Roadies

The writing is clunky and often irritating. The acting is all over the place. The expository harangues are limitless.

The pilot is a messy clunker that will test the patience of Crowe's core fans; the second, written by Winnie Holzman, one of the executive producers along with J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk and Len Goldstein, is a more assured and coherent effort that still falls short of digging out of the hole created by the pilot; and the third episode is sadly terrible, the kind of hour filled with bad decisions and triteness that offers little hope for a creative recovery going forward.

Given the absence of an intoxicating atmosphere and the lack of dramatic momentum, episodes ramble on and on punishingly, like a jam band that refuses to leave the stage.

It is a sporadically engaging mess that eventually slouches away from your attention span like a puppy caught piddling on the rug.