for the physically uncoordinated. You’ll be done with this after an inning.

Louie differs from his late, unlamented 2006 HBO show "Lucky Louie" in that he dials back the volume. Yet he manages to not only push but also assault the boundaries of what's acceptable for basic cable, even at this late hour.

The shifts from comedy to bloodletting can be unnerving, even if the whole thing is unconvincing.

Red Widow might leave you feeling blue over the waste of time and talent.

Average acting and troubled storytelling can be forgiven in a film about music if the music is transcendent. But Lifetime couldn’t secure the rights to any Brown or Houston hits. So we get actors lip-syncing to imitators. Often the lip-syncing isn’t even synched.

The show is at least meta enough to have the department commander call out the sheer outrageousness of the appointment, but that doesn’t make it any more plausible.

As The Voice made loud and clear, there's not enough talent to go around.

Fox managed to turn the final hours of Jesus Christ into an extended “Today Show” concert. Except “Today” has never had so many taped segments. The bewildering sort-of-live production in New Orleans last night starred Tyler Perry as host and violated the cardinal rule of storytelling: SHOW, don’t tell.

Why did executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer ("Remember the Titans") populate his CBS series with such revolting characters? With the exception of Marg Helgenberger's harried but compassionate investigator, this is a crew teeming with bullies and psychos. [6 Oct 2000, p.S32]

The dress rehearsal was rough in many spots. The camera work at times was manic, punctuated by the stray stagehand ducking for cover. It also suffered from a huge distraction--the audience. ... Hudgens brought mad energy to her part. Valentina as the doomed Angel was affecting and downright kicky on “Today 4 U.” Brandon Victor Dixon, the scene-stealer from last year’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” didn’t find his footing until late in the show. Others in the cast seemed drawn from a community theater production.

Beggars and Choosers has moments of high laughter and inside-y insight. Ultimately, though, it's a downer that dwells more on the cliches than the truths. [17 June 1999, p.59]

Stern, who starred in the "Home Alone" and "City Slickers" movies, isn't devoid of comic instincts. Perhaps that's why he seems to be going through the motions here with a barely concealed smirk.

Being allowed inside the cerebrum of Ally, I feel some sympathy for her. I like her more than I would if she were the typical TV cipher. But I don't like her enough to want to watch this flawed show about a lawyers-in-love triangle week after week. [4 Sep 1997]

There's some appealing energy and certainly adequate acting talent in "Just Shoot Me," but it lacks originality. [3 Mar 1997]

The whole enterprise dissolves too quickly into a '90s version of "White Shadow," with teacher Johnson as the angel of mercy sent to rescue her "at-risk" minority students from the forces of evil. [30 Sept 1996, p.34]

The Paul Reiser Show is stale and dated.

Most of the characters, however, are written and behave as if they are 14, and not 20-something graduate students. That said, the first episode ends on a terrific cliffhanger, when a creature from another realm--a man with a swarm of moths flitting around his head--attacks. A good three minutes does not excuse the hour that came before it. And the resolution is presented so poorly in the next episode that it sabotages any good will the first episode earned.

Just when you thought the teen melodrama was completely played out, along comes another trite "Dawson's Creek" clone to cause cringes of annoyance and pangs of distress. [12 Jul 2000]

You have to wonder if Morgan and Wong learned anything from Chris Carter. With no semblance of an ongoing secondary story line, such as the government conspiracy of "The X-Files, The Others" boils down to a gaggle of flaky mystics who flit about applying their brand of drippy New Age closure. [5 Feb 2000]

Nobody here is as self-obsessed as the least Kardashian, which will come as a relief to the celebrity-jaded, but we all know where the real talent lies in this family, and he's not onscreen enough to justify this series.

The cast is attractive, but nobody comes off well with material so cringe-worthy. [25 Nov 2011]