Three Rivers is a masterful send-up of old medical TV show conventions, dating back to the '50s, with a parade of cliches so obviously and hilariously inane that you will laugh until your side aches.

This isn't only "Frasier," recast as a standard family sitcom. It's "Green Acres."

The writers have great ears for "real" dialogue, and, in fact, not a single line here feels like a dead ball. The characters, too, arrive fully formed and believable. First impressions are absolutely vital in TV, and The Middle makes an excellent one.

I laughed. Not often, or perhaps not often enough, but there was also enough McFarlane-esque gross-out sophomoric tomfoolery to keep even me reasonably entertained for a half-hour. Plus, good ol' likable Cleveland works well as a leading man.

Neither offensive nor particularly funny, it's merely another average, laugh-track-addled sitcom. The four leads are fine; they just need better material.

It's evocative, smartly structured, well acted and insists that the strange ride you are about to take will be worth every minute.

As the woebegone divorcee with an antic streak and a full-blown need to get down, Cox is not believable.

Modern Family is good. Better than good. Really good. O'Neil--dry and wonderful as ever--and Vergara (considerably less dry) are a winning combination.

This is a shame and a waste of three gorgeous actresses, a wonderful actor (Gross) and an idea that--with a little more wit, smarter writing and less soap--could have yielded a winner.

There's no reason to pile on here, but this show needed many more months of gestation before getting thrown to the wolves.

There are many enjoyable performances by many wonderful actors, including Baranski, Panjabi and, the nicest surprise of all, David Paymer, who plays a judge. But you've seen much of this before.

It's a Pre-Cambrian specimen that crept out of the primordial ooze of TV past, with a rhythm so profoundly familiar that if you happened to fall asleep during the first few minutes and woke up for the last, you'd be able to mentally reconstruct the entire program from scratch.

Accidentally feels like a show that's nearly been focus-grouped into oblivion--with lines, beats and a cultural resonance that's so familiar you can almost see the baseball bat of predictability descending upon your head. So be it. Elfman's fine, as usual. This could be worse.

Who else but Larry David could have imagined that a "Curb" largely without the glorious Cheryl Hines could conceivably be funnier? Or that her absence might work as a comedic plot foil for one of its major story arcs? He did, and that's genius.

Bored sometimes lags and drags, as if it took a few tokes, too. But when it's funny--and Bored certainly can be--it's a winner.

Michael is a clinically interesting personality type who is profoundly unempathetic, until such times as he is very empathetic. The wonderful creative trick of The Office is knowing exactly the right moment to humanize Michael.

Community can be fresh, funny, smart and extremely aware of its own cleverness; it also can be terrifically odd--odd good, or odd bad, or sometimes odd-good-bad-strange all at once.

There's so much to like here. Now, all P&R has to do is become consistently likable.

Suffice it to say, keep the kids away, but you will laugh - and feel guilty about it afterward.

That's a lot of pressure, even for Iron Jay, and maybe why Night One felt like a work in progress--terribly rough in spots, not bad in others.

This one is stylish, smartly produced and has a very appealing cast.

If you loved it before, you'll love it again. "Auf"-ully good.

Finding original humor in this tired old horse of a format may not only be difficult, but close to impossible.

Mad Men, as ever, remains a solid and beautifully produced TV program. Best of all, this episode promises a compelling third season. Fans will find much to savor.

Defying Gravity is a glorious, glimmering glop of foolishness--a spitball magnet of the first order that elicits jeers when it wants tears and catcalls when striving for philosophical heft.

What's new here? Nothing, really. Jane is likable, Adams is, too, and so--believe it or not--is Hung. That's another problem. Hung needed to be scabrously funny. Instead, it's just middlebrow amusing.

Purefoy brings some raffish charm to the role, but these days, who wants to embrace raffish philandering philanthropists--particularly ones so defiantly dim.

Yes, cliches about wealth and privilege abound and are confirmed, or perhaps further embedded....But NYC Prep is so eager to establish a kinship with "Gossip Girl" that it's forgotten to tell much of a story.

Silly, gross, soapy, mysterious, intriguing, exotic, erotic True Blood is fun. Even more fun this season.

The pilot is flawed (most pilots are), not particularly funny and even--bizarrely--deploys two bland jokes from the "Weeds" premiere at 10 (did the writers trade notes?). But Falco is good, proving that she can transcend Carmela Soprano.

The Goode Family is a highly imaginative and often amusing variation on that one note.

