Pilot Inspektor Tim: Hell on Wheels

The show: Hell on Wheels, Sundays on AMC

The premise in ten words or less? Civil War vet works the railroad, hunts his wife's killers.

Any good? If there's one thing I've learned from all other critiques of Hell on Wheels across this great wide internet, it's that you're apparently contractually mandated to talk at length about Deadwood if you review this show. Now, I'm not here to dispute the greatness of Deadwood, and it certainly goes without saying that Colm Meaney's semi-antagonistic railroad magnate here smells faintly of Al Swearengen, but, despite being Westerns set in roughly the same timeframe, I feel the shows are doing two very different things on a structural level.

Deadwood, boiled down to its most basic premise, was locked in and literally about one location, and explored the growth and culture and politics and ins and outs of that location in exhausting detail. Welcome to fuckin' Deadwood! It can be combative!

Hell on Wheels, in stark contrast, is pretty much an on-the-road adventure show. I imagine the people behind it might blanch at such an analysis, thinking it far too base for what they're creating, but it's true. The show, set in 1865 shortly after the death of Lincoln, seems designed to move along with construction of the transcontinental railroad, and has built into its inherent premise a means to continually introduce new characters and locations and conflicts, while of course keeping it anchored by those who work on the railroad.

Chief among this main cast is Anson Mount (which already sounds more like a Western character's name than a real man) as Cullen Bohannon, a Confederate Civil War vet and former slave owner who goes undercover working railroad construction while on a Kill Bill-esque mission to bring vengeance to his wife's wartime murderers one by one. It's a pretty solid premise that provides wiggle room to showcase cool Old West settings that don't necessarily adhere to the archetypal deserts and dusty towns (most of the show actually takes place in the grasslands of middle America) and to tell stories ranging from longform serialized plots to standalone revenge-of-the-week episodes.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Mr. Mount has the presence to bear the load of an entire TV series on his admittedly masculine shoulders. He has a cool beard and a glare and that gravelly Western voice going on, granted. But he just doesn't have the gravitas or the charisma that you might hope for from such an iconic Man With No Name-esque figure, and there isn't nearly as much mystery in his eyes as the director seems to think there is in long, slow, extreme close-ups. In a perfect world, this role would be played by Viggo Mortensen, but sadly, ol' Viggo don't do TV.

This being a serialized cable drama, there is of course an extended cast, but the three biggest players besides Bohannon seem to be Common as Elam Ferguson, a former slave and railroad worker who may or may not prove an ally of Bohannon's (probably so, because the one major black character isn't going to be a villain), Colm Meaney as Thomas "Doc" Durant, the aforementioned ruthless railroad magnate, and Dominique McElligott as Lily Bell, the wife of a contractor who finds herself on the run from some hostile Native Americans.

None of these characters or performances just blew me away, but none were particularly problematic either. I'll offer further judgment on them when I re-review the series in weeks to come. I do raise an eyebrow at the show's adherence to what's been called the "Smurfette Principle" – there being exactly one prominent female in an otherwise all-male cast, something that Deadwood certainly didn't struggle with – which arguably places even more pressure on the character of Lily to step up than anyone else, so let's hope the writers are up to the task.

Now, I should stress that despite the adventure show moniker I've bestowed upon it, I wouldn't really define this as an action series in the traditional sense of the term (at least not yet – Breaking Bad has action scenes, but they tend to be spaced many episodes apart, so Hell on Wheels may be working its way there). There's one scene that could kind of be described as a slaughter and some other instances of bloodshed and death, but, at least in the pilot, these other instances tend to be done in the blink of an eye; the exclamation points on the end of scenes rather than the sentences.

For examples of both the light side and the dark side of where patience with action could lead, you don't even need to change your channel off of AMC. On the one hand, you have Breaking Bad, a show with such rich characterization that long, action-free stretches can nonetheless be gripping and fraught with tension. On the other hand, you have The Walking Dead, which doesn't seem to have any idea what to do with itself if the zombies aren't on the offensive. At this point for Hell on Wheels it's just a question of how well they can do the character work and which show they'd rather be.

But the first episode, while containing a few dead spots, makes for an overall solid and decently atmospheric introduction into the show's world. The production values and costumes and all that are nice enough that I never questioned it being the 1860s, and I think there's a lot of incredibly interesting places the show could go given a few seasons as Bohannon rises up in the railroad biz. It's not great, but I like to imagine that it could be great if they don't fuck it up. So, if you have any inclination towards Westerns whatsoever, check it out.

Will I watch again? It's on AMC, so yes, you can pretty definitively book the first season of this one on my viewing schedule. Now, recent episodes of The Walking Dead have me questioning whether or not the AMC brand is worth what it used to be just a year ago, but still, the network behind Breaking Bad deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Premise: B+

Execution: B

Performances: B-

Potential: A-

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Once Upon a Time

The show: Once Upon a Time, Sundays on ABC

The premise in ten words or less? Woman moves to town populated by fairy tale characters.

Any good? The one monumentally appealing thing Once Upon a Time has going for it is that, perhaps on the most fundamental level of any new show this fall, I've never seen this story on television before. Even my two favorite new shows this season, Homeland and Boss, while superbly scripted and performed, are on some level putting new spins on old anti-terrorism and political stories, respectively. Once Upon a Time, which I was only able to very loosely paraphrase the plot of in the allotted ten words above, isn't putting a new spin on anything. It's just new.

While the story does indeed involve Jennifer Morrison's protagonist Emma Swan rolling into the town of Storybrooke, Maine after the son Henry she gave up for adoption ten years earlier tracks her down and she's forced to drive him home, and the town is indeed populated by fairy tale characters, it's a little more complicated than all that.

Storybrooke's residents, who include the Evil Queen, Snow White, Jiminy Cricket (in human form), Prince Charming, Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, the Seven Dwarfs, and many more, have not only been transplanted from their fairy tale origins but also seem to have lost all memories prior to said transplant and are now living as contemporary American people who share characteristics of who they used to be, perhaps most notably the Evil Queen as the town's somewhat dictatorial mayor, Henry's adopted mother, and, before long, Emma's archnemesis.

The show was created and is run by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz, who worked on Lost for all six seasons, so it should come as no shock that this information – when it isn't delivered via exposition from young Henry, one of the town's only residents who isn't from a fairy tale and perhaps the only one who knows the truth – is doled out via flashbacks which take us from Maine to a high fantasy fairy tale land of castles and princes and witches and swords and magic and whatnot, where the Evil Queen plots revenge on Snow White for some unknown slight. Normally I'd object to Kitsis and Horowitz plumbing Lost's leftovers so soon, but, at least from the point of view of a fantasy nerd, these flashbacks are a fairly enjoyable way to shake things up.

Now, when it comes to television, I'm a sucker for the new and the original, and I can at least initially overlook at lot of flaws if they're in service of something that has nothing to do with cops, doctors, or lawyers. So I give this show a thumbs up for its unorthodox narrative, but beyond that there's undeniably a lot that's really messy about it. When I said there was one monumentally appealing thing about Once Upon a Time, I meant there was one monumentally appealing thing, and a number of other decent or flawed things I hope improve.

On the plot level, as of two episodes in at least, the Storybrooke scenes feel kind of directionless and inconsequential, and the town's residents' reactions to Emma just chilling in the town for a little bit and getting to know her son feel unconvincingly fascinated or unconvincingly hostile. I guess that's the danger of serialized shows – procedurals may be boring and predictable, but at least you know what the plot is. In the Storybrooke part of this show, which is about three-quarters to two-thirds of both episodes I watched, I'm not quite sure what the heroes or villains want, why they're up against each other, or where any of this is going.

Now, in the fairy tale scenes, the Evil Queen goes apeshit and blasts plenty of people with lethal black magic. If she gets her powers back in the real world and starts doing so there, things could get interesting. As of now, the bulk of each episode feels like it's biding time.

On the acting level, the biggest blemish is without a doubt Jared S. Gilmore as Henry, giving the exact kind of overly precocious, overly cute, not remotely convincing performance you usually expect from child actors (and that the show Gilmore is a transplant from, Mad Men, is actually one of the best-known avoiders of via Kiernan Shipka's Sally Draper). Normally this isn't a big deal, since little kid characters tend to be stuck somewhere in the background, but in this case he has maybe the most screentime of anyone save Emma and the Queen, and it grates.

