Perhaps Allen Gregory's arrogance is meant to be entertaining, but I just found it mostly insufferable, despite his occasional flashes of self-awareness.

It's be one thing if the show employed thinly drawn, cliched characters in service of solid comedy, but very little of Glory Daze is actually funny.

No matter how many times the show piles on another complication for the patients of the week, everything about the characters and the cases has a been-there, done-that feeling, and that rote quality is not mitigated by the occasional acknowledgement of the show's jungle setting.

Not only are Whitney's jokes a little musty, the multi-camera format seems like the wrong choice for this comedy.

Unfortunately the new version of Being Human is more repetitive, clunky and melodramatic than the previous one.

Veep simply isn't particularly fresh or funny, and most of its jokes are telegraphed from a long way away.

Aside from the moments in which Stephen Moyer and a few supporting actors are on the screen, however, the show fails to ignite in any sustainable and meaningful way.

To really hook into this drama, you have to care about the kids and their fates, but to me, they all remained predictable types throughout, and the show did a poor job of showcasing the terrific Octavia Spencer.

So far, it's contrived, predictable and seemingly allergic to ambiguity and subtext.

Well, this is a pile of nonsense, but at least it's more or less inoffensive nonsense.

The show is so bland and forgettable that it gives me no real reason to return.

On paper, it all appears to be functional. In reality, I find myself uninterested in Ryan's minuscule problems and Wilfred's repeated attempts to hector or nag Ryan into taking more chances with his narrow little life.

A weird photocopy containing little atmosphere and less emotional resonance.

Karen Gillan is a treasure, and it's only by dint of her presence that this comedy works some of the time. Yet in a larger sense, "Selfie" does not really work, because there are a lot of unpleasant and judgmental elements lurking in its premise.

The New Normal needs to work in a more linear and emotionally direct fashion, and there's not much about this NBC pilot, which is fueled by a mixture of cattiness and slick manipulation, that reassures me on that front.

Every point is hammered home with a complete lack of subtlety; during the closing argument in the pilot, bits of previous scenes were replayed at crucial moments, in case the audience forgot what transpired several minutes ago. It's always a good time when a television network assumes that you're a half-wit.

I came away from HBO's five-part series with a great deal of respect for Winslet's impassioned performance, but so many other aspects of Mildred Pierce worked against Winslet's naturalistic style that parts of the miniseries ended up being, frankly, a slog.

Frankly, it's avant-garde to the point of feeling overwrought and pretentious.

The two leads lack any kind of chemistry, platonic or otherwise, and the storytelling lacks the smarts and insight of one of TV's best Sherlockian creations, "House."

For all its predictable moments, however, Made in Jersey is still more or less watchable, thanks to Montgomery, who is an effortlessly appealing actress.

Despite all the show's flaws, she makes some quieter emotional moments work, thanks to her undeniable presence and skills. The by-the-numbers vehicle that has been constructed around her isn't worthy of her talent, however.

Common Law, like "Fairly Legal" before it, isn't just formulaic--it's lazy.

This middling-to-mediocre Reelz production is at least a few notches above a Syfy Saturday night movie. The special effects in "Ring" are sometimes passable and sometimes fairly terrible, but there is an actual story on display and manages to be somewhat timely.

The second season of this Western finds it marginally better paced and the characters moderated a bit from the broad archetypes seen in Season 1, but I still find little to compel me in the story of a robber baron and an ex-soldier teaming up to get a transcontinental railroad built.

The drama, which is an adaptation of a U.K. series of the same name, tries way too hard to be a Serious Cable Drama. The strain almost turns it into a parody of the genre.

Rosewood brings nothing distinctive or memorable to the formula, aside from the welcome diversity of its cast.

Happy Endings is really no better than any of those other comedies ['Better With You,' 'Traffic Light' and 'Perfect Couples,'], which is to say, it's pretty weak.

As rendered here, none of its medical crises or characters are terribly compelling.

Again and again, the show takes what should be subtext and turned it into stilted dialogue that grows repetitive very quickly.

There is a flatness to the supporting characters--Saul's wife and Carrie's sister are now garden-variety Prestige Cable nags--and a measured predictability to the overall story that drains too much tension from even the sight of a wig-free Corey Stoll. Yet Mandy Patinkin and F. Murray Abraham are still fantastic, the show still employs top-notch directors and Homeland can still rustle up an atmosphere of tense isolation when it needs to. All in all, many of the tin-eared elements would more or less tolerable if I were still intrigued by Carrie Mathison.

