A little too raw, especially in this hour.

Snooki & JWoww reeks of the end-times--the end-times for "Jersey Shore."

All this feels dutiful and rote - the CliffsNotes version.

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?

Think of Fuller House as “Full House 2.0.” Same premise, same vibe, mostly same cast.... A winner, strictly for fans.

This fantasy adventure is actually tolerable now for adults who found ABC's May "Dinotopia" miniseries such an endless festival of special effects with little redeeming dramatic value. [28 Nov 2002]

Every single scene, and just about every line, will remind you that this is an unapologetically, gloriously idiotic enterprise. ... For discriminating viewers; shark lovers; sharks; meteorologists: F. For “Sharknado” fans: B

To Wisdom’s credit--so far anyway--this doesn’t look like the typical gruesome network cop drama arrayed with female victims and their predatory killers (even though there are two such victims in the pilot). It does look like a good idea in search of genuine high-tech bona fides.

It is awful. It is truly awful. It is awful in ways that make the word "awful" seem inadequate.

Nobody seems to be having any fun here, not even lording-it-over-everybody Ming. You'd think next week's second episode might be better, once all that exposition is out of the way, but you'd be wrong. It's even more lifeless.

The writers try to limn the blue-collar vs. white-collar struggle that gave the movie its bite, but end up sounding mushy and sentimental. [16 Apr 1990, p.11]

ABC hasn't provided much in advance to watch--smart network!--but there were some clips for Wipeout, and they were (seriously) hilarious.

The first episode is fairly execrable, but High Society settles down by the second, and we get a clearer--or at least less-boozy--view of Mortimer and her world.

"Teachers" isn't half-bad.

The pairing might have worked, if only they weren't saddled with trite dialogue. ("Am I disturbing you?" someone says to cafe owner Whoopi: "Too late, I'm already disturbed.") And it might have worked if the show had more resembled a "small" production of the kind that some pay-cable services specialize in instead of an assembly-line, go-for-the-cheap-shot sitcom. [30 Mar 1990, p.II-5]

Grim, sad, painful.

Absent a compelling core romance, and absent a passably beast-like beast, you're left with a sodden police procedural.

It's the tired guys will be guys trope dusted off for one of TV's pre-eminent comic actors, Tony Shalhoub, who can't even break through the smog of mediocrity that's enveloped him here.

Dreadful. Or to use a more manly phrase, aaarrgggh, awful.

So much of tonight's series pilot feels so glib and rings so false, it's hard to believe this soapy saga comes from the quality-not-quantity production team of Tom Fontana and Julie Martin.

This wanna-be's as dumb as dirt, and, as a consequence, even makes Hollywood seem more toxic than it probably is.

Yeah, Brooklyn 11223 is awful, and awful not because it's inauthentic--it isn't necessarily to those being portrayed here--but because it's hugely phony.

The party's over, the hangover's begun, and the final summer looks like it's gonna be a long and wet one.

Where "Batman" played it straight, and was therefore kinky, Scorpion smugly thinks it's cute, and therefore isn't. Its cops are Keystone, its star is personality-free and its plot progressions are dippy-dumb. But Lintel's poppin' chest is always well-lit, gunfire is frequent and spectacular explosions keep topping themselves. [4 Jan 2001, p.B31]

Cynical, randy, derivative and as wearily familiar as a cup of cheap joe, "Freddie" is also expertly cast, acted, written and directed.

No matter where the goofy "Desperate Housewives" goes, it's not into the toilet, which is where Big Shots spends its time both literally and figuratively.

Any series that calls itself Wicked City is pretty much asking for ridicule ("Sin City" already taken?), but to then go ahead and stuff the sausage with grade A baloney? That, my friends, is a demand.

Most of Luis so far is underdeveloped and oversold. [19 Sept 2003, p.B48]

"Donny!" would be as bad as you could imagine except ... it exceeds even your imagination.

Viewers will immediately locate the central flaw. If half of the contestants are so rich, then why go to all this trouble for $200,000?