I also haven't been extremely engaged by Jennifer Morrison as Emma (perhaps because she doesn't have that much to do), but thankfully, outside of those two, I like most of the cast. Ginnifer Goodwin is basically the living embodiment of "likable," which shines through in her Snow White. Former Bond villain Robert Carlyle cheeses it up admirably as Rumpelstiltskin and Lana Parrilla tears into the Evil Queen / the mayor with a relish that I have to admit makes me kind of root for her over the show's nominal hero. Not to mention Giancarlo Esposito – goddamn Gustavo Fring himself! – as the Evil Queen's Magic Mirror and, in the real world, reporter for The Daily Mirror newspaper. I hear he also makes great fried chicken.

Ultimately, whether or not I end up liking Once Upon a Time and continuing with it into 2012 and beyond comes down to where it's going. If the real world scenes (which I assume will come to gradually take over the show, as a network TV budget can't nurse extended high fantasy sequences forever) turn into a bloodless soap opera with Emma and the Queen trying to one-up each other in Desperate Housewives fashion (as they do in the second episode), then I'll be done. If Storybrooke gets more dangerous, magical, and action-packed, I might well be in. We'll see.

Will I watch again? I always like to see a fantasy series on television, so I'm gonna stick this one out for a little while, see where it takes us. And if it takes us into a glowing cave with a cork stopping up a pool of magic I will be extremely upset.

Premise: A-

Execution: B-

Performances: B-

Potential: B+

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Allen Gregory

The show: Allen Gregory, Sundays on Fox

The premise in ten words or less? Spoiled, precocious seven-year-old transfers to public elementary school.

Any good? I'll say upfront that I'm not the person to talk to when it comes to animated sitcoms. I don't really watch them, like, at all. I did watch the first new Beavis and Butt-head since there was so much hype surrounding it, and I watched an episode of The Simpsons a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure those are the first two animated sitcom episodes I've seen since the pilot of Bob's Burgers in January (although I'll add the caveat that I love Mission Hill and Undergrads and own both on DVD, so I guess there's exceptions to every rule).

So I'll keep my thoughts on Allen Gregory quick and simple. The show centers around the title character, a little kid voiced by Jonah Hill with two gay dads who is used to a pampered life of luxury and intellectual snobbery. After his dads lose their money, he's forced to attend a public elementary school, where his elitist attitude immediately makes him an object of ridicule, but he does make one friend. He also has an adopted Cambodian sister, Julie.

Summed up quickly, I didn't find any of it that funny. I do think there's some appeal to reversing the Simpsons / Family Guy tradition of dumb guys at the center of animated sitcoms with a guy too smart for the world instead, but in practice Allen Gregory himself fails to be either likable and sympathetic or dislikable in a funny way. He's just a bit of a prick, and the characters around him all feel fairly generic (although if forced to pick a favorite I'd go with his deadpan sister Julie). There was one scene where Allen Gregory abruptly gets a crush on his elderly principal that made me chuckle, but that was about the extent of my laughter.

Now, I'm sure the series will evolve as Allen Gregory begins finding his place at his new school and they come up with new characters to surround him with, but this pilot didn't have enough heart, humor, or creativity to keep me around to see that happen. But with all that said, I did actually rather enjoy the crisp, colorful animation, particularly the way the characters are drawn. Finding the art style repellent is the main thing that kept me from watching any more of Bob's Burgers, so it's a shame they couldn't have gotten some of the designers who wound up here.

Will I watch again? If I was interested in watching an animated sitcom I'd be much more likely to just catch up on all the Futurama I've missed or finally get around to watching Archer like everyone on the internet says I should. What I'm saying is that episode two of Allen Gregory is super, super low on my list of things to watch. I'm not sure it cracks the top thousand.

Premise: C+

Execution: C

Animation: A-

Potential: C+

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Boss

(Note: Although two episodes of Boss have aired, I have only watched the first, so this is still, from my end at least, a pilot review. Just wanted to clear that up first thing.)

The show: Boss, Fridays on Starz

The premise in ten words or less? He's the mayor of Chicago!

Any good? I was absolutely taken with Boss from the opening frames and stayed riveted to the screen from then on in a way no other new series this fall this side of Homeland can claim. This is dense, brainy, literate television; endlessly stylish, ferociously acted and bursting with potential. I'm not going to claim it's on the level of Starz's Spartacus franchise – you gotta work your way up to claims like that – but as of one episode in it seems like a fascinating dark mirror of The West Wing, responding to every facet of that show's hope and optimism with the same on the opposite end of the spectrum. Boss is pure political cynicism.

The story centers around the fictitious mayor of Chicago, one Tom Kane, brought to life with startling power by Kelsey Grammer, so far removed from Frasier Crane that if you didn't know beforehand you would never guess or even believe that this man was a sitcom star for twenty years. From the opening scene, a minutes-long static shot of his face as he receives a dire medical prognosis (an opening which I might add is incredibly ballsy and unusual filmmaking for a TV series), he says infinitely more with almost indecipherably subtle shifts of his eyes and jaw than, say, Poppy Montgomery was able to with agonizing, protracted monologues about her dead sister in Unforgettable.

But don't get the wrong idea – while Boss is unafraid to dwell on silence when it serves the mood, Tom Kane is no silent protagonist. In fact, he immediately follows this long, restrained opening with a big all-American speech at a political event, and later on the pilot tosses some lengthy, downright Shakespearian (if Shakespeare used the word "fuck" more, anyway) monologues his way, which Grammer tears into with explosive, almost terrifying fury. One episode in and I'm already prepared to call bullshit if he doesn't secure an Emmy nomination.

To discuss the rest of the cast, I first need to get into the story, and hoo boy. Unlike certain other shows I've discussed this season (especially the last show I reviewed, ABC's Man Up), Boss is anything but thin on plot. In addition to the health issues, illicit securing of medication and generally screwed up personal life of the titular boss, stories that all receive their fair share of screentime, the first episode of Boss shoots plot threads in every direction you care to name. There's Kane's machinations and back-scratching and vote wrangling toward securing an expansion to the airport, there's appeasing various interest groups, there's Kane grooming the up-and-coming Illinois State Treasurer to primary the governor of Illinois, although the young political stud has some dark sides of his own.

And there's Kane's daughter Emma: political heiress, woman of God, charity worker, crack addict. She may not have the second-most screentime after Kane (that would probably be Kane's right-hand operators, Kitty O'Neill and Ezra Stone), but she does have the second most screentime in scenes from her point of view without the mayor in them, scenes that seem to be setting up a greater plot significance down the road.

And all that isn't even getting into various other subplots about construction workers, school renovation, or Chicago journalism that the series kicks off immediately and throws you right into the deep end of. The pilot of Boss is basically trying to launch into the fifth season of The Wire right out of the gate, with various institutions and points of view spanning every inch of the Windy City. There's even a little sex and violence in the mix, but I won't spoil the specifics there.

So as for the supporting cast, I am definitely liking Kathleen Robertson and Martin Donovan as Kane's aforementioned inner circle: Donovan radiates utter give-no-fuck confidence as Ezra Stone, while Robertson's Kitty O'Neill, able to rattle off a litany of Chicago politics facts at a moment's notice, is a creepy, cool ice queen. Connie Nielsen doesn't get enough screentime as Kane's estranged wife Meredith to make too much impact just yet, and nothing Hannah Ware did as Emma or Jeff Hephner as the rising State Treasurer Ben Zajac just blew me away in the pilot, but there's plenty of room to grow.

But, although I referenced HBO's magnum opus up above, I should be clear: Boss is not The Wire when it comes to realism. Maybe not even Breaking Bad. Boss (perhaps befitting the network that airs Spartacus) is hugely stylized, almost operatic. The camera work can be flashy, the entertaining, theatrical dialogue can have little in common with anything any human has ever actually said, the music can be sledgehammer.

In one scene, as Kane explains the history of various districts of Chicago to Zajac while standing atop a high building, the camera spins in a wide circle as the various regions of the city fade into historical versions of themselves from old America. Despite its cynicism and realpolitik, this is not a show that exactly purports to take place in reality.

