Disjointed operates on another plane of altered consciousness, which may begin to explain this genial, harmless misfire.

It is breathtakingly inept. Either that or subversively brilliant: A send-up of every mawkish cliche, idiotic plot twist or ludicrous splatter of dialogue that's propped up every preposterous secret agent thriller.

Marred by the usual hospital prime-time melodramatics, Pure Genius is still a compelling idea matched to a superior cast.

Gritty, jarring, profane and smartly produced.

It's hilarious, really, and refreshing, and original and - absolutely - an acquired taste.

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

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.

Cheer Perfection is numbing in its ordinariness--dull, trivial and never, ever outrageous.

In two unbearably long hours, the film says nothing that wasn't said first, or better, 21 years ago. And where the original had a palpable air of menace, a mood hot and sticky with fear, the TV sequel is as fast-moving as a stagnant pond. [4 Mar 1988, p.7]

Surface fashion styling can't cloak the underlying framework of yet another CBS procedural.

Competent spinoff, but the formula tends to wear like a straitjacket on Whitaker.

The whole project feels salaciously sleazy, unless you're enjoying the proceedings, in which case it's juicily depraved.

Past Life is a straight-down-the-middle cop procedural--"Cold Case" with a gimmick--when quirkiness, humor and even some bogus science or crackpot theology would have given it some heft or at least a sense of fun.

No, it's not exactly "House." But it isn't like any other show, either, with its mad mix of moral dilemmas, medical crises, family ties, double-life-living and, y'know, rubouts 'n' stuff.

Their [Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon's] Odd Couple feels like the kind of time-filling time killer that's chasing viewers to other options.

A prime-time soap that wants to be harder-edged than “Empire,” but instead manages to be less fun.

What's fascinating is just how ruthlessly it has been edited, or (more likely) re-edited since the breakup to turn you-know-who into Little Ms. Perfect.

While The Neighbors sketches something genuinely creative--and truly weird--its comedy doesn't really come together.

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

There might be something smartly contemporary buried deep inside Manhattan Love Story, but the pilot is too busy demonstrating its cognizance of connected devices and social media.

There is no fear in this show or any of the doom, shame, ignominy or flat-out reprobation that comes with getting one's head handed to one by the Donald.... Without fear, there is no danger and without danger, no drama.

[A] treacly piece of tripe.

With Tools, there is no discernible style, or point of view, or voice, or humor that ever rises to the level of originality.

Like any competent Bruckheimer, "Miami Medical" speaks TV very well. It spins the A, B and C story lines like plates in a circus act. It has reduced the medical jargon to the requisite bewildering-cum-authentic prattle.

The thing looks stylish, has a nice cast, is well written, and Bratt--scruffy, unkempt, a little more than off-center here--has the requisite intensity for the role. But it also is jarringly slick and borderline seamy; maybe that's just part of the fast world Banks and his cohorts find themselves in, but the tone ultimately robs the show--or at least the pilot--of heart and passion.

"What About Brian"... wants to be "thirtysomething" for twentysomethings, but it is clichesomething.

Any smart girl would also wish for humor at a higher level than slapstick broccoli on the eyeball or a 12-year- old boy drooling, "You're kinda easy on the peepers." [20 Sept 2002]

Maybe there's a funny idea here, but without edge, bite or (yup) claws, we'll never know. Good heart, no claws (or laughs).

Determinedly irreverent and politically incorrect, but so obvious in its targets and so unoriginal in its barbs that it ends up being mostly an ode to its own crudity. [29 Apr 2005]

There's no "here" here.

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

[Robinson] is funny, and there are fleeting reminders of that.... Then it all goes sour, and flat.

Malibu Country is nothing great. But its studio-shot sitcom style sure suits Reba.

The dynamics of the show seem different enough that "Housewives" fans will want to give Miami a try. But we'll have to see if the plot lines will sustain interest.

Because so many viewers will have seen this kind of reality show before, their minds may start to wander by the second commercial break.

It's pretty stock stuff. [23 March 2000]

We haven't had a good dishy time-waster in awhile. Maybe this is it.

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

Dreadful.

[A] shamelessly derivative cop show set in the shamelessly overexposed city by the bay, with high-school-play-level acting performances which help make the overall effect cornier than a cornfield in Kansas. And yet ... and yet, there's something appealing about ABC's new cop drama.

NBC's superficial knockoff is just Lipstick on a pig.

Fans of quality action and thriller storytelling will have a good time with "The Terminal List," even if they'll probably be able to predict exactly where it's going.

There's perverse fun to be had in watching "3 lbs." Count the groans as you spot yet another trite piece of formula.

Bull is sleek in look, pace and technique--and crafty enough to indulge CBS’ trademark dollop of human feeling amid the flash. But it’s essentially breezy TV junk food, leaving behind a prefab aftertaste.

This all felt too commercial, too slick, too “American Idol”-ized. The Passion is Christianity’s foundational story. This usually--also awkwardly and regrettably--felt like just another TV one.

Make a list of sitcom cliche shtick, and you'd find it all here. The eye-bulging hard-trying line sell. The ba-dum-bum punch line rhythm. The motormouth babbling to signify "wackiness." The louder- the-better sense of comedy. Even the family visit where members enter a room precisely a peculiar eight paces apart so each has time for an entrance "joke." [27 Feb 2003, p.B31]

So pleased with itself, it doesn't seem concerned about pleasing us.

A harmless and mostly fun little sitcom.

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.

Kevin Can Wait is neither as bad as you may have feared nor as good as you may have hoped. It’s squarely and innocuously in the middle.

Roseanne's Nuts isn't awful. It just is. There's "nut" much happening.

