Though some action is depicted outside the two therapists' offices, most episodes are dominated by the sessions themselves, which unfold as brilliantly performed one-act plays.

The major flaw of "The Great Game" is not allowing Sherlock and Watson to work enough as a team. This flaw makes clearer what the other episodes do well, which is to emphasize the most interesting and important aspect of the original stories, Holmes and Watson's complicated and entertaining relationship.

It's through such visual devices that Lie to Me repeatedly aligns viewers with Lightman's view. In much the same way, the show frequently cuts to commercials via photos of celebrities looking variously guilty according to FACS, so that you might recognize the expressions Lightman describes, and so feel that you can see what he sees.

It's surprising that he's [Cross] written a sitcom so reliant on physical comedy, and cast himself in the rather one-dimensional, repetitive main role. The show's best lines possess a crackling absurdity.

As each individual seeks his or her limits, the group is coming together, sharing their difference and their secret. No Ordinary Family is set up to develop these relationships. It is off to a promising start, tweaking a lot of superhero conventions without seeming like a parody.

Unfortunately, the rest of the episode follows Dexter's descent into a routine guilt spiral, blaming himself for Rita's death (he should have "been there" to "protect her"), rather than ruminating on how it feels to be on this receiving end of a serial killing. How a series this smart could overlook the far more interesting angle is as much of a wasted opportunity as it is a disappointment.

The Amazing Race typically features interesting contestants from a variety of backgrounds and thrown into a high-pressure, high stakes race set in unfamiliar environments. This opening leg of Season 17 feels like a warm-up for difficulties to come.

What makes Justin's dad funny is the brevity. Without it, $#*! My Dad Says is not.

This is the central duality of the show: half fish-out-of-water tale about Todd, half underdogs-come-from-behind-to-triumph story about his staff. The problem is that neither plot has a sound foundation. For the first, it's hard to identify with Todd because he's not very likable.

Watching the cast play doubled characters promises to be one of the great pleasures of Fringe's coming season. Certainly Torv and Noble face the biggest challenges, she depicting two characters in flux, he portraying polar opposites. But the alt-world also offers alternatives for all the players.

Each member makes a case for his or her status as the team's "linchpin," allowing the rest of us to see a little more about all, rather than the series' usual focus on Bones and Booth. A love letter to group synergy and the fruits of hard labor, the entire episode makes its own case for the team's existence. The whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.

The comic commentary may be poking gentle fun at nerds, but the real target of the show's sharp satire is the arbitrary, self-serving stupidity of mainstream culture.

It was disappointing that this premiere lacked a lot of fun, usually Community's strong suit. Still, it reminded us of the distinct joys of the first season, offering cartoonish physical comedy, densely written jokes, and obscure pop culture references.

Unfortunately, the best bits of the premiere were the flashbacks to the finale, though their impact was watered down considerably in the context of an action-less storyline, filled with Grey's usual rambling pontifications.

By the end of The Breakfast Club, the kids have learned that each of them is not solely a Brain, a Princess, a Criminal, a Basket Case, or an Athlete, but individuals who defy categorization. If only the characters in My Generation--and its dwindling viewers--were afforded the same opportunity.

At times witty and always good-looking, Undercovers needs to figure out how to balance its serious, silly, and gimmicky inclinations.

Traditional sitcoms get mileage from the characters acting the same way in a variety of situations, and much of Cougar Town's warmth comes from that sort of predictability. However, the show got better when individuals changed a bit, and the premiere hinted at more of that to come.

We cheered for Jack McCoy to convict the scumbag criminal on Law & Order and for Ally McBeal to speak out for the wrongly accused. Here, there are no easy answers, but the difficulty doesn't tax viewers' intellectual curiosity so much as their patience.

Better With You might try to be a straight-up joke/punchline/laughtrack sitcom. But that dooms it to comparisons with the other ABC shows such as Modern Family and The Middle that bookend it on Wednesday night. Those shows both have more distinct attitudes toward institutions like families and, particularly, marriage, than Better With You seems likely to find.