I can't see this comedy having long-term appeal, given the thinness of the premise and the boring character at its center.

Despite solid work from the show's supporting cast, none of the elements of this show really work. So far, the only thing it has going for it is that it kicked "Perfect Couples" off the air.

The problem is, like "Sean Saves the World" and "The Michael J. Fox Show," this show is formulaic, slightly frantic and relies too much on unearned sentiment.

In execution, Turn is plodding, predictable and a bit confusing, though I might have tried harder to follow the plot had any of the characters made it worth my while. As it is, the characters are mostly paper-thin and forgettable.

Mr. Sunshine isn't particularly hilarious or endearing, and the comedy doesn't surround Perry with a balanced ensemble of characters who get to be funny as well.

Believe substitutes mawkish sentiment for character development and thinks mysterious incidents and procedural beats constitute a story.

Much of the show simply feels disjointed, or tired, or both. Despite intermittent flashes of liveliness, the pacing of Ray Donovan is off, especially at first, when it feels as though the show is trying to cover too much ground and cram in too much backstory about the Donovans' troubled past in Boston.

There is awkwardness and idiocy on display in Life's Too Short, which stars actor Warwick Davis as a hopefully inaccurate version of himself, but almost none of it is funny, much of it is off-putting and all of it is pointless.

Perfect Couples is so screechy, predictable and lame that I kind of despised these characters within minutes of being introduced to them.

What's mystifying is why Starz and the creators of Black Sails seem to think that, given the expanding array of options available to consumers, any content creators can get away with peddling fare that can't even manage to be consistently mediocre.

[The actors] are cramped by obvious, unsubtle writing and a show that doesn't seem to have much of an idea of where to take these sardonic characters.

The characters are thinner than cardboard cutouts, and I could see every “twist” coming from a mile away.

ABC has a house style, and this workmanlike execution of that style pretty much derails this drama. Many interior scenes are over-lit and thus not spooky, and there’s just a blandness in the casting and the production design that does nothing to help The Whispers build up the kind of mysterious atmosphere it needs to work.

Unfortunately, heaping helpings of atmosphere do not make up for the lack of a strong narrative thread or the fact that the characters are so thinly drawn that it's hard to care about anything they do.

A tedious array of shrieky moments, dumb stereotypes and unearned sentiment.

The attempt to shoehorn the Shat into the strained story of a father and an adult son, Henry, getting to know each other for the first time seems false. And when there are glimmers that it might work, Shatner's character, Ed, is visited by his grating other son, Vince, and his even more grating wife, Bonnie. They're awful.

It's the sloppy approach to context and the tabloid-y aspects of Vice that are ultimately harder to take than the self-aggrandizing bro-ness of it all.

The Goldbergs has a solid adult cast, but the whole thing leans heavily on broad humor and cartoonish moments--and did I mention that it's LOUD.

The actors have no chemistry together and their characters lack the kind of depth and texture that a well-crafted TV project would have been able to give them. Various actors frequently have to deliver painful exposition dumps, the storytelling is often incoherent.

Feisty is one thing, rude is another. But all of that is of a piece with the show's generally lazy approach to storytelling: A couple of supporting characters are cardboard villains, and a subplot about a minor's surgical procedure doesn't make a ton of sense if you know the first thing about medical privacy laws.

It's good at being tedious.

There's no getting around it: There are just big problems in the execution of this engaging premise, and I doubt I'll be able to get beyond what I've already seen, given how regularly the show turned me off in the early going.

The show treats this central culture clash with a great deal of tentativeness, a quality that never makes for good comedy, yet despite its scaredy-cat caution, Outsourced still manages to be vaguely insulting and condescending.

It’s hard to assess much of the acting here because most of the actors are confined by a script that swings between harsh judgments and moments of deep sentimentality that almost feel as if they were included to be compensatory.

It keeps resorting to broad gags and dopey jokes, and, just to mix things up, every so often it lunges at sincerity. None of it lands, unfortunately.

This contrived, airless comedy is not a good vehicle for him, nor is there much enjoyment to be found in the show's musty supporting characters.