Utterly vacuous and incompetent.

By summer's lower standards, the series is watchably preposterous. [19 July 1992, p.3]

Character likability is actually just one issue. Plausibility is the other.

There's cheese (i.e., all Syfy flicks) and then there's cheese--Velveeta vs. Brie. But guess what? Ghost Shark is both! How victims die, which body parts are left and where, the perfectly predictable dialogue and straight-faced performances, even a historical nod to Roanoke--we're just not worthy of this much smartly executed satisfaction.

It's got some charm and there's some humor here, too--mstly at Jones' expense. But seriously, don't you have something better to do tonight?

"Fashion House" is a bit more coherent, if still ludicrous.

There's no authentic life to Saint George beyond the setup/joke/laugh formula and its witless, gamy punchlines.

ABC's little-girl gang of four represents nothing more than cliches.

Little of it adds up to much of anything but foul-minded mischief.

"Awful" doesn't begin to do The Choice justice, not that it deserves justice.

The angel on my shoulder says H8R is a piece of slime, bringing out the worst in everyone involved. But the devil on my other shoulder says this show is the logical outcome of our culture's celeb-obsession, and everyone involved gets precisely what they deserve. Which is soooo fun to watch.

Despite Salomon's efforts at visually stylish filmmaking, Justice for Natalee Holloway never puts any real meat on the bones of the much-hyped saga.

Even the baby talk offers more variety than you'd think, with Danza frequently encountering friends with their own peculiar outlooks on toddler life (Roscoe Lee Browne voices a stuffy baby-actor in the second show). [8 Mar 1991, p.103]

Reboots can work ("Hawaii Five-0"), but they haven't got a prayer if they lavishly, ludicrously, embrace all the hooey and hokum of the original. Welcome to the new Angels.

Maybe the problem with CBS' new Sunday popcorn movie "Mayday" isn't that it could be better. It actually could be worse. Then this would be deliriously mockable trash instead of an occasionally gripping but mostly frustratingly loony piece of hooey.

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

It is so ancient - in approach, tone, style and energy - that you can almost see the dust bunnies tumble across the set.

If this is comedy, who needs it? [24 Sept 2002, p.B27]

"American Inventor," ... is unspeakably awful, and makes not just a travesty of the type of television that "American Idol" so dramatically popularized, but an unintentional parody of it as well.

Airing five nights a week and featuring 10 strangers - not to mention insufferable hosts Julie Chen and Ian O'Malley - this will fill our screens for the next three months. Unless we happen to leave the set turned off. Which, judging from last night, might be advisable. [6 Jul 2000]

Yup, pretty awful.

A mini-triumph of style over substance (of which there is almost none).

Our mouths may be open, but more likely agape than laughing.

Sex Box is bad. It's also hackneyed, dull, derivative and surprisingly windy.

The characters are vibrantly well-defined... And the writing is smart, with a light touch.

A series so monumentally meaningless, so pathetically puerile, so irredeemably ridiculous that, within my limited professional context, it prompts the Biggest Question of them all: Why is there television? [2 Nov 1988]

This one isn't David Spade's fault. Really it isn't.

Beyond comprehension, beyond silly, beyond words.

As awful as $#*! My Dad Says is, you almost detect an ember of promise here. Maybe it's Shatner--whom we will always love, no matter what--or maybe it's an illusion. But CBS needs to blow some life into that ember before it's too late. Maybe it already is.

Inhumans squanders its Marvel back story (largely unclear here), to come off silly and stilted (in the hands of “Iron Fist” showrunner Scott Buck), as it plods through a cheap parade of cliches in writing, design and production. Despite special effects up the wazoo, it’s utterly devoid of magic or wonder.

"Lord of the Flies"-meets-a-telephone book, and just about as entertaining.

"Emergency" is sodden, forbidding, a waste of 22 good minutes.

Viewers are expected to swallow - worse, to savor - simplistic recycling of melodrama plots seen a hundred times before.

Liz & Dick is not a complete disaster, nor entirely is Lohan.

