Feels strangely empty and hamstrung.... If you like your soaps without novelty, nuance, or bite, Related has four girls for you.

For the most part, 90210 seems unsure what to do with the Gen-X demographic, fitting in an awkward assortment of teachers, guidance counselors, and big sisters alongside the kid stars.

A befuddled retirement party for King's clichés. From start to finish, the show dodders about like an Alzheimer's patient on a scavenger hunt.

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

Not at all intelligent, the show is pretty much immune to any form of legitimate criticism, and further, it will likely be gone within the first few weeks of this television season.

The first episode offers little to recommend. However, if the show can keep up with the boys as they undergo their own awakenings, then it might eventually offer something fresh to the campus comedy canon. If not, the series will become a comedy of last resort.

The jokes fly furiously during the first episode, and the delivery is impeccable all around.

Napoleon Dynamite the series forms its comedic syntax in the vernacular of those established shows [The Simpsons, Family Guy] instead of retaining the singular phrasing of Napoleon Dynamite the movie, and suffers as a result.

Unsupervised appears content to amble along, reiterating what we've seen before.

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.

While options during the era were surely limited, the show's broad strokes don't do justice to the choices women were making, or their self-awareness while making them.

Bruckner takes on the role with gusto, and she and Harron together create someone whose unthinking commitment to the pursuit of “F-U-N” (in Anna’s phrasing) achieves something close to sublimity.

Ironside is an exercise in cynicism, a safety-first raid on the vaults with not a shred of respect for either the its prospective audience.

A relentlessly unfunny mid-season replacement comedy from ABC that sucks all the fun out of dysfunction, the show could have been pitched to network execs as "Arrested Development meets Ordinary People." But it shows none of the former's wit or latter's intelligence.

While Life is Wild is structured as a sort of fishes-out-of-water tale, it is more accurately described as a neocolonial masturbatory fantasy.

The network has risked its own reputation for cutting-edge, genre-busting shows by churning out a sitcom whose main joke is how derivative, unfunny, and unconvincing it is.

Conviction is an awkward show.

The Practice should have been this much fun.

Hart of Dixie doesn't look to be much more than what you'd unfortunately expect.

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 Outcasts degenerates into space melodrama, complete with teens regularly pissed off at their parents. The human community works through corruption, lust for power, and betrayal, but also shows love, dedication, and sacrifice.

At once schematic and preachy, it never indicates the stakes--either for its “diverse” players or for you.

You might be thankful that Sam has explained his job, with so many un-blocked metaphors, if you've never seen a show like Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior before. But because you've seen too many shows like this and too many teams like his, you're unimpressed. You're already too many steps ahead.

Unfortunately, Criminal Minds confuses critical thinking with supernatural abilities.

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.

While Grace must seek to do right, The Mob Doctor is most compelling when she has to sort out what that is, and also when she has to justify what she does wrong.

Unfortunately, the pilot doesn't suggest that there is anything more interesting at work here than a weak attempt to wring laughs out of aliens who are buffoons.

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.

As ordinary as this plot sounds, How To Be a Gentleman has a couple of things going for it, namely, Hornsby and Dillon.

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.

Though she performs a heartfelt song about her mixed emotions, the implication being that Bobby's songs are lies and hers tell truth, the episode's ongoing comedy bits don't support this distinction.

We don't expect nighttime relationship dramas to be thrilling, but we have the right to expect an interesting character or two.

While the show has little going for it, it does have Seth Green.

Combining the flashy trashy aesthetics of reality TV and the rodeo circuit, Rodeo Girls is at its best in the ring itself, as the camera speeds around the barrels with horse and rider.

The series has laid groundwork for minor and mostly predictable complications.

The writers need to differentiate how Allen Gregory relates to Jeremy from how he relates to Julie. If the show had Allen Gregory treat Jeremy and Julie differently, there'd be more opportunity for a wider variety of jokes, including some that don't involve yelling.

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.

Hopper [is] so misfitted for this role that he seems perversely perfect.

Three Wishes is a veritable showcase for corporate largesse, and oh yes, self-promotion.

It helps that Bell is able to suggest complexity, emotional and moral, even when the dialogue fails her.

Zero Hour‘s first episode ends on one hell of a promising cliffhanger, including a shock that comes out of nowhere but still makes sense. If director Pierre Morel can ask for a few more takes (occasional scenes feel like actors are still rehearsing) and if the script turns as strange as that episode-ending shock suggests it might, Zero Hour may actually be more new than recycled.

It isn't just the concept that's unoriginal, but also the scripting. The show has an abundance of jokes, but few elicit more than a grin.

The plots of the first episodes have none of the labyrinthine structure of classic Seinfeld episodes; they feel more like vehicles for prewritten bits. They’re funny, but they don’t sound like regular people talking. This artificial sensibility is exacerbated by various performances.

With a winning lead player and supporting cast, plus an interesting premise, Moonlight has potential.

Cole is good and Price is evil. And neither one of them is remotely interesting.

Save for Sheila, the parents are likable and their circumstances familiar, but Guys with Kids relies too often on predictable jokes.

Trapped in the hour-long drama structure, the half-hour sitcom that The Mysteries of Laura might long to be never finds its footing.

Carpoolers opted to careen straight into a gender war minefield, with stock male characters looking hapless amid a seeming pack of controlling, lazy, and deceitful women.

The plots are thin, generally revolving around the idea that dumb is smart and smart is dumb.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter offers precious few chuckles and lots of angst and argument.

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.

This isn't to say Are You There, Chelsea? is completely hopeless. There are bright spots. The brightest, predictably, is Handler.

The individual performers, enthusiastic as they seem to be, are hardly helped by this approach. Shannon and John Michael Higgins (who plays Kath’s new boyfriend, Phil Knight) are both used to playing lovable buffoons. But their time is largely wasted here.

Funny but inconsequential.

While it returns Allen to a Mr. Fix-it style of parenting and some broad he-man comedy, the show offers fewer grunts and more shrieking female voices.

The show is, in various ways, just such a trick, not quite convincing viewers that its shtick is authentic, but granting that those viewers get the joke (and will forgive, and even enjoy, the cheesy results).

Here everyone, even Bosley, seems interchangeable.

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

Despite the many hard bodies on display, South Beach is flabby.

There's no bottom to this show's sentimentality.

This is dicey subject matter (especially for those viewers who have struggled to become pregnant or know someone who has), and at times the tone seems blasé, even offensive.

If it's trying to emulate Sex and the City, Love, Inc. misses the fact that that show presented us with complex characters from the get-go; here the single women are all pretty much one-shtick ponies.

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

UPN's new series has a shot -- in the sweepstakes for the worst reality show of all time.

These stereotypes (the befuddled one, the needy one, the sexist pig) hardly make for the most engaging cast of characters.

Only Kroll managed to wring any comedy out of this ham-handed premise.

It will most likely be remembered for years to come, alongside My Mother, the Car and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, as one of TV's truly bad ideas.

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.

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.

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.

His new foray into television, James Ellroy's LA: City of Demons, delivers more of the same. And his pulp-noir style and fixation on dead women will probably appeal to fans but win no new converts.

The host never seems genuinely interested in the places he visits. Because Larry the Cable Guy is a character and not a real person, his interactions feel calculated.

As preposterous as this sounds, Being Human benefits from being reasonably self-aware as well as intelligent in the questions it asks.

This season is shaping up to be a good one, with strong personalities and savvy players. The Redemption Island twist is making for compelling duels, and no one knows yet how the winner of the Island challenges will integrate back into the tribe.

Still, the plot that sparks this dramatic energy, as happens too frequently with the ageing L&O franchise, is humdrum, trusting too much to fans' loyalty and anticipation of the closing spectacle, when Goren flays the murderer into confession.

Like other roads in other seasons, those in Manitoba will assuredly begin to look routine over time, leaving show creator and executive producer Thom Beers to rely again on exaggerated danger, overbearing music cues, and personal conflict to provide the drama.

If there aren't a lot of surprises in The Inbetweeners' new season, that in itself is expected by its fans. Conceived as a down-to-earth antidote to the glossy sexcapades of Channel 4's other teen series, Skins, The Inbetweeners displays kids warts and all.

Drop Dead Diva seems regularly to be patting silly, charming women on their heads and telling them they're cute, as when Jane's new boyfriend (David Denman) tries to soothe her by saying, "When you get mad, you're pretty adorable." Such irritations undermine the show's kicky surrealism.

All this is to say that it's good to see that Season Four starts without any arc in sight. At least until the last minutes of the premiere episode.

It seems unfair to complain that Childrens Hospital isn't great. But given that what it used to be, good isn't really good enough.

It's the rock-solid basic format that makes the show feel vital even 11 years and 22 seasons in.

The Amazing Race is at its best when it anticipates our assumptions about other people, overturns them, and then invites all new judgments.

We are afforded perspectives on staff and patients alike. But, this ER runs almost too smoothly.

One needs to hone in on the performers to find reasons to stay engaged, because the plots and premises of Criminal Minds are worn thin as filaments by this point.

Despite its gratuitous nudity, double-crossing gunplay, and growing pile of corpses, Bored to Death is a remarkably gentle show and its characters surprisingly lovable.

Like many prophecies, the show overreaches a little and tends to vague details, but it also offers means with which to think about what lies ahead.

There's enough action-packed monster fighting to keep the show exciting, the character development is solid, and the cerebral overarching plot will keep sci-fi fans interested.

If this kind of comedy fails in its airless context, Todd Margaret's illogical universe can still be entertaining, at least for brief moments.

The special effects won't keep you up nights, the transformations and the blood remain un-frightening. Instead of such visceral sensations, the show reveals what's human in monsters and vice versa.

In its first season, Love in the Wild was thoroughly mediocre. But any improvements this year are sadly negated by the presence of McCarthy.

Most of the time, Wipeout is quite wonderfully in touch with its unabashed silliness.

This shying away from meaty storylines typifies the longstanding weakness of Major Crimes and, to a certain extent, The Closer before it.... As the team has little to do on the job, the episode fills out the time with minor whiffs of narrative.

Copper reveals not only the grim living conditions of 19th century New York, but also the implications of unchecked police power.

Despite the new episode’s title, “Ch-Ch-Changes,” not much here is different.

The navel-gazing tenor doesn’t always obscure Parenthood‘s thought-provoking moments, which often also showcase clipped, witty scripting, and lucid acting.

Archer‘s affection for character and craft makes it more likely to be remembered as one of the great TV shows of our time, and not just another dirty cartoon.

Still impressively detailed and masterfully assembled, the show again focuses on the classed relations among employees and employers, relations that can be both supportive and dysfunctional, and, increasingly, affected by external forces.

Even with selective choices of what reality to include in its fiction, Sleepy Hollow is effective, biting like a vampire, infecting with simultaneous thrill and dread.