And for my money, that's awesome. Just one hour into what I imagine will hopefully be a few dozen and Boss already evokes the feel of an epic Greek tragedy, not the least because of how the first scene of the series makes it obvious this thing has to end. There is one particular scene in the pilot involving one of Kane's guys threatening someone who knows a secret about him in a gratuitously flamboyant manner that went just a little too far out of the bounds of reality for me, but other than that this is television that straddles the fine line of being flashy, loud and bold without sacrificing subtlety, intelligence, or complexity.

There's something inherently funny about watching Kelsey Grammer not only anchor but positively excel in one of the best new shows of the year, because I regard his last show, ABC's short-lived sitcom Hank, to be literally and without one iota of hyperbole the worst scripted show of the last five years. Hank is so apocalyptically awful I actually recommend students of television watch it as a fascinating example of how every single conceivable thing can go wrong in the creation of a show, a quick and efficient guide of everything not to do. But hopping from Hank to Boss goes to show that while you can count an actor down, you can never truly count them out.

Will I watch again? Like Homeland, I'm definitely with this one for the duration of at least the first season.

Premise: B+

Execution: A-

Performances: A

Potential: A

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Man Up

The show: Man Up, Tuesdays on ABC

The premise in ten words or less? Some guys hang out.

Any good? Man Up is the epitome of a show that is almost impossible to summon any kind of feelings, thoughts, or emotions for upon completion of an episode beyond "that was an episode of television I just watched." It doesn't trigger the gag reflex the way the likes of Whitney and Last Man Standing do, but it also packs no more than two or three small chuckles into 22 minutes and has as limp and soggy a non-premise as any new show I've watched this fall. Even 2 Broke Girls, while yukky and laugh tracky as hell, has more personality and more of a narrative.

Okay, I'll try my best to describe what the show is about. At its center are three guys, Mather Zickel's Will, Dan Fogler's Kenny, and Christopher Moynihan's Craig. They play a lot of video games and work in insurance and grapple, for some reason, with the fact that they are not as masculine as the generations of men that have come before them. Will has a wife and a son and Kenny, as is Fogler's style, has a more abrasive, Jonah Hill-in-Superbad type personality, but other than that not much differentiates the characters.

Now, on a performance level, there's nothing particularly wrong with the show. The sheer energy with which Fogler flings himself into every line of dialogue even inspires a little smirk here and there, and Henry Simmons manages to make Kenny's ex-girlfriend's new, physically perfect beau, Grant, pretty likable as he gradually becomes the fourth member of the clique. But it's hard to judge when none of them have any particularly engaging or funny dialogue put in their mouths.

There's a weird ABC network synergy going on between this and the awful new Tim Allen show Last Man Standing, as both are about men upset about the death of traditional masculinity, with Allen's bitterness targeted at the world around him and the Man Up guys' at themselves. In one scene Will's wife Theresa (played by Teri Polo, who I guess most people associate with her role in the Meet the Parents franchise but who was more importantly in The West Wing) chastises her husband for never having fought in a war like his father and grandfather, and he actually seems emasculated by this observation; strange, alien behavior with no foothold in reality from either side.

But, stupid and bizarre as the show's theme may be, at least it attempts to have one. On a story level, it's thin to the point of anemic; there's just nothing to the narrative beyond "here's some guys, watch them." It makes loosely-plotted hangout shows like New Girl and Happy Endings and Up All Night look like Arrested Development in comparison.

Will I watch again? I'd watch it before its thematic / network sibling Last Man Standing, but then again I'd rather watch a recording sent from the future of my own death than Last Man Standing, so that isn't saying much. I'd say Up All Night is a baseline for the absolute minimum quality level a sitcom needs to meet for me to watch it, and Man Up does not meet that level. So no.

Premise: C-

Execution: C

Performances: B-

Potential: B-

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Person of Interest

The show: Person of Interest, Thursdays on CBS

The premise in ten words or less? A machine predicts murders, two men stop them.

Any good? First off, I should note that calling this a "pilot review" is fraudulent, as I actually shotgunned all four existing episodes in rapid succession just before writing this (but "First Four Episodes Inspektor Tim" just doesn't have the same ring to it). But in a sense it makes no difference, as the next three chapters largely just confirmed both the good and the bad things I had suspected from the first.

Person of Interest is a procedural, with many of the problems that genre entails – being episodic and fairly predictable – but it also happens to be the strongest procedural of the fall. This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise considering the pedigree behind it, which includes creator Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher and co-writer of The Dark Knight) and executive producers Nolan and J.J. Abrams. (But, the greatness of Star Trek and Super 8 notwithstanding, let's not forget Abrams was also behind last fall's largely unfortunate NBC procedural Undercovers.)

What separates it from most other procedurals and aligns it in a way more with 24 or Homeland is that rather than solving crimes, the two men at the show's center are out to prevent crimes before they happen. But unlike in 24 or Homeland, they're not out to stop huge terrorist threats but more everyday murders.

The show, while set in 2011, takes place in a very lightly sci-fi alternate universe where, after 9/11, Finch (Michael Emerson of Lost fame) was tasked with creating The Machine, which sees everything going on all throughout the country through a million eyes, hears everything through a million years, intercepts every email, records every phone call – basically, everyone everywhere is spied on at all times. The Machine then analyzes the data and reports who is going to be the victim of fatal violence. The government only used The Machine to prevent major terrorist attacks, but, upset that ordinary murders were being discarded, Finch set out on his own.

But Finch is martially untrained and walks with a limp, so he drafts aimless but deadly veteran Reese (Jim Caviezel of Jesus Christ of Nazareth fame), the show's protagonist, to be his instrument of justice, and the two go into the vigilante business together. But, as The Machine only gives the identities of people who will be involved in murders – not when, how, or why the murders will happen or even whether the person it pinpoints is the victim or the killer – the job also involves detective work.

Now, what the premise is immediately reminiscent of is Batman's cell phone sonar at the end of The Dark Knight, to the extent that it could almost be accused of being a ripoff if it weren't from the same writer. It could also be compared to Homeland, which doesn't have any science fiction but does examine the push and pull between privacy and national security.

The problem, from a greater political standpoint, is that, as of four episodes in and unlike in The Dark Knight or Homeland, neither the heroes nor the narrative of Person of Interest have given the slightest indication that there's anything disturbing or wrong about the power to spy on every single person in America at will. I'm not necessarily saying the series is right-wing, but it is, at the very least, a little tone deaf.

Like pretty much all of CBS's scripted programming – comedy, drama, or whatever – Person of Interest is well-engineered to have an infinitely sustainable premise lacking any real direction, goal, or end point, so the series can viably go on for ten seasons so long as they can keep devising new weekly crimes. No shocker there: That's the formula that's put CBS on top and there's no reason for them to tweak it now.

But what is surprising is that there is a sense of continuity, with the fourth episode following up on a subplot from the pilot and making direct references to the events of the third episode while expecting viewers to keep up. That doesn't sound like anything special if you're used to good TV, but, given this is a CBS procedural, I'll admit I was taken aback. It certainly gives the show a leg up on the rigidly, almost depressingly episodic Prime Suspect in that regard.

But whereas Maria Bello's Jane Timoney was the only thing that kept me watching Prime Suspect for the few episodes I did before giving up, Person of Interest's hero Reese may be the weak link of his own show. He's given this very blandly badass characterization, without any hint of internal life or personality, never losing his cool, never intimidated or flummoxed by anything, taking down every obstacle without breaking a sweat. He's like a good Anton Chigurh, which isn't as interesting as you might think. His generic procedural protagonist backstory of having lost someone is no more inspired than it is with Poppy Montgomery's character on Unforgettable, and Jim Caviezel does little to give him the extra kick to smooth over the weak writing.

The supporting cast fares a bit better, although none of them just grabbed me by the balls. Michael Emerson's oracle-type techie backup Finch, while given little more characterization on the page than Reese, is, unlike Reese, jolted to life by his actor. Emerson was always great as Ben Linus on Lost, even when given shit to work with, and he captures this odd balance that makes Finch simultaneously just a little creepy while also being clearly on the side of good. Taraji P. Henson and Kevin Chapman fill out the rest of the rather tiny main cast as two cops, the former good and searching for Reese, the latter dirty and doing Reese's bidding on threat of exposure. Neither are bad, neither remarkable.