An effective and well-wrought drama, with enough cinematic flair and energy to paper over some of its more obvious faults.

There is at least one troubling aspect to "Wishes" - an abundance of product placements within the show itself, which begs the question: Does salvation come with a price tag?

Nothing particularly interesting or revelatory. For this to work--at least for viewers--The Hoff needs to move past self-parody, or at least take himself seriously. He tries here, but the exercise still seems flimsy and hollow.

Elfman is good (as usual), but Alice doesn’t give her a whole lot of room to expand either. ... There’s not much more here, other than those standard sitcom garnishments, and that spunky, chatty fuzzball.

The pilot serves up flashy ooh-ah instead of anything tangible to wrap our arms around.

Ambitious and intermittently entertaining, Zero Hour--and its celebrated lead--don't quite hit all their marks. But at least the mystery's a hoot.

Kelly knows how to work the camera, and the camera knows how to get the best out of her. For Kelly, and NBC, that’s the good news from Monday’s launch. Otherwise, that long “Will & Grace” cast interview was a self-inflicted injury that clouded what this new show is and can be.

If Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 film was the Barnum & Bailey Big Tent version of the story of Exodus, this is the snippy little art house version - smarter (perhaps), a lot more accurate (perhaps) and indisputably duller.

Many viewers will find its satire way over the line, but they're not the ones The WB is aiming for. [6 Oct 2000, p.B51]

Nice cast. Otherwise, charmless. Airless. Lifeless. (Blah, blah and blah.)

A few of the critical “makeshift” moments defy logic, if not ridicule.

This show is slickly packaged and unchallengingly trite in its slavish reality-show construction.

Though Saget is amiable and likable here, the ratio of good quips to groaners is still only about one-to-four.

The plastic "punch lines" grow more contrived. The tired stereotypes feel more offensive.

"Almost Family" is also a snooze. It sleepwalks past the issues it purports to explore, as well as the unethical, and most likely criminal, behavior involved. ... So "Almost Family" made Hutton's Bechley an almost-loveable rogue, and his offspring almost-unbothered by the almost crime he perpetrated against them and countless others. No "almost" about that. It's flat-out creepy.

Sausage factoryline network sitcoms like this one — most of them, really — are weirdly out of step with the moment, like the obnoxious guest at some party who drinks too much and tells bad jokes before learning that he's not at a "party" but at a wake. ... Lamentable second act.

The fatal attraction story line is a long windup to a punchline you already know, and promos have revealed it as well. The mystery element is plopped down in the middle of that particular story like a lead MacGuffin.

Most of the material flatlines even before it begins, while never rising to the level of the HBO series to which it pays homage.

So the show seems either a subversive deconstruction of the laugh-track sitcom blueprint or a stupefying misfire built around the blandest star ever.

The "Funny or Die" duo makes this zesty, single-camera comedy speak to adults by letting their lead be one.

Alex O'Loughlin is bogged down by trite dialogue, half-hearted support, perfunctory exposition, and better-to-look-good-than-make-sense production priorities.

Lacks the sharper edge of Hughes' movie. [23 Aug 1990]

Nothing remotely lurid in either show [7 Days of Sex and The Conversation With Amanda de Cadenet].

Bruckheimer assembly-line sausage stuffed with plenty of hooey and violence--but the leads are plenty appealing.

Not worth sitting through for the scenery when you can switch to Travel Channel.

Part Dr. Jekyll, part Mr. Hyde and all dumb.

Rosewood's pilot is stuffed with hackneyed setups, tedious exposition and character quirks galore.

"Standoff" does seem to emerge miraculously out of the fumes of '70s TV - a near-perfect reformulation of every bone-weary cliche, every hackneyed piece of cop chatter (Dan Tanna lives!) that last-century TV glorified in.

A show that is so achingly familiar - in content, tone, stars, everything - that it's actually funny.

Nothing to see here. Move on.

Messy, discordant opener with potential.

A slight, cartoonish, and terribly, terribly obvious dramedy.

I'm ashamed to admit it in front of my more serious colleagues, but I think the show can be very funny. Of course, like everything else on TV, some of it hits, a lot of it misses. But in the midst of the pain, cruelty, ridicule and abuse, not to mention boredom, somebody falls into a manhole and I find myself bursting out laughing. [29 Mar 1990]

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

Carpoolers is like a flimsy "Saturday Night Live" skit pounded home and running on beyond endurance. Actors sputter their lines, dither and whimper like some 1950s sitcom.

One Big Happy is just... conventional.

The outcome is an ersatz facsimile of the original “Trek” and a couple of spinoffs. Their heart and overall spirit are present, along with some decent special effects. The dumb jokes and ham-fisted setup lines just tend to diminish them.

TBS' entry only lacks "Sex and the City's" craft in writing, characterizations, plot, production and wit.

Pauly is still Pauly--but he's a more grown-up version who cares about his friends, ailing dad and career.

If you last the entire pilot, and your head doesn’t hurt, you’re a sturdier viewer than I.

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

You have a life--live it, and don't watch this.

This feels more like a rushed afterthought by Fox instead of a fully developed premise that could carry a pair of seasoned actors to their retirement, or at least to a big payday.

There's a smoldering ember of promise here, mainly in the cast, even if the pilot tended to smother it.

A wan, weary network-sitcom-by-committee--oh, and Matt LeBlanc, too.

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.

Outlaw isn't bad as much as bogus. The whole faulty premise creaks and groans under the weight of a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't shell game, as key plot points zip by, then are quickly tucked back under their shell in the vain hope you won't remember them, or maybe take them at face value.