It is so numbingly derivative--effectively a dull mash-up of "House" and "Private Practice"--that you quickly forget it's also numbingly silly. But then, maybe that's the whole idea.

McKinley and its denizens feel just a little too cliched, the emerging romantic entanglements a little too forced, the female characters--notably Terri and Sue Sylvester--just a little too mean-spirited. Still, it's a great cast.

If you thought the "Real Housewives" of New York City, Atlanta and Orange County were outrageous, you haven't seen anything yet.

What's here is pitch-perfect - the fear, loss, emotional devastation and, peculiar to this disease, silence.

Overall, a meaner, harsher fashion competition, but compelling.

Sit Down is raw, vulgar and blithely offensive, with so many triple and quadruple entendres for so many sexual acts, I lost count.

The Beales' story--predictably, sadly--descends into mutual recrimination, then near madness. It's all rescued by two stunning performances.

CSI is not looking for a facsimile, so fans can rest assured that Fishburne will evolve into a unique and valued lead on his own.

Sure, The Cougar is idiotic--these shows always are. That's a large part of their appeal. But casting fouled up here.

What a hoot. What a ridiculous, soap-operatic cutup of a series. But if you can stop giggling long enough, as I managed to--quite a feat, let me tell you--Harper's Island is also hugely enjoyable.

The Unusuals is not a good show; it is a messy, uneven, silly, inconsequential show.

One of TV's bleakest shows is also one of TV's best comedies. What a marvel.

Byrne is brilliant and--for the most part--so is this fine and absorbing show.

Cannavale's Cupid is at least funny and charming. He's good here and so is Paulson. The weak link--the "B" story, like tonight's tepid one with the Postie, which was as appetizing as week-old cod.

This is a gentle, good-hearted series and Scott was pretty much born to play Precious. But LDA can also be willfully, stubbornly languid.

It's bright! It's energetic! It has that sort of dialogue that zips, zaps and zings! It's even ironic! Yet, at its very core, Motherhood is completely vacant.

Honestly, it's a complete oddball with some charm and a few good lines.

Kings is a worthy enterprise that will deeply puzzle millions of viewers.

Enjoyable only if you enjoy watching people - and networks - making fools of themselves.

Lotsa fast banter and stylish direction will make some viewers dimly recall--as they are doubtlessly meant to--William Powell and Myrna Loy's late, great "Thin Man" movie series.

Breaking Bad is extraordinary, and if the rest of the season matches Sunday, an Emmy nomination for best drama seems certain.

This doesn't pretend to be a deep show, but it's a pleasant diversion with a good cast, and really good (read: expensive) production values.

Neither great, nor horrible, nor propitious nor preposterous. It was just a start, and in the late-night TV game, sometimes that's good enough.

In a word, The Listener is boring. Or, if you prefer alliteration, listless.

The pilot is, in fact, baffling, and needlessly so.

Get beyond that preposterous premise outlined above, and you've got a solid piece of prime-time entertainment. This show knows what it is, and knows exactly what the core audience expects.

A fun show, but where, oh where is all this heading?

The season's premiere represents pig-in-the-python storytelling--there's so much to work through, so many details, stories, characters and time dimensions to attend to, that after a while this all starts to feel like a very full meal.

With a visual sensibility that mimics a video game, Web browser and iPhone, as well as a hearty online presence with a social-networking bent, the new Electric Company seems to deliver.

It's smartly written; clinically interesting (Why is Tara this way?), and maybe even a metaphor for the challenges all women face.

It's pretty much impossible to describe The Beast without getting tangled in the underbrush of potboiler cliche....The good news, in fact, the wonderful news, is that Swayze really is good.

Tonally, this often feels more like a psychological thriller than an action one, which is a very good sign. 24 is thinking, not just doing, and that bodes well for the later hours when our friend has tended to jump the tracks. All in all, a terrific start.

This is TV's best and brightest at the moment, and a wonderful tribute to New York's resurgent TV production industry.

Rest easy. Scrubs is just fine (with all cast members, except Jenkins, back), though the opening episode is superior to the follow-up.

Momma's Boys is so dreadful that it effectively neuters critical disembowelment before the operation even begins.

Leverage's pilot is particularly entertaining. The cast is fine, direction is expert, writing above average, and Hutton's Ford is almost convincing. But the payoff feels laden with cheese of another sort.

