Though the cast members are photogenic, as is the city, one tires of watching them play at self-discovery.

Is this show in danger of being too nice? Somebody must have thought so, because George has been given a harridan for a mother.

The singles scene must be pretty bleak if women would rather mass for a prime-time cattle call than go out on a blind date.

Neither [Underwood nor Moyer were] helped by the fact that the production stuck to the original Broadway show, which premiered more than half a century ago. It was full of business that might be delightful or even exciting on a stage--nuns gliding about while singing their alleluias, characters racing up and down grand, sweeping staircases--but on a wide-screen television it tended to look like just that, lots and lots of stage business.

Meyers is talented and interesting enough that I shouldn't be watching his premiere and wishing that Stefon had shown up instead of Joe Biden.... The monologue was nothing much. Meyers at least seemed instantly comfortable, at home, once he finished a string of so-so punchlines and sat down behind the desk.

Popular makes valid points about the unfairness of social stratification. But with its gimmicky camera work (whoa, we're on fast-forward) and flights of surrealism (talking frog in bio lab), it tries too hard to be hip.

If all this sounds more painful than funny, you've hit on the show's main problem.

How much hipness can be injected into any program that relies on endless footage of folks falling on their faces, losing their pants and getting knocked silly?

Parker is appealing as always, but watching the show is an empty diversion—like scanning a gossip column about people who don't exist.

There is a tiresome similarity to the plots: In almost every episode our plucky heroes are captured by the reigning totalitarian regime only to be rescued by the local resistance group.

Once hot show sliding toward X-tinction.

This once-steady sitcom may now be stuck in neutral.

In contrast, the British original, while just as explicit, is also funny and warm, with a Trainspotting zip. You'll be happier renting videotapes of that.

Dreyfus... seems to be laboring to turn a so-so show into the I Love Lucy of the 21st century.

Too bad there isn't more onstage action, which is when these folks are at their funniest. Instead, we get to see them being insecure, neurotic and nasty.

Unfortunately, the hour-long show's formula grows old after a few viewings, and the Fab Five's frequent product plugs start to seem like a worse crime than household clutter.

Without Becker and his weekly rants (mildly amusing, though hardly of Dennis Miller caliber), this third-year sitcom would have nothing going for it.

The only thing more uneven than the quality of the videos is host Bob Saget's comic commentary.

Ragsdale has vigor, and the office scenes, featuring Jason Bernard, Yeardley Smith, Jane Sibbett and Hank Azaria, work moderately well without the intrusion of the barbershop quartet in his cerebellum. That gimmick, however, makes the show unbearably contrived.

For a scary movie, this is incredibly banal. In fact, the events surrounding fateful Flight 29 are a crashing bore.

The hot-potato miniseries dares to be unflattering. [11 Apr 2011, p.45]

[Laura Prepon] doesn't have any of the original's bone-tired, hard-earned scorn. [19 Jan 2012, p.42]

There's no real awe or fear-just a relatively safe Haven. So, no go.

Wonderland grabs elements from the Lewis Carroll classic, throwing them down a rabbit hole and lets them land willy-nilly. [28 Oct 2013, p.42]

Cosmetically frozen and emotionally infantile. [17 Sep 2012, p.40]

The coach-team setup give the show a slight Voice vibe, but the whole thing feels flat. [10 Feb 2014, p.50]

Unless several characters get more interesting in a hurry, hungry tyrannosaurs will have to provide all the excitement.

The pilot aspires to outrageousness, but the humor needs to get a whole lot smarter.

Maybe Prinze should just clear the soundstage of all these people, stand there alone and start over. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

I commend Banks for keeping up her interest level, but it gets ever harder to buy into the phony melodrama of redemption and suffering.