Truth Be Told doesn't let its issues come from the characters. The issues are the characters. Maybe future episodes will flesh out these people, but they initially serve as stick figures on which to hang "outspoken" opinions seeming not necessarily their own.

Note the parade of cliche characterizations (the way-too-understanding wife who gazes upon her dim guy with affectionate he's-a-dope-but-he's-my-dope amusement). Also the schlock writing.

These folks wouldn't be paranoid if they thought critics loathed their forced and annoying show and widely predicted it would be the season's first to tank. [6 Oct 2000, p.B51]

Seen "Malcolm in the Middle"? It's good, right? Clever, original and fresh? Now imagine it's a tired retread, a shadow of itself. That's this shameless ripoff, which ratchets up the leer quotient and down the brains. [2 Oct 2000, p.B07]

[The contestants] range in age from 25 to 41, aren't all model-pretty as often found on "The Bachelor," and include black, white and Hispanic women with a variety of jobs from executive assistant to neuropsychologist and a span of body types from va-voom to fuller figures. ... Also commendable is host Jesse Palmer, the sportscaster, former NFL quarterback and season-five star of "The Bachelor" who manages to project sincerity despite the remarkable premise. ... But otherwise vapid and regressive show.

Something is missing in "Woops!," besides a second joke. ... It could have been the funniest show in the world, if there was a nuclear war, really, and this was the only one show left. "Woops!" is moronic on so many levels. [5 Oct 1992]

While "Men" may have the nutritional equivalent of stick gum, there's some genuine charm here along with a surprisingly seasoned and talented cast.

Forced, frantic and continually preposterous.

There's nothing unexpected here, and certainly no adventure, just who's sleeping with whom, and who's the daddy, and why they're still so juvenile, and how Tom Berenger ended up in this soapy soup.

Problem is, the show is more comfortable with cliché than subtlety.

A groaner from beginning to end.

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

Uncle Buck is sometimes funny like a poke in the eye. It's crude and vulgar. The jokes are obvious, the situations cliched, the characters obnoxious. Would you believe a lecherous insurance agent named Doreen Douche? [10 Sept 1990, p.9]

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.

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

A couple of the lines are surprisingly offensive, and a couple others even surprisingly amusing.

The storms in this production have more personality than the characters who chase, study and prepare for them.

It's all about the women-in-terror kick of frying them alive. (Oct. 15's episode promises a bride who's shot during her wedding.) Reprehensible.

Yes, offensive, but the second episode loses that element, which suggests Fox got the message. Not surprisingly, it's the better of the two.

Because this is an all-for-one, one-for-all musical act, these groups are tight and have to be. As a result, the six finalists are very good--which largely makes for good TV.

It's silly, ridiculous, fun, outrageous and absurd. Plus, there's Brad.

Frankel's repartee may make it seem as though she's missed her calling as a Borscht Belt comedian, but underneath it all she really has no sense of humor.

The third season was a two-headed monster. One was Sam and Ron; the other was Shore's typically moronic, casually vulgar, breezily amusing self. Guess which one was unwatchable.

Feels like a rebuilding year here. Veterans trying to hold their spots, rookies working to make the team. Whether a winning lineup coalesces remains to be seen.

Competent soap, and the new season is frothier than ever.

All those greens and blues--and I'm just talking about the trousers and jackets--make you almost forget how well-written and acted this show is; even the medical jargon seems (ummm) un-jargony and informative. The mini dramas are mostly, however, just a light summer breeze, as befitting unpretentious Pains.

Still absorbing. Still painful.

ThunderCats fanboys and girls will approve, although the story does feel a lot darker and more violent.

JUNKies follows a familiar formula, but adds a buoyant burst of adrenaline when the guys spontaneously react to the inventions and their makers.

It's "Reno 911!" with bloody bite.

How could you possibly go wrong with these two? You couldn't.

A big fat wink to fans. The fifth season looks like a winner.

OK, caution dispensed, tonight's episode is a good start. But wait till the baby comes.