Ultimately, Person of Interest has some good things going for it that separate it from merely being Generic Crime Procedural #8139, and you could do worse with your TV viewing. But it also has its unfortunate aspects – the foremost of which may be the fact that the show's message essentially seems to boil down to "spying, wiretapping, and the dissolution of privacy are awesome and would solve every problem" – and, given that it airs the same night as Community and Parks and Recreation, you could do better too.

Will I watch again? Probably not, but that's more my general antipathy for procedurals speaking than a comment on the fairly acceptable quality level of the show. If you're going to watch a new procedural this fall, make it Person of Interest before Prime Suspect and way, way before Unforgettable. (And Charlie's Angels, lol.)

Premise: B-

Execution: B-

Performances: B-

Potential: B-

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Homeland

The show: Homeland, Sundays on Showtime

The premise in ten words or less? CIA agent believes rescued American POW may have been turned.

Any good? Homeland is really, really good, something I was worried I wouldn't have the pleasure of saying about any new series this fall. It doesn't have an obscene budget or do anything particularly flashy to achieve its goodness, it just plain puts in the work, delivering a complex, fascinating story, well-defined and very well-acted characters, real stakes, real thrills, real edge, real mystery, and striking contemporary sociopolitical relevance in what it says about the invasion of privacy in the post-9/11 era.

The show is primarily about two people who only very briefly interact in the pilot: CIA analyst Carrie Mathison, played by Claire Danes, and U.S. Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, played by Band of Brothers' Damian Lewis, who has just been rescued after eight years of captivity in Iraq. Problem is that, while on site in Iraq before getting benched in Langley for her erratic behavior, Carrie got a tip that an American prisoner of war had been turned by Al-Qaeda, and Brody is the only American POW who has been found since then.

The government intends to utilize Brody as a media-friendly symbolic hero, so Carrie, left out in the cold, conducts a one-woman operation to discover if he's truly gone bad or not. While Brody either readjusts to domestic life with his now-alien family (including a young son with no memory of him whatsoever) or pretends to do so while plotting terrorist action, Carrie has cameras installed all through his house and holes up in her ratty apartment obsessively watching everything that goes down in the Brody household, from meals to conversations to Brody fucking his wife, eyes peeled for any hint of terrorist sympathy or activity. And things only get more fucked up from there!

The best way I can sum up the series is as 24 meets The Conversation meets The Manchurian Candidate, or perhaps simply as the thinking man's 24. That isn't a slam on 24, exactly – I've seen every episode of 24 in existence – but simply acknowledgement that even at its best that series was more or less a cartoon that existed entirely for the immediate base thrill. Homeland shares much with 24, including showrunner Howard Gordon, writer / producer Alex Gansa, composer Sean Callery, and season-spanning anti-terrorism storylines, but it's a more patient, more subtle, more intelligent series, one that approaches homeland security in a realistic manner and has no reliance on weekly gunfights or car chases to be nervy and thrilling.

Now, if you've seen Damian Lewis as Dick Winters in Band of Brothers, you don't need me to tell you that he's really good (on the other hand, if you've only seen him in Dreamcatcher, you probably do), giving a performance that befits the uncertain, mysterious nature of his character's true intentions. Firefly's Morena Baccarin brings wounded cautiousness edged with hope as Brody's wife Jessica, while Mandy Patinkin is gravitastic as Carrie's CIA superior Saul Berenson, who is less than approving of her methods. The rest of the cast also does good work, even the Brody kids, but the show's true secret weapon is Claire Danes as Carrie.

When I mentioned above that things just get more fucked up, what I was alluding to is the pilot's eventual reveal that Carrie is crazy. And when I say crazy, I don't mean neurotic or even irrationally intense like Jack Bauer (although she is the latter to some extent), I mean the character is literally crazy; she requires daily anti-psychotic medication to function in society. While not a true villain protagonist in the manner of Tony Soprano or Breaking Bad's Walter White – she believes everything she's doing to be for the good of her country, and as we don't yet know the truth of Brody, it could well be – Carrie Mathison is a dark, disturbing, fascinating figure, probably my favorite new TV character of the fall, and Danes is a revelation in the part.

Everything about Danes' performance is brilliantly edgy and tense, and, while spying on the Brody household for long, silent stretches, she says more with her eyes and body language than most other TV actors could with pages of monologues. Little things like her looking up when someone says her name, the way she makes eye contact, and her vaguely erratic movement are disquieting in this wonderfully subtle way I can't even define. There is absolutely no trace of Danes' angsty high schooler from My So-Called Life or celestial princess from Stardust here. It's a transformation that should sweep Emmy off its feet.

Also, I really hope that at some point during the season Carrie runs out of her anti-psychotic meds at a crucial juncture and can't get more, because, much as I appreciate the subtle tightrope of Danes' performance now, there's definitely a side of me that wants to see her dial it up to eleven for at least an episode.

There's still other subplots I've barely touched on, including Jessica Brody trying to hit undo on various parts of the life she made after assuming her long-missing husband was dead and the CIA's hunt for the show's big bad (and Osama bin Laden stand-in) Abu Nazir. Needless to say, this show is heaving with content from the word go, yet it still manages to keep it all feeling sleek and streamlined. It's equal and equally skillfully part character drama, espionage thriller, conspiracy thriller, and terrorism thriller. And in case you need some of that lowest common denominator good stuff to give you a final push, there's f-words, nudity, and a guy gets beaten to death.

I do have some concern about the future of Homeland, namely how and if they can sustain the show into a second season and beyond. They could resolve the stories of Brody and Abu Nazir and have Carrie confront a new terrorist threat ala 24, but that could get generic. Alternately, they could extend the mystery of Brody's allegiance beyond the first twelve episodes, but that could get tired (and Lost has made me permanently wary of series-spanning arcs). But while I'm nervously curious about what Homeland will look like a year from now, for the time being ignore my petty pessimism and watch it, because it's really damn good.

Will I watch again? They have me for at least the first season, guaranteed. Beyond that we'll have to play it by ear, but if the rest of the season is paced and structured in a way befitting the quality of the pilot and climaxes in a suitably unpredictable yet thrilling fashion, they'll have me for good.

Premise: A-

Execution: A-

Performances: A

Potential: A

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Last Man Standing

The show: Last Man Standing, Tuesdays on ABC

The premise in ten words or less? Generic family sitcom starring Tim Allen as macho asshole.

Any good? Let me preface this by saying that Galaxy Quest is one of my favorite movies of all time and I like Buzz Lightyear as much as the next guy, so it's not like I have any kind of anti-Tim Allen agenda. It just so happens that in this case Allen has chosen to dedicate his time to a fetid piece of lowest common denominator crap with all the artistry of a kindergartener's finger painting; a hideously generic laugh track family sitcom that, barring references to contemporary pop culture and the internet, feels like it's fallen through time from 1992. Last Man Standing proudly sucks.

Allen plays Mike Baxter, the titular last man standing in a house otherwise populated by women, namely his wife Vanessa (an unfathomably generic "gets lightheartedly frustrated with stubborn husband, but then they kiss and make up" stock sitcom wife) and their three daughters. The youngest daughter is tomboyish and tends to agree with Mike the most, the middle a girly girl who loves Glee and makeup and whatnot, the oldest a young single mom who got pregnant in high school (the lone aspect of Last Man Standing that strikes me as something from a 21st century show, but don't mistake that for the character actually being dynamic or engaging).

But make no mistake: This is Mike's show. Let me tell you about Mike. Mike Baxter is a motherfuckin' man's man. In the first two episodes, he expresses antipathy and / or hostility towards, but not limited to: The internet, blogs, vlogs, tanning salons, people who don't change their own tires, people who don't hunt, soccer, fantasy football, Harry Potter, Glee, all modern popular culture, the anti-war movement, Islam, gays, foreign languages, and Barack Obama. He works for a sporting goods supplier and rants and raves at length about "What happened to men?!" to the unyielding roar of the laugh track. It might be amusing if he were supposed to be a repulsive neanderthal, but no, he's supposed to be awesome; a hero for the Rick Perry 2012 generation.