The show consists mostly of cheap re-creations of cases in which a marriage is undone by infidelity--and murder. [10 Sep 2012, p.40]

It's like a David Mamet parody of Roseanne. [19 Jun 2006, p.37]

It's not a fascinating process. As host and co-judge, Jewel is so glamorously reserved, she's faintly sinister. [6 Jun 2011, p.46]

[A] dull new sitcom. [23 Jan 2012, p.40]

It's still not funny. [23 Jan 2012, p.42]

[A] disappointingly thin, damp new series. [10 Jun 2013, p.47]

Annie calls for some sort of inner steel, but Perabo looks less like an untested agent than an overwhelmed intern.

Silly. [7 Nov 2005, p.41]

It has none of Desperate Housewives' winking cuteness, none of Revenge's dagger-eyed, fire-breathing kick. [12 Mar 2012, p.43]

Well, a mil doesn't go far these days, and neither does this series. [4 Sep 2006, p.41]

The show is just as bad as several other recent WB shows (Modern Men, The Bedford Diaries), neither cartoonish enough nor realistic enough to register as anything more than a conceptual shell with a handful of dried peas rattling inside. [24 Apr 2006, p.39]

The premise might make sense if Stults had a Rain Man intensity. Instead he's laid back and scruffy. [6 Feb 2012, p.40]

The Nashville-meets-California jokes are pretty weak. [12 Nov 2012, p.46]

There are small funny moments along the way. [4 Dec 2006, p.39]

This isn't much different from the studied vapidity of an earlier E! star, Paris Hilton, except that Lochte seems awfully nice. [29 Apr 2013, p.40]

Is there anything here that Bruce Springsteen hasn't already sung about? [19 Mar 2007, p.39]

An abysmal new series, but Tony winner Katie Finneran is a great comic talent. [5 Dec 2011, p.48]

The experience is like having the velvet rope lifted, then wishing you could use it to hogtie the charmed circle behind it. [22 Aug 2011, p.48]

Reiser, a precise, nimble comic, doesn't have the gut-level energy to bully life into this contraption. It's stalled. [25 Apr 2011, p.46]

The tone of the first three episodes is grubby yet also precious. [11 Jun 2007, p.41]

As an ensemble they are, like their teacher, attractive but not very exciting. [10 Apr 2006, p.35]

For now, it's a mess. [2 Jul 2012, p.37]

It just doesn't work. [30 Jan 2006, p.38]

The Exes is New Girl fallen off the back of a truck. [19 Dec 2011, p.44]

Though [Ramsay's] bleep-filled rants are supposed to bring out the best in his staff, they seem like blatant workplace harassment. When he turns his ire on the customers, it's even harder to stomach.

In the first few episodes, nothing's happening. No pulse. Doctor, what's wrong? [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

Diaries is lukewarm and earnest. [21 Jan 2013]

The show's main problem is that the guys, straddling the line between undateable-cute and undateable-unlikeable, more frequently fall into the latter camp. [2 Jun 2014, p.46]

This is competent reality fare, but coming after the besotted Ali and Roberto, it's like tying cans of nitroglycerin to a honeymooner's car. [23 Aug 2010, p.35]

It feels less like Freud's fun house than an opportunity for one performer after another to launch into frenzied, vituperative speeches. [24 Apr 2006, p.39]

Lee may lack the essential sweetness, or pathos, to make Earl ever seem like more than a cute variation on those lovable, loquacious losers who tumble, beer can spurting, through Coen brothers movies. [3 Oct 2005, p.39]

It's more like Seinfeld reconceived for the slacker sensibility of a director like Kevin Smith or Richard Linklater. And that's what's wrong with the show: It's hard to shake the feeling that it's just someone's project.

Kathy isn't a vehicle. It's a parking space. [21 May 2012, p.38]

The show's a letdown, especially since it comes with one of the most lovingly assembled casts of any series. [9 Oct 2006, p.41]

It's like watching The Hills with all the shallow fun, glamor and Lauren Conrad edited out. [25 Jun 2012, p.47]

Clive Owen teams with Nicole Kidman for a long, lopsided slog through the life of Ernest Hemingway and war journalist Martha Gellhorn. [4 Jun 2012, p.42]

The show's tone of enigmatic menace is overcooked. [25 Jun 2007, p.41]

Murray is more interesting here than in last season's laughable The Lone Ranger, but the writing... is junior-varsity stuff.

