The show plays like bad imitation noir where the private eye can occasionally sink his teeth into the villain.

It's not a great sitcom, not even really a good one, and the strain of trying to sell such mediocre material will no doubt get to Garrett in a few weeks, but it's still vastly better than its companion show.

The new season has a few moments, mostly involving the return from the dead of Jack's old CTU colleague Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard), who now seems to be working for the bad guys. But all the attempts by Jack and his writers to justify every past decision often brings the action to a crawl.

Any show that's willing to go to such a silly place, to have its main character utter a line of dialogue that's like a parody of a parody of stuff these guys were writing two decades ago on "thirtysomething," is not a show I have time for, even if other shows won't be back until April.

McKellen, and the production design, and some smart use of Brian Wilson songs on the soundtrack (The Beach Boys' "I Know There's an Answer" is the miniseries' cheeky final tune) weren't enough to overcome my need for coherence.

Whatley’s quick conversion to the cause takes away what little tension there is in the partnership, and is emblematic of a larger problem. McGinn needs the people that she meets to buy into the idea of reincarnation, or else she can’t get anything done.

Unfortunately, too much of the show is taken up by the usual Kelley stupidity. [1 Oct 2004]

The disappointing new project from "Arrested Development" creator Mitchell Hurwitz is mainly a reminder of how much the "Arrested" cast--several of whom provide voice work here--added to that show.

It's an hour of unpleasant yet bland people occasionally bumping into each other and saying racially provocative things.

If "Donnellys" wants a shot at doing better than "Studio 60" in its timeslot, it needs at least a hint of a larger-than-life figure.

A work in progress.

Californication doesn't have the courage of those movies' ["Shampoo" and "Blume in Love"] convictions. It acts like it wants to tell the story of Hank's comeuppance, his growth from obnoxious man-child to real man, but it can't bear the thought of the audience not liking Hank (and, by extension, Duchovny) right out of the gate.

Addison isn't very strong or decisive in her professional capacity either, spending most of the pilot waffling on whether she should have left Seattle Grace.

There's some amusing material on the margins of the show--the guys use OnStar to settle a debate about the lyrics to a song on the radio, Dougie admits his marriage isn't perfect and his wife "sometimes she gets up in the middle of the night and bakes in her sleep"--but outside of Jerry Minor's winning performance as the overextended but always cheerful Aubrey, it's completely forgettable.

New Amsterdam is essentially three shows in one: Amsterdam flashing back on all the exciting things he's done in the last 366 years; Amsterdam trying to find The One, and Amsterdam and partner Eva Marquez (Zuleikha Robinson) solving murders like the leads on some kind of supernaturally-charged "Law & Order" spin- off. But only the first of those shows is remotely interesting.

Mental was produced on a relative shoestring by Fox Telecolombia, and there's a flatness not only to the sets (which look not unlike what you might see on a Univision show), but the dialogue and characterizations.

[Of the two new soaps,] only "Fashion House" seems to understand that it's supposed to be a guilty pleasure.

The show is so self-conscious of everything it’s doing that nothing has quite the effect its creators want it to have.

The new show doesn't feel like a clone, but it also seems to be missing the spirit of what made the original such a success. [23 Sep 2002]

In an ideal world, Katims and Nutter would have taken the best elements from their previous series: the keen insight into teen behavior of "My So-Called Life" and the inventive storytelling of "The X-Files." Unfortunately, Roswell gets it backwards, using both the self-importance of the former and the paper-thin characterization of the latter. [6 Oct 1999, p.73]

TThe writing is stilted, with every other sentence from Rourke's mouth a ready-made movie poster tagline.

They're all likeable enough, but the set-ups are straight out of a dog-eared playbook.

It at times seems like a pornographic parody of "The X-Files."

Jenna Elfman (who plays a newspaper movie critic who gets pregnant after a one-night stand with the young guy on the left, played by Jon Foster) seemed like a loose, natural comedienne, but she's trying way too hard to sell the jokes here-possibly because she knows no one's going to buy them without a whole lot of help.

It abandons all of Kelley's strengths, like the legal setting and male bonding, and drowns itself in his weaknesses: women discussing their feelings, women flirting with men, women acting body-conscious... basically, anything involving the female gender.

It's a cheesy-looking, indifferently plotted, repetitious piece of work. ... The creature effects don't pass muster in the Spielberg era, the pacing is slack, the dialogue is dull, and the whole thing looks washed out and feels rushed and poorly thought out. [28 Nov 2002]

Who wants to watch a less funny, vaguely cuddlier House impersonator?

If FX's other signature drama "The Shield" is a fine example of how cable's relaxed content restrictions can lead to more compelling drama, Nip/Tuck is a symbol of that freedom run amok. "The Shield" is heavy on shock value, but those shocks are there to serve some kind of larger purpose. When the Nip/Tuck writers throw in something raunchy or disgusting, it's simply because they can. [21 June 2004, p.27]