Hellcats

It takes us to the South and to a class-conscious frame of mind and then introduces a web of complicated relationships that the eye recognizes as cross-racial but the dialogue does not. For now, it seems that this is a tale of collegiate self-discovery and hand-spring liberation that just happens to be set in the post-racial America I keep hearing about it.

Is it must-see TV? Perhaps not, but it's a lively and light addition to The CW lineup and pairs well with the unabashed silliness of "America's Next Top Model."

In the larger picture, Hellcats has the deceptively tricky mission of taking what has been a 90-minute idea in most other incarnations and stretching it into an ongoing series. But it serves up plenty of eye candy to enhance the ride, so hey, gimme an M for Marti!

Played partly tongue in cheek, the show's premiere isn't quite unabashedly trashy enough to completely qualify as a guilty pleasure, but one can see it developing into that.

So what you get from Hellcats is a wildly derivative wish-fulfillment view of college life made to appeal to junior-high girls, most of whom are too young to recognize how many shows and movies Hellcats has appropriated.

Tom Welling's picked up all the wrong lessons from behind the screen, from premise to character development. Hellcats is poorly paced and its attempts at comedy and drama stumble.

Story-wise, the show is awful--stock characters, nonsensical motivations, obvious plot turns, bad acting... The routines--and the dynamic filming of them --are dazzling enough to distract from the surrounding lousiness.