The gay jokes, which include Mike pulling his grandson Boyd out of daycare upon learning that one of the babies has two dads and later ranting to his daughter that he doesn't want Boyd to wind up "dancing on a float!", are particularly problematic. It's not that a joke can't be made about homosexuality – Tobias on Arrested Development and Dean Pelton on Community are the butt of many, many gay jokes, largely involving self-denial and futile attempts to get back in the closet – but, in the year 2011, your punchline cannot be "Gays! Disgusting, right?!" (Though, granted, the laugh track disagrees with me, as it did so, so many times while watching Last Man Standing.)

In the couple days since Last Man Standing aired, I've already seen plenty of internet commenters make the brilliant argument that the show is in fact hilarious, it's just not for wimpy PC liberals. Now, don't misunderstand: I take absolutely no offense at the implication that Last Man Standing isn't for me. In fact, I swell with pride to think so. But even if your politics lie to the right of Rick Santorum, if you enjoy laughing at things that are clever and witty, this show is not for you, because it's generic and dumb and boring and aggressively unfunny. Half the jokes in the entire show are structured as "something unmanly occurs or is mentioned, Tim Allen expresses disapproval, laugh track goes apeshit," over and over and over again. Hey assholes! I didn't laugh the first time! I'm not gonna laugh the eightieth time! Fuck off!

Will I watch again? A resounding fuck no. I'm honestly not sure I'd even take it over Whitney. I'm sure the real life Mike Baxters of the world will fucking love it, though.

Premise: D

Execution: D-

Performances: C-

Potential: D+

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: American Horror Story

The show: American Horror Story, Wednesdays on FX

The premise in ten words or less? Family moves into haunted house.

Any good? It's weird, I'll definitely give it that much. And not just weird by the relatively soft standards of television, but plain fucking nuts. The underlying haunted house story has been done a million times before, up through and including box office disaster Dream House just a couple weekends ago, but this series cranks the absurdity and surrealism of the thing up to eleven in a way that I admired for its audacity even as I questioned whether or not there was really any artistic ambition behind it whatsoever.

The central family, the Harmons, includes Connie Britton as wife / mother Vivien, Dylan McDermott as husband / father Ben, and Taissa Farmiga (who I assumed to be Vera Farmiga's daughter or niece but is in fact her 20+ years younger sister) as surly teen daughter Violet. After her five-year stint as Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights, Britton is one of my favorite actresses of all time, and she's probably the main thing that had me interested in this show in the first place. She's very good, of course, but I almost question whether she's too good, playing starkly realistic and from the gut while almost everyone else is some degree of hammy (McDermott perhaps unintentionally).

Anyway, the Harmons deal with some fairly realistic issues, including Vivien's recovery from a miscarriage, Ben's infidelity, and Violet dealing with school bullies and cutting herself. But then there's Ben lighting fires in his sleep and trying to counsel a kid who fantasizes about shooting up the school who then romances Violet, and Vivien handling the creepy neighbor lady who keeps breaking in and the neighbor's Down syndrome daughter who repeatedly tells Vivien that she's going to die.

And finally, jettisoning all realism, Vivien hires a maid who appears to be a wrinkled old lady to everyone except Ben, to whom she's a sexy twentysomething who fingers herself in the middle of the house and tries to seduce him. Ben jerks off in front of a window and Vivien gets raped by the gimp from Pulp Fiction. Oh, and there's ghosts, of course, and a man with a half burned off face who warns Ben that everyone who lives in their new house goes crazy and eventually on a murderous rampage.

If all that made you go "What the hell?", don't worry, that only means you're sane. It's a pilot that sets up stories and conflicts and mysteries at a dizzying, almost self-parodying rate, and if you think it sounds stupid or not for you you're probably right. But I either found there to be the nugget of something intriguing or my TV crush on Connie Britton is substantial enough that I was tricked into thinking I did. Either way, my interest is perked, although I'm ready to jump ship to bitter mockery at a moment's notice if things go south. Seeing as the show is run by Glee's Ryan Murphy, I already have one hand on that life preserver.

Will I watch again? The show is weird enough to reel me in for a second episode, although it's safe to say the presence of Connie Britton plays a larger role still. But retaining me beyond that will require it maintaining close to the same fever pitch absurdity, which could be tough. We'll see. Even in the best case scenario I'll be forever irritated that Terriers is no longer on FX while this is. What I'm getting at is bring back Terriers assholes!

Premise: B-

Execution: C+

Performances: B+

Potential: B-

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: How to Be a Gentleman

The show: How to Be a Gentleman, Thursdays on CBS

The premise in ten words or less? Prissy gentleman joins gym, learns to become a man's man.

Any good? Well, of the three new multi-cams I've seen this fall – this, Whitney, and 2 Broke Girls – I'd say it's probably the best (probably better than 2 Broke Girls, indifuckingsputably better than Whitney), if only on account of a strong cast: David Hornsby of Always Sunny (who also created the show and wrote the pilot), Dave Foley of NewsRadio, Mary Lynn Rajskub of 24, Rhys Darby of Flight of the Conchords, and, uh, Kevin Dillon of Entourage. Ok, the last one makes me cringe out of association, but if I try to scrub Entourage from my brain, I do grant that Dillon has a type he plays well.

Whether or not they're actually given anything funny to work with remains in dispute, edging towards no. It's a setup-heavy pilot to be certain, which doesn't bug me at all (if you follow this blog you know that Community is my favorite sitcom on the air, and its pilot is 100% setup), but the setup seems almost more interested in establishing locations than compelling characters.

David Hornsby's protagonist Andrew Carlson writes a column sharing the title of the show for a men's magazine – location number one being the magazine offices, although we never see anything outside of his boss's office – but when the magazine decides to take a more Maxim-style approach, he is instructed to butch up his column or pack his stuff. So he joins a gym run by his former high school nemesis Bert – the gym being location number two – and, in return for tormenting him when they were kids, Bert agrees to teach Andrew how to be a real man. And the third location is Andrew's mom's house, where he eats dinner with his mom, sister, and brother-in-law (the brother-in-law also joins the gym, which is good as it prevents the locales from being totally disconnected).

None of this sounds too bad, but the real problem lies in how the characters are largely one-note caricatures assigned the exact same broad, hammy humor that you usually find in these multi-cam affairs. Also, the entire "Man up! RARGH REAL MEN" premise and vibe of the show, while I suppose providing a nice counterpoint to The Big Bang Theory for CBS sitcom devotees, truly doesn't appeal to me in the least. That said, there's a scene where Kevin Dillon as Bert spends like a minute of screentime chugging down an entire carton of milk that threw off the calculatedly mechanical rhythm of the show in a slightly amusing way.

Like CBS's 2 Broke Girls, How to Be a Gentleman's supposed appeal is rooted in the friendship of two strong and initially opposed archetypal leads, but more so than 2 Broke Girls this show succeeds in at least putting funny actors in its supporting roles. Rhys Darby probably comes closest of anyone in the cast to earning a laugh via pure New Zealand spunk as the brother-in-law. So if you absolutely must watch a new multi-cam this season, I'd go with this one by just a little bit. It's sure as hell better than the show it replaced, $#*! My Dad Says. No one on earth can deny that.

Will I watch again? When a gentleman is confronted with a multi-cam laugh track sitcom pilot in the year 2011... he chooses to change the channel.

Premise: C+

Execution: C-

Performances: B-

Potential: C+

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Charlie's Angels

The show: Charlie's Angels, Thursdays on ABC

The premise in ten words or less? Three pretty ladies fight crime.

Any good? Yikes! This is some bad television! Not a disappointment in any way – it's exactly as bad as I figured a new Charlie's Angels TV series would be the minute I heard they were making a new Charlie's Angels TV series – but a clear-cut piece of shit by any standard; a show that makes pretty much all of the USA Network's frothy, generic crime procedurals look like masterworks.

Last week I praised another new ABC show, Revenge, for mostly standing aside and letting the cheesiness of its premise waft through unchecked. But that kind of cheese really only works if there's at least the pretense of creative effort put in – few movies I consider "so bad it's good" were deliberately engineered to suck – and Charlie's Angels announces its shittiness so quickly and so assertively that I was stunned. It's just amazingly stupid, and "stylish" in the worst, most grating way. Even things like the song choices, establishing shots of Miami, and scene transitions are obnoxious and garish.