Good comedies take a lot of work, but that strain shouldn't show up on the screen. It pains me to say that, despite all the obvious effort, I can't see how Running Wilde could get significantly better.

The tacked-on attempt to give the show some heart ("See, they're just crazy, mixed-up regular folks with good intentions!") was so disappointingly cynical and contrived. It was a transparent attempt to give depth to something that had so vociferously lacked it.

This is a case of a show just not working on both a structural and emotional level.

Chelsea doesn't do anything to make the TV version of Chelsea interesting, likable or winning.

At least Lewis appeared to be having fun, which can't be said of anyone else in this rather grim production.

I might have tried harder to get past the bad taste that situation left in my mouth, had the rest of the show not been fairly paint-by-numbers and generic, but as escapist hours go, there's not a lot of meat on the bone here.

One of the most narrow and timid fall seasons in memory. This premise is particularly tired.

Despite a great deal of visible effort, the first four episodes of The Strain never succeeded in making Corey Stoll's epidemiologist character even remotely compelling. Unfortunately most of the other characters are even more superficial and predictable, which made it nearly impossible to stay engaged when they began doing dumb things. The only real bright spot in The Strain is David Bradley.

Aside from Don Johnson’s canny oil baron, and as we found with the “Dallas” revival, one savvy old dude can’t always carry an entire show on his back, especially when the rest of it is so mechanical.

There's a tentative blandness to 'Star-Crossed' that hindered my ability to care about any of its broadly sketched characters.

Given that this show was created by "Scream" writer Kevin Williamson, there's the usual showy deconstruction of scary-story cliches, but that deconstruction just draws attention to how hollow this project is. ... Ultimately, my dislike for The Following has less to do with its gore factor than with its essential laziness, silliness and pretentiousness.

The only thing I can think about when I watch the Millers is that Margo Martindale deserves so much better than this, and I wish she was free of this show's hackneyed, overly broad "humor."

The rhythms, the "jokes" and the pace are all stiff and overwrought, and priority seems to be giving Sean Hayes a huge number of opportunities to mug for the camera.

When The Newsroom isn't obvious and self-congratulatory, it's manipulative and shrieky.

Everything about Magic City shows a lack of depth, and the pacing is almost glacial.

What a big mess, and what a disappointing waste of Debra Messing.

This annoying show is not quite as drenched in dumb and/or sexist assumptions as "Mixology," but that is the lowest possible bar to clear.

The women here are shrewish, the vibe is both manic and tired, and overall, the decent cast (which includes the wonderful Anthony Anderson) is given nothing funny to do.

This just doesn't work on any level and creates very little suspense, even in life-or-death situations.

NBC's new Jimmy Smits vehicle is called Outlaw. I guess the title 'Contrived, Irritating Star Vehicle' just wasn't as catchy.

ABC is advertising that the show's creators wrote "The Hangover," but imagine that movie with the heart and charm removed, and you're left with these skeevy remains.

CBS programs generally display a level of basic competence that this "comedy" falls woefully short of.

Super Fun Night isn't just bad, it's infuriatingly bad, given Wilson's likability, game energy and overall potential as a TV personality.

The bigger problem is, this show clearly has designs on being the next "Modern Family" and yet it isn't charming in the slightest. To hook viewers, the pilot needs to make them care about at least one person in this ensemble, and it can't manage that.

Liz and Dick is badly paced, cheap-looking and encrusted with a tinkly, preposterous soundtrack that is designed to make viewers go insane.

It doesn't work as a character drama and it's tiresome more often than it's freakily scary.

Women are as capable of writing a misogynist, soul-killing TV comedy as anyone else. Exhibit A: I Hate My Teenage Daughter, a shrieky nightmare.

Creatively speaking, Dads comes off as if it were a much-resented homework assignment for all involved.

The existence of this comedy, which pretends to be brash but mainly succeeds in being more offensive, unfunny and predictable than Dads, told me that we have angered the gods.

Despite the careful attention to image enhancement possibilities, the core ugliness and toxic narcissism of Anger Management are impossible to ignore.

It's surprising to me that this ever got past the development stage, because nothing about Tyrant truly works. It's a halting, strained hodgepodge that ends up being an awkward mixture of bland and offensive.

This shoddy program is nothing more than exploitative, misogynist trash.