By dint of smart casting, imaginative challenges and A-list guests, Top Chef retains its three stars for culinary entertainment.

A few new faces from last season are back, but the formula remains ironclad, right down to the soaring courtroom rhetoric and McCoy's somewhat suspect ethical calculus. This comfort food remains comfortable, indeed.

Murdered innocents, a gory sword fight in slow motion and dry, witty, dialogue. Yes, it's all here, but what's missing is ... excitement.

This is TV's best comedy. And there's nothing in the first two episodes that would suggest otherwise.

I do know something about TV shows, and this one works best when Anne Slowey is on camera (which is not nearly enough) and the program focuses on clothing - that great, exasperating, endlessly complicated art form known as "fashion."

Gritty, jarring, profane and smartly produced.

Surprise! Crusoe's good, and by "good" I mean competently produced and acted.

Interesting detours, and a worthy show--but at times just a smidgen too self-righteous and melodramatic.

Far, far, far and away NBC's best new pilot of the season and one of the best new shows of the season, on any network -- commercial or cable.

The producers ("Alias" alums Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec) have created a Dickensian (with a nod to L. Frank Baum) universe, draped in shadows, pastels and mystery, while aurally wrapped in chestnuts from the Sweet, Five Man Electrical Band and the Ramones. This new series has enormous promise.

There's some very funny stuff here, but the serious question before NBC is this: How long can it stretch the joke before viewers go stark raving mad?

Tonight's premiere may seem like ridiculous twaddle, and it may feel like a major downer (and kinda sloooow), too, but maybe that's just Bruckheimer playing with our heads. In fact, Hour deserves a second look (next week is definitely better).

It's horrible, horrible, horrible, and you will hate yourself for laughing--although I'm afraid you will.

The Ex List--based on an Israeli hit ("Mythological Ex"), with whiffs of "How I Met Your Mother" and "My Name Is Earl" - is a flat-out great idea for a TV series. But Ruggiero (who's since left the show) needed a strong partner to reign in her worst impulses, like a running gag about shaved genitalia.

This is a cool weekly cartoon series from Lucasfilm Animation that finds a fresh new style for depicting the struggle of the Jedi and their army of genetically engineered clones against the seemingly indomitable droid army of evil Separatists.

This show was always best when handling the little things that aim to capture life, and often do.

Anyone who enters this fantastic and beautifully realized play-scape--which remains ever so slightly ghoulish--will stick around. This is a winner.

Hilarious implausibility, overheated dialogue and enough soap to do several loads of laundry are part of its appeal.

Creator Shonda Rhimes promised deeper, sharper medical stories this season to tether this show to the ground, and tonight Private Practice delivers those - even if the so-called "moral gray" area of each feels contrived.

This is pure kiddie fare; no big deal--Chuck's back; TV's a better place.

It's still the Meredere (or Deremere) show, and Cristina's right. It's just ... so ... over.

Gary is a throwback to a time when laugh tracks were provided by evidently demented studio audiences; when one-liners were stoked with double entendres about sexual functions; when sitcoms had a beat, pace and predictability so primitive that they engaged only the reptilian part of our brains. To some viewers, this may be comfort food. To others: Hell.

Knight Rider is a disaster, a remake so deliriously and delectably bad that you have to watch just to tell your grandchildren that you were there.

The formula--must find murderer of beautiful woman before last commercial break--predates the dinosaurs, but also incorporates some satisfying twists.

You can't go wrong with Smith ("That '70s Show") or Lenehan, pros with impeccable comic timing, which leaves relative newcomers Bornheimer and Hayes. Thumbs-up here, too. Worst Week may be the best new comedy on network TV this season.

This is good bunk, fun bunk, energetic bunk. Much better bunk than the last volume.

It's wonderful stuff, and we all seem to be on a voyage of discovery.

Why, then, this debacle, with bad jokes, listless lines and a parade of cliches? Beats me.

I wanted to love Fringe, with its extraordinary pedigree and exotic, soulful Australian beauty Torv in the lead role, and splendid Noble in key support. Plus, Blair Brown's here, too, as a top exec at an evil corporation. But I just can't shake this word "derivative."

Garcia is a major-league cutie and sunny on-screen presence without being cloying. But enough with the filthy-rich-kid dramedies!

Entourage--at least in original episodes--has been off the air for one solid year, but when that title song from Jane's Addiction kicks in, it's like an old friend calling--only this time, the friend seems worthier, and his stories more interesting.