A thorough whitewashing.

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

The show is bad, the star a bit sad, his shtick as old as a rock.

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

What is missing here is heart, drama, and - most inexcusably - horror.

Freddy, the series, is for the mature mind. Not the 9-year-old mind, but the 11-year-old mind. ... It's not funny, but ghastly, the sickest, most violent, blood-spurting TV imaginable. [6 Oct 1988]

Someone must believe the allure of "CSI" lies in its "look" - Cold Case also offers time-tripping flashbacks blending the past incident into present time - along with the behavioral "cool" of its central character. But even when William Petersen plays reserved, his "CSI" cop seems to be seething at his core. That suppressed fire makes him worth watching. Morris is barely an ember.

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]

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]

It's bland, tired, listless, and if the show isn't having much fun, how can it expect viewers to?

Successful series have been built around less interesting fantasies, but the creators of That Was Then are almost as hapless as their hero. They saddled themselves with a casting nightmare. As the supposedly 16-year-old Travis, Bulliard looks closer to 26. And in the fake beard that's intended to make him look 30, he just looks silly. In fact, none of the cast members who have to play two ages is convincing. [27 Sept 2002, p.B39]

Call Girl is a dreary London day. A pass.

Eli Stone is fated to flounder.

There's certainly comedy to be found in these basic situations, but not in "Lucky Louie's" confounding approach or stilted presentation.

It's hard to imagine anyone over the age of 15 being able to watch this series with a straight face after seeing Tarzan go sniffing through Midtown like a bloodhound, but maybe that's the audience the WB is after. As we said, Fimmel does have great pecs. [3 Oct 2003, p.B47]

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

The pilot was so uneven that the whole affair nearly veers into "Reefer Madness" territory--the kind of over-the-top cautionary fable that subverts honorable intentions through hysteria or cliche. Despite its pedigree, Teenager doesn't appear to have ever stepped inside a high school, either.

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

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]

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

Despite the storylines' incessant emotional and psychological delvings, the result is an inert if not annoying muddle among unpleasantly profane people whose prospective salvation isn't worth wading toward.

All this feels dutiful and rote - the CliffsNotes version.

A real loser. [23 Aug 1990]

I don't like safe TV. I admire anyone who tries to experiment. But "Cop Rock" doesn't work. [25 Sep 1990]

Private Practice is hugely disappointing, and in so many ways that a mere review can't even begin to do all the problems injustice.

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.

A second-rate knockoff of what's not quite a first-rate fabrication itself.

ABC must be loco throwing Lopez to the critical wolves like this. [27 Mar 2002, p.B31]