As it walks a line between between mockery and compassion, Raising Hope most obviously evokes a comparison with creator Gregory Thomas Garcia's last series, My Name is Earl. In the new show, however, the players are more believable and less caricatured.

Running Wilde demonstrates a distinct lack of its predecessor's lightning speed and intense saturation of jokes. This may be a structural issue: Running Wilde doesn't offer an intricate ensemble cast, but only the usual sit-commy supporting array, a wacky neighbor and a couple of crazy servants.

Detroit 1-8-7 has a long way to go before it comes close to equaling Homicide, but it's off to a promising start.

That effort to seem "contemporary" carries over into the plot too: the new task force has "immunity" from the Governor to do whatever it takes to catch the bad guys, the better to keep up with shows like 24, one presumes. They aren't just detectives, they're a special arm of the law that doesn't have to adhere to "procedure" and "regulations."

As it poses existential questions, the show benefits from the casting choice of newcomer Wolk and a supple, low-key naturalism in both performances and direction.

What's ultimately frustrating about The Event is not the lack of answers (though the pilot does conclude with Sophie telling President Martinez, "I haven't told you everything") or the dreadfully lazy characterizations. It's the insistence that the plot somehow taps into something that's happening right now in the United States.

For starters, they need to offer intriguing characters and meticulous plotting. The first episode of Chase provides neither.

Frankly, the premiere's funniest don't focus on weight (these are also the lines featured most frequently in trailers, suggesting that someone is aware of the line the fat jokes are walking). Let's hope for a time-soon-when Mike & Molly runs out of fat jokes and moves on to explore the dynamics of two people falling in love while working to overcome personal demons.

The action is set to move to gangster playgrounds like New York and Chicago, and introduce some dangerous romantic entanglements. If Boardwalk Empire doesn't begin in the most thought-provoking manner, its multiple, ready-to-expand stories suggest many avenues to explore.

With a focus on success at all costs, The Apprentice is not exactly feel-good viewing, but it's always compelling. And the heightened intensity this season's contenders bring to the game may leave viewers feeling like it's both fascinating and troubling to watch people on television scramble in the name of money.

Like so many plot turns in Outlaw, this one is too convenient, too silly, and not a little audacious. It helps that the show knows it.

Amid such generic plotting, the show serves up an extended action sequence in a hotel that's nicely shot and choreographed, establishing the template for other fight scenes. It appears that Nikita is going to be a down-and-dirty brawling kind of series, where martial arts serve a function besides looking really cool.

Terriers teases out both the pleasures and the perversities.

More often, the show is a show: the camera cranes out to show Cathy's loneliness, the half-hour closes with a bittersweet pop song or the point is made too obviously ("Cancer's not a passport to a better life, cancer's the reason I'm not gonna have a life"). Still, the show does illustrate a useful idea, that what you think is "normal" is only that, what you think.

The conspiracy here is grounded in human activity and ambition, rather than aliens or supernatural forces.

Perabo shows herself capable of playing Walker tough or sweet, clueless or competent. Unfortunately, in the span of a single episode, she's asked to do all of the above.

Yes, Rizzoli & Isles is quick with cliches....[But] for all the stereotyping, it's hard to be mad at Angie Harmon.

The reason we might stick around is Audrey Parker. She also provides an alternative to the usual dark mystery associated with Stephen King's work.

Entourage underscores how tenuous hegemonic masculinity is--and how much it depends on everyone playing his part.

While Hung has its stage set to see some of these types of stories play out, scene after scene positions Ray as a cipher for other characters.

The bar is set reasonably low for police procedurals and there is no reason to think that Memphis Beat can't clear it eventually. However, to "save" Memphis, maybe what the show needs is to let loose and have a little bit of fun.

For all the politics, though, what True Blood reveals most consistently is that Arlene is right: all of them—vampire, human, and were—are enslaved in one way or another, by appetites, gifts, power, and family (or pack) bonds, intimating an uneasy commonality across races.

The Good Guys, true to its genre, presents an opposition between order and anarchy and asks the audience to embrace the apparently crazy cop who, in the tradition of American pragmatism, cuts through the red tape to get things done.