The two episodes I watched (yes, by the time I got around to it on Hulu, there were two episodes, so I watched two, which I already know I shall lament on my deathbed) were identically structured outside of Minka Kelly joining the team as the third Angel in the first one. Some type of crime, investigation which at some point entails dressing sexily (but not so sexily as to upset elderly viewers), uncover a supervillain and his plot, lukewarm action scene, Charlie congratulates the Angels via intercom. It's all flawlessly dumb and predictable. In the second episode they prevent the assassination of the First Lady of Russia, so it seems that comically huge stakes are going to be Charlie's Angels' bread and butter. Not that I have anything against huge stakes – I did watch 24 – but it helps if they're earned over time.

The acting in this show is astonishingly bad, despite the four-person regular cast containing both a Friday Night Lights alum and a Wire alum. In fact, the single biggest laugh I've had at any new show this entire TV season is Annie Ilonzeh's look of mild disappointment upon seeing her best friend blown up via car bomb, which plays like the director told Ilonzeh to imagine she just arrived at the bank, only to realize it was already closed. But writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar don't exactly give their leads golden dialogue to work with either. In response to the same car bombing, one of the Angels later blandly utters the line "I never thought my heart could hurt this much," and my whole asshole clamped up.

Ilonzeh may be the worst, but if so it's by a tiny margin. Rachael Taylor delivers all her dialogue with impressive apathy, and while Minka Kelly can do good work under the actor-friendly umbrella of Jason Katims (i.e. on Friday Night Lights and Parenthood), as car thief and new Angel Eve French she achieves a failure to emote that you almost never see in a professional production. The scene where she describes her and a friend's escape from a child trafficking ring in an expressionless monotone may be a new low for the filmed monologue, especially when she caps it off with "The faces of the girls we left behind still haunt me." in a tone and cadence that seems more appropriate for the line "They were out of chips at the grocery store."

The problems with Charlie's Angels are legion, from the plotting to the acting to the dialogue to the filmmaking, but I think the true fatal flaw is what a soulless and mechanical thing the series is even by the standards of network television. The majority of scripted shows, even shitty ones I have no use for, were, at some point in the development process, an idea by a creative person; a story they wanted to tell. Charlie's Angels is only on television because some businessmen said, "Yeah, we can probably make money off this title. Make 42 minutes of stuff that we can market it with every week." And so they did, and it sucked, because there's absolutely no heart behind it whatsoever.

Will I watch again? Sorry, Charlie!

Premise: D+

Execution: D

Performances: D

Potential: D-

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Pan Am

The show: Pan Am, Sundays on ABC

The premise in ten words or less? Pan Am stewardesses in the 1960s. One is secretly CIA!

Any good? One surefire way to get me intrigued in a TV drama is to make a pilot that I can watch in its entirety and have no idea what's going to happen in the second episode, let alone the fifth or the tenth. The best way I can sum up my stance is that I like TV dramas with well-engineered seasons that within any given episode have no set formula or repeated structure. That's why, despite thinking both episodes of Prime Suspect that have aired so far are competent, I'm pretty sure I'm done with the show – the two episodes have the exact same structure and so will the next ten. That bores me.

And that's why I liked Pan Am. It's an odd show, to be certain, one that (despite premiering to a respectable 11 million viewers) I'm not sure will make it to a second season, but it sure ain't formulaic. The show focuses on four women, played by Kelli Garner and Christina Ricci and relative unknowns Margot Robbie and Karine Vanasse, who are stewardesses for Pan Am airlines in 1963. Like a certain other well-known 60s drama, it's set against a backdrop of retro glamour (in this case specifically revolving around air travel) while also depicting a darker undercurrent of ingrained sexism.

But lest you think the show is simply Mad Men on a Plane, it also has a spy thriller component, as Garner's character Kate is secretly working as a courier and spy for the CIA. What! Beyond that, it has a Lost-esque flashback structure and a story concerning the mysterious disappearance of the stewardess who Ricci has replaced. Mix all that with its empowerment message and you have an absolutely fucking packed show. The pilot doesn't contain anything you'd describe as an action scene but is nonetheless impressively breathless.

The other obvious show to compare Pan Am to is NBC's The Playboy Club. Both are new 60s-set dramas about women in outwardly glamourous, sexy careers who still operate under a certain misogyny – the Pan Am stewardesses have exacting restrictions placed on them in terms of age, weight, etc. – but unlike The Playboy Club, which forces us to view them through the viewpoint of Eddie Cibrian's (shitty Don Draper wannabe) Nick Dalton via the condescending and sexist assumption that we'll only be interested if we see it through a man's point of view, Pan Am actually lets the women be the main characters. Men play a role – most notably an airline captain played by Mike Vogel – but aren't forced into a leading role it makes no sense for them to be in.

The show's visual style is kind of dazzling, and, like its storytelling, weird in a good a way. The way the jets are filmed doesn't look all that much more photorealistic than the dinosaurs in Terra Nova, but unlike that show, it isn't aiming for realism and botching it. Pan Am's visuals gleefully reject realism and go about 10% askew from reality for this soft, colorful, nostalgic look that, of all things, made me think of The Incredibles and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I really hope that wasn't something they only put in the extra effort to do because it was the pilot, and the look is actually maintained throughout the series.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in Pan Am is how firmly Kelli Garner seems to be the main character. I'd assumed ever since hearing that Christina Ricci was cast in a TV show some months back that that show would be The Christina Ricci Show as surely as New Girl might as well be called The Zooey Deschanel Show, but, at least as of one episode in, that isn't the case. Like, not even a little bit. Ricci has less screentime, less development, less focus, and less dialogue than Garner. But the last five years of Ricci's film career haven't exactly been chock full of hits, so maybe I shouldn't be too surprised after all.

Okay then. Whew. I made it through this entire discussion of Pan Am's pilot without making one pun about a Pan Am pilot. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty sure I deserve a medal.

Will I watch again? I feel compelled to watch at least a few more and see if the show takes shape as something interesting. Granted, I have no trouble whatsoever imagining Pan Am quickly becoming a shallow, repetitive soap. But I can also easily see the opposite. I feel like writers and producers who make a pilot where I have no idea what the second episode will entail deserve my eyeballs for their audacity alone.

Premise: B

Execution: B

Performances: B+

Potential: B+

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Terra Nova

The show: Terra Nova, Mondays on Fox

The premise in ten words or less? Family travels back to live in dinosaur times.

Any good? Yesterday I discussed Prime Suspect, a cop procedural that wrung water from the stone of its ultra-generic premise via strong acting and filmmaking. And today we examine the opposite: Terra Nova, a show with a unique, exciting premise and loads of potential that finds itself held back by shaky, lukewarm execution.

But we'll start positive, and the positive lies first and foremost in the show's setting and story. I mean, traveling back to live with the dinosaurs! That's just cool! I should mention that the characters in Terra Nova don't accidentally fall through a time rift and get stuck – this isn't Lost – but make the deliberate choice to journey back and escape the polluted semi-apocalyptic future of the 22nd century. In and around Terra Nova (the village they live in), in addition to dinosaurs both friendly and hungry, they find hostile tribes, sabotage, moles, mysteries, sonic boom guns, and plenty of other potentially neat concepts.

The problem lies not in the "dinosaur times" part of the premise but in the "family" part. Not that I have anything against families on television – hell, I watch NBC's Parenthood, which is a family show distilled down to nothing but family – but the central five-person unit here, the Shannons, range from blandly inoffensive to flat-out annoying. In all fairness, it's really only the rebellious teenage son Josh that annoys, but geez, what a grating character, made worse by his equally grating teenage posse. The cop husband, doctor wife, teenage daughter and five-year-old daughter fall more on the bland, "who gives a shit?" end of the spectrum, but they're all the main characters, so it's a pretty big problem.

Thankfully, Stephen Lang (or, as most viewers will refer to him as until they learn his character's name, "Avatar Guy") lends gravitas and badassery as the leader of Terra Nova. His presence is the only thing holding the show back from receiving a D-range acting grade, but is also problematic in that it'll make most viewers wish he was the main character.

At somewhere approaching $20 million, Terra Nova's 86-minute pilot is one of the most expensive produced in the history of television (future episodes are going to clock in at around $4 million apiece), and it shows in impressive sets, vistas, vehicles, and a nice grungy look in the 22nd century scenes leading off the episode. But $20 million, while huge for TV, would still be considered microbudget for an action sci-fi film of the same length, and the dinosaurs, while infinitely better than any CGI creatures you'd see on TV a decade ago, just aren't quite there yet.