Sorry, this one doesn't cick. [9 Aug 2010, p.35]

Thandie Newton is intimidatingly fierce.... The problem is everyone else. [8 Apr 2013, p.45]

It wouldn't be a crime if the contestants were consciously showing their dramatic side, but there ought to be a law against some tricks of the reality trade.

The show wants to mix in big themes (politics, money) with a family soap opera, but it just feels bloated and vague. [25 Sep 2006, p.43]

Unlike Monk, a gently comic character coping with mental illness, Roday's just an overgrown kid. [10 Jul 2006, p.39]

They all work hard at being catty, as reality format demands, but the snideness is forced. [3 Sep 2012, p.40]

In its zeal to avoid Johnny Depp-style silliness, any sense of pirate fun is lost at sea. [3 Feb 2014, p.44]

Cox... doesn't have the right vulgar relish to hold the show together. [8 Jan 2007, p.35]

Outsourced really needs to move beyond this sort of broad stupidity because its cast, notably Sacha Dhawan, is actually quite good. [27 Sep 2010, p.56]

Now, ma'am, no need to bolt like a horse-unless you're scared of cliches. You aren't, are you?

Allen and Travis, who are both better than you r average comic actor, seem aware that they're trapped in a particular cookie-cutter sitcom hell, forced to laugh their way through stale gags about kids while other new TV comedies explore family life with clever, contemporary touches. [17 Oct 2011, p.39]

The supernatural drama lacks in dramatic tension and suffers without the self-aware humor that made the similarly themed American Horror Story: Coven work so well. [28 Apr 2014]

It's Jersey Shore toned up as an Abercrombie & Fitch campaign. [12 Aug 2013]

This go-round, a tired-looking Bobby Brown struggles to act like he's there for anything other than the paycheck, and Britney Spears' ex Kevin Federline (who appears alongside his ex Shar Jackson) comes off like a man defeated. Bummer, dude.

The show can be wonderfully mean... but it's too spotty. [24 Oct 2005, p.41]

The acting in the kickoff episode is awfully anemic, and that's no lie. [24 Jul 2006, p.33]

The show is rather complicated—and simply uninteresting.

King’s characters inspire indifference—except for the ones who are actively annoying—so you’re unlikely to care that some of the ghostbusters wind up dead. The author has a cheeky cameo in part 2 as a pizza delivery man, but instead of wasting his time acting he should have thought up a satisfying ending. After six hours of Rose Red, it’s truly scary to contemplate that the story may not be over. Bottom Line: Bring on the wrecking ball.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo Child is one miserable half-hour. [27 Aug 2012, p.44]

Battle doesn't have much to offer that's original. [5 Sep 2011, p.44]

It's like watching a marionette with one set of strings operated by John Lithgow and the other by Pee-wee Herman. [12 Mar 2007, p.39]

The show is flat. [7 Nov 2005, p.41]

It's a hair-sprayed cobweb. And not funny. [9 Jan 2012, p.40]

Done without any of the smart silliness that made Drew Barrymore's 2000 movie reboot so much fun, the show is just vixen nostalgia. [17 Oct 2011, p.42]

Millennium ... has grown more pretentious and less coherent with each new installment.

This is one kid who should not stay in the picture. [7 Nov 2011, p.45]

The only thing that might make them come to their senses would be a violent but salutary shock. Like Cancellation. [7 Nov 2011, p.45]

How'd They Do That? rehashes a previously aired Home Edition and adds a few details that weren't worth including the first time. Why'd they bother?

I just wish he'd [Will Arnett] run away from this dead horse of a sitcom. [11 Oct 2010, p.38]

The premise of this one is about as dumb as you can get.