Summon your patience and settle in for the long haul. By its end, the series' exploration of how ordinary human fallibility is transformed into shocking human depravity is compellingly inventive.

Happy Town‘s rhythm is like that, pitching between the obvious and the obscure. It’s not yet clear where it’s “snap sharp.”

Treme sketches and interweaves stories and desires, hopes and disenchantments.

With all these suds in the way, the premiere is muddled, so concerned with leading us by the nose to get the backstory that it never asks us to care about anyone.

What has been ramped up in this season are Jackie’s unexpected kindnesses and cruelties. And this is what makes the show so great. She constantly sidesteps all expectations and usually for the worse.

Perhaps the most disturbing possibility--the subtext that makes Breaking Bad both enthralling and often unbearable to watch--is that Walter is becoming who he always was. He hasn’t changed. He’s been purified.

It does tend to love its sublimely self-confident hero, a quick draw and a smartass who nonetheless walks a sort of moral line that baffles his mostly rube-ish opponents. But the show offers other, pleasures that help to make up for what's predictable.

In its insistence on the chaos of battles and the confusion of downtime, the series also offers another “harsh reality,” that these decent men are exploited by their faceless government, again and again. If this story is not explicit in the bloody surface of The Pacific, it is a persistent, distressing undercurrent.

Even though Parenthood‘s parents are all making completely misguided choices, the series doesn’t consider these as a means to education, through which the adults might reach that kind of self-awareness. That lack of consideration is the series’ most unfortunate waste of a promising storyline, one that could have imbued this second version with something refreshing or even revelatory.

Much like last season, this one already has Adams and Ben standing in for viewers. Their insights, or their reactions, mold yours.

How To Make It delivers a conventional story with uncommon panache. It’s fun, especially for guys, but it’s aiming for boutique liquor and only tastes like high-end latte.

Even as you’re hoping that she won’t have to conjure up variations on this explication theme every week, she does it a few more times in this episode alone.

Fittingly--and disappointingly--his fame-hungry characters don’t raise questions concerning politics or inhabit any realm of social interest; they are as vapid as their environment.

The connections are sudden, relationships shallow, and dialogue glib.

If it’s not an ingenious or very new device (see: Nina, Tony, Curtis, et. al.), the damaged soul who is Jack’s Self Reflected re-raises and continues to complicate the questions that are typically understood as resolved in Jack. Patriotism and heroism, bad choices and hideous torture in the name of a big picture: it’s 24 repeating.

Even the flashy action is of a piece with all this conventional structuring, as Chance regularly takes a few minutes to run and jump or punch and shoot. Such predictability does Human Target no favors.

Even in the face of all this men’s realm intrigue, the most compelling aspect of Big Love remains the women.

A fast moving mix of physical comedy and wry dialogue articulate this friendship, revealing its complexity and its depth.

The show benefits as well from its lack of exposition, focus on present action, and a ruthless economy of editing rarely seen on primetime TV.

Unlike crime dramas, when the body is usually cleanly dead, by its very nature Three Rivers lingers on the processes of death and near-death at both ends of the story. Just how many poignant farewells can an audience take?

This commentary on the emptiness of all-consuming family life might fare better were it not brimming with one suburban cliche after another. These cliches don’t indicate Dexter’s discomfort with the banality of his new environment. Instead, they’re just boring.

If the procedural plotting in FlashForward was ordinary, all the conversations about destiny and free will--and what any of it means for the poor sap who didn’t see anything during the blackout--made the first episode feel vibrant, engaged with heady concepts and questions.

With its deft writing and sharp performances, the show is a telling snapshot of how families live now.

Even as this plot pattern bodes ill, Margulies and Panjabi make a formidable team.

One could watch NCIS: Los Angeles. But one could also watch paint dry with far less pain and no less gain.

These political hiccups are unfortunate, but not deal-breakers. Bored to Death is undeniably smart, and so it could very well be laying the groundwork for all these wincing moments to be properly unpacked by an apt post-modern femme fatale (mom?).

If Fringe‘s writers--Abrams, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman--sustain the sharp wit and swift plotting they managed in this summer’s Star Trek prequel, they might maintain the series' high-speed, oddball unpredictability.