There are many CGI elements that can be done justice with TV money. Spaceships, for one: I never questioned any of what I saw on Battlestar Galactica or Firefly, the latter of which is getting on a decade old. Castles and other giant structures, as seen on Game of Thrones. Robots, vehicles, distant shots of CGI cities. Basically anything that isn't supposed to be an organic, living thing can be pulled off on TV given restraint and talented artistry.

But making things that are supposed to be flesh and blood truly look like they're sharing the frame with the actors (especially in lengthy shots in broad daylight, as this show attempts) is a million times harder. Even big budget feature films like I Am Legend screw it up. And the dinosaurs on Terra Nova, while good for TV, never quite break free from looking like refugees from a CGI animated film hanging out in live action ala Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I'm interested in what Terra Nova is attempting to do, and I could see the show getting pretty good if they enrich the mythology, have a well-structured season arc, make the action scenes more visceral and less cartoony, and have three or four of the Shannons die in a tragic dinosaur attack. (Sadly, at least one of those things has little chance of happening.) But whether the show pulls a Spartacus (gets better and better with each episode) or a The Event (spins perilously and quickly off the rails), this pilot, while not a failure, won't be remembered as a great one.

Will I watch again? There's nothing else quite like it on TV right now, so yes. I just hope I don't live to regret it.

Premise: A-

Execution: B-

Performances: C

Potential: B

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Prime Suspect

The show: Prime Suspect, Thursdays on NBC

The premise in ten words or less? Lady cop.

Any good? Like with CBS's new cop procedural Unforgettable, I don't have overwhelmingly much to say about Prime Suspect, but unlike with Unforgettable, that doesn't necessarily mean I hated it. In fact, I wouldn't even say I disliked it! As far as cop procedurals go it's a reasonably competent pilot with just a little bit more grit and reality to its world than, say, Blue Bloods or Hawaii Five-0, directed by Peter Berg of Friday Night Lights awesomeness and anchored by a strong central performance.

That performance is Maria Bello, taking her first regular TV gig since the 90s as NYPD Detective Jane Timoney. Now, granted, Bello's done her share of crap, but by and large she's a solid film performer who brings a believable edge that allows you to quickly invest in Timoney even before meeting her father and seeing her hostile work environment. The supporting cast has a number of "that guy" actors like Kirk Acevedo, Brían F. O'Byrne and Joe Nieves whose names may not ring a bell but whose faces will spark recognition in any TV junkie, and they all do generally good work.

It's the script I can't muster much enthusiasm for, for roughly the same reasons I can't for most cop procedurals. The characterization isn't bad and the dialogue doesn't all sound like TV patter, but it's the same crime scene - police station - investigation - questionings - big clue - final action scene arc as every fucking cop show episode ever, and I have zero give-a-shit about that story structure anymore. I've seen it. I've seen it literally hundreds of times, and if I watched more cop shows it'd be literally thousands of times. The filmmaking and acting mine it for all it's worth, but I worry there's not much there there.

Will I watch again? Taken on its own, the pilot isn't a bad little 42-minute cop movie, but it also fails to introduce any kind of major case or serialized story that will be continuing in weeks to come. I can get into cop / crime shows – in the last year I've liked The Chicago Code and absolutely loved Terriers – but for that to happen, there has to be a big hook, at least one major story that kicks off and concludes the season and is woven in and out of more stand-alone episodes throughout its duration. I have no interest in rigidly episodic procedurals (i.e. the majority of cop, doctor, and lawyer shows on TV). So, yes, I'll watch one more Prime Suspect on the strength of Bello and a decently solid pilot. But if that big hook isn't there, I'm out.

Premise: C+

Execution: B

Performances: A-

Potential: B-

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Whitney

The show: Whitney, Thursdays on NBC

The premise in ten words or less? Whitney has a boyfriend and some friends.

Any good? Whitney is a towering, monumental obelisk of unfunniness; a show that's existence can only be explained by it either being a refugee from Funniness Opposite Land, a land where the unfunny is funny and vice versa (in this land, it's the best show), or perhaps a scientific experiment by NBC to see how much unfunniness can physically be packed into one episode of television. If it's the latter I'd like to congratulate them, because somehow, against all odds and logic, they've managed to produce perhaps the first half hour of TV "comedy" I've seen since Hank that fails to improve on staring at an off television for the same length of time.

Whitney Cummings the comedienne plays Whitney Cummings the photographer, who speaks in a way strangely reminiscent of a comedienne throwing out stand-up observations vaguely reworked into awkward, unnatural dialogue that makes you feel a little bit ill just listening to it (it's okay though, because the five seconds of braying laugh track every other line let you know how funny it actually is). You just won't believe how wacky Whitney is! There's this one scene near the end where she wears a naughty nurse outfit. A naughty nurse! LOL, where do they come up with this stuff! I'm glad that the naughty nurse scene goes on and on and on, or we might not notice how funny it is.

Whitney has a boyfriend, Alex – played by Chris D'Elia like NBC took him aside and threatened to withhold pay unless Alex was the least charismatic, least funny, least distinctive black hole of a sitcom co-lead on any network – and some generic sitcom friends. One of them is so funny because she just says whatever's on her mind, even if it's a little bit crude! At one part she uses the word "balls," as in the slang for testicles! Oh, the uproarity! Another friend is a food critic. We know this because in one scene she's dressing provocatively and Whitney scolds her, "You're a food critic, not a Kardashian!" Oh my god, that is so funny! Do you see how they got exposition and a pop culture reference out of the way in one line? Brilliant! The laugh track thinks so too! A joke that will be studied for decades to come, I'm sure of it.

In all seriousness, there is a moment at the end of the first act where, for a brief second, the show almost stumbles upon comedy, when Whitney mistakenly eats the cake (or cupcakes, for some weird reason) at a wedding reception before the bride and groom. Now, the awkwardness resulting from this could have been funny, except that as soon as Whitney realizes, we don't even see anyone stare or get upset, we just get one quick, unfunny quip and cut immediately to the next scene, thereby skipping the part that might have actually worked comedically. Because, you see, the people making Whitney don't understand what funny is, and couldn't find a joke if it was dangled in front of them on a stick.

Whitney is a perfect storm of shit, from its empty non-premise to its flat performances to its poor, hammy characterization to its awkward, amazingly unfunny dialogue to its complete lack of originality or ambition to its laugh track laughing, laughing, always laughing, mocking everyone with a modicum of taste who might be watching. It's assertively and confidently the worst new scripted television show of 2011, and should make everyone who wanted Outsourced and / or Perfect Couples off NBC's comedy lineup realize the horrible truth in that adage about the grass on the other side.

Will I watch again? The question is less "Will I watch Whitney again?" than "How many gallons of liquid pigshit would have to be forced down my throat before I'd agree to watch Whitney again?"

Premise: C-

Execution: D-

Performances: D+

Potential: D

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Revenge

The show: Revenge, Wednesdays on ABC

The premise in ten words or less? Woman plots revenge against the people who framed her father.

Any good? Revenge has absolutely no legitimate artistic merit of any kind, but I will say that it achieves a delirious "so bad it's good" trashiness that arguably exceeds any other prime time soap of recent years. This is the lurid garbage Ringer wishes it could be; part wealth fantasy, part pulpy revenge thriller, and populated by the prettiest of mannequins. This show is pure fucking cheese, and not some tepid Cheddar cheese; I'm talking the smelly French stuff. I laughed harder, louder, and more frequently at this pilot than I did at any of this month's new sitcoms.

The show is an incredibly loose adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo centering on Amanda Clarke, who was torn away from her beloved father at a young age when some rich Hamptonites framed him for funding terrorism (like, honest-to-god, blowing shit up, Al-Qaeda terrorism). He died in prison, convicted of treason, but unbeknownst to Amanda he had invested in a computer startup years earlier, and upon Amanda's eighteenth birthday she receives both word of her father's innocence and a 49% share in the now multi-billion dollar computer conglomerate. So Amanda changes her name to Emily Thorne and returns to the Hamptons, rich and enraged, to engineer the social, political, and / or financial downfall of the people who set her father up, one at a time.

