Once freed from the scaffolding and backstory constraints of a series premiere, Journeyman may find itself.

A good-natured show with a convincing sense of fun and a likeable cast, Chuck also has the wit, confidence, and grasp of the cultural climate to turn a running joke about a celebrity porn site into a major plot device.

Other shows do complicate and elaborate the geek mystique ("CSI" and "Bones" come to mind), but all we’re likely to get from The Big Bang Theory are missed communications, fumbled opportunities, and general yuckety-yucks.

If you strip away the designer shoes and drinks, the show is left with all the hallmarks of a typical teen melodrama.

Kid Nation does not mean to find out whether kids can do what adults could not. It means instead to demonstrate that these kids really would die without the intervention of adults.

Tell Me You Love Me begins within confines, its white, middle class, straight couples all dealing with versions of the same problem. That this focus might be "real" is not the question. More troubling, for a series banking on its newness, is that the focus is so familiar.

The writer-director makes some inspired, insightful cinematic choices. However, the play’s untidiness--it’s one of Shakespeare’s most mischievous--virtually guarantees a final product distinguished by individual performances rather than dramatic consistency.

Although Brown repeatedly manipulates behavior, Mind Control ultimately comes across as a refreshingly honest endeavor. The tricks are entertaining, and the explanations revelatory.

Interactions are rendered in smart, layered compositions, with elements that crowd and obscure, colors that distract and focus your attention. Such plot intricacies might appear contrived, but twisting even in the first episode suggests otherwise.

Smart-ass, angry girls’ solidarity characterizes State of Mind.

The series proceeds to follow Jenny’s remarkably bland course of revelation.

Though the show occasionally lapses into the “cringe comedy” mode, made popular by "The Office" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Flight of the Conchords" is also quite sweet.

Molly and her friends spend so much time name-dropping and worrying about reputations, we never feel connected to their pain or joy. The show’s foundational preoccupation with Hollywood does produce some humor, most often in film-based fantasy sequences.

Funny but inconsequential.

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

Despite some promising moments in the first few episodes, the show seems destined for the same fate as Ellie.

Those who enjoy Sons & Daughters enjoyed Arrested Development more, and the same viewers put off by the latter's off-the-wall humor will also be put off the new show.

Conviction is an awkward show.

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

Love Monkey is an anomaly, an intelligent, well-written dramedy for adults about adults, even if some of the chords it hits are in a minor key.

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.

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

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

Sleeper Cell is compelling television primarily for its excellent performances and chilling premises, rather than its plots. Alarming as these may be, they are rendered here with predictable rising and falling action, a bit of romance, and some tidily resolved conflicts.

If the first offering, "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road," is any indication, the hoped-for resurrection of in-your-face frights is still a couple of corpses away.

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

[The show has] married the procedural to melodrama, with occasionally intriguing results.

Despite these obvious missteps and in between the blatant attempts to appease original fans, Night Stalker shows promise.