Given the heft of the show’s themes and the crispness of the writing, it’s got to be a brilliant social commentary disguised as a major network sitcom, right? Or maybe Joel McHale really is that likable and we’re all wallowing in nostalgia for a simpler 2002. Either way, boo-yah.

How interested will viewers be in its fictional scandals when real life offers much more sensational examples of bad behavior?

To ensure you understand the magnitude of all this emotional mayhem, Maddux helpfully narrates in generically navel-gazing voiceover.

While some subplots are trite (a nurse turns down a paramedic’s romantic overtures, saying she’s “damaged goods"), the premiere hums along whenever Hawthorne is driving it.

What is abundantly clear by this brutal, swift, and exquisitely yucky scene is True Blood is back, doing what it likes to do best, that is, dumping you into yet another crisis with precious little context or buildup.

All this tightly plotted baby nonsense doesn’t feel at all urgent, because, true to form, Nancy’s playing several angles at once, each with its own possibly lethal consequences.

Nurse Jackie offers both gripping drama and outrageous comedy.

Royal Pains is a pleasant excursion, with some great one-liners and a chance to tweak its well-worn formula.

Jack delivers to every brilliant-offbeat doctor expectation, which means that for all his hyper-performative charms, Jack is also tedious, right down to the zipper in his forehead that marks commercial breaks.

As effective as the big numbers can be, they don't always pay off. The show also has a bad habit of delivering easy solutions to the kids' problems.

Sit Down, Shut Up makes jokes about nut-sacks (of the legume variety). Still, it does one thing very right, and very like the beloved Arrested Development, with talented comedians delivering gags at an exhilarating, rapid-fire pace.

The particulars of the transition involve the usual melodrama, as each regular cast member has a chance to express his or her feelings about Grissom’s departure, however pissy or mundane.

The Cougar is not only oogy and repetitive, but also as behind the curve as TV Land‘s usual rerun fare.

Unfortunately, clumsy writing gets in the way of potential insight.

If visuals are not mundane in Southland, neither is the dialogue, especially the incidental repartee that oils coexistence in a high-stress profession.

It’s not new or challenging or even very strange. It is, however, plenty quirky.

Paul’s sessions this time around are sometimes soapy--as they were last year--but they are always mesmerizing.

The series doesn’t mean to dig deeply into contemporary African social problems or politics, instead, it offers up middlebrow mysteries that can be solved in an episode’s time, a heroine who is keenly observant and positively feminine, a vague sort of half-step forward from Nancy Drew or Jessica Fletcher.

This relationship between king and subjects is the driving concern of Season Three, and marks a welcome departure from the show’s previous focus on the personal drives and desires of Henry VIII.

Combing broad strokes and detailed color on an extensive canvas, Kings makes the rewards and costs of ambition plain for all to see.

This sort of banter takes up a good portion of the Castle premiere episode, each instance of it reinforcing the always-already familiar premise.

Again, Breaking Bad promises to be quite a ride.

Set against Reaper‘s slackers and the largely limited actors who portray them, Wise will having you rooting for the Devil.

To viewers new to the franchise, L&O: UK might prove a fine introduction. For dedicated watchers of the original, it might function as a kind of recap of the "best of" episodes from the series' entire life. But for the truly addicted, it will always be a paler, politer, well-bred echo of the Real Thing, better left on the side of the Atlantic where it originated.

Even as Dollhouse sounds like other TV shows and movies, it is also utterly strange, its premise literally ridiculous and intriguingly metaphorical.

Cavanagh and McCormack bring what you know they will--an effective mix of fast talk and easy delivery to pitch the partners’ situations, which range from silly to predictable.

Things chugged along on the island, even if its temporal hiccups were too often reduced to flip dialogue ("When are we?” was the annoying question du jour).

Lie to Me offers well-designed (and repeatedly, very white) interiors, utterly formulaic scripting, and familiar characters.

While the portrayal of the disorder is gimmicky, the show sustains a particular charm, thanks to solid performances and its honest treatment of the complex relationships in this unconventional family.