Although the show seems to have a revenge-of-the-week structure (the pilot involves Emily exposing the affair of a woman who testified against her father and having her exiled from the Hamptons), there is a big bad in the form of Madeleine Stowe's Victoria Grayson, whom the pilot refers to multiple times as "Queen of the Hamptons." It remains to be seen whether Victoria's ultimate downfall will take place at the end of the season or the end of the series, but Stowe's presence is a relief, with her giving the show's only performance that isn't glassy-eyed, frigid, and lifeless.

A huge aspect of the show is the wealth fantasy – oh hey, look at Emily buying an expensive house on a whim, look at Emily buying a ticket to a $10,000-a-plate fundraiser like it was a candy bar, look at Emily's expensive clothes, etc., etc. – which I generally despise, but I'd say it's a bit less obnoxious here than on Entourage. The idle millionaire lifestyle is portrayed mostly as something decadent and villainous, a mask Emily has to wear out of necessity, as opposed to Entourage or Sex and the City where it's like "oh man, isn't being a rich piece of shit awesome?"

Really, the worst moments of the pilot are whenever it tries to achieve any sort of emotional poignancy – the flashbacks with young Amanda and her father, filled with dialogue like "I love you infinity times infinity," are so overwritten and agonizing – while moments where Emily does shit like dress up as a housekeeper and slip poison into Victoria's husband's soup achieve a zen-like stupidity nirvana that makes it all almost worthwhile. If you're going to be trash, be trash, don't playact at artistic ambition.

Will I watch again? Probably not on any weekly basis, but I could imagine myself one day skimming through it on Netflix Watch Instant if I hear the season maintains the same fever pitch goofy absurdism and has some sort of satisfying structure to it. The show premiered to a not-quite-mind-blowing but definitely rock-solid 10 million viewers, so I'm willing to bet there's a second season on the horizon as well.

Premise: B

Execution: C+

Performances: C

Potential: B-

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: Unforgettable

The show: Unforgettable, Tuesdays on CBS

The premise in ten words or less? Detective with photographic memory.

Any good? Unforgettable is easily the worst drama pilot I've sat through in the last two weeks – one of the worst I've seen all year – and, unlike Ringer, it doesn't even have the decency to be bad in an amusingly zany fashion. This is Generic Cop TV 101; soft-brained, zero-ambition pabulum ladled out from the CBS procedural assembly line with a sneer and a "fuck you America, here's the shit you like!"

The protagonist is Carrie Wells (played with resounding "I have successfully hit my marks and delivered my lines"-ness by Poppy Montgomery), a former detective with hyperthymesia, meaning that she can remember every moment of her life with photographic clarity, except, of course, the day her sister was murdered, the one case she can't solve. But the cops need her help on a murder, so she's back. The main cop is Al, played by Dylan Walsh, and in the very first scene – the very first scene! – between Carrie and Al they drill in with alarming assertiveness that will make you cry in the shower later that there's an EPIC ROMANCE on the horizon between the two. Because lord knows you've failed at making a pilot if you don't establish an EPIC ROMANCE on the horizon.

Carrie's memory skills are depicted by scenes where we cut between Poppy Montgomery thoughtfully furrowing her brow and then walking through her own memories in frozen time, looking around at things she may have seen with her peripheral vision. It's kind of stupid and absurd, but it's definitely better than the overwritten scene earlier in the episode where some old guy quizzes her about what happened on March 27th, 1998 and she rattles off a litany of facts. That was some seriously rancid shit.

This is shorter than my other reviews because there's really nothing to say. Outside of the visually and dramatically inert trips into memory land, absolutely every single aspect of this pilot is identical to every sloppy, lazy police procedural episode you've seen since time immemorial. Visit the crime scene, police station, flat "witty" banter, a couple red herrings, questioning witnesses and suspects, final predictable twist, half-assed action scene, rinse and repeat every week. It goes without saying it's going to be a monstrous hit, because it asks absolutely nothing of its viewers, even by CBS standards.

Will I watch again? Fuck no. Life's too short to spend watching episodic police procedurals even if they aren't this stupid and bland.

Premise: D

Execution: D

Performances: C-

Potential: D

Overall:

Pilot Inspektor Tim: The Playboy Club

The show: The Playboy Club, Mondays on NBC

The premise in ten words or less? Chicago's Playboy Club in the 1960s, and gratuitous murder.

Any good? I've never really been part of the cult of Mad Men. I mean, I like Mad Men. I've seen all 52 episodes of Mad Men. But there are lots of other TV shows I prefer to Mad Men – past and present, network and cable, comedy and drama – and I never fail to grimace at TV critics offhandedly stating that it's the greatest show on television, if not in the history of television, as if it were an objective fact. I roared with approval at Friday Night Lights thrashing it in acting and writing at the latest Emmys.

But whatever problems I may have with Mad Men, one thing it does have is restraint, and supreme confidence in the depth of its characters being sufficient to anchor compelling drama. Granted, the last network show I saw display similar confidence was Lone Star, which Fox took into a back alley and executed after two episodes, but even so, it throws The Playboy Club into sharp and bitter contrast. The Playboy Club features its first attempted rape right around four minutes in, followed one minute later by its first spurting-blood murder and a few minutes after that by body-hiding shenanigans. That right there is not showing restraint.

I compare the shows because, however much the producers of The Playboy Club like to pretend differently, their show would not exist without Mad Men. It's trying hard to tap into the same 60s chic – smoking, drinking, retro clothes, retro cars, social regressivism and all – and the main male character, Nick Dalton, is modeled after Don Draper to a laughable, almost sad degree. One of the show's leads, Naturi Naughton, was even on Mad Men, playing a Playboy Bunny in both shows. But, in trying to do Mad Men except with murder and the mob and prettier, younger actresses, The Playboy Club shows a grave misunderstanding of what made that show tic in the first place.

And it's a shame, because, unlike the Parents Television Council (more on this in a second), I actually wanted to like this show. Mad Men ripoff or no, I was rooting for it to succeed if only for having the balls to try something off the beaten path for network TV, with nary a cop or doctor to be found.

And it does do a number of things right. A lot of money was injected into the project and they chose their director well (Alan Taylor of Rome, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones and, would you look at that, Mad Men fame) and the results are all on the screen. It looks like a million bucks; easily the most sumptuously designed, visually pleasing pilot I've seen so far this season. The cast includes Amber Heard and David Krumholtz and Firefly's Sean Maher, and some of the actors I'm less familiar with like Laura Benanti as the Bunny house mother also do good work. The characters are all pretty well-defined in the available 42-minute window and some potentially engaging interpersonal conflicts are introduced. But that murder is just such a silly and juvenile way to kick things off, and it's hard to get past that.

The other huge problem is Eddie Cibrian as the previously mentioned Nick Dalton, who is, I guess (going by the billing order), supposed to be the main character. Outside of his cringe-inducing wannabe resemblance to Don Draper, he has this agonizingly disconnected story going on about being a lawyer and trying to clean up the mob, and it's just so not what I was interested in going into the show. Shouldn't the idea be to follow the Bunnies, especially with minor movie star Amber Heard as our viewpoint into that unique sorority? I mean, who the fuck wants to follow some slicked-hair lawyer who happens to hang out at the Playboy Club a lot and sleep with one of the Bunnies? One episode in and he's already my least favorite protagonist on television. What an utterly bizarre miscalculation.

I feel I should mention that, having now actually watched the show, the Parents Television Council hysteria preceding its debut (including the show being briefly banned in Utah) is more hilarious than ever. With acknowledgement that pornography exists and women walking around in the equivalent of one-piece bathing suits being the extent of the show's "adult" material, this is basically the least racy version of a Playboy show you could possibly imagine. 2 Broke Girls is more salacious.

Will I watch again? That such an ambitious, pricey, heavily-hyped drama premiered to 5.02 million viewers all but assures The Playboy Club's fate as one of this season's first freshman casualties (I'd be surprised to see it complete its 13-episode season run, but, this being ratings-starved NBC, it's not impossible), so I'll probably keep watching out of sheer curiosity, since I'm not likely to be watching long.

Premise: B-

Execution: C+

Performances: B

Potential: C+

Overall: