The second half of the pilot improves over the first. So there's progress.

It's a show I would really like to like, and there are elements present in the pilot that make me want to see how it's doing by, say, episode four or five, but it's not there yet.

The show is pretty much a by-the-numbers cop show.

Anyone looking for soapy twists and turns, shocking violence and a fast-paced ride will get what they want from creator Kevin Williamson and crew, just don't expect the show to dig deep into its characters or give you much to think about in the process.

Action will only take the show so far, but eventually viewers need to care about the characters or they don't have a reason to keep watching and Chase turns into a show that gets watched as an afterthought, not as appointment viewing.

The disconnect between what Mind Games wants to be and the show bubbling just under the surface makes it a bit of a puzzling viewing experience.

While a nice romantic comedy is a good escape, this one uses too many romantic cliches a little too late.

While it's never as silly or artless as HBO's overpraised "Game Change," Spector is low-stakes, procedure-oriented and deliberately claustrophobic, lacking in the sort of sharply pointed dialogue one may expect from Mamet

Lifetime chose to tell a by-the-numbers tale of passion gone wrong rather than the potentially compelling (if lurid) courtroom story that played out on news channels for weeks earlier this year.

Despite being populated with likable actors giving mostly solid performances, it's hard to escape the feeling that you've seen this before.

You might feel bad for the wine, and maybe for the hour you could have spent doing other things. You probably won't feel bad for Sara or Jack.

The Season 4 struggle starts somewhat intriguing, but gets repetitive quick.

Labyrinth takes way too long to hit the ground running and introduce the actual story, so part 1 is confusing and fails to get viewers to care about both the past and present storylines.

A boring non-event.

From shows like "Alias" to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to "Nikita," it has become commonplace to see hot chicks action stars. So a "Charlie's Angels" reboot has to offer something else in order to work. And it doesn't.

House of Lies lacks the heart of "Shameless" and Kaan lacks the likability of Duchovny's Hank Moody, which means we care very little about the characters after two episodes.

Mob City presents a sumptuous-looking period piece with remarkable attention to detail. But beyond that, it all feels a little bit overblown.

Well, let's hope the show gets better after the pilot episode.

Just know going in that you'll be far better served by acknowledging the towering silliness of the plot, because it's just about impossible to take it seriously.

Instead of an entertaining half-hour to ease our wait for the return of "30 Rock," the network has given us another "Outsourced."

Now that finished episodes are out there, we can tell you that it's not great.

Taken together, the monotone voices and 2D characters end up falling flat.

There are random fast forwards to jump to the parts of Aaliyah's story Lifetime was able to secure the rights to tell rather than trying to portray an accurate timeline of her career. For fans of the late singer it feels egregious and for casual watchers it's disorienting and uncomfortable.

For all its stylistic appeal, one sizable problem remains with Allen Gregory--it's not funny.

It quickly devolves into borderline slapstick comedy that was old when the Three Stooges were doing it.

There was one laugh-out-loud moment in the premiere and that was when son Henry imitated his father and William Shatner's character remarked that no one can do a good impression of him. Otherwise it was a lot of furrowed-brow staring at the TV when the laugh track roared, wondering what the #*!! they were laughing at.

Broad, cheap and tedious, it wouldn't have the slightest chance of cracking a major network's schedule during the regular season.

As you might expect, the results are pretty offensive, but not even for their obvious racial and cultural ignorance. It's the laziness with which every element of this show was assembled that makes Outsourced such an annoying blister of a television series.